Read The Night Walker (Nightmare Hall) for Free Online

shoulder as she held up the white blouse to check for wrinkle damage.
    And recoiled in horror as she unfolded the garment.
    Red, bright, vibrant splotches of red, splashed all up and down the front of the blouse, as if someone had used it as a canvas for an abstract painting.
    Gasping in horror, Quinn threw it to the floor and stood staring down at it as if she’d never seen it before and didn’t know how it had arrived in her hands.
    Tentatively, her mouth tense, Quinn pulled the skirt off her shoulder and held that, too, out in front of her.
    More red, a river of it running from waist to hem.
    The doorknob turned.
    Breathing in short gasps, Quinn snatched the blouse up from the floor, balled both garments into tiny bundles and thrust them under her bed.
    Tobie came into the room, a towel wrapped turban-style around her red hair. “You okay?” she asked as Quinn, her legs weak, sank down upon her bed. “Still upset about Carlie and Donner? I don’t blame you. It’s horrible, just plain horrible.”
    “Tobie,” Quinn said when she trusted herself to speak, “what time did you get in last night?”
    “About midnight. Why?”
    “I just wondered. I didn’t hear you come in.”
    “Well, of course not, Quinn. You never hear anything once you’ve gone to sleep. You were out like a light when I came in.”
    Quinn breathed easier. She’d been asleep when Tobie came in. Tobie had just said so. Safely asleep, in her bed … not wandering around campus dumping paint on innocent, happy people.
    Not that she had seriously thought it could have been her. The doctor had said she was expressing anger when she did those things in her sleep. She wasn’t angry at Carlie or Donner. Why would she be?
    But … she had gone to sleep angry. She did remember that. Angry at … ?What was it that had made her angry?
    Oh. She remembered now. The story about what had happened to Tobie. She’d been upset about that.
    But that had nothing to do with Carlie or Donner.
    Quinn got up and walked over to the dresser mirror. As she picked up a hairbrush and began slowly brushing her straight brown hair, she could see Tobie moving from bed to closet and back again. The expression on her face was sad.
    Was she thinking about Carlie and Donner? Or about something much, much worse … was Tobie thinking now about what had happened to her before she ever came to Salem?
    “Could I borrow your blue denim skirt?” Tobie asked suddenly, turning toward Quinn. “If you’re not going to wear it, I mean.”
    In the mirror, Quinn watched as her cheeks flamed scarlet. As red as the paint on the skirt Tobie was asking to borrow. “It’s … it’s in the laundry,” she stammered.
    “No, it isn’t. I washed it last week with my stuff. I remember because I was really careful to take it out of the dryer at exactly the right time, so it wouldn’t wrinkle. I know how you hate to iron stuff.”
    “Yeah, I know, but I was going to wear it yesterday, and then I spilled nail polish on it. Sorry. You can wear my navy skirt if you want. It’s clean.”
    “Darn. Thanks anyway, but that skirt’s too dressy. I want something I can wear with socks. I’ll just wear jeans.”
    Socks.
    Quinn glanced down at her feet. She’d forgotten about the clean white socks she’d been wearing to bed every night. If she’d left her bed last night, the bottoms wouldn’t be snowy white anymore, would they? Wasn’t that why she’d begun wearing them in the first place … thinking they’d tell the story? And now, when she was worried, she hadn’t even bothered to check them out. She’d forgotten.
    Her heart pounding loudly in her chest, she hurried back to the bed and sat down. She didn’t want to look. She did want to look. She did, she didn’t …
    She lifted her foot and twisted her leg sideways.
    The soles of her socks were still clean. Pure, snowy white.
    Letting out a deep sigh of relief, Quinn let her foot drop.
    She hadn’t walked in her sleep last night. She