by Diane Hoh
“Dinah will be disappointed.” He held the heavy glass door open for her and they left the diner. “She and Sid are going, too. I told her I’d try to talk you into making it a foursome.”
Sid and Dinah? Sid and Dinah almost never doubled. Sid didn’t like “sharing” his time with Dinah. At least, that’s what Dinah always said.
“Dinah will understand,” Shea said. “She gets straight A’s without blinking an eye, but she knows I don’t.”
“She wasn’t getting an A in bio,” Coop said, taking Shea’s hand to lead her across the highway.
Shea looked up at him in surprise. “She wasn’t? How do you know?”
“Sid told me. He said Dinah was really shook. Apparently, she’d argued with Dr. Stark about two of her grades this semester, thought they were unfair. But Stark refused to budge.”
Frowning, Shea said, “She never told me that.”
“Tell you the truth,” Coop went on, “I think Dinah’s a little bit relieved that Stark won’t be finishing out the year. Probably thinks she’ll have a better chance with someone else. Dinah would never say that, of course. She’s too nice.”
No, she’s not, Shea thought, remembering the night at Vinnie’s when they’d all been raking Dr. Stark over the coals. Dinah had been as vocal as anyone in her criticism of the teacher. Shea hadn’t thought anything of it then, because they were all doing it. Now, she realized that it had been unlike Dinah to be so critical. She must have been really upset about her grade in Dr. Stark’s class.
But then, why not? Hadn’t they all been? Tandy was the only one who’d defended Dr. Stark.
“Let me know if you change your mind about the movie,” Coop said as he left Shea on the steps of the campus library. “I’ll be at the lab all morning. You can call me there.”
At the mention of the lab, her face must have paled, because he quickly added, “Shea? What’s wrong?”
“Headache,” she said quickly. “See you.” She turned to run up the steps and inside the dim, cool library, where she could sit and think in privacy.
She stayed in the library for a while, until she began to feel as if she were suffocating. Then she went out and hiked along the river behind campus. It amazed her that people passing by called out to her, wanted to stop and talk, asked her about her weekend plans. As if she were still the same, normal, popular person she’d been when the week began. Couldn’t they see that she wasn’t?
Later that day she played tennis with Tandy, who finally became so exasperated with Shea’s sloppy, erratic playing that she threw down her racket in despair.
While playing, Shea remembered how often they’d seen Dr. Stark on the courts. Although the teacher had exchanged the dowdy print dresses for tennis whites, her hair was still severely pulled back from her face, her mouth set in a grim, straight line as she fought to win. She had never looked to Shea as if she were having any fun at all.
Shea couldn’t help thinking then that Dr. Stark might never play tennis again. The thought had depressed her so profoundly, she’d missed a perfect serve from Tandy, who had groaned and given her a disgusted look.
Later, she had dinner with Tandy and Linda Carlyle at Hunan Manor in town, but turned down their invitation to attend a sorority party with them. Then she went back to her room to lie on her bed and watch the hands on her clock radio approaching the time when she would have to leave for the lab.
Suddenly she found herself standing outside the door to the Animal Behavior Studies lab, her hand on the round brass knob.
The hallway was dark and deserted, the building quiet. The teachers and teaching assistants and laboratory technicians and student volunteers, like Coop and Sid, were, at the witching hour on a spring night, partying or watching television or seeing a movie or listening to music or reading or, maybe, sleeping. The reptiles and the spiders and the mice and the rats were, like her, on their own.
There was no sound from inside the lab.
Shea turned the knob and the door, unlocked as the whisperer had promised, opened.
When she had closed the door behind her, she switched on her small plastic flashlight. She had never been in the lab before. Forcing herself to take a few slow deep breaths, she glanced around, using the flashlight to study the room.
There were the mice, in their cages on tables to her right, the larger rats in cages beside them.
She moved hesitantly into the room until she was standing beside a long, narrow table with a bottom shelf. She saw the bags on the shelf before she could work up the courage to study the table’s contents.
Cages. Two, three, four.
Glass, like aquariums. With covers, also glass.
Shea closed her eyes. She couldn’t look.
How was she going to carry out her “assignment”?
You have to do this, she told herself. You have no choice. So just do it and get it over with!
Shea opened her eyes. Nothing stirred in any of the cages. She was grateful for that much. A sleeping snake was preferable to an alert, slithering one, its narrow, forked little tongue spitting at her in defiance.
She located the cage housing the snake named Mariah. All coiled up like a spring in a corner of its cage. She drew in her breath when she spied the rattle at one end, but quickly reminded herself that the snake had been rendered harmless.
“Harmless, harmless, harmless,” she whispered, as if chanting the word repeatedly could somehow protect her. But a niggling little voice in the back of her mind said, “He said it wasn’t poisonous anymore, but it can still bite.”
Shea forced herself to study the cage’s lid. A simple slice of glass, hooked firmly on two sides. With her eyes on the snake, she undid the hooks with trembling fingers. But she didn’t lift the lid. Not yet.
