Hellfire

22

Phillip left the hospital a few minutes later. Carolyn, unwilling to leave her daughter alone that night, had asked for a cot to be brought into Beth’s room, and phoned Hannah to pack an overnight case for her.

Phillip walked slowly along Prospect Street, feeling the aura of tension in the village around him. There was still a crowd of people gathered in front of the mill, talking quietly among themselves, but they fell silent as he approached. There was something condemnatory in their glances, though none of them seemed willing to look directly at him. But he was all too aware of the eyes that raked over him, then quickly looked away. He wondered if he should stop and talk with them, then decided there was nothing he could say.

As he made his way quickly through the small crowd, and came to the north side of the old brick structure, his instincts told him to walk on, leaving the mill and all thoughts of it until tomorrow. But he couldn’t do that. There were decisions that had to be made, and he couldn’t allow himself to put them off. At the corner of the building, he turned left, starting once more toward the side entrance.

He used his key to open the construction shack, then rummaged around in Alan’s battered desk until he found a spare set of keys to the building. In the darkness of the evening, he opened the door and slipped inside the mill itself. He stood still for several seconds, rejecting once more the strange urge to turn his back on the old building and simply walk away.

He told himself that the anxiety he was suddenly feeling meant nothing. It wasn’t the building itself he was reacting to, but rather the tragedy that had occurred there only a few hours ago. The mill was only a building, and there were practical decisions to be made.

And yet his anxiousness began to congeal into something like fear, gathering around him, challenging him. He answered the challenge by reaching for the switch by the door that would turn on the naked bulbs of the worklights, certain that by banishing the darkness he would alleviate the irrational panic that was threatening to overwhelm him now.

At first it worked. Harsh white light flooded the building, and the familiar forms of the new construction reassured him. There was, after all, nothing to fear.

As his eyes scanned the progress Alan had made, Phillip realized immediately that there could be no reasonable argument for abandoning the project now. It was all but complete, needing little more than a few days’ work on the mezzanine level.

And yet he still had an uneasy feeling that there was something here that he had yet to fully comprehend. Even with the worklights on, it was as if some dark shadow lingered in the vast spaces beneath the roof.

He moved forward to the spot where Alan Rogers had died only a few hours before. Though the floor had already been washed clean, and there was no evidence of the tragedy that had occurred there, still he could see Alan’s broken body all too clearly in his mind’s eye, and see Beth, her face ashen, crouching brokenly over the corpse, keening her grief into the echoing spaces above.

He paused for a moment, then, almost against his will, turned to face the front of the mill. On the steps, separated from him by the glass of the front doors, were the curious people of Westover, watching him with what he imagined to be suspicion. Suddenly he felt like an actor on a stage, caught unexpectedly in the spotlight without having rehearsed his role.

And then, as he stood alone in the mill, he realized that he had not come here tonight simply to make a decison about the future of the mill.

It was something else.

There was something he was looking for.

He turned away, and started toward the back of the mill, pausing at the enormous lighting panel that had been completed only a week ago. A moment later every light in the mill blazed into life, washing the shadows cast by the worklights away, suffusing the entire building with the even illumination of hundreds of fluorescent tubes.

When he looked down the stairs into the basement, the darkness there was gone too, driven away by the surge of electricity.

He started down the stairs, moving slowly, for still the light had not completely freed him from the nearpanic that had threatened him when he’d first entered the building.

At the bottom of the stairs he gazed out into the far reaches of the basement, but there was nothing there that seemed the least bit unusual. It was as it had always been, nothing more than a vast expanse of space interrupted at regular intervals by the huge wooden columns that supported the floor above. There was nothing that Phillip could see that would induce the unease that was again growing within him.

He looked down at his feet, at the spot where his brother had died, and Jeff Bailey had died, and his mother had nearly died.

This, he realized, was the true reason he’d come here tonight. To stand alone at this spot, waiting to see if the fear his mother had described to him six weeks ago would come to him now, threaten him as it had threatened her.

Was it the same fear that had killed his brother?

