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

Sorry. Just showing off, I guess, trying to impress. Not usually my style. I can see why now, because it doesn’t seem to be working, does it?”
    “No, it doesn’t.” Rachel glanced around the lobby. The crowd had thinned, and she could see the other paintings clearly. “All of the other works have names under them. The seascape didn’t.” She aimed a glance at Aidan. “Can’t you at least admit it’s odd that there was no name tag under that one painting?”
    “No. I wouldn’t want my name under it, either. Can we please go eat?”
    She wasn’t going to learn any more about the seascape by staring at a blank wall. He had apologized, and she was hungry.
    But before she turned away, she saw the painting again as clearly as if it were still hanging there, the blues, the greens, the wild water, the blobs of pinkish paint that she’d taken for arms and a face—especially the face, eyes and mouth wide open in terror. And on the heels of that repugnant vision came the nightmare, flooding back into her mind in vivid detail, the fisherman on the bank, the shadowy figure darting out of the woods with the baseball bat, sending the startled victim flying out into the brown rushing water and over the falls Rachel shuddered violently.
    “Hey, what’s going on?” Aidan said with concern, reaching out with one arm as if to prop her up. “Are you sick?”
    If she shared the nightmare with him, how would he react? She didn’t know him well enough yet to guess, and she wasn’t ready to risk ridicule. “Of course I’m not sick,” she said, brushing his arm away. “Just hungry. Let’s go eat.”
    “Looking for the seascape?” a voice said from behind them.
    They turned around. Rudy Samms, a broom and dustpan in his hand, nodded at them. “Someone took it down during the night.”
    “During the night?” Rachel echoed. “How do you know that?”
    “Because it was here last night when I came back to clean up. I was the last one to leave the building, and that painting was still here then. But it wasn’t here when I came in, first thing this morning,” Rudy finished. “So I knew someone had to have taken it during the night.”
    “Don’t you lock up when you leave?”
    Rudy glowered at Rachel from beneath dark brows. “That’s a stupid question. Of course I lock up. But other people have keys. All of the art professors have them, and some of the students do, too. There are studios upstairs, and sometimes they need to get in to work.”
    “I told you, Rachel,” Aidan said, “the artist was probably embarrassed by the painting and removed it.”
    “In the middle of the night?” Rachel asked sarcastically.
    “On the other hand,” Aidan added, “maybe the artist decided to take it down, lug it back upstairs, and put it away in the storage closet, that infamous graveyard of Paintings Not Worth The Nail To Hang Them On. In which case, it could still be in the dumbwaiter, waiting to be transported up.” Taking Rachel’s hand, he led her to a small door, half Rachel’s size, cut into the wall near the entrance to the building.
    He opened the door and Rachel peeked inside. The dumbwaiter was really just a wooden cupboard hung on ropes in a pulley arrangement, “It’s like a mini-elevator,” she commented. “What’s it for?”
    “For getting supplies and artwork up to the studios on the upper floors.” Aidan closed the small door. “Not a bad workout, hauling twenty-five pound bags of plaster up to the tenth floor. But there are times when I wish this thing was automated, like the elevator.”
    Even as he said that, the elevator door opened and Joseph, Paloma, and Samantha stepped out, laughing. Joseph and Samantha were wearing paint-daubed shorts, like Aidan, and tank tops. Paloma was dressed in a long, black-flowered dress and black high-buttoned shoes. A small, black velvet hat sat on her head, the lacy veil draped over her eyes. All three were carrying huge, black, art portfolios.
    “I see your