Win, Lose, or Die

by Diane Hoh

  She would have to stand up to remove it from the plaster fingers.

  If she stood up, her hunter might see her.

  But at least she’d have something to fight with.

  “Nick-ee! Give it up. It’s over. Forty-love, I told you. You’re going to go back to the office with me, and you’re going to have an accident back there. John found out who you were, hated you for what you’d done to him, and attacked you with a hockey stick. You fought back, hitting him. But he delivered the final, fatal blow to your skull before passing out himself. Perfect. Don’t you think it’s perfect? I had planned to make it look like a robbery. But while I was dressing in this monkey suit, I heard you talking to John. Isn’t it weird that none of us knew about his eye? But this is so great. He has a reason to hate you, too. And,” the voice lifted lightly, “maybe I’ll just help myself to some of that money lying there beside John. Not all of it, of course. Now that it’s not going to look like a robbery, I’ll have to just take a little.” The voice hardened again, “I deserve it all, after what you did to me.”

  Holding her breath, Nicki slowly, cautiously, lifted herself from the floor, trying desperately to remain in the mannequin’s shadow, away from the reflected light.

  “Maybe,” the voice said dreamily, and now it was moving closer again “maybe I’ll buy a nice, new outfit. I could use a new outfit. Something stunning.”

  “Stunning” was a word Libby would use. Was it Libby, after all? Was it Libby’s scholarship Coach had handed over to Nicki? John had said, “Libby has one, and a guy named Ty.” But Coach hadn’t told him whose scholarship she’d reduced to partial, so it could have been Libby’s.

  Nicki reached out toward the ski pole, hoping it was settled loosely in the grasp of the mannequin skier, so that she could easily lift it from between the fingers.

  “Everything we had was gone. The house, cars, all of my college money. My mother said I’d have to stay home and get a job to help out, but I wouldn’t. I wasn’t giving up college. Then I’d have to live like them, for the rest of my life. No, thanks. I knew I could get a tennis scholarship, and I was right. And when I first got here, I did great. Great at practice, won most of my matches. Coach was pleased. But money was such a problem. There was never enough, never, and the stress of constantly writing home and begging for money got to me. I started screwing up, and losing. I knew Coach was getting impatient with me, but I never thought she’d reduce my scholarship. And she wouldn’t have, if it hadn’t been for you.”

  Nicki reached up and tugged on the ski pole. It slid upward easily, and she heaved a sigh of relief.

  “I’m getting tired of this game.” There was anger in the voice again. “I need my rest. Practice tomorrow, you know. And you won’t be there. Everyone will be very upset, saying how awful it is about you and John. Come out now, Nicki, and quit wasting my time.”

  Nicki continued to slide the ski pole up, up, out of the mannequin’s fingers. In just a few seconds now, she’d have it in her hands, and would no longer be defenseless.

  Halfway up, the ski pole stuck.

  Biting down hard on her lower lip to keep from screaming, Nicki yanked harder on the pole. The mannequin shook, and the ski goggles hanging around its neck clinked noisily, a sound that stopped Nicki’s heart as it echoed like a shout throughout the silent store.

  “Aha! There you are! Taking up skiing now, are we? You’ll never get out on the slopes. Ready or not, here I come!”

  The bulky, padded figure in the white hockey mask took off across the carpet, hockey stick raised ominously in the air, heading straight for Nicki. When it was only a few feet away, it stopped, keeping the hockey stick raised in one hand and unfastening the white molded plastic mask with the other hand.

  The clasp slipped free, and the mask came off.

  Patrice Weylen smiled at Nicki.

  Chapter 21

  NICKI’S HAND WAS FROZEN on the ski pole. “Pat?” she murmured through lips gone numb. “You?”

  “Of course.”

  Nicki’s mind was reeling. “No! No, it can’t be you!”

  “Why not? Why can’t it be me? Who did you think it was? Libby? She still has her scholarship. I hate her for that. But,” she shrugged bulky shoulders, “I hate you more, of course.”

  “You killed Barb?” Nicki’s voice shook. But her hand began tugging again, very gently, on the ski pole. “Why?”

