The housemother who found Giselle McKendrick hanging from the brass light fixture in her bedroom didn't scream When she entered the room on the second floor of Nightingale Hall,an off-campus dormitory at Salem University,and found Giselle suspended,swaying gently above the shiny hardwood floor,Isobel Coates's mouth opened in horror but she made no sound.

For several minutes,the only sound in the bright and sunny room came from the birds outside, screeching in the huge oak trees shadowing the tall, skinny,old brick house.Sheer white curtains at the narrow windows move gently, ghostlike, stirred by a warm June breeze.

As Mrs. Coates's wrinkled,brown-spotted hands rushed to cover her mouth,the neatly folded stack of white linens she was carrying hit the polished floor with soft slap."Oh," she whispered, "oh,oh,oh..."

Young, pretty Giselle McKendrick's body was a lazy pendelum swinging from the light fixture.She was wearing white shorts and a bright yellow halter top because of the rare,early June intense heat wave.But that heat was oddly absent in the small,square space.Giselle's bedroom was icily cold.

The girls bare,tanned legs dangled lifelessly.Her head hung at a rash angle.Her blue eyes stared blindly at the wall,and her mouth was frozen open in a voiceless scream.Her curly blonde hair brush against her broken neck as she swayed back and forth,back and forth...

A length of rope, one end fastened firmly around the stem of the old-fashioned light fixture, encircled Giselle's slender throat.

Mrs.Coates,her mouth still hidden behind her hands, began moving slowly backward, murmuring,"No,no,no..."

The other five students living in the rooming house came home that afternoon to find Giselle's room unoccupied, the purple spread neatly pulled up over the bed, the white curtains still stirring gently.The news of their friends death shocked each of them into stupified silence.They stumbled about the house,crying,glassy-eyed with disbelief.

Although the rest of the house shimmers with stultifying heat, that one small space on the second floor remained bone-chillingly cold, as if wrapped in an icy December wind.

Giselle's housemates left for summer vacation in somber silence.According a small, unobtrusive article in the local newspaper shortly before they left Nightingale Hall, the official verdict on Giselle's death was"apparent suicide." It seemed that Giselle McKendrick had chosen to stop living, and no one who knew her understand why.

It was beyond understanding.

The housemates vowed never to return to Nightingale Hall.How could they?They would live in stead in one of the on-campus dorms, away from painful reminders of their friend.

They emptied closets and drawers and desks and then, loaded down with suitcases, trunks, and backpacks,left Nightingale Hall behind forever.There were no backward glances as they made their way down the gravel driveway that snaked up over the hill and curved along the front of the house.A glance over the shoulder might serve as an unpleasant reminder that six, not five, students had taken up residence in the three-storied brick dormitory nine months earlier.That seemed,now, like a lifetime ago.

When the last student had gone,Mrs.Coates draped the living room,dining room,and library furniture with heavy clothes and then packed their own suitcase.She was spending the summer at the beach.Perhaps, away from the dorm and its empty rooms,she could forget the terrible sight of that lovely young girl's body swinging from the ceiling in the small,sunny bedroom.

As the house mother's taxi pulled away on a warm June evening,the empty dorm seemed to settle further into its grassy knoll overlooking the campus.Huge,giant-limbed oak trees shading the house made its dark red brick look almost black.The floor-to-ceiling windows facing the windows front porch were completely shuttered, as if the house had closed its eyes to sleep.Even the birds have left, taking their songs with them.An eerie silence fell over the hill.

Lost shadow and deepening twilight, the house settled into the hillside to wait.

All summer long, it waited...

Jessica Vogt leaned forward,her navy-blue eyes staring out the bus window.She wanted to take in every detail of the town of Twin Falls where she would be spending the next years of her life.The main street, Pennsylvania Avenue, crowded with traffic now as other college students like herself arrived in town, pass flanked on one side by a slowly meandering river, on the other side by shops and restaurants, a red brick post office, several bank buildings.Shoppers accustomed to the annual onslaught of young people ignore the long line of cars and buses making its way through the center of town and went about their business.

The bus passed slowly through the center of town, advancing past a stone bridge on the left spanning the river, and a beautiful row of lavish white and brick homes on the right, facing the water. A huge stone church took up one whole block, it's spire rising some distance above the medium\-sized community. Tall, full trees lined the avenue in front of the church. A larger section of more modest homes followed, and then, at the edge of town, a large, sprawling shopping mall.

Jess could already see the rooftops of the university buildings some distance ahead, just beyond the town. She settled back in her seat. It was a pretty town, not unlike her own hometown. Peaceful, quiet . . . and it had a mall. She smiled. What would life be like without a mall?

The bus let her off just a block from Nightingale Hall, the off\-campus dorm where she would be living.

When it had gone, she walked up the block, and paused at the bottom of the curving gravelled driveway that led up the slope to the house. Hands in the pockets of her khaki shorts, a set of cheap brown luggage resting beside her sandelled feet, she grimaced in dismay as her eyes focused on the building destined to be her home from September to June. It wasn't very inviting.

"Great place to film a horror movie", she murmured, running a hand through her short, glossy black hair. Shifting slightly, she kept her gaze on the house.

It was tall and narrow, 3 stories of break so deep are red and so shaded by massive oaks it looked charcoal. Two of the dark green shutters flanking and tall, skinny windows where hanging crookedly and the wide, wooden porch sagged enough to make the house look a little drunk. A metal fire escape traveled from the ground up to the third story along the left hand side.

In case we never need an escape route, Jess thought.

The house stood, tired and worn, at the top of the slope, overlooking the hill and the highway with, Jess had to admit a certain kind of dignity in spite of its shabbiness.

It's seen better days, she thought with conviction. It must have been beautiful once.

The lawn had recently been mowed, filling the air with the smell of fresh cut grass, and the squat green shrubbery flanking the wide front porch was thick with round, red berries.