Dark Moon (Nightmare Hall) (15 page)

No cars stopped at the top.

No cars stopped at the bottom, to let riders out.

The wheel whirled faster. The wind whooshed in their faces, stealing their breath, making their eyes tear. Screaming that had begun as delighted excitement began quickly to change to shouts of astonishment.

And still it gathered speed, this giant yellow wheel overlooking the Founders’ Day carnival on the grounds beside the university. Faster, faster, spinning, spinning …

“Oh, God,” Eve breathed, clutching the brass rail in front of her with both hands, “something’s wrong!” She turned her head to see Serena’s face a ghostly white, her loose, pale hair being tugged backward so hard by the force of the wind it seemed to Eve that it might be ripped right out of her scalp at any moment. Her eyes were red and watery, her mouth open in shock. Her hands, like Eve’s, were frozen on the railing. “Serena!” Eve cried, “hold on! Don’t let go!”

The screaming around them, shrill now with raw panic, increased in intensity and volume.

The wheel spun crazily, faster, and then faster still, as if it were trying desperately to escape its moorings and race off into the dark night.

Unbalanced by the unaccustomed, dizzying speed, the Ferris wheel began to teeter precariously on its base.

E
VE WAS SO HYPNOTIZED
by the incredible speed of the revolving wheel that when the unthinkable happened, she almost didn’t realize it.

The wheel was by now spinning at such breathtaking speed that Serena, who weighed slightly more than one hundred pounds, was lifted up out of her seat by centrifugal force and tossed over the side as casually as someone might toss a used tissue or a crumpled piece of paper.

Still, she managed, with one hand, to retain a hold on the brass safety bar.

Eve screamed and lunged forward to help, as Serena dangled over the edge of the racing Ferris wheel.

“Give me your other hand!” Eve screamed, leaning as far over the side of the car as she dared. The wildly spinning wheel was already tilting dangerously, first to one side, then the other. The wind ripped at Eve’s hair, her face, her eyes. Serena was no more than a blur in front of her. But she was still hanging on with one hand. If Eve could grab the other wrist, waving frantically in the air …

She grabbed, grabbed again, grasping nothing but rushing air. Then finally, her fingers closed around Serena’s flailing wrist.

“I can’t pull you up!” Eve shouted to the terrified girl, “but I won’t let go! I promise you, I won’t let go!”

Serena’s eyes were wild with terror.

Eve hung over the edge of the car, its unyielding wooden side digging painfully into her stomach, the wind robbing her of breath, of vision. Her heart was pounding wildly in her chest. She was conscious of nothing except the need to hang onto Serena.

And still the wheel continued to spin out of control. It teetered dangerously on its moorings, as if it couldn’t decide whether to stay or to go.

A scream, more piercing than the steady chorus of cries, rang out overhead, and a blur of green and blue, of flailing arms and legs, dove past, down, down, until it slammed into the ground far below. It bounced once, then lay still, a faint multicolored blotch in the carnival dirt.

Comprehension slowly forced its way through Eve’s fog of agony. Someone … someone above her had been thrown out … someone hadn’t been as lucky as Serena … someone had been flung to his death.

Eve clung more tightly to Serena’s wrist.

Poor Serena slammed repeatedly up against the wooden car. Each time their car neared the ground Eve wondered if she should let her drop free. But the car swung back up into the air so rapidly, there was no time. Serena would probably have been crushed by the oncoming, speeding cars before she could roll to safety.

Eve, completely drained, hanging on now by sheer force of will, knew that neither of them could hang on much longer.

When the wheel started to slow down, she was afraid to trust her own senses.

But she wasn’t imagining it. It
was
slowing … not quickly, but gradually, as if whoever was at the controls realized that a sudden, abrupt reining in of the renegade wheel could be disastrous.

So it happened slowly, so slowly that the hysterical screams continued until the wheel had come to a complete stop. Only then did the sound of hysteria, like the wheel’s speed, diminish, becoming instead a soft, sickly chorus of gasps and groans of relief.

As the ambulances arrived, screaming onto the carnival site once again, each passenger’s hands had to be forcibly peeled away from the brass guardrail. They had to be lifted bodily from the wooden seat and carried down the ramp to safe, solid ground.

