Hell Within -- Chapter Five: The Humanist Scenes 8&9

-8-

It was dark outside by the time Dr. Ambrose finished with his last group.

He called upstairs after her, and Mandy sat her algebra book aside and grabbed her black leather jacket off the backrest of the chair. Then she trotted down the stairs and out the front door.

She found Dr. Ambrose already sitting inside his Range Rover with the engine running. He looked back at the building and shook his head.

"I forgot to turn off the lights in my office. Can you get it?"

She nodded and trotted back inside, through the waiting room and the narrow hallway, and into his office.

But when she flipped the lights off, she noticed something she’d never seen before.

It had been there all along, she supposed, but it had been tucked away in such a manner that she'd walked right past it thinking nothing of it.

Now that the lights were off, the door on the right wall -- (the wall opposite the area where Paul usually spoke with clients) -- was blatantly obvious.

Maybe she'd thought it was only a coat closet before. It was a small door, barely large enough for an adult to walk through without ducking, and certainly too short for a man as tall as Dr. Ambrose. But in the darkness, the light flowing thought the crack beneath the door was much too bright to be from the single bulb socket of a closet.

She crept over to the door and rested her hand on the cool porcelain knob. She took a deep breath, and then she cracked the door open.

Inside, cream-colored walls accented by, what else, that goddamn hunter green shit.

She opened the door all the way.

The room beyond appeared to be a small private office -- so small that there wasn't enough room for much of anything other than a small desk and a chair. And the desk within was a fine maple one, no doubt an antique. It stood in the middle of the room with a leather-bound journal placed squarely in its center.

And photographs covered the walls, many of them far older than Mandy. The frames on the far left of the wall facing her appeared to be the oldest, possibly containing some of the earliest etchings done. The first was a blurry print of an important looking man wearing an ascot and an eyepiece situated beside an attractive woman wearing a full-length, long sleeve dress of thick vertical stripes.

A little boy stood in between the man and the woman -- a child not much older than five. All of his hair had been sheered off and his facial features were round and immature, but despite the child's age Mandy knew who the boy was. He could be no one other than her host.

There was no date stamped on the picture, but by its antique silver frame and the delicate, fading state of the image and the clothing of the people within it was obviously well over a hundred years old.

Immediately to the right of this image was another in a similar frame of not much better quality. In it, an older version of the man portrayed in the first photograph stood with his hands folded at his plump waist before a large fireplace, and beside him, a young Paul Ambrose stood dressed in his Sunday best.

He was no longer a boy at all, he'd grown to his full height and his face had filled out. A glimmer of youthful mischief still sparkled in his eyes, and not all the boy had seeped from his face. He looked to be about sixteen.

In the next portrait, the same Dr. Ambrose stood beside a tall, young woman who wore a full dress similar to the one his mother had worn two pictures ago. The only difference was in their accessories. Ambrose's mother had dressed in a rather straightforward fashion. The girl he was with now had chosen to bring her parasol along, and she also wore a wild-looking, flower-laden hat.

She was pretty, too. She had curly blond hair, and her face had an elfish quality.

In the next photograph, a group of people she didn’t recognize stood outside the front entrance to Dr. Ambrose’s house. And Dr. Ambrose stood on the steps wearing a black tuxedo with an ascot with the young lady in the picture before holding his left hand and wearing a wedding dress.

Mandy moved on down the wall and the years.

A young Paul Ambrose standing beside the woman she assumed to be Noel just outside the building that she now stood inside.

In the next, Paul Ambrose, in his twenties, just outside the same building with a horse and buggy behind him.

Apparently, a few years of photographs were missing because the next picture was of a group of important-looking men posing in a block in front of a sign that read "Dartmouth University, class of 1921."

She searched the scrubbed faces and standing in the back she found him, and he looked just as he did now.

In the next portrait, Dr. Ambrose stood before a heavy curtain holding a certificate that she could not read, and beneath it was a framed certificate that proclaimed that Paul E. Ambrose was a Doctor of Medical Science. It was dated 1925.

On down, another black and white with Ambrose shaking hands with a man that she recognized from her psychology textbook. It was Sigmund Freud.

Another degree hung beneath it from Oxford University saying that Paul had achieved a Ph.D. in Psychology. The date on it was 1951.

"What are you doing?" Dr. Ambrose snapped.

The sound of his voice came so abruptly that she jumped three feet in the air, and then she stared back at him like a deer caught in the headlights.

