Deadly Visions (Nightmare Hall) Read Online Free PDF Page A

by a strange need to find out exactly what had happened up there near the falls. She didn’t want to go near the place, but she found herself unwillingly striking out in that direction.
    She would have kept going if someone hadn’t called out her name.
    It was Aidan, running toward her from the art building, his long, dark hair tied back in a ponytail, his T-shirt and jeans smeared with daubs of gold and rust paint. “Hey, how’s it going?” he said, a little short of breath as he caught up with her. “I’ve been working on some backdrops for the drama department. Where are you headed?”
    “Nowhere,” she said quickly. She hadn’t actually been going up to the falls, had she? What an insane idea! The last thing she wanted to see this morning was the scene in her nightmare. It would bring it all back, when what she really wanted to do was forget it.
    “Here, come sit on the fountain for a sec,” he said, throwing himself down on the low, stone wall around the fountain in the center of the Commons. Because of the unusually mild weather, there were students lying on blankets all across the level green, some studying, some talking, some just working on a tan.
    “They don’t act like someone was killed last night,” Rachel said with more than a hint of resentment in her voice. Shouldn’t campus look different this morning than it usually did? Shouldn’t something have changed? “I mean, died. Someone died.”
    “You heard about Ted. Maybe some of them don’t know yet.”
    “News like that spreads quickly, Aidan. Of course they’ve heard. But,” she added, glancing around the Commons, “they act as if they don’t care.”
    “Well, Ted was a nice guy,” Aidan said, “but I don’t think he had that many friends. Kept to himself pretty much.” He glanced over at her, mild curiosity in his eyes. “Were you a friend of his? Is that why you’re upset?”
    Rachel bristled. What on earth was wrong with people? Did you have to know someone personally and well before you could care that they’d died? Ted Leonides was only eighteen years old! “No, I didn’t know him very well. But what difference does it make? He shouldn’t be dead, should he? It’s all wrong.”
    “I agree,” Aidan said, nodding. “But maybe everyone’s afraid that if they show how they feel, they won’t look cool. When I was in tenth grade, a good friend of mine died. A bunch of guys were out hiking, and this guy, Andrew, fell down a deserted mine shaft. Broke his neck. It was really rough at school for a while after that, because we all felt sick and mad and you can’t let any of that stuff show when you’re sixteen. So we all got stomachaches and headaches and couldn’t sleep and our grades sank, but we never once talked about it, any of us. We never admitted out loud that Andrew’s death had got to us. Afraid it would make us look soft or something, I guess. Who knows? Anyway, that’s probably the way a lot of people feel right now.”
    “Well, that’s stupid,” Rachel said heatedly.
    Aidan shrugged. “Maybe. But that’s the way it is.”
    “Were you with them? On the hike?”
    He shook his head. “I was supposed to be. But I’d broken curfew the night before, my old man caught me, and I spent all day Saturday cleaning out the garage. Maybe one of the reasons I had nightmares for a while after that was knowing that if I’d been with them, I probably would have been in the lead. I usually was. Always in a hurry, that’s me. So I could have been the first one to dive down that mine shaft instead of Andrew.” He shook his head, his mouth grim. “I thought about that a lot after he died. Almost felt guilty because it was him instead of me. Weird.”
    Maybe, Rachel thought. But having a nightmare after a horrible accident happened wasn’t nearly as weird as having one before it happened. How could you dream about something that hadn’t even happened yet?
    “You’re shaking,” Aidan said suddenly, surprise in his