Hellfire

25

A kind of somnolence hung over the house all that day, and more than once Carolyn had to resist an urge to go to her room, close the curtains, then lie down in the cool half-light and let sleep overtake her. But she hadn’t done it, for all day long she found herself obsessed with the idea that hidden somewhere in the house was the key to whatever evil lay within the mill.

For a while, after breakfast, she tried to fight the growing obsession, telling herself that Phillip was right, and that there could not possibly be anything inherently evil about the old building. She reminded herself that Phillip’s father, in his last years, had been senile, and that Abigail, in those last weeks of her life when she had changed her mind about the mill, had already been weakened by a heart attack.

And yet every argument she presented herself with fell to pieces in the face of her growing certainty that there was something in the mill that neither Conrad nor Abigail had quite understood, but had nevertheless finally been forced to accept.

Finally, after lunch, she started searching the house.

She began in Abigail’s rooms, opening every drawer, searching through the stacks of correspondence the old woman had kept filed away, looking for anything that might refer, even indirectly, to the mill.

There was nothing.

She went to the basement, then, and spent two hours searching through the jumble of furniture that had been stored there. When she finally emerged, covered with the dust and grime that had collected through the years, it was only to climb the long flights of stairs to the attic, where she began the search once more.

Again she found nothing.

But it was strange, for she did find that the Sturgesses, apparently for generations long past, had been inveterate collectors. Aside from enough discarded furniture to fill the house half-again, she had found box after box of old albums, piles of scrapbooks, cartons of personal correspondence, and even yellowed school reports done by Sturgess children who had long since grown up, grown old, and passed away.

And yet, among the collected detritus of the family’s life, there had been not one scrap of information about the mill upon which their fortune had been built.

In the end she decided there was a reason for it. The records, she was certain, would have too clearly reflected the realities of the mill — the theft of her own family’s share in it, and the appalling conditions under which it had been run. The Sturgesses, she was sure, would not have wanted those records around as a constant reminder of the sins of the past.

Eventually giving up the search, she wandered into the dining room to sit among the portraits of the departed Sturgesses.

She dwelt for a long time on the picture of Samuel Pruett Sturgess, who today seemed to be mocking her, as if he knew it was a descendant of Charles Cobb Deaver who was gazing at him, and was laughing at her efforts to discover the secrets he had long since destroyed.

At last, as the afternoon faded into the kind of hot and sticky evening that promised no relief from the humidity of the day, Phillip came home. He found his wife still in the dining room.

“Enjoying the pleasure of their company?” he asked. When Carolyn turned to face him, he regretted his bantering tone. Her hair, usually flowing in soft waves, hung limply around her shoulders, and her white blouse was smudged with dirt. Her face looked haggard, and her eyes almost frightened. Phillip’s smile faded away. “Carolyn, what is it?”

“Nothing,” Carolyn sighed. Then she managed a weak smile. “I guess I’m behaving like an hysteric. I’ve been turning the house upside down all day, trying to find the old records from the mill.”

“They’re probably in the attic,” Phillip observed. “That’s where practically everything is.”

“They’re not,” Carolyn replied. She pulled herself to her feet, and started out of the room. “And if you ask me, old Samuel Pruett destroyed them all himself.”

For a moment, Phillip thought she must be joking, but there was nothing good-humored in her tone. He followed her into the library, where he fixed himself a drink, then poured her a Coke. “What about the girls?” he asked. “Any problems?”

Carolyn sank into a chair, shaking her head. “None at all. They’ve been together all day, and I kept waiting for the explosion. But it hasn’t come.”

Phillip’s brows arched hopefully. “Maybe,” he suggested, “you were wrong this morning.”

“I wish I could think so,” Carolyn replied. “But I don’t. I just have a feeling something’s going to happen. And I wasn’t wrong about the mill this morning, either,” she added. “I really do want you to close it up again.” She met his eyes. “I know it sounds crazy, and I can’t explain it, but I’ve just gotten to the point where I believe your parents were right. There’s something evil about the place, and I think your whole family knew it. I think that’s why I can’t find any records. And I mean, none at all!”

Phillip hesitated, then, to Carolyn’s surprise, nodded. “You might be right,” he said at last. “Anyway, I can’t really say I think you’re wrong anymore.” His gaze shifted away from her for a moment, then came back. “I went down there again today, and something $$

As clearly as he could, he told Carolyn about the strange experiences he’d had — the odor of smoke he’d noticed in the mill when he’d been there with Alan back when the restoration was just beginning, and the sense of panic he’d had the day Alan had died.

He even told her about the hallucination he’d had, as if he’d slipped back a century in time, and felt as if an angry mob had been reaching out to him, trying to lay their hands on him.

“I felt as though they were going to lynch me,” he finished. “And I went back this morning.”

“And?” Carolyn prompted him.

