House of Reckoning

by John Saul

  At least not the whole truth.

  As she got into her car and glanced at her schedule—she was going to be five minutes late for a meeting with a couple who were thinking about taking in a group of four children, all under the age of five, whose mother had died and whose father had abandoned them—she made a mental note to check back with Sarah Crane in another week or so. Maybe they’d have a little private time then, and if things looked all right, she might even be able to consider this placement permanent and move on to some of the more difficult ones—like the four children she hoped would, indeed, be taken in by the couple she was about to interview.

  Starting the engine and checking the address of her next appointment, Kate put Sarah Crane out of her mind, at least for the moment.

  Bettina moved once again through Shutters’ downstairs rooms, trying to determine exactly what it was that had changed in the house. Coming home from school this afternoon, she’d paused not only at the worn gates to the estate, but outside the garage as well, trying to see if anything looked different. But it hadn’t—not really.

  Or at least that was what she told herself. After all, peeling paint and sagging shutters and falling roof slates couldn’t just repair themselves. She’d just gotten used to it—that was all. She’d finally become inured to the steadily increasing decrepitude of the place, and it wasn’t that it looked any better at all—she’d just stopped seeing all the damage she couldn’t afford to repair.

  Now, with Cooper and Rocky trotting ahead of her, she spent twenty minutes going through every room in the house one more time.

  Nothing, until she came to the studio. And there it was: the yellowed manuscript still lay exactly where she dropped it when the phone rang a few hours ago and that terrible voice dredged up nightmares she’d hoped never to have again.

  Now both dogs were sitting next to the manuscript like twin sentinels, and both were gazing expectantly up at her.

  They know, Bettina thought. Whatever it is, it’s in those pages.

  Which, of course, she’d known all along. After all, since Sarah was drawing scenes from those pages without ever having read them, how could they not be connected to what was happening? She picked them up, straightened them out, then began going through them, not reading them, but looking for a pattern.

  They read almost like case histories of the people who had once been inmates here, but histories written by the patients themselves rather than the doctors.

  But her thrice-great-grandfather claimed they were fiction.

  Tales from my imagination.

  That’s what he’d written.

  But what if it wasn’t true?

  If the stories were truly fiction, why had her ancestor hidden the manuscript? Had he interviewed some of the inmates and then fictionalized their insanity?

  But again, why?

  The old filing cabinets in the basement—they were filled with old records. If she could match the stories to some of the inmates, then find the common factor among those inmates—

  She shuddered at the thought of going down into the dank shadowy chambers under the house, but shook the feeling off. She’d never been afraid of anything down there before, so why should she now? But she already knew the answer to that, too. She should be afraid because now everything had changed. Everything about the house was different.

  Everything.

  But it’s still just the basement, she told herself.

  She went to the kitchen, found the big flashlight she always kept there, and called out for Cooper and Rocky. They came into the kitchen, but when they saw her opening the door to the basement, Cooper uttered a low growl while Rocky dropped to the floor in the open door to the butler’s pantry, refusing to come a step closer.

  The smell of mildew drifted into the kitchen, and now Cooper, too, dropped to the floor, pressing close to Rocky.

  Bettina flipped the wall switch that turned on the string of ancient yellow lightbulbs. “C’mon, sissies,” she said.

  Neither of the dogs moved.

  She started down the concrete steps, pausing halfway down to listen.

  Silence.

  Yet something was waiting for her—she could feel it.

  She almost turned and fled back up the stairs to the bright lights and warmth of the kitchen, but then hesitated. She’d been down here thousands of times, and there was no reason to be afraid now. Taking a deep breath, Bettina descended the rest of the stairs and began shoving the decaying boxes of God only knew what from in front of the old file cabinets.

  She opened the first drawer. Inmate files. Hundreds of them, all jammed together, and when she tried to pull one out, it crumbled in her fingers.

