The Whisperer (Nightmare Hall) (15 page)

“No. Impossible.

“Be there or be sorry,”
the professor whispered, leaning casually against the black metal railing. The videotape was still in her hand. She smiled lazily, her cold blue eyes on Shea’s face.

“You?” Shea gasped. Her hand was still on the light switch.
“You?”
Her other hand held the boot. And, she remembered then, her shoulder bag held a tape recorder. With a tape in it. As nonchalantly as possible, she slipped her hand into her purse and pressed RECORD.

“So … who attacked you? I thought the whisperer had done it. But if
you’re
the whisperer, then who … ?”

The professor laughed wildly, a cold, chilling sound that echoed throughout the balcony. “Oh, you stupid girl, there
was
no attack! No one hit me on the head. I lost a contact lens, and when I was crawling around beside my desk looking for it, I got tangled in the lamp cord and accidentally pulled the lamp and that stupid paperweight down on top of me. The lamp hit me on the back of my head, knocking me flat on the floor, and the paperweight was right behind it. Slammed me on the temple. I saw stars, and when I came to,
you
were in the room. I wanted to see what you’d do, so I played possum.”

Shea’s mouth fell open. “You … you were never attacked?”

“Well, of
course
I was …” another cackling laugh … “by my enemies, the lamp and the paperweight. The wretches hit me when I was down, you might say.” Dr. Stark tilted her head. “Did I ever thank you for calling the emergency crew? No? Well, thank you, Fallon. I deeply and truly appreciate it.”

Shea struggled to comprehend what she’d just been told. No attack? No one had hit Dr. Stark with the lamp or the paperweight? It had been an accident?

“You … you were conscious when I was in your office? And you deliberately let people think you were attacked? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“It certainly
does.”
Dr. Stark began tossing the black plastic cassette from one hand to the other, as if she were playing catch with a ball. “I knew exactly what I was going to do the minute I woke up on that floor and realized what had happened. It was the perfect opportunity to teach you a lesson. I’d already looked at the tape. I knew you had been cheating.” Her eyes narrowed. “Cheating
me!
You were
not
going to get away with it. I realized that if everyone thought I was paralyzed, I could do anything I wanted to, and no one would ever guess that it was me. So … I faked paralysis.”

The look in Dr. Stark’s eyes was chilling. Shea shrank backward, pressing into the wall. It was past midnight on a Monday night. Wouldn’t Tandy begin wondering where she was? Maybe Dinah had awakened downstairs, found a phone down there somewhere, called the police?

Someone had better have done
something.
Because Dr. Stark wasn’t going to tell Shea this whole story and then let her go. And there was that look in her eyes … if help didn’t come … her only consolation was that the tape recorder, she hoped with all her heart, was recording this entire conversation. If anything happened to her, someone would at least find that tape recorder in her bag.

“You couldn’t have fooled all those doctors into believing you were paralyzed.”

“Oh, they couldn’t find any reason for the paralysis. But I’d been traumatized by the attack. So they decided it was psychosomatic. But real, nevertheless. Actually, that worked out well. Had they thought it was my body turning on me, they’d have kept me in the hospital. Since they decided it was only my
mind,
they let me transfer back to campus, to the infirmary, which gave me the freedom I needed.”

“The freedom to make my life miserable?” Shea asked bitterly.

“You’ve got it. The infirmary is so poorly staffed. And since I was no longer in any danger, they paid very little attention to me. When I wanted to leave, all I had to do was have someone wheel me into the whirlpool and leave me there. I locked the door, insisting on my privacy. The first time I left by the back door, I had to borrow a nurse’s uniform I found hanging in the closet. I picked up these clothes at the lab and from then on, when I went out, I was dressed as you see me now.” She laughed. “So unlike me! Twice, I ran into people I knew, colleagues of mine. They never even blinked. Had no idea who I was.”

“That’s a horrible thing to do,” Shea said with contempt. “Fooling everyone into thinking you’d been badly hurt, that you were crippled!”

The expression on Dr. Stark’s face changed. She jerked upright, standing very straight and rigid, her thin, angled face cold and filled with hate. “And how dare you judge me? You stole an exam! Did you think I was going to let you get
away
with that?”

