The Bell House

by Lori Titus

  “I don’t know,” Louise frowned. “But she didn’t marry Jeremiah. I never heard anyone in the family speak of her again.”

  “Once we move to California,” Jenna said. “I don’t know that I want to see Daddy anymore.”

  “That’s up to you,” Louise said. There was pain in her eyes, a certain hardness. “If you want to visit, I won’t stop you.”

  AFTER JENNA LEFT THE coffee shop, she decided to take a walk before going back to her car. It was a sunny morning, and despite the winter chill, the air felt pleasant. She walked down to the city park and watched the ducks gliding back and forth across the water.

  She didn’t want to go back to Constance’s house, but wasn’t ready to go to her own either. At some point she still needed to retrieve her laptop and at least pack a suitcase or two.

  She checked her emails on her phone; nothing important.

  Raquel had called, but she decided not to listen to the voicemail. It could wait. She was sure the girls were fine—after all, she would have called more than once if it were an emergency.

  And truthfully, she didn’t have the stomach to deal with anyone else’s problems at that moment. There were a couple of calls from people regarding Henry’s memorial, which she had been tasked with.

  You picked a hell of a time to get swallowed up by the earth, she thought.

  The earliest call she’d received that morning was from her doctor’s office.

  JENNA WAITED FOR TWENTY minutes before Dr. Novak ushered her into her office.

  “How are you feeling today, Jenna?” She asked brightly. Novak was a motherly black woman who wore her hair pulled back in a bun. She smiled patiently, waiting for Jenna’s answer.

  She shrugged. “I have been better. I have been feeling very tired lately, but there’s been a lot of things going on.”

  “Speaking of which, I spoke with Dr. Suri. It turns out that she prescribed some meds for you, but there was a delay before we got your blood work back. Have you taken any of the pills?”

  Jenna had to think about it. She’d picked up her prescription days before and hadn’t thought of it again. “No, I haven’t.”

  “Good.”

  “What’s going on? Is there a problem?”

  “I think you’ll be very pleased with this news,” she said. “You’re pregnant.”

  Part Four

  Chapter Seventeen

  Black surgical thread ran the length of Diana’s wounds. During her suicide attempt, she’d cut upwards, creating marks that looked like an ungodly stigmata. It took her a half hour to work the bandage off on her left side. Her flesh felt cooler and softer to her fingertips. It took another hour to remove the bandage from her right arm. She stared at the sutures and smiled sadly. She looked like a cloth doll that had been stitched up with old thread.

  When she was little, she had a rag doll named Mary Ann. She had been fighting with Arnold, one of the neighborhood boys. He’d terrorized her for months. One day, he managed to corner her in the schoolyard and snatch Mary Ann. She had the doll by the legs, and the boy pulled the rag doll’s head and ripped it clear off her body. Walking home from school, she cried, holding the dolls body to in her arms and the doll’s head in her fist.

  Diana’s mother, Drea, whipped her for letting another child win the fight. Angry, she snatched the doll away and sent her daughter to bed early.

  Later that night, Diana came out of her room on the pretense of needing to go to the bathroom.

  Drea sat in the living room with the television blasting. On her lap was Mary Ann’s severed head. Her cotton doll feet hung from the side of her mother’s thigh.

  Beside Drea was her sewing basket. She pulled out a spool of navy thread, pushed the stuffing down into the dolls head, and stitched her neck back up. Diana would never forget the sight of Mama’s thin brown fingers as she worked the thread and cloth together.

  Even then, she felt that something wrong was done to Mary Ann. She couldn’t possibly be right with her head stuck back that way.

  How would she remember anything? Would the other dolls look at her the same when they were pretty and without the scars of thread lacing their skin? If she ever took the doll to a friend’s house to play, there would be the inevitable questions of what happened to Mary Ann and why she was different. She would have to explain about her fight with Arnold, the doll’s baby brother, another cloth doll dressed in a sailor’s suit. And then, they would laugh at her.

  Diana’s mother was poor, and everyone in town knew it. Yes, they lived in a nice house, but there was never much money to go around. The adults all knew that Diana’s father was married, which meant the children at her school knew as well. Even if they hadn’t been told, there were stares, looks that let them know Diana was not a nice girl. Not to be played with or talked to or taken seriously.

  “NO MORE SCARS,” DIANA said to herself quietly. “No more skin.”

  She began to work on the thread with her teeth. She reveled in satisfaction as she heard the first tiny snap.

  Tasting blood on her lips, she looked into the darkness in the corner of the room. She tried to see Travis there but could not find him. The sound of his voice came through, though, clear as a chime.

  Very good, Bugaboo. Good job.

  BY THE TIME JENNA CAME out of Dr. Novak’s office, dark clouds boiled overhead. The first droplets of rain fell as she slid into her car.

  Jenna hadn’t heard the weather forecast the night before, but she remembered that the local meteorologist complained about the need for rain in Chrysalis and the possibility of a dry year boding poorly for the crops.

  “Well, you all got what you wanted, didn’t you?” she said sourly.

