Down a Dark Hall

by Lois Duncan

  The letter, she thought. Of course! I had written the Rosenblums’ phone number in the letter. Natalie must have read it and realized what the number meant and called them.

  She believed him as she had always believed him, and she felt his hand guide hers to the knob of the kitchen door.

  She did not remember, later, stepping through it. She knew only that suddenly she was outside, running down the driveway, with the silly towel still upon her head and the rain in her face and the wind whipping cold against her shoulders. Ahead of her lay the iron fence and beyond that the black arms of trees waving wild against the sky. She could not see them for the darkness, but she knew they were there.

  Halfway down the drive she stopped and turned to look back at the house. There it stood, as it would stand forever in her nightmares, the great peaked roof outlined in flashes against the lightning-ruptured clouds. It had been from almost exactly this point that she had first glimpsed Blackwood, gray stone upon gray stone like a child’s jigsaw puzzle, the windows ablaze in the late afternoon sun as though the interior were alive with flames.

  “Can’t you feel it?” she had said then to her mother. “There’s something about the place—something—”

  She knew the answer now.

  Kit did not wait to watch the building fall. She turned and began to run again into the clean, cold strength of the wind.

  “Here I am!” she cried. “Here I am!” as headlights came round the curve in the road ahead and drew to a stop against the gate.

  Q&A with the Author

  Young adult author Jenny Han sat down with Lois Duncan to ask her all about

  Jenny: In my opinion, DOWN A DARK HALL is your scariest book. I think the isolation and claustrophobia play a big part, and also the horrible adults — Madame, the Professor, even Dan, the selfish stepdad — but it’s the ghosts that frighten me the most. Lois, do you believe in ghosts?

  Lois: I don’t believe in the type of ghosts that are associated with Halloween, dressed in white sheets and shouting, “Boo!” But I do believe that the energy of human consciousness can survive the death of the physical body. I don’t find it impossible to speculate that that energy might be transmitted to others by those souls who are highly motivated and whose mind force is strong enough. But, of course, that’s not something that any of us can be sure of one way or the other as long as we’re anchored to this earth plane.

  Jenny: How did you pick the artists whom the girls channel?

  Lois: I chose brilliant artists, writers and musicians who died young and might be expected to be frustrated because they had so much to offer and weren’t given enough time to fully express it.

  Jenny: And I’m dying to know — what was that French poem Sandy wrote all about, and did you have an actual painter in mind for the grotesques that Kit and Jules find so horrible?

  Lois: Sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t know myself what was in them. I didn’t want to start visualizing the contents, because I didn’t want them in my own mind. (I can’t even stand to watch a horror movie on television.) I thought I’d cop out and let my readers imagine them for themselves.

  Jenny: It seems you did a little research on how to forge a painting. How did you become interested in that? Have you ever done any painting?

  Lois: I don’t know a thing about painting. But I’m fortunate enough to be a longtime friend of the famous artist Betty Sabo. When I wanted information about aging those forged paintings, I went to Betty. She described the entire procedure and then reviewed the manuscript to make sure I got it right. You’ll notice the book is dedicated to Betty and her husband, Dan Sabo.

  Jenny: Did any particular place inspire Blackwood Hall? Or the story of the family who once lived there?

  Lois: Pure imagination. This was my one experience in writing a Gothic mystery, so I went all out to make it as atmospheric as possible.

  Jenny: What research did you do to study ESP?

  Lois: After the murder of my teenage daughter, Kaitlyn Arquette, I began having startling psychic experiences of my own, and I contacted Dr. William Roll, project director for the Psychical Research Foundation, to see if he could help me understand what was happening to me. He was as fascinated by those experiences as I was and asked me to write a paper about them for a conference he was chairing. We communicated a lot by phone (no e-mail back then), and got to be friends.

  Bill, then, came up with the idea of our collaborating on a nonfiction book for young adults based on laboratory research and documented case histories of psychic phenomena. He had connections with the top parapsychologists in the nation and was intimately involved in the research himself, and I had a history of writing for teenagers, so we thought we’d be the perfect team to create such a book. PSYCHIC CONNECTIONS: A JOURNEY INTO THE MYSTERIOUS WORLD OF PSI was published, and it was a good book.

  The problem was that school librarians were reluctant to stock it for fear of its being challenged by irate parents who didn’t want their children exposed to the subject unless it was treated as fantasy. So, to Bill’s and my great disappointment, it went out of print pretty quickly. However, I learned a lot by writing that book with someone so knowledgeable to guide me. It was like taking a crash course in parapsychology.

  Jenny: Had you heard of anyone going insane from channeling, or was that just suspense writer’s license?

  Lois: Writer’s license. Through writing PSYCHIC CONNECTIONS, I came to know many practicing psychics — some working with police departments — and I’ve never heard of any of them being harmed by that experience. They just take it for granted. Like having a knack for drawing or writing or playing the piano.

