The Night Walker (Nightmare Hall)
Page 12
A hot stab of flame singed Quinn’s elbow.
“Let go of the rope! Now!”
She let go.
And dropped, dropped, the heat from the burning building making her as dizzy as the fall itself.
She landed in the blanket, bounced once as if on a trampoline, and then lay still.
The fire truck screeched up the driveway.
Someone ran to direct the fire fighters.
“Ivy,” Quinn said hoarsely as people helped her off the blanket. “Ivy Green is in there.”
And by the way someone replied, “In there?” Quinn knew there was no hope. Not for Ivy.
But then … maybe there hadn’t been any hope for Ivy in a long, long time.
While the fire fighters tackled the blaze, Quinn, the blanket wrapped around her shoulders, sat with Jess and Ian, wiping her face with a cool cloth Jess had brought her.
When the fire was out, when the fire truck had gone and the police had arrived, Quinn went inside Nightingale Hall to answer their questions. Jess and Ian stayed with her.
The first question the police officer asked her was, “May I ask you what you were doing in the barn, miss?”
Quinn, lying on a couch with the blanket over her, her cuts and bruises being tended to by Nightingale Hall’s housemother, Mrs. Coates, wanted to say, “Well, officer, I can tell you this. I wasn’t sleepwalking.”
But she didn’t. He wouldn’t understand.
Instead, she told him everything that had happened that night.
Epilogue
THE FOLLOWING MORNING. QUINN, her hands mittened in white gauze, lay in the narrow infirmary bed surrounded by her friends. Her head throbbed dully and her chest ached from smoke-tortured lungs, but for the first time in weeks, she felt completely, totally safe. Simon was sitting on the edge of her bed, holding one of her bandaged hands carefully in his, and Tobie and Suze stood on the opposite side.
She was safe.
But she still had questions.
“Suze,” she asked hoarsely, “why did you tell me you were getting Reed’s purse from the wrecked car? You weren’t.”
Suze’s face flamed. “No, I wasn’t,” she said. And added sheepishly, “I had talked Jake into taking me for a ride in his car that afternoon. He didn’t want to, but you know me … I just kept pushing until he gave in. We just went for a ride and came right back. When I got home, I didn’t have my psych notebook, and I knew it had to be in his car. I figured the police would be returning all that stuff to Jake, and Reed knows what a barracuda I am when it comes to boys. I was afraid if she found that notebook, she’d think the worst. And it wasn’t true. So, I knew I had to get that notebook back.”
“Well, since it’s confession time,” Tobie said quietly, “I might as well tell you, Quinn, that I haven’t been seeing Danny when you thought I was.”
Quinn didn’t admit that she already knew that. If Tobie had decided to talk, she wasn’t going to interrupt.
“I like Danny,” Tobie went on, “but I’m just not ready for another relationship. Not yet. I didn’t think it was fair to be with Danny when I was thinking of Peter the whole time. But I didn’t want to tell you, because I knew you thought it was good for me to get involved with someone.” She looked directly at Quinn. “But I can’t. Not yet. I’m working on it, and I think I’m doing better. The counselor has been a big help. I was with her almost all day yesterday. That’s why you couldn’t find me. She says I’ve got time, that I shouldn’t rush it. And I think she’s right.”
“So do I,” Quinn croaked.
“You do?”
“Sure. It sounds perfectly healthy to me. You’re dealing with your feelings. Ivy didn’t. She twisted them into something angry and ugly and then she turned that against other people. But …” Quinn smiled to take any sting out of her words, “no more secrets, okay?”
Tobie nodded. “No more secrets.”
Quinn’s eyes filled with tears then, thinking of Ivy. “It’s so weird,” she said softly, “in a way, it was a secret that was Ivy’s undoing. The secret of my sleepwalking. But,” she added lightly, “at least I know now I’ve only done it twice since I got to Salem. I thought for a while that I was doing it all the time, but it was just those two times when Tobie brought me back.”
Suze cleared her throat. “Ah, I hate to break this to you, Quinn, but it was three times.”
“Three?”
“Yeah. I brought you back once, too. The night Jake and Reed were attacked in their car. And that time, you weren’t just out in the hall. I found you down in the lobby when I came home from my date that night. I couldn’t believe it. There you were, in your sweats and a pair of white socks, looking like you had no idea where you were.”
Quinn stared at her. “In the lobby? That night?”
“Right. I felt sorry for you, because you had these clean white socks on, and people had been tracking across the tile all night with wet, muddy feet. I knew your socks were going to get filthy. Anyway, I could tell you weren’t awake, so I just turned you around and took you back to bed. You never said a word. When I told Tobie the next day, she explained that you do that sometimes. But I never said anything to you because I didn’t want to embarrass you.”
The socks. The socks that Meg had pointed out when they had all gathered in room 602 after the attack on the car. She really had been sleepwalking that night.
“Okay, okay,” Quinn said, relieved to finally know the truth about that night. “Three times, then. But no more than that. And I have a feeling it’s not going to happen again.”
The nurse came in then, and ordered everyone out. “You can come back later, after she’s rested. She needs her sleep.”
Feeling safe, Quinn closed her eyes, certain for the first time in a long while that she wouldn’t be setting one foot outside the bed until she was wide awake again.
She slept.
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
978-1-4532-5084-6
This edition published in 2012 by Open Road Integrated Media
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