  She wondered what rain would do to sinkholes out in the oil fields and how high the creek might rise on her property. She had never seen it anything but bone dry, and seeing it rush with water would be a new experience.

  Protected in the silence of her car, she turned on the heat and the windshield wipers and let the car idle.

  She touched her belly, thinking about the new life inside of her, and started to cry.

  Logically, she should have considered this a possibility. She made love with Stephen a few days before the fire. But after a year of trying, she’d just about given up. She had been off the pill, and there was no physical reason that they shouldn’t have been able to get pregnant—it just hadn’t happened. Given that they had an active sex life, their doctors had chalked it all up to stress and told them to try for another year before seeking medical intervention.

  Jenna was both happy and saddened, knowing that this child would never know their father.

  But she was also angry. Stephen was a young, vibrant man. There was no reason that he shouldn’t have been alive to see his child grow up.

  She picked up her cell phone to call Melva, Stephen’s mother, to give her the news. Then she thought better of it, and decided she’d stop by to see her instead. Stephen was Melva’s only son, and she would be thrilled to know she had a grandbaby on the way.

  “CONSTANCE, HAVE YOU heard from Jenna?”

  Raquel held the phone tight, trying to mask the panic in her voice. She hadn’t slept the night before. She had spent it turning over the things that Taleya had told her. Ghosts. Threats.

  There was something not right about that house. Raquel had never seen anything at her mother’s home, but she’d been well aware of an oppressive mood in that place. She felt it more when she went to a friend’s house and came back. Heaviness, darkness, something not dispelled by sunshine, music, or laughter.

  Constance paused before answering.

  “Jenna spent the night here, but she left this morning and I haven’t heard from her since.”

  “I have been trying to reach her, and she hasn’t answered her cell. If you see her today, please tell her to call me. It’s very important.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know for sure,” Raquel said. “Let her know she can’t go bac
k to her house. I need to explain to her why.”

  “What does this have to do with, exactly?”

  “It will sound crazy if I say it . . .”

  “I’ve heard a lot of things. I’m not easily surprised.”

  “Anybody ever tell you that house might be haunted?” Raquel asked.

  “Yes,” Constance said. “I have heard that.”

  “I had a long talk with Taleya last night, and she said that she saw some things in that house. I’m inclined to believe her.”

  Constance sat down. “I’ll try to find Jenna.”

  “Cousin,” Raquel said, “before you go, did Jenna mention anything to you about being pregnant?”

  DIANA’S MOTHER, DREA, was a woman with destructive tendencies.

  Raised by a series of aunts, uncles, and other disinterested relatives, Drea floated from home to home after her mother died. She was only six at the time. Standing outside her aunt’s house that first winter after her mom died, looking at the chain link fence and the cracked brick porch, she’d felt so alone. The burden of that loneliness clung to her flesh, a scar she carried with her for the rest of her life.

  It had been years before her father found her and brought her to live with him. At the time, she was twelve. Drea had been shocked to learn that her father was a married man and had a whole other family. He had a son, a daughter, and a wife that watched her with a look of pity. Drea got along with her new brother, Carl, but not her sister, Margaret, who had been the adored child. She was older, prettier, and their father’s favorite.

  Carl and Drea shared their jealousy of their sister, but mutual hatred was not a bond that could seal their friendship over a lifetime.

  After high school graduation, Drea left town with a boy who said he wanted to marry her. She had no illusions about that. No one had ever treated her well who hadn’t lived to regret it—except her father, perhaps, but it was already too late by the time he’d found her. By then she already had her mind set. She could not trust anyone. There was no reason she should expect anyone to be more than a temporary fixture in her life.

  Drea believed, deep down, there was something wrong with her—some reason she could not be loved.

  She’d gotten pregnant and hoped that a child would be the one permanent thing that she did have.

  Two months later, when she was only seventeen, she’d had her first miscarriage.

  Restless, Drea had moved from place to place, never putting down roots anywhere. She’d experimented with drugs, but she found her most loyal lover in the bottle. She liked whiskey but would happily take beer or vodka if it was the only thing that she could get her hands on. Her twenties stretched out in a blur of parties, sketchy boyfriends, and gaps in her memory.

  At thirty, she was pregnant again and unable to curb her drinking. The second miscarriage almost killed her, but it scared her to the point she decided to get sober. She moved back to her hometown of Chrysalis and lived in a rent-by-the-week motel overlooking the local all-night cafe. At night she would go there and sit by the window, drinking cups of coffee until the wee hours of the morning.

  It was during this time that she became aware of Travis Bell.

  Travis had been in her orbit before. She remembered that he had been on the football team in high school. She saw him come in for his coffee early in the evening. He nodded and smiled at her once or twice, but she couldn’t be sure whether he knew who she was. They never spoke. He was even more handsome than she remembered from school, and Drea found herself the worse for wear. Travis was a successful businessman, a married man, and he had no reason to look at someone like her.

  There was a church on the edge of town that held Alcoholics Anonymous meetings in its basement, and on weeknights when the urges were bad, she would go there.

  She had been shocked to see Travis there one night.

