The Silent Scream (13 page)

The drizzle became a steady rain. Driven by the hilltop wind, it slapped against the windows. The room, with its smell of burning wood and the warmth from the fireplace, seemed a great place to be on such a night. Why can’t it always be this nice, Jess thought.

She had barely finished thinking the question when Linda, becoming bored, stirred restlessly and asked Milo, “Why is your notebook so thick? You never finish anything, so what are all those papers in there?” Before he could answer, she made a playful grab for the blue spiral book and began leafing through it.

“Hand it over,” he ordered lazily, reaching for the notebook.

Laughing, Linda held it high, beyond his reach.

Several papers slipped out and drifted to the floor. One landed at Cath’s feet. She bent to pick it up.

And her eyes widened as they scanned the sheet. “I
knew
it!”

He looked up. “What?”

Cath stood up, staring at Milo, the sheet of paper still in her hands. “This is my essay. The one you said you didn’t take!”

Everyone in the room stopped what they were doing to focus their attention on Cath, and on Milo, scrambling to his feet.

“It fell out of
your
notebook,” she said, her eyes on his face. “You really
did
take it.”

“No, I—”

“I was so sure at first.” The ever-present lines of tension in Cath’s face deepened. “But then, no one else thought so, and I decided maybe I was wrong. But … but here it
is.
”

Jess’s heart sank. Had Milo really stolen that essay, and lied about it?

The way he’d lied about knowing Giselle. Hadn’t told the truth, anyway. The same thing, really.

“I
didn’t
take your essay and I don’t know how it got in my notebook,” Milo said emphatically. “That’s the truth. Believe it, don’t believe it. Your choice.” And bending to grab the blue notebook from a red-faced Linda’s hands, he stalked from the room.

Aiming a disgusted look in Cath’s direction, Linda got up and ran after him.

“Why did she look at me like that?” Cath said, glancing around the room. “
I
didn’t do anything. It’s not
my
fault my essay was in Milo’s notebook.” Near tears, she picked up her books and, head down, left the room.

It no longer seemed warm or cozy.

When Jon and Trucker had gone, Jess and Ian sat on the floor close to the fire’s dying embers. “That
was
Cath’s essay,” she told him. “I saw it. It still had her name on it.”

“I don’t want to talk about that,” he said firmly, taking her hands in his. “There’s been too much crazy stuff going on around here, and it’s getting to you, I can tell. I thought we had something going, but lately I’m not so sure.” He took a deep breath and let it out. “I want you to go to that dance with me. That Fall Ball thing. I think that’s what we need to do.”

Jess smiled. “You make it sound like a prescription. Take one Fall Ball and call me in the morning.”

“In a way, it is.” He grinned. “Dr. Banion, at your service.”

She wanted to say yes, of course she’d go to the ball with him. But—the person who had fought with Giselle on campus had long, dark hair. And Ian had acted so strangely since she’d found that letter to Giselle. Ian could have been Giselle’s out-of-town boyfriend, couldn’t he? And he could have been angry that she’d dumped him. And he could have put the worms in her drawer when he was hunting for the letters …

No!

“Come on, Jess,” Ian urged softly. “Who needs a good time more than us?”

He
hadn’t lied about knowing Giselle. It was Milo who had done that, not Ian.

If she went to the dance would she be able to pretend, even for a few hours, that her life was as normal as any other Salem University student? Could she fool herself into thinking, in the brightly colored hall filled with music and laughter and dancing, that when it was all over, she’d be going home to a nice, safe,
normal
dorm?

Maybe. She could give it the old college try.

But … was Ian still the person she wanted to go to the dance with? Did she trust him?

She studied his face, bronzed by the flickering, dying flames. Anyone could be responsible for all the strange things that had happened at Nightingale Hall.
Anyone.
Anyone except Ian, she decided.

“Yes,” she said, “I’d love to go to the ball with you.”

A
N OPPORTUNITY TO LOOK
for the rest of Giselle’s letters came the following night, when everyone but Jess had left the house to attend a fraternity party.

