That finished, she was up the dark stairs every bit as fast as he had been.
TWELVE
“Back to bed, young man,” Lucy commanded, meeting Williams halfway as he tottered down the back stairs to the dining room.
“But, Mama, I’m hungry,” he whined, holding tightly to the railing.
Lucy could see the gleam of sweat on his forehead, the shaking of his hands.
Taking him by the shoulder and turning him around, she said, “You’re not fine, you’re sick. I’ll have Naddy bring up something for you to eat. But in the meantime, get back into bed.”
He protested weakly as she led him back to the top of the steps. She could feel the heat roll off his small body.
At the top of the landing, his legs buckled beneath him.
“Naddy!” she yelled, catching him. “Help!”
Naddy came running, took Williams’ other arm.
A moment later, Jack clumped up the steps. “What’s he doing out of bed?”
“He was trying to go down to breakfast,” grunted Lucy.
“Here, let me take him,” he said, gathering the limp 12-year-old in his arms.
“Hi, Pa,” the boy slurred when he opened his eyes; he smiled weakly.
“Shush, boy,” his father said, trying to sound cross. He was not convincing. “Stay in bed and stop giving your Ma fits. Understand?”
“Yes, Pa.”
Jack carried Williams to bed, wiped his face with a cool, wet cloth from a nearby table.
Williams sank into sleep quickly, but as Jack moved to leave, Drew and Zach opened their eyes, saw him.
“Hi, Pa,” came their low, moaned greeting in unison.
“How you boys doing today?”
“Fine, Pa.”
“Fine,” echoed Drew.
Jack ruffled a sweaty head with each large hand, eliciting vague smiles.
“Now, you boys get to feeling better, you hear? Your Ma’s worried sick. And your chores are piling’ up,” he chided.
“Yes, sir,” answered Zach. “We will.”
Jack smiled at him, tousled his hair again, turned and left the room. He took no more than two steps toward the stairs when Betsy tottered to him in the dim hallway.
“Daddy?”
Before he could react Betsy fell into his arms. She was slick and hot. Turning her head, a solid stream of liquid gushed from her open mouth, splashed against a painting hanging on the opposite wall, knocking it askew.
Just as suddenly, her head lolled, and she fainted.
Jack caught her, and she was a feather, a wisp in his arms.
“Lucy! Naddy! Call the doctor! Quick!”
Cradling her, he noticed more liquid trickling down the insides of her legs, pooling on the floor underneath her.
* * *
Hopson was unprepared as he entered the house, handed his coat to Naddy.
Screams reverberated down the stairwell as furniture thumped heavily through the ceiling.
Wasting no time, he dashed up the steps, burst into Betsy’s room and the confusion therein.
Jack and John held the twisting, writhing young girl as she kicked and screamed, throwing the covers off. The entire bed shook and jumped, despite the combined weight of father, son and daughter upon it.
Lucy stood near the fireplace, her hand clamped over her mouth, a shocked expression on her face.
Hopson grabbed his bag, and brought out a bottle with an elegant silver cap. Inserting himself between Jack and Betsy, he grasped her head with one hand, steadied it, and lowered the bottle to her lips.
Her eyes, abnormally large and glassy, fell upon him, then rolled alarmingly back in her skull.
A scream pierced Hopson’s ears, high-pitched, filled with anger, and unnerving enough to raise gooseflesh on him. His resolve nearly fled him at that point, because the scream hadn’t come from Betsy’s lips; it rang in the air around him.
Betsy, still writhing frantically beneath her father and brother, opened her mouth wider than it should have been able to stretch, and from it, more harrowing than the disembodied scream, came an unearthly roar of pain. It seemed to go on for minutes, echoing in the room, fading as she paused to gather another breath.
Seizing the opportunity, Hopson shoved the bottle between her open lips, upended it. Thin, red liquid bubbled into her mouth, down her chin, and stained the front of her nightgown.
Her teeth snapped closed around the bottle’s neck, and scraped the glass with a sound like fingernails on slate.
Choking and gagging, she threw John from her with a surge of strength. He sailed from the bed, landed hard near the door.
As her hands found Jack’s throat and closed around it, Hopson forced another, larger swallow down her throat. Grimacing, she clenched her jaw, shattering the neck of the bottle. Shards of glass sprayed her face.
Regaining his footing, John jumped to the bed again, grabbed Betsy’s hands, and tried to pull them from his father’s neck.
Within seconds, Betsy’s efforts slowed. Her head fell back onto the pillow and her body went slack.
Betsy’s hands dropped, twitched a little on the bedcovers, lay still.
Jack wrenched away, gasping for breath.
John waited for a moment, until he was sure she was unconscious, and crawled from the bed.
“What in God’s name is going on?” croaked Jack, rubbing his neck. “She nearly killed me!”
“I… I couldn’t break her grip,” whispered John, aghast, looking at his sleeping sister.
Hopson felt for Betsy’s pulse, looked into her eyes.
“What is that stuff?” Jack gestured to the broken bottle at Hopson’s feet.
“Laudanum,” said Hopson. “I’ve never had to give anyone that much before. She’ll sleep for a while.”
