Free Captives (Nightmare Hall) by Diane Hoh Page B

from the inside and pocketed the keys so we couldn’t open them. And then, with the house locked up tighter than a penitentiary, he was magically transported out of here.”
    Molloy sagged against the sink. “Sorry. I was just trying …”
    “You were just trying to deny the truth.” Daisy’s tone softened. “I don’t blame you. I was doing the same thing when I insisted that no one was in here but us.” She glanced around the long, narrow, dim kitchen again, her eyes revealing raw fear now. “But someone is, Molloy! And for some crazy reason, he’s trapped us in here with him!”
    They were too bewildered to think straight. They stumbled to the round, wooden kitchen table at one end of the room and sank into chairs.
    “What are we going to do?” Molloy said. She wasn’t asking a question, and didn’t really expect an answer. She knew Daisy was as stunned as she was. First Lynne, with that horrible wound on the side of her head, curled up inside the trunk as if she were already dead, and now this! Trapped in a horrible old house with no way out.
    No, that wasn’t right. That couldn’t be right. Of course there was a way out. There had to be. “We’ll just have to find another way out, that’s all. He couldn’t have nailed all of the windows shut. He didn’t have time.”
    Daisy disagreed. “One big, fat nail, one hammer, one blow, presto, the bottom of the window frame is nailed to the windowsill and won’t open. How long could it take? It’s not like he had to do the upstairs windows. Who’s going to jump out of a second-story window?”
    But Molloy insisted they quickly check all of the first-floor windows. “If you’re right, and they’re all nailed shut, we’ll just have to break one,” she said. They had taken to talking in whispers. It seemed safer. “Then one of us has to go for help, and the other one has to get back upstairs to Lynne and Toni.”
    They were checking the last room, the bedroom off the kitchen, when each of them found something.
    The room had no windows, and they would have turned and left quickly. But Molloy decided a coat or jacket would be helpful when one of them went out into the rain, and she opened what she thought was a closet door. Instead she found a staircase.
    Daisy had her back turned, in the process of finding another pair of dry socks. She heard Molloy’s gasp of discovery and whirled around, her face suffused with fear. “What? What’s wrong?” Then, taking a step forward, “What is that?”
    “It’s the back staircase we talked about,” Molloy said, holding the door open and peering up into the shadowed tunnel. “It was right here all along.” She stared at Daisy, her eyes wide with discovery. “This is how he did it. This room is right off the kitchen. He came in the back way when we were up front in the library and carried Lynne up these stairs. He’s probably been going up and down it, going in and out, the whole time we’ve been in here.” Her eyes were huge with dismay. “Maybe even listening to us, watching us …” Tears of terror trembled on her eyelashes. “Oh, Daisy, he must have been so close! And we didn’t even know it.”
    “Close it!” Daisy demanded, and lunged for the door, slamming it shut. “Lock it!”
    Molloy stared down at the doorknob. “It doesn’t lock. There’s no lock. But …” she lifted her head, “we can put something against it. Something heavy. So he can’t use the staircase anymore. Can’t sneak up on us from in here.” She glanced around the small, cluttered room, her eyes landing on a huge, old dresser. “There! We’ll use that. If we can move it.”
    “We can move it!” Daisy said firmly. “We have to.”
    It took a while. Although the drawers were only half-full, they had to remove them, setting them aside while they made another try at hefting the huge piece up over the edge of the faded oriental carpet. It kept getting stuck, and they were both sweating profusely by the time they