Deadly Visions (Nightmare Hall) (5 page)

Rachel moaned softly to herself. Not again, no, please …

She took two steps sideways. An optical illusion, she urged silently, that’s all it is. The paint had been applied in thick, broad strokes that overlapped each other, and she told herself those strokes were creating the effect that had caught her eye. She told herself that there wasn’t really anything unusual there.

It’s just a vase, she commanded, so don’t do this again. Don’t see something that no one else sees.

And they didn’t see it, she could tell. Joseph was yawning with boredom, Aidan and Samantha were talking quietly, and Paloma was fiddling with the catch on her portfolio. None of them was the least bit interested in the still life.

Rachel would have given up then. She would have put the painting out of her mind and left to eat a perfectly normal breakfast. But as her head swiveled away from the painting, she noticed the lines. Beginning just beneath the “head” and continuing on down the front of the vase, she saw now a series of horizontal lines, equidistant from each other. She noticed them because they were so precise, so even, so straight, in a painting that seemed otherwise composed of semicircular strokes and swirls.

She stared at the lines. They
had
to be part of the design on the vase. Because how could they possibly be what they looked like to her?

What would a staircase be doing in a floral life?

Time to get your eyes checked, Rachel, she told herself, turning away from the painting. Then, remembering the nightmare about Ted, she added, and maybe your head at the same time.

“Rachel, come on!” Paloma whined.

But Rachel didn’t move. There, off to the left side of the vase, midway down the series of lines, couldn’t those two darker blue blobs be legs? That was what they looked like to her. Legs splayed out at angles, as if they were … as if they were falling? Falling down the stairs? Was that why the mouth was screaming?

Do
not
do this! Rachel cried silently, her breath coming rapidly in her chest. You are deliberately trying to find some hidden, mysterious message in this stupid painting, just so you can convince yourself you weren’t wrong about the seascape.

Rachel took another two steps away from the painting, walking backward. She bumped into Aidan’s chest and turned toward him to apologize. “Let’s go eat,” she said, trying to collect herself and calm down.

But she couldn’t stop the thoughts buzzing in her head. She had seen something sinister in the first painting. And look what had happened to Ted. Now she was seeing another strange image hidden in the still life. Someone falling down a flight of stairs.

She didn’t
want
to see that. She wanted to see what everyone else saw, an ordinary and, according to Joseph, not great, painting of a vase of flowers. She wanted that more than anything.

But when she glanced back at the still life one more time, she knew with painful certainty that what she was looking at was someone tumbling helplessly down a steep flight of stairs, screaming in terror.

A
T BREAKFAST IN THE
small cafeteria in the basement of Lester dorm, Rachel struggled to force the image of the still life from her mind. Acting moody wasn’t going to endear her to Aidan and his friends. Although she had other friends, she liked this new group. Joseph was arrogant, Aidan could be patronizing, Paloma was a bit of a flake, and Samantha was a little intimidating. But they were all so
interesting,
and Rachel didn’t want them writing her off as a hopeless basket case.

She sipped quietly on her orange juice as she glanced around the table. What was she doing with these people? What did she have in common with them?

She had met Aidan at a movie in Devereaux’s rec room just two nights ago. She’d gone with Bibi, but as always, after the movie Bibi had latched onto a good-looking soccer player and wandered off. Rachel had been standing in the doorway, waiting to see if Bibi was coming back, when someone behind her said, “I’m trying to figure out why you’re standing there alone. Could be because your friends went off to get something to eat. Or maybe you had an argument with your date and sent him on his way. Or, and this would certainly be
my
choice, you’re here alone.”

Rachel turned toward the voice. It was his eyes she noticed first. The brightest blue, without a hint of gray or hazel. He was leaning against the door frame, smiling at her. She didn’t notice the paint-stained jeans or the slight slump to his shoulders or the cleft in his chin until much later. All she saw was the smile. And, of course, the eyes.

“I’m here alone,” she said simply.

And then she wasn’t.

They had talked the night away, and discovered that they had nothing at all in common. He’d been raised in a big, noisy family, while she was an only child, orphaned early and raised by a quiet but loving grandmother. He lived in a city, Albany. She was from a town so small, she’d read every interesting book in the library by the time she was fourteen. She liked rock, he liked jazz. She loved strawberries and cantaloupe, asparagus and broccoli. He said fruits and vegetables were okay, but the best food on earth was marshmallow crème on peanut butter, a concoction Rachel couldn’t imagine trying to swallow. He was a night person, often working on his art until two or three in the morning, and had deliberately scheduled most of his classes for later in the day so he could sleep until ten or eleven. She got cranky if she wasn’t in bed by midnight.

And, of course, there was what Rachel thought of as “the art thing.” It wasn’t as if she didn’t like art. She just didn’t know much about it, while Aidan seemed to eat, breathe, and sleep it.

They should not have been attracted to one another.

But they were.

The following day on campus, she had met Joseph through Aidan, and that evening he had invited her to the art exhibit.

She had no idea why Aidan was interested in her, if he was. Right now, he seemed far more interested in Samantha, who was discussing not art, but music with him. They had the same tastes, while Rachel had never heard of the performers whose names they tossed around with easy familiarity.

She was feeling as left out as if they’d been discussing art, after all.

But she knew that wasn’t the only thing bothering her. Try as she would, she couldn’t completely erase the image of the screaming face on the staircase in the still life painting.

“You’re awfully quiet,” Aidan said suddenly. “Anything wrong, Rachel?”

They were all looking at her.

“I’m just anxious to get outside, that’s all. It’s such a great day. I hate to waste it.”

The others agreed, and Rachel was happy to hear Samantha sigh and say regretfully that she had work to do at the art building. Joseph had errands to run, and Paloma was going into town to check out the jewelry displays in the only two jewelry stores in the small community of Twin Falls.

