Deadly Visions (Nightmare Hall) (4 page)

Rachel found herself very annoyed that people were doing
normal
things when something so abnormal had happened the night before. It seemed to her that the nightmare … so real, so vivid … had created a bond between her and Ted that had never been there while he was alive.

Rachel felt overcome by a strange need to find out exactly what had happened up there near the falls. She didn’t want to go near the place, but she found herself unwillingly striking out in that direction.

She would have kept going if someone hadn’t called out her name.

It was Aidan, running toward her from the art building, his long, dark hair tied back in a ponytail, his T-shirt and jeans smeared with daubs of gold and rust paint. “Hey, how’s it going?” he said, a little short of breath as he caught up with her. “I’ve been working on some backdrops for the drama department. Where are you headed?”

“Nowhere,” she said quickly. She hadn’t actually been going up to the falls, had she? What an insane idea! The last thing she wanted to see this morning was the scene in her nightmare. It would bring it all back, when what she really wanted to do was forget it.

“Here, come sit on the fountain for a sec,” he said, throwing himself down on the low, stone wall around the fountain in the center of the Commons. Because of the unusually mild weather, there were students lying on blankets all across the level green, some studying, some talking, some just working on a tan.

“They don’t act like someone was killed last night,” Rachel said with more than a hint of resentment in her voice. Shouldn’t campus look different this morning than it usually did? Shouldn’t
something
have changed? “I mean, died. Someone died.”

“You heard about Ted. Maybe some of them don’t know yet.”

“News like that spreads quickly, Aidan. Of course they’ve heard. But,” she added, glancing around the Commons, “they act as if they don’t care.”

“Well, Ted was a nice guy,” Aidan said, “but I don’t think he had that many friends. Kept to himself pretty much.” He glanced over at her, mild curiosity in his eyes. “Were you a friend of his? Is that why you’re upset?”

Rachel bristled. What on earth was
wrong
with people? Did you have to know someone personally and well before you could care that they’d died? Ted Leonides was only eighteen years old! “No, I didn’t know him very well. But what difference does it make? He shouldn’t be
dead,
should he? It’s all wrong.”

“I agree,” Aidan said, nodding. “But maybe everyone’s afraid that if they show how they feel, they won’t look cool. When I was in tenth grade, a good friend of mine died. A bunch of guys were out hiking, and this guy, Andrew, fell down a deserted mine shaft. Broke his neck. It was really rough at school for a while after that, because we all felt sick and mad and you can’t let any of that stuff show when you’re sixteen. So we all got stomachaches and headaches and couldn’t sleep and our grades sank, but we never once talked about it, any of us. We never admitted out loud that Andrew’s death had got to us. Afraid it would make us look soft or something, I guess. Who knows? Anyway, that’s probably the way a lot of people feel right now.”

“Well, that’s stupid,” Rachel said heatedly.

Aidan shrugged. “Maybe. But that’s the way it is.”

“Were you with them? On the hike?”

He shook his head. “I was supposed to be. But I’d broken curfew the night before, my old man caught me, and I spent all day Saturday cleaning out the garage. Maybe one of the reasons I had nightmares for a while after that was knowing that if I’d been with them, I probably would have been in the lead. I usually was. Always in a hurry, that’s me. So I could have been the first one to dive down that mine shaft instead of Andrew.” He shook his head, his mouth grim. “I thought about that a lot after he died. Almost felt guilty because it was him instead of me. Weird.”

Maybe, Rachel thought. But having a nightmare after a horrible accident happened wasn’t nearly as weird as having one
before
it happened. How could you dream about something that hadn’t even happened yet?

“You’re shaking,” Aidan said suddenly, surprise in his voice. “Are you that upset about Ted?”

Rachel stood up. “I want to see that painting again,” she said, her voice steady.

“What painting?”

“The seascape. The one at the exhibit yesterday. The painting that I thought showed someone drowning and none of the rest of you did, remember?”

Aidan stood up, nodding. “Yeah, I remember. It wasn’t very good.”

“Maybe not,” Rachel said crisply, turning on her heel to move toward the Fine Arts building. “But
someone
did drown last night. So I want to see that painting again.”

