Prologue 2

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...

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