Captives (Nightmare Hall) Read Free Page B

beam, steadily growing dimmer, revealed only dripping trees and bushes. “Not yet. Let’s just listen for a minute. It’s probably a raccoon or a squirrel.”
    “It’s just so dark,” Toni said, her voice quavering slightly. “They don’t have bears around here, do they?”
    Even Lynne blinked. “Bears?” She waved the flashlight more aggressively, playing it in a circle around them. She had just completed the circle when the pale yellow beam blinked out.
    Toni gasped, and Daisy said, “Oh, great. I don’t suppose anyone happens to be carrying extra flashlight batteries, do they?”
    This time, the sound, still above them, was louder. They could hear it clearly over the rain beating down upon the trees and bushes and leaf-covered ground.
    Someone or something was up there.
    “That did not sound like a raccoon,” Molloy whispered, one hand reaching out to clutch the sleeve of Daisy’s windbreaker. “And if it was someone looking for us, they’d be calling out to see if we were in here.”
    “Let’s go back down,” Toni said, her words rushing together with urgency. “Come on, it’ll be easier going downhill. We’ll go back to the car and wait there for someone to find us.”
    “I’m too tired to turn around now.” Lynne shook the flashlight vigorously, but it refused to come back to life. “Besides, that road is probably an ocean by now. And do you really want to tackle that creek again? I don’t. We’re almost to the top, and there’s a house up there. I can see it. A nice, warm, cozy house, with a telephone. Come on, guys, don’t wimp out on me now. There are four of us and we don’t even know what’s making that noise. It could be a raccoon. A big one.”
    “I’m with Lynne,” Molloy said. “I am soaked to the bone, I’m cold, my legs feel like rubber from all this climbing, and I can’t face that creek again. Come on, girls, we are women, hear us roar. Whatever that is up there, we can deal with it, right?”
    “Absolutely right,” Daisy said, turning to face the top of the hill.
    “Well, I’m not going back down by myself,” Toni said grudgingly. “If you’re all going up, I’m coming, too. But could we please stay very close together, now that we don’t have any light at all?”
    They had all turned toward the top of the hill and joined hands, when they heard a rumbling sound above them. It sounded a little like a large truck moving across the ground,
    “What …?” Lynne began, but before she could finish the thought, the deep grumble became an ominous thundering, and the earth seemed to shake beneath their feet.
    The boulder came at them from above, shooting out of the thick, dark underbrush like a cannonball, aiming straight at the group holding hands on the muddy, slippery slope.

Chapter 5
    T HE HUGE BOULDER THUNDERED down the hill toward them, spraying mud and leaves in its path. Too paralyzed with fear to move, the four girls, still clutching hands and stricken mute with shock, formed a petrified human chain directly in its path.
    It was Molloy who screamed, “Move out of the way!”
    The sound of her voice spurred them to action. Hands tore free of other hands, bodies flew to the left and to the right, voices cried out in pain as a leg slammed into a fallen log, an elbow cracked against a stone on the ground.
    The boulder, which Daisy would describe later with her usual hyperbole as being “the size of a small house,” thundered on down the hill, past them, landing, finally, in the creek far below them with a splash that resounded through the woods.
    Molloy, weak with relief, lay sprawled on the spongy ground, her head against the rough bark of a fallen tree. She could already feel a lump beginning to rise on the back of her skull. But a lump was nothing in comparison to being squashed flatter than a pancake by a giant rock,
    Lynne, holding her left elbow, was lying right beside Molloy. Her face was twisted in pain. “I think it might be broken,” she told