Hellfire

27

By the time Phillip reached the mill, it was already clear that the building was doomed. Three fire trucks were lined up along the north wall, and two more stood in the middle of Prospect Street, their hoses snaking across the sidewalk and up the steps to the shattered remains of the plate-glass doors. But the water that poured from the hoses into the building seemed to evaporate as fast as it was pumped in.

The roar of the blaze was deafening, and when Phillip found Norm Adcock, he had to put his mouth to the police chief’s ear in order to be heard at all.

“It’s no good,” he shouted. “There’s no way to stop it.”

Adcock nodded grimly. “If they can’t get it under control in ten minutes, they’re going to give up on the building and just try to keep the fire from spreading.”

But they didn’t have to wait ten minutes.

The main floor had burned through now, and the fire was raging through the new construction. The heat and flames rose upward, and suddenly, as Phillip watched, the great dome over the atrium seemed to wobble for a moment, then collapse into the firestorm below. The gaping hole in the roof combined with the shattered front doors to turn the entire structure into a vast chimney. Fresh air rushed into the vacuum, and the blaze redoubled, lighting the sky over the town with the red glow of hell. Over the roar of the inferno, the wailing of sirens sounded a melancholy counterpoint, a strange dirge accompanying the pageant of death the mill had become.

“The girls,” Phillip shouted, straining to make himself heard over the deafening crescendo.

Again Adcock shook his head. “By the time I got here, there was no way to get inside. And if they were in there …” There was no need to finish the sentence.

The firemen had given up on the building now, and the hoses were turned away, pouring water onto the ground around the mill. And yet there was really little need for this. Always, the mill had stood alone between the railroad tracks and Prospect Street, the land on either side of it vacant, as if no other building wished to be associated with the foreboding structure that had for so long been a brooding sentinel, guarding the past.

Prospect Street itself was filling now as the people of Westover, hastily dressed, began to gather to witness the last dying gasps of the mill.

They stood silently for the most part, simply watching it burn. Now and then, as a window exploded from the pressure of the heat within, a ripple of sound would roll through the crowd, then disappear, to be replaced once more by eerie silence.

It was a little after two in the morning when the brick walls that had stood solid for well over a hundred years finally buckled under the fury of the fire and the weight of the roof, trembled for a moment, then collapsed.

The entire building seemed to fall in on itself, and almost immediately disappeared into the flames.

All that was left now was a vast expanse of flaming rubble, and once more the fire fighters turned their hoses toward the blaze. Clouds of steam mixed with smoke, and the roar of the inferno suddenly dissolved into a furious reptilian hissing, a dragon in the final throes of death.

Now, at last, the crowd came to life. It stirred, murmuring softly to itself, drifting closer to the dying monster.

It eddied around Phillip Sturgess as if he were a rock dividing a current. He stood alone as the mass of humanity split, passed him by, then merged once more to flood into the street.

And then, finally, he was alone, standing silently in the night, facing the ruin that had once been the cornerstone of his family’s entire life.

Carolyn stood on the terrace with Hannah, watching the flames slowly die back until all that was left was an angry glow. She could see the black silhouettes of people, looking from Hilltop like no more than tiny ants swarming around the remains of a ruined nest.

It should have happened a hundred years ago.

The thought came unbidden into her mind, where it lodged firmly, until she finally spoke it out loud. For a moment Hannah remained silent; then she nodded abruptly.

“I expect you’re right,” the old woman said softly. Then she took Carolyn’s arm in her gnarled hand, and pulled her gently toward the house. “I won’t have you standing out here in the night air, not when there’s nothing you can see, and nothing you can do.”

“I have to do something,” Carolyn objected, but nevertheless let herself be guided inside. She followed Hannah into the living room, then sank into an overstuffed chair.

“You just stay there,” Hannah said gently. “I’ll put some tea on so it will be ready for Mr. Phillip when he comes back.”

Carolyn nodded, though the words barely penetrated her mind.

Slowly, she relived the short time since Phillip had left the house.

She’d followed him downstairs, the strange book she’d found in Beth’s room still clutched in her hand. Only when he was gone had she taken it into the living room, and read it through carefully.