“Not me,” she announced after dinner. “I have a bad headache. I need a nice, long nap.”

“You’re going to stay here
alone
?” Linda asked, disbelief in her voice. “No, come with us.”

“I can’t,” Jess said lightly, conscious of Ian’s eyes on her. He looked disappointed, and she was afraid he’d offer to stay home with her.

He didn’t. “Too bad about your headache,” was all he said and, giving her a hug, he left with the others.

She was alone at last.

It made sense to begin her search in her own room, the one that had been Giselle’s. Giselle might have tucked the letters away in a corner or shelf of the closet, if she hadn’t thrown them away.

I
would have, Jess thought as she braced herself against the chill in her room and pulled the door open. If the other letters were anything like the one I found, I’d have ripped them into tiny little fragments and fed them to the garbage disposal. No one has the right to threaten someone that way.

She found no letters in her room. Or any other evidence that Giselle McKendrick had once lived there.

Disappointed, she was about to make her way down the hall to Linda’s room and try there, when she heard a noise from downstairs.

They couldn’t be home already. She hadn’t been searching for more than half an hour.

A flicker of light from outside drew her to the window. A pale yellow circle moved near the in-ground cellar doors. Trucker? Hadn’t he gone to the party, too? Ian had planned to invite him. Jon, who was driving everyone, had laughed and said, “You guys are going to be piled on top of each other in my Beemer.” But he hadn’t said Trucker wasn’t welcome to join them.

Maybe Trucker hadn’t felt like going.

Just then, her overhead light went out.

Reaching behind her for the desk lamp, Jess pushed on its switch.

Nothing happened.

She tried again. But her room remained black as night. The bulb must have burned out.

Jess, a small voice somewhere in her head murmured, what are the chances that the bulbs in your overhead light
and
your desk lamp would die at exactly the same moment?

She was
not
going to get upset. Maybe Trucker was working in the cellar and had to turn off the electricity for some reason. He could be working on the furnace. He had said he needed to check it out before cold weather hit.

But … hadn’t he said it was a gas furnace? Why would he need to turn off the electricity?

Maybe he was working on something else, something electrical. He probably didn’t even know anyone was home. Probably thought she had gone to the party with the others.

Feeling her way in the dark, Jess made her way across the room to the door and opened it. The hall was pitch-dark. She felt for the wall switch, flipped it several times, but nothing happened.

The electricity was definitely off at Nightingale Hall.

It seemed to take her forever to wend her way downstairs and into the kitchen. When she reached the cellar door, she hesitated.

What if it wasn’t Trucker down there? What if he’d gone to the party when Ian invited him, and someone
else,
thinking the house empty, was in the cellar … maybe hunting for something? Hunting for, say, some incriminating letters?

No sound echoed up from the cellar. Maybe there wasn’t
anyone
down there now. If the light she’d seen had belonged to Trucker, he could have finished what he was working on and gone back to his apartment over the garage.

But then … the electricity would be back on and … she flicked the switch beside the door … it wasn’t.

There was only one way to find out. She had absolutely no intention of going down into that damp, musty cellar. But she had to know if Trucker was down there, in which case she would ask him to turn the electricity back on.

And if Trucker
wasn’t
down there, she’d go over to his apartment to remind him about the electricity.

It wasn’t like him to forget something like that.

She unlatched the cellar door and pulled it open. “Trucker?” she called softly.

Not a glimmer of light shone upward. Trucker wouldn’t be down there without a light. He’d have a lantern or flashlight with him.

He wasn’t down there. She’d have to go find him and tell him about the electricity.

She moved to slam the door shut and latch it.

Too late. A blow between her shoulder blades stole her breath and knocked her off-balance. She teetered precariously at the edge of the cellar stairs, her hands reaching out for something, anything …

And then a second, more forceful blow sent her off her feet and out into the black void, flying out and down, down, down …

She couldn’t catch her breath to scream.

