Read Deadly Visions (Nightmare Hall) for Free Online

favorite painting has disappeared,” Joseph said to Rachel.
    “I don’t want to talk about it,” Rachel said curtly. “We’re going to breakfast. You can all come if you promise not to discuss art.”
    Samantha, looking very pretty, her blonde hair piled carelessly on top of her head, laughed. “But Rachel, what else is there?” She smiled at Aidan. “Aidan, haven’t you indoctrinated this girl yet?”
    “I’ve been trying. It’s not easy. She has a mind of her own when it comes to art, and, I suspect, just about everything else.”
    “I would love it,” Rachel said, her voice as smooth as glass, “if you wouldn’t discuss me as if I weren’t here.”
    Aidan stiffened, but Samantha laughed again and said, “Sorry. We’d love to go to breakfast. We’ve been slaving upstairs since the wee, small hours of the morning, and we’re all starved.”
    They were almost to the door when Rachel spied a small painting hanging in a dim corner. What caught her attention first was the size of the work. It was noticeably smaller than others surrounding it. Then, as she glanced at it, she was attracted by its colors. Without saying anything to anyone, she wandered over to take a closer look.
    The work was a still life—flowers in a vase—painted in soft, muted lilacs, pinks, and pale blues. She liked the painting, and said so, aloud.
    “You’re not serious,” Joseph said, moving to stand at her side. “It’s so trite!”
    “I do like it,” Rachel cried, “and I really don’t care whether you approve or not, Joseph.”
    There was an awkward silence behind them, where Aidan, Paloma, and Samantha were standing.
    Then Samantha said, “Well, good for you, Rachel. Joseph thinks he’s Salem’s art expert. Of course you can like anything you want. Actually, I think that one’s pretty, too. I love the way the artist used the mauve. Gives it a lot of power.”
    Rachel was about to turn away when something else caught her eye. Viewed from the side, there seemed to be something different about the vase. It was, at first glance, just a dove-gray, urn-shaped container. That was what she had first seen and that was what she wanted to continue seeing.
    But there was no mistaking the fact that the thick swirls and whorls on the vase seemed now to be creating a … a head … there the eyes, there the nose, and there the mouth, open, wide open, like the mouth in the seascape, in a scream of terror.
    Rachel moaned softly to herself. Not again, no, please …
    She took two steps sideways. An optical illusion, she urged silently, that’s all it is. The paint had been applied in thick, broad strokes that overlapped each other, and she told herself those strokes were creating the effect that had caught her eye. She told herself that there wasn’t really anything unusual there.
    It’s just a vase, she commanded, so don’t do this again. Don’t see something that no one else sees.
    And they didn’t see it, she could tell. Joseph was yawning with boredom, Aidan and Samantha were talking quietly, and Paloma was fiddling with the catch on her portfolio. None of them was the least bit interested in the still life.
    Rachel would have given up then. She would have put the painting out of her mind and left to eat a perfectly normal breakfast. But as her head swiveled away from the painting, she noticed the lines. Beginning just beneath the “head” and continuing on down the front of the vase, she saw now a series of horizontal lines, equidistant from each other. She noticed them because they were so precise, so even, so straight, in a painting that seemed otherwise composed of semicircular strokes and swirls.
    She stared at the lines. They had to be part of the design on the vase. Because how could they possibly be what they looked like to her?
    What would a staircase be doing in a floral life?
    Time to get your eyes checked, Rachel, she told herself, turning away from the painting. Then, remembering the nightmare about Ted, she