"A light was on."

Paul shook his head. "This is my private office."

She just stared at him. Paul took a step toward her, and she backed away from him. He looked past her at the pictures on the wall and then into her face.

She knew.

"You don't understand," he said.

She shook her head. "You're some kind of freak."

Paul sighed and stepped across the room to the windows looking out on the alley behind the house. When the house was built, the windows had displayed a beautiful view of woods and distant rolling hills, and now it was nothing but brick and concrete.

He looked at her and licked his lips.

"How old are you?" she said.

He shook his head. "I don't celebrate birthdays."

She stared at him for a long moment. Then he started toward her again. She stepped back against the wall.

"What are you?"

Paul sighed hard. "I don’t want to talk about this."

"Why?"

"Because it’s none of your business."

She frowned, and now she wasn’t so hungry anymore.

-9-

She left him in his office staring out the window and went upstairs.

She was in the process of taking all her belongings from the walnut drawers of the bureau and stuffing them back in the boxes her mother had sent when she felt a peculiar burning in the back of her neck.

She turned around.

Dr. Ambrose was propped up in the archway gazing in at her.

"Ever heard of knocking?"

Dr. Ambrose said nothing.

She shook her head and turned back around to resume her packing.

"Going somewhere?" he said evenly. Mandy turned back around and gave him her most incredulous look, but Dr. Ambrose acted like he didn't notice.

She stared at him a moment longer, and then she turned around and continued.

"Where will you go?"

She didn't answer.

"You know, we're in a bad recession."

She ignored him.

"Rest assured this act will seal the fate of your emancipation suit."

She glared at him.

"What do you expect?"

Paul nodded, stood up straight in the doorway, stepped into the room, and sat on the side of her bed.

Mandy shook her head. "You have something to say?"

Dr. Ambrose shrugged. "What's to say? I can understand why you might feel as you do."

"Who the hell are you?"

He gave her an interrogative look. "Paul Ambrose."

She grimaced. "I don't believe you about Jude Ledbetter. No one looks that much like his grandfather."

He grinned and shook his head. "You think I'm over a hundred years old? I'm getting on in years. . . ."

"That file I read with your name on it was from the early part of the century."

His grin turned into a smirk. "Maybe I'd better hurry up and retire, then."

She stomped the floor. "1927? Hello!"

Paul cleared his throat and looked up at her. "In 1927, this practice was run by Dr. Paul Ambrose -- senior."

She sighed and looked down at the floor.

"That was my father."

"And I suppose you’re gonna tell me that he and your grandfather both look exactly like you. Right. What are you, an alien that reproduces asexually?"

Paul stood up. "If you're going to leave, I suggest you find a place to stay quickly. It's about to rain, and I noticed that you have a leak in your car."

And he turned and started away from her. Mandy looked back at him just as he was walking into the kitchen area, and at that moment, he looked terribly sad.

"Why can’t you just tell me the truth?" she snapped.

Dr. Ambrose stopped and bowed his head. "Because the truth is very strange, and I don’t know if I can trust you."

"So it’s true."

"That depends on what you think the truth is."

She threw her hands up in the air and turned around.

Dr. Ambrose turned around and looked at her back. "I’ve made a mistake here. I’ve gotten myself far too involved in your life. I know from past experience that being close with a client is not a good idea."

"Why?" she sighed.

"Because you’ll die, and the grief will be terrible. As you grow older, you’ll notice that I don’t."

Mandy turned back around and resumed her packing.

"Even though you are a terrific pain in the ass, I enjoy having you here. It makes things much more than just haphazard."

She looked back at him. He looked so vulnerable.

"What the hell are you?"

"I am a man with oversized intuition who has lived an unreasonably long life. I’m not a demon who’s gonna come up behind you when you least expect it and poke you in the ass with a pitchfork. I’m not a sexual predator who moves you into an apartment full of hidden cameras so I can film you undressing and put it on the internet. I’m not an alien who’s going to beam you up into a space ship so I can perform weird experiments on you. Let me help you."

"Why do you even care?"

"Because I see you through your own eyes and mine as well, and our emotions are the same."

Mandy studied him hard, and everything she saw on his face told the tale. She believed him this time. Believing him made her feel like a sack of shit.

She stood up and brushed past him into the kitchen area, took her jacket off the table and pulled it on, and then she looked back at him.

"Are you taking me out to dinner, or not?"

(Coming Soon: Chapter Six: The Father)