Eve and Serena’s car came to a rest midway to the ground. The minute the car stopped swaying, Eve used the last ounce of strength she possessed to haul Serena back inside the car, where she lay unmoving, scarcely breathing, her face completely colorless, until their car slowly inched its way to the ground and they were lifted out.

The minute her feet touched the ground, Serena fainted.

T
HERE YOU ARE! SEE
how much better everything works when you’re right out there with nothing getting in the way of your beautiful rays shining down upon me? I could feel the power filling me up, making me stronger.

And listen, this was a very big deal. Couldn’t have done it by myself. Too much even for me. Wasn’t it fantastic? Have you ever heard such screaming in your life? Well, yes, I suppose you must have. But I hadn’t. It was so exciting.

I felt totally invincible. So powerful! It was the most exhilarating experience of my life.

They’ll shut it down now. They’ll have to. And the whole, stupid thing will go down in Salem’s history as one massive failure. She’ll be held responsible, of course, she and the others. They all deserve it. Naysayers. Skeptics. Who are they to judge? Ignorance is no excuse.

I have to let her know why it happened. I don’t care so much about the others. Let them find out or not, it makes no difference. All I really wanted to do was punish them, and I’ve done that. But her … I want her to know. That’s what she wants, right? She can’t stand not understanding something. So all I’m really doing is giving her what she wants.

Of course once she knows, I’ll have to kill her. That’s no big deal. It’s not like I’ve never done it before. There was my precious mama first, and then after that, there was Carolyn, my best friend in high school, who should have known better. Learned her lesson, didn’t she?

This one will be a piece of cake. She doesn’t have a clue. I don’t even have to be careful around her, which makes it so much easier.

Ready or not, Evie, here we come!

T
HE FOUNDERS’ DAY CARNIVAL
at Salem University was shut down the next day. The first thing Friday morning signs went up all over campus, warning people away from the site while safety inspectors from the state combed every inch of every ride, and the Ferris wheel in particular.

Eve’s reaction was immediate when she heard the news. The carnival is closed, she thought grimly. Will he quit now? Was that all he wanted, to shut down the carnival? Or was there more?

She had a chilling feeling that there was more. That it wasn’t just the carnival he was out to sabotage. And silly as it was, she couldn’t help feeling that it just might, after all, have something to do with the moon. If that was true, this nightmare wouldn’t end until the moon was once again no more than a tiny sliver of silver.

That could happen tonight. The moon could be full tonight.

“It had something to do with a cog,” Kevin told her that afternoon. “The Ferris wheel, I mean.”

They were sitting on the fountain on the Commons, trying to relax and recuperate from their harrowing ordeal. Three people remained in the hospital, recovering from injuries. Serena had been released, as had Eve and her friends.

All but one. Don, the young man from Twin Falls who had manned the dart booth, was dead, Eve had learned the night before. She was still reeling from the news.

“What about a cog?” she asked Kevin.

“They’re saying someone fooled with one of the wheel’s cogs. The controls slipped out of gear, and that’s all she wrote. We were lucky, one of the inspectors was kind enough to point out to me. We all could have been killed.”

Eve nodded silently. Of course they could have. And it was no surprise that the controls had been tampered with. Hadn’t she known that all along? “Well, at least they won’t write it off as an accident. Maybe they’ll even get to the bottom of things. Some answers would be nice right about now. As for the carnival itself, it suddenly doesn’t seem so important, does it?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Kevin shifted on the stone wall. “We’ve still got the street dances in town, tonight and tomorrow night.”

Eve would go to the street dance tonight. Why not? If she could survive the Ferris wheel, she could survive anything.

Andie and Eve dressed for the street dance in silence. All of campus had been unusually quiet all day, and Eve wondered if anyone could possibly have a good time at the evening’s festivities.

So she was surprised when she did have fun.

She hadn’t had a chance the night before to talk to Garth except to make sure that he was still in one piece. He was, and other than bruised elbows and knees, he had seemed fine. It would be nice to see him away from campus.

He was waiting for her in front of the post office when she and Andie arrived in town. Traffic had been blocked off at the bridge in the center of town, and a crowd was already milling about while the band, a group from campus, warmed up on their wooden platform above the street.

