The Coffin (Nightmare Hall) (8 page)

Vince glanced up from his scrambled eggs. “You mean Tanner’s housekeeper?”

Charlie nodded.

“Oh, it’s Sills. Mavis Sills. She lives in that new apartment complex right along the riverbank in Twin Falls. I think it’s River Street.”

Charlie looked startled. “How do you know all that? I didn’t know it.”

“A friend of Sills, Sunshine Mooney, is the housemother at Lindy’s sorority house.” Lindy was Vince’s current girlfriend. “Lindy says Sunshine talks about her friend Silly a lot: where they’re going on vacation together, how when Sunshine retires she’s going to move into Silly’s apartment complex, that kind of stuff. I picked up on the name ‘Silly’, thought it was funny, and that’s when Lindy told me it was Tanner’s housekeeper and her real name was Mavis Sills.” Vince grinned. “Now there’s a pair of names for you, Sunshine and Silly. Sounds like a comedy act, doesn’t it?”

“There!” Sandy told Charlie emphatically, “now you don’t have to waste time calling Butler Hall. You can call the housekeeper and find out why Tanner left.”

“She
didn’t
leave!” Charlie, dark eyes blazing, fairly bit off the words. “How many times do I have to say it?”

Chagrined, Sandy mumbled, “Sorry. I meant, you can ask her where Tanner is.”

But there was no answer at the housekeeper’s apartment. Charlie let the phone ring a dozen times, refusing to give up until Jodie urged gently, “Charlie, give it up, she’s not
there.
Come on! We’ll try something else.”

They were all clustered around one of the pay phones in Lester’s lobby. “Why don’t we just hike on over to Tanner’s?” Philip suggested. “Maybe the housekeeper is already there. That could be why she isn’t answering at her place, Charlie.”

Charlie quickly dialed the Leo home. “If Silly is there, why isn’t she answering?” he asked a moment later when, again, there was no response to the insistent ringing.

“She could still be on her way,” Sandy said.

Giving up, Charlie hung up the phone.

“Let’s go over there,” Jodie said eagerly. “Silly will be there by then, and Tanner could be there, too. Maybe she stayed with someone else last night, although you’d think she’d call her best friends first, wouldn’t you? But let’s face it, Tanner has lots of friends to choose from.”

“Well, let’s just go find out,” Charlie said, and led the way out of the building.

But, though they rang the front doorbell at Tanner’s house, then went around to the back and pounded on the back door, and then circled the house on the outside, going from room to room and rapping on the outside of every window they could reach, the big brick house showed no signs of life.

It was as still, as silent, as death.

T
ANNER, IMPRISONED IN THE
tall, dark narrow box, was completely unaware that morning of Charlie’s arrival. She couldn’t see the surveillance screens, couldn’t hear the insistent doorbell or the pounding on wood or rapping on glass. Her friends came and went without her knowledge.

Tanner was aware only of the narrow confines of her tiny cell. Because the hastily constructed booth was not soundproof like the music room, she
did
hear her captor leave, heard him close and lock the door.

Before she’d been angry, upset, and yes, afraid. Now she was desperate. There was barely enough room in the box to lift her arms from her sides, let alone turn around and face front. Even if she did manage to turn around, the door was barred against her. Hadn’t she heard, very clearly, the thick chunk of wood being twisted into place? There was no mistaking that sound. She was locked into this terrible place, like an animal in a cage. Worse. Cages had bars, and you could see out.

Although there was air inside what Tanner had come to think of as “the coffin,” she knew it would quickly grow stale. It was already stuffy. Beads of sweat began to gather on her forehead, clinging to her hair. The smell of fresh-cut lumber was giving her a headache.

It was dark, but there were tiny pinpricks of light slipping in between narrow gaps in the boards. There were more, larger gaps at the corners, where the walls had been joined.

Tanner tried to peer through one of the small cracks, but could see only an edge of the fireplace mantel, which did her no good at all.

She managed to turn around, facing the front of her narrow cell. She pushed against the door. Then pushed again, harder this time. Her breath came in shallow gasps. She wished that she were wearing heavy work boots so she could kick at the door. Bare feet were useless.

