The Silent Scream (12 page)

She hoped Trucker wouldn’t take Cath’s flirting seriously. It would be a mistake. While the others accepted Trucker as a friend, Cath still snobbishly saw him as “the handyman.” She would never seriously consider him a potential boyfriend.

Although Jess had a good time, she found herself missing Linda and Milo. She was so surprised by the fact, she mentioned it to Ian.

He nodded. “Yeah, me, too. Maybe that means the residents of Nightingale Hall are starting to come together as a group, right?”

Cath and Trucker had gone to the jukebox to make selections, so Jess felt free to say, “I know Cath hasn’t forgiven Milo for the essay she thinks he stole. But at least they’re speaking to each other. That’s a beginning, right?”

But her optimism began to dwindle the minute they left the restaurant. And by the time they drove up the gravel driveway, it had completely disappeared, and dread had taken its place.

She stared up at Nightingale Hall and knew she didn’t want to go inside.

It wasn’t a safe place to be.

She would have felt silly saying so. No one had seen the shadow on her wall or heard the scream. Linda’s shredded bathing suit had been forgotten, and the shattered mirror was being attributed to an object being tossed through the window by a neighborhood kid.

So, everyone else jumped out of the truck and walked into the house as if it were an ordinary dorm, where ordinary things happened.

And Jess followed, because although she was almost sure now that Nightingale Hall wasn’t the least bit ordinary, there didn’t seem to be any other choice.

In her room, Jess found she was too unsettled to sleep. Wrapping the quilt around her shoulders and switching on her bedside lamp, she grabbed a pile of papers from her desk and sat on the bed intending to sort them out until she felt sleepy.

History essay, math assignment, notice about overdue library books, a letter from her sister Nell, a photograph …

Jess’s hand paused in midair.

The photograph wasn’t hers. She had never seen it before.

It was dusty. She wiped it off with an edge of the quilt, and as she did, she remembered Ian pulling several pieces of paper from underneath the chest of drawers. This picture must have been one of them.

Leaning back against the headboard, she held the small, square, colored photograph closer to the blue lamp on her nightstand.

There was something very wrong with the picture.

The girl whose head and shoulders filled the square space was very pretty. Her hair was thick, shoulder-length, and very blonde, her bright blue eyes clear, her skin smooth, her face oval. She could easily, Jess thought, be considered gorgeous.

But across her face, someone had drawn a nasty, thick black slash.

Who was this girl?

Who was she kidding? She knew perfectly well who it was. She knew as well as she knew her own name that the girl in the photograph was Giselle McKendrick.

S
TARING DOWN AT THE
photograph, Jess realized she’d seen the face before. But where?

Then she remembered. In the photo booth, at the arcade. The face she was looking at now was the same face in the “double exposure” on their strip of film.

Giselle had been in their photo? How could that be?

A violent shudder seized Jess, and she wrapped the quilt more tightly around her shoulders. Tearing her gaze away from the photo, she glanced down at the pile of papers in her lap. Ian had unearthed more than one paper from under the chest. What else had been hiding under that bottom drawer? Did she really want to know?

There was a sheet of paper, letter-size. No envelope. The paper was white, unlined, a trace of gossamer cobweb clinging to its upper right-hand corner. It had been folded twice, and the creases remained.

The typewritten words had faded. But they were legible.

Dear Giselle,
Jess read, and with a sharp intake of breath, she closed her eyes, letting the letter fall.

But she knew she had to read it.

She sank back against the pillows and read:

Dear Giselle,

Your time has run out. You’ve stalled long enough. You haven’t answered any of my phone calls or my letters. So I’m coming there and you’d better be ready to leave with me. I’m not taking no for an answer.

The letter was signed,
Your Forever Love.

But it didn’t sound very loving.

Jess gripped the sheet of paper in her fist. Its angry message repeated itself in her head. What did it mean? The writer intended to come to campus, that was clear enough. To get Giselle and take her somewhere … and he sounded very, very angry.

But … Giselle hadn’t
left
campus with anyone. She hadn’t left campus at all. Not … alive.

