The Bell House

by Lori Titus

  “Darryl was abusive. It got to the point where I brought the kids here because I felt it was safer. I was trying to work and save enough to get out of there, but it was not going to happen with two little mouths to feed. I hadn’t really been getting along with her, but I needed the help, and I couldn’t think of anyone else to ask to keep them for me.

  “In a way, I got lucky. Darryl got pulled over in his car one day, and he had drugs on him. He ended up doing some time for possession. When I came back here to take the girls, she didn’t want to give them to me. She made a complaint in court against me saying that I was a drug user and that I had abandoned my children in her care. I’d never gotten in trouble with the law, but of course, Darryl’s record didn’t make me look good, or the fact that I had been in rehab for drugs twice before.”

  “She sued you for custody?”

  “Yes. We went back and forth. In the end, the court ruled in my favor. But meanwhile, she was doing things to the kids. Punishing them every time they spoke to me. Calling me names in front of them. It became apparent to me that she was not going to let them go without a fight. And trust me, she’s not one you want to tangle with.”

  “It’s taken a year, but I have custody. It was ruled in my favor a couple weeks ago, and I finally have a decent place for them, one their dad doesn’t know about. It may sound awful to say, but this couldn’t have happened at a better time. Now I can take them home without interference from her.”

  “So she’s been keeping your children from you all this time?” Despite everything that she’d seen Diana was capable of, Jenna was still shocked.

  “Here’s what you need to understand about Mom. She’s a control freak, first of all. It’s about whatever she can get out of you. And she likes people to feel sorry for her, so of course she enjoyed parading my kids around and telling people what a bad mom I am and how she’s so perfect. All the while complaining about how she’s getting too old to take care of little kids. She probably wants a redo for messing Ahmad up.”

  “My God.”

  “Aunt Jenna, do you want to know what really happened?”

  “Yes.”

  “You know Ahmad’s friend was driving the car when they crashed, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ahmad brought Jonathan over to introduce him to my mom. They were boyfriends. You know he was never in the closet as far as family was concerned, but he just didn’t bring his friends home. I think this was the first time he was really serious about anyone, because he made a point of introducing him to me a few weeks before. Ahmad had been over to Jonathan’s house to meet his parents earlier that month too, and it went very well.

  When they came here, Diana got Jonathan liquored up and started asking him questions. He got pissed and wanted to go home. He didn’t want to stay under the same roof with her acting up. Or come back here,” Raquel gestured. “They should have stayed, but I understand why they didn’t. And of course Ahmad couldn’t let him go alone . . .”

  Jenna felt her eyes tearing up. “Your mom told you?”

  “After he died,” Raquel continued, “she came back here and wouldn’t leave. She would get in his bed and just lay there and cry. I came in and begged her to go back to our house with me. And that’s when she told me. She spilled her guts about everything. She’s still guilty about it. I know that much. But she can’t take back what she did. That was the only brother I’ll ever have, and he’s gone.

  “I have tried to forgive her, Aunt Jenna. But after what she did to him, and then how she’s treated me, there is just no way to repair things. I won’t say that there isn’t some part of me that still loves her, but I can’t be around her. And once I take the kids with me today, I’m never letting them come back here. Mama is destructive, and she rips apart everything that she touches.”

  “Well, I’m so glad that you’re okay,” Jenna said, grasping her niece’s hand.

  “You are welcome to come visit us,” Raquel smiled through her tears. “If you find yourself needing a place to stay, you’re always welcome. I mean that, Auntie. Just don’t tell her that you know where I am going.”

  “I won’t. I guess we better get the girls ready to go. I don’t know when or if Henry is going to be coming home today.”

  “There’s one that needs to grow some balls,” Raquel whispered. “If he didn’t go along with every damn thing she wanted, maybe she wouldn’t be so far out of control.”

  Part Three

  Summer, 1967

  At night, the heat in Chrysalis is unrepentant. Hot and wet, the air is thick and hangs about like a living thing.

  It wasn’t nearly as bad as the heat he’d experienced in Vietnam, and though he’d lived with Southern heat all his life, Travis’ first year back home was difficult.

  He moved into the back house of his parent’s property. Kamila went up to North Carolina to care for her ailing brother, who was said not to have much more time. Travis was sorry to hear the news, but happy to see his mother leave. He wanted to be alone, and though she tried not to hover, she couldn’t resist.

  Headaches seemed to come out of nowhere, incapacitating him for days at a time. His doctor told him that this was an expected result of his head injury. He had prescribed pills, but they did little more than put him to sleep. Still, when his head pounded, sleep came to be a blessed relief.

  What Travis wasn’t prepared for were the phantom pains that riddled his body, something that he had never felt before his time as a soldier. He had shrapnel injuries, but this pain sizzled its way through different parts of his body, curled around his gut like a snake, and made him nauseous in the morning.

  When he complained, he received a shrug and a frown by way of acknowledgement from his doctor. “I don’t have anything to give you for that. It takes time, son. It’s part of coming home.”

  Travis found that liquor softened the edges of his discomfort.

