Down a Dark Hall (15 page)

There was no possible way that Natalie could mail it when there was no address on it.

That night the winds came. Far and thin at
first, like quarrelsome children arguing in the distance, and then closer, shrieking and crying in high, shrill voices in
the branches of the trees outside the fence, they made their way to the doors of Blackwood and tried to get in.

All night long, they circled the house, trying the windows, howling around the corners, wailing in the eaves, until when morning
came Kit was certain she had not slept at all.

Then she realized that her right hand was cramped from writing and that the music book that lay on her desk was half-filled.

“It’s the same with
me
,” Sandy told her later. “I try to fight it, but there’s only so long you can hold out. I don’t plan to sleep, and then suddenly
it’s morning, and I
have
slept.”

Apologetically, she offered Kit a sheet of paper.

“Another poem?” Kit glanced at the paper and handed it back. “I can’t read that. It’s in French.”

“I can’t read it either. It’s in my handwriting, though, so I know I wrote it down.”

“Should we get Ruth to translate?”

“I hate to ask her,” Sandy said. “She’ll enjoy doing it, and I don’t want her to enjoy it. That sounds terrible, doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” Kit agreed. “Still, I know what you mean. She’s taking such pleasure in this that I want to smack her.” She paused
and then said, “We don’t have much choice. It’s either ask Ruth or Madame or Jules, and Ruth’s better than the others. You
do want to know what you wrote, don’t you?”

“I guess so,” Sandy said, pocketing the paper. But she made no effort to go to find Ruth, and neither did Kit, who felt as
drained and exhausted as if she had been outside all night running a marathon. They spent most of the day together in Sandy’s
room, reading, talking a little, and playing a halfhearted game of cards. Late in the afternoon the rain began, lightly at
first and then with increased strength, so that by evening the gentle patter on the roof had become a dull roar.

At six thirty they went down to the dining room, not so much from hunger as from the realization that neither of them had
eaten since the night before. It was Lucretia’s evening off, and the meal left out on the table consisted of some withered-looking
cold cuts and a bowl of soggy potato salad. The candles flickered erratically, and beyond the long windows an occasional flash
of lightning streaked the black sky.

The food looked even less appetizing once they had put it on their plates.

“I can’t take it,” Sandy said. “I’m sorry, I just can’t make it go down.”

“We’ve got to eat something,” Kit told her. “We need all the strength we can get.” But after one or two forced mouthfuls,
she too shoved her plate away. A great roll of thunder filled the room, and the chandelier began to sway, moving slowly back
and forth like an ornate pendulum, while the hundreds of tiny crystals caught the light from the candles and threw it in a
strange, iridescent pattern upon the far wall. Outside the wind screamed and tree branches scratched at the windows like clutching
hands.

“Let’s go to the parlor,” Kit said. “At least there’ll be a fire.”

Ruth was there ahead of them, leafing through her ever-present notebook and eating a peanut butter sandwich.

“I went out to the kitchen and made it myself,” she said, cramming the last wedge into her mouth and swallowing. “I couldn’t
face that stuff on the table.”

“That’s a good idea. Maybe we’ll do the same thing in a little while.” Kit crossed the room to stand before the fire. The
heat felt good against her back, and the crackling of the logs was the first cheerful sound she had heard in a long time.

“Why don’t you give her the poem,” she suggested to Sandy, “and see what she can make of it.”

“Another offering from Ellis?” Ruth asked, closing her book.

“No,” Sandy said. “It’s in French. Ellis’s poetry is all in English.” She dug the paper out of her pocket and held it out.

Ruth took it and sat for a moment in silence, her eyes flicking from left to right as she scanned the lines. “Wow!” she said
softly. “You don’t want me to read you this.”

“Why not?”

“You just don’t, that’s all. It’s—it’s not like that other stuff you wrote.”

“I don’t care,” Sandy said. “I want to hear it. I want to know what it is I’ve been writing.”

“Well, okay.” Ruth gave a slight grimace. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you.” She began to read, slowly, in an expressionless
voice. As one word followed another, Kit, standing mesmerized in front of the fireplace, could not believe what she was hearing.
Sandy’s face grew paler and paler. Finally she made a gesture to cut off the translation.

“No more. Don’t read any more.”

“I told you,” Ruth said. “I knew you wouldn’t want to listen.”

“It’s sickening,” Sandy said in a choking voice. “I’ve never used words like those in my life. It’s just foul, the whole thing.
It makes me want to throw up.”

“Well, don’t blame me for it,” Ruth said. “All I did was read it, the way you asked me to. Who’s the author, if you don’t
mind my asking?”

“I don’t want to think about it.” Sandy turned wretchedly to Kit. “Can you imagine the sort of creepy, demented freak that
would spill out garbage like that?” She shuddered. “I feel dirty just for having held the pen. I wish now I’d never—”

She broke off in mid-sentence as the room went white with a glare of brilliant light. Instantaneously there came a crash of
thunder so tremendous that the ceiling seemed to lift with the impact and a picture on the wall by the window fell to the
floor with a clatter. At the same moment, the electric lights flickered and went out.

In the sudden silence that followed, Kit could hear her heart pounding in rhythm with the drumming of the rain.

“That—” She tried to speak and found that her voice had to be dragged from her throat. “That was a close one.”

Ruth nodded. Her glasses caught the firelight and threw back a reflection of leaping flames. “I bet it hit the chimney.”

“And now the lights are out. That’s just great,” Sandy said shakily. “Can you imagine climbing those stairs and trying to
find our rooms in the dark?”