  She closed the drawer again and stood still for a moment, gazing at the row of filing cabinets.

  Where? She wondered. Where do I look? Where do I even start?

  Then she heard a faint scratching sound from behind her, and instinctively whirled around, only to see Cooper, his head cocked, standing at the foot of the stairs, looking at her. Sighing, she turned back to the filing cabinets.

  And something had changed.

  But this time she knew right away what it was: one of the drawers—the bottom one in the cabinet farthest to the left—was open.

  Not by much—just a crack—but she was certain that a moment ago, before she’d turned around, it had been closed.

  Behind her, Cooper growled softly.

  Bettina reached out, her fingers trembling, and pulled the drawer open.

  At first it seemed empty, but then, when she pulled the drawer all the way open, she saw them. Tucked away behind the metal slider designed to keep the files in front of it neatly upright, were a batch of large envelopes, perhaps thirty in all.

  Bettina carefully lifted the first one out, opened it and slid the pages out, shining the flashlight onto the top sheet. The patient’s name had been Tarbell: William G. Tarbell. All that was on that first sheet was a sort of time line, listing the date of admission and the various wards to which Tarbell had been assigned. The man had seemingly been well enough to act as a groundskeeper at Shutters during the last four months the time line included. Bettina carefully turned the pages, scanning the handwritten notes as quickly as she could. Over the course of a decade, Tarbell had apparently married three young women and fathered five children; only the last wife and one of the children survived. Tarbell, according to the notes, had eaten all the others.

  Bettina was almost certain she remembered a similar story in the ancient manuscript. Taking all the envelopes from the drawer, and with Cooper at her heels, she went back upstairs to the light and warmth of the kitchen. She turned off the basement lights, locked the door, and carefully laid all the envelopes on the big wooden kitchen table. She went to the studio then, retrieved the manuscript, and returned with it to the kitchen.

  Twenty minutes later she had correlated most of the stories in the manuscript to the files, and discovered that they had three things in common.

  Each of the inmates had been in service here at the house; some as cooks, others as gardeners or housekeepers or stable hands.

  Each had committed truly horrendous acts of violence and shown absolutely no remorse.

  And finally, not one of them had a date of death listed in their records, let alone a date of release.

  Not that anyone committed to Shutters Lake in its early days was ever released, and in only a very few cases had relatives claimed bodies when someone died. But most of Shutters’ inmates never left at all; when they died, they were buried in the property’s own cemetery, their names, dates of interments, and the location of their graves carefully recorded in a large ledger that was still in her grandfather’s study. “Just in case,” he said when he showed her the ledger so many years ago. “If someone came looking for a relative, my grandfather always wanted to be able to show them where the grave was, and he told me to keep the book handy, just in case any of their descendants showed up.”

  Bettina got up, went to th
e study, and found the ledger.

  Not one of the people whose case histories had been tucked in the back of an otherwise empty file drawer were listed in the cemetery register.

  But if they weren’t buried in the cemetery—

  The memory of Sarah Crane’s first drawing rose in Bettina’s mind, and suddenly she knew where those people were.

  The basement.

  All of them were in the basement.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Bettina was just about to take off her robe and crawl back into bed, which was already occupied by both dogs and all three cats, when Rocky stood up, stiffening as he went on point with his nose directed at the window. “What is it?” Bettina asked as she untied the belt. But the sweep of a pair of headlights across the ceiling answered her question even before Rocky—and then Cooper—began barking.

  Someone had come up the driveway and was now stopping in front of the house.

  Cooper’s ears perked up and he stared at the bedroom door, waiting for the doorbell.

  Bettina looked at the clock. Ten-thirty. Who would come at this time of night?

  The voice on the phone.

  The doorbell rang, the dogs began to bark, and Bettina opened the bedroom door to let them dash downstairs. She followed, more slowly, coming to a stop at the bottom of the stairs as an echo of last night’s phone call rose out of her memory.