She reached out to press against the walls on either side of her, as if by doing so, she could push them farther away, giving her more room. She was suddenly desperate for more room. The lack of space made her feel as if she were being squeezed like an accordion.

It was hopeless. She wasn’t going to get out of here on her own. Hastily put together or not, the tall, narrow box made an effective prison.

What was he
doing
to her? And why was he doing it?

Her palms still pressing against the side walls, her back against the rear wall, Tanner sank slowly to the floor, where she had to bend her knees for lack of room.

She placed her hands in her lap and let her chin rest on her chest. Maybe none of this was really happening. It couldn’t be real. How could it?

She stared into the darkness, her eyes widening with hope. Maybe it
wasn’t
real. She couldn’t be sure exactly when, but at some point after she’d arrived home, maybe she’d fallen asleep. Maybe … maybe when she went upstairs to look for Silly.

Yes … yes! That had to be it. Of course! She remembered standing in the middle of her bedroom when she hadn’t been able to find Silly. That must have been when she’d gone over to lie down on her bed, probably intending to just rest for a minute. And she’d fallen sound asleep instead.

Which made everything after that a dream. A horrible, creepy nightmare but still, not
real!
So she wasn’t actually sitting in this narrow, airless box. She was lying on her bed upstairs, sound asleep. Silly was somewhere in the house or the backyard and there was no intruder who looked like something risen from the grave.

Feeling much better, Tanner leaned against the back wall of the coffin and closed her eyes, deciding that the best thing to do was wait patiently for the dream to be over. Not that she had a choice.

She didn’t hear the music room door open. Her first awareness that she was no longer alone came when a sudden burst of light told her the door to the coffin had been yanked open.

Shielding her eyes against the light, Tanner raised her head.

The repulsive gray mask stared down at her. “Well, how do you like it? Not much fun, is it? But then, it’s not supposed to be. It’s actually been proven very effective in disciplining those wild, unruly creatures whom society chooses to call ‘difficult’ or ‘wayward.’ Wayward youth, ah, what an expression. Implies that they’re going in the wrong direction, right?” He laughed bitterly. “Like the people in charge actually know what the
right
direction is! That hasn’t been
my
experience, I can tell you.”

Tanner blinked. It hadn’t been a dream, after all? Disappointment washed over her, painful as an acid bath.

“Yes, ma’am,” he continued, one hand holding the door open, “this is what we call ‘The Booth.’ Looks kind of like a coffin, doesn’t it? This is where people are sent when they break a rule, no matter how slight the infraction. Maybe they mouth off, or resort to a sharp kick or a punch to settle a dispute, or maybe they don’t make their bed one morning because they’re in a hurry, or they don’t hang up their clothes exactly the right way. So they have to go into The Booth.”

“What are you
talking
about?” Tanner cried, struggling awkwardly to her feet. Her legs were cramped, and she had to stamp her bare feet on the wooden floor to restore circulation.

“Never mind. That’s in the past. For me, anyway. Look, you said you were hungry,” he said flatly. “You can come out and eat. But if you give me any trouble at all, you’ll be back in The Booth so fast, your head will spin. And you’ll stay there until your hair turns gray. Come on out of there.”

Tanner, her legs stiff, stepped out.

“You’re lucky you’re alone in the house,” he said. “If there were lots of people here, they’d all hammer on The Booth when they walked by, and kick at it and yell things, so you’d never be able to sleep, even though that’s what you want to do more than anything, to make the time go faster.”

Tanner was wallowing in the bitter truth that none of this was a dream. No nightmare, after all. She hadn’t fallen asleep on her bed upstairs. It had all happened, every last horrible second of it. And it was still happening. “It was bad enough without any noise,” she said. She was so glad to be out of that horrible box, she almost felt grateful to him. She had to remind herself that he was the one who had put her in there in the first place.

Her teeth felt gritty, her hair was a mass of tangles, and she yearned desperately for a shower and clean clothes. Maybe, if she did everything he told her to, she could talk him into letting her go upstairs alone for half an hour.

How long was he planning on holding her here? Where was Silly? And why hadn’t Charlie come back, looking for her?

“You can call me Sigmund,” her jailer said abruptly, as if she’d asked his name. “Just Sigmund.”

