The Haunting of Bell Mansion

by James Hunt

  The liquor was warmer than the air outside, and Brent poured it straight into his mouth, spilling some of it down his chin and the front of his jacket. He poured for five seconds before finally setting the bottle down.

  Brent shut his eyes, letting the liquor burn and calm his nerves. Tequila had always been his drink of choice. He caught a lot of shit because of it when he was growing up because everyone in his neighborhood drank whiskey.

  “Don’t be one of those wetbacks, Brent!”

  He could still hear their voices now, twenty years later. But the torment of his heritage was at the bottom of his concerns. He knew that Dell had radioed the troopers, and he knew that he told them about what happened, but that didn’t mean they knew every detail. And if the woman who set him free was as good at helping him escape as she was covering up murders, then he had some wiggle room. But that meant finding Sarah and killing her.

  Outside, a siren wailed in the distance, and Brent hurried out the door. The harsh din of the sirens preceded the flashing lights that bathed the town in blues and reds.

  Before the cop were even in the town, Brent sprinted for the woods. He’d feel better with a few bullets in his empty chamber.

  24

  Iris wasn’t sure what she had expected when it was done. She had hoped that the weight of doubt and pain that she’d experienced over the past several decades would be lifted. She was tired of feeling so hollow and empty. She wanted it to be done, but when she saw Dell disappear into that orb and the witch claiming its last soul, there was no sweet moment of release, no light that guided her from the darkness. She only felt weaker.

  A cold hand lightly grabbed her shoulder, and Iris turned to find the witch circling from behind. “My dear Iris, you don’t look well.”

  The witch had chosen to remain unclothed in the house, though her long black hair covered her breasts, and Iris found it difficult to look the woman in the eye. She was so bold in her body. Iris had never had that confidence, even as a younger woman, at least not in the company of strangers.

  “Where is my daughter?” Iris kept her head down, and she couldn’t stop shivering. “You promised me I could have Mary.”

  The witch slowly peeled her fingers off Iris’s shoulder and then stepped toward the bed where Sarah had been confined. “She is still needed.” The witch gripped the nearest bed post and then looked back, half her face covered by her bangs. “But the dark lord will give you what you seek. He can provide everything.”

  Iris finally looked up from her feet. She clenched her fists by her sides and then took an aggressive step forward. “You told me that if I gave you the souls you needed that I would get my daughter back!” She thrust a curved and swollen finger, crooked from arthritis, and aimed it at the witch.

  The witch kept her back to Iris, the threat repelled off of her porcelain skin. “You know you’re very much like Allister Bell.” She turned, holding one of the picture frames that contained a photo of her daughter that had been scratched out as she walked back toward Iris. “When his family was in trouble, he did whatever was necessary to save them. No matter the cost.” She smiled, handing the picture over to Iris. “Love is dangerous, Iris. Love kills more people than any war or disease. It clings to people like a parasite and sucks them dry till there’s nothing left. Love leaves you hollow.” She placed her long red nail against Iris’s cheek and then traced her jawline with the gentlest of strokes. “You put all of your blame into the dark lord for how you feel. But you are the one in control of your emotions, Iris Bell. Not him. You.”

  Tears welled up in Iris’s eyes and then fell along her wrinkled cheek, catching in the lines of her skin that distorted its path. She traced the scratched-out features of Mary’s face in the picture, trying to remember her daughter’s face. She had always been so beautiful, even as a baby. That fire-red hair was so striking it caught glances everywhere she went. There wasn’t a man in town that didn’t want to marry her, though none of them, not even the one she’d say yes to, was good enough for her.

  “So pure,” Iris said, remembering her daughter. “Fresh as a brand-new morning.” But while she wanted to smile, and while she wanted the words leaving her lips to taste sweet on her tongue, Iris frowned, and the words tasted sour.

  “Let go, Iris,” the witch said, grabbing hold of her arm. “That sadness, that uncertainty, it can all fade away. You can make it disappear in the blink of an eye.”

  She wanted to let go, she wanted to feel that sweet release of apathy and drift into nothing. Her hands ached from holding on for so long, but she wasn’t even sure if she knew how to do that anymore.

  “Allister didn’t have the opportunity that you have right now,” the witch whispered in her ear. “You could reshape your future. You could be young again, and strong, and desirable.”

  The last word pricked at her soul. She wanted to feel that way. She wanted men to look at her the way she’d seen people look at the witch, the way Iris was looking at her right now.

  “All you have to do is let go,” the witch said, continuing her seductive whispers.

  And just when Iris was about to do it and feel her fingers slip from the ledge so she could fall, she lowered her gaze to the picture frame, and she kept hold.

  “Fine,” the witch said, displeased. “Have it your way, hag.”

  The witch stormed out of the room, leaving Iris alone with the picture held in her arthritic hands that curved around the silver frame. A tear splashed over the glass, and Iris leaned up against the wall to help keep herself from falling.

  Grief spilled out of her in waves, and she dropped the frame from her hands, covering her face, smearing the tears along her cheeks, and then collapsed to the floor. How did she get here? How did all of this happen?