  … I’ll kill you …

  What was she thinking? It wasn’t time to open the door—it was time for an alarm system!

  Except that anyone who wanted to kill her wouldn’t ring the doorbell first.

  Would they?

  The bell rang again, but instead of going to the front door, she de-toured into the study and picked up a heavy poker from the hearth. With it clutched tightly in her right hand, she finally approached the door, turned on the porch light, opened the small Judas door and peered out.

  Lily Dunnigan stood on the porch, her face pale and her eyes darting nervously as she searched for anyone who might be hidden in the velvet darkness of the night.

  Bettina dropped the poker into the umbrella stand, unlatched the dead bolts, and opened the door. “Lily?”

  “Thank God you’re here,” Lily said as she slipped into the house and Bettina closed the door behind her. Then she noticed Bettina’s bathrobe. “Did I get you out of bed?”

  “Not even close,” Bettina said. “I hadn’t gotten my robe off yet.” Then she saw the redness in Lily’s eyes, and her tone turned serious. “Lily, what is it? What’s happened?”

  The dogs, apparently satisfied that whoever this was didn’t mean their mistress any harm, sniffed eagerly around Lily’s feet, and she reached down to give them each a scratch before blowing her nose on a well-used handkerchief. “It’s Nick,” she finally managed to say. “And Shep.”

  “Come into the kitchen,” Bettina said. “I’ll put on a fresh pot of tea.”

  Lily unbuttoned her coat and followed her to the kitchen. “Nick doesn’t seem to be getting any better, and I’m—” She hesitated, and Bettina knew that whatever was coming next was something Lily wished she didn’t have to say. After taking a deep breath, Lily went on. “Shep says that if Nick doesn’t start getting better, he’s going to send him back to the hospital.”

  Bettina frowned as she filled the teakettle. Though Nick wasn’t in any of her classes this year, she’d seen him around the school, and he’d seemed all right, at least until he was jumped in the park. “Is he worse since he was beaten up?” she asked.

  “It seems to come and go. We thought the new drug was working for his hallucinations, but now they’re getting worse.” Lily hesitated again, then: “And now he’s calling them ‘visions.’”

  Bettina’s frown deepened. “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “I’m at my wit’s end,” Lily said, finally taking off her coat and dropping onto one of the chairs at the big oak table.

  Now Bettina understood why Lily had come here in the dead of night. She put some tea in the pot, and while waiting for the water to boil, leaned against the counter, folded her arms across her chest, and waited on Lily Dunnigan. Whatever Lily wanted, she would have to ask for it.

  It didn’t take long.

  “I—I’ve heard …” Lily began hesitantly. “Well, I’ve heard that you can do things …”

  She looked so embarrassed that Bettina almost laughed out loud, but Lily also looked so miserable that she almost went over and hugged her. “Despite what you might have heard,” she said gently, “I don’t cast spells or tell fortunes or anything like that.”

  Now Lily looked like she wanted to fall through the floor. “I—I just wondered if there was anything—anything at all—you could do that might help Nick.”

  The kettle began to whistle, and Bettina poured water into the teapot, then took the pot and two mugs to the table. “I’m not a witch,” she said.

  “Oh, no, no, I’d never—”

  Bettina smiled. “Come on, Lily—don’t tell me you haven’t heard the rumors.” Lily reddened, answering her question. “Look, we both know I don’t really fit into this town. I’m an artist—maybe not much of one—and I’m interested in all kinds of things. Herbs and natural medicines and things like that. That may make me a kook around here, but it doesn’t make me a witch.”

  “I know,” Lily insisted. “But I’ve heard you’ve given people things—”

  “I’ve given a couple of people homeopathic remedies and mixed up a few herbal teas, and that’s about it, Lily. But for problems like Nick’s, I wouldn’t have any idea what to do.” Bettina poured tea into the mugs and pushed one of them across to Lily.

  Lily eyed the mug suspiciously.

