Hellfire

by John Saul

  “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.
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  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.

  23

  Almost everyone in Westover went to the funeral for Alan Rogers or to the funeral for Abigail Sturgess.

  Only a handful went to both.

  For a few fleeting moments, Carolyn and Phillip had considered the possibility of combining the two services, but quickly rejected it. There had been no relationship between the two people who had died, nor did their circles of mourners overlap. So, in the end, they had decided that services for Alan would be held in the morning, three days after he died, and for Abigail the following afternoon.

  What Carolyn had noticed most as the two long days wore on were the differences between the two services.

  For Alan, the little church had been packed full with all the people she had been close to during her childhood and the years she had been married to Alan. The minister, who had grown up with Alan, had talked for forty minutes about the friend he had lost, and carried them all back into the past. It was, for Carolyn, a time of memories shared with people she hardly knew anymore, and she found herself missing all the old friends she had unwittingly cut herself off from when she married Phillip. Alan, for those forty minutes, had come back to life for everyone in the church, and Carolyn had found herself half-expecting to get up at the end of the service, turn, and see Alan himself leaning against the back wall of the church, grinning sardonically at the fuss being made over him. But when the service was over, and she stood at the door of the church with her daughter, her feeling of momentary nostalgia faded quickly away.

  No one, she realized almost immediately, knew quite what to say. Should they offer condolences to the woman who had divorced the man they were honoring?

  Nor did they know quite what to say to Beth, for the gossip had not yet died down, despite the statement Norm Adcock had issued the day after Alan died. So as Alan’s friends filed slowly out of the church, they paused for only the briefest of moments to speak to Carolyn, and eye Beth with ill-concealed curiosity. Then they hurried on. As soon as was decently possible, Phillip shepherded her to the waiting car. Carolyn, as they drove toward Hilltop, had found herself relieved that in his will Alan had specified cremation for his remains. A service at the cemetery, she was sure, would have been too uncomfortable for anyone to have borne. She found herself wondering if Alan had arranged for there to be no graveside service just for that very reason. It would, she decided, have been very much like him.

  The next afternoon they had gone back to the church for Abigail’s funeral. Once again the church had been full, but for the most part it was a different group. For Abigail, people had come from as far away as Boston, and the streets around the church were lined with Cadillacs and Lincolns. The same minister conducted the service and the eulogy, but this time he spoke about someone he had barely known. The eulogy, rather than evoking memories of Abigail, was little more than a recounting of the accomplishments of the Sturgess family. As Carolyn listened, she quickly became acutely aware that the woman the minister described bore no relationship to the woman Carolyn herself had known.

  This time, as she stood at the door next to her husband and her stepdaughter, everyone lingered, offering her condolences on the loss of the mother-in-law they all knew perfectly well had hated her. Carolyn forced herself to play the expected role, her eyes cast down as she murmured the proper words.

  In the late afternoon there had been the burial at the mausoleum. Abigail’s place, next to her husband, was outside the ring of columns, and she was not, as her husband had been, presented to Samuel Pruett Sturgess. That, Carolyn privately reflected, was apparently an honor reserved only for blood relatives.

  After the interment they had all returned to the house, and repeated the reception that had been held for Conrad only a few months earlier. And as with Conrad, the only mentions of the deceased were a few automatic phrases whispered in hushed tones of mourning, after which the men clustered together to catch up on business, and the women finalized plans for various committee meetings and social gatherings, none of which included Carolyn.

  And then, at last, it was all over, and Carolyn and Phillip were alone in the library.

  Both girls had gone quietly to their rooms as soon as they’d returned from the burial service. Upstairs, there was only silence. For that, Carolyn was grateful. She sat wearily in one of the big wing chairs and sipped the drink Phillip had poured for her, reflecting, with a shudder she could barely conceal, on the way everyone had stared at Beth at the funeral services, as if they were all wondering, still, what had really happened to Alan, though no one had dared speak the question aloud.

  At Hilltop, too, the air had been heavy with silence and the weight of unspoken questions for the last three days. Even Tracy had been nothing but demure and polite, the perfect child, appropriately sad at the passing of her beloved grandmother.

  Carolyn had observed her cautiously but had so far said nothing. Since the moment she’d brought Beth back from the hospital the morning after Alan died, Tracy seemed to have changed. When she and Beth had come in, Tracy had been waiting for them. She’d told Beth how sorry she was that her father had died, then gone out to the car to bring in Carolyn’s overnight case and Beth’s suitcase. And when they’d gone upstairs, she’d even offered to help Beth unpack.

  And so it had gone. Tracy, as far as Carolyn had been able to see, was finally doing her best to accept both of them.

  Except that Carolyn had noticed almost immediately the fact that all the crystal in the library was gone, and that both the door and the floor were severely scarred. Though Phillip had said nothing about it, and she had so far refrained from asking him, she was certain that Tracy had been responsible for the damage. Now, she decided to face the issue.

  “I have noticed,” she said carefully, “how well Tracy has been behaving. And I’ve also noticed that something obviously happened in here. Do you want to tell me about it?”

  Phillip hesitated, but knew he couldn’t conceal the truth from his wife. As briefly as possible, he told Ca
rolyn exactly what had happened the night Abigail had died. When he was finally done, Carolyn sat silent for a long time. Then she stood up and went to the window, gazing out into the fading light of the summer evening. And despite the warmth of the air outside the open French doors, she found herself shivering.

  “You think I did the wrong thing, don’t you?” Phillip asked when Carolyn’s silence had gone on longer than he could bear.

  “I hope not,” Carolyn replied so softly he could hardly hear her. “But I’m afraid she must hate us now more than she ever did before.” Then she turned to face her husband. “I’m afraid, Phillip. I’m so very afraid.”

  Tracy had the door of her room closed and locked, and now she sat at her desk going through the contents of her grandmother’s jewelry box. The best things, she knew, were kept in the vault at the bank, and her grandmother had brought them home only once a year, for Christmas and New Year’s. Those were the things Tracy really wanted—the diamond necklace with the big emerald drop, which had a bracelet and earrings to go with it. And there was a sapphire tiara. The stones had been specially chosen to match the color of her grandmother’s eyes. Tracy knew they would match her own eyes as well.

  But still, there were some nice things in the jewelry box, and she was having a hard time trying to decide which ones to take. She had to leave a lot of it so no one would notice that some of it was gone, and she had to leave some of the best stuff, too.

  Except that maybe she didn’t.

  A lot of the stuff in the box that she really liked, she couldn’t remember her grandmother ever even wearing, so there was a good chance that her father wouldn’t remember it either.

  And some of the things in the box had been her mother’s. She’d leave those—surely her father would give her mother’s jewelry to Carolyn.

  She picked up a large jade pendant, carved so that it had a different pattern on each side, and held it up to her neck. The chain was a little too long, but that didn’t matter. The jade itself, she decided, was a perfect color for her—a very pale pink, and, when she held it up to the light, so transparent that the two patterns on either face combined to form yet a third. She opened her own jewelry box, lifted out the tray, and slipped the pendant into the tiny hidden compartment under what looked like the bottom of the case.