by Diane Hoh
Nightmare Hall
The Whisperer
Diane Hoh
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Epilogue
A Biography of Diane Hoh
Prologue
THE VOICE ON THE telephone was unrecognizable.
It was only a whisper. But not the soft, sweet whisper of a person in love. Not the soothing, comforting whisper of one friend to another. Not the conspiratorial, sly whisper of someone passing on gossip. Nothing so harmless as any of those.
This whisper was sinister, chilling, the voice low and threatening. It wafted through the wires like poisonous air, slithering out on Shea’s end in a dark, sickening cloud, enveloping her in dread.
Because she had brought this on herself. And now she didn’t know how to stop it.
This call was only the beginning, she knew that.
There would be others.
The whispers would continue.
Chapter 1
THE CONVERSATION WAS HUSHED in one particular blue booth at Vinnie’s Pizzeria, located in the village of Twin Falls, not far from Salem University. Comments were subdued, almost whispered, because the subject of the conversation sat only a few feet away, in an identical booth directly across the aisle.
Doctor Mathilde Stark, bane of science majors all across the beautiful, sprawling Salem campus, ate her fettuccini Alfredo calmly, ignoring the whispers across the aisle. The tall, severely dressed professor sat hunched over an open textbook, apparently oblivious to the whispering group.
“Why does she wear her hair like that?” Dinah Lincoln, Shea Fallon’s best friend, said. Dinah was short, plump, and easygoing, unlike Shea, who rushed through life as if she couldn’t get enough of it. “It’s almost the same color as yours, Shea. She would look much better if she wore it loose like yours. How does she get every hair to stay in place like that? Spray it with varnish?”
“She probably stared at it in the mirror with that evil eye of hers and froze it into place,” Shea hissed balefully. But mixed with her anger was an overwhelming sense of guilt. If her friends knew what she’d done that very afternoon. … She couldn’t tell them. Not even Dinah, who was the least judgmental person Shea knew. Even Dinah wouldn’t understand or condone this. No way.
Well, why should she? Shea asked herself. I don’t condone it myself. I know it was a sleazy thing to do. But I had no choice. It was the only way.
“I heard she mixes up a kettle of lethal brew and conjures up the ghosts of dead scientists whenever she needs to come up with a new, ever more terrifying exam,” the large, blond boy sitting opposite Shea said in a low voice. Sidney Frye, Dinah’s boyfriend, shared Dr. Stark’s advanced biology class with Shea, as Dinah did.
A broad-shouldered girl in jeans and a Salem T-shirt, a mass of thick, golden hair spilling down her back, approached their table. The boy with her was tall, with dark hair and friendly gray eyes. He looked vaguely familiar to Shea. “You guys aren’t being very subtle,” the girl said. “I mean, all this whispering … you can’t possibly be dumb enough to think Dr. Stark doesn’t know you’re raking her over the coals.”
Shea groaned, “Tandy, you’re my roommate. You know better than anyone what that woman has already done to me this year. How could it get worse? I’d never had a C in my life until I walked into that class. She hates me, that’s all. I can tell by the way her upper lip curls in contempt when she returns my papers.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Tandy Dominic said. She, too, was in the Advanced Biology Monday/Wednesday/Friday nine A.M. class. “She’s tough, but she’s good. I’ve learned more from Dr. Stark this year than I’ve learned from all the other teachers I’ve ever had. You guys just don’t try hard enough, Shea.”
No one agreed with her.
Changing the subject, Tandy motioned toward the tall, dark-haired boy and said, “Shea, this is Cooper Doyle. Coop. He’s in our bio class. I’m sure you’ve noticed him.” A sly grin slid across her fair-skinned, oval face. “Because he noticed you …”
Cooper Doyle laughed. “Speaking of subtle,” he said.
Tandy shrugged and tossed her hair. It fell around her shoulders in beautiful blonde waves. “Sorry. Subtlety isn’t one of my fine points. Coop, meet Shea Fallon, my roommate.”
When she had gone, Shea, her cheeks slightly pink, invited Coop to sit with them. She introduced him to Dinah, who surprised Shea by saying she already knew him. Coop worked with Sid, part-time, in the Animal Behavior Studies lab. Dinah often dropped in to see Sid while he was working, and had already met Coop there.
“You probably don’t remember, but I ran into you earlier,” he said to Shea as he slid into the booth beside her. “At Wilshire Hall. The science building?”
Shea almost gasped aloud. That was him? He remembered seeing her there? She had hoped, since she’d hurried away with only a breathless “excuse me,” that he hadn’t really had a good look at her.
Still … he couldn’t know where she’d been rushing from, could he?
“So, do you enjoy that bio class as much as I do?” he asked with a grin. He, too, kept his voice low, aware of the professor sitting across the aisle.
If he knew what she’d been up to in the science building, he wouldn’t be asking that question. She needed to get a grip on herself and answer him in as normal a tone of voice as possible, as if everything were perfectly normal.
If only it were …
“Maybe I should have taken regular freshman bio,” Shea responded. “You know, the basics. But it sounded so boring. My advisor suggested that I take the advanced class instead, since I’ve never had any trouble in science. Until now. I didn’t think it would be so tough.”
