Pretty Please (Nightmare Hall) (11 page)

Well,
she
hadn’t. She’d been watching…paying attention…staying close to Evan or with Nan or Reed or Kelly or Carl.
She
hadn’t forgotten. How could she?

But Evan had…or he wouldn’t have let her go off to the infirmary by herself.

She should ask Nan or Kelly to come along. Safety in numbers…

But the infirmary was right at the top of the hill, right on the other side of that new wall. She’d be in plain sight of the pond almost the whole time. The snow wasn’t coming down so hard now…they’d be able to see her.

And hadn’t she decided she wasn’t going to let that creep dictate how she lived her life?

She would go by herself. If whoever it was was watching, let him. He couldn’t do anything to her in full view of all those people on the pond. And he’d see that he hadn’t scared her into hiding. Maybe that would dent his ego so badly, he’d give up on her.

Trying to ignore a trace of resentment toward Evan for forgetting that she was in danger, Jo removed her skates, slung them over her shoulder, and hiked up the hill to the infirmary.

Dr. Trent wasn’t on duty, and the nurse who greeted Jo at the front desk, added quickly, “I’ve got an emergency. One of your professors had an urge to be eighteen again. Went skating, fell on the ice, and sprained an ankle. Bandages and tape are in the back room, in the closet. Just jot down in the book whatever you take, okay? Makes it easier to keep track of inventory.”

Glad to be in out of the cold, Jo headed straight for the back room where the supplies were kept. She would fix her bandages and take some extra in case the snow got heavier again. Then she could keep skating until it got dark. Later, maybe they’d all go to Vinnie’s.

For a day that had started in such a horrible way, it had certainly improved.

She found the supply cabinet. Opened the door. Reached inside for the packet of fresh white bandages, wrapped in plastic for sterility…

She was about to turn around when, for the second time that day, an arm came out of nowhere and wrapped itself around her neck, cutting off her air supply.

B
EFORE JO COULD MAKE
a sound, she was thrown into a wooden chair and her hands were quickly and roughly tied behind her back. Too shocked to think clearly, she cast a desperate glance over her shoulder. She caught only a glimpse of a figure all in black, face hidden behind a black ski mask. The glimpse told her nothing…except that she was in real danger.

“You just wouldn’t listen, would you?”
a voice whispered in her ear.
“I warned you and I warned you and I warned you.”
There was a sharp tug on the ropes around her wrists to make sure they were tight enough.
“You just ignored me. I don’t like that, Jo. I don’t like that at all. I made a mistake, being so patient with you. I don’t often make mistakes. And I hate it when I do.”

“What do you want?” Jo managed. Her legs weren’t tied, but that did her no good at all. Kicking backward would be futile. All she’d hit would be the chair legs. She would have to wait and hope he’d move out in front of her, where a well-placed foot might connect, might even do some damage.

The ski-masked head leaned in close to hers. She could feel the thick wool rubbing against her ear.
“What do I want? I want you to stop offending people with the sight of that ghastly face of yours. You won’t do it on your own, like I wanted you to, so I’ll have to do it for you.”
And then,
“Don’t even think about screaming. If you make a sound, I’ll snap your neck like a twig.”

Jo’s heart rolled over. She fell silent, biting on her lower lip to hold back the scream rising up in her throat.

She felt the figure behind her move away from her chair. A faint flicker of hope that he had finished with her, that he had only meant to scare her, died quickly as soft footsteps returned a minute later to take up a position behind her again.

What was he
doing
back there?

Maybe the nurse would need supplies, would come rushing into the room, see him,
stop
him. Or run and call the police before he could block her path.

That seemed Jo’s only hope.

Something soft touched the top of her head. Something white rolled down over her shoulder, into her lap. She looked down. Narrow gauze bandage, unrolling itself across her shoulder, her lap, onto her thighs, a soft white ribbon tracing a path down her body.

Now
it’s not sterile anymore, she thought with an odd feeling of detachment born of shock. The wrapper is off and the gauze is touching my clothes and the floor and it’s probably already covered with germs.

