Cain twisted around to the others, his voice tight. “Joke’s over. This is bullshit.” He glared at Patrick. “Someone’s a sick fuck, and I think it’s you.”
“That’s it, asshole.” Patrick lunged at Cain, and suddenly they were grappling, throwing punches.
Lisa and Robin cried out, grabbed at Patrick and Cain, trying to pull them apart.
The rappings started again, as if titillated by the sudden violence. Clearly not a window this time, but a wave of sharp knocking, coming from the ceiling, from within the very walls.
Cain and Patrick froze mid-struggle, looking up and around them.
The pounding grew sharper, louder, a rising tide, building, thundering, shaking the walls. Someone started to scream; Robin thought it might have been her. She could barely hear herself think.
Cain suddenly lunged for the table, flung himself up on his knees, reaching for the board. Robin had no idea what he was doing, but beside her, Martin cried out, “No!
Cain twisted to the fire and threw the board on the glowing embers.
All around them, the rappings pounded in a frenzy. Now Lisa and Robin both were screaming.
On the coals, the board burst into flame.
And suddenly, everything stopped.
Dead silence.
The five of them sat frozen, staring into the fire as the yellow flames rolled, burning the board to black.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Hours of eternity later, the first streaks of gray dawn showed through the windows.
Robin, Martin, and Cain huddled in blankets. Unable to sleep, they had forayed, hands linked to belts as if on an Arctic expedition, to the closet the Hall residents called the downstairs kitchen to make coffee, stopping at the bathroom to use it one by one, door cracked open and the others on guard outside.
Now they sat with hands wrapped around mugs, drinking in silence, while Lisa and Patrick dozed beside them in the murky gray light.
Somewhere a door slammed and they all jumped. Lisa and Patrick bolted out of sleep, freaked.
They all huddled, frozen, listening. Robin’s blood turned to ice at a rattling, dragging sound in the hall.
Lisa whispered, terrified, “No…”
They all whirled at the sense of movement behind.
A stocking-capped stoner stood in the arched entrance of the lounge. Robin recognized him from the third-floor boys’ wing. Behind him, another stoner in striped jacket and comically identical stocking cap hauled a suitcase, its broken wheels rattling.
The stoners looked around the lounge, taking in the bedding, the overturned furniture, the five students, huddled in blankets, hollow-eyed and haunted, pale as ghosts.
One of the stoners laughed uneasily. “Whoa… musta been some party.”
Patrick managed a bleak smile. “Yeah. Some party.”
Robin, Cain, Patrick, Lisa, and Martin all started to collect their bedding.
They did it in silence, avoiding one another’s eyes.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
And the rest of the weekend could not have been more ordinary. Residents began to trickle in early Sunday morning, becoming an unstoppable tide. There were midterms to study for, after all, and perhaps there were others who were glad enough to cut the family visit short.
By noon that cloudy day, doors were standing open all over the Hall, music blasting again, residents visiting, making sandwiches out of leftover turkey, passing around foil-wrapped care packages of pumpkin loaf and gingerbread cookies while they moaned about pounds gained, nursed hangovers, and visibly started to panic about term papers and exams.
Back in her room, Robin swallowed two of Waverly’s Valium before returning the bottle to the bottom drawer, then slept a black sleep until six that evening, when she bolted up in terror at the sound of her door slamming open.
Waverly breezed in, one of her signature thoughtless entrances. She turned all the lights on full and proceeded to fuss about the room, pulling open drawers and unpacking prissily and noisily, with appalling disregard for her roommate.
Robin lay back on her pillows, barely able to move. She was aware through her depressant haze that Waverly would think Patrick was still out of town, and that Patrick would go to pains to make her think he had been. At least Robin wouldn’t be alone that night. And for the first time in their short acquaintance, Robin was painfully glad of her roommate’s presence. Surely nothing mysterious or out of the ordinary would dare happen around Waverly.
Strangely comforted, she drifted back into a drugged and troubled sleep.
Late that night, when the rooms went dark and all the rest of the Hall slept, two lights remained on.
One was a solitary desk lamp, in a dim room lined with bookshelves along every available inch of wall space. There were no other adornments—not a poster on a closet, not a rug on the floor. The bed was unmade and there was a pall in the room, the numbness of loneliness.
Martin sat at his desk, surrounded by uneven piles of books. His laptop was open and signed on to the Net, but he seemed unaware of anything in front of him; he merely stared into space.
Abruptly, he stood and crossed to his bed. He knelt, reached underneath, and dragged out a suitcase. He unzipped the brown vinyl flap and looked down at the contents. After a long moment, he removed several leather-bound books with gilt Hebrew lettering on the covers.
He seemed to brace himself before he lifted one onto the bed and opened the cover.
The other light hung from a cord that surely had never passed an electrician’s inspection. The single bare bulb dimly illuminated the basement.
The long, low-ceilinged room was a horror-movie dream, a claustrophobic maze of stacked furniture and metal utility shelves and twisted pipes.
A shadowy figure moved stealthily through the crooked aisles.
There was a sudden hiss and clanging just to the right.
The shadow jumped back—then Cain relaxed as he made out the shape of the old boiler. He crossed to it, knelt to open the control box, studying the gauges inside.
Then his eyes fell on the floor beside him. He frowned, reached out to pick something up off the concrete.
A cold smile creased his lips as he stared down at the object in his hand.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
By Monday, Mendenhall was as full and boisterous as ever, bearing little resemblance to the endless and haunted halls that the five of them had inhabited over the weekend.
The maelstrom of school descended, spiked by the heightened anxiety of midterms. Students studied everywhere, huddled alone in corners with piles of books, gathered in nervously chattering groups at every available table.
Everything returned to normal—except Robin. Instead of sleepwalking through her days under a dark cloud, she was wide-awake.
Somehow the terror of the haunting had receded and she was left with an overwhelming feeling of, yes, excitement, and impatience to know more. No longer envious of groups and pairs of students, she hurried through the halls, flushed and light-headed with her secret. Finally, she belonged to something bigger, something almost unbearably strange and fascinating. In fact, she could think of little else. If not for a dreaded biology midterm that afternoon, she would have gone to the library the very first morning.
Now, one midterm down, curled up in her room with Ego and Id, her mind kept wandering back to the long weekend, the board, the veering, delirious, almost sexual sense of being completely out of control. The tug of…something…responding under her hands.
And the impossible shatter of glass.