The Initiation

By Diane Hoh

A college freshman tries to escape the clutches of an occult gang
The first months of college take a toll on Molly Keene. In high school she knew everyone, but at Salem University she’s just another face in the crowd. No one notices her besides Norman, a peculiar intellectual who invites her to join his new club: the Others. The first meeting is just small talk, but at the second, things get weird. A ceremony takes place in the woods, around a campfire. Norman declares that the Others have secret powers which give them the right to impose their will on the school. It should be funny, but Molly isn’t laughing. As she makes more friends, Molly tries to get away from Norman and his creepy club. But she has already been initiated, and the Others aren’t going to let her go without a fight. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Diane Hoh including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s personal collection.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Release date: Mar 27, 2012
• ISBN: 9781453248089

Diane Hoh

Diane Hoh (b. 1937) is a bestselling author of young adult fiction. Born in Warren, Pennsylvania, Hoh began her first novel, Loving That O’Connor Boy (1985), after seeing an ad in a publishing trade magazine requesting submissions for a line of young adult fiction. After contributing novels to two popular series, Cheerleaders and the Girls of Canby Hall, Hoh found great success writing thrillers, beginning with Funhouse (1990), a Point Horror novel that became a national bestseller. Following its success, Hoh created the Nightmare Hall series, whose twenty-nine installments chronicle a university plagued by dark secrets, and the seven-volume Med Center series, about the challenges and mysteries in a Massachusetts hospital. In 1998, Hoh had a runaway hit with Titanic: The Long Night and Remembering the Titanic, a pair of novels about two couples’ escape from the doomed ocean liner. She now lives and writes in Austin.

Book preview

Nightmare Hall

The Initiation

Diane Hoh

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Epilogue

A Biography of Diane Hoh

Prologue

THEY SAT IN A CIRCLE around the blazing fire, their features distorted by the dancing orange and yellow flames. Their heads were down, their jackets pulled tightly around them for warmth.

They called themselves the Others.

Norman dropped to a crouching position. The firelight played across his thin, pale face, casting eerie shadows that turned his skin to reddish-orange and lit a menacing yellow light in his eyes.

Thunder sounded in the distance, and an ominous black cloud swept across the half-moon overhead. An owl hooted a question. Bat wings fluttered in the tall, black trees.

Someone giggled nervously.

Molly studied the way the dancing flames seemed to change Norman’s bone structure. His face reminded her now of a tall, narrow jack-o’-lantern her grandfather had once carved on Halloween. She’d been upset because pumpkins were supposed to be round, and this one wasn’t. You can’t make a jack-o’-lantern out of that skinny thing! she had cried.

But he had. And thanks to his cleverness with the knife, the resulting work of art had been the scariest Molly had ever seen. Its mouth opened as if in a scream. Its crooked, pointed teeth, its slanted, narrow eyes, had looked far more sinister than any round pumpkin could.

That was how Norman’s face looked now as he began to explain the purpose behind the Others. His face seemed sinister, menacing … An optical illusion, of course, created by the wavering yellow and red flames.

And now for our initiation, Norman said, rising to his feet.

They all rose with him.

Chapter 1

MS. KEENE, MAY I see you after class?

Molly Keene froze in her seat. Second row, next to the window. On this warm fall day, sun was streaming in through the glass, filling the big, square lecture hall with a warm, golden glow.

But with Dr. Theodore’s abrupt request, a sense of foreboding swept over Molly. It was as if dark clouds had suddenly swept across the sky over the campus of Salem University.

Why did her English professor need to talk to her? What had she done wrong?

That last paper … the one she’d handed in on Wednesday … the one she’d titled, Solitaire, about the difficulties of the transformation from popular high school senior in June to lowly college freshman on an unfamiliar campus in September … she must not have worked hard enough on it. Dr. Theodore must have hated it, or she wouldn’t be asking to see her.

She knew she hadn’t done her best on that paper. There had been a party going on across the hall, and she’d had a hard time concentrating. The party had sounded like a lot of fun. She and her roommate, Kayla, had been invited. Kayla was always invited. And Kayla always went. But Molly had decided to stay home and work on her paper. She wouldn’t know anyone at the party, anyway.

That’s how you get to know people, Kayla had pointed out. By going to parties and mixing.

Molly wasn’t good at meeting so many new people all at once. She liked to meet them one at a time, get to know them slowly. That’s what she’d done in high school, and it had worked. By the time she graduated, she knew almost everyone in her class.

But here at Salem University, it was different. So many people …

Ms. Keene? Is there a problem? Intelligent hazel eyes peered out at Molly from behind wire-rimmed glasses.

Oh …  no, Dr. Theodore. I’ll stay. Norman would be mad. She was supposed to meet him out on the front steps of Goldwin Hall at three o’clock. He wanted to talk to her about the Others, the campus group he’d founded. She hadn’t told him yet that she wasn’t joining, after all.

