Down a Dark Hall (9 page)

“You do know that song,” she said with certainty. “You’re a music graduate. If you don’t recall the title, you must at least
know who wrote it. Who was the composer?”

“I’m not sure,” Jules said. “It sounds like—well, I guess it’s from something by Schubert.”

“By Schubert? And you don’t recognize it?” Kit was incredulous. “How can you possibly not know the work of someone so famous?”

“
You
don’t recognize it,” Jules said defensively.

“No, but I don’t claim to be a student of music. Even so, I know that Schubert died when he was very young. He couldn’t have
written all that much.”

“Look, Kit—” Jules did meet her gaze now. His eyes were blazing, and the anger which he had shown when he had first turned
and seen her lay somewhere in their depths. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you all of a sudden, but I don’t need this kind
of interrogation. You don’t know a thing about music. You can’t have heard this piece before. It’s practically unknown.”

“But I have heard it,” Kit said quietly. She had not only heard it, but she knew where.

The melody on the tape was the same haunting song that she had been playing in her dream.

In October, Lynda completed a landscape
and Sandy wrote a poem.

The landscape was done in oils. It was a large canvas, measuring two feet tall by three and a half feet wide. It was of a
lake, serene and peaceful, throwing back the golden glint of the afternoon sun. The woods on the far side of the water were
in shadow, but the immediate foreground was bright with sunlight and wild flowers.

“Where is it?” Kit asked.

“It’s in the Catskills,” Lynda said.

“A place you’ve been?”

“I don’t think so. I know how it looks though.” Lynda regarded the painting with pride. “Don’t you think it’s pretty?”

Kit nodded. The picture was beautiful.

“Lynda,” Ruth spoke gently, as one might to a small child. “I want you to think for a minute. Try to remember why you decided
to paint this particular scene. Did it come from a calendar, maybe? Or did you see it on TV?”

“I don’t know,” Lynda said. She frowned, considering the question. “It’s a funny thing, but I don’t remember
thinking
about it at all. I just mixed the paints and took the brush in my hand, and I started painting.”

“How did you know how to mix the colors?”

“That’s not hard.”

“Could you teach me?”

“No,” Lynda said. “You just have to know it by yourself instinctively. I can do it, but I couldn’t explain how to somebody
else.” She smiled apologetically, that sweet, bland smile that made her look so much younger than her actual years. “I’m sorry,
Ruth. I guess a person just happens to be a natural artist, or she doesn’t.”

She showed the oil painting to Madame Duret, who admired it greatly and hung it on the wall in the dining room. In the week
that followed, Lynda produced two more paintings, small ones. Both were landscapes. One seemed to be of the same lake, but
from a different angle, for it showed a footpath leading down to its edge. The other was of fields, green with springtime,
lying flat and rich beneath a blue sky. In the bottom right-hand corner of each picture, Lynda printed the initials
T.C.

“T.C.?” Kit said. “Those aren’t your initials.”

“That’s the way I’m going to sign my work,” Lynda told her.

“But why? What do they stand for?” Kit was bewildered.

“Nothing really. I just picked the initials out of the air. People don’t have to paint under their real names, and I’m going
to paint under T.C.”

It was soon after this that Sandy wrote the poem.

“I did this,” she said without preliminaries, tossing herself across the foot of Kit’s bed and handing her a sheet of lined
paper which had evidently been torn from a spiral notebook. “Read it and tell me what you think.”

It was late afternoon and Kit, who was tired of studying, tossed her book aside and picked up the poem. It was titled “Leave-taking.”
Quickly she scanned it and then went back to read it again:

“You wrote that?” Kit turned to her friend in amazement. “Why, Sandy, it’s—it’s—”

“You don’t have to say it,” Sandy interrupted. “I know it’s good. I also know I didn’t make it up.”

“You remembered it from somewhere?”