Keeping her eyes on the sleeping Mariah, she reached down with one hand to grasp one of the bags from the bottom shelf. It was a gunny sack made of beige canvas, with a drawstring closure. She dropped the sack onto the table beside the cage and yanked its neck fully open.
The stick with the noose on one end was right where the whisperer had said it would be, hanging on the left side of the glass cage. Shea reached for it tentatively, willing her hand not to shake.
I am actually going to do this, she thought with a mixture of horror and awe. I’m going to pick up this tool … and she did. I’m going to lift the lid of this cage … and she did. I’m going to reach in and loop the noose around this snake’s head and then I’m going to tighten the noose and then I’m going to pick the snake up and drop it into that sack and carry it out of here.
This she did not do. Because the snake was asleep, its head cozily resting inside that coil of reptile flesh. There was no way she could get the noose around its head while it was asleep.
She would have to wake it up.
Shea tapped lightly on the glass, then more firmly.
The noise woke up the snake.
It lifted its head sleepily, fastening cold, beady eyes on Shea.
Afraid the snake would lie back down and the moment of opportunity would be lost, Shea moved quickly, automatically. She dropped the loop into place, the noose sliding easily over the snake’s head, and jerked the stick backward so the loop tightened gently.
She had done it. Her knees were so weak she had to lean against the table, and her breath was coming in painful, choked little gasps, but she had done what she had thought she could never do.
Swiftly, before her shaking fingers could accidentally let go of the stick, dropping it back into the cage, Shea lifted the startled reptile and thrust it into the waiting sack. With her free hand, she yanked on the drawstring, pulling the neck of the sack tightly closed, with half of the stick protruding from the top so that she would be able to grab it when it was time to unleash the snake on room 620.
Done!
The snake was hers.
Her knees were knocking against each other, her arms felt like all of her bones had melted and her lower lip was quivering uncontrollably, but
… she had done it.
Except …
Except that she wasn’t finished.
Chapter 9
AS SHE HURRIED FROM the lab across a deeply shadowed campus to Lester, Shea held the canvas bag away from her, as if it were a ticking time bomb. She could feel the writhing movements of the shocked and protesting Mariah, angry at being yanked out of a contented sleep.
Campus was deserted. Those who weren’t out partying were in their rooms studying or sleeping. Shea was grateful. What could she possibly say to someone who caught her running across campus holding a wriggling gunny sack out in front of her as if it were about to explode?
She darted into Lester, and, unwilling to risk encountering someone in the elevator, took the stairs to the sixth floor. Her heart was pounding ferociously and, by the time she reached the fourth floor landing, she felt dizzy and lightheaded.
But she kept going, telling herself it would all be over soon. In just a few more minutes, she’d pull off this stupid stunt and retreat to her own room. Tomorrow, she’d get the tape and the paperweight, destroy them, and put all of this nastiness behind her and get on with her life.
Room 620 was quiet, with no light shining under the door. Bethany and Annette were either asleep or out.
A door slammed somewhere.
Shea jumped and almost dropped the noose handle. The possibility that she might actually have to reach into the bag and fumble around for the handle made her blood freeze. She pulled the door open quietly, carefully. As she did, her other hand jerked the handle and the snake free and, in one frantic movement, tossed snake and noose into the room. Then she turned to leave. But in her haste, she pulled the door closed with too much force.
It slammed.
Behind it, she heard. “What? What was that?” and then a second voice ordering, “Turn on the light, quick!”
Shea ran, the canvas bag dangling from her wrist.
Half a second later, a scream shattered the midnight quiet. It was quickly followed by another, and another until the sixth floor resounded with screams.
Shea stopped running. She wasn’t going to make it down the entire length of the hallway unseen. Doors were going to fly open. Heads were going to appear in the open doorways. What those curious eyes would see was a hallway occupied by only one person. Her. With a canvas bag clearly labeled PROPERTY OF A.B.S. LAB hanging from her wrist.
When, minutes later, they learned that the reason for the screaming was a reptile from the A.B.S. lab, anyone with an IQ above twelve would make the connection.
She had to get rid of the sack.
Her eyes darted wildly about, seeking a trash bin, a closet, anything …
There, in the wall opposite her … an incinerator chute.
The telltale bag disappeared only seconds before heads began appearing in doorways.
The screaming continued, reaching an hysterical pitch. People began moving out of their rooms, asking each other what was going on, some complaining about the nerve-shattering sound. Somebody shouted, “Hey, who’s partying and why wasn’t I invited?”
Shea slipped into the gathering pack making its way toward room 620. She had to know what was going on in there. It didn’t sound at all as if the “joke” had been funny.
More doors flew open, more bare feet joined the group hurrying along the hallway toward 620. Several people, including Shea, broke into a run as it became clear that the screaming was in earnest. There was no party going on in that room. Something was very, very wrong.
They were just a few feet away when the door suddenly flew open and a wild-eyed Annette appeared in the doorway. Her dark hair hung in a tangled heap on her shoulders and her pretty face was ashen. “Help me!” she screamed, “someone, help! I think Bethany’s had a heart attack. Hurry!”
Shea froze. Heart attack? Bethany?
“And someone come and get this … this repulsive creature out of here?” Annette screamed from inside the room.
