Hell Within -- Chapter Thirteen: The Survivor -- Scenes 4-7
The Conclusion.
-4-
"Pull in here," Mandy said.
The taxi driver guided the yellow Crown Victoria into a parking space before the black iron gates.
Mandy threw the door open.
"Wait here," she said.
And then she got out.
There was a median on either side of the gates well-groomed and covered with pansies, tulips, and violets. A gardener wearing a pair of old blue jean overhauls and a flannel shirt hovered over the left median planting new flowers.
"Excuse me?" Mandy said.
The man turned around and looked at her.
"I was wondering if you could tell me if you've seen a particular person come in here."
The man shrugged and pulled off his leather gloves. "Don't really pay much attention to who comes and goes."
"There might have been a man to come through here today driving a white Escort station wagon. He would've been of about average height with dark brown hair. . . ."
The man frowned. "There was an old boy who assaulted a fella in the parking lot this morning. Cops came by askin about him, but I didn't see nothin. Fella said he was joggin, and saw some old boy sittin in an Escort actin weird, so he tapped on the window. The man had a gun, and he threatened him."
"A gun?"
Mandy felt as though she was going to throw up.
"You okay, Miss?"
She snapped out of it and turned back toward the cab.
"Miss?" she heard the landscaper say.
She ignored him.
-5-
It took Paul two hours to track down the house that had belonged to Mandy's grandmother. He dug through Terra Green's personal papers to find out her address, and after an hour of doing that, he came up with the name Hazel Summerhour and no address.
Then he went to public records, and after an hour of dealing with a woman who looked as though she had a few ex-husbands she'd rather see, he came up with a Franksburg address.
The house was in a depressed region of Franksburg in the center of town from which all other roads radiated out. It stood alone on a grown-up plot full of brown weeds -- its white paint cracked and peeling from the white gables and its red brick streaked with black.
He stepped out of his Land Rover and banged on the door.
No answer.
He cupped his hands over the window in the door and peeked inside, but he saw no movement within.
But from the door, he saw a sweating can of Coke on the kitchen table.
He knocked again.
But not a peep came from within.
He turned the knob, and to his great surprise, the door swung open. He stepped into the kitchen and looked around. A phone book sat open on the table to the yellow pages, and beside it sat an envelope with the side ripped out of it.
Paul walked over to the table and picked up the envelope, and on the reverse side of it "Mandy" was written in a hand that Paul mildly recognized as Ben's. He dropped the envelope on the table and turned to start for the den when he nearly slipped on a sheet of paper lying on the floor. He stooped and picked up Ben's letter and then he skimmed it. Then he folded it and stuffed it in the pocket of his green blazer.
That's when he realized what the phone book was trying to tell him. It lay open on the table to the yellow pages and the only thing on either page was Cab companies.
"She's going to Lakewood Village," he exclaimed.
A chord of terror surged through him.
He had to get to Ben before she did.
-6-
As the taxi cab approached the mansion, Mandy rolled down her window and hung her head out and looked up toward the gray sky just over the tree tops for the first glimpse of the house.
The pine trees slowly peeled away from the bank on the side of the road, and then the tip of the east bell tower peeked over the treetops.
She hoped she wasn't too late. Ben was going to do something stupid; she could feel it.
Then she saw something that completely replaced her interest in the house.
On the bank on the left side of the road, directly across from the driveway that lead up to the house, her dirty white Escort sat empty. A pang shot through her chest.
"Stop!" She demanded.
"What?" the driver said.
"Stop now!"
The driver pulled over onto the bank, and Mandy threw the door open and bolted out and across the road without even looking to make sure nothing was coming.
She yanked the passenger's side door of her car open and poked her head in.
The keys were in the ignition, and the gun of which the landscaper at the cemetery had spoken, a black .38, sat in the passenger's seat. Seeing the gun in the car with Ben nowhere around didn't make her feel better as it should have. Instead, she had the sense that there was something entirely more sinister afoot.
She pulled the keys out of the ignition and turned around to face the mansion. She couldn't see the house itself for the trees, she could only see the towers poking above them. And there was an acrid smell in the air. It was the kind of odor one might smell when a heavy machine has burned itself up. It was the smell of burning wires and insulation.
Then she noticed the black plume of smoke rising into the air between the two bell towers -- a plume that was much too big to come from a chimney.
"No," she whispered.
But now she knew.
She shot up the driveway and toward the house.
