Down a Dark Hall Page 5

  “They wouldn’t believe me either,” Kit said quietly.

  “You?” Sandy stared at her.

  “After my father was killed. Except I never thought of that as a dream. He was there in my room, really there. I know he was.”

  For a moment they sat in silence, gazing at each other. Sandy’s eyes were huge in her thin face and the freckles stood out like polka dots against her pale skin. Kit was trembling, and this time it was not from cold.

  “What does it mean?” Sandy asked finally. “It can’t be coincidence. The two of us both having had experiences like that. And tonight—the locked door, the woman by my bed…”

  “I don’t know what it means,” Kit said. “But I’ll tell you one thing. I’m going to find out.”

  They spent the rest of the night in Kit’s room. They did not talk, but Kit was too keyed up to sleep, and she could tell by the sound of her breathing that Sandy was awake also, lying still and tense in the bed beside her. Only when the first flush of dawn lightened the sky beyond the window did she finally doze off, and when she again opened her eyes she found that it was well past eight o’clock and Sandy was no longer in the room. She got up and dressed and went down to the dining room to breakfast. Ruth and Lynda were there, finishing plates of eggs and toast.

  “Sandy was here a few minutes ago,” Ruth answered Kit’s unspoken question. “She said she wasn’t hungry, she just wanted some coffee, and that she had an early class scheduled with Professor Farley. I guess he’s giving her some help in algebra.”

  “How did she look?” Kit asked.

  “Awful,” Lynda told her. “I thought maybe she was coming down with something. There were bags under her eyes and she looked exhausted. Come to think of it, you don’t look so great yourself.” She regarded Kit quizzically. “Is there some sort of flu making the rounds at Blackwood?”

  “Not that I know of,” Kit said. “We were both up most of the night. Sandy had a dream and woke up screaming, and I was in with her for a while, and then she came back to my room. Didn’t you hear us? Between her yelling and my banging on the door, we could have woken the dead.”

  Despite herself, she gave a little shiver at her choice of words.

  “I didn’t hear a thing,” Lynda said. “Did you, Ruth?”

  “I might have,” the dark-haired girl said. “I had a restless night, so maybe I kind of half-consciously woke up. I’ve been doing a lot of dreaming myself lately.”

  “You have?” Kit froze at the statement. “What sort of dreams?”

  “I don’t know,” Ruth said with a shrug. “I don’t remember them when I wake up. I just have this feeling in the morning that I’ve been at it all night.”

  “I know what you mean,” Lynda said. “When that alarm goes off, sometimes I can hardly make myself get up.”

  “Well, at least let’s get up from the table.” Ruth consulted her watch. “We’ve got literature with Madame in just a couple of minutes. What’s on your schedule this morning, Kit?”

  “Music,” Kit told her.

  “Jules all to yourself? Lucky you!” Lynda giggled and tossed her blond curls. “If I’d known there would be a teacher like him, I’d have signed up for piano lessons too. As it is, I can’t even get him to look at me.”

  “He does seem to be the silent type,” Ruth agreed. “I get the impression he’s dedicated to his work. Not that I’m that interested.”

  “Well, I am,” Lynda said. “After all, he’s probably the only man we’re going to see between now and Christmas vacation. That is, unless you count Professor Farley.”

  The door to the kitchen opened and Natalie came in with a pot of coffee. She nodded a curt good morning, but her face softened a little when she saw Kit.

  “Morning, miss,” she said. “Can I fix you some breakfast?”

  “No thanks, Natalie,” Kit said. “I’m not hungry this morning.”

  Natalie set the coffeepot on the table.

  “You should eat something,” she said. “You’re getting skinny.”

  The aroma of the coffee rose in a cloud, and Kit, who normally found the odor enticing, felt her stomach lurch with a wave of nausea.

  “There’s no time for it now,” she said. “I’m running late. I’ll make up for it at lunchtime.” With a nod of farewell to the girls, she left the room.