Bethany was only eighteen. How could she have had a heart attack?
A boy from Shea’s English class ran into the room, emerging a moment later holding Mariah aloft by the noose handle. There were cries of revulsion from the crowd.
“That’s from the lab,” someone called. “What was it doing in their room?”
“Scaring them half to death,” the snakehandler replied grimly. “Bethany’s out cold. Annette already called campus emergency.” He shook his head.
Shea moved to the open doorway and stared inside, where several girls were helping Annette in her efforts to revive Bethany. The stricken girl lay prone on the floor, arms outstretched. Her lips were tinged with blue.
“She’s always been so careful,” Annette was saying as she dabbed at her roommate’s forehead with a damp cloth. “Didn’t go out for sports, even though she wanted to, hardly ever went dancing … I always felt bad because I go dancing a lot and she couldn’t come along. She’s careful about what she eats, and she’d been feeling really good lately. And now this! I can’t believe it! Why would someone throw a snake into the room of someone with a heart condition?”
Shea sagged backward, against the door. Heart condition? Bethany had a heart condition? Had the whisperer known that?
Of course he had.
And that changed everything. Tossing a snake inside room 620 had never been intended as a prank. Couldn’t have been. She had been blackmailed into doing something that could have taken someone’s life.
“Boy, you look worse than Bethany,” a girl standing next to Shea said to her. “Maybe you should leave. This whole scene too much for you?”
Yes, it was. That poor girl lying on the floor, corpselike, while out in the hall the snake was still on display. Yes, it was all too much for Shea. At any moment, she just might start screaming herself.
But she couldn’t leave. Not yet. Not until she learned that Bethany was going to be all right … if Bethany was going to be all right.
After what seemed like hours, the paramedics arrived.
“She’s just fainted,” one paramedic announced when she had performed a cursory examination of the patient.
Shea let out a huge sigh of relief. Annette, kneeling beside Bethany, did the same.
“But she could be experiencing some minor cardiac distress,” the woman continued. “We’re going to take her with us, check her out thoroughly.” She glanced at Annette. “You said something scared her?”
“Yes. A snake. Someone tossed it into our room. Bethany is deathly afraid of snakes. She got hysterical the minute she saw what it was. And then she collapsed.”
Shea heard “deathly afraid of snakes” and felt a surge of pure hatred toward the whispering voice on the telephone. A “joke,” he had said. “Perfectly harmless,” he’d told her.
Bethany could have died.
Annette went with the ambulance, Mariah was taken back to the lab, and the crowd began to disperse. Shea headed wearily back to Devereaux.
The phone was ringing when Shea quietly unlocked the door and entered her room.
She stared through the dark toward the ringing telephone. No … no, it couldn’t be, not now!
“Mmm, get that, will you?” Tandy murmured sleepily, and buried her head under her pillow.
Moving stiffly, like a puppet, Shea walked over and picked up the receiver with an icy hand.
“Congratulations,” came the sinister whisper. “You done good, kiddo! Real good!”
Chapter 10
SHEA WAS NOT ABOUT to talk to the whisperer with Tandy in the room. Without saying a word, she slammed the receiver down and unplugged the phone. It wasn’t as if anyone else would be calling them this late.
“Who was that?” Tandy muttered, emerging from beneath her pillow.
“Wrong number.” Shea said irritably, as she got into bed.
A joke … it was supposed to be a joke. Now Bethany was in the infirmary … and the whisperer still had the videotape and the paperweight. It was all supposed to be over by now, and it wasn’
t.
She rolled over on her back again and wondered if it ever would be over.
She shouldn’t have slammed the phone down like that. Maybe he’d called to tell her he was ready to keep his promise.
What if she’d made him so angry, he’d decided not to keep his promise at all?
And did it really matter, Shea thought wearily as the sleep of total exhaustion overtook her, after what had happened to Bethany?
The following morning, she half-expected the telephone to ring immediately when she plugged it in. It didn’t. But as long as she was in the same room with it, she couldn’t relax.
“I’m going over to the infirmary to check on Bethany,” she told Tandy. She had already filled Tandy in on the snake episode, carefully omitting her part in it.
“Are you going to stop in and say hello to Dr. Stark while you’re there?” Tandy asked with a teasing grin. “I know how much you must miss her.”
“Dr. Stark? She’s at the hospital in town.”
“They’re supposed to transfer her up here this morning.” Tandy began brushing the long, pale yellow waves. “Coop told me. I’m surprised he didn’t tell you. Dr. Stark wanted to be back on campus. They thought she’d get better faster if she was around her beloved students.” Tandy’s tone was heavy with sarcasm. “Because you all love her so much, I guess.”
“Tandy …”
“So they transferred her to the infirmary to recuperate. I’m sure the line of visitors will go all the way around the building.” More sarcasm. “She still can’t walk, so a physical therapist comes out from Twin Falls every day to work with her.” Tandy laughed. “Now, there’s a job for you. I think Stark is a great teacher, but I wouldn’t want to be the person who has to force her to do painful exercises. One withering glance, and the poor therapist will probably run for the hills.”