The Whisperer (Nightmare Hall)

by Diane Hoh

  But when she reluctantly sent her eyes to the spot on the floor beside Tandy’s bed, there it was … a golden sun made of soft, thick rays of hair, curled into one another in a circle.

  It hadn’t been a dream.

  Because anything seemed better than sitting on her bed staring blankly at the evidence of last night’s cruel deed, Shea dragged herself up and out of bed. She took a shower, thinking, If only I hadn’t been so desperate for a copy of that stupid exam. And as she dressed in a long gauze skirt and white peasant blouse, she asked herself, Why didn’t I warn Tandy that some crazy person wanted her hair chopped off?

  Something inside her snickered, are you kidding? Tandy would have thought you’d gone off the deep end. She’d think you were the crazy person.

  Tandy groaned, wriggled, stretched, her eyes opening slowly, reluctantly. She winced as she rolled over on her side and a headphone jabbed against her ear. Pulling off the headset, she flipped onto her back, her eyes on the ceiling.

  Shea sat on her bed, hands folded in her lap. Her heart was pounding so loudly in her chest, she half-expected Tandy to lift her head and say, “Cut out that awful racket, will you?”

  Instead, Tandy said, “Did I ever tell you how passionately I hate Monday mornings? More than you hate bio, and that should tell you a lot.”

  At the word “bio,” Shea’s stomach rolled over. If she’d studied harder, if she’d hired a tutor, if she’d gone to Dr. Stark for help, the terrible moment about to happen—wouldn’t have to happen.

  If, if, if! What good did ifs do?

  “I propose,” Tandy said lazily, “that we go to the state legislature with a petition to abolish Mondays. How does that sound? Just think,” with a sleepy grin, “that would only leave two days of bio! You’ll go for that, right?”

  Without answering, Shea remained sitting stiffly on her bed, waiting. …

  “What’s the matter with you? Get up on the wrong side of the bed?” Tandy sat up. “And how come you’re already dressed?” She glanced sideways, at her clock. “It’s so early.”

  And then Tandy sat up. Shea watched her expression change as she noticed something felt different.

  Tandy sat up straighter, and her left hand reached up to see what the problem was. …

  As her fingers felt the back of her head, the expression on Tandy’s face became one of utter confusion. Her fingers moved along the back of her neck, stopped in confusion, then moved rapidly, searching, seeking. … Her right hand flew up to join the left, feeling the chopped, ragged ends where there should have been long, silky strands.

  Tandy’s mouth fell open. Her eyes widened in shock and disbelief.

  “Tandy …” Shea tried, then realized there were no words that would help. None.

  Tandy’s eyes, huge with bewilderment, flew to Shea’s face. What she saw there jolted her up off the bed and sent her, barefoot, across the floor to the dresser mirror. In her haste, she failed to notice the puddle of yellow nestled below her bed, It could as easily have been a discarded blouse or sweater.

  Shea sat perfectly still, her heart aching as Tandy stood, in her long white T-shirt, in front of the dresser and confronted her reflection. She stared at it for an agonizingly long minute, turning her head to one side, then the other.

  Then her mouth opened in a soundless scream.

  Chapter 14

  AS TANDY TOOK IN the whole, horrifying picture of what had been done to her, her body went rigid. Her hands gripped the edge of the dresser as if she knew that without it, she would collapse. Her mouth remained open in disbelief. “No,” she whispered, running her hands desperately over her head one more time, as if she might find that her hair had miraculously reappeared, “oh, no, no!”

  She whirled to face Shea with bewildered eyes. “What’s going on?” Tandy cried. “What’s happened?”

  Shea remained miserably mute. She spread her hands helplessly in front of her. Before she could think of something to say, there was a knock at the door, it opened, and Dinah stuck her head in, saying, “I thought I heard you guys … omigosh, what’s wrong with your hair, Tandy?”

  Tandy burst into wild tears and ran to her bed, flinging herself across it, burying her head in her hands as she sobbed hysterically.

  Dinah moved on into the room. “What happened to her?” she whispered to Shea.

