Hell Within -- Chapter Eight: The Becomming -- Scenes 6-8

-6-

The more Amy thought about it, the more her conversation with Ben disturbed her. And there were things around the house that were wrong too.

As she was making her rounds and picking up Ben’s mess she found things that seemed odd. She’d happened on the game room on the fifth floor to find two pool sticks lying on the table, and an empty bottle of scotch on the floor.

Ben hadn’t made any friends that she knew of since they’d moved here, and he never invited guests over. With whom had he been chummy enough to drink and shoot pool?

In the Kitchen there were two plates with identical leftovers laid out on the table they’d brought over from the apartment.
And Ben hadn’t changed clothes in two days.

She had to talk to someone or she was going to go nuts. She picked up the phone and dialed Shelly’s number in Gainesville.

"Hello?" her friend said after one ring.

"Shelly?"

"Amy? God I’ve been worried sick. Ben called me at work yesterday looking for you."

A pang of horror shot through her chest.

"What did you tell him?"

"That I saw you in Publix talking to that manager guy."

"Oh, shit. This is not good."

"What’s wrong?"

Amy bit her lower lip. "That explains everything. He knows. I did this to him."

"What are you talking about?"

"Saturday was our anniversary."

"Why were you in Gainesville?"

She shook her head. "We’ve had some problems. It’s been pretty uncomfortable for both of us lately."

"Honey, I’ve been divorced twice and even I know better than that. You don’t leave him alone on you anniversary."

"I was with another man."

"Oh, my God!"

"Yeah."

"Ben’s always been a little crazy, but I think he’s gone off the deep end this time."

"Why?"

"He asked me if I’d ever met his Uncle Rudy."

"Oh, well, I totally understand -- that’s terrible."

Shelly was usually a smartass, but this time it was getting away with her.

"Rudy’s been dead for years," she snapped.

There was a heavy silence.

"Ben lived with Rudy from the time he was very little until Rudy killed himself."

"Has he ever acted this way before?" Shelly said.

"He’s always been -- fragile. There’ve been times when he was under a lot of stress that I could swear he was talking to someone who didn’t exist, but never like this."

"He needs professional help."

Amy nodded staring through the surface of the desk in the study.

"That’s what I’m afraid of."

-7-

Ben couldn’t sleep.

He’d awakened to find Amy lying asleep in the oval bedroom connected to the master’s quarters via the drawing room. It really was over.

Rather than waking her and starting an argument, he decided to slip off to the master’s study after a bottle of Vodka he had hidden in the desk.

But when he turned the brass knob on the stained wooden door, the knob slipped out of his hand and the door swung open on its own.

A white light blared out the room along with a cold puff of air that faintly smelled of Vitalis rushed outward into the hallway brushing his hair back from his face.

Ben shielded his eyes with his forearm. The sweet musk of the hair oil became so strong that Ben choked on it. The depth of the cold deepened. The puff of air turned into a gale that tugged mightily at his cotton tee shirt and sweatpants, chilling him to the bone.

"Leave me alone!" Ben cried.

And all at once, the wind subsided. The cold wind disappeared. The smell of Vitalis sank to a tolerable level.

Ben lowered his arm and peered inside.

He instantly recognized the form of the man standing behind the desk looking out the window with his arms folded neatly behind his back. Now that Ben saw him, He realized exactly how different he was from him.

His father was much shorter than he with sandy blond hair, and he had a somewhat stocky build. His form was not flattering, but he had a commanding posture like a leader of state.

Ben stepped in the room, and Theodore Lancaster, a man who by all accounts was much more than Ben, turned and considered him.

"I know what it is that rules you," Ted Lancaster uttered.

Ben squinted at him, but his father didn’t seem to notice. He turned back around and looked out the window as if lost in his own thoughts.

Ben took another step toward him, but his father didn’t move a muscle. He stood at the window as if frozen in stone.

"Critical application of the lessons of history is the only road to salvation."

"What do you mean?"

His father turned toward him now with an expression that Ben couldn’t read and stretched his hand out toward the ornate desk before him.

"If you wish to save yourself and yours, you must understand what it is that ruled me."