So … she must have said no when he came for her.

But in the letter, he said he wouldn’t
take
no for an answer. Had he meant it? And if he had, what had he done or said in return for her
no
that was so awful it had driven Giselle to suicide?

Unless …

Jess sat up straight in bed. Her eyes stared blankly at the spot on the wall where, in her dream, the dreadful shadow had hung. Unless Giselle
hadn’t
committed suicide.

The word “apparent” rang in her head. “Apparent suicide.” “Apparent” meant that it
seemed
like suicide. But maybe it wasn’t.

Jess awoke in the morning stiff and cramped, half-sitting, half-lying against the headboard. The weather outside was drizzly and gray, and cold, damp air drifted in through the open window.

She dressed quickly in jeans and the gray Salem U. sweatshirt, grateful for its fleecy warmth. Stuffing the photo and the letter in a rear jeans pocket, she hurried down to the kitchen. Everyone else was already eating breakfast.

The kitchen seemed dismal without the sun’s warming rays streaming in through the wall of windows. The gray mist outside had made the rest of the world disappear, and the room became a dreary, isolated island.

Trucker had made coffee. Jess sipped the strong, hot liquid gratefully and took a seat at the table. Unhappy with the weather, her housemates barely grunted as she sat down. Only Ian smiled at her.

“I found something,” Jess said when they were all seated. She placed the letter and the photo side by side on the wooden table between an open cereal box and a round tub of butter.

Cath lifted her head. “A dead body in the basement?” she said in a weary monotone. “It wouldn’t surprise me.”

Ian studied the picture. “Who is it, and who went crazy with the black marker?”

“I think it’s Giselle McKendrick, and I’m sure the person who drew the slash mark is the same person who wrote the letter. I think the photo is some kind of threat.”

The letter was passed around the table. “Well,” Linda commented, “he’s no poet, that’s for sure. Doesn’t have a way with words.”

When the photo reached Milo, his face paled and the hand holding the picture trembled slightly.

“Is it her, Milo?” Jess asked gently.

He nodded, and swallowed hard. “Her hair looks longer, but it’s her.”

“There were other letters,” Jess said, retrieving the picture and the letter. “He says so. They could be here somewhere.”

“Then why did you only find
one
?” Cath asked.

“This one slid down behind the dresser.”

When Trucker read the letter, his only comment was, “Tough guy. I know the type. All talk and no action.”

Maybe, Jess thought. Maybe not. “I think I’m going to see if I can find those other letters.”

“What’s the point?” Ian said, sounding annoyed. “The girl is dead. Why do you want to play Sherlock Holmes?”

That rankled. Jess shot him a look of irritation. She had no intention of playing detective. She was just going to look for the letters.

It almost seemed as if he didn’t
want
her finding any letters to Giselle. But why? What did Giselle have to do with Ian? They’d never even met.

Suddenly she remembered her conversation with the girl named Beth. She said she’d seen someone fighting with Giselle … someone tall, with long, dark hair.

Ian had been on campus last June. He’d said it was to check out the place.

But Jon had been on campus then, too. And hadn’t he said he had a “thing” for blue-eyed blondes like Giselle?

And then there was Milo, who knew Giselle and hadn’t told them. What if he’d never got over his feelings for Giselle?

He could have been fantasizing about her that whole time in high school, built that fantasy into a romance that never was. She’d read about people who did that. And you couldn’t talk them out of it, no matter how hard you tried. Had Giselle suffered because of Milo’s illusions?

“That poor girl,” Cath said softly, glancing over Trucker’s shoulder at the photograph. “So gorgeous … and so unhappy, taking her own life …”

The cellar door flew open and slammed violently against the wall.

T
HE SLAMMING OF THE
door stirred them all to action. While Trucker closed the cellar door and latched it, everyone else gathered together books and papers, windbreakers, and hooded sweatshirts against the weather, and straggled out of the house.

Between classes, Jess grabbed a sandwich in the student café with Linda. Conversation centered around the Fall Ball. It was a relief to forget about what was going on at the house and concentrate on something else.