“I was afraid no one would show up, after last night,” Eve commented, glancing around. “But,” she added with false brightness, “there’s no Ferris wheel here, is there?”

She danced with Alfred, who was limping slightly, and with Kevin, who seemed preoccupied. He had been a good friend of Don’s and he seemed to be taking the death hard.

Serena hadn’t arrived yet. Eve wondered if she would come at all. Her legs had been so badly bruised, she wouldn’t be able to dance.

It was a beautiful, balmy May night. The kind of night when nothing is supposed to go wrong. The sky was almost clear, with only a few clouds off in the distance, the breeze warm and gentle, the streets and buildings awash in the silver glow of the pumpkin-sized moon.

Alfred wanted to take her home after the dance. She said no, thanks, as she always did. He seemed to take it well. Better than usual. He just shrugged and said, “Later.”

Eve was dancing a slow dance with Garth, when he reached up suddenly and released her barrette. Her thick, curly hair spilled onto her shoulders.

“Hey! What’s the big idea?” But she wasn’t really angry.

“Leave it,” he said softly when her hands left his shoulders and flew to her hair. “Hair that pretty shouldn’t be held captive.”

Laughing, Eve thrust the barrette into her jeans pocket and went on dancing.

Freeing her hair freed something else inside of her. She felt, for the first time since her father had left the house, like
Eve,
instead of just Nell’s daughter.

“Thanks,” she said to Garth after a while and he must have known what she meant, because he just smiled and nodded.

She had hot intended to be alone at all. She had planned all along to keep someone she trusted with her at all times.

But when Garth said, “Don’t go away. Be right back. If we’re going to keep dancing like this, we need fuel,” and left her, she didn’t go very far, didn’t seek out another safe someone to be with. Garth would be right back. So she just backed up a little, into a quiet, dark corner in front of the drugstore, away from the crowd.

“Eve?”

Eve turned around.

Serena, pale and sweaty, her eyes glancing around nervously as she tugged at Eve’s elbow, pulling her backward. “Don’t let him see us!” she whispered urgently.

“Who?”

“Alfred!” Serena held out her hands. They were holding a plastic bag, and they were shaking. “I found something, Eve. I wasn’t going to come down here at all tonight, my legs hurt so bad, but I found this, and I thought you should see it right away.” She handed Eve the bag.

Eve opened it and peered inside. “What is it?”

“Darts. Look! The metal-tipped kind. A whole bunch of them. And an invoice. Alfred ordered them, Eve, on his own. His name is right there on the slip.”

Eve removed the piece of paper. It was dark in the corner. She had to hold the paper up to the moonlight. Alfred’s name was there, his signature. She’d seen it before, on all the cards he’d sent her. “I don’t understand,” she said, glancing up at Serena.

“All this time,” Serena breathed, “all this time, he was right there in the house. Right there at Nightmare Hall! Down the hall from me. Why didn’t I guess? I’m so stupid. There were all kinds of clues. I just didn’t see them.”

“You’re not a detective, Serena,” Eve comforted. “What else is in here? Where did you find all this stuff?” She began poking around in the bag, careful not to cut her finger on one of the dart tips.

“I was supposed to ride into town with Alfred.” Serena shuddered at the thought. “But I knew I wouldn’t be able to dance, so I went down the hall to tell him I wasn’t going. He’d already gone without me. Never even told me he was leaving. I guess he just took it for granted I wouldn’t be going, after last night. Anyway, I was about to leave his room when I noticed the bag. It says, ‘Foley’s Carnival Supply’ on the side, see there?”

Eve looked. There it was.

“And I thought, why would Alfred be ordering supplies for the carnival? I knew you’d done all that stuff. So I peeked. And there they were.”

Eve pulled something rough and prickly from the bag, held it up to the moonlight, remembered the bewildered look on Alice’s face as she was thrown to her death. “Burrs? These are burrs, Serena.”

“He wouldn’t have picked one from the roadside the day of the parade,” Serena pointed out. “Someone might have seen him. So he must have plucked a bunch of them before that day, when no one was around, and kept them. And that’s not all, Eve. It’s so weird, I mean, I knew Alfred had a thing for you, but …”