Hell Within -- Chapter Four: The Children -- Scenes 6&7

-6-

Amy was withdrawn the rest of the day. She talked very little -- quietly going about her tasks occasionally whispering to herself.

Once most of their personal items were distributed, she told Ben that she was going to the store to pick up some things. Ben offered to go along, but she said she’d like some time by herself.

After she was gone, Ben did some exploring.

He was climbing the spiral staircase to the second floor landing when he heard whimpering echoing spectrally through the tower.

He stopped and peered through the shadowy archway into the hallways of the second floor, but he could see nothing. Then he walked through the archway and into a different era.

It was unlike the medieval first floor but built in a style much older than the 1920s trophy house architecture that dominated the fifth floor.

There was a single square hallway that encompassed a massive center room. The lath and plaster walls were painted white and the corridors were lit only by the dim glow of kerosene lamps. And the corridor smelled of oiled wood floors.

The atmosphere was distinctly 1800s. The feel of it reminded Ben of a Mark Twain novel.

Ben followed the hallway around to the front of the center room where he found a set of gaudy double doors made of stained oak and constructed much in the same fashion as those on the front of the house. The only difference was that the doors had no coat of arms. In the place of the coat of arms on each door was an ornately-carved cross. He pushed the doors open, walked inside and his mouth fell open.

The room beyond was not something one might expect to find in a place such as this. Its ceilings soared thirty feet over Ben’s head with half-moon shaped windows around the very top now eternally dark. There were twenty pews to either side of him -- carved seats in the style that one might find in churches over a century old.

On the far side of the room stood a stage with its centerpiece a mahogany pulpit. And a life-sized cross stood suspended from the ceiling a few feet behind the pulpit with a choir box immediately behind.

A church?

Then he heard the whimpering again. It seemed to stem from a closet up on the stage in the space between the pulpit and the choir box. Ben started toward it slowly, and as he approached, the sounds grew more distinct.

He stopped before the door and touched the knob.

"Hello?" he said.

The only answer was the whimpering. He turned the jeweled knob and swung the door open. Inside, old shelves full of rotting hymnals covered in dust and cobwebs, old Sears catalogues stacked against the wall, but the source of the whimpering was not to be found.

Then the light in the auditorium swelled behind him causing the white walls to glow as if in morning sunlight. Across the auditorium, the laughter of boys.

Ben turned to look and found a crowd of twenty or so boys huddled up over another boy staring at the black bound Bible held in his hands.

Ben frowned and started toward him, and even as he did, he noticed the face of the boy holding the bible. His dark brown hair and narrow face was not unlike his own had been when he was the same age.

Ben slipped in around the crowd of boys and peeked over them, and that’s when he saw the source of their interest.

A drawing of a naked woman sat folded carefully inside the young man’s bible. Ben grinned.

Then a hairy hand came out of nowhere and snatched the drawing from the bible.

Ben looked at the man. He was about Ben’s height but much skinnier and his face was hollowed-out and leathery, like the face of a man who’d seen many days of hard work.

As the man recognized the charcoal lines on the page, his eyes ignited. He slapped the boy with the Bible in the back of the head so hard that his face slammed into the pew before him.

"How dare you defile the word of God with this wickedness!"

The boy peered up at him helplessly with his nose oozing blood.

The man grabbed him by the hair and dragged him out into the isle beating him all the way and then he lugged him across the auditorium over the stage and tossed him like a stack of potatoes into the closet and tossed his Bible in after him.

"You stay there, and you ain’t comin’ out until you’ve read every last word in that book and know it better’n me."

Ben stood paralyzed with the other boys in the middle of the auditorium, and as he stared the light in the room faded to darkness again and the crowd before him disappeared and the man on the stage faded to oblivion. The only sound in the room now was the sound of the whimpering behind the closed door of the closet.

Then came the sounds of heavy footfalls in the hallway outside. Ben turned and eyed the double doors. The footfalls stopped just outside the doors, and the left door swung open. Then the footfalls began again inside the auditorium with no body to accompany. Ben stood frozen in terror.

The auditorium turned ice cold and the smell of ozone drowned out the fustiness of the oiled wood floor. As the footfalls approached, glowing green eyes appeared followed by a blurry, clairvoyant form and by the time the man passed him, he was solid.

The man in the painting downstairs, arrayed in his high-collar, lacy medieval garb.

He moved slowly but in a straight line for the closet, and when he reached the door, he passed straight through it. Then the whimpering died.

"Who are you," the boy said.

"We’ve come to protect you."

-7-

The sounds of gentle footfalls resonating through the cavernous hallways nudged Ben out of his sleep. He opened his eyes and found himself curled up on the couch before the fireplace in the downstairs den with the haunting painting of Henry Lancaster bearing down on him.

Someone had apparently slipped in the room and covered him with a quilt and built a fire in the hearth. He looked over at the grandfather clock in the right corner of the room and its gaudy hands pointed to the Roman numerals IV and V.

He frowned, tossed the quilt back, and stood up. He turned around and looked in the direction of the archway, but he could see nothing beyond but the black stone walls. He crept across the den and poked his head out into the hallway.

He looked left down toward the foyer and saw nothing. He looked right and saw Amy creeping down the hallway with her shoes in her hand.

"Amy?"

She stopped in her tracks, sighed, and turned around to face him. He couldn’t see her well in the darkness, but he was sure that she looked distressed.

"Are you just getting home?"

She just looked at him.

He stepped out into the hallway and leveled himself, folding his arms behind his back.

"Where did you go to get those groceries, Gainesville?"

She shrugged. "I forgot to turn my key back in, and I wanted to make sure we finished cleaning the apartment."

Ben shook his head. "I went over and over that apartment, and your key was a copy."

She only stared at him.

"Why did you really go back?"

"Ben," she sighed. "Can I just go to bed?"

Ben took a step toward her. "You’re not gonna start this shit again are you?"

Amy rolled her eyes and started back up the hallway. Ben followed her.

"The reason I wanted to move out here is so you’d start acting like my wife."

She ignored him.

Ben grabbed her arm and spun her around to face him.

"I’m a millionaire now. If I wanted a dick-socket, I’d hire some pretty young floozy to come here once a night and spread her legs for me. You’re supposed to be my best friend goddamnit."

She looked away from him. "I need time. You just uprooted me from all my friends."

Ben released her and threw his hands up in the air. "How much time do you need? And why does it always seem to come down to this?"

"What?"

"We had to leave Athens because you were sneaking out in the middle of the night with your friends to smoke pot."

"You’re not perfect! What about that girl you fucked?"

Ben glared at her. "Fine! But the next time I wake up in the wee hours of the morning to find you creeping back into the house, I’m going to personally pack your shit."

And he turned to walk back toward the main den.

"Ben?" she said.

And he waved her off.

Back in the den, he eyed the portrait of his ancestor, wrapped himself back in the quilt and plopped back down on the sofa clamping his eyes shut.

The room hadn’t been quiet a minute before the silence was broken again by an alien thought that resounded with an English accent.

Whore.

Ben opened his eyes and stared up at the portrait of Henry Lancaster, and for a moment, he could have sworn that the green eyes of the man in the portrait were glowing.

(Continue to Chapter Four -- Scenes 8-9)