Hell Within -- Chapter Six: The Father -- Scene 1

-Chapter Six: The Father-

-1-

Being wealthy was not anywhere near as romantic as Ben thought. His third month into his residence at the Lancaster mansion had brought him nothing but boredom and dismay.

His first two weeks, he’d kept himself occupied with learning the lay of the land, exploring the house, and arranging and arraying -- bringing the house up to 21st century standards. But the charm wore off of all his new electronic toys rather quickly.

In an effort to renew his excitement, he dumped his tired RX-7 for a new Aston Martin V12 Vanquish -- silver, but he found out rather quickly that he was not a teenager anymore -- that driving fast did not excite him, it scared him. He’d never been an options nut, and he was no longer a fan of the hunkered-down and leaned back feel of a sports car.

A month later, he gave up and drove his shiny Aston Martin to Bridgeton Ford and bought himself a new four-cylinder, five-speed Ranger. He hadn’t even looked at the Aston Martin since.

He didn’t have a job or any friends in town, so he spent most of his time trying to find new ways to keep himself entertained.

He bought himself a PlayStation 3 at the Bridgeton Wal-Mart but found out that most of the single-player games pissed him off and made him feel stupid. He went through two controllers inside the first week.

His love life was a piece of shit -- mostly involving a jar of Vaseline and a nonsensical line typed into a computer beginning with www.xxx. . . .

He loved his wife, and he missed her terribly. She grew more distant with each passing day, and now it seemed that he never saw her anymore. She’d commandeered his Aston Martin, and spent most of her time visiting her "friends."

It was fight or flight time now, and he didn’t know what to do.

She’d opted out of spending their anniversary with him, in favor of going to an all-weekend concert with Shelly. Ben was not stupid, and now he was faced with spending the most depressing day of his life alone.

He rose early on the morning of his anniversary, packed a cooler full of ice and beer, grabbed his tackle box and reel and headed out to the pond.

Ben didn’t even like fishing. He’d only re-stocked the pond because it seemed like a masculine thing to do, and he halfway hoped to lure his Uncle Rudy, whose condescending company often irritated him. But he needed camaraderie enough not to care were it came from.

And he especially disliked the idea of fishing alone, but it seemed like a quiet way to drink away the day without getting himself into an excessive amount of trouble.

Outside, he found an awesome mid-November morning. The air was full and cold. The sunlight was a soothing amber-autumn hue, and a low vapor hung over the pond like the breath of a ghost.

He dropped his rod and tackle box on the bank, unfolded the lawn chair that he’d sat out yesterday beside the old gazebo, and cracked open a beer and reclined without giving a second thought to the fishing aspect of this expedition.

That’s all he really wanted -- to sit outside and quietly watch the day come to pass without speaking a word -- a kind of private protest. A time to listen to the wind as it picked up and brushed through the woods, causing a swelling sigh to sweep through the rolling hills, and of course reflect on all the various different ways that Amy was a bitch.

It was cold, and after a few minutes, his face and hands went numb. But Ben wasn’t afraid of the cold.

And he sat in place nursing his beer for an indeterminate amount of time, watching the sun complete its ascent above the bare treetops.

But just as the sun crested the woods, his eyes caught the skeleton of a church steeple rising just above the trees in the woods. He’d seen it before, but he’d never given it any thought.

Now, as he stared at the amber November horizon, he recalled that the property upon which the mansion rested spanned 100 acres – That would mean that the church would have to be a part of his residence.

For all the exploring he’d done inside the residence, he’d never explored the property itself.

As he sat on his lawn chair reflecting on it, he noticed something else, too. On the opposite side of the pond where the clearing ended and the woods began laid the ruins of an old mortared stone pathway leading into the woods.

He wondered what treasures lay beyond.

He glanced at his fishing rod, killed his beer, and then took another one from the cooler.

Then he made his way around the bank of the pond to the other side, and stood just before the woods at the mouth of the path.

By the look of the walkway, no one had been down it in years. The path was broken in spots with stones missing and the parts of it that remained, the mortar between the stones had broken and weeds, now brown, had wormed their way through.

He traced the path as far through the woods as he could with his eyes, which wasn’t far. Less than a hundred feet away the path bended and disappeared behind a patch of pine trees.

He screwed the cap off his second beer and took a gulp.

What the hell?

And he started down the path.

It led him deep into the woods to a stream where it seemed to end at the bank, and where it ended, stood the rotten remnants of what was once a wooden bridge. Ben stopped at the stream, for a long moment sipping his beer and listening to the sounds of the cold, clear water rush over the rocks.

He lit a cigarette and puffed it, suddenly inspired by the prospect of erecting a small building out here. The sight gave him a feeling of serenity that he hadn’t felt in a long time.

It would also be a wonderful way to fuck with Amy. What if he built a building here without a word to Amy. One day she would come home from one of her all night visits to "Shelly’s" and would find him nowhere.

At length, he tossed his cigarette aside, jumped over the stream and continued following the path onward. Before long, he came upon it.

The old church was a wooden building with a stone foundation hidden among the trees. It was in a state of complete ruin.