  Pat dropped the mask and moved closer, but she was still too far away to see Nicki’s hand on the pole. “I told you, I thought she was you. Dumb, keeping the lights off while you’re in a whirlpool.” She giggled. “Someone could get hurt that way.”

  “You killed her!”

  “She wasn’t all that important, Nicki. She wasn’t even that good a tennis player.

  “It wasn’t my fault,” Pat continued. “The only way to get my scholarship back was to get rid of you. Permanently. I had to do that, Nicki. It wasn’t my fault that was Barb in the tub, and not you.”

  “I didn’t know I’d taken your scholarship,” Nicki said, trying to buy some time. “I just found out. Is that why everyone was so cold to me when I arrived?” She began to slide upward, a fraction of an inch at a time.

  Pat laughed bitterly. “Not exactly. They didn’t know Coach had taken me into her office and explained, oh, so sweetly, that I wasn’t living up to my potential and she was very, very sorry, but she had no choice, she would have to reduce my scholarship to a partial. John was the only person Coach told. But I knew. And I spread a rumor that you demanded a full-tuition scholarship, that you wouldn’t come to Salem without it. That made you sound greedy and spoiled. So everyone was already against you before you even arrived. Of course, no one knows it was me who spread the rumor. Not even Ginnie. I made sure of that.”

  If she moved any closer, she would see Nicki’s hand pulling the ski pole upward.

  “Ginnie had that bruise on her face,” Nicki said. “The night you attacked me in the locker room. Why didn’t you have any bruises?”

  “I did. On my left shoulder. That’s where the door caught me, knocking me off balance.”

  “You tried to blind me.”

  “It almost worked. Too bad it didn’t.”

  The pole continued to slide upward, upward … almost free of the mannequin’s grip.

  “Well, it’s going to work this time,” Pat said emphatically. “The game is over. I think you’ll agree that the match goes to me. Winner,” she declared, lifting the hockey stick higher and drawing it back behind her head, “and still champion, Patrice Weylen!”

  “No!” Nicki shouted, and with one last vigorous yank, pulled the ski pole free. She thrust it out in front of her, its sharp, pointed tip forward.

  But Pat was wearing thick layers of padding. The pole wouldn’t do any good unless it was thrust into her face. Nicki couldn’t do it. She wasn’t going to risk blinding another person, not even to save her own life.

  Desperately, Nicki raised the ski pole and swung it sideways with all her might even as the hockey stick sliced through the air toward her.

  Her blow landed first. It hit Pat’s left shoulder, knocking her off balance and deflecting the hockey stick so that it only glanced off Nicki’s right arm. Pat staggered sideways in her unwieldy uniform. She dropped the hockey stick and fought to regain her balance, to no avail. As she tilted precariously, her flailing arms struck the mannequin. It tipped, leaned, and toppled forward onto her, knocking her to the ground.

  Nicki dropped the ski pole and began backing away, one hand to her mouth.

  Sirens sounded startlingly close by. The door burst open. The lights came on.

  “Hold it right there,” said an official voice.

  “Nicki?” a voice called from the office doorway.

  Nicki looked up. John, hanging onto the office door for support, said weakly, “I called the police.”

  As the police led Pat away, she stopped to look at Nicki. She whispered, “You’re going to win, after all, aren’t you
? It wasn’t supposed to be like that.”

  Nicki, sagging against the wall nodded silently.

  She had won.

  She was still alive.

  Epilogue

  THE DOME REVERBERATED WITH the unmistakable sound of tennis balls being whacked back and forth across the nets on every court. A brilliant winter sun shone in through the glass roof, dappling the white-clad players with dancing shadows.

  Nicki, breathing hard, took a break. New racket in hand, she ran to the sidelines where Deacon and Mel, John and Ginnie were seated.

  “Lookin’ good!” Deacon said with a smile. He reached out to take her hand.