  Jenny: PSYCHIC CONNECTIONS sounds fascinating! I wish it were still in print. What’s the most interesting or surprising thing you learned while working on it?

  Lois: That all these subjects that many people consider unbelievable — things like clairvoyance, precognition, telepathy, and astral projection — are being taken seriously by scientists. They’re being studied in laboratory settings, often with positive results.

  Jenny: What was particularly challenging about updating each book?

  Lois: The biggest challenge in updating these stories and bringing them into the present day was the dramatic change in technology since the time they were written. Remember, some of these books were written in the 1970s. And a very strong plot element in many of my novels was the fact that the endangered heroines were unable to cry out for help. But today, most teenagers have cell phones. They can call — they can text— they have laptops and iPads — nobody is isolated. I had to find ways of getting rid of those communicative devices in book after book. And I couldn’t use the same method more than once, because people might read these new editions back-to-back, so they’d notice if I repeated myself.

  Jenny: Many of your books have paranormal elements — did you go through a period when you were especially interested in these types of subjects?

  Lois: I have always been interested in the paranormal. (That interest took on a new dimension in 1989, when Kait was murdered and psychic detectives gave us more information than the police did.) But back when I wrote these particular books, I had not yet been personally exposed to the study of parapsychology. I considered it fantasy — yet wasn’t quite sure it was fantasy. I used it primarily because it made for good story material.

  Jenny: Can you tell us a little about your writing process?

  Lois: People often ask me, “Do you plot your books before you start, or do you let your muse be your guide and just go where you’re taken?” When you write in a genre, as I do, you have to lay out your plot ahead of time. There’s a basic three-part structure for all genre novels: (1) Someone the reader relates to (2) reaches an important goal (3) by overcoming increasingly difficult obstacles. That means that, in order for the reader of a young adult novel to relate to the protagonist, that protagonist must be a teenager. In regard to Step Two, the more important the goal, the stronger the story. The most important go
al for anyone is survival, which is why mystery and adventure novels are so popular. The next most important goal is love and acceptance, which is why romance novels are popular, especially with girls. And, for teenage protagonists, there’s a third and very important goal— and that is to grow up. The protagonist must mature during the course of the book and therefore be wiser and stronger at the end of the story than in the beginning. Once you develop your characters and set the goals for the protagonist (in my case, I usually set all three goals, and therefore have a main plot plus two subplots all going at once), you set obstacles in the way of the protagonist so he or she has to overcome them to reach those goals. That movement to hurtle obstacles in order to reach the goals is called “pacing.” So there’s a lot of planning that goes into my novels before I ever sit down and actually start writing.

  Jenny: I’ve read all of your books many, many times, so I decided I would read the updated versions and see if I could spot the changes. Of course I noticed the cell phones and texting and e-mails, but I also noticed subtler differences, like name changes — Mother to Mom, Rheardon to Rolland. I think I know why but I’d love to hear it from you.

  Lois: There were different reasons. Mostly it was to modernize the novels. When my children were growing up, most young people called their mothers “Mother.” Today they usually call them “Mom.” But when I went back and re-read those novels, I also realized that, for some unknown reason, I had tended to favor certain names. Perhaps I’d known people with those names and therefore was comfortable with them, so I tended to overuse them. I hadn’t realized I was doing that, because some of those novels were written ten or fifteen years apart. But now, reading them one right after another and seeing a last name like “Rheardon” pop up twice, I became very conscious of what I’d done, so I made the necessary changes.

  Jenny: Can we dare hope to read an all-new novel from Lois Duncan in the near future?

  Lois: I honestly don’t know what I’m going to write next. I’m in between projects, recharging my batteries.

  Jenny Han is the author of several books for teens, including The Summer I Turned Pretty, It’s Not Summer Without You, and Shug, as well as Clara Lee and the Apple Pie Dream, the first book in the middle grade series featuring Clara Lee. She is currently at work on the final book in her summer trilogy, We’ll Always Have Summer.

  Lois Duncan

  Lois Duncan is the author of over fifty books, ranging from children’s picture books to poetry to adult non-fiction, but is best known for her young adult suspense novels, which have received Young Readers Awards in sixteen states and three foreign countries. In 1992, Lois was presented the Margaret A. Edwards Award by the School Library Journal and the ALA Young Adult Library Services Association for “a distinguished body of adolescent literature.” In 2009, she received the St. Katharine Drexel Award, given by the Catholic Library Association “to recognize an outstanding contribution by an individual to the growth of high school and young adult librarianship and literature.”

  Lois was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and grew up in Sarasota, Florida. She knew from early childhood that she wanted to be a writer. She submitted her first story to a magazine at age ten and became published at thirteen. Throughout her high school years she wrote regularly for young people’s publications, particularly Seventeen.