“Sigmund?” When she was very young, her mother had called her father that when she was mad at him. Her voice had been sharp and sarcastic. “As in Freud?” Tanner asked just as sharply.

“As in Sigmund.” He took her elbow, gripping it firmly, and led her out of the music room and down the hall to the empty kitchen.

I don’t want to call him anything, Tanner thought, glancing quickly around the kitchen for some sign of Silly, and finding none. I don’t want him here long enough to have to give him a name.

If she could only get a grip on what was happening. But it was all so unbelievable, so Twilight-Zonish. She was trapped inside some crazy video game, except that someone else had the controls.

“You now have four minutes,” he said. “Why don’t you have a nice bowl of ice cream?”

Out of the music room for the first time, Tanner was much more interested in escape than in food, although her stomach was pleading otherwise. This could be her only chance to get away.

If she went with him to the freezer for ice cream, if she maneuvered her position on the porch cleverly enough, she just might be able to race out the back door and scream for help before he could grab her.

It was worth a try. She
had
to get away from him. Out of this house and away from him.

“Ice cream sounds good,” she agreed, and went to the cupboard to get a bowl, then to the silverware drawer for a spoon and a metal scoop.

“I want some, too,” he said, sounding offended, and followed her steps to collect his own bowl and spoon. “It’s your favorite, strawberry ripple.”

Tanner paused halfway between the sink and the kitchen table. “How do you know?” she asked, conscious of a new uneasiness beginning to slide up her spine.

“What?”

“How do
you
know what kind of ice cream Silly bought?”

“Oh. I … I saw the note she left, and I checked to see what kind she got. Just curious, that’s all.”

Which would have made sense, except for one thing. Tanner had pocketed the note from Silly. She had come home, read the note, and put it in the pocket of her sweatpants. It was still there, slightly the worse for wear.

So, if he’d come into the house after Tanner got home, he couldn’t possibly have seen Silly’s note.

Then … how did he know that Silly had bought ice cream, and what flavor it was?

Had he already been
in
the house when Tanner arrived? Hiding? Waiting?

It was then that Tanner realized exactly what part of the note had bothered her, the thing that had been niggling at some small part of her brain ever since she’d read it. It was the signature. “Mavis.” Silly had left notes before. She never signed them “Mavis.” She always signed them “Silly,” looping her letter l’s broad and wide, like letters written in the sky by an airplane.

But
this
note had been signed “Mavis.”

Because … Tanner’s throat closed … because Silly hadn’t written it.

He
had.

No wonder the note hadn’t sounded anything like Silly. That explained, too, why it had been printed instead of sprawled across the page in Silly’s usual careless scrawl. He hadn’t wanted to take a chance on trying to fake Silly’s longhand.

Why would he write a note telling Tanner there was ice cream in the freezer?

Instead of moving on into the back porch off the kitchen, Tanner turned to face him. He was busy collecting a spoon from the wall of cupboards and drawers opposite her. “How did you know I like strawberry ripple ice cream?” she asked.

The gray mask swiveled toward her. “What?”

“How did you know?”

“Me? I didn’t buy the ice cream. What are you, nuts? Your housekeeper bought it.”

No, she didn’t, Tanner thought with stunning clarity. She didn’t write the note, so she didn’t buy the ice cream, either.
You
did. But why?

The answer came from somewhere in the back of her mind, delivered with the same stunning force. He had bought the ice cream and written the note to get her out to the freezer on the back porch.

Why? If it hadn’t been for the coffin, she’d have been terrified that he planned to force her into the low, squat freezer on the back porch. But if that was his plan, he never would have taken so much time and effort to build that horrible wooden box in the music room, would he?

Tanner’s brain whirled. What was going
on?

Why hadn’t Silly left her own note about dinner before she’d left yesterday? She
always
left a note. Always.

If he’d been hiding in the house
before
Tanner got home, wouldn’t he have run into Silly?

“Speaking of the housekeeper,” she said, her voice nearly strangling with anxiety, “did you by any chance see her when you got here yesterday, whenever that was? I mean, she was supposed to show up for work today, and she’s not here. I figure, if you saw her, you might know if she’s sick or something.”