Deadly Visions (Nightmare Hall) (10 page)

She nods, and closes her eyes.

He begins pouring carefully. The milky white liquid spills out over her forehead, her closed eyes, across her cheeks, her nose, avoiding her nostrils from which the plastic straws protrude. When the plaster reaches her mouth, covering her lips, her legs jerk instinctively, and he cautions her gently to lie still. “Remember to breathe through your nose,” he says, and she is quiet again.

He continues to pour until all of the girl’s face except for her nostrils is covered with a thick layer of white.

He lifts the pitcher.

Lowers it again.

Then he bends close to her face. He is smiling beneath the black hood. He puts his mouth next to her ear and whispers, “Surprise!” and in one swift, calculated movement, he rips the straws from her nose and pours again, filling both nostrils with the rapidly drying plaster.

The girl stiffens on the table. Her arms would have flown up then to flail at the air, but he has dropped the empty pitcher to the floor and is pinning her arms at her sides. Her legs are free and she kicks those, wildly, frantically as the plaster in her nose begins to harden. Her chest heaves in a desperate effort to suck in air, her body bucks and thrashes, but his weight pressing on her arms keeps her pinned to the table.

“Like a dying butterfly,” he says, almost sounding sad.

It only takes a few minutes.

When it’s over, he bends, picks up the pitcher, walks to a nearby sink and rinses the glass container thoroughly. He dries it, takes it into the storage closet and lodges it on a shelf. When he comes back out, he returns to the still,
s
ilent figure lying white-masked on the table.

When the time is right, he reaches down and pulls the mask free. It comes off without effort. The face beneath it is almost as white as the plastic, although the lips are blue.

“I guess I forgot to mention that we weren’t making a life mask, after all,” he says. “We were making a death mask.”

Rachel woke up screaming.

A
S THE NIGHTMARE EVAPORATED,
and Rachel realized she’d been dreaming, her screams died. No one came running to her door, pounding on it to find out what was wrong. When she turned her head slightly, she realized why. Sunshine was streaming in through the window. It wasn’t night, it was a beautiful afternoon … Sunday, she thought … and everyone was outside, doing fun things.

Why
had she had that obscene nightmare?

Rachel lay in bed, as silent and motionless as the young woman in her dream. There had been no oil painting this time, no hidden image to warn her of the nightmare to come. It had slithered into her mind on its own. From where? She had been told that dreams were a product of the subconscious mind. But she couldn’t bear to believe that her mind could harbor images as ugly as those in this latest nightmare.

It was one thing to think she was having nightmares brought on by the hidden images in the oil paintings. Those, at least, she could chalk up to the power of suggestion. Sometimes, she knew, an image that you hardly noticed the first time you saw it, could sink into your mind and park there. Later, it could pop up when you least expected it, even in dreams, because it was in your subconscious. That could have happened to her because of the oil paintings.

But dreaming something as horrible as this newest nightmare without ever having seen anything that suggested such an atrocious act, was ten thousand times worse.

Rachel sat up, leaning against the wall. Wait a minute. She
had
seen something to suggest that dream. The masks. The white plaster life masks made by Aidan and the others. The process had been explained to her, and she had found it frightening. “Not for the claustrophobic,” Joseph had said, and she had shivered in distaste.

Surely that explained this latest dream of horror, the worst yet. She hadn’t created it with her own mind, after all. The masks had suggested it.

Was she the only person on campus whose subconscious was so easily manipulated? Did anyone else suffer as she did when they closed their eyes at night, after viewing the works of art in the exhibit?

Today was the last day the paintings and masks and sculptures would be on display. She couldn’t wait until they were gone.

Except, they wouldn’t really be gone. Joseph had said that after the exhibit, the works would be on display in shops at the mall, the bank in town, and in various buildings around campus. Unless she stayed in her room forever, she couldn’t escape the paintings and masks entirely.

But she wouldn’t look at them. Whenever she came across one, she would lower her eyes and hurry past it without taking in one single detail. That way, she wouldn’t be able to dream about it later.

Her head hurt. Her palms burned, and her shoulders felt like giant hands had been playing tug-of-war with them.