Ben looked down at the desk and frowned, and when he looked back up, his father had vanished along with all trace that he ever was.

He stood in place for a long moment considering everything that was said, and thinking of the demeanor of the spirit that had been his father.

Then he stepped over to the desk and looked upon it.

The desk was neat and orderly just as he’d left it. The work surface was covered with a leather desk mat that had been there long before he’d taken ownership of the house. In the upper right corner, there was a wooden pen holder with two silver sconces holding brass pens that no longer worked. In the upper left, a dial-faced clock inside bell-shaped crystal that probably hadn’t kept time since his parents lived here.

He sat behind the desk and opened the middle desk drawer. He found the old photo album just were he’d placed it and nothing else new.

He pulled the upper left drawer open. Pencils, paper, a Texas Instruments calculator he’d had since college, and an assortment of bills, old and new.

He opened the bottom left drawer and found something within that he hadn’t seen before.

An old printed map of Wood County so age-worn that it looked as though the slightest touch might cause it to disintegrate.

He lifted it out of the drawer and gingerly unfolded it on the top of the desk, and it told him nothing.

There was no writing anywhere on it.

He opened the bottom right desk drawer and pulled the bottle of Vodka out, screwed the cap off, and took a hefty swig. As he was screwing the lid back on, the brass pen in the right side of the pen holder plucked itself out of its sconce and drifted over to the map.

It drew a small "X" at a point just above Van Durr Road, and then wrote, "The Mansion," beneath it. And as Ben watched, the pen traced Van Durr Road back down to the main road which must have been called East Gate Parkway at one time. The pen turned east and traced East Gate back out of Lakewood Village and over the bridge that crossed Lake Wood where it turned north on a road called "Lakeside Drive." It followed East Gate up a short distance and then drew a path off the road to the right just before the lake where the invisible hand drew another "X," and beneath it "6329 Lakeside Drive, the lake cabin."

-8-

Ben awoke to find himself staring at his alarm clock the boxy red letters read 11:26 am. He got up, showered, and dressed himself warmly, and then stepped out into the hallway.

On his way out, he stopped by the master’s study to pick up his map. He found Amy inside dropping his empty bottle of Smirnoff in the trash.

"Hi," he said.

She looked up and frowned. "I won’t have to be your slave anymore."

Ben gave her a hard look.

"I got a call back on the add we put out in the paper this morning."

"What add?"

"You said I could put an add in the paper and hire a live-in maid?"

"Yeah, but I don’t recall doing an interview."

"I interviewed her this morning over the phone. She starts this afternoon."

Ben shook his head. "It’s my money that will pay her, not yours."

"She’ll be here at three if you want to interview her first."

Ben sighed. "I won’t be here."

"Where’re you going?"

"To Bridgeton. I’m going to take the truck down for its first oil change and run some errands. I’ll be gone all day."

"I can call back and re-schedule."

Ben shook his head. "I guess you already told her she had the job."

She nodded.

"Don’t do that. Hell, you’re not even here most of the time."

She gave him a timid look. "I assumed. . ."

"Oh, shut up!"

She held her hands up, and Ben shook his head tightly.

"Did you happen to see a map on the desk when you were cleaning up?"

"Yeah, what is that?"

Ben frowned. "If I wanted to tell you I would have volunteered it. May I have my map, please?"

She opened the middle desk drawer, pulled it out, and tossed it to him.

"What’s your problem?"

Ben rolled his eyes. "I know you’re not that stupid."

He started to turn away.

"Do you want me to call her and reschedule or what?"

Ben turned back toward her.

"No, what’s done is done. So how much of my money did you tell her I’d pay her?"

"We didn’t negotiate wages. I told her she’d have to talk to you."

He nodded and started away again.

"If you’ll call me and tell me when you’re gonna be home an hour before you get here, I’ll have dinner waiting on you."

Ben turned and smirked at her. "What’s the occasion? It’s not Thanksgiving or Christmas."

"I just wanted to do something nice for you."

Ben huffed. "Whatever."

And then he turned and went for the stairs.

(Continue to Scene 9 part A)