Molly glanced across the aisle at Phoebe Sayward, one of her new friends at Salem. Phoebe rolled her eyes toward her thick, sand-colored bangs, and shrugged her rounded shoulders, as if to say, Who knows why Dr. Theodore wants you to stay? Then she mouthed, I’ll wait outside for you.

Oh, great. Phoebe would run into Norman. She didn’t like him. His last name should be Bates, Phoebe had said after Molly had introduced them. "Norman Bates. Like that guy in the movie Psycho. He acts so superior, like he knows something we don’t know. Like he’s keeping secrets. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had a few bodies hidden in the basement of his house."

Of Phoebe, Norman had said only, She’s not one of us.

Molly wasn’t sure what that meant. Everyone liked Phoebe. She was funny and bright, and so talented. She was going to be in a piano recital on campus the following week, and she had been featured in the first issue of the campus literary magazine, Odyssey, in an article titled, Talent Abounds at Salem. Other talented freshmen had been included, but Phoebe’s picture, in the center of the page, had been the largest.

How could anyone dislike Phoebe? Norman was just too judgmental.

But he’d been kind to Molly that first hectic week of school when things had been so crazy and she was convinced that she would never make a single friend on campus. So many people … who was going to notice someone so average: average height, average build, average brown hair?

She had fiercely missed all her friends from high school, not a single one of whom had come to Salem. She’d felt as if she’d suddenly been cast out to sea in a very small boat.

Then Norman had noticed her, speaking to her at registration as she stood among that sea of strangers. She’d been so grateful for someone to talk to. Phoebe was right about Norman looking as if he knew something everyone else didn’t, but Molly had decided that simply meant he was smarter than most. An intellectual. It wouldn’t kill her to spend some time with intellectuals. Maybe she’d learn something. Wasn’t that why she’d come to college?

Phoebe had tried to talk her out of attending the second meeting of the Others. You don’t know anything about this group, do you? she’d asked. "And just what exactly does the name mean, anyway? The Others? Other than what?"

Molly had no idea what the name meant. She’d been so glad to be included in something, she hadn’t asked very many questions at the first meeting, which didn’t turn out to be much. Only half a dozen people besides her and Norman were there. They talked about classes and then went back to their dorms. But it was better than sitting in her room alone.

Then she’d met Phoebe, and that had helped.

She’d gone to the second meeting when Norman called to invite her, because it seemed rude not to. She went without Phoebe, who said, Not in this lifetime and went to a movie instead.

But the second meeting wasn’t anything like the first.

Molly leaned back in her chair and thought about that meeting. It had taken place a week before. She should have forgotten about it by now, but she was having trouble putting it out of her mind. Thinking about it filled her with anxiety, although she wasn’t sure why. Maybe because she’d been caught off guard? She hadn’t been expecting an initiation.

But an initiation it was.

They met at the state park near the campus. There, in a clearing deep in the woods, Norman announced, We’re going to have an initiation ceremony tonight.

Molly looked up in surprise. Initiation? She wasn’t ready to be initiated into a group she knew so little about. There were more people tonight, almost a dozen. Norman had been busy gathering members. He was good at that, she knew. Did they already know the purpose of this group? Was she the only one still in the dark?

The Others … what did it mean?

Norman and a friend, a heavyset, dark-haired boy nicknamed Bat because he had very poor vision and his glasses were as thick as the bottom of a Coke bottle, built a blazing fire in a clearing. Darkness had fallen, and a warm day had turned into a chilly autumn evening. The ground, soft with pine needles, was damp from recent rains, and so the fire seemed comforting.

But Molly wished she hadn’t come. She didn’t know any of these people. And she certainly wasn’t going to get to know them with their features so bizarrely distorted by the dancing orange-and-yellow flames from the fire. They all looked like jack-o’-lanterns. She wouldn’t recognize a single one of them on campus the next day.

Molly shivered, wondering briefly if the slithering rustle she heard behind her might be a snake.

Norman stood up and began speaking. Our purpose in being together, he said forcefully, is twofold. First, we are together because while no one else recognizes our special talents, we recognize them in each other. Perhaps some of us haven’t yet discovered what our special abilities are. But we know they’re there, waiting to see the light.

Watching him, Molly struggled to convince herself that Norman was right. She must have some special talent or ability that lay deep within her like a secret.

But she couldn’t think what it might be. Her parents and three sisters loved her because she was family, her friends liked her because she was a nice person, and her teachers had always seemed perfectly pleased with her because she handed in her work on time, and it was neatly done and legible.

But no one had ever discovered anything unique or special about her.

She wanted to believe Norman. But she couldn’t.

It’s true, he insisted, as if he’d read her mind. Every one of us is exceptional in some way. Superior. But we are not the ones getting the attention on campus. We are the Others, those whose talents have not yet been recognized. And that brings me to our second purpose in establishing this group.

Molly listened with interest. Now she would learn what Norman’s group was all about.

Norman dropped to a crouching position. His eyes narrowed in concentration as the firelight turned his pale skin to orange.

"Our purpose is this. From now on, we will be the ones who decide if those people on campus getting all the attention really deserve the accolades thrown their way. We will be the ones who decide