Free The Coffin (Nightmare Hall) by Diane Hoh Page B

fast, your head will spin. And you’ll stay there until your hair turns gray. Come on out of there.”
    Tanner, her legs stiff, stepped out.
    “You’re lucky you’re alone in the house,” he said. “If there were lots of people here, they’d all hammer on The Booth when they walked by, and kick at it and yell things, so you’d never be able to sleep, even though that’s what you want to do more than anything, to make the time go faster.”
    Tanner was wallowing in the bitter truth that none of this was a dream. No nightmare, after all. She hadn’t fallen asleep on her bed upstairs. It had all happened, every last horrible second of it. And it was still happening. “It was bad enough without any noise,” she said. She was so glad to be out of that horrible box, she almost felt grateful to him. She had to remind herself that he was the one who had put her in there in the first place.
    Her teeth felt gritty, her hair was a mass of tangles, and she yearned desperately for a shower and clean clothes. Maybe, if she did everything he told her to, she could talk him into letting her go upstairs alone for half an hour.
    How long was he planning on holding her here? Where was Silly? And why hadn’t Charlie come back, looking for her?
    “You can call me Sigmund,” her jailer said abruptly, as if she’d asked his name. “Just Sigmund.”
    “Sigmund?” When she was very young, her mother had called her father that when she was mad at him. Her voice had been sharp and sarcastic. “As in Freud?” Tanner asked just as sharply.
    “As in Sigmund.” He took her elbow, gripping it firmly, and led her out of the music room and down the hall to the empty kitchen.
    I don’t want to call him anything, Tanner thought, glancing quickly around the kitchen for some sign of Silly, and finding none. I don’t want him here long enough to have to give him a name.
    If she could only get a grip on what was happening. But it was all so unbelievable, so Twilight-Zonish. She was trapped inside some crazy video game, except that someone else had the controls.
    “You now have four minutes,” he said. “Why don’t you have a nice bowl of ice cream?”
    Out of the music room for the first time, Tanner was much more interested in escape than in food, although her stomach was pleading otherwise. This could be her only chance to get away.
    If she went with him to the freezer for ice cream, if she maneuvered her position on the porch cleverly enough, she just might be able to race out the back door and scream for help before he could grab her.
    It was worth a try. She had to get away from him. Out of this house and away from him.
    “Ice cream sounds good,” she agreed, and went to the cupboard to get a bowl, then to the silverware drawer for a spoon and a metal scoop.
    “I want some, too,” he said, sounding offended, and followed her steps to collect his own bowl and spoon. “It’s your favorite, strawberry ripple.”
    Tanner paused halfway between the sink and the kitchen table. “How do you know?” she asked, conscious of a new uneasiness beginning to slide up her spine.
    “What?”
    “How do you know what kind of ice cream Silly bought?”
    “Oh. I … I saw the note she left, and I checked to see what kind she got. Just curious, that’s all.”
    Which would have made sense, except for one thing. Tanner had pocketed the note from Silly. She had come home, read the note, and put it in the pocket of her sweatpants. It was still there, slightly the worse for wear.
    So, if he’d come into the house after Tanner got home, he couldn’t possibly have seen Silly’s note.
    Then … how did he know that Silly had bought ice cream, and what flavor it was?
    Had he already been in the house when Tanner arrived? Hiding? Waiting?
    It was then that Tanner realized exactly what part of the note had bothered her, the thing that had been niggling at some small part of her brain ever since she’d read it. It was the signature. “Mavis.”