  At night, he lay in bed naked with all the lights off, still sweating. The fan was so loud that sometimes it kept him awake. Somewhere between one and two in the morning, he would drift into sleep.

  Once in the deepest realms of sleep, images flashed through his head and he found himself inside a prison of his own making. Here, the dead waited for him with knives and bars of iron. They swam towards him in a black mire, their eyes white and their teeth red with blood. These ghouls, once human, had been eaten alive. All the flesh had been ripped from their bodies as they screamed. This he knew, in the dream. He clawed to make his way out, but his hands found no purchase. Dirt flowed away between his fingertips like so much water and each panicked movement sunk him deeper in.

  After that first time, the dream came every night. From what he could remember of that June, the days passed in a haze of alcohol and pills, the sunshine pressing in against the edges of his windows. At some point, he took a hammer and nailed comforters around the windows, blocking out as much heat and sunlight as he could. He knew that Kamila would be horrified to see her house in such a state, but he couldn’t allow himself to dwell on that.

  Keeping the sunlight out was the only way he could rest in the daytime. He found that if he slept in the day, he didn’t have dreams. So he stayed awake at night, trying to fight the paranoia creeping into his waking thoughts. His gun stayed loaded at this bedside. Once or twice he thought about his brother Jeremiah and what it must have taken for him to blow his brains out over the girl that he loved: some combination of cowardice and guts that Travis didn’t have. He promised that he’d kill any living thing that came across the path of his doorway uninvited.

  Sometimes he would hear the sound of soft, shuffling footsteps at night. He’d wait, gun in hand, holding his breath. There would be a tap on the door. One. Two. Then nothing. Watching the clock, Travis counted the minutes. Just when he thought the intruder left, there came the wrapping against his door again.

  Screaming, Travis would threaten to shoot.

  Nothing. No sound.

  Not even the shuffle of retrea
ting footsteps.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The house was eerily quiet.

  Not only Diana’s house, but the entire property.

  Jenna walked up the steps. She passed the window of the bedroom her nieces once shared. It was silent without their laughter—no music playing, no television chattering. Walking past Diana’s kitchen window, she missed her sister’s gravelly voice as she fussed with her friends over the phone and the sound of her knife as she chopped vegetables by the sink.

  She felt eyes on her and turned around.

  From a perch on the rooftop, she saw a pair of yellow eyes glaring back at her. It was a white feral cat, one of several that roamed her backyard. Realizing that he’d been spotted, the cat turned and ran, scampering away onto Mrs. Norris’ fence.

  Jenna had never actually seen one of the cats before, but often heard their growls at night, the cries of roaming animal spirits without a place to rest.

  Something moved out of the corner of her eye.

  She shivered, moving backwards.

  She could have sworn that she’d seen a form, like a man but shadowy, disappearing into the trees.

  “WHERE IS MY HUSBAND?” Diana demanded.

  The nurse stood beside her bed, adjusting the IV. “He was here until just a while ago, don’t you remember?”

  “Why did you people let him leave? He was supposed to stay here with me.”

  The nurse patted her arm.

  “Don’t touch me, you bitch!” Diana cried.

  “I just gave you a sedative,” the nurse said. “You’ll start to feel it in a few minutes. Try not to worry. I’m sure your husband will be fine.”

  Diana shook her head. She could see the white walls breaking apart, weeping a thick, black substance, like gore bleeding from a dead body. She screamed.

  A FEW MILES FROM THE oil fields, there was a piece of land that the company Henry worked for wanted to acquire. Part of the necessary procedure was to have a geographical survey conducted. This was not the first or last of the surveys needed to approve the new project. Since Henry had met with the geologists before and knew the area well, his boss assigned him the task of seeing the men to the site.

  Henry sat in his truck while the two geologists talked. They took measurements and pointed towards the hills.

  He kept the engine running. Sade’s voice rumbled over the radio: a song about love, war, and the edge of faith.

  A breeze blew through. Henry leaned back, growing weary. Sleeping on Keisha’s couch hadn’t done anything good for his back.

  He closed his eyes.

  When he opened them again, the men were still in the field ahead, this time placing stakes and bending as they took measurements.

  Clouds moved overhead, blocking the sun.

  Henry looked up.

  Between the clouds, he saw it, the black void bleeding through. He watched it spread, his heart stuttered.

  He got out of his car and ran.

  “No!” One of the men called, holding his hands out.

  Henry never heard them.

  The ground opened beneath him, and he fell down into the blackness.

  Later, they would pull up his body from the hot oil that he drowned in. His eyes were still open, staring into the darkness that enveloped him.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Jenna sat in the darkness of her room, lit only by the computer screen and a candle on her desk.

  It seemed that Patricia Bell, the Bell family’s long-lost matriarch, liked nothing better than to whisper her thoughts in the dark. Jenna’s fingers flew across the keyboard as she tried to capture them.

  He lifted me from the bed. I heard him tell the women to go. Though I felt their looks of concern, they crept away without a word. Disobeying anything that Thadd said would draw the same punishment as speaking against the man of the house.

