Deadly Visions (Nightmare Hall) by Diane Hoh

perched on one side.
    Awash in relief and renewed hope, Rachel pulled the door open.
    There were the ropes, the pulleys, and the little cupboardlike box, sitting empty now. It was small, but so was she.
    She lay on her stomach, staring bleakly at the open, waiting cupboard. You’re crazy, she told herself. The blow to your head has scrambled your brains. You are ten floors above the lobby. You’re feeling sick and dizzy and exhausted, and you expect to haul yourself all the way down ten stories by pulling on those ropes? Not in a million years.
    I wouldn’t have to lower myself all the way down, she argued. The other studios might be open. I can just lower myself one floor, crawl out into another studio, and escape that way. I can do that. That’s not so hard.
    The wound on her forehead was still bleeding. She had to keep swiping at it with the rag to keep her eyes clear.
    But what if the other studios are locked? she asked herself. Then what? You’ll crawl out, you’ll go to the door, you’ll try the knob, and it won’t budge. You’ll still be shut in. Are you going to try that at every single floor?
    There would be a telephone. She could go to the next floor, crawl out of the dumbwaiter into the studio, and call for help. And wait.
    And then Rachel remembered, with a jolt, just how all of this had happened. She remembered that someone unseen had darted into the closet, had knocked the boxes out from under her, had grabbed her purse and run, locking the door after him.
    What if he was still around?
    What if he was, at this very moment, standing on the other side of the storage closet door, listening and waiting? He’d hear the dumbwaiter moving slowly, painfully. He’d know what she was doing. He would turn and race downstairs, much faster than she could let out the ropes. He’d be on the next floor waiting for her when she crawled to what she thought was freedom.
    Too risky.
    It was the lobby or nothing. Even if he was down there, waiting, when she arrived … if she made it … he wouldn’t dare reveal himself with all those people around. She’d be safe.
    Ten floors … she was so dizzy … it seemed impossible.
    But she had no choice.
    Keeping the rag with her to wipe her forehead, Rachel crawled forward, into the dumbwaiter. It lurched crazily when she entered. Her heart stopped as she grabbed for, and clutched, both ropes. She imagined the small, wooden cupboard free-falling under her weight, hurtling downward like an elevator with a broken cable, smashing into a thousand pieces when it hit the ground ten stories below.
    But when she grabbed hold of the ropes, the dumbwaiter steadied itself. It slid downward again as she settled her weight inside, but when she pulled on the ropes with all of her strength, it stopped descending, swinging slightly.
    Rachel pulled herself into as small a ball as possible, her head bent, her legs folded into her chest.
    Then, taking only tiny little gasping breaths, she tested the two ropes to see which one would lower her. When she pulled on one, the wooden cage tilted slightly upward, telling her it was the other rope she needed to grasp.
    Clutching it with both hands, she let it out no more than half an inch at a time. Had she been trying to haul her own weight upward, the task would have been too much for her. But gravity was on her side, and as she cautiously let the pulley rope out, the cage began, very slowly and unevenly, to descend, swinging very slightly from side to side, banging gently against the sides of the narrow shaft.
    It took a thousand years for Rachel’s precarious descent. Every nerve in her body was screaming with tension, and her fingers, palms, and arms throbbed in agony from the strain of her death-grip on the thick, rough rope. Four different times, her fingers jerked in a reflex action against the relentless tension, and four different times the dumbwaiter lurched sickeningly. Each time, Rachel gasped and tightened her grip again, nearly passing