Just as she had finished, Hannah had appeared, to tell her the mill was burning.

Even before she’d gone out on the terrace to look, she’d come to the certain realization that both Beth and Tracy were dead. And in the numbness following the first overwhelming wave of grief for her daughter, she’d also come to understand that there was a certain unity in what had happened.

It was as if the tragedy that had occurred in the mill a century ago — a tragedy that had never been fully resolved — was finally seeking its own resolution, and exacting a terrible revenge on the descendants of those who had for so long avoided their responsibilities.

Except for Beth.

For the rest of her life, she knew, she would wonder why Beth had had to die that night.

Now she sat alone in the living room, waiting for Phillip to come home, trying to compose her thoughts, preparing herself to explain to her husband what had happened in the mill so many years ago.

At last, just before three, she heard the sound of his car pulling up in front of the house. A moment later the front door opened and closed, and she heard Phillip calling her. His voice sounded worn out, defeated.

“In here,” she said quietly, and when he turned to her she could see the anguish in his eyes.

“The girls—” he began. “Tracy — Beth—”

“I know,” Carolyn said. She rose from her chair, and stepped out of the dim pool of light from the single lamp she had allowed Hannah to turn on. She went to her husband, and put her arms around him, holding him tight for a moment. Then she released her grip, and drew him gently into the living room. “I know what happened,” she said softly. “I don’t understand it all, and I don’t think I ever will, but I know the girls are gone. And I almost know why.”

“Why?” Phillip echoed. His eyes looked haunted now, and there was a hollowness to his voice that frightened Carolyn.

“It’s in the book,” she said softly. “It’s all in the little book I found in Beth’s room.”

Phillip shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

“It’s a diary, Phillip,” Carolyn explained. She picked the small leather-bound volume up from the table next to Phillip’s chair and put it into his hands. “It must have been your greatgrandfather’s. Hannah says she’s seen it before. Your father used to read it, and Hannah thinks he kept it in a metal box in his closet.”

Phillip nodded numbly. “A brown one — I never knew what was in it.”

“That’s the one,” Carolyn replied. “Hannah found it in Beth’s closet right after you left.”

“But how did it—?”

“It doesn’t matter how it got into Beth’s room. What matters is what was in the diary. It … it tells what happened at the mill. There was a fire, Phillip.”

Phillip’s eyes widened slightly, but he said nothing.

“There was a fire in a workroom downstairs.”

“The little room under the loading dock,” Phillip muttered almost to himself. “The one behind the stairs.”

Carolyn gasped. “You knew about the fire?”

“No,” Phillip breathed. “No, I’m sure I didn’t. But one day I was down in the basement with Alan. We were looking at the foundation. And right at the bottom of the stairs, I smelled something. It was strange. It was very faint, but it smelled smoky. As if something had burned there once.”

“It did burn,” Carolyn whispered. Now she took Phillip’s hand in her own. “Phillip, children died down there.”

Phillip’s eyes fixed blankly on his wife. “Died?”

Carolyn nodded. “And one of the children who died there was your greatgrandfather’s daughter.”

Phillip looked dazed, then slowly shook his head. “That … that isn’t possible. Tracy is the first girl we’ve ever had in the family.”

Carolyn squeezed his hand once more. “Phillip, it’s in the diary. There was a little girl — your greatgrandfather’s daughter by one of the women in the village. Her name — the child’s name — was Amelia.”

“Amelia?” Phillip echoed. “That … that doesn’t make sense. I’ve never heard of such a story.”

“He never acknowledged her,” Carolyn told him. “Apparently he never told a soul, but he admitted it in his diary. And she was working in the mill the day of the fire.”

Phillip’s face was ashen now. “I … I can’t believe it.”

“But it’s there,” Carolyn insisted, her voice suddenly quiet. “Her name was Amelia, but everybody called her … Amy.”

Phillip’s face suddenly turned gray. “My God,” he whispered. “There really was an Amy.”

“And there’s something else,” Carolyn added. “According to the journal, Amy used her mother’s last name. It — Phillip, her name was Deaver. Amy Deaver.”