Jack noticed Lucy, who still hadn’t moved; he went to her. She let him wrap an arm around her. “She came out of the room and got sick this morning,” he told Hopson. “I carried her back to bed, and she slept a little. When she woke, she complained of a stomachache. Before we could do anything, she started shrieking and kicking.”
Hopson felt the covers, smelled the tips of his fingers.
“That’s what she brought up,” said John. “She’s also passing a lot of water.”
“This all came out of her? All of it? You actually saw it?”
“Yes,” he answered. “Why?”
“It has no smell about it. Just plain water. And there’s so much of it.” Hopson shook his head, went back to examining her as Jack comforted his wife.
Hopson’s hands probed Betsy’s body, poking, palpating, his fingers pressing deep into her flesh. When he reached her abdomen, a groan escaped her lips. “That’s impossible. She’s had enough laudanum to put five men to sleep.”
As he pressed lower on her abdomen, he raised her nightgown and noticed a slight swelling. Hopson looked questioningly at the Bells, turned back and pressed his hands against the tumescence.
A shriek exploded from Betsy, and she kicked Hopson away.
The outburst was short-lived, her cries fading to dull groans.
Hopson returned to the bedside, staying away from Betsy’s legs.
“If I didn’t know better,” he said to Lucy and Jack. “I’d say she’s pregnant.”
“What?” asked Lucy in a dead voice.
Jack remained silent, color draining from his face.
Lucy felt his arm twitch.
“These other happenings—the fits, the passing water, even the coma—I don’t know. It could be, I suppose, her body’s reaction to a miscarriage.”
“Pregnant?” Lucy stepped away from Jack, giving him a wretched, horrified look.
“Hank Gardner!” John spat, slamming his fist into a bedpost. “He was just up here a week ago!”
“John,” cautioned Hopson. “This didn’t happen in a week.”
“He’s had plenty of opportunity to disgrace her before then.”
“Right now, we need to help her, not guess
who’s to blame. Go and tear up some sheets into long strips. Jack, stoke the fire, get it nice and hot. We need to keep her warm. Lucy…”
“I’m staying here,” she said, brooking no argument.
Hopson didn’t. “Hurry!” he exhorted the two men. “Before she wakes up again!”
* * *
The curtains were thrown wide, and the grey sky with its grey sun spun into the room like gauze. Lucy lit candles on two tables that had been set up, one on each side of Dr. Hopson.
The Doctor, who had shed his jacket, loosened his tie, rolled up his sleeves, and stood between Betsy’s splayed legs at the foot of the bed. His patient, waxen and pallid in the light of dim day, moaned and shook her head from side to side.
Her movements were contained; her arms and legs strapped to the bedposts.
Lucy sat at the head of the bed, stroking her daughter’s face with a wet cloth, trying to comfort her. Jack stood impassive near the fireplace, and John leaned against the wall on the other side of the room.
Spread out like a sacrifice, covered only from the waist up, Betsy seemed oblivious to them all, locked in some inner torment from which even Hopson’s drugs offered little respite.
Against his better judgment, Hopson administered another dose of laudanum. His hand quivered as he pressed the slender glass to Betsy’s lips. The drug trickled into her mouth, between her clenched teeth.
At the instant of its touch, Betsy spasmed and screamed, her back arching off the bed.
With a shocked cry, Hopson stumbled backward. “Good Lord!”
Before he could do anything, the arc of her body collapsed to the bed. She convulsed, her stomach contracting violently. Her screams gave way to quick, panting moans.
Liquid oozed from between her thighs.
Water… thin, slightly brown.
At first, Hopson thought the discoloration was old blood, but when he got closer, he smelled something, something earthy and familiar.
Dirt.
The water coming out of her was muddy.
A powerful contraction, and something pushed from her, barely concealed by her nightgown. It dropped to the bed sheets with a little plop.
Hopson cautiously poked at it with his finger.
It was a clump of twisted, tumorous tissue no bigger than a walnut, untouched by blood or gore.
Instead, it was slicked with mud.
As they stared at it, Betsy drew in air with a strangled cry, and let it out with a wail that literally shook the house.
The candle flames danced and were extinguished. The fire sputtered, almost indignantly, and died. A crack appeared in one of the room’s windowpanes, spread like an accusing finger. The floor shook beneath them.
In the kitchen, a rack of pots and pans hanging above the mantel fell, scattering cookware over the stone floor with a tremendous clatter. A crack opened in the flagstone, raced across the floor like lightning.
* * *
Less than three miles from the Bell house, Reverend Johnston was sitting down to a bowl of soup on this cold winter’s day. He had just returned from a simple funeral at the Boswell place, where their sick boy, despite all of Dr. Hopson’s ministrations, had died.
As he lifted his spoon, a whistling, high-pitched whine filled the room, the house shuddered around them, and soup sloshed onto the table.
Johnston and his wife watched, amazed, as his Bible fell to the floor, landed on its spine. Its front and back cover fell open like leather wings, and the pages were rifled as if by a stiff breeze.
Neither felt the air move.
When Johnston looked, he noticed that the Bible had fallen open to I Kings.