  “Grandma?” Kegan froze in the doorway and then immediately dropped to his knees, gently placing his hands on her shoulders. “Are you all right?”

  Iris leaned her head back, eyes red and glassy. “It was wrong.” She turned to Kegan, locking eyes with him, and then grabbed his arm before he could pull away. He was like his father. He always had a problem staring difficulties in the face. He ran from them. But unlike his father, Kegan could be swayed. He could be convinced of another way. “Kegan, I—”

  Sirens blared beyond the walls, and both turned to the door. The noise grew louder, and both of them knew what the police had come here for.

  “C’mon, Grandma,” Kegan said, gently lifting Iris off the floor. “We need to get you to bed.”

  “No,” Iris replied. “I need to see.”

  Kegan opened his mouth to protest, but then stopped himself and only nodded as he helped her out of the room and down the hall.

  The going was slow, and before they even reached the first floor, they heard officers banging on the door. No doubt Dell had called for backup when he arrived. But there was no Dell here, no bodies, nothing to incriminate them. The witch would see to that because she still needed to perform the ceremony.

  “Wait.” Iris held up her hand for Kegan to stop as they reached the second floor. She gestured toward the nearest room and then walked to the window. She pulled back the curtain and saw half a dozen highway trooper vehicles parked along the end of the main street, which dead-ended into the circular drive of the mansion’s property.

  “They’ll press us hard,” Kegan said. “Dell’s car is still down there, and I don’t think they’re going to just go away if we pretend not to know anything.”

  “The wolves at the door,” Iris said, her voice a breathless whisper. “Scratching, clawing to get inside. They never stop.”

  The pounding continued, and Kegan tried to pull her away from the window. “The longer it takes for us to answer, the longer they’re going to stick around because they think something’s wrong.”

  But Iris just kept staring out of the window, ignoring Kegan’s pleas for heading downstairs, and then her gaze turned toward the town. Even from far away, it looked like it had deteriorated into nothing. “W
e made it. We can destroy it.”

  Kegan pulled Iris from the window, forcing his face into hers. “What are you talking about? Grandma, we need to head down there and talk to them.”

  And Iris wasn’t sure she understood what she was saying herself. But there was something growing deep within her thoughts, an idea that wanted to break free. She couldn’t live like this anymore. She couldn’t put her family through this anymore. The witch was right. She could make a different decision than Allister made. She could set what was left of her family on a different path. Because she was starting to realize that the road she’d chosen had a dead end, and it was coming up. Quickly.

  25

  After battling the woods again for the hundredth time, Sarah broke from the trees and saw Redford stretched at the bottom of the hill where she stood. The sun had risen higher in the sky, and Sarah figured it was somewhere around mid-morning; late enough to where people had already commuted to work, leaving the roads below barren.

  The chapel was on the west side of town, and Sarah spotted the cross rising from the sharply-pitched roof. The sun was still low enough for the tip of the cross to scrape the bottom of it, which cast a shadow that stretched into the road and covered the building to the north.

  Sarah adjusted the book in her bag over her shoulder, looking up to check her distance from the church, and then lowered her eyes.

  The closer she moved toward the church, the more her stomach soured. And despite the cold, beads of sweat appeared on her forehead and dripped from her underarms and down her ribs.

  When she was a kid, either in the orphanages or in a foster home, there were always people that came from the church to help volunteer their time or donate clothes or toys. And while Sarah accepted their hand-me-downs, she never enjoyed the transaction.

  The volunteers always looked down on her and the other kids like they were disease-ridden. But it was the looks of pity that she hated most.

  The people that gave all of those donations weren’t giving orphans all of those toys and clothes because they wanted to make the kids feel better, they were doing it because it made themselves feel better.

  It was like some kind of moral ‘taking out the garbage’ that involved dropping off toys and clothes that their kids had outgrown. A yearly purge of do-good that came and went quickly.

  But where were the church goers when she had gone two days without food? Where were the priests and pastors when her foster father was beating the shit out of her? Where was God when she was scared and alone and cold in the middle of the night during winter because her foster mother had gone on another bender and didn’t have enough money to turn the power on?

  Those memories swirled to the forefront of Sarah’s thoughts, and by the time she reached the front chapel, she was seething with anger. She no longer cared for seeking answers, she just wanted something to yell at.

  Sarah burst inside, finding rows of long pews empty with a red carpet that ran through the middle of it, which led toward the pulpit. Light shone through the stained-glass windows that sat high on the walls to her left and right, breaking up the sunlight into different shades of colors that brightened the empty pews.

  And at the front of the church, nailed to a cross that sat high on the front wall, lording over anyone that came to visit, was a statue of Jesus Christ.

  Sarah walked all the way down the red carpet, her eyes locked onto Christ’s downturned face, wearing that crown of thorns the Romans had placed on his head to mock him. He looked weak, tired, and hungry. But Sarah had no sympathy for him. Why should she? She had gone her entire life weak, tired, hungry, and afraid. He experienced it for only a few days.

  “Hello.”

  With a snarl etched on her face, Sarah turned and found the priest dressed in black, hands behind his back with a coy smile on his face. He faced the sunlight, and the glasses he wore reflected the rays that penetrated the windows.