  “Where are we going?” I asked him.

  “Hush now,” he said.

  The bathtub was already prepared with water. He got in the tub and sat in the water with me against his body.

  It was only tepid, but it felt like ice against my skin. It soaked quickly through my thin gown.

  I started crying. “Be still, darling,” he said.

  “I am going to die, aren’t I?”

  There was a long pause before he answered. “Yes, but not tonight,” he whispered against my ear.

  I closed my eyes again, feeling cold and miserable. I was too far awake to search for the place in the shadows where my mother waited. Thadd’s hands cradled my swollen belly. I wondered what he could be thinking of, but some part of me was afraid of knowing.

  “What do you want for breakfast?” He suddenly asked.

  “What?”

  “You must be hungry,” he continued. “They say women in your condition constantly are. So if you tell me what you want them to bring you, I’ll have them prepare it. Whatever you want.”

  I remember that I laughed, but this caused a pain in my chest and a fit of coughing. Thadd’s arms grew tighter against me, almost painfully so.

  “I will probably be gone by then,” I said crossly.

  “No, you won’t. Why do you keep saying you’re going to die?”

  “Because that’s what the midwife told you, isn’t it?”

  Again, another long pause.

  “That’s not at all what she said, Patricia. You are delirious with fever is all. I know what I like. Those pancakes that Madeline makes. When I was small she used to make them every Sunday. With blueberries. Remember, sometimes I’d get some for you? And we’d eat them outside? Like they were pieces of bread?” He sighed. I could tell he was smiling, I felt his cheekbone against mine.

  To please him, I said: “That will be fine.” I was tired of fighting to breathe, of the horrible pain that sat in my chest. I was tired of bed and sleep and my apparently endless pain.

  “You’ll feel better when the child comes,” he said, rubbing my shoulder. “That’s where all this morbid talk comes from.”

  “There’s no place for me here.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Because I can’t belong to you. But I can’t be without you either.”

  He held his breath when I said this. I felt it in his chest. Then he exhaled and shook his head. He did not speak. It was only the truth, but I knew that I had hurt him.

  “You will be fine. The child will be fine. We just have to keep you cool. Make it through until the morning.”

  I closed my eyes. I asked God to let me go.

  But He didn’t listen to me.

  THE SOUND OF HER CELL phone jolted Jenna back to the present.

  The caller ID displayed St. Matthew Medical Center’s phone number.

  “Ms. McBride, there is a situation here at the hospital, and we need you to come down.”

  Jenna sat back, feeling her heart pound. “What’s happened to my sister?”

  “Diana is in stable condition, though she was upset earlier in the day. She had her dinner and was sleeping until a while ago. But something else has happened, and we’d like you to come into the hospital to discuss it. How soon can you get here?”

  THE GOOD THING ABOUT Chrysalis was that nothing was usually more than fifteen minutes away, and by bending some traffic laws, Jenna was able to make it to the hospital in ten.

  She was ushered into a private room, and a doctor joined her about five minutes after she got there.

  He said that his name was Dr. Radcliff. She had never met him before. With a sympathetic smile, he offered her a seat.

  “It’s my understanding that you’re the closest of Ms. Bell’s kin?”

  “Well, there is her husband of course,” Jenna shifted in her chair. “Her daughter is estranged. What’s this about?”

  “You wouldn’t happen to know how to reach her husband’s family, would you?”

  “No, I don’t. I believe both his parents are deceased.”

  “Alright. This is a very sensitive situation, and usually we
wouldn’t share this information with you. But since you’re the closest relative, I have to inform you that we have some really bad news regarding Ms. Bell’s husband, Henry.”

  “Henry? What happened?”

  “He was at work this afternoon, out in the oil fields. He fell through a sink hole.”

  “He’s dead?”

  Radcliffe nodded. “I’m so sorry. This must be a horrible time for the family. I am consulting with a psychiatrist about your sister’s case, because at this point, I can’t say when we should even give Diana this kind of news seeing as she has already attempted suicide once. I also wanted to make you aware that since Henry has passed, someone from the family will need to make decisions for Diana. It’s quite obvious that she doesn’t have the presence of mind to make decisions for herself.

  “Well, it can’t be me,” Jenna snapped. “I can give you her daughter’s number . . .”

  “I do understand that there have been some tensions in the family as of late,” the doctor said. “If you’re not willing to sign a power of attorney, then it would help if you can find a family member that could. Someone is going to have to do it.”

  “Exactly what decisions are you looking to have made about her, anyway?”

  “I don’t know if you realize just how much of a bad way your sister is in. She may need to be hospitalized.”

  “I don’t understand . . .”

  “She may need to be placed somewhere, that provides long term care,” the doctor said. “A facility that would focus on treating her mental health issues.”

  RAQUEL WAS SLEEPY WHEN she first picked up the phone, but the sound of her aunt’s soft voice jolted her awake. It took her a minute to register what she was being told, but when she did, she got up and closed the bedroom door behind her, trying not to wake the kids.

  “Oh my God, Jenna. He died?”