The Night Walker (Nightmare Hall) (6 page)

Thunder rumbled across the sky, drowning out the horrified cries of the car’s occupants.

The left cheek of the girl in the passenger’s seat was bleeding. She held one hand up to it, as if to hold her face together, her fear-stricken eyes fixated on the figure moving slowly around the car, hammer in hand.

The hammer struck again and again, this time attacking the windows.

Repeated blows to the windows brought a veined network of cracks. But the glass refused to give.

Both occupants of the car were bent double in the front seat, trying to protect their heads and faces.

Slam!
against the driver’s window.
Crash!
against the passenger’s window. Shouting and screams from inside the car were drowned out by the wind and rain and thunder.

The figure moved back and forth in the downpour, giving up on the windows and slamming the hammer down upon the hood, then moving around to smash both headlights, then back to the driver’s side to wield the weapon against the roof, over and over again.

Finally, with the passengers still cringing inside, the figure moved slowly away from the car and disappeared into the night.

Q
UINN WAS RUDELY AWAKENED
by a commotion going on in the hall outside her room. People were shouting, feet were pounding along the hardwood floor. It sounded like horses stampeding.

She sat up. Rubbing her eyes sleepily, she switched on her table lamp and glanced at her alarm clock. Two o’clock. She hadn’t been asleep that long.

What was going on?

“Tobie?”

Then she remembered. Tobie was spending the night at Nightmare Hall.

More shouting, more pounding feet …

Quinn slid out of bed, dragged a pair of jeans on over her T-shirt and loafers on over her socks, and stumbled to the door to open it.

Meg Pekoe, their resident advisor, was just passing.

“What’s going on?” Quinn asked, her voice thick with sleep.

“Something’s happened,” Meg said breathlessly. “It was just on the campus radio. Come on, we’re going out to see.”

“See what?” Quinn’s pulse was beginning to pound. Something bad … it was something bad, she could tell. But she hurried to the elevator with Meg. “What
is
it? What’s happened?”

As Quinn and Meg moved into a crowded elevator, a girl from down the hall said, “The girl on the campus radio station said they just got a call that a couple was trapped in a smashed car out behind Lester. Not a car crash, though. She said the caller made it very clear that it hadn’t been a car crash.”

“If it wasn’t a car wreck, what was it?” Meg asked. “How could a car be smashed if it wasn’t in an accident?”

The girl shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe it’s a joke. But the girl on the radio sounded really upset. She said it sounded to her like the couple was just sitting in their car and someone came up and smashed the car to pieces. Weird, right?”

A boy to Quinn’s left nodded. “That’s what I heard,” he said. “That the doors were smashed in so they couldn’t get out and then the rest of the car was attacked. Maybe with a hammer or an ax, sounds like.”

“Who was it?” Quinn asked, “Whose car?”

“Don’t know,” came the answer. “No names. We’ll find out when we get down there, I guess. Sounded like they were still inside the car. Trapped.”

Quinn felt a little ghoulish. Should they really all be pouring out of the building to stare at two people trapped in a wrecked car and possibly injured? Creepy, when you thought about it.

But everyone knew the victims could be their friends. It was only natural that they’d be concerned.

The scene behind Lester was chaotic. A crowd had already gathered, and people were still arriving. Two police cars, their rooftop lights still revolving, sat off to one side, casting an eerie blue glow over the scene. Several officers were trying in vain to disperse the onlookers. If the storm hadn’t passed, the crowd might have been smaller, but the skies had cleared and a full moon shone down upon the rain-slicked scene.

The car in question, she saw as she moved closer to the scene, was not one she recognized. Although there seemed to be a sea of glass on the ground surrounding the car, the spider-webbed windows were still intact. Quinn could see two people sitting very close together in the front seat.

The glass on the ground had to have come from the windshield, now dotted with small holes with nasty-looking jagged edges. Both doors had caved inward under what must have been repeated blows with a heavy object.

There was hardly a square inch of space on the roof that hadn’t been pocked with dents, like a golf ball.

“They’re still in there,” Suze said as Quinn arrived to join the group that included Ivy, Tim, and Danny. They all looked as stunned as Quinn felt. “The doors won’t open,” Suze continued. “The fire department is bringing the Jaws of Life. It’s like a giant can opener. They’ll have to cut the doors away.”