  When Sarah didn’t say anything, the priest stepped closer, and the smile faded to concern. She watched him examine her and her haggard state. “Do you need help?”

  Sarah laughed, but it had no joy. It was mocking the priest’s question, and she looked back up to Christ on the cross. “Isn’t that what he’s for?” She smirked and then looked back to the priest, though his expression of concern hadn’t faded.

  “Would you like to sit down?” The priest gestured to the front pew and took a seat before she agreed to join him.

  Sarah walked toward him but didn’t sit down. She figured she wouldn’t be here that long. She had never found church useful before, and she was confident that wouldn’t change now. He’d tell her that she needed to be saved, and that the only way to break Satan’s hold on her heart and soul was to accept the love of their lord and savior.

  The priest raised his eyebrows at Sarah’s glaring silence. “This may come as a surprise, but I don’t read minds.”

  Sarah unzipped her jacket and removed the Codex Gigas, making sure the cover was facing the priest. She set it on the pew next to the priest and then stepped back and crossed her arms. “Do you know what that is?”

  The priest simply looked at the book, picked it up, and flipped it over in his hands as he nodded. “I do.”

  Sarah waited for more, but the priest didn’t budge. “And?”

  The priest set the book back down on the seat. “This is the bible of Satan.”

  Sarah frowned, shifting her consternation toward the book on the pew. “It’s what?”

  The priest pointed to each word of the title. “Codex Gigas. The Devil’s Bible.”

  Sarah stole glances between the bible and the priest, then eventually sat down, leaving the book between them. “There is something coming, and I need to know how to stop it.”

  “What do you think is coming, and why do you think you need to stop it?” the priest asked.

  Sarah shook her head, taken aback by the question. “Because it’s the end of the world.” She pointed to the book. “The devil is coming, and he’s bringing hell with him.”

  “You’re referring to the end of days?” the priest asked, furrowing his brow.

  Sarah gritted her teeth. “I’m serious.”

  The priest looked Sarah up and down and nodded. “I can see that. And I can also see that you don’t want to be here.” He gestured toward the doors at the back. “No one’s stopping you from leaving.”

  It was the priest’s aggressiveness that threw her off guard. She squinted at him, the pair in a standoff. Finally, Sarah walked to the pew and sat down, keeping her posture stiff and rigid. She pressed her finger against the book’s cover. “The guy who wrote this is on his way unless I can figure out a way to stop it.”

  “The apostles are coming?” the priest asked.

  “The Devil.” Sarah pointed to Christ. “You know, the guy who did that to your friend up there.”

  “Satan didn’t do that,” the priest said, and then he picked up the book. “And he didn’t write this. You know who did?”

  “Who?”

  “People.”

  Sarah deflated. “People wrote this book and killed Jesus.”

  The priest nodded. “That’s right.” He smiled, but this time Sarah didn’t feel belittled or degraded, it was the smile she suspected an older brother would have given a younger sister if she’d ever known what that was like.

  “God is real,” the priest said. “Satan is also real. But neither really play a large role in our day-to-day lives. They whisper to us.” He held up a finger. “But they don’t make our decisions for us, they don’t put us in predicaments, and neither of them can save you from yourself in this world.”

  “So I guess I came to the wrong place?” Sarah asked.

  The priest chuckled and then shifted in the pew to more of a relaxed position. “People come in here all the time, looking for answers. They’re convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that Satan is responsible for everything bad that’s happening in their life, and they want to know why God isn’t doing anyth
ing to stop him. But what people don’t understand is that they’re the ones making bad decisions. They want an excuse for the choices that they’ve made in their life, and all of them had the same look on their faces that you do right now when I tell them that God can’t help them. You have to help yourself.”

  Sarah rubbed her temples, trying to stem the headache forming. “Look, I know that you might get a lot of people coming in here with a lot of bullshit problems, but when I tell you that the devil is coming, and that I need to know how to stop it, I’m not fucking around.”

  “And you think the answer is in this book?” The priest asked.

  “I don’t know, genius, that’s why I came to talk to you.”

  The priest laughed. “Fair enough.” He picked up the devil’s bible, the motion quick and agile, which surprised Sarah. He flipped through the pages, too quickly to actually be reading them. “Did you know that the first portion of this book is actually the bible?”

  “The bible that you read?” Sarah asked.

  “Word for word.” The priest stopped halfway through the book and pressed his finger against the page. “It was around the fifteenth century that a group of monks decided to add their own books to the bible. They had a different idea of the teachings of Satan along with a different version of the book of Revelations.”

  “Revelations,” Sarah said, a few more memories of her childhood Sunday school resurfacing. “That’s when the rapture is supposed to happen.”

  The priest leaned forward, resting his left forearm on the back of the pew. “The bible speaks of the second coming of God as an apocalyptic event, and that only those that are true to God and have followed His word will be rescued from the earth, and the rest will be forced to suffer after God takes His children to heaven and the devil takes control of the earth. The monks from the medieval ages had a different take that it would be Satan who returns in Revelations, rescuing humans of earth from the wrath of God.”