Then she almost laughed aloud. Like it mattered…he was probably going to kill her, anyway, right here in the infirmary supply room. Hadn’t he said he had to “stop” her from showing her face in public? Hadn’t it sounded like he meant…
permanently
? As
in forever
?

“Stop shaking,”
he ordered in that same ominous whisper.
“I can’t do this right if you won’t sit still.”

Couldn’t do
what
right? What was he doing with that gauze?

Then she felt it. Hands on the top of her head, the softness of gauze being wound around her head, across her forehead, then around her head again, and again across her forehead….

“I didn’t want to have to do this, Jo. But you refused to understand how important it is for
t
he world to be a beautiful place. All you had to do was stay inside until your bandages came off. Was that so much to ask? I don’t think so. I did it for years, day in, day out, for years! Never going outside in daylight where people could see me and hate me for the way I looked. I never even knew what the world really looked like until I was twelve because for all those years, I only saw it after dark. You can’t see much in the dark, Jo. Not much at all.”

Jo gasped and instinctively kicked out with her feet when the first layer of gauze reached her eyes. Having her eyes covered was terrifying. “No,” she cried, “no, don’t!”

In answer, he jerked cruelly on the bandage.
“Shut up! I told you not to make a sound! If that stupid nurse comes running in here, I’ll have to kill her. And you’ll be responsible. So shut your mouth.”

“You didn’t lock the door?” Jo asked, hope in her voice.

“You need a key to lock it. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. The nurse is the only one here, and she’s busy. By the time she finishes with that idiot, Professor Lang, I’ll be long gone. And it’ll be too late for her to do anything for you.”

Another layer of gauze was wrapped around her eyes, then another. She could no longer see. Becoming suddenly blind was utterly terrifying.

“Forget about the door,”
came the voice in her ear.
“You’d never make it. I’m faster than you are, and my eyes aren’t covered.”

If she’d known about the door sooner….

“Quit kidding yourself,”
as if she’d said the thought out loud.
“I’d never have let you get to the door. That would have ruined everything.”

The wrapping continued, the gauze slowly, efficiently winding around her cheekbones, her nose. If it covered her nostrils, she would have to breathe through her mouth. And if someone didn’t come, didn’t help her, before it reached her mouth…how would she breathe then?

She wouldn’t.

Jo felt like she’d been kicked in the chest. This…this was what he was doing? Wrapping her like a mummy, suffocating her like he’d tried to do with the plastic bag? But…but that had only been a warning. He’d left her hands untied so she could free herself.

Her hands were tied now.

This was no warning.

“Please,” she whispered as the gauze, once, twice, three times, circled her nose and effectively shut off her ability to breathe through her nostrils, “please….”

“Please? Please?”
A low, wicked chuckle.
“As in pretty please? For years, I thought when She said ‘pretty please’ to get me to do something, that She meant pretty things were pleasing to her. And I thought that was really cruel, considering what I looked like then. I was anything but pretty. It made no sense, her saying ‘pretty please’ to me, because She wasn’t a cruel person, not at all. She was kind and protective. But I never, ever talked to any other human beings except Them, so how could I know that ‘pretty please’ just meant an extra please?”

The gauze covered the space between her nose and her upper lip. Once, twice, three times.

There was nothing she could do. Her hands were tied behind her back, and no matter how hard she tried to free them, the ropes failed to give. Her legs were free, but useless, with him standing behind her chair instead of in front of it. And screaming for help would just make him kill her more quickly.

“You don’t know what it was like. Being trapped inside all those years. Never feeling the sun on your face, never playing with other children. But even when I was very small, I understood that They were doing the right thing. The world shouldn’t have to see such ugliness.

“And They did it for my sake, too. Other children would have made fun of me for the way I looked, tortured me, wounded me to the core. I would have been emotionally scarred forever by their cruelty. Knowing that, They protected me from it. They kept me safe. That’s all I was trying to do for you, Jo. But you wouldn’t let me. You ignored me. I thought you were smarter than that.”

