Haunted

Meg Cabot



Fog. That's all I can see. Just fog, the kind that pours in from, the bay every morning, seeping over my bedroom windowsills and spilling onto the floor in cold, ropy tendrils. . . .

Only here there are no windows, or even a floor. I am in a corridor lined with doors. There is no ceiling overhead, just coldly winking stars in an inky-black sky. The long hall made up of closed doors seems to stretch out forever in all directions.

And now I'm running. I'm running down the corridor, the fog seeming to cling to my legs as I go, the closed doors on either side of me a blur. There's no point, I know, in opening any of these doors. There's nothing behind them that can help me. I've got to get out of this hallway, only I can't, because it just keeps getting longer and longer, stretching out into the darkness, still blanketed in that thick white fog. . . .

And then suddenly, I'm not alone in that fog. Jesse is there with me, holding my hand. I don't know if it's the warmth of his fingers or the kindness of his smile that banishes my fear, but suddenly, I am convinced that everything is going to be all right.

At least until it becomes clear that Jesse doesn't know the way out any more than I do. And now even the fact that my hand is in his can't squelch the feeling of panic bubbling up inside of me.

But wait. Someone is coming toward us, a tall figure striding through the fog. My frantically beating heart - the only sound I can hear in this dead place, with the exception of my own breathing - slows somewhat. Help. Help at last.

Except that when the fog parts and I recognize the face of the person ahead of us, my heart starts pounding more loudly than ever. Because I know he won't help us. I know he won't do a thing.

Except laugh.

And then I'm alone again, only this time, the floor beneath me has dropped away. The doors disappear, and I am teetering on the brink of a chasm so deep, I cannot see the ground below. The fog swirls around me, spilling into the chasm and seeming intent on taking me with it. I am waving my arms to keep from falling, grabbing frantically for something, anything, to hold on to.

Only there's nothing to grab. A second later, an unseen hand gives a single push.

And I fall.

1

"Well, well, well," said a distinctly masculine voice from behind me. "If it isn't Susannah Simon."

Look, I won't lie to you. When a cute guy talks to me - and you could tell from this guy's voice that he was easy on the eyes; it was in the self-confidence of those well, well, wells, the caressing way he said my name - I pay attention. I can't help it. I'm a sixteen-year-old girl, after all. My life can't revolve entirely around Lilly Pulitzer's latest tankini print and whatever new innovations Bobbi Brown has made in the world of stay-put lip liner.

So I'll admit that, even though I have a boyfriend - even if boyfriend is a little optimistic a term for him - as I turned around to see the hottie who was addressing me, I gave my hair a little bit of a toss. Why shouldn't I? I mean, considering all the product I'd layered into it that morning, in honor of the first day of my junior year - not to mention the marine fog that regularly turns my head into a frizzy mess - my coiffure was looking exceptionally fine.

It wasn't until I'd given the old chestnut mane a flip that I turned around and saw that the cutie who'd said my name was not someone I'm too fond of.

In fact, you might say I have reason to be scared to death of him.

I guess he could read the fear in my eyes - carefully done up that morning with a brand-new combination of eye shadows called Mocha Mist - because the grin that broke out across his good-looking face was slightly crooked at one end.

"Suze," he said in a chiding tone. Even the fog couldn't dull the glossy highlights in his raffishly curly dark hair. His teeth were dazzlingly white against his tennis tan. "Here I am, nervous about being the new kid at school, and you don't even have a hello for me? What kind of way is that to treat an old pal?"

I continued to stare at him, perfectly incapable of speech. You can't talk, of course, when your mouth has gone as dry as ... well, as the adobe brick building we were standing in front of.

What was he doing here? What was he doing here?

The thing of it was, I couldn't follow my first impulse and run screaming from him. People tend to talk when they see impeccably garbed girls such as me run screaming from seventeen-year-old studlies. I had managed to keep my unusual talent from my classmates for this long, I wasn't about to blow it now, even if I was - and believe me, I was - scared to death.

But if I couldn't run away screaming, I could certainly move huffily past him without a word, hoping he would not recognize the huffiness for what it really was - sheer terror.

I don't know whether or not he sensed my fear. But he sure didn't like my pulling a prima donna on him. His hand flew out as I attempted to sweep past him, and the next thing I knew, his fingers were wrapped around my upper arm in a viselike grip.

I could, of course, have hauled off and slugged him. I hadn't been named Girl Most Likely to Dismember Someone back at my old school in Brooklyn for nothing, you know.

But I'd wanted to start this year off right - in Mocha Mist and my new black Club Monaco capris (coupled with a pink silk sweater set I'd snagged for a song at the Benetton outlet up in Pacific Grove) - not in a fight. And what would my friends and schoolmates think - and, since they were milling all around us, tossing off the occasional "Hi, Suze," and complimenting me on my ever-so-spiffy ensemble, they were bound to notice - if I began freakishly to pummel the new guy?

And then there was the unavoidable fact that I was pretty convinced that, if I took a whack at him, he might try to whack me back.

Somehow I managed to find my voice. I only hoped he didn't notice how much it was shaking. "Let go of my arm," I said.

"Suze," he said. He was still smiling, but now he looked and sounded slyly knowing. "What's the matter? You don't look very happy to see me."