She landed at the foot of the staircase, her head striking the hard, earthen floor with a sharp crack.

In that last, final second before she lost consciousness, she heard the door at the top of the stairs slam shut and the metal latch click into place.

J
ESS CAME BACK TO
awareness slowly, painfully. She could see nothing. Her left elbow throbbed. Her head hurt. And she had no idea where she was.

Trying to remember was like pushing her way through a thick, cottony fog. What was she doing in this cold, damp, dark place that smelled of earth and mold and … something else … something sweetish?

A sinister hissing sound off to her left brought her head up, snapped her eyes completely open. That sweet, sickening smell, the hissing … the smell was gas, the hiss a leak. Gas was leaking from somewhere near her.

She remembered then. She had been shoved down the cellar stairs, had hit her head, been knocked out.

She was in the cellar and there was a gas leak.

It took her long, agonizing moments to force herself to a sitting position and then, reaching backward to grip the stair railing for support, pull herself completely upright. If only it weren’t so dark …

Shaky and dazed, she was clear-minded enough to know she had to get out of the cellar, which was rapidly filling with gas.

The door at the top of the stairs was locked, she remembered. She had heard the latch slide into place. Someone had shoved her down here and didn’t want her to leave.

Why
not
? she screamed silently.

But there was another way out. The outside cellar doors, the ones Trucker used. Where
were
they? Jess peered into the darkness. Which direction? Where was the front of the house?

She struggled to form a diagram in her mind, using the kitchen above her as a guideline. It worked. There, in
that
direction, straight ahead. The cellar doors should be
there.

She staggered, one hand to her aching elbow, the other hand protecting her mouth and nose from the gas, through a maze of boxes and cartons and trunks, until her sneakered foot bumped against the bottom stone step that led the way up and out through the wooden doors.

Silently rejoicing, she lifted her arms and pushed upward with all of her strength, tears of pain spilling down her cheeks as her injured elbow screamed a protest.

But her efforts were in vain. The heavy wooden doors never moved. The rattling sound she heard was probably the padlock, securely fastened on the outside.

Jess sagged against the stone wall. No way out … And the hissing continued.

I don’t want to die in here, she thought clearly, her eyes searching through the darkness for help. I have to stop that gas …

It had to be coming from the furnace. Trucker called it the heater from hell, saying it was a huge old thing from the Dark Ages. If it was that big, it shouldn’t be hard to find even in the dark.

I don’t
want
to do this, she thought, fighting tears. I want
out
of here!

Biting her lip and swiping at the tears, she told herself angrily, quit whining. Find that gas line!

Gingerly moving forward, Jess took tiny steps, making little circles in the air with first one foot, then the other. Twice, a sneaker came into contact with something, but both times the object was small and soft: a pile of rags, a bundle of old clothing?

She kept going. Her senses alert, she followed the hissing sound until she bumped up against the huge, unmoving pile of metal in the middle of the room … the furnace.

Her headache was growing worse every second, hammering away at her skull. Using her injured arm, she crooked it at the elbow and scooped the bottom of her sweatshirt up against her mouth and nose. Listening carefully, she located the source of the ominous hissing. It was coming from directly below where she stood. She crouched, exploring with her hand. The hand found a cold metal pipe at the base of the furnace. The hissing came from there.

All she had to do now was find the valve, turn it, and the hissing … the gas flow … would stop.

Her fingers moved to the end of the pipe, where the valve would be.

There … was … no … valve.

Someone had removed it.

Someone had made it impossible for her to stop the flow of gas.

Jess sank back on her haunches, moaning, “Oh, no …”

A fit of coughing seized her. She grasped the sides of the boiler to pull herself up and her right hand touched something soft …

There was something caught on a nail above her head, something that felt like old wool. She could use it to cover her mouth and nose.

She tugged, gently at first, then more forcefully. The scrap of soft cloth came off the nail with a tearing sound. She put it over her mouth and nose, pressing it close to her skin.