He had to know.

And yet, as the seconds stretched into minutes, there was nothing.

He turned finally, and for the first time saw the little room tucked away behind the stairs. Its door stood slightly agape, but beyond the door there was only darkness.

It was from that darkness that tentacles of true fear finally began to reach out to him.

He told himself that what he was feeling was irrational, that there was nothing beyond that door but an empty room. And yet, as he approached the door he found himself stepping to one side so that the door itself separated him from whatever might lie beyond. His pulse rate suddenly rising, he reached out, grasped the door, and began sliding it to the left until it was fully open. Now the space was nearly six feet wide, and the light from the basement spilled into the room, only to be swallowed up by the blackness of the walls beyond.

There seemed to Phillip to be nothing unusual about the room. A simple rectangle, with a single small window high up on the far wall, and barren of furniture. The only sign that anyone had been in here in years was the area on the floor where the accumulated dust of a century had been recently disturbed.

All that set the room apart from the rest of the basement was its smell.

Emanating from the room was a strong odor of smoke, as if there had recently been a fire here.

As the smoky odor filled his lungs, Phillip began to feel a strange roiling of emotions that seemed to come not from within himself, but from the room.

The fear was stronger now, but mixed with it there was a sense of pent-up rage. It was almost as if the room were coiling in upon itself, preparing to strike him.

And yet there was a strange feeling of longing, too. A deep melancholy, tinged strongly with sadness. As he stood staring into the room, resisting a compelling urge to step inside and meet whatever was truly there, Phillip found his eyes flooding. A moment later the tears overflowed, and ran unheeded down his cheeks.

He took a tentative step forward, his arms reaching out as if to touch whatever was in the room, but then he suddenly veered away, and instead of entering the room, grasped the edge of the door and quickly rolled it shut.

As it slammed home, he imagined that he heard a short cry from within, a childish voice calling out to him.

“Father!”

He hurried up the stairs, turned off the lights, and started toward the side door.

And then, at the far end of the mill, he saw the faces.

They were still there — the people of Westover, their faces pressed to the glass, their features distorted into strange grimaces. Their hands seemed to be reaching out to him, and at first he had the feeling that they were beseeching him. Then, as he moved into the rotunda beneath the soaring glass dome of the building, he perceived something else.

The faces, though vaguely familiar, were unrecognizable. The men, clad in shabby clothing, all wore caps low on their foreheads, and their faces were unshaven.

The women, all of them gaunt with what seemed to be hunger, were also dressed shabbily, in long thin dresses that covered them from their wrists to their ankles and were buttoned high on their necks. They all wore their hair alike, twisted back into buns at the napes of their necks.

And they were not beseeching him.

They were reaching out to him not because they wanted anything of him.

They wanted him.

Their eyes showed it clearly. The eyes, all of them fixed on him now, glittered with hatred. He could almost feel it radiating out from them, surging through the glass of the doors — rolling toward him in an angry wave down the broad corridor of the mill.

He froze for a moment, his panic building within him, then turned and ran to the side door, reaching out to the switch and plunging the mill back into the darkness that had filled it a few moments earlier. He stepped through the door, closed it, and locked it.

He glanced toward the front of the mill, half-expecting to see an angry crowd moving toward him. Instead, there was nothing. Only a single man, silhouetted against a streetlight, waving to him.

“Mr. Sturgess?” he heard a voice calling. “Are you all right?”

Phillip hesitated. “I’m okay,” he called back softly. “I just wanted to take a look around.” Then he raised his hand, and returned the man’s wave. But instead of going back to Prospect Street, he turned the other way, walking down the path until he came to the railroad tracks.

As he hurried through the night, he tried to convince himself that what he’d seen had existed only in his imagination.

When he got home twenty minutes later, Phillip found Tracy waiting for him. She was sitting on the stairs, halfway up, and when the door opened, she stood up and looked eagerly down at him. He glanced up at her, then dropped his keys in the drawer of the commode that sat near the front door. Neither of them said anything until he started toward the library, intent on fixing himself a drink. As he was sure she would, his daughter followed him into the big walnut-paneled room.

