The Whisperer (Nightmare Hall)

by Diane Hoh

  “Why Tandy?” Shea’s fingers toyed nervously with the light switch. “Why Tandy’s hair?”

  “Because she’s vain. She deserved to be taken down a peg or two. Good for her. Make her see what’s really important. That girl, Annette, was just like Tandy. She wasn’t here at Salem for an education. She was here for a good time.”

  “That’s cruel. You’re cruel,” Shea said, unthinking. And then, so quickly that she didn’t even know she had done it, her fingers hit the light switch, plunging the balcony into utter darkness.

  Dr. Stark uttered an oath.

  And Shea flew down the stairs in her stocking feet, rounded a corner so fast she smacked her cheek on the wall, kept going, flying down the hallway to the stairs leading to the basement.

  She heard Dr. Stark behind her, muttering loudly, furiously, as she stumbled in pursuit of Shea. At first the rantings were unintelligible, but then the voice gathered strength and volume until it was almost shouting.

  And Shea, racing down the iron stairs, heard, “All the same … all of them … vain, silly things, in college for a good time … just want to be pretty and cute and popular … don’t know the first thing about hard work and dedication … well, I could tell them a thing or two, I could … work, work, work, nothing but work and study, work and study, no time for fun, no time to find anything sweet and precious, have to succeed, have to … but it’s no fun, no fun … all work and no play makes Mathilde a dull girl. Dull, dull, dull …”

  She was so close behind Shea, her breathing filled the air in the dark, narrow stairway.

  When Shea burst out into the basement, she didn’t know where to go. The cubicles … a mistake … no way out … she’d be trapped in there and Stark would find her … where? where could she hide?

  Don’t stay down here, she told herself … too easy to be trapped down here … go back upstairs … take the back staircase, the dark one, go back upstairs … if you hurry, there’s a chance you can get to the phone and dial before she catches up.

  “Cheaters … cheaters, all of them …” The voice behind Shea rambled on furiously, “and that stupid girl with all that long, pretty blonde hair … she had it coming … taught her a lesson, all right … she won’t soon forget Mathilde Stark … fools, all of them, fools!”

  Shea dashed down the hallway, not even taking the time to stop and check on Dinah. She didn’t dare. Every second counted.

  “I can’t let you out of here!” the insane voice behind her screamed, “not now! I’m not done! I’m not stopping with you. Campus is polluted with cheaters. You were only the first. Wouldn’t have been able to do anything about it if that contact lens hadn’t fallen out and the lamp hadn’t hit me. Perfect, just perfect. Worked out so beautifully. Can do anything I want … no one knows I’m not paralyzed. Only you, and you’re not leaving here alive, I promise you that, Fallon. You might as well quit running.”

  Shea’s mind raced, like her feet as she flew down the hallway toward the back stairs. Dr. Stark had been following her all night. She had planted the tape at Nightmare Hall when the house was empty, and then followed tonight to see if Shea found it. Must have heard her asking Dinah about a VCR. Followed her here …

  What had she done with the librarian? Or had she simply hidden until the librarian, forgetting about Shea and Dinah, had left early?

  No. The librarian wouldn’t have forgotten about them. Stark must have done something to her. … Shea drew in her breath … was the woman still alive?

  The professor’s voice changed, became instead of the shrill shout, a harsh, loud whisper. She was very close … not more than a few feet behind Shea.

  “Cheaters only cheat themselves, they do, they do, my mother said so, over and over again, and I tried to tell her I couldn’t do the work, I couldn’t, it was too hard, someone had to help me, and she screamed at me that I had to learn to do things for myself, to work hard, work hard …”

  Shea reached the dark, narrow back staircase and darted up it. She couldn’t see a thing, no light at all, and behind her the whisper continued, close on her heels.

  “She could have helped me, she was smart, had her doctorate, taught lots and lots of other people, but not me, oh no, not me, said I had to do it myself, it was hard, so hard, but I didn’t dare use a cheat sheet the way Joey Farmer and Debbie Sorenson did all the time, because cheaters only cheat themselves, they do, my mother said so, and she knew everything. Smartest woman I ever knew. But she wouldn’t help me. Why wouldn’t she help me?”

  Fingers clutched at Shea’s left ankle as she scrambled up the last few steps. Sharp nails clawed at her skin.

  Suddenly Shea realized she was still holding her boot. She swung backwards with it, hard.

  There was a pained yelp behind her and the fingers on her ankle let go.