  Shea knew she had to say something. She couldn’t just keep sitting there as if she’d suddenly been struck mute. “Someone … someone cut her hair off last night while she was sleeping. When the electricity was off and I was trapped in the elevator.” She pointed. “There it is, on the floor. It was there when I came in.”

  “You were stuck in the elevator? I knew the electricity was off. Sharon told me. But she didn’t tell me anyone had been trapped in an elevator. How awful! You okay?”

  Shea nodded.

  “You’re not serious about her hair, are you?” Dinah asked, glancing at Tandy, wailing wildly on the bed. “Someone cut it off last night? What are you talking about? Who would do that?”

  “I don’t know,” Shea answered honestly. She didn’t know who the whisperer was.

  “I don’t get it,” Dinah said slowly, sitting down on Tandy’s bed and awkwardly patting Tandy’s back, heaving with wild sobs. “You’re telling me that someone walked in here last night and hacked off Tandy’s hair? That’s so crazy!”

  Shea nodded grimly. “I know. But apparently that’s what happened.” She still couldn’t believe it herself.

  Dinah’s round face registered total confusion “But why? Why would someone do that?”

  Shea clenched her fists. This was all her fault. She’d started it, by copying that exam. She’d never intended to hurt anyone, but there it was, that bright pool of yellow on the floor, and there was poor Tandy, crying hysterically on her bed.

  This would all end when the whisperer no longer had anything to hold over Shea’s head. She’d be free of him and his stupid, crazy cruelty. And he’d quit hurting other people.

  She knew that unless she did something, he wouldn’t stop with Tandy. He’d continue to demand that Shea do things, horrible things, and when she refused, he’d do them himself, knowing she’d feel responsible.

  It couldn’t go on.

  “I might be able to fix your hair a little,” Dinah offered the sobbing Tandy. “I’ve cut my own hair and my little sister’s a couple of times. Sit up, Tandy. Let me see how bad it is.”

  Tandy, lying face-down, shook her shorn head vigorously.

  Dinah had to plead for several more minutes before Tandy finally forced herself upright. Her face was swollen and tear-streaked, and her expression was one of total desolation. “Why would someone do this to me?” she wailed.

  “Maybe someone was jealous of how beautiful your hair was,” Dinah suggested.

  “Was!” Tandy cried. “Was beautiful. Now, I look like a freak! I’m not stepping one foot outside this room looking like this.”

  “Oh, Tandy, don’t be silly,” Dinah said softly. “You can’t give up living just because someone cut your hair. Give me a pair of scissors and I’ll see if I can fix this a little.”

  “I have a pair of scissors,” Shea said, getting up and going to her desk.

  But the scissors weren’t there. She searched every inch of the cluttered desk. No scissors.

  Giving up, she turned away from the desk, trying to remember if she’d left them somewhere else. She was about to say, “I can’t find them,” when she realized that Dinah, sitting on the bed beside Tandy, was holding something up in the air, a puzzled expression on her face. “I was sitting on these,” she said slowly, looking up at Shea. “They were here, under Tandy’s blanket.”

  The scissors. Shea’s scissors.

  What were they doing on Tandy’s bed?

  Tandy and Dinah were both looking at Shea, Tandy’s eyes accusing, Dinah’s questioning.

  Shea took a step backward. “Oh, come on, you don’t think that I. … ?”

  “Of course
not!” Dinah said hastily. “I’m sure the person who did it saw your scissors on the desk and grabbed them, that’s all.”

  But Tandy said in a voice hoarse from crying, “If someone came in here to cut off all my hair, don’t you think they’d have brought their own scissors?”

  Shea had been thinking exactly the same thing.

  “Maybe they didn’t come in here to cut your hair,” Dinah said calmly, beginning to arrange the ragged ends of Tandy’s hair with her fingers, trying to decide where she should cut. “Maybe they came in for something else … to see if your electricity was on, or to borrow something, maybe a flashlight.” She viewed the crazily varied lengths of Tandy’s remaining hair with doubt in her eyes. “This isn’t going to be easy,” she added, before returning to the matter of the scissors. “Some girl who’s always been jealous of Tandy’s hair came in for something else, and when she found Tandy asleep and the scissors right there on Shea’s desk, she flipped out. I think that’s what happened,” Dinah said firmly. She began snipping carefully, one ragged strand at a time.