  Jules Duret was waiting for her in the music room. He was wearing a pale blue shirt, open at the throat, and a pair of dark fitted jeans. He was seated in a chair by the window, and a musical score lay open on his lap, but he did not seem to be reading it. He had the air of someone who had been waiting for a long time.

  He glanced up as Kit came in, his face solemn.

  “You’re late,” he said by way of greeting. “I’d almost given up on you.”

  “I’m sorry,” Kit said. “I didn’t sleep well last night, and I overslept this morning.”

  It was hard to think of this handsome young man as a teacher. He appeared hardly older than the boys she had hung out with in public school, and his dark good looks made him far more attractive than the best of them. Still, there was a quality of reserve about him that made communication difficult, and Kit, who was usually as comfortable with boys as she was with girls, found herself fighting a vague feeling of unease in his presence.

  “Have you been practicing?” Jules asked now. “Sit down and let me hear how far you’ve come. Let’s warm up with some scales before we get to the actual pieces.”

  Kit obediently took her place on the piano bench. She placed her hands on the keys. To her surprise, she found that her fingers were stiff and sore, as though she had already been playing for hours.

  “Jules?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “I—I just don’t think I want to play this morning.” Kit took her hands from the keys and let them fall into her lap. I’m tired, she thought, I’m so terribly tired, and I’m scared, and I need somebody to talk to. I need a friend.

  She raised her eyes to meet the dark, intense gaze of the young man across from her. Was Jules Duret a friend? For all she knew, he might not even like her. Yet who else was there to talk to? Sandy was as upset as she was, and Lynda and Ruth were no help.

  “Can we talk for a few minutes,” she asked in a thin voice, “instead of having a lesson?”

  “Talk?” Jules’ eyes seemed to narrow slightly. “About what?”

  “Blackwood.”

  “What about Blackwood?”

  “I don’t know,” Kit said. “That’s just it—I don’t know. There’s something odd about Blackwood, something sinister. All of us feel it, but it’s almost impossible to put it into words. Things have been happening.”

  “What do you mean?” Jules asked with interest.

  “Well, for one thing, we’ve all been having dreams. Sandy dreamed last night that someone was in her room. She cried out, and I heard her and went down the hall to find out what was wrong. Her door was locked.”

  “It couldn’t have been,” Jules said. “The doors don’t lock from the inside.”

  “Why don’t they?” Kit asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just that. Why don’t they lock from the inside the way other doors do? Your mother said that she’d had the locks put on the doors to assure us of privacy, but how can you have privacy if you can’t lock up when you’re in a room?”

  “You can lock up when you go out of a room,” Jules said. “So that no one can get into your things while you’re gone.”

  “I’m not worried about that,” Kit said. “I bet all the other girls will have laptops too, and other than that, I don’t have anything sitting around in there valuable enough for someone to want to steal. But I would like to be able to lock the door when I’m inside. And last night, Sandy’s door was locked. I tried the knob. And then, suddenly, it did come open as though somebody had released it.”

  “Then it wasn’t locked,” Jules said with certainty. “It must just have been stuck. I’ll see about putting
some oil on those latches. Which room did you say it was?”

  Kit regarded him with frustration. “Weren’t you listening at all? I’m not asking you to oil Sandy’s lock. What I’m trying to tell you is that something weird is happening here at Blackwood. There was somebody in Sandy’s room last night. A woman. I know it sounds crazy, but Sandy saw her with her own eyes!”

  “She was dreaming,” Jules said. “You just finished saying yourself that all of you are doing a lot of that. It’s nothing to be concerned about. It often happens to people who are away from home for the first time, under the strain of meeting new people and adjusting to new surroundings.”

  He paused, and then in a lower voice asked, “Did she say anything—the woman in Sandy’s room?”

  Kit was surprised at the question. “Why do you ask that?”

  “Well . . . just to get the end of the story.”

  “I don’t think she did. At least, Sandy didn’t tell me so. What do you care if you’re so sure it was a dream?”

  “Sandy reacted by screaming,” Jules said. “I thought perhaps it was at something the woman had said to her.”

