Deadly Visions (Nightmare Hall) by Diane Hoh Read Free Book Online Page A

her nightshirt.
    The package was on the floor, leaning against the bed. And Rachel remembered then, Bibi had said the package was big. She wouldn’t have said that about a box of cookies.
    The package was big. It was also flat and rectangular, wrapped in white plastic, and tied with twine.
    “Is it your birthday?” Aidan asked as Rachel moved toward the package.
    “No,” she said, “it’s not.” There was something about the shape of the package, something familiar, something that birthed a tiny kernel of uneasiness in her chest. It wasn’t her birthday, and she hadn’t been expecting a package, and although her grandmother occasionally surprised her with a new sweater or a pair of gloves or thick athletic socks, she had never sent anything in so large a package.
    Rachel unearthed a pair of scissors from a desk drawer and cut the twine. Slowly, carefully, she began to peel off the white plastic, beginning at the top. She did it slowly because she had already guessed, from the shape of the package, what was inside, and she didn’t want to see it.
    Suddenly all the horror of her nightmare was flooding back into her mind as if a dam had broken somewhere in her head.
    I know what’s in here, she thought, sickened and dizzy. But I don’t know why someone sent it to me.
    When enough of the plastic had been peeled away, Aidan let out a soft exclamation. “The seascape?” he said, as Rachel backed away from the painting, her hands at her mouth. “Someone sent you the seascape? What for?”
    “I don’t know,” she whispered.
    They were silent for a moment, staring at the blues and the greens and the storm-tossed water. “Did you ever find out who painted it?” Aidan asked.
    Silently, Rachel shook her head.
    “Maybe he signed it before he wrapped it,” Aidan suggested. “Check and see.”
    Rachel hesitated, biting her lower lip. Then she took a deep breath, let it out, and went back to the painting to strip away the last of the white covering.
    A set of initials had been painted in the bottom right-hand corner in thick black oil.
    Initials.
    Four initials.
    M.Y.O.B.
    Rachel sank back on her haunches, letting out a soft, deep breath. At Christmastime when she was growing up, her grandmother often came home with overflowing shopping bags. When Rachel asked, “What’s in the bags, Gram?” the answer was always the same: a warm, but firm, “M.Y.O.B., young lady. If you’re a good girl, you’ll find out soon enough.”
    M.Y.O.B.
    Mind Your Own Business.
    Rachel’s head spun. The initials in the bottom right-hand corner of the seascape which had been delivered to her weren’t an artist’s signature.
    They were a warning.

Chapter 6
    “M .Y.O.B?” AIDAN SAID. “THAT’S his signature? Is that supposed to be a joke?”
    “I don’t think so,” Rachel said, sinking to her knees in front of the painting. “I think it’s a message for me. A warning. He doesn’t want me telling people I see things in his work that others don’t see. He wants me to keep quiet about it.”
    “You’re getting all of that out of four initials?” Aidan’s voice was skeptical. He dropped to his knees, too, his eyes on the painting.
    Suddenly Rachel noticed something else about the seascape. The drowning figure was gone. Although she peered at the painting intently, the pinkish blobs that had seemed to her to be a screaming mouth and a pair of flailing arms were no longer there.
    “It’s gone,” she whispered. “There isn’t anyone drowning in this painting now. It’s just a seascape.”
    “It always was, Rachel,” Aidan said. “There was never anyone drowning in that painting. That was just a product of your imagination. I know art is subject to interpretation, but if you’ll excuse the bad pun, you sort of went overboard on this one.”
    Because she couldn’t deny what was sitting right in front of her eyes, Rachel would have agreed with him then, except for one thing. If she never had seen something sinister in