  “I hate short hair!” Tandy wailed. “I’ve always hated it! I’m going to look like a brand-new baby bird!”

  “You’re going to look really cute,” Dinah said in that same calm voice. “You never should have had so much hair. Your face is too small.”

  “Since when are you an expert?” Tandy said bitterly. Then she added angrily, “I’m going to the dean about this! I’m cutting bio this morning and going straight to Butler Hall. This isn’t any different than being robbed.”

  Dinah and Shea nodded. “You were robbed,” Shea agreed.

  “I’ll have to take your scissors with me, Shea,” Tandy continued, her voice cool. “I mean, Dinah did find them in my bed. There might be fingerprints on them, besides yours and Dinah’s, I mean.”

  She thinks I did it, Shea realized. Tandy really believes I cut off all her hair last night. How could she think that? And I can’t tell her about the whisperer. She’d think I was a raving lunatic. So would Dinah. They’d never understand.

  But then, who would?

  “I’m cutting bio, too,” Shea said, standing up. “There’s something I have to do.” The sooner she confessed to Dr. Stark, the sooner this nightmare would be over.

  “You’ll see, you’re going to feel a lot more free with short hair,” Dinah was telling Tandy as Shea left the room.

  The building had come alive with the usual Monday morning hustle to get over the weekend and get back into gear for a week’s worth of classes. It was never easy, and the sounds of the struggle filled the hallway. Cranky voices complained from behind closed doors, the pipes groaned with the strain of too many showers at the same time as residents of Devereaux fought to fully awaken, and typewriter keys raced to finish papers neglected over the weekend and due that morning.

  When I first got here, Shea thought as she entered the elevator, I loved Monday mornings. The start of a whole new week always seemed like such a great thing. But then, I loved everything about Salem University at first, didn’t I?

  The elevator door had already begun to slide shut when Shea realized, with cold-sweat certainty, that she could not stay in this elevator. Not after last night. She hadn’t been thinking when she got on or she would have headed straight for the stairs instead.

  Her arm shot out and one panicky finger pressed the DOOR OPEN button. With a huge sigh of relief, Shea jumped free.

  Thanks to the whisperer, it would be a while before she could enter an elevator without panicking.

  Because, although she wasn’t sure how he was responsible for the blackout last night, she knew that he was. He’d probably found the master switch, wherever that might be, and turned it off before he sneaked into their room to hack off Tandy’s hair.

  Shea took the stairs down to the lobby.

  It was empty and quiet there. The heels of her black flats click-clacked across the tile floor as she headed toward the big, double front doors. Her stomach writhed at the thought of facing Dr. Stark with the truth. How would the professor react? Probably turn her over to the administration immediately, with a demand for absolutely no clemency.

  Probably not.

  Dr. Stark had never been the friendliest, warmest person on campus. She’d probably be even worse after what had happened to her.

  Maybe she wouldn’t even listen to Shea.

  But … I won’t know until I try, Shea told herself, rounding a corner where the lobby wall jutted out at an angle, hiding from her view a small alcove off to her left. The alcove held only a desk with brochures on it, a worn plaid couch, and a door leading to the basement.

  Shea heard no sound, saw nothing. One minute she was almost to the door, and the next an arm had wrapped itself roughly around her neck and was dragging her backward, into the alcove.

  “Well, good morning, Miss Goody Two-Shoes! Think you’re too saintly to give someone a simple haircut, do you? That’s pretty funny, coming from a cheat! And just where do you think you’re going?”

  Chapter 15

  “I SAID, WHERE DO you think you’re going? Didn’t suddenly decide to confess all, did you, Shea? Not a good idea. Not good at all.”

  The grip around her neck was so tight, Shea had trouble breathing. She had told no one that she was going to see Dr. Stark. How did he know that?