  “She was frightened,” Kit told him, “simply by the fact that the woman was there. Can’t you imagine what it would be like to wake up in a room where you thought you were all by yourself and find somebody standing by your bed, looking down at you? And the cold—I felt that myself. When I went into the room this great wave of cold air came sweeping over me, and Sandy was blue with it. When I touched her hand, it was like ice.”

  “Look, Kit,” Jules said, “there just couldn’t have been a stranger in Sandy’s room. How could she have gotten there? The gates to Blackwood are always locked at night, and so is the building itself. Nobody is going to climb straight up a wall to come in a window. And even supposing that was possible, how did she get out again so quickly when you came bursting in the door? Did she have wings?”

  “The locked door—the cold air—”

  “I told you, the door was undoubtedly stuck. And, of course, the air in Sandy’s room was going to be colder than the air in the hallway. She probably had her window open.”

  Jules leaned over and put his hand on Kit’s. It was a nice hand, warm and strong with long, fine fingers, and it felt good upon hers.

  His voice was suddenly gentle. “Blackwood is an old mansion, magnificent, of course, but heavy with atmosphere. Old places are inclined to be that way. You have to get used to this place gradually. I had some dreams myself the first week or so after we came here.”

  “You did?” Kit asked, surprised.

  “Sure. What would you expect? I’m not used to living in a place like Blackwood. I’m fresh out of music school. I’ve been living in an apartment with a couple of other guys. I’ve spent my vacations with my mother at her various schools, but other than that I’ve pretty much lived my own life. When she wrote and asked if I would come to America with her to teach in her new school, I wasn’t too sure I wanted to. Then she told me more about the school—how special it would be and the kind of students she would have here—and I decided to give it a try.

  “When I got my first glimpse of Blackwood, I couldn’t believe it. I still don’t know how my mother was able to locate such a spot. The place has its own vibes. You just have to get used to them.”

  “And you’re used to them now?” Kit asked him.

  “I like them. I feel—different here. I play better. I appreciate things more.”

  “Do you still dream?”

  “Well, yeah. Some. Everybody dreams.”

  “Jules.” Kit tried to smile at him. “You make everything sound so sensible and normal. You must think I’m an idiot.”

  “I don’t think that at all,” Jules said quietly. “I think you’re smart. And pretty. Sometimes I wish that I’d met you somewhere else, under another set of circumstances. That I wasn’t your teacher. But—” He gave her hand a quick squeeze and released it, “we’ll just have to take things as they are. And the way they are right now, we’ve wasted half the class period chattering. Are you ready to play for me?”

  “As ready as I’ll ever be,” Kit said with a sigh. “I probably have as little talent as anyone you’ll ever have as a student. Don’t you get bored listening to me plow through pieces like ‘Happy Leaves’ and ‘Swinging on the Gate’?”

  “I don’t get bored,” Jules told her. Then, after a pause, he lowered his voice. “You do have talent, Kit. Maybe someday you’ll realize how much. There are all sorts of talents in the world, and only one of them is music.”

  “Hey, Kit, guess what? I drew your portrait!” Lynda stood in the entrance to the parlor, holding a sheet of paper against her chest.

  “You did?” Kit glanced up from her book. “Let’s have a look.”

  The girls generally gathered in the parlor during the hour before dinner. It was a pleasant spot, well-lit and with comfortable furnishings, and a good deal more modern than the rest of the rooms at Blackwood. Usually they chatted or watched TV, but tonight no one seemed to be in a talkative mood. Kit and Ruth had been reading, and Sandy was over at the card table in the corner, dealing out a game of solitaire.

  Now, with Lynda’s entrance, they all looked up from their activities. There was something about Lynda’s bright prettiness that lit up any room, and at this moment she looked so innocently pleased with herself that Kit found herself smiling.

  “Come on, let’s see it. I didn’t know you were an artist.”

  “I didn’t either,” Lynda said, handing her the paper. “I really surprised myself.”

  Kit held the sketch out in front of her in a joking manner and then caught her breath in amazement. “Wow! It is of me!”

