Free Deadly Visions (Nightmare Hall) by Diane Hoh

brilliant as Aidan’s eyes. The very same shade of blue that had pulled her to the seascape in the first place.
    Below that, on the pocket, a round, uneven circle of the color that Samantha had called “mauve” in the still life. Next to it a slash of lavender and underneath that a blob of cornflower blue. All of the colors found in the still life.
    Still wearing Aidan’s smock, Rachel bent down to finger quickly through the rest of the mound, scrutinizing each of the remaining smocks for paint stains the same shades as those on the smock she was wearing.
    No other smock bore those same telltale shades. Only Aidan’s.
    Rachel stood up, hugging the smock around her. Aidan hadn’t painted those two paintings. He hadn’t. He would have said, if he’d painted them.
    Well, no, Rachel, the voice in her head said, I don’t believe he would have. Because whoever painted those particular works of art is up to no good, right? Isn’t that why you’re here? Because you believe that whoever painted those paintings also pushed Ted Leonides into the river and Milo Keith down the fire escape? Just like in your nightmares? So how likely is it that the artist of those two works would admit to having painted them? Use your head.
    Rachel looked down at the splotches on the front of the smock. Aidan? No, he couldn’t have painted those pictures. He didn’t even like them. At least … he’d said he didn’t like them. And had sounded like he meant it.
    Her purse, which she’d deposited on the floor of the storage closet when she tried on the smock, was a large, roomy brown shoulder bag. Rachel removed the smock, rolled it up into as small a ball as possible and thrust it into the purse. She had no idea what she was going to do with it, but she knew she couldn’t leave it there. It told her something, although she wasn’t sure exactly what.
    When Aidan noticed it was missing, he’d have no reason to connect the disappearance to her.
    Rachel slung the purse over her shoulder and turned to walk back to the door of the closet.
    She was almost there when she noticed a stack of canvases, piled on top of each other, on a high shelf just ahead of her. If they were signed, she might get some idea of each person’s particular style, even with her limited art knowledge. Maybe she could figure out for herself who had painted the seascape and the still life.
    But the shelf was too far up for her to reach.
    Rachel glanced around. There was no ladder. How did they get stuff down from that shelf? Maybe there was a ladder somewhere else. But she didn’t want to waste time looking.
    Instead, she pulled half a dozen unopened cardboard boxes off the shelves and piled them on top of one another, creating her own “ladder.” Dropping her purse on the floor and using a lower shelf as a stepping stool, she climbed onto the box pyramid, stood up, and grasping the edge of the top shelf with one hand, reached upward with the other arm to pull a canvas forward.
    The top canvas was a charcoal sketch of Butler Hall, the administration building. She turned it over, the boxes teetering precariously beneath her. The initials on the back were S. W. Samantha. The drawing bore no resemblance to either of the oil paintings.
    Rachel slid it back into place and was about to pull the second canvas toward her when she heard a noise at the door and then a scuffling sound below her.
    Before she could look down, a voice whispered harshly, “Gotcha!” a forceful blow hit the middle cardboard box, and Rachel’s ladder collapsed beneath her.
    She had her right hand on a canvas as her tower of boxes gave way; her left hand clutched one of the shelves. Crying out in surprise and fear, she dangled, legs waving frantically, for just a second or two, struggling to maintain her hold on the shelf.
    She dropped the canvas and would have grasped the shelf with her right hand, too, but it was too late. The fingers on her left hand were already sliding off the shelf. With a