“I must have,” Sandy said. “I couldn’t have written it myself. On the other hand, I don’t recall ever having read it. I never
read poetry unless it’s for a class assignment.”

“I certainly don’t recognize it,” Kit said. “Perhaps Ruth will know what it’s from. She’s very well-read.”

She started to get to her feet, but Sandy reached out a restraining hand.

“Let’s not bring Ruth into this.”

Kit was surprised. “Why not?”

“I just don’t like her,” Sandy said. “There’s something about her that turns me off. I can’t put my finger on what it is,
but I have this feeling that down inside she’s a cold fish and that the only person in life who really matters to her is Ruth
Crowder.”

“She’s incredibly smart,” Kit said.

“I’ll give you that. She makes me feel so stupid. Still—” Sandy drew a long breath. “I’m being silly, I guess. Okay, go get
her. If this is famous, she’ll probably know what it is.”

Ruth, however, did not recognize the poem.

“It’s a type of sonnet,” she said, studying the paper. “It has a familiar ring to it, but I’ve never read it.” She glanced
across at Sandy. “Where did you get it?”

When Sandy did not answer, Kit spoke for her.

“She wrote it this afternoon.”

“Then why—” Ruth stopped as the meaning of the statement became clear to her. Her sharp, dark eyes took on a sparkle of interest.
“How did it happen, Sandy? Do you write poetry often?”

“Never,” Sandy said shortly. “And I don’t know one kind of sonnet from another. That’s what’s so crazy. I went up to my room
after lunch and stretched out on my bed to check over some algebra problems. I must have dozed off, because suddenly I realized
that a lot of time had gone by. I had a pencil in my hand, and on the page of my notebook opposite the math problems there
was this poem.”

“ ‘Leave-taking,’ ” Ruth read the title again. Her face was flushed with suppressed excitement. “First Lynda and now you.
It’s really incredible.”

“What does Lynda have to do with this?” Kit asked her.

“Don’t you see a connection? Lynda’s never painted before, and yet she suddenly seems to have this amazing talent and is turning
out pictures that look as though they belong in museums. Sandy’s never written poetry, and here she is writing sonnets. And
I—”

She paused. Kit regarded her in bewilderment. “And you?”

“I’ve been doing some pretty intricate math,” Ruth said carefully, “stuff I never could even have conceived of before. At
first I thought I was just writing down a lot of numbers. I couldn’t see any meaning in them. But now I’m beginning to get
glimmers of understanding. It’s as though I were being educated by a teacher who is more—much more—capable than Professor
Farley.”

“What exactly are you getting at?” Sandy’s face was dead white beneath her freckles. “Are you trying to say that this is something
supernatural?”

Ruth gave her a challenging look. “Do you have a better explanation?”

“Any explanation is better than that,” Sandy said shakily.

“There was that woman,” Ruth said, “that night in your room when Kit heard you screaming. And there was the time after your
parents’ death when you knew about the plane crash. If those weren’t supernatural occurrences, I’d like to know what you would
call them.”

“You told her about those things?” Sandy turned to Kit accusingly. “I told you about them in confidence.”

“I’m sorry,” Kit said. “I didn’t think of them as secrets. All these things are part of the mystery of Blackwood. We have
to compare our experiences. Perhaps then we’ll see some kind of pattern. Ruth thinks that all four of us are capable of ESP,
and that that’s how we came to be chosen as students here.”

“Those entrance exams we took,” Sandy said thoughtfully. “They
were
kind of unusual.” She paused. “Then, if that’s true—if we were selected for that particular reason—it means that Madame Duret
. . .”

She could not bring herself to complete the sentence.

Ruth finished it for her. “It means that Madame Duret wanted us at Blackwood for exactly that reason.”

The room was silent as they digested this statement. Kit thought,
This can’t be real, this conversation. We’re making this up; we’re inventing a story and giving ourselves roles in it, the
way Tracy and I used to do when we were younger
. But she was no longer twelve, and Tracy was not here, and Ruth was not one to play games. Sandy was not playing either;
her thin face looked sick.