Phillip’s eyes met hers. The only Deavers who had ever lived in Westover were Carolyn’s family. “Did you know about this?” he asked now. “Did you know all this when you married me?”

Now it was Carolyn who shook her head. “I didn’t know, Phillip. I knew how my family felt about yours; I knew that long ago they’d lost a child in the mill. But who the child’s father was — no, I never heard that. I swear it.”

“What happened?” Phillip asked after a long silence. His voice was dull now, as if he already knew what he was about to hear. “Why didn’t the children get out?”

Carolyn hesitated, and when she finally spoke, her voice was so quiet Phillip had to strain to hear her. “He was there that day,” she said. “Samuel Pruett Sturgess. And when the fire broke out, he closed the fire door.”

“He did what?” Phillip demanded.

Carolyn nodded miserably. “Phillip, it’s all in the diary, in his own handwriting. He closed the fire door, and let all those children burn to death. Even his own daughter. He let them burn to death to save the mill!”

“My God,” Phillip groaned. He was silent for a moment, trying to absorb what Carolyn had just told him. The story was almost impossible to believe — the cruelty of it too monumental for him to accept. And yet he knew it was true — knew it was the secret that had finally driven his father mad.

Even his mother, at the end of her life, had discovered the tale, and accepted its truth.

“I don’t believe in ghosts,” he said at last. “I never have. I never will.”

“I don’t either,” Carolyn agreed. “But I keep thinking about it. The children, caught in a fire. Tonight, our children, caught in a fire. And the other people who have died in the mill. Your brother. And Jeff Bailey. The Baileys had an interest in the mill once, didn’t they?”

Phillip nodded reluctantly. “But what about Alan?”

“The reconstruction,” Carolyn whispered. “Don’t you see? Your father was right. The project never should have started to begin with.”

Phillip’s head swung around, and his eyes met hers. “And what about Beth?” he asked. “What did she do to deserve what happened tonight?”

At last Carolyn’s tears began to flow. “I don’t know,” she said through her sobs. “She was such a sweet child. I … I just don’t know!”

Phillip put his arms around his wife, and tried to comfort her. “It was an accident, darling,” he whispered softly. “I know how it all seems now, but whatever happened tonight, it couldn’t have had anything to do with what happened a hundred years ago. It was just a terrible accident. We have to believe that.”

We have to, he repeated to himself. If we don’t, we’ll have to spend the rest of our lives waiting for it all to start again.

And then, against his will, a picture of his daughter came into his mind.

Alan Rogers had died, and she’d gazed into the mill at the broken body of Beth’s father.

Her eyes had glittered with malicious hatred, and her lips had been twisted into a satisfied smile.

He held his wife closer, and shut his eyes, but still the vision lingered.

Late the next afternoon, both Phillip and Carolyn stood with Norm Adcock as a pair of workmen pried away the metal plate that had covered one face of the loading-dock wall for the last hundred years.

Samuel Pruett Sturgess, in the last pages of his diary, wrote of the metal plate, and his hopes that it would seal the room from the outside, as the firmly bolted metal door sealed it from the inside. It was his intention, in the last days of his life, that no one ever enter the workroom behind the basement stairs again.

Grayish wisps of ash still drifted toward the sky from the smoking ruin, and its heat still caused a shimmering in the summer air.

The men, their shirts stripped off against the combined heat of the sun and the fire, worked quickly, using a cold chisel and a maul to break away the bolts that secured the metal to the concrete of the dock. At last it fell away, and the window, its glass long ago broken out of the frames, was exposed to the sunlight for the first time in a century. The workmen stepped back, and Norm Adcock, with Phillip at his side, moved forward.

Residual heat drifted from the room, but when Adcock reached out and gingerly touched the concrete itself, he realized that it was no longer too hot to go inside. He dropped to his knees, and shone a flashlight inside.

At first he thought the room was empty. Opposite the window, he could see the remains of the metal door, twisted and buckled by the intensity of the heat that had all but destroyed it, hanging grotesquely from its broken support rail.

He worked the light back and forth, examining the floor.

Everywhere he looked, there was nothing but blackness.