  Shea scrambled up the last few steps, emerged into the main floor of the library again, ran, gasping for breath, toward where she thought the semicircular main desk should be. Fell. Got up, ran again, reached the desk, slammed into it, knocking the breath out of her. Searched desperately for the phone. Found it, picked up the receiver …

  And a strong, clawlike hand grabbed a handful of her hair and yanked her head backward.

  Chapter 21

  SCREAMING IN PAIN, SHEA dropped the phone, but her index finger pushed the “0” down before her right hand flew up to struggle against the iron grip on her scalp, while her left hand searched frantically across the surface of the huge desk for something, anything, to use as a weapon against her attacker.

  A second strong arm wrapped itself around Shea’s waist, pressing the breath out of her. “You don’t know what it was like,” the harsh, insane whisper hissed into her ear. “Always studying, always working, never having any fun. People thought I didn’t want to have fun, they thought I actually enjoyed being a drone. I hated it! I still hate it! I wanted to have fun, but there was no time. And after a while, I didn’t know how. I didn’t know how, and that was something I could never ask my mother. Because, as smart as she was, that’s one thing she never, ever knew. How to have fun. …”

  Fingers searching, seeking … there! Hard, metal … a stapler. Huge. Gigantic. A giant stapler.

  Shea’s fingers closed around the metal tool as the hand on her hair and the arm around her waist began dragging her backward.

  “Here’s what’s going to happen. You knew you’d be found out … not only your cheating would be discovered, but the truth about your attack on me was about to be revealed when the police received an anonymous tip about the location of the paperweight with your fingerprints and bloodstains on it. You couldn’t stand the thought of the disgrace. So you hid in this library until it closed and then you went up the stairs and climbed up on that metal railing and jumped off.”

  “I won’t …” Shea gripped the stapler tightly as Dr. Stark, with an arm around Shea’s waist, continued to yank her backward … “I won’t jump. Never.”

  “Oh, of course you will. Didn’t I tell you I was in charge here? You will do as I say, young lady!” Rueful laughter. “Oh, no, I can’t believe it, I just sounded exactly like Her. My mother. Exactly. Maybe the doctors were right. Maybe I do need a psychiatrist!” More laughter, a cackle of glee. But the grip on Shea’s hair and around her waist remained ironclad.

  “When I’m finished with you, I’m moving on to your friend, Dinah. She’s even worse than you. I looked at her transcript … no way did that girl deserve straight A’s in high school. Been cheating for years, I could tell. She’s next, she’s next …”

  In one quick, rough movement, Shea lifted the stapler high over her head and brought it down hard, on Dr. Stark’s head.

  Dr. Stark’s scream of pain rang out throughout the dark, empty library like the shriek of a wounded animal.

  And the hands flew away from Shea, releasing her.

  Gasping in relief, Shea ran.

  She had just made it to the front door when two uniformed campus security police pushed it open and gr
abbed at her. Over their shoulders, she saw the blue light of their car, parked at the library entrance.

  “Don’t let her get away!” Dr. Stark shouted from behind Shea. “The girl attacked me. She’s been holding me prisoner in here.” Holding up a bloody hand, she approached the group at the doorway. “I am a respected member of this faculty, and this student must be arrested. This is not the first time she’s attacked me. I’ve been protecting her, hoping to help her out, but I see now that’s not possible. …”

  Her voice drifted off then as she finally noticed the object that Shea was holding up triumphantly in front of her, like a cross before a vampire.

  The cassette from the tape recorder.

  Dr. Stark screamed in fury and flung herself at Shea.

  Epilogue

  THEY WERE SEATED IN a booth at Vinnie’s on a warm Friday night in May. The restaurant was crowded, the music loud, conversations lively.

  “No whispering this time,” Shea said, smiling at Coop. “No teacher sitting across the aisle from us, trying to paralyze us with her poisonous gaze. It feels good.”

  Coop nodded. “We won’t have to worry about her for a while. The new bio prof told me she’ll be in that hospital for a long, long time. So,” he took Shea’s hand in his, “how does it feel to be on probation?”

  “Honest,” Shea said, laughing ruefully. “It feels honest. I don’t hate it.”

  “Me, either,” Dinah said, nodding agreement. “You were right, Shea. Making a clean breast of things really helped.”

  “Yeah,” Dinah’s date, a tall, thin boy named Russ Thompson said, “but don’t forget … the dean had to give you guys a break so you wouldn’t sue the school. I mean, let’s face it, having a crazed professor on the faculty is a public relations nightmare for any university.”