“Well?” she demanded as Phillip poured a generous slug of Scotch into a Waterford tumbler, then added a couple of ice cubes and some water. Only when he finished making the drink did he turn to face her.

“Well what?” he asked evenly.

Tracy hesitated. There was something in her father’s eyes she’d never seen before. Though he was looking at her, she had the funny feeling that he wasn’t seeing her. “Well, did she kill him?” she asked at last.

Phillip frowned, swirling his drink in his glass, then went over to the French doors to stare out into the night. “Why would she do that?” he asked, his back to Tracy.

“Well, isn’t that obvious?” he heard his daughter say. “She wants to come back here. So she killed her father, because if he’s dead, there’s no place else for her to live.”

Phillip felt his eyes flood once more, and suppressed the groan that rose in his throat. “Is this place really that wonderful?” he asked so softly that Tracy had to strain to hear him. “Is it really worth killing someone — your own father — just to live here?” Then, when he’d waited long enough for his words to sink in, he swung around and faced Tracy, who was standing in the center of the room, her eyes wide as she stared at him. “Well?” he asked. “Is it really worth all that?”

“It is to her—” Tracy began, but Phillip didn’t let her finish.

“How could it be?” he asked. “What would have been so wonderful for her here? Ever since you came home from school you’ve done your best to make her miserable. You didn’t even try to be friends with her. You treated her like a servant, ignored her, snubbed her—”

“So what?” Tracy demanded. Her face had flushed with anger, and her blue eyes glinted in the light of the chandelier. “She’s nothing but trash, just like her mother. She doesn’t belong here, and she doesn’t fit in here, and if she comes back here, I won’t live here anymore!”

“I see,” Phillip said calmly. “And just where do you propose to live?”

Tracy’s eyes widened, and the color suddenly drained from her face. What was he saying? He couldn’t mean what she thought he meant, could he? “I … I’ll go live with Alison Babcock.”

Phillip nodded thoughtfully, and sipped once more at his drink. “Tracy,” he said quietly, “I think you’d better sit down. It’s a good time for the two of us to have a talk, since Carolyn won’t be home.”

“I hope Carolyn never comes back here again,” Tracy declared, dropping into one of the wing chairs and draping her left leg casually over its arm.

“I’m sure that’s what you hope,” Phillip replied, sitting down opposite her. “But I’m telling you right now that it’s a hope I want never to hear expressed in this house again. You may think anything you like, but you will keep your thoughts to yourself from this moment on.”

His words hit Tracy like a physical blow. For a moment she was too stunned to say anything at all. Then she swallowed, and widened her eyes. “Daddy—”

“Put your feet on the floor, and sit up like the lady you think you are,” Phillip said.

Tracy’s leg came off the arm of the chair, and dropped to the floor. She stared at her father, trying to figure out what had happened. “You’re going to let her come back here, aren’t you?” she finally asked, her voice heavy with accusation. “Even after what she did to my horse.”

“Ah,” Phillip said, draining his glass and rising to his feet to fix himself another drink. “The horse.” As he passed Tracy he glanced down, and could see by her eyes that his suspicion was correct. “The Babcocks have some pretty good stock in their stable,” he commented. He said nothing more until he was once more facing her. “I wonder how safe they’d feel with you living in their house.”

Tracy’s heart was pounding now, and she had to grip the arms of the chair to keep her hands from shaking. “I didn’t do it—” she began, but when her father shook his head, she fell silent.

“I don’t believe you, Tracy,” she heard him say. “I don’t believe you, and I don’t know what to do.” His eyes flooded with tears once more, and this time he made no effort to hide them. “I guess I haven’t been much of a father, have I? I’ve always tried to give you everything you wanted, but it wasn’t enough.”

“But I love you, Daddy,” Tracy ventured.

