Hell Within -- Chapter Five: The Humanist -- Scene 4

-4-

Two monkey-headed knuckle-dragging Bridgeton cops converged in the parking lot of Dr. Ambrose’s practice, entered the waiting room, and listened rather stoically and with mild disinterest as Mandy recounted Davy’s rather inappropriate visit, and once she’d given them Davy’s name and address, they supplied her with a generic-looking business card with a case number scrawled in chicken scratch on a blank line.

Mandy got the feeling that they weren’t too enthusiastic about the prospect of helping her – that she’d interrupted a doughnut-eater’s convention.

They left without so much as a "fuck-you-have-a-nice-day," telling her rather casually on the way out that if she wished to press charges she could go down to the station and purchase a copy of the police report for ten bucks, and file it with Municipal Court for a small fee.

Fucking bureaucratic bastards.

And then they were off. They left her completely alone in the big, dark building all by herself.

Easy prey.

Dr. Ambrose arrived soon thereafter and was quite consternated about the whole affair.

He huddled her into his black Range Rover and started down the road.

Dr. Ambrose had not been accurate in his estimation of the distance between his office and his house. It took them nearly an hour and a half, and neither of them spoke along the way.

God knows what Dr. Ambrose was thinking, but Mandy’s mind was preoccupied with how responsive Dr. Ambrose had been. How he’d called her moments before the banging on the door began. Not nearly enough time for a security guard across the street who was probably watching Jay Leno on a portable TV to spot the intruder and call him.

How he seemed to know the moment that Davy was gone.

How he’d made a journey of an hour and a half in 45 minutes.

Even if he did have hidden cameras, he couldn’t have been watching them every waking minute, could he? It was midnight, and Dr. Ambrose did not strike her as a night owl.

How had he known Davy was coming before he got there?

Why would he have hidden cameras on the street?

The more she thought about it, the stranger the whole thing seemed.

She looked up at him and caught him peeking at her out of the corner of his eye, and the look on his face was that of concern.

But her attention to that detail was lost as soon as he pulled off the road onto a gravel driveway and The House immerged from the shadows.

It was three stories tall, and the exterior of the walls were covered in a substance that was not unlike stucco. There were half-circle windows all along the large base of the house with the panes arranged in a sunbeam pattern that looked to go underground. The full-sized windows to either side of the porch were large, angry-looking rectangles with multiple panes.

The most prominent feature of the front façade was the porch. It jutted out into the front yard and three, hand made stone steps led up to a landing lit buy a heavy outdoor light that was not unlike the light on the front porch of The White house. It had a double-door entryway with heavy doors made of hand-carved maple. Directly over the porch was an enormous square-shaped multi-pane window looking out over the front yard that was big enough to be an entire wall of a room.

The roof was tall with steep angles. The gables were crafted out of what was most certainly hand-carved wood, and it was shingled with ceramic tiles. There were two dormers presiding over the large picture window above the porch with normal-sized windows.

"This is your house?"

Dr. Ambrose said nothing. He cut the engine to his Range Rover, got out, and took the gym bag containing her things with him. Mandy got out and surveyed the land.

There was something slightly familiar in the lines of the place. The look and feel of it -- the smell of the air -- the shapes of the trees -- all gave her a strange feeling of déjà vu.

She looked down and found Dr. Ambrose staring at her with keen interest from the porch.

"How old is this place?"

"Annandale was finished in 1783."

"Where did the name come from?"

Dr. Ambrose smiled slightly and seemed to look inside himself. "I don’t know," he said.

She stepped up to the front porch and Dr. Ambrose snapped out of it, sat the gym bag down and unlocked the door. Then he opened the door and motioned for her to go in first. She hesitated wearily, but Dr. Ambrose urged her on with a reassuring nod. She stepped inside and found something beautiful.

The antechamber was a rectangular room with walls painted in a soft peach color accented by moldings carved with a flowering ivy design. The floors were of fine hardwood, not like the floors in the apartment above Dr. Ambrose’s office, but with a heavy gloss to them.

The house had the subtle smell of aged timbers but above that was a kind of delicious smell -- like that of baking yeast bread. The smell reminded her of her grandmother’s house, and she was instantly at ease.

"It’s beautiful," she said not looking at Dr. Ambrose who had stepped in behind her and shut the door.

"Thank you. I restored it myself, three times."

She gave him a puzzled look but Dr. Ambrose didn’t notice.

"It was originally a plantation. My parents got it as a wedding gift from my Grandfather. Her family used to run a farm that encompassed everything around here."

"Wow."

He looked at her. "Did you see that Sod Grass farm on the way in here?"

"It was hard to miss."

"All of that and more belonged to my uncle."

"So your parents were rich."

He nodded. "My father was."