“It’s not,” Sid said, keeping his voice low. “My roommate, Joe Cameron, has Professor Lambeth for bio, and he says it’s a piece of cake. The problem isn’t the subject, it’s the professor,” he grumbled, casting a sideways glance across the aisle. Then he shrugged his wide shoulders. “You just have to know how to deal with someone like that, that’s all. Figure out what she wants, and give it to her.”
Dinah smiled. “If you don’t do well in her class, Sid, she’ll fire you from your job at the Animal Behavior Studies lab, and then you won’t have any more spending money. You’ll never be able to take me out again.”
Shea expected Sid to laugh, but he didn’t.
The temptation then to confess all, to tell each of them what she had done was so overwhelming, Shea had to grab a slice of pizza from the tray and thrust it into her mouth, just to keep from blurting out the truth.
Fortunately, Dinah changed the subject then, mentioning in a normal voice an upcoming party at Nightingale Hall, an off-campus dorm.
Lost in thought as she chewed, Shea leaned against the back of the booth, not hearing Dinah’s words. She still couldn’t believe what she’d done. Never, not once in twelve years of school had she cheated.
You never needed to before, an inner voice pointed out bluntly. So don’t be so sanctimonious about it. It wasn’t that you were so noble. It was just that you always did well.
Obviously. Because now that she wasn’t doing so well, what had she done?
She’d cheated.
Well, not yet. She hadn’t actually cheated yet.
But she’d laid the groundwork. Surreptitiously glancing across the aisle as Dr. Stark wiped her mouth with a paper napkin, picked up her check and her purse, and rose stiffly from her seat, Shea fought an irresistible urge to crawl under the table. She doesn’t know, she told herself. She couldn’t. She wasn’t there.
That was true. Dr. Stark’s office had been empty when, earlier that afternoon, Shea had tentatively turned the doorknob and opened the door a crack. If, over the wild beating of her own terrified heart, she had heard the slightest sound of activity inside the office, she would have ended it then. She would have turned around and raced down the hall and out the front door of Wilshire Hall. But she had heard nothing. The coast was clear.
As Dinah rambled on about the upcoming party, Shea replayed in her mind the scene from that afternoon.
She had never been so frightened in her life. She couldn’t believe she was even contemplating cheating. But she was desperate. The scholarship that had sent her to Salem was an academic one, and had very strict demands. Nothing under a B, period. No negotiating there. A final grade of C in any subject meant that her mother would have to chip in some of her hard-earned savings to finance her daughter’s education, something Shea knew her mother hadn’t counted on doing. The relief in Mrs. Fallon’s face last July at news of the full-tuition scholarship had been undisguised.
But Fiona Fallon’s darling daughter had as much chance of earning anything above a dismal D in Dr. Stark’s deviously devised exam tomorrow morning as she did of being elected president. No way.
Unless … unless she had a copy of the exam. …
She had fought the idea. She knew plenty of kids in high school who had done it. But she’d never even had to think about it then. And she’d been awfully judgmental, it seemed to her now, about the kids who had. Miss Superior. Miss Self-Righteous. Saint Shea.
Now, she understood. She could not flunk that exam tomorrow. She had studied and studied, until her eyes were crossed and her brain felt like mush, but she knew she still wasn’t ready for Dr. Demento’s worst.
She couldn’t believe the door to Dr. Stark’s office was unlocked, the office empty when Shea peered inside. Wasn’t that kind of unsafe? Dr. Stark must be a lot more trusting than she looked. Most of the time, she acted like students were the lowest form of life on the planet. She clearly wasn’t one of those teachers who believed in being “pals” with her students. So why the open-door policy?
Biting her lower lip, Shea peered around the corner of the office door. No one in sight. Was the exam even in the office? Would Dr. Stark be that careless?
If she’d only stepped out for a minute, she might have left the exam on her desk.
Hurry, hurry! Shea urged herself, stepping into the room, closing the door behind her. She didn’t dare lock it. If the good doctor showed up, an excuse could be invented for being there, but there’d be no excuse for having locked the door.
Breathing in tiny, panicky gasps, Shea ran to the huge, antique desk of dark wood, pushing aside the thick fronds of a tall, potted plant stationed beside it, and began fumbling through a thick pile of papers. The soft hum of a humidifier sitting on the floor beneath the radiator and the rhythmic tick-tock of a round wooden wall clock were the only sounds in the bright, neat room filled with hanging plants and attractive colonial furniture. Shea couldn’t help noticing that the room seemed far more warm and welcoming than the woman who occupied it. Maybe someone else had decorated it.
The next few minutes were nightmarish. Thumbing frantically through the pile of papers, she sliced a finger on a crisp sheet of paper, leaving a thin trail of red on the next few sheets. When she realized that she was leaving “evidence” of her visit, she was horrified. She took a confused step backward, stumbling into the potted plant. Her left elbow struck the heavy green desk lamp, knocking it to the floor and taking with it a large, cube-shaped, copper paperweight. Shaking, Shea bent and picked up both objects and set them back on the desk. Then she wrapped a tissue around the injured finger before returning to the pile of papers.