  “Yeah, not bad,” Nicki agreed. A shadow crossed her face. “I guess I play better when the only danger facing me is losing a game, as opposed to losing my life.” She glanced around the dome, her eyes regretful. “I still can’t believe it was Pat. She seemed like such a good friend when hardly anyone else did. I slept in her room.”

  “It was my room, too,” Ginnie said. “She wouldn’t have done anything to you with me there.” The bruise on her face from her fall at the mall had healed completely. She looked healthy and well-rested. Her left hand, Nicki noticed, was firmly ensconced in one of John’s. “Anyway, you taught me something. That life is short. Too short to focus on only one thing.” She smiled at John. “Right?”

  “Right!”

  “Well, that’s great,” Nicki said, sitting down between Deacon and Mel, “because I wouldn’t want one of my new roomies to be a tennis nut. Strange things happen to people who become obsessed.”

  Ginnie had said, “I could never sleep in that room again,” and since Nicki felt exactly the same way about her own room, she and Ginnie had both moved out and were now sharing a larger room with Mel.

  They had spent that last long night talking about Pat and about what had happened, and when they were finished, they had made a pact not to bring it up again. “We’ve dissected the whole thing,” Nicki had said resolutely,” and we need to put it behind us and get on with other things.”

  Now, as she sat contentedly between Deacon and Mel, watching Salem’s tennis team running around the courts serving and backhanding and smashing the balls across the nets, she realized that was exactly what they’d done.

  They’d put the whole horrible business behind them.

  Exactly where it belonged.

  And if she sometimes imagined Pat’s face looking up at her, whispering, “You won …”, she knew that in time, that, too, would disappear.

  “Bledsoe!” Coach yelled, “get out here!”

  Nicki jumped up and ran out onto the court.

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Nightmare Hall Series

  Prologue

  AIR.

  I need air.

  Every time they put me in this dark, narrow, airless space, they insist, as I struggle and scream in fury at them, that there is plenty of air.

  But they lie.

  It is always the same. In only minutes, my chest begins to ache, as if giant claws are squeezing it. My head hurts as my lungs struggle to pull in enough oxygen. I feel dizzy, as if I’ve been spinning in circles for hours.

  But I haven’t been. Because there isn’t enough room in my dark, musty chamber to spin, or even to walk. Not enough room to take two steps forward or two steps backward. No room to lie down, and sitting is almost impossible in this tall, dark, narrow, box, unless you scrunch up your legs so that your knees are jabbing into your stomach like cattle prods. A very painful position, and those times when I’ve been forgotten in here and had been sitting like that, I was totally unable to walk when they finally remembered and came to let me out. My legs had frozen in their folded-up position. They had to reach in and lift me out. I’m not exactly lightweight, and they had a hard time. That made them mad. But it was their fault for forgetting me.

  Dark. It is so completely black, as if I’d suddenly gone blind. There are no windows in my box, not so much as a tiny crack to let in a sliver of light from the hall outside. And it is quiet, deathly quiet. The wood is thick. Only the loudest sounds penetrate, sounding vague and distant, as if my ears were stuffed with cotton. Faint voices, an unrecognizable note or two of music, occasional muffled footsteps. This place is almost soundproof.

  Which makes it as lonely as an isolated mountaintop in Tibet, or the very depths of an ocean, unoccupied by even the bravest of sea creatures.

  The sense of isolation is unbearable.

  But that’s their goal, isn’t it? To make it unbearable.

  They’ve succeeded.

  It stinks in here, too. The smell of human panic is everywhere, oozing from the gray-brown boards. Some of the smell is probably mine, past and present.

  Once … maybe it was the first time they locked me in here … I broke every fingernail, ripped them to shreds, trying to claw my way out. And once … maybe that was the first time, I had no voice left when they finally set me free. Couldn’t talk above a whisper for three days, from the shouting and screaming to be let out.

  Air. I need air.

  I won’t forget this. It won’t be forgiven. Ever. It should never have happened to me. I didn’t deserve it. It wasn’t necessary.

  That’s what I get for trusting.

  Never again. I’ve learned my lesson, here in my dark, silent, torture chamber. Trust is for fools. I will never be that foolish again. Never.