“We’ll have to ask her,” Sandy said in a half whisper.

“Ask Madame Duret?” Ruth shook her head. “There’d be nothing to gain by that. Any question we ask her, she’s bound to have
an answer for. We don’t have proof that there’s anything wrong. So Lynda’s painting and Sandy’s turned into a poet—what does
that prove? Only that Blackwood is a good school and is bringing out latent talents in its students.”

“It’s the same with your math,” Kit said. “She’ll just credit Professor Farley for being such a good instructor. I seem to
be the only one here who hasn’t developed a new talent.” She tried to make her voice light. “I feel sort of left out.”

“I wish I were left out,” Sandy said. “This is scary. If we can’t ask Madame Duret outright, then what
can
we do? If Ruth’s theory is right and we’re all reacting because we’re sensitive personalities, then I want to know what it
is we’re reacting to. I’m the same person I was back home, but I didn’t write poetry then. Why am I doing it here at Blackwood?
Is it something about the place itself?”

“What do we know about Blackwood?” Ruth asked. “Other than the fact that it’s an old estate? I don’t even know the name of
the family that used to own it.”

“I know that,” Kit volunteered. “It’s Brewer. But that doesn’t help much.”

“I can see no way of getting into town to ask about it,” Sandy said. “We haven’t been off the grounds since we got here. It’s
a good fifteen miles down to the village, which is farther than I’m about to hike.”

“You couldn’t get out anyway,” Kit said. “The gate’s kept closed except when Professor Farley drives down to the town for
mail. What about the people from the village who work here?”

“What people?” Ruth said. “They all quit except for Natalie Culler, and she never opens her mouth.”

“She does with me sometimes,” Kit said. “We got to be friends on that first day before the rest of you arrived.”

“Well, there’s nothing to lose,” Ruth conceded, “if you want to raise the question to her. The worst she can do is refuse
to answer.”

“I’ll do it,” Kit said determinedly, “as soon as I get the chance.”

That night it rained. It was a heavy, relentless rain that drummed upon the roof and slashed against the panes and poured
in torrents through the rain gutters. Lying in bed, Kit closed her eyes tightly and tried to pretend that it was a city rain,
and that she was in her room at home and the roof above her head was a simple partition that separated her from the next floor
of apartments, and that her mother was in the room next door reading, wearing her blue nightgown, with a mud mask on.
In a minute,
Kit thought,
she will put her book down and get out of bed and come into my room to check the window
.

But when the bedroom door did open, it was not her mother who slipped through and pushed it closed behind her.

“Kit,” a voice asked softly, “are you awake?”

“Yes,” Kit said. “What is it? Is something wrong? Wait a minute, I’ll turn on the light.”

“No, don’t,” Sandy said. “I just want to tell you something. The woman—her name is Ellis.”

“The woman in your dream? You’ve given her a name?”

“Kit, it wasn’t a dream.” Sandy sounded definite. “It’s something else, something more than a dream. This isn’t something
my mind has made up. Ellis exists. She’s a real person. I’m sure of it.”

“That’s impossible,” Kit said. She reached out and began to fumble for the bedside lamp.

“Don’t,” Sandy said, sensing her action. “Please, don’t. As long as it stays dark I can still see her like a picture on the
screen of my mind. She’s young, even younger than I thought at first, and she has the most beautiful eyes, dreamy and filled
with sorrow as though she’s been through a lot of suffering.”

“You were afraid of her that first time,” Kit said. “You screamed.”

“Not now. I’m not afraid anymore. I just wanted to tell you that.” Her footsteps brushed on the floor. “Good night, Kit.”

The bedroom door opened and closed. Alone once more, Kit shivered and pulled the blankets up over her shoulders. The room
was heavy with dampness and the slow, hard beat of the rain.