“Milo hasn’t asked me yet,” Linda said gloomily. “I don’t think he’s going to. He’s so darn
shy.
”

“Well, I can’t quite see Milo in a tux,” Jess remarked. She couldn’t see Milo at a dance, either, for that matter. He seemed so antisocial.

“Oh, I can! He’d be gorgeous!”

Jess shrugged. “Maybe if he did something with that hair and that beard … like trimming them, for instance.”

“I like his hair. I think he looks cool, artistic.”

Artistic, Jess thought. Had Milo ever used a black marker in his artistic efforts? As in defacing a photograph? He had said that he and Giselle stopped being friends in high school. But he’d never said that was
okay
with him.

Maybe it hadn’t been.

When Jess got home, Nightingale Hall looked even more forbidding than usual in the persistent fog and drizzle.

I don’t really want to go in there, she thought, staring up at the dark brick structure.

But where else was there to go? She’d stalled on campus as long as possible, reading in the library. But she hadn’t wanted to walk home alone after dark, so she had finally gathered her things together and walked, slowly, home.

Maybe everyone else would leave tonight and she could hunt for the rest of Giselle’s letters. Where would they be, she wondered.

And that was when it occurred to Jess that maybe she wasn’t the
only
person anxious to get her hands on those letters. Cath’s missing paper, Linda’s ruined bathing suit, the worms in her dresser drawer … what if … what if those were just smoke screens? What if they were just stupid pranks designed to cover up the fact that someone had actually been
hunting
for something in those rooms?

Something like … letters to a dead girl, letters that might be too revealing if they were discovered.

You are
so
melodramatic, she chided herself, shaking her head. You should have been an actress. The letters probably aren’t even
here.

But … maybe someone
thought
they were.

It couldn’t hurt to look for them. If she found them, they might answer some of her questions about Giselle.

Ian was in the kitchen, alone. He helped her remove her soggy windbreaker and handed her a cup of steaming hot chocolate. “Nasty out there. How come you’re late?”

“I was at the library. Research.” She didn’t add that she intended to do a different kind of research the minute she had an opportunity. He wouldn’t understand her need to hunt for the letters.

They sat at the table, sipping silently in the dreary kitchen. Dozens of questions swirled around in Jess’s mind, but she didn’t share them with Ian. He’d think she was being silly. Hadn’t he said, “The girl is dead,” and told her to forget about it?

But she couldn’t do that. Jess wondered if Ian noticed the change in her mood toward him.

“So, did you toss that stuff?” he asked. He was wearing a thick white sweater, sleeves pushed to the elbows, and his high, angled cheekbones were wind-burnished, like hers. His dark eyes remained on her face as he said, “The picture and that letter? Did you dump them?”

“No. Not yet.” Immediately, she regretted the admission. If someone
was
looking for the letters, maybe she should be pretending she’d tossed the one she’d found into the trash. And maybe … her stomach stirred uneasily … maybe she had made a mega-major mistake sharing the letter and photo at breakfast. If someone really
was
determined to find the missing letters, and
if
that person was one of her housemates … Who else would have access to their rooms … ? Maybe she should have kept her big mouth shut this morning.

Too late now.

“Jess, that’s old news,” Ian said, his voice unusually fierce. “What are you hanging onto that stuff for?”

“Actually,” she said nonchalantly, “I think I left it somewhere on campus. So, I guess that’s not really hanging on to it, right?”

“Oh. Well, good. There’s something really morbid about carrying around a picture of a dead girl and one of her letters.”

True. But then, there was something really morbid about the girl having died in the first place, wasn’t there? Especially when there seemed to be some mystery about
why
she’d died.

The weather kept everyone inside, giving Jess no chance to hunt for the letters.

When Linda absolutely refused to stay in her room alone, saying staunchly, “There is safety in numbers,” they all settled in the living room. Trucker built a generous fire in the stone fireplace, and the room quickly warmed.

Milo and Linda settled on the Persian rug near the blazing orange and yellow flames, while Jess and Cath plopped themselves down on the sofa and Trucker, Jon, and Ian occupied chairs scattered about the huge room.