* * *
At John Bell’s house, Ruth and Liz attacked the dirty laundry with a washboard and a large bar of lye soap in a great tin tub on the dining table. Wet clothes hung all around them, drying in the heat of the fireplace.
As they worked, Ruth stopped, cocked her head as if hearing a distant sound. She opened her mouth to speak when the house gave a short, sharp jolt, as if the ground beneath them were given a jerk. “Earthquake,” said Ruth, matter of fact. “Happened worse seven, eight years ago.”
She shrugged, and they continued with the wash.
* * *
The slaves’ cabin trembled, sending children scattering like loose marbles. Some of the women, remembering the last earthquake, screamed, expecting the ceiling to come tumbling down upon them.
Adam, inside that day with an attack of arthritis, was rolled off his bed, and quickly sat up. He found himself looking in Saloma’s dark and spiteful eyes, aglow with triumph, with vindication.
* * *
Farther out, where there were no people to feel or fear, down through the dank, damp hole, down through the mud and muck, there was a room that had cupped a smooth, flat pool of water.
Even before the shaking began, the pool had begun to vanish, its darkened, muddy water burbling away through some unseen crack to spill across clean linen.
The rock teeth hanging from the shelf above trembled as the water receded, cracked, and fell like daggers into the thick ooze left behind.
Something stirring in that darkness pulled itself from the mouth of the cave and cried its first cry.
THIRTEEN
Hopson took the cup thrust before him without even looking, and dropped into a chair near the fire. “She’s sleeping,” he said, taking a drink of coffee and looking around at the silent, blasted faces of the Bells.
For almost ten minutes, no one said anything. They looked into the dark corners of the room, stared into the heart of the fire.
Then, “You want to explain what happened up there, Hopson?” asked Jack.
Shaking his head, Hopson said, “I don’t know. I thought at first that she was having a miscarriage, but now, I’m not so sure. The tissue she passed was more like a tumor of some sort.”
“What about the screams, Doctor? What about her strength? The water? The house shaking? The fire and candles going out?”
“Surely, you don’t think there was a medical reason for all of that?”
Jack laughed, the fire accentuating his features. “No, but surely you can see where I’m heading with this, can’t you?”
“Do you want me to tell you that your daughter is possessed? Because I’m not prepared to…”
“Possessed?” Jack laughed again, and Hopson noticed Lucy and John glance nervously at him. “No. That’s exactly what I don’t want you to tell me, Doctor. My point is that I don’t want anyone who wasn’t here to tell me that, either.”
“But what about all of those things, Jack?” came Lucy’s voice.
Jack spun on her, but lost some of his determination when he saw her, pale and drawn but serious and resolute. “The water was just water. The house shook from an earthquake. Nothing more.”
Lucy’s eyes said all she needed to say.
Jack broke from those eyes, turned away.
“But, she threw me across the room…,” said John.
“Nothing more!” snapped Jack.
Hopson understood where Jack was going, and although he had his doubts, he was prepared to let the man have his way. “It’s common for people suffering delirium to have the strength of several men.”
“Yes, listen to him. Finally.”
Through the darkness, Hopson could see Lucy staring at him, her disappointment all too clear.
Only John spoke what was on everyone’s mind. “Are we to forget that she was pregnant?” he hissed.
“She may not have been,” Hopson responded.
“So, Hank is to go unpunished for this?”
“Nothing is to be said to Hank,” Jack said with finality. “Nothing is to leave this house.”
John turned rigidly and left the room.
Taking the opportunity, Hopson stood to leave.
“Doctor?” Jack asked.
“If you’re asking me to swear, Jack, I won’t. But I’ll say nothing.”
Jack watched him collect his bag, p
ut on his coat and hat, and open the door.
“Thank you for bringing my daughter back,” said Lucy.
“I fear that I had little to do with it,” he said, shutting the door on any parting words Jack might have had.
* * *
Jack wondered if she would ever stop flinching at his touch. He rolled over in bed after watching Lucy undress and wash her face at her dressing table.
She extinguished the candle, crawled into bed in darkness and silence.
Jack reached for her, tried to draw her to him, and although she acceded to his movements, it was not without that first moment’s hesitation, a slight flinch in her shoulders. “I’m glad to have you back.”
She said nothing.
“I’m glad to have Betsy back, too.”
“Are you, Jack? Are you really?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“Just a question, that’s all.”
“I’m glad, Luce. Very glad. Once our boys get better, the family will be whole again.”
“Will it? Was it ever?”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m tired. So much has gone on the last couple of days. Goodnight, Jack,” she said as she kissed him lightly and rolled away.
“Goodnight, Luce.”
Losing track of the time, he listened to her breathing as it slowed, steadied into a deep rising and falling. When he was sure she was asleep, he leaned over, kissed her. This time, she did not flinch, did not shy away.
Smiling painfully, he pulled the blankets up, closed his eyes.
A sudden tap-tap-tap roused him.
He looked over and saw the closed window. No shadows moved across it, none could. The trees on this side of the house were not nearly high enough to cast shadows on a second-floor window. Then, of course, they were not high enough to tap at it, either.
The Bell Witch Page 6