She moved swiftly across campus, Aidan matching her stride for stride. “Rachel, you really think that painting is connected to what happened to Ted? That’s crazy!”

She ignored him.

Taking the hint, he fell silent. But he stayed with her.

The art building was even more crowded than it had been the night before, although the bulk of the crowd seemed to be adults. Some Rachel recognized as professors. Others were, she decided, residents of Twin Falls and other neighboring communities. From the sound of their voices, they seemed to approve of most of the work on display.

But there was, like yesterday, no crowd in front of the far wall.

Rachel knew the exact spot where the seascape was hanging. She pushed her way through the crowd, anxious to see if her eyes had been lying to her. Maybe this time she would see the painting exactly as everyone else had, and know that Aidan was right. That there was no connection between the seascape and Ted’s death.

Elbowing her way through a thick cluster of people discussing the pros and cons of a work of sculpture in the center of the room, Rachel emerged on the other side of the group and aimed straight for the far wall.

When she was still several feet away the crowd cleared, and her eyes went to the spot where the seascape had been hanging.

She stopped, her mouth dropping open in disappointment.

It was gone.

R
ACHEL STARED QUESTIONINGLY AT
the blank space on the wall where the seascape had, just the night before, been hanging. “It’s gone,” she said. “The exhibit isn’t over until tomorrow. Why would someone take their work down already?”

“The artist probably hated it as much as everyone else did,” Aidan said.

Rachel barely heard him. She was studying the blank space on the wall almost as intently as she’d studied the painting. “Now I’ll never know who painted it,” she complained.

“Look, here’s what probably happened,” Aidan said seriously. “We were told six months ago there’d be an exhibit this weekend, so most of us moved our butts trying to get as much decent work done as possible. But the seascape artist, if we can call him that, probably goofed off until it was too late—then panicked and dug up an old work that only a truly desperate person would dare to hang in public. When he saw how people reacted to it, he had the smarts to take it down. We can only hope he destroyed it completely.”

“I don’t care what you say, the painting wasn’t that bad,” Rachel said coolly, turning away from him.

Aidan laughed. “You mean, you don’t know much about art, but you know what you like? I never thought I’d actually hear someone say that.”

Rachel’s mouth tightened. He was insufferable. Did she really want to get to know someone who talked to her as if she belonged in a kindergarten finger-painting class? “I wanted to see the painting because I still think I saw someone drowning in it, and someone
did
drown last night, in case you’ve forgotten,” she said stiffly. “That has to seem a bit weird, even to you. And now the painting is gone. So I can’t check it out again.”

“You didn’t see anybody drowning in that painting,” he said firmly. “And neither did anyone else. Come and have breakfast with me and I’ll teach you everything I know about art.”

“That shouldn’t take long,” Rachel snapped.

Aidan’s face reddened. “Ouch! I guess I had that coming. Sorry. Just showing off, I guess, trying to impress. Not usually my style. I can see why now, because it doesn’t seem to be working, does it?”

“No, it doesn’t.” Rachel glanced around the lobby. The crowd had thinned, and she could see the other paintings clearly. “All of the other works have names under them. The seascape didn’t.” She aimed a glance at Aidan. “Can’t you at least admit it’s odd that there was no name tag under that one painting?”

“No. I wouldn’t want
my
name under it, either. Can we please go eat?”

She wasn’t going to learn any more about the seascape by staring at a blank wall. He
had
apologized, and she
was
hungry.

But before she turned away, she saw the painting again as clearly as if it were still hanging there, the blues, the greens, the wild water, the blobs of pinkish paint that she’d taken for arms and a face—especially the face, eyes and mouth wide open in terror. And on the heels of that repugnant vision came the nightmare, flooding back into her mind in vivid detail, the fisherman on the bank, the shadowy figure darting out of the woods with the baseball bat, sending the startled victim flying out into the brown rushing water and over the falls Rachel shuddered violently.

“Hey, what’s going on?” Aidan said with concern, reaching out with one arm as if to prop her up. “Are you sick?”

If she shared the nightmare with him, how would he react? She didn’t know him well enough yet to guess, and she wasn’t ready to risk ridicule. “Of course I’m not sick,” she said, brushing his arm away. “Just hungry. Let’s go eat.”