“Do you?” Phillip asked. “I suppose you do, in your own way. But it’s the wrong way, Tracy. I can’t live my life for you. I can’t decide whom to fall in love with simply on the basis of what you want. And I can’t let you dictate who will live in my house and who won’t.”

In her own mind, Tracy mistcok the sadness in Phillip’s words for weakness. “But they don’t belong here, Daddy,” she protested once more. “I don’t see why you can’t see that. Carolyn and Beth don’t even like it here. All they want is our money!”

The tenseness in her father’s jaw told Tracy she had made a mistake, and she instinctively shrank back in her chair. Her father’s eyes were coldly furious now.

“I’m not going to hit you,” he told her. “Perhaps I should, but I won’t. I don’t believe in that sort of thing. But I will tell you this now, Tracy, and you had better listen and you had better understand, because I won’t tell you again. From this moment on, you will treat Carolyn with all the respect you would give your own mother, or any other adult woman. I don’t care anymore how you feel about her. The only thing I care about is how you treat her. From now on, you will be friendly and helpful and polite, whether I am in the house or not. As for Beth, yes, she will be coming back here to live. And it won’t be because she has no other place to go. It will be because both her mother and I love her very much. And you will treat her the same way you will treat Carolyn. You will go even further. You will make friends with Beth, unless she’s not interested in being friends with you. In that case, you will simply be polite to her, and stay out of her way. When she comes home tomorrow, you will tell her you are sorry about what happened to her father, and you will apologize for having poisoned her horse—”

“It was my horse,” Tracy exploded. Suddenly she was on her feet, glaring at her father with naked fury. “It was my horse, and I had the right to do anything I wanted to it! And it’s my house, and I can act any way I want to here, and you can’t stop me. I hate you!”

Phillip rose to his feet. “Very well,” he said softly. “If that’s the way you feel, there’s only one thing I can do. In the morning, I’ll make some calls and find a school for you.”

“Good!” Tracy shot back, her feet planted wide apart on the carpet, her face a mask of angry belligerence. “And I hope it’s as far away from here as you can get!”

“Oh, it will be,” Phillip replied. “But of course since you’ll be there year-round from now on, we’ll have to find one that has no vacations. Also, of course, one that has no horses.” He looked down, his eyes fixing on his daughter. “No privileges of any sort, I should think,” he said softly. “It appears that you’ve already had far too many of those.”

Tracy searched her father’s face, trying to see if he really meant what he was saying. “I … I’ll run away!”

Phillip shrugged. “If you do, then you do. But if I were you, I’d think about it pretty hard. I understand life can be pretty rough out there for a girl of your age.” Then he turned and left the library, closing the door quietly behind him. Tracy, frozen with rage and disbelief, stood perfectly still for a moment, then went to the bar and began throwing the glasses at the door, one by one.

Phillip and Hannah met at the bottom of the stairs as the first crash of breaking crystal emanated from the library. The old woman’s eyes widened, and she almost dropped the small overnight case she carried in her right hand. She said nothing, but her eyes questioned Phillip.

“It’s Tracy,” he said mildly. “She’s a little upset right now, but I imagine she’ll calm down when she runs out of glasses. If she asks you to clean up the mess for her, please do me the favor of playing deaf.” He thought he heard her gasp as her head bobbed dutifully. “Oh … and, Hannah,” he added as he started up the stairs. “From now on, there will be no need for you to do anything about Tracy’s room. Shell be cleaning it up herself, starting tomorrow.”

Hannah’s brows arched, and she eyed Phillip shrewdly. “Is that what this is all about?” she asked, tilting her head toward the library.

“I’m afraid not,” Phillip replied. “She doesn’t even know about having to clean her own room yet.”

“In that case, sir, I’ll lock up the rest of the crystal and the china as soon as I get back from the hospital.”

“Thank you,” Phillip said, and found himself grinning as he went up the stairs and turned toward his mother’s suite. He found Abigail sitting in her favorite chair, a book facedown in her lap. The moment he came into the room, her sharp old eyes fell on him suspiciously.

“What in the name of God is that racket, Phillip?” she demanded.