  As an adult, Lois moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she taught magazine writing for the Journalism Department at the University of New Mexico and continued to write for magazines. Over three hundred of her articles and stories appeared in such publications as Ladies’ Home Journal, Redbook, McCall’s, Good Housekeeping, and Reader’s Digest, and for many years she was a contributing editor for Woman’s Day.

  Six of her novels—SUMMER OF FEAR, KILLING MR. GRIFFIN, GALLOWS HILL, RANSOM, DON’T LOOK BEHIND YOU and STRANGER WITH MY FACE—were made-for-TV movies. I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER and HOTEL FOR DOGS were box office hits.

  Although young people are most familiar with Lois Duncan’s fictional suspense novels, adults may know her best as the author of WHO KILLED MY DAUGHTER?, the true story of the murder of Kaitlyn Arquette, the youngest of Lois’s children. Kait’s heartbreaking story has been featured on such TV shows as Unsolved Mysteries, Good Morning America, Larry King Live, Sally Jessy Raphael and Inside Edition. A full account of the family’s ongoing personal investigation of this still unsolved homicide can be found on the Internet at http://kaitarquette.arquettes.com.

  Lois and her husband, Don Arquette, currently live in Sarasota, Florida. They are the parents of five children.

  You can visit Lois at http://loisduncan.arquettes.com.

  “There are a lot of smart authors, and a lot of authors who write reasonably well. Lois Duncan is smart, writes darn good books and is one of the most entertaining authors in America.”

  —Walter Dean Myers, Printz award–winning author of Monster

  and Dope Sick

  “She knows what you did last summer. And she knows how to find that secret evil in her characters’ hearts, evil she turns into throat-clutching suspense in book after book. Does anyone write scarier books than Lois Duncan? I don’t think so.”

  —R. L. Stine, author of Goosebumps and Fear Street

  “I couldn’t be more pleased that Lois Duncan’s books will now reach a new generation of readers.”

  —Judy Blume, author of Forever and Tiger Eyes

  “Lois Duncan has always been one of my biggest inspirations. I gobbled up her novels in my teens, often reading them again and again and scaring myself over and over. She’s a master of suspense, so prepare to be dazzled and spooked!”

  —Sara Shepard, author of the Pretty Little Liars series

  “Lois Duncan’s books kept me up many a late night reading under the covers with a flashlight!”

  —Wendy Mass, author of A Mango-Shaped Space, Leap Day and Heaven Looks a Lot Like the Mall

  “Lois Duncan is the patron saint of all things awesome.”

  —Jenny Han, author of The Summer I Turned Pretty series

  “Duncan is one of the smartest, funniest and most terrifying writers around—a writer that a generation of girls LOVED to tatters, while learning to never read her books without another friend to scream with handy.”

  —Lizzie Skurnick, author of Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading

  “In middle school and high school, I loved Lois Duncan’s novels. I still do. I particularly remember Killing Mr. Griffin, which took my breath away. I couldn’t quite believe a writer could DO that. I feel extremely grateful to Lois Duncan for taking unprecedented risks, challenging preconceptions and changing the young adult field forever.”

  —Erica S. Perl, author of Vintage Veronica

  “Haunting and suspenseful—Duncan’s writing captures everything fun about reading!”

  —Suzanne Young, author of The Naughty List series and A Need So Beautiful

  “Killing Mr. Griffin taught me a lot about writing. Thrilling stuff. It was one of the most requested and enjoyed books I taught with my students. I think it’s influenced most of my writing since.”

  —Gail Giles, author of Right Behind You and Shattering Glass

  “If ever a writer’s work should be brought before each new generation of young readers, it is that of Lois Duncan. The grace with which she has led her life—a life that included a tragedy that would have brought most of us to our knees—is reflected in her writing, particularly (from my point of view) in I Know What You Did Last Summer. Her stories, like Lois herself, are ageless.”

  —Chris Crutcher, author of Angry Management, Deadline and Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes

  “Lois Duncan’s thrillers have a timeless quality about them. They are good stories, very well told, that also happen to illuminate both the heroic and dark parts of growing up.”

  —Marc Talbert, author of Dead Birds Singing, A Sunburned Prayer and Heart of a Jaguar

  Also by Lois Duncan:
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  DON’T LOOK BEHIND YOU

  I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER

  KILLING MR. GRIFFIN

  STRANGER WITH MY FACE

  SUMMER OF FEAR

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Q&A with the Author

  About the Author

  Praise for Lois Duncan

  Also by Lois Duncan

  Copyright

  Copyright © 1974 by Lois Duncan

  Author Q&A © 2011 Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Little, Brown and Company

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017

  Visit our website at www.lb-teens.com

  Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  First eBook Edition: April 2011

  First published in hardcover in September 1974 by Little, Brown and Company

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.