Hell Within -- Chapter Eight: The Becomming -- Scene 9 Part B - 10

-9- (Continued)

"Ben?" a familiar voice hailed.

He opened his eyes.

The gray light of day poured into the old cabin from outside, and through the dirty and bare windows he saw the driveway now mostly devoid of the gravel that had paved it before making it nothing more than mud. And his new, red Ranger glistened in among the bare trees.

Ben looked around the room.

All the furniture was gone.

Nothing remained of the horror that he’d just witnessed save brown stains on the white papered walls that might have only been dirt.

He looked in the direction that the voice had sounded and found Tom standing in the archway between the kitchen and den wearing a warm-looking gray and black sweater with a trench coat.

"What’re you doing here?" Ben said.

Tom smiled and walked past him and stood beside the dark woodstove.

"I was passing by and noticed your truck out front."

Ben looked about, dazzled.

"My parents died here," he said, more to himself than anyone else.

"Indeed. It was a terrible thing. They were both in the prime of their lives."

Ben looked in Tom’s general direction but not at him.

"Why didn’t you tell me?"

Tom smiled knowingly. "It’s not the sort of thing one likes to broach in idle conversation."

Ben nodded and shuddered. "What the hell happened?"

Tom took a step toward him and stopped, stuffing his hands in his pockets.

"The children had a terrible hold on your mother. They’d tricked her into believing that the source of all the trickery was Henry, and in fact, he was the only one who could save her."

Ben frowned and looked directly at Tom this time. "How do you know all of this?"

Tom gave him a tight smile. "My family has cared for your family since long before we had a choice in the matter."

"You were slaves?"

Tom nodded.

"What an awful heritage! Why didn’t you leave?"

Tom chuckled. "I did, if you’ll recall, but like you, my fate is irrevocably bound to the house."

"Tell me more," Ben said.

Tom paced back over to the woodstove.

"That was a different time. Your father was a forward-thinking man. He was for the Civil Rights Movement, and the abolition of segregation in the south. But your mother was a daughter of the old southern aristocracy."

"Oh."

Tom looked away from him and out the window. "She believed my father ignorant and eccentric. To her, he was a nigger -- just a tool that lightened her load."

"This is what happens to every member of my family?"

Tom nodded. "The children convince them that the house is either evil or they are insane. Some of them are able to resist longer, but eventually, they all end up the same."

Ben looked down to the floor. "Is that what will happen to me?"

Tom gave him a grave look. "You are not dead yet."

Ben peered at him.

"Henry has not left the house. His penance requires that his spirit remain trapped inside the walls of the mansion until such time as an insightful man or woman of Lancaster blood asks him to aid them in the fight against the children."

Ben looked back down at the floor.

"Time is short, and by your behavior and demeanor it seems to me that the children already work their devilry on you."

"What should I do?"

Tom shook his head. "That is not for me to say."

"But my mother. . . ."

"Your mother is not herself. She is one of the children now. The only way her soul can find rest is by invoking Henry to stave the children off. Once Henry is freed then his penance will be satisfied and the children freed of their bondage."

Ben sighed hard.

Tom walked over to him and patted him on the shoulder. "You bare a terrible burden, and you are a fragile man much as your mother was a fragile woman. You have a chance to free yourself and all of your children of the curse, and you mustn’t fail."

-10-

The drive home was dreadfully long, but Ben remembered none of it. His mind reeled with images and voices of the things he’d seen and heard since he’d come into his mansion. All of the warnings. All of the counter warnings. And not a single one of them had come from a reliable source.

The only person who had not led him astray was Tom, and he wasn’t completely sure about him either. Tom had a way of popping up at the most unusual times and then disappearing without a trace.

And the conversation he’d had with Rudy was still fresh on his mind. The way that his mother had grown psychotic before the end -- seeing things and talking to people that didn’t exist. Ben wasn’t so sure that Rudy existed anymore.

According to Amy, Rudy had suffered a rather nasty death when Ben was a boy.

That couldn’t be could it?

It was just after four in the afternoon when Ben pulled into the broken driveway of the mansion. And he drove up the long path through the trees much as he’d driven the rest of the journey -- lost in his own thoughts and scarcely aware that he was driving.

But his thoughts came to an abrupt end as the trees thinned revealing the front façade of the mansion and the cul-de-sac before it.

He stopped his truck and cut the engine and peered at the car sitting before the front entrance. It wasn’t the Jaguar.

Ben knew that car.

How many other brand new, Tonka-truck-yellow Corvettes could there be in a town like Lakewood Village? The only question was what was it doing here? It didn’t belong anywhere near here. He’d left it and its owner behind in Gainesville months ago.

He stepped on the emergency brake pedal and got out of the truck. Then he crept through the trees and up to the side entrance of the mansion at the base of the eastern bell tower. He slipped his key in the lock one tooth at a time, and then he turned back the lock until it clicked, ever so softly.

He eased the door open, pulling up on the handle so that the squeaky, old hinges wouldn’t give him away, slipped inside as silently as a cat, and eased the door shut behind him.

Then, rolling his steps, he eased past the spiraling stone staircase and to the archway leading into the east wing hallway of the first floor where he stopped and listened hard.

But the only sound was that of the cold wind outside whistling past the house.

Slowly as a sundial he turned and started back for the staircase like a hunter stalking prey. He slipped his loafers off at the base of the staircase and climbed the steps barefoot and on all fours.

Halfway up, he heard wraith’s voices coming from the top of the house. He discerned not words but he recognized the timbre of both instantly. One was that of the woman who’d sworn to be faithful to him until her dying day, and the other was that of a man that he would have trusted with anything.

He stopped in the mouth of the hallway at the fifth floor and listened hard again.

In a moment, he heard the sound of Amy’s laughter. The sound had originated in the vicinity of the master’s quarters.

He hugged the right wall stepping close to the baseboards to keep the floor from creaking and giving him away, and then he arrived.

The door to the sitting room was open.

He pressed his back against the wall and peeked inside.

The room was just as it should be save for the trail of clothing starting near the couch in the sitting room and leading back into the oval bedroom were Amy slept most of the time.

His eyes found the mirror above the mantle of the fireplace which stood opposite the archway that led into the oval bedroom. In it, he saw the bed and two forms writhing beneath the white sheets.

He stared long at the spectacle; half believing that it was something other that what it appeared to be.

Then the white sheet fell away as Amy rose up -- her bare back exposed to the mirror. And the man lying beneath her was none other than Richard Little.

Dick.

His former boss, and a man with whom he’d attended college.

His friend.

Ben shook with anger.

He wanted to charge the room and beat them both into a bloody pulp.

But no.

Now he knew.

It took every last ounce of restraint in his body to turn away from them and creep back down the hallway, but he did.

He drifted back down the stairwell, down the east wing hall and into the foyer.

Once he’d reached the main hall of the first floor he stopped in the darkness looking about like a lost child.

The fate that the children had plotted for him was exposed.

It was both ugly and awful, and he could not face it alone.

And that was when Ben made his decision.

His lips parted slowly as if he were still unsure of his choice, and he was unsure even as he whispered the words.

"Henry, I need you."

The spirit appeared at once, clairvoyant in the darkness. His green aura flared off him like flames. His eyes glowed like tiny jewels in the shadow.

He smiled as graciously as his vile form would allow, and he said "You have chosen wisely."

(Coming Soon: Chapter Nine: The Addict).