“It’s Tracy, Mother,” he replied. “I have finally put my foot down with her.” As briefly as possible, he explained to his mother what he had told his daughter, and why. When he was done, the old lady gazed at him from beneath hooded eyes.

“You’re making a terrible mistake, Phillip.”

Phillip shrugged, and dropped into the chair opposite her. “It seems to me I’ve been making a series of terrible mistakes with Tracy all her life.” His mother, though, didn’t seem to have heard him. She was staring at him now with the disapproval a mother reserves for a wayward child. What, he wondered, was she angry about now? And then he realized that the chair he had unconsciously sunk into had never been occupied by anyone but his father. “He’s dead, Mother,” he said quietly. “Is the chair in the mausoleum not enough? Is this supposed to be a shrine as well?”

He immediately regretted the words, but there was no recovering them.

“Sit where you wish,” Abigail replied, her voice cold. “Since you seem intent on taking over his place in this house, you might as well take his chair as well. But as for Tracy, you can’t simply change the rules on a child like her. She’s far too sensitive.”

“I’m afraid I can’t agree with your assessment of her sensitivity,” Phillip observed dryly. “And as to the rules, I haven’t changed them. I’ve simply established some.”

“And you expect me to allow it?” Abigail asked, her expression hardening.

“It’s not a question of your allowing anything,” Phillip replied. “I’m simply setting some limits and rules on my daughter, that’s all.”

Abigail’s lips twisted with scorn. “Your daughter? I suppose you have a biological right to say that, but I’d hardly say you’ve fulfilled the functions of a father with her.”

Phillip refused to rise to the bait. “And of course you’d be right in saying it,” he agreed. “But that’s not the point. The point is that it’s time she learned that being a Sturgess does not make her anything special, and I intend to teach her that.”

“By punishing her for being naturally resentful of the wrong sort of people intruding into her life?”

“That’s enough, Mother,” Phillip said, rising to his feet. “I simply wanted to find out how you were. I didn’t come in here to debate with you.”

Abigail’s voice took on the coldness that Phillip had long since learned to recognize as the ultimate sign of his mother’s rage. “And you presumed that I would simply acquiesce?”

“I don’t presume anything, Mother,” he replied, struggling to retain control of his own anger. “But it does occur to me that you might be just the slightest bit interested in how Beth is doing. Her father died this afternoon. Is protecting Tracy’s selfishness really more important than Beth’s welfare?”

“There’s nothing I can do for Beth Rogers,” was Abigail’s acerbic reply. “But there is a great deal I can do for my own granddaughter. Not the least of which is preventing you from moving young Beth back into this house.”

“Because she’s ‘the wrong sort of person,’ Mother?” Phillip asked wearily.

“Not at all,” Abigail shot back. “I do not want her here because I regard her as a danger to us all.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Mother. You’re sounding as paranoid as Father was just before he died.”

“I am not the least bit convinced that your father did not have all his faculties intact,” Abigail stiffly replied.

Phillip sighed. “All right, Mother. There’s obviously no point in discussing it anymore. If you need anything, I’ll be in my rooms.”

“If I need anything, I shall ring for Hannah, just as I’ve done for the last forty years.”

“Hannah’s not here. She’s gone to the hospital to take some things to Carolyn.”

Tracy stared angrily at the empty bar, looking for something else to throw. But there was nothing. The last of the three dozen crystal tumblers that had sat on those shelves for as long as she could remember now lay smashed at the bottom of the library door. The door itself was marked with a series of crescent-shaped scars where the glasses had struck it, and Tracy, even in her rage at her father, was sure that those marks would never be removed. For the rest of her life they would be there in the door, a constant reminder of this day when her father had turned against her.

But there was still her grandmother.

Her grandmother would take her side, and convince her father that he was wrong, that instead of letting Beth come back to Hilltop, they should make Carolyn leave. They could go back to their crummy little house on Cherry Street. Her father could buy it back for them.