That poor girl … lying on the table, the straws sticking out of her nostrils until the black-robed figure whispered in her ear, “Surprise!” and yanked the straws free. Grotesque. The whole, insane dream had been grotesque.

But then, so had the entire episode in the art studio’s storage closet, and that hadn’t been a dream at all. She couldn’t blame anyone for not believing it, not even Aidan. She had tried so hard to explain, but everything she’d said had only sounded weirder than what came before it.

And the only proof she’d had was the gouge on her forehead, which she’d admitted had been her own doing, and the bloody lump on the back of her head, which she’d also had to admit she’d sustained when she fell. In fact, the only thing her attacker had actually done to her was kick the boxes free and close and lock the door. There was absolutely no way to prove someone had actually done either of those things.

Rachel sat up, nervously running a hand through her hair and then wincing as her fingers slid into the bump on the back of her head. Deciding that she was not going to spend the rest of her life hiding in her room, she got up, took a long, hot shower which did a lot to ease her aches and pains, and dressed in jeans and a red T-shirt. She was combing her damp, curly hair when Bibi returned, holding a brown paper bag close to her chest. She hesitated in the doorway, her eyes apprehensive.

Rachel knew immediately that she didn’t want to know what Bibi was carrying. And it occurred to her then that she had gone, in just a couple of days, from someone who had awakened every morning looking forward to the day, to someone who had begun dreading every passing moment. The thought filled her with rage. Why was this happening? And how could it have happened so quickly?

She sank down on her bed, holding the hairbrush in her hands, her eyes on Bibi. It had taken her so long to get over her parents’ shocking deaths. Her grandmother had been loving and kind and welcoming, but still, it had taken a long, long time to stop being angry and sad and shake that unbearable feeling of abandonment.

But she’d done it. And after that long, long time, she had finally begun to feel safe and loved again. It hadn’t been easy. She’d had to fight hard for it. And now someone … she had no idea who … someone was trying to take that away from her.

Rachel’s lips tightened, and her spine stiffened. She wasn’t going to give them an easy time of it. They weren’t going to take away from her what she’d struggled so long for without a battle. “What have you got there?” she asked Bibi. “It’s for me, isn’t it? Let me see it.”

Slowly, reluctantly, Bibi approached, holding out the package to Rachel. “It was sitting on the floor outside our room when I came back,” she said. “I looked inside, Rachel. I didn’t know it was for you. There wasn’t any name on the bag.”

Rachel reached inside the folded bag and pulled out her brown shoulder bag. Confused, she looked up at Bibi. “But this is great, Bibi. Now I don’t have to cancel my credit cards or apply for a new driver’s license. This is terrific. Why didn’t you want to give it to me?”

Bibi sat down on the floor at Rachel’s feet. “Look at it, Rachel,” she said quietly. “Look at the back flap.”

Now it was Rachel’s turn to hesitate. Bibi’s voice told her too much. Bibi had seen something when she checked inside the brown paper bag that wasn’t going to make her roommate happy. Rachel lifted her head to gaze out the short, wide window. The sun was shining so brightly, it made her eyes ache, and the sky was almost as brilliant a blue as Aidan’s eyes. Such a beautiful day, why ruin it by seeing something that was going to make her miserable?

“Maybe I’ll wait until later,” she said, still gazing out the window. “Maybe I won’t look at it just now.”

“No,” Bibi said firmly, “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Rachel. You’d better look at it now.”

Rachel tore her eyes away from the window and looked down again at the purse. It looked so innocent, lying there in her lap, the brown leather shoulder bag she had hoped would show up. Now it had, but she wasn’t rejoicing, was she?

“You’re right,” she said, remembering her resolve to fight against whatever was threatening her safety. “I’m being silly. It’s probably nothing.”

Bibi’s expression said quite clearly that it wasn’t “nothing.” But Rachel turned the purse over, anyway.

Paper-clipped to the back flap of her purse was a page torn from a small desk calendar. Every day following Sunday had been slashed through with vivid red paint. Scrawled across the top of the page in the same shiny red were the words YOU WILL NEVER SEE ANOTHER MONDAY.

Monday. Tomorrow. She was never going to see tomorrow? Or any other tomorrow?