Any second now, the gauze would reach her mouth, cover her lips, shut off her air passages completely. She had to do something, had to
stop
it…

Before she could think of something, the fingers stopped, left her face. Footsteps padded away.

He’d run out of gauze. He’d gone to the cabinet for another roll.

She had maybe one split second in which to do
something
, anything…

If only she could see…

But she could use her legs. The chair she was tied to was lightweight wood, and only her wrists were fastened to it. She could lift it. If she moved quickly….

Taking a deep breath through her mouth, Jo pulled herself to her feet, taking the chair with her. A few steps to the door….

But she had never walked with a chair tied to her back. She lost her balance before she took even one step. Toppling sideways with a startled cry, she crashed to the floor, where she lay on her side, the chair still attached to her back by her wrists.

“What do you think you’re doing?”
The whisper was furious.
“You never learn, do you? You refuse to take me seriously! Sharon Westover could tell you that’s a mistake, Johanna. Sharon could tell you that when I make up my mind to do something, it gets done.”
Another evil chuckle.
“That is, if Sharon could still talk. Unfortunately, it’s too late for Sharon to tell you anything. Too bad. Sorry about that.”

So she’d been right about Sharon. How horrible.

The chair, with Jo still fastened to it, was hoisted upright and slammed back into place.

Jo was dizzy. Her head reeled. And her stomach lurched as she realized she’d missed her only chance to escape.

“If you think your face looks bad, you should have seen hers. It was grotesque. She must have gone through the windshield. I couldn’t believe it when she showed up on campus. Wasn’t even bandaged. I sent her a hat with a veil, too, and a tube of that corrective makeup. She just ignored them. People said she had guts, coming back to school. But it wasn’t guts. It was thoughtlessness. Cruelty…making people look at her. When she ignored my efforts to protect her, to keep her away from offended eyes, I knew I had no choice. It was her own fault, Jo. Just like this is your own fault. You should have listened to my warnings.”

Jo breathed heavily through her mouth. She couldn’t
see
the gauze on its way to cover her mouth, but she could feel it. If she took a huge, deep gulp of air and saved it, as if she were about to dive underwater, maybe that would buy her some time. Somehow she had to escape.

But Sharon Westover hadn’t. She was dead. And the figure in black who was now beginning to wind the gauze around Jo’s mouth was responsible.

She was trapped in this small white room with a cold-blooded killer.

Who meant to kill her, too.

Here came the gauze over her lips. He yanked it in tightly, to cut off any possibility of her breathing through her mouth.

With only one layer of porous gauze over her mouth, she was still able to breathe, though erratically. But as the second layer pressed itself harshly against her lips, she knew she had only minutes to live.

Now that she could no longer see, he had moved from behind her over to her right side. She could feel him moving near her right arm.

If she was going to do something, it had to be
now
.

She leaned back in her chair, lifted both legs high, and quickly brought them back down, slamming them onto the floor as hard as she could while at the same time, throwing herself backward. The push of her feet against the floor combined with the weight of her body leaning to the rear, sent the chair toppling a second time, but this time backward.

She landed on her back.

And although she couldn’t see, she knew he was bending over her. The curses he uttered told her where his head was. She brought both legs up and kicked out with a fury born of desperation.

And connected. A startled, angry “Ooof!” told her the breath had been knocked out of her target. She had missed the head but probably hit the chest. Footsteps staggered backward, there was a crashing sound, and then something hit the hard wooden floor.

Jo scrambled up, yanking the chair up with her, and raced for where she thought the door should be. She ran right into it, the doorknob jabbing her cruelly in the stomach when she and the door collided.

But she couldn’t open it. Tears of frustration melded into the gauze over her eyes as she faced her helplessness. Even if she turned around, her back to the door, the chair tied to her wrists would prevent her from reaching the doorknob.

Scrambling sounds behind her told her time was running out.

She did whirl around then so that her back was to the door, and began crazily, wildly, slamming the chair legs against the wooden door.