She pulled the library door open, ignoring the broken glass that ground into the polished surface of the floor, leaving deep scratches. Hannah could clean up the mess tomorrow, and call someone to fix the floor.

She hurried up the stairs, glancing down the corridor to see if her father’s door was closed. Then she turned and started toward her grandmother’s rooms.

She didn’t bother to knock; she simply pushed the door open and stepped inside. At first she thought the room was empty. Her grandmother was no longer in her chair, and Tracy started toward the bedroom.

Then, from the window, she heard Abigail’s voice.

“Tracy? Are you all right, child?”

Tracy turned and saw the old woman, leaning heavily on her cane, a robe wrapped tightly around her. She looked much smaller than Tracy ever remembered, and she looked sick. Her skin seemed to hang in folds from her face, and her hands were trembling. “Daddy wants to send me away,” she said.

Abigail hesitated, then slowly nodded her head. “I know,” she sighed. “He told me.”

“You have to make him change his mind.”

“I’ve already tried,” the old woman replied. “But I don’t think I can. He’s decided I spoiled you, I’m afraid. If your mother were alive—”

“But she’s not!” Tracy suddenly shouted. “She’s dead! She went away and left me, just like you did!” She started across the room, her face contorting as her fury, which she’d been holding carefully in check, rushed back to the surface. “You went to the hospital and left me here with them! They hate me! Everybody hates me, and nobody cares!”

Abigail felt her heart begin to pound in the face of the girl’s anger, and instinctively turned away. She tried to close her ears to Tracy’s fury, and made herself concentrate on the night beyond the window.

She shouldn’t even be standing here. The doctor had insisted that she stay off her feet, but after her conversation with Phillip, she’d had to get out of her chair, had to pace the room while she tried to decide how to handle the situation. And finally she’d gone to the window, where she’d looked out toward the mill that was always, inevitably, the source of all her family’s troubles.

She concentrated once more on the mill, still trying to shut out the shrill sounds of Tracy’s angry voice.

And then, as she stared out into the black night, the dark form of the mill seemed suddenly so close she could almost touch it.

She could see the front doors, and the windows, neatly framed with their shutters, as clearly as if she were only across the street.

It was her imagination; it had to be. It was far too dark, and the mill much too far away, for her to see what she was seeing.

Her heart pounded harder, and once more she felt the bands begin to constrict around her chest.

And then, as the mill seemed to grow ever larger and closer, she saw the strange glowing light of a fire. At first it was only that, a strange glow emanating from the stairs to the basement.

But as she watched, and felt her ancient heart begin to burst within her, the glow turned bright. Flames rose up out of the stairwell, licking at the walls, then reaching out beyond the blackening brick as if they were searching for something.

Searching for her.

“No!” she whimpered. With an effort of pure will, for the pain in her chest was consuming her now, she turned from the window and groped for a chair. “Tracy!” she said, hearing the gasp in her own voice. “Tracy, help me!”

“Why?” Tracy said in a low voice, indifferent to her grandmother’s pain. “Why should I help you? What do you ever do for me?”

“My heart—” Abigail whispered. She reached out, but as the pain clamped down on her breast, then began shooting down her arms toward her fingers, she dropped the cane and pitched forward, crumpling to her knees. She stretched out her left arm, and just managed to touch Tracy’s leg.

Tracy’s breath caught, and she pulled away from the strange apparition on the floor. She scrambled from the room, screaming for her father.

“It’s Grandmother!” she yelled. “Daddy, come quick! Grandmother’s dying!”

Phillip found his mother on the floor of her parlor. She lay on her side, her hands clutching at her breast as if trying to free herself of the demon that possessed her. He dropped to his knees, and reached down to take her hands.

Her eyes, death already taking possession of them, fixed on him, and she reached up to touch his face.

“Fire,” she whispered. “It’s burning again. You have to stop her, Phillip … you have to …”

For a moment Phillip thought his own heart would stop. “Who? Who has to be stopped, Mother?”

The old woman gasped for breath, then made one final effort. “Amy,” she croaked. “Amy …”

And then she was gone.