"What did he do?"

He glanced at her and then pondered the question a moment before he said. "He was a psychiatrist. Dr. Ambrose Sr?"

"Oh," she said. Now she didn’t feel quite so weird about the file she found in the office.

"They gave this house to me as a kind of a wedding gift -- in the same tradition as it was bequeathed to them."

"So you and your wife lived here?"

"Not long. We had a house in Bridgeton, but we met because of the house. We spent the first weeks of our marriage here."

"Lotta memories," she said.

Dr. Ambrose nodded.

Then he snapped out of it again. "Anyway, it’s way past our bedtimes. In the interest of preserving privacy, yours and mine both, I’ll put you up in one of the basement bedrooms."

"Okay."

He held up a finger. "One thing though. I would appreciate it if you would respect my privacy and treat my house with the utmost respect."

"Absolutely."

He nodded.

"So what was your wife’s name?"

He looked away from her and seemed to ponder the question again, and then he smiled. "Noel."

"That’s pretty."

Dr. Ambrose paused for a moment longer, and then he led her through the house and down to her room.

When he opened the door to the bedroom where she was to stay, and she walked inside, it was like looking inside a room that she might’ve seen in a dream that she couldn’t quite remember.

The situation of the furniture -- the oriental-looking antique vanity against the wall to the left just inside the door -- the single-wide bed against the opposite wall, the simple end tables to either side of it -- even the two half-circle windows at the top of the room were somehow friendly.

He handed her the gym bag.

"I don’t think it would be a very good idea for you to stay in the office apartment until Davy is behind bars, so this will be home for the next couple of weeks. What’s your schedule for tomorrow?"

She looked down at the floor. "Go to school, and then I have to be at work at five."

"What time do you get off?"

"I dunno, eightish. You can never plan."

He stood up straight. "Well, I probably have enough work at the office to keep me busy until then. Meet me there after work, and you can follow me here. After that, you’ll know the way."

She nodded, and he started to turn away.

"Dr. Ambrose?"

He turned around.

"I’m sorry I didn’t trust you."

He shook his head. "Mistrust is a good thing especially given your context. Trust is a thing earned not given."

"That’s true."

He gave her a tired smile. "But that works both ways. You have to earn my trust, too."

"You look stressed."

He gave her a shrewd smile. "Not at all."

She squinted at him and gave him a mischievous grin, and he returned with another tired smile and a nod.

"Well, maybe a little. This is a tremendous responsibility that I’m not accustomed to bearing."

"Why are you doing it?"

"With your experience regarding adults in authority, I can understand your reservations, but believe it or not, there are people in the world who help others simply because it’s the right thing to do."

She frowned.

"Whatever menial discomfort I have to cope with pales in comparison to yours. You want to be a good person badly, but no one has ever shown you how. You don’t know how much of a tremendous impact a single, seemingly insignificant individual can have on the whole of humanity over the course of a lifetime in simply trying to be good."

"Wow."

He stood in place for a moment longer, and then he said, "I’m tired, so if you want to hear some more of my pompous bullshit, you’ll have to wait until in the morning."

She laughed.

"Bathroom’s across the hall, and this door locks just in case you still haven’t decided whether or not I have a perverted taste for teenage girls."

She laughed again.

He grinned. "Pleasant dreams."

Then he turned and stepped out shutting the door behind him.

Mandy stood in place and waited for the sounds of his footfalls climbing the stairs to disappear before she locked the door.

Then she unzipped her gym bag and pulled out the tee shirt and sweat pants she always slept in, but when she went to empty her jeans pockets she pulled out the folded sheet of Xerox paper that she’d found in the desk in her small apartment this morning.

She unfolded it as best she could with her only functioning hand
stared at the picture of the man who looked like a youthful Dr. Ambrose and then she read the article.

August 17, 1885

Steel Tycoon sells off Company

The doors of the Bridgeton home office of Ledbetter Mills closed for the last time this afternoon. Recent financial hardships coupled with the end of the government reconstruction contract with the steel giant have rendered the company unprofitable.

The lumber mill owned by Ledbetter Mills in Bridgeton that employs a third of Bridgeton’s working class has been sold to a local board of investors, who promise layoffs, pay cuts, and an assortment of other unfortunate ramifications for Bridgeton’s economy.

As for all of the other mills owned by Ledbetter Inc. throughout the country, they have all either been sold or closed.

This is the latest episode in a terrible chain of events for the young president of the company Jude Ledbetter. His wife of two years, Noel Smith Ledbetter passed away while giving birth to a stillborn son. The former president of Ledbetter Mills, John Ledbetter, suffered a stroke and is not expected to live out the year.

The city is full of bitterness over the loss pay, but many. . . .

(Continue to scenes 5&6)