“I don’t want to imagine it,” Kit said. “I’m going to sleep right here. Let’s draw straws to see who gets the sofa.” She meant
the words to be light, but they didn’t come out that way. There was the sound of voices in the hall beyond the parlor door.
Madame’s, sharp and commanding. Professor Farley’s. Jules’ raised in a question. There came another roll of thunder, farther
away this time, and the door opened.

“Girls?” the professor said. “Are you all right in here?”

“I guess so,” Ruth said. “Do you know what happened?”

“We think it got that big tree outside the dining room window. Jules is going to look, and Madame has gone to the kitchen
to hunt for candles. There should be a supply of them there for use on the table.”

“At least we have a fireplace,” Sandy said. “We can pretend we’re at camp and toast marshmallows and tell ghost stories.”
There was a moment’s silence, and then, as the full significance of what she had said came through to her, she began to laugh.
It was a high, strange laugh, and once it started it would not be stopped; it poured forth, like carbonated liquid from a
bottle that had been shaken and uncorked, gushing out, wild and uncontrolled.

“Stop it,” Ruth told her.

But Sandy could not stop. She sat down on the hearth and stared at them out of wide, frightened eyes, and continued to laugh
while tears streamed down her cheeks in fire-colored rivulets and the wind shrieked around the corners of the house, straining
to be heard over the beat of the rain.

“Sandra? My dear girl.” The professor came slowly across the room in his cramped, old-man’s walk, grotesquely silhouetted
against the glow of the firelight, and bent to gaze into Sandy’s face. “Please, my child. You will have to get control of
yourself.”

“She can’t,” Ruth said. “She’s hysterical.”

“She certainly seems to be.” The professor raised his head. “One of you girls, go fetch Madame Duret. She’ll know how to handle
this.”

“In the dark?” Ruth objected. “The kitchen’s all the way at the back of the house.”

“I’ll go,” Kit said.

“In the pitch black? You’ll get lost in the hall.”

“No, I won’t.” Silently, Kit cursed herself for the eagerness in her voice. How was it possible that they did not hear it
and turn to her in suspicious amazement? But they were both bending over Sandy. There was no one to see her, no one to stop
her.

She stepped through the door, pushed it closed behind her and started down the hall full of darkness. She was not afraid.
For the first time in weeks, it seemed, there was no fear in her.

She was moving purposefully and directly toward the thing that she was going to do. But quickly, for there was little time.
Any moment now Madame might emerge from one of the doors at the far end of the hall, her hands filled with candles. Kit walked
close to the wall, guiding herself with one hand, trying to gauge the distance she had come in comparison with that which
she still had to go. She came to the door of the music room; her hand felt the frame, crossed the emptiness of the gaping
doorway, found the wall on the far side. She began to count her steps, one, two, three, four—how many feet would it be from
the music room door to the door of Madame Duret’s office? She attempted to picture it in her mind, but the depth of the darkness
around her blotted out all memory of the way the hall looked in the daylight.

Ten, eleven, twelve . . . had she come too far? Had she somehow missed the doorframe? Or, worse still, might she have lost
direction entirely and be working her way toward the entrance to the dining room?

God, I hope not,
Kit thought.
If I end up there, I’ll never be able to get myself turned around and started back again
.

Thirteen, fourteen, and she was upon it. The paneling of the wall gave way beneath her hand to the smooth, hard wood of the
door. With a breath of relief, Kit felt along it, inch by careful inch. On their first trip across, her fingers missed the
knob. On the second, they found it. Offering a silent prayer, Kit closed her hand upon it and gave it a turn. It moved so
easily that she almost fell forward as the door swung open into the room beyond.

And she was in the office. She knew it by the feel of the carpeting beneath her feet, by the faint smell of paint from Lynda’s
canvases, piled there for storage. Although she had been inside this room only once before, Kit could have described every
inch of it, and she moved forward without hesitation in the direction of the desk. Her outstretched hand touched the back
of the desk chair. She reached past this and felt the flat, smooth surface of the desktop beneath her palm. She groped over
a pile of papers, a computer, and found her goal.

The telephone.

She would not be able to see the numbers in the dark, but that did not matter. If she punched enough buttons she’d eventually
reach an operator.

In one minute,
she thought,
just one more minute, I’ll hear Tracy’s voice
. Or her mother’s or father’s. And she would say, “This is Kit—I’m trapped at Blackwood. Help! You’ve got to help me!” Her
hand was shaking as she lifted the receiver and her other hand felt for the buttons. So great was her anticipation that she
had already drawn in her breath to speak when she realized that there was no dial tone. Silent and dead, the receiver lay
against her ear.

For a long moment she stood there, unmoving, willing it to life. Then, slowly, she lowered it and let it fall from her hand
onto the desk. The clatter was loud. It did not matter. Nothing mattered now.

“It was our one chance,” Kit said softly. “Our one last chance.”

Never would there be another night like this one, with so much confusion and excitement, with people rushing in different
directions and the office door forgotten and unlocked. It was a onetime occurrence. By the time the phone line was repaired,
the house would be back to normal and the office secure against invasion.

If I were Sandy,
Kit thought miserably,
I’d have hysterics. I’d stand here and shriek and laugh and bang my head against the wall. Or I’d cry. I think I could cry
from now to eternity and still have more tears
.

But being herself, she did neither. She simply stood there in the darkness, leaning upon the desk, waiting for the inevitable.
Madame would return to the parlor with the candles, and as soon as Professor Farley realized that Kit was not with her, someone
would be dispatched to find her. And whoever it was would not have to think long to know where to look. It was only a matter
of minutes. The hall beyond the doorway grew lighter and she heard the footsteps approaching. Then suddenly a flashlight appeared,
turned straight into her face.

Jules’ voice said, “Kit! What are you doing in here?”

The flashlight beam moved to the desktop and found the phone, receiver off the hook. She could hear Jules draw in his breath.