  “I told you it was.” Lynda perched on the arm of her chair. “Do you like it?”

  “Like it!” Kit exclaimed. “It’s—it’s—incredible. I mean it, honestly. Lynda, you’re amazing!”

  “This I’ve got to see.” Ruth got up from the couch and came over to stand behind them. She was silent a moment and then said, “You couldn’t have drawn that, Lynda. You must have traced it or something.”

  “I didn’t,” Lynda said in a hurt voice. “I just sat down and drew it. I’d been taking a nap, and I woke up, and all of a sudden I wanted to draw a picture. I went over to the desk and got a pencil and a sheet of paper and sat down and did it, just like that. And the weird thing is, I didn’t even know who it was going to be until it started to look like Kit, and then suddenly it was Kit.”

  “But you’ve never done any drawing before,” Ruth said skeptically. “You never took art classes in school. This sketch—well, it’s expert. The eyes have that direct, kind of challenging look that Kit’s do, and the mouth, the chin—​everything—it’s Kit, all over. It’s absolutely professional.”

  By this time Sandy too had come over and was studying the picture.

  “You’re right,” she said. “It’s really good. Would you do one of me, Lynda? I’d like to send it to my grandparents. I bet they’d frame it.”

  “Sure,” Lynda said happily. “Now that I’ve got the knack of how to do this, I’ll draw everybody. Next I think I’ll do Madame Duret with her eyes kind of boring right into you, the way they do. Or maybe Jules. Would anybody like a picture of him?”

  “You’ll have to scan that one,” Kit said with a laugh. “We’re all going to want a printout. And one of Professor Farley stroking his beard—”

  “Did I hear my name mentioned?” The professor’s deep voice broke into the conversation. He stood framed in the doorway, smiling in his friendly way. “Let me in on the joke. I was drawn by the laughter.”

  “I was drawn too,” Kit said, “but in my case, it was by a pencil.” She turned the picture so that he could see it.

  “Look what Lynda did. Isn’t that something?”

  “It is, indeed.” Professor Farley came slowly into the room to stand, gazing down at the penciled portrait. “That’s an excellent piece of work, Lynda. Have you studied art
for a long time?”

  “I’ve never studied it at all,” Lynda told him. “In fact, the only drawing I’ve ever done was during a party once when we were all supposed to draw each other and then have people guess who the pictures were. I drew Ruth, and won the prize for last place!”

  “Well, you’ve surely improved since then,” Professor Farley said admiringly. “I’m going to mention this to Madame Duret. She likes to encourage talent in our young people. I’m sure she will provide you with art supplies that will allow you to express yourself better than you can with a pencil.”

  “Can I keep this?” Kit asked, and Lynda nodded, pleased.

  “Of course. I’m glad you like it enough to want it. And I will do you, Sandy, and you too, Ruth, if you want me to. Or do you still believe that I traced it?”

  “No,” Ruth said apologetically. “I know you wouldn’t lie to me. Besides, what could you possibly have traced it from? I’m sorry if I doubted you. It’s just that we’ve known each other so long, and to suddenly discover that you’re a natural artist—it’s just a shock. It’s like I don’t really know you at all.”

  “You know me better than anybody,” Lynda said fondly. “I’d never have made it through at that last boarding school if it hadn’t been for you. Like I said, I’m just as surprised myself.”

  “Five minutes till dinner,” Kit said, glancing at her watch. “I’m going to run upstairs and put this picture in my room before something happens to it. The way we’re passing it around, it’s going to be nothing but one big smudge.”

  The soft glow of twilight lit the stained-glass window at the end of the hall with a gentle radiance that made the hallway itself appear like the center aisle of a cathedral. At a moment like this, Kit thought as she walked down it, I can almost believe that all the creepiness has been in my imagination.

  She reached the door of her room and opened it and went in. She flicked on the study light and laid the pencil portrait on the desk.

  For a long moment she stood there, gazing down at it. It was not an intricate sketch; the lines were pure and simple, and yet it caught something beyond a surface likeness.