"Still not letting go of my arm," I reminded him. I could feel the chill from his fingers - he seemed to be completely cold-blooded in addition to being preternaturally strong - through my silk sleeve.

He dropped his hand.

"Look," he said, "I really am sorry. About the way things went down the last time you and I met, I mean."

The last time he and I met. Instantly I was transported in my mind's eye back to that long corridor - the one I had seen so often in my dreams. Lined with doors on either side - doors that opened into who-knew-what - it had been like a hallway in a hotel or an office building . . . only this hallway hadn't existed in any hotel or office building known to man. It hadn't even existed in our current dimension.

And Paul had stood there, knowing Jesse and I had no idea how to find our way out of it, and laughed. Just laughed, like it was this big colossal joke that if I didn't return to my own universe soon, I'd die, while Jesse would have been trapped in that hallway forever. I could still hear Paul's laughter ringing in my ears. He had kept on laughing . . . right up until the moment Jesse had slammed a fist into his face.

I could hardly believe any of this was happening. Here it was, a perfectly normal September morning in Carmel, California - which meant, of course, a thick layer of mist hung over everything but would soon burn off to reveal cloudless blue skies and a golden sun - and I was standing there in the breezeway of the Junipero Serra Mission Academy, face-to-face with the person who'd been haunting my nightmares for weeks.

Only this wasn't a nightmare. I was awake. I knew I was awake, because I would never have dreamed of my friends CeeCee and Adam sauntering by while I was confronting this monster from my past, and going, "Hey, Suze," like it was . . . well, like it was simply the first day back at school after summer vacation.

"You mean the part where you tried to kill me?" I croaked, when CeeCee and Adam were out of earshot. This time, I know he heard my voice shake. I know because he looked perturbed - though maybe it was because of the accusation. In any case, he reached up and dragged one of those largish tanned hands through his curly hair.

"I never tried to kill you, Suze," he said, sounding a little hurt.

I laughed. I couldn't help it. My heart was in my throat, but I laughed anyway. "Oh," I said. "Right."

"I mean it, Suze," he said. "It wasn't like that. I'm just . . . I'm just not very good at losing, you see."

I stared at him. No matter what he told himself, he had tried to kill me. But worse, he'd done his best to eliminate Jesse, in a completely underhanded manner. And now he was trying to pass the whole thing off as bad sportsmanship?

"I don't get it," I said, shaking my head. "What did you lose? You didn't lose anything."

"Didn't I, Suze?" His gaze bore into mine. His voice was the one I'd been hearing over and over in my dreams - laughing at me as I struggled to find my way out of a dark, mist-filled hallway at either end of which was a precipice dropping off into a black void of utter nothingness, over which, right before I woke up, I teetered dangerously. It was a voice filled with hidden meaning. . . .

Only I had no idea what that meaning could be, or what he was implying. All I knew was that this guy terrified me.

"Suze," he said with a smile. Smiling - and probably even scowling, too - he looked like a Calvin Klein underwear model. And not just his face, either. I had, after all, seen him in a pair of swim trunks.

"Look, don't be this way," he said. "It's a new school year. Can't we make a new start?"

"No," I said, glad that my voice didn't shake this time. "We can't. In fact, you - you'd better stay away from me."

He seemed to find this deeply amusing. "Or what?" he asked, with another one of those smiles that revealed all of his white, even teeth - a politician's smile, I realized.

"Or you'll regret it," I said, the tremor back in my voice.

"Oh," he said, his dark eyes widening in mock terror. "You'll sic your boyfriend on me?"

It wasn't something I'd have joked around about, if I were him. Jesse could - and probably would, if he found out the guy was back - kill him. Except that I wasn't exactly Jesses girlfriend, so it wasn't really his job to protect me from creeps like the one in front of me.

He must have figured out from my expression that all was not copasetic in Suze-and-Jesse-land, since he laughed and said, "So that's how it is. Well, I never really thought Jesse was your type, you know. You need someone a little less - "

He didn't get a chance to finish his sentence, because at that moment, CeeCee, who'd been following Adam in the direction of his locker - even though we'd solemnly sworn to each other the night before over the phone that we were not going to start off the new school year chasing boys - came back toward us, her gaze on the guy standing so close to me.

"Suze," she said politely. Unlike me, CeeCee had spent her summer working in the non-profit sector, and so had not had a lot of money to blow on a back-to-school wardrobe and makeover. Not that CeeCee would ever spend her money on anything so frivolous as makeup. Which was a good thing, since, being an albino, she had to special-order all of her makeup anyway, and couldn't just stroll on up to the M.A.C. counter and plunk her money down the way anybody else could.

"Who's your friend?" she wanted to know.

I was not about to stand there and make introductions. In fact, I was seriously thinking of heading to the administrative office and asking just what they were thinking, admitting a guy like this into what I had once considered a passably good school.

But he thrust one of those cool, strong hands at CeeCee and said with that grin that I had once found disarming but that now chilled me to the bone, "Hi. I'm Paul. Paul Slater. Nice to meet you."

Paul Slater. Not really the kind of name to strike terror into the heart of a young girl, huh? I mean, it sounded innocuous enough. Hi, I'm Paul Slater. There was nothing in that statement that could have alerted CeeCee to the truth: Paul Slater was sick, manipulative, and had icicles where his heart should have been.