Trembling, Shea watched as Dr. Stark, her face red with fury, took a step forward.

There might not be much time left.

“What happened to the paperweight?” she asked.

“I shoved it under the bookshelves. It’s still there. I didn’t turn it over to the police because I wanted to handle things in my own way. I always say, if you want anything done right, do it yourself. Actually,” she added, her voice cold, “that paperweight is going to prove very useful to me.”

Shea didn’t want to know how.

“Why Tandy?” Shea’s fingers toyed nervously with the light switch. “Why Tandy’s hair?”

“Because she’s vain. She deserved to be taken down a peg or two. Good for her. Make her see what’s really important. That girl, Annette, was just like Tandy. She wasn’t here at Salem for an education. She was here for a good time.”

“That’s cruel.
You’re
cruel,” Shea said, unthinking. And then, so quickly that she didn’t even know she had done it, her fingers hit the light switch, plunging the balcony into utter darkness.

Dr. Stark uttered an oath.

And Shea flew down the stairs in her stocking feet, rounded a corner so fast she smacked her cheek on the wall, kept going, flying down the hallway to the stairs leading to the basement.

She heard Dr. Stark behind her, muttering loudly, furiously, as she stumbled in pursuit of Shea. At first the rantings were unintelligible, but then the voice gathered strength and volume until it was almost shouting.

And Shea, racing down the iron stairs, heard, “All the same … all of them … vain, silly things, in college for a good time … just want to be pretty and cute and popular … don’t know the first thing about hard work and dedication … well, I could tell them a thing or two, I could … work, work, work, nothing but work and study, work and study, no time for fun, no time to find anything sweet and precious, have to succeed,
have
to … but it’s no fun, no fun … all work and no play makes Mathilde a dull girl. Dull, dull, dull …”

She was so close behind Shea, her breathing filled the air in the dark, narrow stairway.

When Shea burst out into the basement, she didn’t know where to go. The cubicles … a mistake … no way out … she’d be trapped in there and Stark would find her … where? where could she hide?

Don’t stay down here, she told herself … too easy to be trapped down here … go back upstairs … take the back staircase, the dark one, go back upstairs … if you hurry, there’s a chance you can get to the phone and dial before she catches up.

“Cheaters … cheaters, all of them …” The voice behind Shea rambled on furiously, “and that stupid girl with all that long, pretty blonde hair … she had it coming … taught her a lesson, all right … she won’t soon forget Mathilde Stark … fools, all of them, fools!”

Shea dashed down the hallway, not even taking the time to stop and check on Dinah. She didn’t dare. Every second counted.

“I can’t let you out of here!” the insane voice behind her screamed, “not now! I’m not done! I’m not stopping with you. Campus is polluted with cheaters. You were only the first. Wouldn’t have been able to do anything about it if that contact lens hadn’t fallen out and the lamp hadn’t hit me. Perfect, just perfect. Worked out so beautifully. Can do anything I want … no one knows I’m not paralyzed. Only you, and you’re not leaving here alive, I promise you that, Fallon. You might as well quit running.”

Shea’s mind raced, like her feet as she flew down the hallway toward the back stairs. Dr. Stark had been following her all night. She had planted the tape at Nightmare Hall when the house was empty, and then followed tonight to see if Shea found it. Must have heard her asking Dinah about a VCR. Followed her here …

What had she done with the librarian? Or had she simply hidden until the librarian, forgetting about Shea and Dinah, had left early?

No. The librarian wouldn’t have forgotten about them. Stark must have done something to her. … Shea drew in her breath … was the woman still alive?

The professor’s voice changed, became instead of the shrill shout, a harsh, loud whisper. She was very close … not more than a few feet behind Shea.

“Cheaters only cheat themselves, they do, they do, my mother said so, over and over again, and I tried to tell her I couldn’t do the work, I couldn’t, it was too hard, someone had to help me, and she screamed at me that I had to learn to do things for myself, to work hard, work hard
…”

Shea reached the dark, narrow back staircase and darted up it. She couldn’t see a thing, no light at all, and behind her the whisper continued, close on her heels.

