Free The Coffin (Nightmare Hall) by Diane Hoh

“How do you know all that? I didn’t know it.”
    “A friend of Sills, Sunshine Mooney, is the housemother at Lindy’s sorority house.” Lindy was Vince’s current girlfriend. “Lindy says Sunshine talks about her friend Silly a lot: where they’re going on vacation together, how when Sunshine retires she’s going to move into Silly’s apartment complex, that kind of stuff. I picked up on the name ‘Silly’, thought it was funny, and that’s when Lindy told me it was Tanner’s housekeeper and her real name was Mavis Sills.” Vince grinned. “Now there’s a pair of names for you, Sunshine and Silly. Sounds like a comedy act, doesn’t it?”
    “There!” Sandy told Charlie emphatically, “now you don’t have to waste time calling Butler Hall. You can call the housekeeper and find out why Tanner left.”
    “She didn’t leave!” Charlie, dark eyes blazing, fairly bit off the words. “How many times do I have to say it?”
    Chagrined, Sandy mumbled, “Sorry. I meant, you can ask her where Tanner is.”
    But there was no answer at the housekeeper’s apartment. Charlie let the phone ring a dozen times, refusing to give up until Jodie urged gently, “Charlie, give it up, she’s not there. Come on! We’ll try something else.”
    They were all clustered around one of the pay phones in Lester’s lobby. “Why don’t we just hike on over to Tanner’s?” Philip suggested. “Maybe the housekeeper is already there. That could be why she isn’t answering at her place, Charlie.”
    Charlie quickly dialed the Leo home. “If Silly is there, why isn’t she answering?” he asked a moment later when, again, there was no response to the insistent ringing.
    “She could still be on her way,” Sandy said.
    Giving up, Charlie hung up the phone.
    “Let’s go over there,” Jodie said eagerly. “Silly will be there by then, and Tanner could be there, too. Maybe she stayed with someone else last night, although you’d think she’d call her best friends first, wouldn’t you? But let’s face it, Tanner has lots of friends to choose from.”
    “Well, let’s just go find out,” Charlie said, and led the way out of the building.
    But, though they rang the front doorbell at Tanner’s house, then went around to the back and pounded on the back door, and then circled the house on the outside, going from room to room and rapping on the outside of every window they could reach, the big brick house showed no signs of life.
    It was as still, as silent, as death.

Chapter 9
    T ANNER, IMPRISONED IN THE tall, dark narrow box, was completely unaware that morning of Charlie’s arrival. She couldn’t see the surveillance screens, couldn’t hear the insistent doorbell or the pounding on wood or rapping on glass. Her friends came and went without her knowledge.
    Tanner was aware only of the narrow confines of her tiny cell. Because the hastily constructed booth was not soundproof like the music room, she did hear her captor leave, heard him close and lock the door.
    Before she’d been angry, upset, and yes, afraid. Now she was desperate. There was barely enough room in the box to lift her arms from her sides, let alone turn around and face front. Even if she did manage to turn around, the door was barred against her. Hadn’t she heard, very clearly, the thick chunk of wood being twisted into place? There was no mistaking that sound. She was locked into this terrible place, like an animal in a cage. Worse. Cages had bars, and you could see out.
    Although there was air inside what Tanner had come to think of as “the coffin,” she knew it would quickly grow stale. It was already stuffy. Beads of sweat began to gather on her forehead, clinging to her hair. The smell of fresh-cut lumber was giving her a headache.
    It was dark, but there were tiny pinpricks of light slipping in between narrow gaps in the boards. There were more, larger gaps at the corners, where the walls had been joined.
    Tanner tried to peer through one