Phillip shook his head. “I don’t know. I didn’t like being in the place alone, but I kept telling myself it was nothing — that the place has so many bad associations for me that I couldn’t feel any other way. But the longer I stayed, the worse it got. And I couldn’t go into the basement at all. I tried, but I just couldn’t do it. Every time I looked down those stairs, I had the feeling that if I went down them, I’d die.” He fell silent, then drained his glass and set it aside.

“What did you do?” Carolyn finally pressed when it seemed as if Phillip wasn’t going to go on.

“Went to see my accountant.” He chuckled hollowly. “When I told him I was thinking about giving the project up, he told me what I told you — we can’t. Only he had the numbers to back himself up with.”

Carolyn frowned now. “The numbers? What numbers?”

“All the figures on the amount of money we’ve committed to the project. The loans, the contracts, the cash layouts — the whole ball of wax. And the bottom line is that we literally cannot afford to abandon it. There’s just too much money invested.” He smiled bitterly. “The best thing that could happen,” he added, “would be if the place burned to the ground.”

For the rest of the evening, Phillip’s last words echoed in Carolyn’s mind, and when she at last went to bed, she found it difficult to sleep.

The mill, for her, had become a trap, and she felt its jaws inexorably closing on all of them.

Tracy Sturgess awoke at midnight, just before the alarm on her night table went off. It wasn’t a slow wakening, the slight stirring that grows into a stretch and is then followed by reluctantly opening eyes. It was the other kind, when sleep is suddenly snatched away, and the mind is fully alert. At the first sound of the alarm, she reached out and silenced it.

Tracy lay still in the bed, listening to the faint sounds of the night. She had not intended to fall asleep at all — indeed, she had not even bothered to undress that night, and when her father had come in to say good night to her, she had merely clutched the covers tight around her neck. But when he was gone, she’d set her alarm, just in case.

She slid out of her bed and went to the window. The moon, nearly full, hung high in the night sky, bathing the village below in its silvery light. Even from here, each of the houses of Westover was clearly visible, and when Tracy looked at the mill, the moonlight seemed to shimmer on its windows, making it look as if it were lit from within.

Tracy turned away from the window, put on her sneakers, then crossed to the door. Opening it a crack, she listened for several long seconds. From below, the slow regular ticking of the grandfather clock in the foyer seemed amplified by the silence of the house, and Tracy instinctively knew that everyone else was asleep.

She opened the door wider, and stepped out into the corridor, then moved silently toward Beth’s room. When she came to the closed door, she paused, listening again before she tried the knob. It turned easily, and when she pushed the door open, there was no betraying squeak from its hinges. Then she was inside, and a moment later she stood by Beth’s bed, gently shaking her stepsister.

“Wake up,” she whispered as loudly as she dared.

Beth stirred, then woke up, blinking in the dim moonlight. She looked up at Tracy. “Is it time?”

Tracy nodded, then pulled the covers away from Beth. To her disgust, Beth was wearing pajamas. “I told you not to undress,” she hissed. “Hurry up, will you?” Beth reached out to the light on her nightstand, but Tracy brushed her hand away. “Don’t turn on the lights. What if someone sees? Will you just get dressed?”

Beth scrambled out of the bed, and scurried into her closet. In less than a minute she was back, wearing jeans and a gray sweatshirt. On her sockless feet she had a pair of sneakers almost identical to Tracy’s. She sat down at her desk, and quickly tied the laces, then followed Tracy out into the hall. But at the top of the stairs, Tracy suddenly stopped.

“What’s wrong?” Beth whispered.

“The bed. We forgot to fix it so it looks like you’re still in it.”

“But everyone’s asleep,” Beth protested.

“What if they wake up? Wait for me downstairs by the front door.” Then, before Beth could protest, Tracy scurried back to Beth’s room and disappeared inside.

But instead of arranging the pillows under the covers of Beth’s bed, she went to the desk, opened the top drawer, and took the old book out. Opening the book, she laid it facedown on the desk, then hurried out of the room.

She left the door standing wide open.

Downstairs, she found Beth waiting nervously by the front door. She pulled the drawer of the commode out, fished around until she found the right set of keys, then closed the drawer. A moment later they were outside.

They darted across the lawn, and between the twin stone lions that guarded the path to the mausoleum, then paused to pick up the lantern that Beth had sneaked out of the tackroom that afternoon.

“But why can’t we just turn on the lights?” Beth had protested when Tracy had told her what she wanted.

“Are you crazy?” Tracy had replied. “If we turn on the lights, everyone in town will know someone’s inside. But who’s going to see a lantern?”

Now Tracy checked it once more. Its tank was full, and the wick, which she had carefully trimmed, was still undamaged. The knife she had used to trim the wick — an old rusty jackknife that had also come from the tackroom — was safe in her pocket, along with three books of matches.