And then, at last, he shone the light straight down.

“Jesus,” he whispered, and immediately felt Phillip Sturgess’s grip tighten on his shoulder. “I’m not sure you’re going to want to look at this, Phillip,” he said quietly.

“They’re inside?”

Adcock withdrew his head from the window, and faced Phillip. “They’re there. But I really think you should let us take care of it. Take Carolyn home, Phillip. I’ll let you know if we find anything.”

Phillip hesitated, but finally shook his head. “I can’t. I have to see it for myself.” When Adcock seemed about to protest further, he spoke again. “Carolyn and I have talked about it,” he said. “And we decided that whatever is in there, I have to see it.”

Adcock’s brows rose. “Have to?”

“I’d rather not explain it,” Phillip said. “Frankly, I doubt that it would make much sense to you. But I do have to see what happened.”

Adcock weighed the matter in his mind, then reluctantly nodded. “Okay. I’ll have the men put the ladder in, then we can go down.”

When the ladder had been lowered, Adcock disappeared through the window. Phillip followed him. He carefully avoided looking down until he was on the floor and had stepped carefully away from the ladder. Then, as his eyes became accustomed to the shadowy light of the little room, he let himself look at what Adcock had already seen.

The heat of the fire had all but destroyed the remains of the two girls.

Their clothes had burned, as had their hair. There were still fragments of skin clinging to the skulls, and the skeletons themselves were wrapped in the emaciated remains of the soft tissues of their bodies.

Phillip was reminded of photographs he’d seen of the Nazi concentration camps after the war. He struggled against the nausea that rose in his gorge, then made himself kneel, and reach out to touch what was left of his daughter.

Tracy’s body lay curled tightly, as if she’d died trying to protect herself against the heat.

Around her neck there was a chain, and attached to the chain, clutched in the bony remains of Tracy’s right hand, was a jade pendant that he recognized as having been his mother’s.

If it had not been for the pendant, he was sure he wouldn’t have known which of the hideous, almost mummified bodies was Tracy’s.

His gaze shifted to Beth’s body. It was stretched prone on the floor, one hand up; its fleshless fingers seemed to be reaching toward the window.

Slowly, he became aware of the marks on the wall. At first they were only a blur, almost lost in the blackness on which they had been smeared. But as he stared at them, they gradually began to take shape, and he realized that before the girls had died, one of them — he couldn’t be sure which one — had left a message. Now the message was clear.

It consisted of only one word: AMY.

“It looks like blood,” he heard Norm Adcock say. “There’s some more on the floor.” Then his voice dropped. “Phillip?”

“I’m listening,” Phillip replied.

“I can’t be sure, but right now I’d say only Tracy died from the heat. I think Beth was already dead before the fire started. Look.”

Reluctantly, Phillip made his eyes follow Adcock’s pointing finger.

Despite the damage done by the fire, the seared skin and the shrunken flesh, the marks were clearly there.

Either before, or just after she’d died, Beth Rogers had been hacked nearly to pieces.

Phillip groaned as he realized what it must mean; then his mind rejected the knowledge, and his body finally rebelled. He could fight the nausea no longer. His stomach heaving, and his throat already filling with the sour taste of bile, he retreated to the far corner of the room.

Ten minutes later, pale and shaking, but once again in control of himself, he emerged from the little room into the daylight outside. Carolyn was still there, standing where he’d left her, waiting for him. She looked at him, her eyes asking him a silent question.

He took her in his arms, and held her close. “It’s over,” he said. “It’s all over now.”

Carolyn shuddered, and let her tears flow freely. She felt numb, empty, as if she’d lost everything that she had loved.

But that’s not true, she insisted to herself.

I still have Phillip, and we still have our baby.

And then, for the first time, she felt their unborn child stir within her.

We’ll get through it, she told herself. We’ll get through it all, and we’ll survive. Whatever’s happened, we’ll survive.

She took Phillip’s hand and pressed it to her belly. “It’s not over, darling,” she whispered. “We just have to begin again. And we can. I know we can.”

Once again, the tiny child within her moved, and this time Phillip felt it, too.