  I won’t always be trapped in this small, airless hellhole. I’ll be free soon. Free to go about my business.

  The business of getting even. Payback time.

  I know exactly how to go about it. I have a plan. A wonderful plan. Thinking about carrying it out has kept me from going insane in this loathsome place.

  But first, I have to get out. I have to be freed from this medieval nightmare. This obscene box.

  This coffin.

  Chapter 1

  THE WOMAN STANDING AT the sink in the bright, sunny, blue and white kitchen was short but sturdy, with a broad, solid back and plump shoulders. Wiry, graying hair fought to escape the confines of a brightly printed yellow and rust bandana that matched both the woman’s cotton dress and her full-length apron. She had made the outfit herself and was very fond of it, even though her best friend, Sunshine Mooney, had said, “My heavens, Mave, in that get-up, you look like a bunch of bananas going bad!” Silver hoops dangled from Mavis’s ears and matching silver bangles dotted her thick wrists as age-spotted hands scrubbed at a teabag stain in the bottom of the white porcelain sink.

  A country song whined from the black portable radio sitting on the blue-tiled counter at Mavis’s elbow. As she scrubbed, she sang along with it, at the top of her lungs, in a nasal, off-key voice.

  A pair of hummingbirds hovered at the feeder outside the wide window above the sink. Every few minutes Mavis, continuing to scrub diligently, would glance up from her task and gaze in wonder at the tiny, busy birds. “Most amazing thing I’ve ever seen,” she would murmur in awe, “no bigger than some insects I’ve seen in my time. But so much prettier. Amazing!” Then she would resume her discordant vocalizing.

  People who had heard Mavis sing said, “Well, Mavis couldn’t carry a tune in a wheelbarrow, but she sure is loud.” This was true, as Mavis herself laughingly admitted.

  But on this particular, beautiful, early-spring morning, the volume at which Mavis sang her favorite country tune would be her undoing. Because her heartfelt caterwauling kept her from hearing the black metal latch on the back door lift upward surreptitiously, making the telltale clanking sound that it always made.

  If Mavis hadn’t been shaking the thick, wooden, kitchen ceiling beams with her voice, she might have heard that telltale clanking sound.

  And she might have been saved.

  But because she was wailing, “You-oo hurt me so-oo bad!” at the top of her lungs, Mavis failed to hear that telltale clank, or the ensuing creak of the metal hinge as the back door swung open, or the soft, whispery footsteps entering from the small, enc
losed back porch that housed a freezer, an old wicker chair and table, and a collection of house plants. Her back to the kitchen, she never heard the footsteps crossing the blue and white squares of floor tile and tiptoeing up behind her.

  Lost in the song, Mavis failed to sense a new presence in the room. She was unaware of any approaching danger until it was too late. Cruel and powerful hands encircled her throat from behind, cutting into her windpipe and abruptly ending her song in mid-note.

  The hummingbirds outside the kitchen window went on about their business, unperturbed as Mavis, with strength surprising for her age, struggled valiantly for her life.

  In spite of her surprising strength, she struggled in vain.

  When the last breath of air had been cruelly choked from her body, she gave one last, despairing sigh and went completely limp, like the wet dishrag still clutched in her left hand.

  A voice behind her whispered, “Done! Took long enough. Tough old crow! Now, what am I going to do with you? Can’t have the lady of the house tripping over you when she comes home.”

  Eyes cold with a lack of emotion glanced around the sunny room. The inert corpse in garish rust and yellow sagged to the floor. “Ah, yes,” the whisper said triumphantly, “I see the perfect place. Come along now, like a good girl, time’s a-wastin’.”

  Mavis, who only moments before had been singing at the top of her lungs, made no sound at all as a hand reached down to yank at her gaily printed headscarf and use it to drag the lifeless body across the blue and white floor tiles. Mavis’s left leg slid limply through a small spill of coffee on one cold square. She had meant to mop the floor the minute she finished the sink and counter. She had thought she had plenty of time, the way people always do when they begin an ordinary day no different from any other.

  But Mavis had been wrong.