The Whisperer (Nightmare Hall) by Diane Hoh Read Free Book Online Page B

filled the remaining hours with as many activities as she could cram in, to keep her mind off what lay ahead. Washed her hair. Dried it. Tried to eat the popcorn Dinah and Sid brought over before they left for a late-night frat party. The few bites she managed to put in her mouth tasted like sawdust. Went with Tandy and Linda to a movie downstairs in the lounge. A comedy. She was the only person there who never once laughed.
    She had to bite her tongue after the movie to keep herself from turning to Linda and saying, “Anyone at your dorm have a thing for speaking in whispers? Making weird phone calls? Writing strange, first-gradish notes?” Or, “Oh, by the way, Linda, I’m going to be out your way around midnight tonight, should I drop in and say hi?”
    When Shea announced that she was going back upstairs, Linda said sweetly, “Shea, you’re awfully quiet tonight. Are you feeling okay?”
    An opening … she could so easily have said then, “No, Linda, I’m not. I’m being tortured by someone who’s blackmailing me into meeting him in the woods behind your Nightmare Hall at midnight tonight. Care to help me out with this?”
    But then, of course, Linda and Tandy would have said, “Well, Shea, exactly what is it that this person is blackmailing you with? What have you done, Shea?”
    She answered instead, for what felt like the thousandth time, “I’m just tired, I guess. Sorry.”
    When she left them in the lounge, Shea felt both relief and a sense of abandonment. It was so hard pretending she was okay when she really wasn’t. But she’d felt safer when she was flanked by two strong, athletic friends. Too bad they weren’t coming with her that night.
    When she got back to her room, she yearned to crawl under the covers and hide, maybe forever.
    But if she did, she was sure the videotape and the paperweight would go straight to the police in Twin Falls or to the campus security police. Or maybe the whisperer would first show the tape in bio class on Monday morning, as Dr. Stark had threatened. He might think that was a great idea. Hilarious.
    The videotape was the real problem. If it weren’t for that, the police would never bother to check her fingerprints against the ones on the paperweight.
    Depressed and frightened, she lay on her bed without music or a book or magazine, until it was time to leave.
    Dressing in jeans, T-shirt, and lightweight windbreaker, and old sneakers in case the woods were muddy, she took a flashlight from her desk and left the room quietly.
    No one was around. She could hear muted voices in several rooms, could hear faint music playing, but the hall was deserted.
    She went on foot to Nightingale Hall. It wasn’t that far. And she argued with herself all the way up the highway. What she was doing was completely stupid. Movies and television shows about blackmail had always driven her nuts. She could never understand how the victims could trust a blackmailing criminal to keep his mouth shut, money or no money. The guy was a criminal, for pete’s sake? If he had ethics, he’d be in a different line of work.
    But now she understood. She was walking in their shoes now, those victims, and she knew, finally, how they felt. You make a very big mistake, and then all you want to do is forget it, have it forgotten. And you’ll do almost anything to make that happen.
    Including wandering around deep, dark woods at midnight. …
    When she reached the driveway leading up to Nightingale Hall, she stopped.
    At midnight, the house looked even more forbidding than it did in bright daylight. The downstairs was dark, the upper floors only dimly lit. The brick seemed the same color as the black night sky.
    Shea fought the urge to turn and run back to the safety of campus.
    Instead, she moved up the hill beside the woods, hunting for the path. She found it without any trouble.
    As she pushed aside overgrown bushes and made her way between the tall, black trees whose limbs stretched toward the night