“Looking for the seascape?” a voice said from behind them.

They turned around. Rudy Samms, a broom and dustpan in his hand, nodded at them. “Someone took it down during the night.”

“During the night?” Rachel echoed. “How do you know that?”

“Because it was here last night when I came back to clean up. I was the last one to leave the building, and that painting was still here then. But it wasn’t here when I came in, first thing this morning,” Rudy finished. “So I knew someone had to have taken it during the night.”

“Don’t you lock up when you leave?”

Rudy glowered at Rachel from beneath dark brows. “That’s a stupid question. Of course I lock up. But other people have keys. All of the art professors have them, and some of the students do, too. There are studios upstairs, and sometimes they need to get in to work.”

“I
told
you, Rachel,” Aidan said, “the artist was probably embarrassed by the painting and removed it.”

“In the middle of the night?” Rachel asked sarcastically.

“On the other hand,” Aidan added, “maybe the artist decided to take it down, lug it back upstairs, and put it away in the storage closet, that infamous graveyard of Paintings Not Worth The Nail To Hang Them On. In which case, it could still be in the dumbwaiter, waiting to be transported up.” Taking Rachel’s hand, he led her to a small door, half Rachel’s size, cut into the wall near the entrance to the building.

He opened the door and Rachel peeked inside. The dumbwaiter was really just a wooden cupboard hung on ropes in a pulley arrangement, “It’s like a mini-elevator,” she commented. “What’s it for?”

“For getting supplies and artwork up to the studios on the upper floors.” Aidan closed the small door. “Not a bad workout, hauling twenty-five pound bags of plaster up to the tenth floor. But there are times when I wish this thing was automated, like the elevator.”

Even as he said that, the elevator door opened and Joseph, Paloma, and Samantha stepped out, laughing. Joseph and Samantha were wearing paint-daubed shorts, like Aidan, and tank tops. Paloma was dressed in a long, black-flowered dress and black high-buttoned shoes. A small, black velvet hat sat on her head, the lacy veil draped over her eyes. All three were carrying huge, black, art portfolios.

“I see your favorite painting has disappeared,” Joseph said to Rachel.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Rachel said curtly. “We’re going to breakfast. You can all come if you promise not to discuss art.”

Samantha, looking very pretty, her blonde hair piled carelessly on top of her head, laughed. “But Rachel, what else is there?” She smiled at Aidan. “Aidan, haven’t you indoctrinated this girl yet?”

“I’ve been trying. It’s not easy. She has a mind of her own when it comes to art, and, I suspect, just about everything else.”

“I would love it,” Rachel said, her voice as smooth as glass, “if you wouldn’t discuss me as if I weren’t here.”

Aidan stiffened, but Samantha laughed again and said, “Sorry. We’d love to go to breakfast. We’ve been slaving upstairs since the wee, small hours of the morning, and we’re all starved.”

They were almost to the door when Rachel spied a small painting hanging in a dim corner. What caught her attention first was the size of the work. It was noticeably smaller than others surrounding it. Then, as she glanced at it, she was attracted by its colors. Without saying anything to anyone, she wandered over to take a closer look.

The work was a still life—flowers in a vase—painted in soft, muted lilacs, pinks, and pale blues. She liked the painting, and said so, aloud.

“You’re not serious,” Joseph said, moving to stand at her side. “It’s so trite!”

“I
do
like it,” Rachel cried, “and I really don’t care whether you approve or not, Joseph.”

There was an awkward silence behind them, where Aidan, Paloma, and Samantha were standing.

Then Samantha said, “Well, good for you, Rachel. Joseph thinks he’s Salem’s art expert. Of course you can like anything you want. Actually, I think that one’s pretty, too. I love the way the artist used the mauve. Gives it a lot of power.”

Rachel was about to turn away when something else caught her eye. Viewed from the side, there seemed to be something different about the vase. It was, at first glance, just a dove-gray, urn-shaped container. That was what she had first seen and that was what she wanted to continue seeing.

But there was no mistaking the fact that the thick swirls and whorls on the vase seemed now to be creating a … a head … there the eyes, there the nose, and there the mouth, open, wide open, like the mouth in the seascape, in a scream of terror.