-7-
As soon as Paul Ambrose saw the United Cab pulled over on the right shoulder just before the driveway to the mansion, he locked it down nearly spinning his SUV around in the road. The cab driver who was leaning against the driver's side door of his yellow Crown Victoria smoking a cigarette jumped out of the way.
Paul rolled down his passenger's side window.
"Sir, were you driving a young lady?"
"Yeah."
"Where is she?"
The driver flicked his cigarette off into the woods.
"She ran up that driveway."
Paul looked up above the treetops at the bell towers and noticed the plume of smoke.
"Holy Shit," he said.
He yanked his Land Rover back into drive and squalled up the driveway.
And everything that happened next happened in slow motion.
It seemed to take his SUV two hours to close the quarter mile distance from Van Durr Road to the cul-de-sac in the front of the mansion. When the trees peeled back away from the sides of the driveway revealing the front façade of the house he saw the source of the smoke.
All the arched front windows glowed orange from flames, and the fire had broken through on the roof and actively burned on the top of the house.
And Mandy sprinted across the turn around in front of the house toward the front doors.
Paul locked it down, and his SUV skidded sideways on the driveway. He rolled down his window and called out to her, but Mandy ignored him. She trotted up the steps and to the four oaken doors leading inside, and just as she placed her hand on the brass knob, the fire hit the gas main.
A deafening blast shook the earth so powerful that it could be heard a mile away in Lakewood Village. The white and gray of the sky, and the black of the house, and the green of the surrounding woods were all replaced by a solid wall of flame that surrounded his SUV.
Paul dove across the passenger's seat just as a four-foot-thick beam smashed into his windshield. The tires shrieked as the force of the blast propelled the Rover backwards and Paul fell into the floorboard as the back of the vehicle crashed into a tree trunk.
Then there was nothing but the deafening roar of flames.
Paul lay in his floorboard dumbfounded for an indeterminate amount of time trying to understand what had happened. And then he felt the heat from the fire warming the bottom of the vehicle, and decided it was time to evacuate.
He sat up on the floorboard and dusted the glass from his windshield out of his hair, and then he reached up to the driver's side door, shoved it open and rolled out of the truck and onto the ground.
An acrid odor filled the air -- an odor that smelled of burned rubber. And the whole world appeared to be on fire. The grass burned around him along with chunks of debris from the house. Flames licked the tree trunks and limbs.
The fire boiling up from what was left of the house had turned day into night. Paul, still crawling around on all fours -- half out of fear that there might be another explosion and half out of the physical shock of being tossed so violently, looked back at his Range Rover which was completely ruined.
The blast had knocked it fifty feet off the driveway and into the woods, and the rear end of the vehicle was wrapped around the trunk of a maple tree. The thick ceiling beam that had blown out the windshield still sat blazing on the ruined hood.
Paul looked away quickly. He didn't like the thought that his head had been in that precise location only moments ago.
He crawled a few feet away from it before falling flat on his stomach choking on the smoke with every ounce of energy in his body spent.
Then he thought of Mandy.
His arms and legs found new strength. He pushed himself up off the ground and surveyed the blazing rubble.
"MANDY," he croaked.
But the fire consumed all. He could see nothing that even remotely resembled anything human dead or alive.
He crawled a few feet closer to the house, and called out to her again. The heat from the blaze where the house had been was now causing his clothing to burn on his back. He held his right hand up in front of his face to shield himself from the heat.
That's when he heard it for the first time, barely audible over the roar of the flames. It was kind of a breathless grunt at first, and then it gradually gained strength and became a shriek.
He squinted and aimed his head in the direction of the racket, and through the haze of smoke and glow of flame he saw a flat burning surface that looked like it might've been one of the front doors lying cockeyed on the ground.
And it looked as though something was moving beneath hit.
Paul pushed himself up to his feet and took two half steps before his knees gave way and he fell back to the ground. Then he clawed his way through the char toward the door. As he neared it, the shrieking became clearer. The sound was certainly not words. It didn't sound like something that could come from a human being.
Once he reached the door, he stripped off his green blazer, wrapped it over his hands and flipped the door over.
Mandy lay flat on her back beneath the door -- her face black with soot and ash and her eyes bulging. Paul positioned himself in front of her gaze, but she didn't seem to see him. And she continued to shriek.
Paul scanned her for wounds and found a steak that looked like it might have been a door pin protruding from her right shoulder, and a small amount of blood dribbled from her mouth onto her chin.
He lifted her head gingerly and held her. And she bawled bitter tears into his chest.
And Paul Ambrose -- a man who hadn't felt a single intense emotion of his own in decades -- looked up to the smoke-laden sky and cried.