  “It’s nothing more than a little lemongrass, green tea, chamomile, and ginger,” Bettina told her. “If I mixed it right, it should calm you down.”

  Lily hesitated, tasted the tea, then took a swallow, followed by another. She set the mug down and managed a smile, the color in her face already healthier. “I just don’t know what to do,” she sighed.

  “Maybe Shep’s right,” Bettina offered. “I mean, I’m sure Nick’s doctors are competent.”

  “But his drugs aren’t working anymore. In the hospital, he had the most terrible hallucination—”

  “Hospital?” Bettina said.

  “After he was beaten up,” Lily said. “They beat him up the day before yesterday, really badly. Cracked his ribs and gave him a concussion.”

  “Who did it?”

  Lilly shook her head. “If he even knows, he’s not saying. He says they attacked him from behind, and he never got a look at them.”

  Which told Bettina that Conner West went after Nick after blaming Nick and Sarah for his dog’s death, and Nick was afraid that if he told on them, they’d just beat him up worse. Which, unfortunately, was probably true, given that Conner’s father ran what passed for a police force in Warwick.

  “Anyway,” Lily went on, “Nick had a hallucination of his room in the hospital burning. He thought his bed was on fire and that he was going to be burned alive.”

  Bettina’s mind raced. That was the night Sarah Crane had been here, drawing.

  Drawing fire.

  Drawing it at the same time Nick Dunnigan was seeing it?

  Had it happened again? Did Nick see what Sarah was drawing, as Sarah told her he had when she’d drawn the butchered dog?

  Lily took another swallow from her mug of tea. “The thing is, Nick’s calling them visions now. He says they mean something, but he doesn’t know what. Or at least he can’t tell me what.” She gazed bleakly at Bettina. “I’m sorry—I shouldn’t have come. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  “You’re just trying to help your son,” Bettina told her. “Isn’t that what mothers are supposed to do?”

  Lily nodded. “I just feel so helpless, and Nick’s so frightened. If he could just calm down—” Her expression abruptly brightened and she looked down at her mug. “Maybe this tea!”

&
nbsp; “Lily, it’s nothing but a few herbs. It—”

  But Lily was suddenly excited. “You said it would calm me down, and it did. Why wouldn’t it do the same for Nick?”

  “I don’t—”

  “Isn’t it at least worth a try? I’ll pay you for it!”

  Bettina laughed. “You don’t need to pay me. I can put it together in about five minutes, and I’ll put some in a Baggie for you. But be careful: if Dan West stops you, he’ll think it’s marijuana.”

  Lily hesitated, her eyes widening. “It isn’t, is it?”

  “Of course not! Do you know what they’d do to me if I gave grass to a student?” Then her expression turned serious. “But don’t tell anyone about this, all right? There are enough people in this town trying to get me fired already, and if they could accuse me of practicing medicine without a license, that might just do it.”

  “Would that be better or worse than witchcraft?” Lily asked, her voice as flat as her expression was deadpan. Then she giggled. “Probably worse—at least with witchcraft they could get the minister to pray for them.”

  As Lily poured herself another cup of the brew, Bettina set about mixing the tea and herbs. It might not do a thing for Nick, she thought, but at least giving it to him would make Lily feel better. As for Nick, whatever he was having, it wasn’t visions.

  It was communication.

  Communication between him and Sarah Crane.

  And whatever it was that was in this house.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  It seemed like the longest morning of Sarah’s life. When she emerged I from the Garveys’ house a few minutes after seven-thirty, she’d started toward the corner as fast as she could, certain that Nick Dunnigan would be waiting for her. But there was no sign of Nick, not on the corner or anywhere else, and by the time she was half a block from the school, her mind was churning. He wasn’t in the hospital—she was sure of that. And the last time she’d talked to him before the cell phone battery died, he said he was only going to be out for one day. But where was he? Why hadn’t he been waiting for her?