The thought of people actually being inside that car while someone hammered blows down upon them sickened Quinn. How terrified they must have been!

“Whose car is that?” Quinn asked. “Who’s in there?”

“Reed Combs and Jake Briggs. It’s his car. They’re both still in there.”

“Oh, no,” Quinn breathed. Reed and Jake. Another inseparable happy couple.

W
HILE THE FIRE FIGHTERS
worked at removing the occupants of the car, the police officers examined the car and the area around it, looking for clues.

Quinn had never seen anyone look as bewildered as Reed when she was finally helped from the battered car. She was shaking so severely, she could hardly stand. A thin stream of red ran down one side of her face and the skin underneath it was ashen. Jake wasn’t in much better shape. His eyes were dulled with shock as he surveyed the horrendous damage to his car.

Neither was able to hear normally, an aftereffect of the repeated clang of metal upon metal. Miraculously, they seemed to have only minor cuts and scratches. Nevertheless, they were quickly taken to the infirmary.

Simon showed up then. “Whoa,” he said when he saw the car, “Jake didn’t make his car payment?” Then, seeing the look on Quinn’s face, he said hastily, “Sorry. Bad joke. Anyone hurt?”

“Not physically,” Suze said. “I guess they were really lucky.”

“Obviously not an accident,” Simon said. “Anyone know who did it?”

“No one on campus would have done this,” Danny said firmly as the crowd began to disperse. “Had to be someone from off-campus.”

“Off-campus?” Ivy said, her face very pale. “Danny, you’re scaring me. Are you saying there’s a stranger … a crazed one, at that … running around campus? Maybe armed with a sledgehammer or an ax?”

Danny shrugged. “Who knows? Doesn’t do any good to panic, though. The police will handle it. They won’t leave something like this in the hands of the security guards. They’ll probably have the nut in custody by morning.”

“Morning isn’t that far away,” Quinn pointed out wearily. “It took so long to get them out of that car.” It was starting to rain again and now that the initial shock was over, Quinn realized how cold she was in her T-shirt.

“Here, take this,” Simon said, removing his sweatshirt and handing it to her.

Quinn accepted gratefully and when she had slipped the sweatshirt over her head, turned to face Simon. “Where were you? I thought you’d be out here with everyone else.”

“Asleep,” he answered. “No one woke me up. I’d still be pounding my pillow if it hadn’t been for those sirens.”

“Why are we hanging around here?” Ivy asked impatiently. Her sleek, dark hair was beginning to curl heavily from the dampness. “I hear my nice, cozy, warm bed calling to me. You guys coming?”

Quinn didn’t want to leave. She wanted some answers about how and why this terrible thing had happened. But the police, the fire truck, and the crowd were leaving. There would be no answers tonight. It was time to leave.

With one last, worried look over her shoulder at the ruined car, she went with Ivy and Suze back to Devereaux.

Sleep was impossible. The sixth floor was alive with nervous activity. No one wanted to be alone to deal with their feelings or their fear. People gathered in friends’ rooms to discuss what had happened, and then ran to other rooms to share theories about
why
it had happened. Doors slammed, feet pounded along the hall, and room 602 seemed to be one of the more popular places to gather.”

As if
I
have the answer, Quinn thought, exhausted, as four more girls came into the room and joined the half dozen already sprawled on the floor. I was asleep when it happened. I don’t know anything.

But she knew, too, that as tired as she was, sleeping now, when she was so upset, would be a major mistake. It could set off those hidden sensors that sent her wandering off into the night, unaware. That could
not
happen, not tonight with so many other people wandering the halls. Someone would see her, and then everyone on campus would be talking about Quinn Hadley. Only she wouldn’t be plain old Quinn Hadley anymore, she’d be Quinn Hadley-the-Sleepwalker.

She wouldn’t be able to stand that. That was why she’d sworn both Tobie and Simon to secrecy.

She settled back on her bed, leaning against the wall, listening to the theories.