“Too bad you guys all have things to do,” Rachel said, secretly pleased. If Aidan had no plans, she’d have him all to herself on this gorgeous spring day.

He had no plans.

Rachel never knew what possessed her, talking him into going to the waterfall with her. She hadn’t intended to, hadn’t even thought about going there. The whole idea of being with Aidan was to keep her mind off the seascape and Ted and the still life.

But they were walking across campus, past a raucous game of volleyball taking place on the Commons, when an irresistible urge to view the scene from her nightmare came over her and propelled her feet in that direction.

Puzzled, Aidan went with her.

She had no idea what she expected to find when they got there. Some sign, some clue that, as in her dream, there was more to Ted’s accident that anyone suspected? Maybe the cruel baseball bat, buried in mud along the shore? A piece of black fabric from the cape hanging from a sapling branch at the edge of the woods? Footprints?

She saw none of those things. There was nothing there. Nothing but the worn, muddy path, the dense, sun-dappled woods on their right, the locomotivelike roar of the waterfall just up ahead, the hill rising up out of the water on the opposite shore.

Nothing unusual. It could have been a picture on a postcard.

“I don’t know why I wanted to come here,” she said to Aidan as they moved on toward Lookout Point. “Seems kind of morbid now. I mean, someone
was
killed here.”

He turned on the path, stopped, and looked at her. “That’s the second time you’ve said that.”

Rachel stopped, too. “Said what?”

“That someone was
killed.
Everyone else says Ted died. You say killed. How come?”

Rachel felt her cheeks growing warm. “I … I don’t know.” She still didn’t want to tell him about the nightmare. Bad enough that he thought she was an art ignoramus. She didn’t want him thinking she was a flake who believed in dreams, too. “It’s just … well, the fall
did
kill him, didn’t it? So he was killed, right?”

Aidan thought for a minute. “Oh, yeah, I guess. But … when you said it, it sounded like you meant it wasn’t an accident.”

Rachel felt as if Aidan’s brilliant blue eyes were seeing clear through to her soul. “Why would I think that?” she asked lightly. “No one else does.” Then she added quickly, “Listen, I don’t want to be here, after all. It’s creepy. Can we just go? I feel like playing some volleyball; how about it?”

Although he agreed and followed her as she retraced her steps along the path, away from the roar of the waterfall, she could feel his eyes on her back, and knew he was still puzzled.

“I’m very good at volleyball, by the way,” she called over her shoulder as they emerged from the path onto campus. “And I’ll bet you’ve been so busy painting pictures, you haven’t had time to perfect your game.”

“Wrong,” he said as he caught up with her and grabbed her hand. “You’re not one of those people who think all artists are wimps, are you? Pale-faced and languid from starving in a garret? Because if you are, you’re about to change your tune. I’ve been playing volleyball since I was eight. Two of my older brothers and I were in the regional semifinals. Didn’t win, but we put up a good fight. So, if you’re smart, you’ll play on
my
team.”

She did, and he was right. He was very good. So was she, and she got so caught up in the spirit of the game that all thoughts of screaming mouths and baseball bats and roaring waterfalls were swept completely from her mind. It didn’t even bother her that one of the opposing teammates was Rudy Samms, who proved to be as poor a sport as he was ill-mannered, accusing the winners of stacking their team with the tallest people on campus.

“Maybe that’s why he’s so rude,” Rachel mused as, sunburned and weary, she and Aidan made their way to Lester. “He’s got a complex about being short.”

Aidan laughed. “That’s not his problem.”

Rachel glanced up at him. “What is it, then? You sound like you know.”

“He wants to be an artist. Trouble is, he doesn’t have any talent. I haven’t seen any of his work, but Samantha said when he applied here last spring, he was rejected by the dean of the art school. She said she heard the dean suggested that Samms take up engineering instead. I’ve seen him with a portfolio a couple of times, so he must still be working on stuff. And he hangs around the art building a lot, working as a waiter or custodian. I guess he’s not ready to admit the dean was right.”

“My roommate has a crush on him. I don’t get it. They’re not anything alike. Bibi is fun and smart and happy, most of the time.”

Aidan laughed. “Yeah, well, you and I aren’t anything alike, either. Doesn’t seem to matter, does it?”

Rachel felt a glow of warmth. No, it didn’t seem to matter.

“Gotta feel sorry for someone like Samms,” Aidan said then. “Must be awful to want to do something, be something, and not have what it takes.”

“I haven’t decided yet what I want to do,” Rachel admitted. “Everyone else seems to have plans, but not me. I don’t have any special talent, like you and Joseph and the others.”

He tugged on her hand to stop her in her tracks. He put his hands on her shoulders and smiled down at her. “Oh, yeah, you do,” he said. And he bent his head and kissed her.

Rachel was flustered, caught off guard. But not so flustered that she didn’t kiss him back.

They were interrupted when Bibi came hurrying out of the building. “Oh, Rachel,” she said, barely pausing, “glad I caught you. You’ve got a package upstairs. A big one. I left it by your bed. I’m meeting Rudy. See you later.” And she ran off.

“A package?” Rachel smiled. “My grandmother’s snickerdoodles,” she said, tugging on Aidan’s hand. “The best cookies to ever come out of an oven. Come on, I’m feeling generous. I’ll share. Your reward for playing a great game of volleyball and … other things.”

Bibi had left the door to room 826 unlocked. “We hardly ever lock it,” Rachel explained as she opened the door and gestured to Aidan to come in. “We can never find our keys. My grandmother would have a stroke if she knew how careless we are.”

She glanced around the room for the package, expecting to find a brown-paper-wrapped shoebox on her bed. There was nothing on her bed except a red notebook and 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.