“She could have helped me, she was smart, had her doctorate, taught lots and lots of other people, but not me, oh no, not me, said I had to do it myself, it was hard, so hard, but I didn’t dare use a cheat sheet the way Joey Farmer and Debbie Sorenson did all the time, because cheaters only cheat themselves, they do, my mother said so, and she knew everything. Smartest woman I ever knew. But she wouldn’t help me. Why wouldn’t she help me?”

Fingers clutched at Shea’s left ankle as she scrambled up the last few steps. Sharp nails clawed at her skin.

Suddenly Shea realized she was still holding her boot. She swung backwards with it, hard.

There was a pained yelp behind her and the fingers on her ankle let go.

Shea scrambled up the last few steps, emerged into the main floor of the library again, ran, gasping for breath, toward where she thought the semicircular main desk should be. Fell. Got up, ran again, reached the desk, slammed into it, knocking the breath out of her. Searched desperately for the phone. Found it, picked up the receiver …

And a strong, clawlike hand grabbed a handful of her hair and yanked her head backward.

S
CREAMING IN PAIN,
S
HEA
dropped the phone, but her index finger pushed the “0” down before her right hand flew up to struggle against the iron grip on her scalp, while her left hand searched frantically across the surface of the huge desk for something, anything, to use as a weapon against her attacker.

A second strong arm wrapped itself around Shea’s waist, pressing the breath out of her.
“You don’t know what it was like,”
the harsh, insane whisper hissed into her ear.
“Always studying, always working, never having any fun. People thought I didn’t want to have fun, they thought I actually enjoyed being a drone. I hated it! I still hate it! I wanted to have fun, but there was no time. And after a while, I didn’t know how. I didn’t know how, and that was something I could never ask my mother. Because, as smart as she was, that’s one thing she never, ever knew. How to have fun. …
”

Fingers searching, seeking … there! Hard, metal … a stapler. Huge. Gigantic. A giant stapler.

Shea’s fingers closed around the metal tool as the hand on her hair and the arm around her waist began dragging her backward.

“Here’s what’s going to happen. You knew you’d be found out … not only your cheating would be discovered, but the truth about your attack on me was about to be revealed when the police received an anonymous tip about the location of the paperweight with your fingerprints and bloodstains on it. You couldn’t stand the thought of the disgrace. So you hid in this library until it closed and then you went up the stairs and climbed up on that metal railing and jumped off.”

“I won’t …” Shea gripped the stapler tightly as Dr. Stark, with an arm around Shea’s waist, continued to yank her backward … “I won’t jump. Never.”

“Oh, of course you will. Didn’t I tell you I was in charge here? You will do as I say, young lady!”
Rueful laughter.
“Oh, no, I can’t believe it, I just sounded exactly like Her. My mother. Exactly. Maybe the doctors were right. Maybe I do need a psychiatrist!”
More laughter, a cackle of glee. But the grip on Shea’s hair and around her waist remained ironclad.

“When I’m finished with you, I’m moving on to your friend, Dinah. She’s even worse than you. I looked at her transcript
…
no way did that girl deserve straight A’s in high school. Been cheating for years, I could tell. She’s next, she’s next
…”

In one quick, rough movement, Shea lifted the stapler high over her head and brought it down hard, on Dr. Stark’s head.

Dr. Stark’s scream of pain rang out throughout the dark, empty library like the shriek of a wounded animal.

And the hands flew away from Shea, releasing her.

Gasping in relief, Shea ran.

She had just made it to the front door when two uniformed campus security police pushed it open and grabbed at her. Over their shoulders, she saw the blue light of their car, parked at the library entrance.

“Don’t let her get away!” Dr. Stark shouted from behind Shea. “The girl attacked me. She’s been holding me prisoner in here.” Holding up a bloody hand, she approached the group at the doorway. “I am a respected member of this faculty, and this student must be arrested. This is not the first time she’s attacked me. I’ve been protecting her, hoping to help her out, but I see now that’s not possible. …”

Her voice drifted off then as she finally noticed the object that Shea was holding up triumphantly in front of her, like a cross before a vampire.

The cassette from the tape recorder.