There was not a trace of paint on the timbers, and the wood was gray with decay. The windows were a distant memory with only empty sockets to testify to their historic presence.

The front doors were missing. It was almost as if someone had seen the doors and liked them so much that they decided to take them home. The front portion of the roof had caved in making entry into the old building impossible. It was a miracle that the steeple still stood in place.

An enigma.

Ben knew it was old by the style of architecture and the stone foundation, but the building was generic enough to resist giving away its exact age.

As he stood in place surveying the ruins he noticed a rusty iron gate, partially collapsed, surrounding the back. He took another swig of beer and followed a trail back behind the church.

What he found was another enigma.

There were scores of old graves, some of them with stately stones and some unmarked. He recognized the pattern instantly for the caskets had collapsed underground causing the earth to bow under.

He walked down the rows eyeing the old stones, and what he read on them was most disturbing. Of the stones that remained, nearly all of them were dated in the early 1600s. And most of them stated "Treason."

Then, Ben heard someone approaching.

He ducked into the woods behind the foliage.

The sounds of many footfalls grew closer until he saw them through the trees.

First a man wearing a white shirt in the style that one might have worn in colonial times -- ruffled throat and cuffs -- speckled with fresh blood. He was a plump, older man with a mane of tangled iron hair. He was crying and muttering. His nose and lips seemed to be bleeding as if he were involved in some sort of confrontation. His steps were jerky and confused as if he were being prodded along, and his hands, at first glance, seemed to be folded behind his back.

Then he saw two others behind him.

They were dressed as guards with old-fashioned steel helmets, and they were both armed. The man on the left, with a musket and sword, and the man on the right with only a musket. And the man on the right side held a rope that was tied to the shackles that bound the older man walking before them.

Then two others appeared behind them.

These men weren’t dressed as guards as were the other two, but appeared to be commoners with sack-cloth shirts and hand-me-down tights. And they carried digging tools.

Ben looked back out over the graveyard.

The church was no more, and the Iron Gate that guarded the cemetery was in perfect condition. All of the tombstones were in perfect order. They looked as though they were brand new, and the graves were all covered in fresh dirt and not sunken as they had been only moments before.

And an open grave stood at the far end of the yard with a tombstone already in place but no casket.

The guards prodded the old man over to the fresh grave, and the man carrying the musket and a sword, a prominent-looking man with a sharp face and dark brown hair stepped behind the old man grabbed his shoulder and shoved him down to his knees.

Then the guard stepped back away from him and unsheathed his sword.

"Captain Lawrence Goldsmith, you have been convicted of treason against your colony by his honour Henry Lancaster, Governor and savior of our colony. Your sentence is death. Have you anything to profess before you sentence is carried out?"

The agony and fear on the old man’s face turned to hatred.

"I am no traitor! I am the high captain of our militia! Henry Lancaster is no Governor or savior, merely a madman with power. For the love of Mary, look around you at all these graves! How long, Trevor, until Henry’s eye falls on you, or someone you care about?"

A look of fear came into the swordsman’s face which was quickly replaced with resolve. "I am now the high captain of our militia. You will address me as Captain. As for your pledge of innocence, you were discovered conspiring with the heathens."

Sadness washed over the old man’s eyes. "My only conspiracy has been to protect the people of this colony from the peril that surrounds them."

He looked over his shoulder and directly at the Captain for the first time.

"Have you no conviction? You married my daughter! You know there is no treachery in me."

The Captain shook his head. "And what would you have me do?"

"Release me, and we shall lead a charge into the charlatan’s chambers and do unto him as he has done to so many others."

The Captain deflated, and looked over at the other guard who had lowered his musket and was staring at the Captain now with trepidation.

"Sir?" the other guard said.

The Captain passed the guard his sword, and the guard took it and gave him an interrogative look.

The captain shook his head. "Far be it for me to slay a member of my family."

"But sir. . . ."

The captain assumed a commanding posture.

"Carry out the sentence."

The guard tucked his musket under his belt and drew the sword back.

"Trevor?" the old man said.

The guard swung and the sword sliced effortlessly through the skin, muscle, and bone that was the old man’s head. His head seemed to pop off and spin in the air for a moment like a ball and then it rolled into the grave.

And the body sat in place for a moment as if it hadn’t yet realized that it had lost a vital appendage, and then it slumped forward into the open grave and only the old man’s feet still hung over the edge.

The guard stood in place for a long moment in complete shock of what he’d just done. The old man’s feet began to flop and kick like a fish.

The guard dropped the sword and it clanged against the rocks on the ground.

The captain turned his back to the grave, and whipped his eyes and hung his head.

He stood in place for a long moment breathing deeply and grasping for control over his emotions.

At last, he looked at one of the men that had come along with them bearing the digging tools, taking care to avoid the grave.

"Bury him quickly," he said.

Ben shifted his weight and a twig snapped beneath his right knee, and at once, all the men in the graveyard looked straight at him.

The captain unsheathed his musket.

"Heathens," he cried.

Ben jumped to his feet and bolted for the path, as the other men scrambled after him. He heard one of the muskets fire but felt no wound, and he didn’t dare look back.

(Continue to scenes 2&3)