Hell Within -- Chapter Eight: The Becomming -- Scene 9 Part A

-9-

The roads had changed since Ben’s map was drawn. Van Durr Road had remained unchanged since there were virtually no houses on it. It was a two lane with a broken yellow line that led through an old wooden covered bridge that must have once born horse and buggy across the gentle brook beneath it.

But the road on the map called East Gate had been widened into a four lane and its name had changed to Bridgeton Highway. This wasn’t enough to throw Ben off the trail.

He turned right down Bridgeton Highway and followed it over an old iron bridge that carried the road across Lake Wood. But when it came time to turn onto the final road, Lakeside Drive, there was no road to be found.

Ben ducked into a BP station.

Inside he found a young man with slicked-back brown hair wearing a BP smock and sitting behind the counter watching an episode of "Tales from the Crypt."

"Excuse me?" Ben said.

The man grunted with disdain and stood up.

"Do you know where I can find Lakeside Drive? My map says it’s supposed to be back the other way, but it’s old."

The man shook his head. "I don’t know anything about this town. We have maps over on the magazine stand."

Ben gave him a dirty look and then went over to the magazine rack, found a map and opened it.

"Excuse me?" the clerk said.

"If you open it, you’ll have to pay for it."

Ben looked back at him. "Why don’t you just watch your program, dickhead?"

The man held up his hands. "That’s the rules."

"I’m not going to hurt your precious fucking map."

"Either pay for it, or I’m going to have to ask you to leave."

Ben reached into his right pocket, pulled out a five, wadded it and threw it at the clerk.

"Stick it up your ass."

The clerk picked up the five, glared at him, and rang it in.

Ben went back to the map.

He thumbed down the map directory but there was no listing for a Lakeside Drive.

He unfolded the map all the way and gaped at it. It only portrayed the city limits of Bridgeton and all the main roads branching out from it. There was nothing on the outskirts.

Ben wadded the map and threw it on the floor, but when he looked up, everything had changed.

There was no magazine rack before him. It had been replaced by a wire frame display holding candy bars and liquorish whips. The drink coolers to his right were gone and all that remained was a wall of paneling with a white door stained at the knob with grease and motor oil.

Ben looked back over at the counter and the man standing behind it was an older gentleman with white hair staring at him through thick black, horn-rimmed glasses and puffing on a pipe. He wore a blue mechanic’s jumpsuit with a 76 logo on the left breast.

Just as Ben was about to ask him what in the fuck was going on, the front door flew open ringing a brass bell hung just above it. A man wearing a pair of overhauls stepped up to the counter laid a dollar down and requested a box of Lucky Strikes. The clerk handed him his cigarettes, and punched something in the old-fashioned cash register, took the dollar and handed him change.

Ben scratched his head.

"Any of you know where I can find Lakeside Drive?"

The man buying the cigarettes turned around and looked at him.

"You done passed it. Turn right outta here, an foller the road down to the old stable on the left hand side. The road just past it is the one you wont."

"Thanks," Ben said, and he made a quick exit.

It was no longer daylight outside. It looked as though it was just after dark. The new BP gas pumps were no more and in their place were two full-serve 76 pumps.

The man who’d given him directions brushed past him and out to the boy filling his tank, handed him some money, and climbed up into his ’52 Chevrolet truck.

Ben turned his head and looked in the direction where he’d parked his truck.

His brand new Ranger was gone.

In its place sat a shiny red and chrome ’61 Ranchero not unlike the one Rudy drove accept this one was in mint condition.

Ben reached into his pocket and pulled out his keys.

His new Ford key with the black plastic head and the polished blue oval logo was gone. In its place was a shiny old Ford key. He recognized it instantly. It was the same key that Rudy had on his ring.

It was smaller than a house key, and it only had teeth on one side of it. The head of it was kind of a rounded rhombus shape with a V imprinted on it just beneath the triangular-shaped key chain hole.

"You havin some problems with your truck?"

Ben looked up in the direction of the voice, and realized that he’d parked in front of a garage door. A man wearing a greasy 76 jumpsuit stared back at him with a cigarette hanging from his lips.

"No," Ben said. "I just wasn’t paying attention to where I was parking."

The mechanic scratched his head with greasy fingers and plucked the cigarette from his mouth.

"Say, ain’t this one of them new Falcon Rancheros?"

"Yeah," Ben said.

The mechanic whistled. "She sure is a purdy thing."

"Thanks," Ben said walking around toward the driver’s side door.

"This ’un got a 144 or 170?"

Ben jabbed the key into the lock and turned it, and to his surprise, the black lock knob popped up.

"I’m not a mechanic," he said.

The mechanic nodded. "Have a nice night."

"Same to you."

Ben sat down in the driver’s seat of the Ranchero, and grinned at the primitive nature of the equipment. It had a chrome AM radio with "Ford" imprinted in the grooved metal. The dash was metal and painted gloss black. All of the equipment was operated by pulling out the white knobs on the dash. This particular vehicle had knobs labeled Lights, Choke, Wipers, and Heater.

Ben grinned and inserted his key in the ignition which was located on the dash board rather than on the steering column, pulled the choke knob, pressed in the clutch and turned it over. The familiar sound of a 144 engine churned to life beneath the hood. He pushed the choke knob back in, shifted it into reverse as he would have in his Ranger, eased out on the clutch, and pressed the gas.

The engine went dead.

Ben frowned and looked down at the shifter knob. It was an old-fashioned three speed. Reverse was all the way to the left and straight up.