She found the exam after a few more moments of frenzied searching. It was dated. Tomorrow’s date. No question about what it was.
There was no answer sheet accompanying the exam. Didn’t matter. With the questions in her possession, she could look up the answers in her textbook.
She didn’t dare steal the test. Pointless. If she walked off with it, there wouldn’t be a test. When Dr. Stark discovered the exam was missing, she’d wait until she’d composed a new and different one. And this risky visit to the professor’s office would become a wasted effort.
Copy … she needed a copy of the test. But how … ?
A computer and printer were stationed off to her left. The exam had almost certainly been written on the word processor and then printed. The printer was a laser … very fast. But she didn’t know the file name. Without it, she couldn’t call up the exam and print her own copy.
Would a teacher who had a quick, efficient printer also have a copy machine? Probably not. She could simply print extra copies directly off the word processor.
The tick-tock of the wall clock hammered in Shea’s ears.
So frightened she felt physically ill, she clutched the exam and glanced around the room. There was a smaller room off to one side, its door standing open. She had glanced inside when she entered the office to make sure no one was in there. But she hadn’t really checked it out.
She hurried over to peek inside a second time.
And there it was, big as life, a copy machine, standing against the wall, already loaded with paper.
Shea glanced back toward the office door again, her eyes wide with apprehension. She was taking a terrible chance. Any second now, Dr. Stark could burst into the office. When she saw Shea with a copy of the exam in her hands, her eyes would narrow and turn icy blue, and she would say in that brittle voice of hers, “Ms. Fallon? What exactly is it that you’re doing in my office and what is that in your hands?”
And my life will be ruined totally and forever, Shea thought, clenching her teeth.
But she couldn’t turn back now. She had the exam in her hands. It was only four pages, and unless the copy machine was a relic from the dark ages, it would only take a few seconds to copy the entire exam.
She had to do this. She had to.
The seconds that it took to copy the exam were the longest of Shea’s life. The machine was fast, quiet, and efficient. But while it was copying, her ears strained for the sound of footsteps and her hands trembled so that she could barely lift the finished pages out of the tray.
Then it was done. All four pages, neatly printed, were in her hands. She held them tentatively, as if she expected them to burst into flames at any moment.
Still, not having the answer sheet seemed to make her deed less dastardly. Maybe you weren’t really cheating if you didn’t steal the answers.
A sound from outside in the hall froze her in her tracks. She held her breath.
But no one entered the office.
She turned off the copier and ran back into the outer office, where she hurriedly thrust Dr. Stark’s copy of the exam into the pile of papers on the desk. Then she opened the door carefully, peering out to see if the hallway was clear.
It was.
Sliding the papers inside her blue cardigan, Shea slipped out of the office, closed the door behind her, and hurried down the hall. No running … too obvious. But she walked quickly. Rounded a corner and …
Ran headlong into the tall, dark-haired guy who was now sitting beside her.
She couldn’t remember exactly what she had said or what he had said … she had a vague impression of having mumbled “excuse me” and clutching the front of her cardigan to keep the exam copy hidden. It felt as if it were burning right through the fabric. He had, she thought now, smiled and backed away. If he had said anything, she’d been too frazzled to c
omprehend it.
Remembering how easily she could have given herself away, Shea shuddered as she swallowed the last of her pizza.
“What?” Coop, sitting beside her, asked. “Somebody just walk over your grave?” He smiled as he said it. He had a lean look about him, no fat anywhere. She wondered if he was an athlete.
No, no one walked over my grave, Shea thought. But maybe I just walked all over my own future.
Too late now. She would have to keep telling herself she’d had no choice. Maybe eventually she’d even believe it.
Coop and Sid went off to play pool in the back room. Dinah went to the ladies’ room, and Shea was about to follow her when one of the waiters called out her name. “Phone!” he added, pointing toward a little alcove off to one side.
Phone? Here? Tandy, maybe?
But when Shea said hello into the wall phone tucked away in the short, dark corridor, it wasn’t Tandy’s voice that greeted her. Tandy’s voice was crisp and clear and confident.
The voice Shea heard saying her name wasn’t crisp or clear. It was barely audible.
“Shea Fallon?” the voice whispered.
“I can’t hear you,” Shea complained.
The whisper deepened, but it was still a whisper. “Is this Shea Fallon?”
“Yes,” Shea said impatiently, “but can’t you speak up? Who is this?”
“You don’t have to worry,” the whisper breathed. “No one will know what you’ve done. I’ve seen to that.”
Shea stared at the phone in her hand. “What?”
“I said, don’t worry. It’s all taken care of. I’ll let you know what I expect in return. Count on it. “
Chapter 2
“WHAT DID YOU SAY?” Shea asked, her own voice a mere whisper.
Click. The line went dead.
“Hey, you okay?” a waitress passing by asked. “You look like that red hair of yours is about to turn white.”
“I’m okay,” Shea mumbled, turning away to replace the telephone. She was trembling. Someone knew what she’d done that afternoon?