Holding the defaced calendar page gingerly, Rachel looked up at Bibi. “Is there more inside?” she asked quietly, her voice strained.

Bibi’s blonde ponytail flew as she shook her head. “I didn’t have the guts to look. I don’t think you should, either, Rachel. That message on your purse is enough to take to campus security. Let’s just take the purse and go to the security office and let
them
look inside, okay?”

Rachel’s expression was grim. “No. It’s my purse. I’ll look.”

“Rachel, you don’t know what’s
in
there. That’s a
threat
on the flap. The purse could be booby-trapped or something.”

Rachel uttered a short, harsh laugh. “Booby-trapped? You mean like with a bomb? I thought I was the one with the imagination. I’ll bet there isn’t anything at all inside. Someone is just trying to scare me.” She laughed again, without humor. “Like I’m not already.”

Bibi, her eyes wide, scooted backward on the floor until her back bumped into the desk chair. She sat on the floor, watching.

Rachel picked up the purse, pulled the zipper open, and peered inside. Then, frowning, she slid her fingers inside and when she withdrew them, she was holding a small, white plastic-wrapped package in her hands.

“Rachel, please don’t open that,” Bibi begged. “Please!”

“Oh, come on, Bibi,” Rachel said lightly, dropping the purse on the floor to begin untying the twine around the white plastic, “you know what they say. Good things come in small packages, right?” But her fingers were shaking as she tugged at the twine.

They were so lost in the moment that when a knock came on the door, both jumped and cried out.

“Rachel, it’s Aidan. You in there?”

“And Joseph and Paloma,” Paloma’s voice called. “We’re here, too.”

“And Sam,” Samantha added, laughing.

Bibi sighed with relief and jumped up to let them in. “Now I don’t have to be the only one witnessing the unveiling,” she said over her shoulder as she opened the door. In a rush of words, she told the group what was going on. Her words tumbled out in a jumble that no one grasped.

They were still puzzled as they came inside and saw Rachel sitting on the bed unwrapping the package.

Bibi scooped up the purse and showed them the words scrawled in paint on the calendar page.

Paloma paled visibly, Joseph uttered a quiet oath, Aidan hurried over to Rachel’s side and sat down on the bed beside her, and Samantha said sensibly, “Rachel, you should have just taken that package to security.”

“I told her the same thing,” Bibi said, sitting down on her own bed, “but she wouldn’t listen.”

“I knew it was a painting,” Rachel said as she peeled away the plastic to reveal a small, rectangular object. She held up the object, facing it toward them so they could all see it. “And that’s exactly what it is.”

It was indeed a painting. A small one, perhaps five inches across and seven inches high, but definitely a painting, done not in oil this time, but pastel water colors: pink and mauve and rose on a white background.

Everyone stared at the small work of art, but Rachel didn’t need to. The minute she’d pulled the last of the plastic away, she had known what she would find. Her nightmare … this time,
after
the fact. And indeed, that was exactly what she saw in the painting, although she doubted that anyone else would see it in the muted haze of pink and rose and white.

At first glance, it appeared to be another still life, this one also of flowers. This time, the pink and rose flowers were in a field or a rambling garden.

But Rachel saw clearly, among the vague circles and swirls of pale pink and rose, the white table, the ghostly figure lying motionless on the table, the white death mask covering the young woman’s face.

No one else would see it, of course. They hadn’t seen the drowning figure. They hadn’t seen the figure tumbling down the flight of stairs. If those images had been cleverly hidden within the strokes of oil, this hidden image of the figure lying on the table among the pale watercolors was even more vague. Rachel thought that she wouldn’t even have seen it herself if she hadn’t already had the dream.

How could she have had the nightmare
before
she’d seen this painting?

“That calendar page is from the desk in the art building lobby,” Joseph said. “See that little design at the top, the crisscrossed pen and paintbrush? But I don’t get it,” he added, furrowing thick, dark brows. “The words are scary, but the painting isn’t.”

“Look at it closely,” Rachel said, knowing it was futile, but passing the small painting around, anyway. “Don’t you see
anything
in that painting but flowers?” It was maddening, being so certain of what she was seeing and, at the same time, being incapable of making them see it, too.