  “I thought they did a really good job of keeping things quiet,” Tandy volunteered. Her hair was curled in soft waves around her head, like a cap.

  She looks like a pixie, Shea thought, and she does look really cute. And the truth was, the haircut hadn’t lessened Tandy’s vanity one tiny little bit. Dr. Stark’s “lesson” hadn’t worked in Tandy’s case.

  But that was okay.

  Because, in a way, it had worked for Shea and Dinah. Although Dr. Stark couldn’t take all the credit … some of it they’d discovered on their own … they had both received the message, loud and clear.

  Shea looked at Russ and thought how much better he was for Dinah than Sid had been. Sid had left Salem, and was heading home to work for his father.

  “I’m glad you got the lab job, Coop,” Dinah said. “You deserved it. You worked hard for it.”

  “Thanks, Dinah. And now I can quit mooning around and start paying attention to the really important things.” He stood up and took Shea’s hand. “And now, speaking of important things, Shea has some heavy-duty studying to do with her new tutor.”

  “Who would be … ?” Dinah inquired with a grin.

  “Who would be me,” Coop answered. “Ready, Shea?”

  “Yes,” Shea said, “I’m ready.”

  A Biography of Diane Hoh

  Diane Hoh (b. 1937) is a bestselling author of young-adult fiction. Born in Warren, Pennsylvania, Hoh grew up with eight siblings and parents who encouraged her love of reading from an early age. After high school, she spent a year at St. Bonaventure University before marrying and raising three children. She and her family moved often, finally settling in Austin, Texas.

  Hoh sold two stories to Young Miss magazine, but did not attempt anything longer until her children were fully grown. She began her first novel, Loving That O’Connor Boy (1985), after seeing an ad in a publishing trade magazine requesting submissions for a line of young-adult fiction. Although the manuscript was initially rejected, Hoh kept writing, and she soon completed her second full-length novel, Brian’s Girl (1985). One year later, her publisher reversed course, buying both novels and launching Hoh’s career as a young-adult author.

  After contributing novels to two popular series, Cheerleaders and the Girls of Canby Hall, Hoh found great success writing thrillers, beginning with Funhouse (1990), a Point Horror novel that became a national bestseller. Following its success, Hoh created the Nightmare Hall series, whose twenty-nine novels chronicle a university plagued by dark secrets. After concluding Nightmare Hall with 1995’s The Voice in the Mirror, Hoh wrote Virus (1996), which introduced the seven-volume Med Center series, which charts the challenges and mysteries of a hospital in Massachusetts.

  In 1998, Hoh had a runaway hit with Titanic: The Long Night, a story of two couples—one rich, one poor—and their escape from the doomed ocean liner. That same year, Hoh released Remembering the Titanic, which picked up the story one year later. Together, the two were among Hoh’s most popular titles. She continues to live and write in Austin.

  An eleven-year-old Hoh with her best friend, Margy Smith. Hoh’s favorite book that year was Lad: A Dog by Albert Payson Terhune.

  A card from Hoh’s mother written upon the publication of her daughter’s first book. Says Hoh, “This meant everything to me. My mother was a passionate reader, as was my dad.”

  Hoh and her mother in Ireland in 1985. Hoh recalls, “I kissed the Blarney Stone, which she said was redundant because I already had the ‘gift of gab.’ Later, I would use some of what we saw there in Titanic: The Long Night as Paddy, Brian, and Katie deported from Ireland.”

  An unused publicity photo of Hoh.

  Hoh with her daughter Jenny in Portland, Oregon, in 2008. Says Hoh, “While there, I received a call from a young filmmaker in Los Angeles who wanted to make The Train into a film. They ran out of money before the project got off the ground. Such is life.”

  Hoh in 1991, addressing a class at the junior high she had attended in Warren, Pennsylvania.

  A 1995 photo taken in Austin, Texas, with Hoh’s grandchildren. Says Hoh, “Although my deadlines for Nightmare Hall were tight, I made time for my grandchildren: Mike, Alex, and Rachel. I'm so glad they live here.”

  A current photo of Hoh at home in Austin, Texas.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  copyright © 1994 by Diane Hoh

  cover design by Andrea Uva

  978-1-4532-5086-0

  This edition published in 2012 by Open Road Integrated Media

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  New York, NY 10014

  www.openroadmedia.com

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