"Pull in here," Mandy said.
The taxi driver guided the yellow Crown Victoria into a parking space before the black iron gates.
Mandy threw the door open.
"Wait here," she said.
And then she got out.
There was a median on either side of the gates well-groomed and covered with pansies, tulips, and violets. A gardener wearing a pair of old blue jean overhauls and a flannel shirt hovered over the left median planting new flowers.
"Excuse me?" Mandy said.
The man turned around and looked at her.
"I was wondering if you could tell me if you've seen a particular person come in here."
The man shrugged and pulled off his leather gloves. "Don't really pay much attention to who comes and goes."
"There might have been a man to come through here today driving a white Escort station wagon. He would've been of about average height with dark brown hair. . . ."
The man frowned. "There was an old boy who assaulted a fella in the parking lot this morning. Cops came by askin about him, but I didn't see nothin. Fella said he was joggin, and saw some old boy sittin in an Escort actin weird, so he tapped on the window. The man had a gun, and he threatened him."
"A gun?"
Mandy felt as though she was going to throw up.
"You okay, Miss?"
She snapped out of it and turned back toward the cab.
"Miss?" she heard the landscaper say.
She ignored him.
-5-
It took Paul two hours to track down the house that had belonged to Mandy's grandmother. He dug through Terra Green's personal papers to find out her address, and after an hour of doing that, he came up with the name Hazel Summerhour and no address.
Then he went to public records, and after an hour of dealing with a woman who looked as though she had a few ex-husbands she'd rather see, he came up with a Franksburg address.
The house was in a depressed region of Franksburg in the center of town from which all other roads radiated out. It stood alone on a grown-up plot full of brown weeds -- its white paint cracked and peeling from the white gables and its red brick streaked with black.
He stepped out of his Land Rover and banged on the door.
No answer.
He cupped his hands over the window in the door and peeked inside, but he saw no movement within.
But from the door, he saw a sweating can of Coke on the kitchen table.
He knocked again.
But not a peep came from within.
He turned the knob, and to his great surprise, the door swung open. He stepped into the kitchen and looked around. A phone book sat open on the table to the yellow pages, and beside it sat an envelope with the side ripped out of it.
Paul walked over to the table and picked up the envelope, and on the reverse side of it "Mandy" was written in a hand that Paul mildly recognized as Ben's. He dropped the envelope on the table and turned to start for the den when he nearly slipped on a sheet of paper lying on the floor. He stooped and picked up Ben's letter and then he skimmed it. Then he folded it and stuffed it in the pocket of his green blazer.
That's when he realized what the phone book was trying to tell him. It lay open on the table to the yellow pages and the only thing on either page was Cab companies.
"She's going to Lakewood Village," he exclaimed.
A chord of terror surged through him.
He had to get to Ben before she did.
-6-
As the taxi cab approached the mansion, Mandy rolled down her window and hung her head out and looked up toward the gray sky just over the tree tops for the first glimpse of the house.
The pine trees slowly peeled away from the bank on the side of the road, and then the tip of the east bell tower peeked over the treetops.
She hoped she wasn't too late. Ben was going to do something stupid; she could feel it.
Then she saw something that completely replaced her interest in the house.
On the bank on the left side of the road, directly across from the driveway that lead up to the house, her dirty white Escort sat empty. A pang shot through her chest.
"Stop!" She demanded.
"What?" the driver said.
"Stop now!"
The driver pulled over onto the bank, and Mandy threw the door open and bolted out and across the road without even looking to make sure nothing was coming.
She yanked the passenger's side door of her car open and poked her head in.
The keys were in the ignition, and the gun of which the landscaper at the cemetery had spoken, a black .38, sat in the passenger's seat. Seeing the gun in the car with Ben nowhere around didn't make her feel better as it should have. Instead, she had the sense that there was something entirely more sinister afoot.
She pulled the keys out of the ignition and turned around to face the mansion. She couldn't see the house itself for the trees, she could only see the towers poking above them. And there was an acrid smell in the air. It was the kind of odor one might smell when a heavy machine has burned itself up. It was the smell of burning wires and insulation.
Then she noticed the black plume of smoke rising into the air between the two bell towers -- a plume that was much too big to come from a chimney.
"No," she whispered.
But now she knew.
She shot up the driveway and toward the house.
-7-
As soon as Paul Ambrose saw the United Cab pulled over on the right shoulder just before the driveway to the mansion, he locked it down nearly spinning his SUV around in the road. The cab driver who was leaning against the driver's side door of his yellow Crown Victoria smoking a cigarette jumped out of the way.