The consensus, in spite of what Danny had said, seemed to be that the guilty party was someone on campus. The thought of a stranger among them, especially a criminally crazy stranger, was apparently a far more frightening idea.

“There’s this geek in English class,” Suze offered, “Joey-something. He’s always had his eye on Reed. He’s one of those quiet, broody types. Maybe he finally snapped.”

A redhead named Chelsea from across the hall said, “Oh, Suze, Joey Bass wouldn’t hurt a fly. I, personally, think it was someone from orchestra. Reed plays first violin. I play the viola and I can tell you, violinists are really jealous of each other. If Reed’s hands had been cut by flying glass and she couldn’t play, someone else would get her chair. That could be a really strong motive.”

Quinn hadn’t decided which was worse, thinking that one of their fellow students had suddenly flipped out and done all that damage, or thinking that some crazy stranger was roaming around loose on campus, armed with a hammer.

Looking thoroughly depressed, Ivy and Suze returned to their own room, and the gathering began to break up.

Suddenly,, someone asked, “Geez, Quinn, you’re not going to
sleep
in those, are you?”

Startled, Quinn looked at the speaker. It was Meg Pekoe, their RA, who had come to the door earlier to tell them to get back to bed, and then had changed her mind and stayed. Now, she was staring at Quinn’s feet.

“What?” Quinn looked down. “Sleep in what?”

Meg wrinkled her nose. “Those
socks
! They’re filthy! Looks like you were running around outside in the rain in them. Didn’t you take the time to stick a pair of shoes on your feet?”

“I had shoes on.” She clearly remembered, when the commotion began out in the hall, slipping loafers on over her socks before she left the room, the same loafers that were now under her bed drying out. She also clearly remembered donning a fresh pair of clean white socks before she’d gone to bed. Her socks
couldn’t
be dirty.

Everyone was staring at her feet.

Quinn bent her leg so she could study the bottoms of her white socks.

They were filthy. Black and gritty, as if she’d slogged through a coal mine without shoes.

“Oh, no,” she whispered.

No one heard her.

“Oh, mine look like that all the time,” Chelsea said. “I never wear shoes in the dorm, not even when I go down to do the laundry. What’s the big deal?”

The big deal, Quinn thought, feeling nauseated, was that she had gone to bed wearing snowy white socks. When she’d left her bed during the uproar, she had immediately covered those socks with shoes. She had walked
nowhere
in her stocking feet. They couldn’t possibly be dirty. But they
were.

“Chelsea,” Meg said, “you never got your socks
that
dirty walking around Devereaux. The floors aren’t that disgusting. Quinn’s socks look like she was running around outside.”

“Meg,” Quinn said, her voice cool, “Quit making such a fuss. You’re embarrassing me.” She was proud that her voice sounded so calm.

Dropping the subject, Meg went to the phone to call the infirmary and inquire about Reed and Jake.

She was smiling when she turned around. “They’re both going to be okay,” she said. “They’re being released tomorrow morning.” She glanced at her watch. “I mean,
this
morning. Listen, now that we know they’re going to be okay, I’ve got to get some sleep. I’m out of here.”

When she had gone and the others had followed, Quinn thought bleakly, The one thing I
don’t
need is sleep. I can’t risk it. At least I had a nap earlier. That’ll have to hold me until morning.

She threw the ruined socks into the bathroom wastebasket and slipped on a clean pair. Then she went to the window and sat on the windowseat looking out until a gray, rainy dawn began to wash across campus.

Although she tipped her head back against the windowframe and closed her eyes, she willed herself not to fall asleep.

Why were her socks so dirty? Had she been out of bed
before
Jake’s car had been discovered? Had she been out of bed … in her
sleep
? If she had, where had she gone?

Quinn put her head in her hands. Why couldn’t she
remember
? That was the worst part, not remembering. Sometimes she remembered bits and pieces … little things like the teddy bears on Sophie’s shelves, staring at her with blank, glassy eyes as she bent over Sophie’s bed. And the feel of branches brushing her cheek as she made her way through the woods to the cabin of her tennis rival. But she only remembered those things later, when someone had explained to her that she’d been walking in her sleep.

She hadn’t left the dorm earlier, had she? Wouldn’t she at least remember the rain on her face?