Captives (Nightmare Hall) Read Free Page A

sliding down the glass.
    Maybe that was why Molloy was late. Lynne was driving a car she’d hardly driven at all and with the roads so bad, they’d probably decided to take their time. Hadn’t Banion said something earlier on the radio about the highway between school and Twin Falls being flooded? Closed down temporarily? Lynne would have had to come that way from Briscoe. So maybe they’d stopped somewhere. That would have been smart. Waiting it out, until the rain let up.
    Ernie went to the phone in the hall to check the time. His watch could be wrong. “The time is now eight-thirty-two p.m., Daylight Savings Time,” a smooth voice assured him.
    He should have been paying attention, instead of getting so totally lost in his writing. It was a short story for his comp class, due Monday, and it was almost done. He hadn’t realized how much time had passed since he first sat down in front of the word processor.
    “Aren’t you sick and tired of being poor?” his mother had said when he told her he wanted to become a writer. But his father, the person Ernie had expected to really be disappointed that he wasn’t shooting for lawyer or doctor or scientist, had said, “If that’s what you want, son, go for it. I can’t help you out much, you know that, but if you want it bad enough, you’ll get it yourself.”
    And although Molloy’s father had said scornfully, “A writer? Aren’t you going to get a real job?,” Molloy herself had said, “Great! Reading is one of my favorite things and now I won’t have to buy the books, you can just write some for me.” As if she didn’t have the slightest doubt that if he wanted to be a writer, he would be.
    But he wondered how she’d feel if he confessed that he hadn’t even known she was two and a half hours late because he’d been busy writing.
    I should do something, he told himself, beginning to pace back and forth in the small room. But what?
    Call Molloy’s house, see if she’d left when she said she was going to? If the weather was as bad in Briscoe as it was here, maybe they’d postponed their trip until tomorrow.
    No. She would have called him. She knew how he hated calling her house. She wouldn’t make him do that if she could help it. If they’d started out and hadn’t been able to get through or had decided to wait it out somewhere, she’d have called.
    Unless the telephone lines were down where she was. A distinct possibility.
    Ernie hurried out into the hall again and lifted the receiver off the wall phone. It was still working, although there was a lot of static.
    Ernie replaced the receiver and went back into his room. Just because the phones on campus were working, that didn’t mean all the phones in the area were.
    He tried to relax, and couldn’t. The bad news about Dr. Leo had unsettled him, made his skin crawl. Bad things happened. Even to important people like Dr. Leo. He’d made someone mad and that someone had killed him.
    So bad things could happen to Ernie Dodd, too. Already had, more than once. But the very worst thing that he could think of was something bad happening to Molloy Crandall Book. That, he couldn’t deal with. No way.
    She was probably fine.
    Of course, she was fine.
    She had to be.

Chapter 4
    “W HAT WAS THAT?” LYNNE whispered to the three girls flanking her. They stood as still as statues on the mud-slicked slope, listening to see if the rustling in the woods above them came again. They had been glad to leave the ditched car, but they hadn’t expected the woods to be so dark.
    “Maybe it’s someone looking for us,” Toni said, her eyes searching the crest of the hill.
    “They wouldn’t be looking here,” Daisy said. “Why would they be looking for us in the woods? We’re supposed to be on the highway!”
    “Maybe someone found the car in the ditch, and figured out that we hiked up the hill,” Molloy suggested. “Should we call out or something?”
    “No.” Lynn waved the flashlight around, but the