Paul rolled down his passenger's side window.
"Sir, were you driving a young lady?"
"Yeah."
"Where is she?"
The driver flicked his cigarette off into the woods.
"She ran up that driveway."
Paul looked up above the treetops at the bell towers and noticed the plume of smoke.
"Holy Shit," he said.
He yanked his Land Rover back into drive and squalled up the driveway.
And everything that happened next happened in slow motion.
It seemed to take his SUV two hours to close the quarter mile distance from Van Durr Road to the cul-de-sac in the front of the mansion. When the trees peeled back away from the sides of the driveway revealing the front façade of the house he saw the source of the smoke.
All the arched front windows glowed orange from flames, and the fire had broken through on the roof and actively burned on the top of the house.
And Mandy sprinted across the turn around in front of the house toward the front doors.
Paul locked it down, and his SUV skidded sideways on the driveway. He rolled down his window and called out to her, but Mandy ignored him. She trotted up the steps and to the four oaken doors leading inside, and just as she placed her hand on the brass knob, the fire hit the gas main.
A deafening blast shook the earth so powerful that it could be heard a mile away in Lakewood Village. The white and gray of the sky, and the black of the house, and the green of the surrounding woods were all replaced by a solid wall of flame that surrounded his SUV.
Paul dove across the passenger's seat just as a four-foot-thick beam smashed into his windshield. The tires shrieked as the force of the blast propelled the Rover backwards and Paul fell into the floorboard as the back of the vehicle crashed into a tree trunk.
Then there was nothing but the deafening roar of flames.
Paul lay in his floorboard dumbfounded for an indeterminate amount of time trying to understand what had happened. And then he felt the heat from the fire warming the bottom of the vehicle, and decided it was time to evacuate.
He sat up on the floorboard and dusted the glass from his windshield out of his hair, and then he reached up to the driver's side door, shoved it open and rolled out of the truck and onto the ground.
An acrid odor filled the air -- an odor that smelled of burned rubber. And the whole world appeared to be on fire. The grass burned around him along with chunks of debris from the house. Flames licked the tree trunks and limbs.
The fire boiling up from what was left of the house had turned day into night. Paul, still crawling around on all fours -- half out of fear that there might be another explosion and half out of the physical shock of being tossed so violently, looked back at his Range Rover which was completely ruined.
The blast had knocked it fifty feet off the driveway and into the woods, and the rear end of the vehicle was wrapped around the trunk of a maple tree. The thick ceiling beam that had blown out the windshield still sat blazing on the ruined hood.
Paul looked away quickly. He didn't like the thought that his head had been in that precise location only moments ago.
He crawled a few feet away from it before falling flat on his stomach choking on the smoke with every ounce of energy in his body spent.
Then he thought of Mandy.
His arms and legs found new strength. He pushed himself up off the ground and surveyed the blazing rubble.
"MANDY," he croaked.
But the fire consumed all. He could see nothing that even remotely resembled anything human dead or alive.
He crawled a few feet closer to the house, and called out to her again. The heat from the blaze where the house had been was now causing his clothing to burn on his back. He held his right hand up in front of his face to shield himself from the heat.
That's when he heard it for the first time, barely audible over the roar of the flames. It was kind of a breathless grunt at first, and then it gradually gained strength and became a shriek.
He squinted and aimed his head in the direction of the racket, and through the haze of smoke and glow of flame he saw a flat burning surface that looked like it might've been one of the front doors lying cockeyed on the ground.
And it looked as though something was moving beneath hit.
Paul pushed himself up to his feet and took two half steps before his knees gave way and he fell back to the ground. Then he clawed his way through the char toward the door. As he neared it, the shrieking became clearer. The sound was certainly not words. It didn't sound like something that could come from a human being.
Once he reached the door, he stripped off his green blazer, wrapped it over his hands and flipped the door over.
Mandy lay flat on her back beneath the door -- her face black with soot and ash and her eyes bulging. Paul positioned himself in front of her gaze, but she didn't seem to see him. And she continued to shriek.
Paul scanned her for wounds and found a steak that looked like it might have been a door pin protruding from her right shoulder, and a small amount of blood dribbled from her mouth onto her chin.
He lifted her head gingerly and held her. And she bawled bitter tears into his chest.
And Paul Ambrose -- a man who hadn't felt a single intense emotion of his own in decades -- looked up to the smoke-laden sky and cried.
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