He laughed at himself, cranked up again, and shifted it into reverse.

He immediately found out that he’d forgotten how heavy these old cars felt. The size of the metal steering wheel alone was enormous compared with new vehicles, and there was no such thing as power steering on a low-end Ranchero. And the engines were incredibly weak.

In order to get the car to move backwards, he literally had to step on the gas.

The brakes were slower than molasses.

He pulled the truck out into the road and headed back toward Lakewood Village as the man in the convenience store had instructed, and before long, the trees peeled back away from the left side of the road revealing a brown street sign that proclaimed "Lakeside Drive."

He flipped on his blinker and hauled the heavy hunk of metal onto the old gravel road. In a few moments, his headlights illuminated a mailbox labeled 6329.

Ben turned right onto the gravel driveway and pulled the Ranchero to a halt beside a navy ’52 Ford, cut the engine and turned off the headlights.

The cabin was well off the road and surrounded on all sides by trees, and just behind it, Ben caught the glimmer of the lake through the pines.

He got out of the truck and made his way toward a white painted door on the left side of the cabin, and opened it.

What he found inside was nothing short of amazing.

He found himself standing in a small kitchen. His mother stood with her back to him at the counter chopping up a carrot on a wooden cutting board she’d placed over the sink.

"Honey?" a voice said from somewhere else in the cabin.

She turned around.

This was not the woman Ben had seen in the photographs. Her face was pale with dark circles under her eyes. The whites of her eyes were red as though she’d been crying, and she looked malnourished -- as though she hadn’t eaten well in a long time.

"Yes?" she called.

"Can you make me a cup of coffee?"

"Just a minute," she said.

She turned back around and reached inside one of the wooden cabinets and pulled out a tea pot. She filled it full of water and sat it on top of a woodstove, and then she turned back toward her carrots.

But the room changed just then.

It turned off cold as ice and there was an antiseptic smell in the air that Ben associated with hospitals. He glanced around nervously, and just behind him, the source of the strangeness appeared -- clairvoyant in the dim light.

It was the doctor he’d seen in the old surgery room inside the mansion the day that he’d moved in. He was wearing a lab coat and a kind of head-band light that the doctors of old wore.

His walk was slow and unnaturally jerky like a film missing frames. The ghost walked straight past Ben and stepped into his mother’s body. She gasped and stood up straight, and there was a bizarre twinkle in her eyes.

"Honey?" his father called again.

"I’m coming," she said. But her voice wasn’t just her own. A man’s voice sounded simultaneously with hers.

She turned and stepped over to a white door perpendicular to the one Ben had used to enter the cabin, and opened it revealing a pantry filled with canned foods.

His mother reached into a corner of it and pulled out a double barrel shot gun. She cracked the barrel open and reached into a box of shells just inside the pantry and slipped a shell in each barrel. Then she snapped the barrel shut.

She turned toward an archway to the left of the entry door and stepped through. Ben followed her into what appeared to be a kind of den. The walls in this den were of stained oak panels and the floor of the same kind of hardwood in the mansion. There was another woodstove in the far right corner built for heat only, and a red glow came from the vents in the door.

His father sat with his back to them in a brown leather chair, his feet propped on a matching footstool, and a newspaper opened before him. A crystal ashtray sat on an end table beside him with a cigar still burning.

Ben’s mother lifted the shot gun and pressed the wooden but firmly against her shoulder, and then she cocked one of the two hammers, aimed. . . .

"No," Ben protested.

But the sound of his voice was over-ridden by the blast of the shotgun. His father lurched forward and fell into the floor. The top of this head razed to shards spraying chunks of bone, brain, and blood onto the papered wall.

His mother lowered the rifle, and the ghost backed away from her and disappeared. It took a moment for realization to creep into her eyes.

"Ted?" she whispered.

She looked down at the shotgun still smoking in her hands.

"Ted!" she screamed.

She dropped the gun on the floor and shot around the chair and stopped dead in her tracks just before her ruined husband. She clenched her eyes shut and looked away.

Ben walked around the chair and looked down at the bloody mess. His father’s face and most of the front of his skull had exploded leaving nothing but tangled chunks of shredded tissue.

Ben swallowed hard. He felt as though he were going to throw up. He turned away from the horrific spectacle and looked out the window on the wall opposite the chair.

Outside, it was calm. The Ranchero that he’d driven to the house sat in the gravel driveway beside the old Ford a dark and silent hulk. A hoard of trees obscured the rest of the gravel driveway a few feet behind the two vehicles with a gentle breeze brushing through their bare branches. How could it be so serene outside?

He turned and looked back at his mother.

Something new was happening behind her eyes now. A light had extinguished leaving nothing but gloom. She turned away from the bloody mess and stepped back over to the shotgun lying on the floor, knelt and picked it up.

She flipped the barrel open and found that there was one more unspent shell. She snapped it shut, and looked back over at the destroyed man on the floor.

She dropped to the floor. There was no emotion on her face now, not even shock. A single tear collected in her left eye and rolled down her cheek and dropped to the hardwood floor.

"I love you." she said -- her voice as natural and even as it might have been if she were wishing him goodnight.

She turned the barrel of the shotgun around cocked the other hammer and the shotgun rang out again.

The back of her head exploded spraying the wall behind her with blood, brain and bone. Her body fell straight back as if someone had kicked her in the face. The shotgun darted away from her and clacked to a rest, smoking.

Ben closed his eyes tightly and looked away. He couldn’t bare this anymore.

(Continue to Chapter Nine Scenes 9 part B - 10).