  Reading her mind, he whispered into her ear, “I just guessed. You look like a woman on a mission. Forget it. You’re in even deeper trouble now than you were before. Poor little Bethany could have died, and it would have been your fault. Sorry about that. How was I supposed to know she had a bad heart? It was Annette I was really after.”

  “Where’s the tape?” Shea gasped, her fingers clawing at the arm around her neck. “You promised! I’m not doing another thing you ask me to. You might as well give me the tape now.”

  “Maybe you’re right.”

  Shea’s heart jumped. Did he mean it?

  “Tell you what. If you can find the tape, you can have it.” Soft, wicked laughter. “I tossed the paperweight into the river. It was a nuisance dragging that thing around. It’s heavy, you know? But the tape can still hang you. Here,” something was thrust into her shoulderbag, “maybe this will help. Don’t say I never gave you anything. But if you don’t find the tape, you’re still at my beck and call.”

  Before she could gasp an answer, the arm was released from around her neck. The door behind her opened and closed with a sharp click, and she was alone again.

  Relief flooded her body as she rubbed her raw throat with one hand. He was gone. And he hadn’t threatened her or made her promise to do something disgusting for him.

  He had given her something … stuck it into her shoulder bag. What was it?

  She sank down on the worn plaid sofa in the alcove and pulled her bag onto her lap. She thrust a hand into its soft folds, and almost immediately, her fingers closed on something that hadn’t been in there before.

  A cassette. But not the tape she wanted. This was an audiocassette. A message from the whisperer? Her heart sank. Maybe the reason he hadn’t assigned her some miserable task while he was choking her was, he’d already put it on tape. Maybe this cassette contained new instructions for her, some gruesome new task …

  But he’d said she could have the videotape if she found it. Did he mean it? How would she know where to begin looking?

  She didn’t have a Walkman.

  But Tandy did.

  Sighing heavily, Shea forced herself to her feet and reluctantly made her way back up the stairs to the fourth floor.

  When she walked into the room, Dinah was curling Tandy’s new, short hairdo with a curling iron.

  “I thought you guys would be done by now,” Shea said, disappointed. She had to listen to that tape.

  “Dinah went to get her curling iron. Took her forever,” Tandy said. “I’ve already missed bio and now I’m missing English.”

  “Get your priorities straight,” Dinah cautioned, deadpan. “What’s really
important here, an education or your hair?”

  Tandy was still too upset to laugh.

  Impatient with both of them, Shea asked abruptly, “Tandy, can I borrow your Walkman for a minute? I’ve got a new tape I want to check out, make sure it’s okay.”

  Dinah looked up, dark brows furrowed. “You went out this early in the morning to buy a tape?”

  “No. It was … in my mailbox. My brother sent it. Tandy?”

  “Sure. Help yourself. It’s right there on my table.”

  Taking the Walkman, Shea donned the headphones and went into the bathroom, closing the door behind her. She didn’t care if they thought she was acting weird. The only thing that mattered now was finding out if the whisperer had given her another crummy “assignment,” or if he’d meant what he said.

  She sat down on the cold, tile floor. By accident, she pressed the RECORD button first, but quickly caught her mistake. She pressed PLAY and leaned back against the wall.

  Go directly to the house of nightmares.

  Enter.

  Beyond those doors lies your answer.

  If you find what you seek, do whatever you will with it.

  If you fail, the prize remains in my keeping.

  And you will do my bidding without question.

  Find it or be sorry.

  The tape clicked off.

  Shea remained on the floor, motionless, confusion in her face. The house of nightmares?

  Nightmare Hall.

  The tape was hidden at Nightmare Hall?

  But … how would she find it? She’d never even been inside the creepy old house.

  She played the tape again, hoping there would be more on it than what she’d already heard. But that was all there was.

  She would never be able to find that videotape. And there was a party there that night. She couldn’t very well go searching through the place with people all around her.

  But … what choice did she have?

  She could still go to Dr. Stark and confess. But the thought terrified her.

  And now … she had this one, tiny chance. The paperweight was gone … Now, all she had to do was find the tape, and she’d be free of the whisperer and free of the threat of expulsion. She’d destroy the tape, and that would be the end of it.