  He’d spoken to the group and told his story about how he’d come back from Nam a changed man. He’d said that he had flashbacks and nightmares, that drinking had become the only thing that comforted him. He’d talked about how, in the end, it had only started to make things worse, that he’d fallen into a black place where he was consumed with thoughts of death and people that he’d loved who had already passed on.

  Until that night, she’d always thought that Travis was perfect, that someone like him wouldn’t be strung out on drugs or alcohol. It had given her hope. If someone like that could make the same bad choices she did, maybe it was possible for her to make some good ones as well.

  She’d approached him after the meeting, and they’d talked.

  There’d been a spark from the beginning. A month or two had elapsed before either of them did anything about it. In working the programs twelve steps, it was patently against the ‘rules’ to get into a relationship—especially when one of the parties was married. But they’d thought of it as - a vice to replace a worse specter.

  The first night they made love, she’d cried. Afterwards, she’d gone into the bathroom and shut the door, holding back her tears until she was sure that Travis was asleep. It had been the very first time she could ever remember a man being gentle with her, and the first time she remembered one making her feel loved.

  Within a few months, Drea had gotten pregnant. She’d been afraid to tell him. She’d expected all sorts of reactions: that he might deny the baby was his, or that he’d demand she get rid of it.

  What she hadn’t been prepared for was his emotionless face and shrug when she delivered the news.

  “There’s a house I inherited,” he said lightly, “when my mother died. You can go live there. It will be a good place for you and the baby.”

  Those casual words, the coolness in his eyes, had let her know then and there that it was over. Through the years, they’d been together other times. Drea had sought some form of emotion in him, but sometimes feared that the price she paid for keeping a home for herself and her daughter was providing her flesh when he asked for it.

  She never again had that feeling of safety with him, that warmth that she’d not experienced elsewhere.

  When Diana was born, it had done something to ease Drea’s pain. Her daughter belonged to her, and that bond was something that no one else could touch.

  But sure enough, Drea’s demons had returned, one by one, nourished by the darkness that resided in the Bell house. They’d spoken poison and bitterness that time, not the siren song of her addiction.

  Those demons came with faces and names.

  “HOW COME I DON’T EVER see Mama?” Diana whispered to the shadows. She tried to pull the thin hospital sheets up around her, but they provided little warmth.

  She wasn’t sure if Travis was there anymore. Growing weak, she closed her eyes and ran her tongue over her dry lips.

  “Maybe you want that too badly,” he replied. The ghost was at her side now, not across the room as he was before. She looked into his eyes and found herself unable to look away.

  “I want my Ahmad,” she said, tears springing to her eyes.

  “You won’t get him back,” Travis said. “But everything else is gonna go away.”

  Diana nodded. She wondered how much was left of her father inside this thing with its bottomless eyes and familiar voice. It was too late to turn back now. Only her arms felt warm, where the blood trickled through.

  She couldn’t feel much of anything. She sighed; her eyelashes fluttered. She closed her eyes again and waited. It was coming now with a sound like an approaching train. She had imagined that she would go in silence, but instead, the cries of the Ancestors filled her ears.

  Twenty minutes later, the nurse arrived for shift change. Diana was long gone by then, and she didn’t hear the woman scream.

  Diana lay with her arms outstretched at her sides. The sutured wounds from her suicide attempt lay open. The blood soaked the sheets at the sides of her body forming an imprint like a blood angel against white cotton. Her mouth had opened as the death rattle moved through her throat, her eyes wide as her
father welcomed her into the beyond.

  JENNA HAD TURNED THE ringer off on her phone and shoved it to the bottom of her purse.

  Having spent half the day at Melva’s house and the rest in her car, she hadn’t even thought about it.

  All she could think about was the baby and Stephen. Traffic on the roads thinned, and soon the scenery began to change. Houses and stores gave way to patches of barren land and then, further on, to fields with grazing animals. Cows watched her pass by with wide, innocent eyes.

  Jenna, realizing that she was a good fifty miles outside of town, made a U-turn and headed back towards the city. It was a straight shot from where she was, unless she decided to go back on the freeway. She’d get home faster, but she wasn’t sure if the late afternoon traffic would be worth the trouble.

  She thought about getting on the interstate and heading out of town. She could go west, drive to the airport, and book herself a flight out to California. Or she could go to North Carolina and get to know Raquel better, spend some time with her nieces while she decided what to do.

  Such plans took energy, and she already felt drained. Her arms and legs already felt heavy. Jenna didn’t trust that she would be alert for more than an hour behind the wheel, and she’d need more time than that if she were going to get very far.

  She wanted to lie down and sleep or soak awhile in a hot bath.

  Without thinking about her destination, she found herself parked out in front of her house.

  Diana’s house was dark except for the outside lights that were on a timer, shedding a spotlight over the front door. She rushed past it towards her own house and was relieved to see the outdoor lights illuminated the porch and the tree line in the back half of the property.

  Inside, the house felt cold. She tossed her purse onto the couch and turned the heat on. Wandering into the bedroom, she changed into a t-shirt and pajama pants.