Carrying the lantern, Tracy started up the trail to the mausoleum, Beth behind her.

The great marble structure seemed even larger at night, and the moonlight shot black shadows from the pillars across the floor. One of the shadows fell across the chair in which the ashes of Samuel Pruett Sturgess were interred, giving the girls the fleeting illusion that the chair had disappeared entirely. Standing by the broken pillar, they gazed out toward the mill.

“Look,” Beth breathed. “It’s burning.”

Tracy felt a derisive laugh rise in her throat, but choked it off. “It’s Amy,” she whispered. “She knows we’re coming.” Out of the corner of her eye she saw Beth hesitate, then nod. “Shall we stop at her grave?” she asked.

This time, Beth shook her head. “She’s not there,” she whispered. “She’s still in the mill. Come on.”

Now, with Beth leading, they started down the tangled path that would eventually stop at the river.

“Are you scared?” Tracy asked. They had come to the end of the trestle over the river. On the other side, across River Road, the mill gleamed in the moonlight.

“No,” Beth replied with a bravery she didn’t quite feel. The wooden bridge stretched out before them, seeming longer and higher at night than it did in the daytime. “Are you?”

Tracy shook her head, and started out onto the narrow span, placing her feet carefully on the ties, keeping to the exact center of the space between the twin rails. Behind her, Beth followed her movements precisely, concentrating on staring at the ties, for when she let her vision shift, focusing on the river below, a wave of dizziness passed over her.

Then they were on the other side of the river, and solid ground once more spread away on either side of the tracks.

They paused at River Road, then darted across.

They came to the back of the mill, and Beth pointed to the loading dock. “That’s where she lives,” she whispered. “There’s a little room under there.”

Tracy ignored her, starting up the path along the side of the building. They were exposed now, the full light of the moon shining down on them, and they could easily be seen from any car that might pass by.

The third key Tracy tried fit the padlock on the side door, and when she twisted it the lock popped open. Then, as she pulled the door itself open, she felt Beth freeze beside her. She turned to look, and saw that Beth’s eyes were wide, staring in through the open door. Her whole body was trembling slightly, and in the pale moonlight her skin was the color of death.

“What is it?” Tracy whispered. For a second she didn’t think Beth had heard her, but then the other girl slowly turned, her fearful eyes meeting Tracy’s.

“Daddy,” she said softly. “Look. The moon’s shining right down on the place where Daddy …” Her voice trailed off, and once more her eyes shifted to the interior of the mill.

Tracy followed Beth’s gaze.

Inside the building, the moonlight was streaming through the skylight. The colors of the dome itself were faintly visible, but the moonlight had robbed them of their vitality. Instead of sparkling brightly, they cast a nightmare pall over the interior.

Across the floor lay the huge spider’s web formed by the shadows of the leaded glass above.

Near the center of the rotunda, a single beam of clear moonlight shone down, illuminating the spot where Alan Rogers had died.

Grasping Beth’s hand, Tracy pulled her inside the building, closing the door behind them.

The faint chirping sounds of the summer night disappeared, and silence closed around the two girls. It was as if they’d stepped into another world, a strange dead world that reached out to enclose them, drawing them to its cold bosom.

They started slowly across the floor, unconsciously avoiding the spiderweb shadow cast by the skylight, as if by touching it they could become entangled, to be held prisoner for whatever strange creature might lurk in the shadowy reaches, waiting for its prey.

In the distance, seemingly unreachable, lay the stairs to the basement, and Tracy wanted to run to them, wanted to be away from the strange light and terrifying shadows.

As in a nightmare, her feet seemed mired in mud, each step a terrible effort.

But finally they were there, staring down into the pitch blackness below.

Tracy knelt, set the lantern carefully on the floor, then lifted its chimney off. She struck a match, cupped it in her hands for a moment, then held it to the wick.

The wick sputtered, then caught, the flame spreading quickly along its length. When it was burning brightly, Tracy replaced the chimney, then adjusted the wick. The flame’s intensity increased, but still the light was all but lost in the vastness of the building around them.

“Come on,” Tracy whispered, getting to her feet once more and picking up the lantern.

But Beth hung back, staring fearfully into the darkness below. In her mind, she began to remember the hellish vision she’d seen last time she had been in the little room behind the stairs. “M-maybe we shouldn’t—” she breathed.

But Tracy reached out with her free hand and grasped her wrist once more. “She’s your friend, remember?” Tracy hissed, letting her anger begin to show for the first time since Beth had come back to live at Hilltop. “You can’t chicken out now. I won’t let you!”

She started down the stairs, holding the lantern high. Beth resisted for only a moment, but as Tracy’s grip tightened on her wrist, she gave in. Her heart beginning to pound, she reluctantly followed Tracy into the basement.

The yawning blackness seemed to open before them, welcoming them.