Hell Within -- Chapter Three: The House -- Scenes 3-6

-3-

Tom led Ben through a dark and narrow hallway into the belly of one of the bell towers, and then up a spiral staircase to the fifth floor. The house was very European in style. The lower level looked like something out of the dark ages, but the fifth floor was the complete opposite of the first floor.

It looked like something directly out of a trophy house built in the early 1900's. The ceilings soared over his head, and the lath and plaster walls were painted in a rose-like hue. Gaudy, upside-down bell-shaped fixtures attached to the walls lit the hallways.

The master's quarters was a house within a house. It consisted of two bedrooms and two bathrooms connected by a sitting room and a kitchenette.

And the master bedroom itself was fantastic. The ceiling was of whitewashed crisscrossing beams that soared over Ben’s head, and the walls, off white-stained oak with raised cherry wood panels. The bed was stair-stepped against the wall to the far left of the door. Closely spaced rectangular windows extending from the ceiling to the floor lined the back wall.

Tom dropped him off in the sitting room and excused himself, and once alone, Ben looked around.

The sitting room was furnished with a type of high-based, low backed sofa that reminded Ben of the fifties yet again, and against the windowed wall stood a sad looking, ancient TV set that probably hadn't even been turned on since the Kennedy Administration.

Against the wall to his left stood an old-fashioned cabinet radio that only received AM frequencies, and on an end table beside it sat a crude-looking record player.

And now, he was worried.

Hadn’t anyone in this town gotten the memo that the fifties were over? The only AM radio station he ever listened to anymore was WDUN. He hadn't owned a record since the seventies, much less a record player.

Then he saw the painting on the back wall.

He’d seen photographs of the woman portrayed at least a thousand times prominately displayed in a silver frame on top of Rudy’s old Zenith TV. But he’d never seen her like this.
She was situated in a small room lit by kerosene lamps sitting on a quilted bed with her feet dangling just above the floor. She was naked. Her brown hair looked as though it had been roughed up, and the thing about it that he simply couldn’t abide were the eyes.

There was sadness and fear in them.

A heavy hand landed on his shoulder. He jumped and spun around, and he found himself looking at Tom.

"Didn't mean to startle you."

Ben shrugged and turned slowly back to the portrait. "Where did that come from?"

Tom looked at him and then to the painting shaking his head. "It’s your mother’s one and only self-portrait. Striking isn’t it?"

Ben shifted his weight.

"Your father liked it so much he had to display it, but he didn’t like the idea of putting a naked rendering of his wife out for everyone to see."

Ben stared at him blankly.

"This is how your mother must’ve seen herself."

"Its style reminds me of Frida Kahlo," Ben said.

"Indeed."

Tom smiled, "One of your parents’ old photo albums is in the private study. Turn left out of your bedroom and it's the third door on the right."

He stared at the portrait a moment longer, and then he turned back toward the bedroom to find his suitcase lying unopened on the bed.

"I brought your things up from your car. And I'm working on a meal as we speak. If you want, I can build a fire in here. It seems to be getting a bit chilly."

"Thanks."

And the man started back for the hallway.

"Tom?"

He turned back around to face Ben.

"Why were my parents so rich?"

Tom gave him a secretive smile. "The Lancaster family has been one of the wealthiest families in the State for over a hundred years. Your mother was the only heir."

"Is there a phone around here?

Tom squinted with confusion. Ben was beginning to wonder what planet he was from. He didn’t know what a Publix was; he didn’t know what a phone was. . . .

"A telephone?"

"Oh, forgive me. I have no need for such things."

Ben gave him a wry look, but Tom paid him no attention.

"You’ll find the appropriate device in the study."

And Tom turned back for the hallway. Ben looked after him wondering how anyone in this age could possibly get by without a telephone.

-4-

Ben found the study precisely where Tom described, and the room had a kind of pensive beauty to it.

It was octagonal shaped with walls the color of parchment and pine beams as thick as crossties supporting the corners and meeting at the point of the cathedral ceiling. The only furniture in the room, a desk -- made of fine mahogany -- situated in the center of the room on top of a circular red rug.

He walked around the desk and sat down behind it in an overstuffed chair. He laced his fingers behind his head and leaned back.

He wondered what Amy would say when she heard about this.

"Phone," he said.

And he looked around the room, and he found what Tom was talking about on the wall to his right. It was antique. Its base was made of stained wood with two black bells on the front of it that reminded him of eyes. And beneath them was a cone shaped microphone that you were supposed to yell into, and the earpiece was mounted on the side of the box.

No buttons.

Just a damn dial.

Where the hell had Tom been the last four decades?

He picked up the earpiece and pressed it against his ear.

No dial tone.

He hung the earpiece back on the cradle, shook his head and sat back down behind the desk. Then he thought of the photo album.
He leaned forward and opened the middle drawer. And batted the contents of the drawer around but he could find nothing resembling a photo album.

He closed the middle drawer, opened the right drawer, and rummaged around in it, finding nothing but paperclips, dust-coated manila folders, a flimsy box of staples, and a few dried up fountain pens. After deciding there were no surprises in the drawer, he closed it and opened the left-hand drawer.

And he found what he was looking for. The only thing within the drawer was an old, leather bound book with the words "Photo Album," gilded in the center of the cover. He lifted it out gently as if he were touching a priceless artifact, and blew the dust off the cover. Then he opened it and began wafting through the pages and pages of old photos starring his parents.

-5-

Hours later, Tom turned the brass knob on the door to the study and peeked inside. Ben was half curled in the chair behind the desk sleeping. He smiled, slipped inside, and crossed the study to the desk.

The photo album lay open on Ben's lap to an 8x10 black and white of Jamie standing inside her art studio with her hand on her swollen abdomen. The caption beneath the photograph read, "Jamie, due in six months." But there was nothing joyful about her expression.

Gently, Tom lifted the book from his lap, closed it, and placed it on the desk trying to keep from making a sound. Then he waved his hand in front of Ben's face. Out cold.

Tom smiled.

"Pleasant dreams," he whispered, and then he cackled as if he'd told himself a raunchy joke. He turned and walked out of the room -- his heavy footfalls echoing profusely through the cavernous hallways.

-6-

As he was turning toward the master’s quarters, Ben caught movement out of the corner of his eye. He spun around just in time to see the back of a man’s head as he disappeared around the corner. -- Tom hadn’t told him that there was anyone else in the house.

"Excuse me?" he called, but the man ignored him.

Then he noticed a light coming from the room across the hall, and he stalked over and peeked inside.

It was an art studio. Stacks of unfinished canvases were propped against the parchment colored walls, and tackle boxes filled with brushes and paints covered the long workbench in the center of the room. An easel stood along the back wall between two arched windows, and a woman hovered before it with her back to him.

She was short and thin with her long auburn hair drawn back in a ponytail, and she wore a white cotton nightgown that extended to her ankles.

"Can I help you?" Ben barked.

She didn't move. She stared at the painting -- a surreal one of a baby lying in a navy cradle -- the moonlight drifting over it through tall arched windows. And a pale mist hovered over the baby looking down on him with green eyes.

He walked through the doorway, around the table and tapped her on the shoulder hard. -- She ignored him.

Furious, he walked around her, and the sight of her face nearly sent him into shock. She had round facial features with wide brown eyes and a sharp nose. It was the woman he’d nearly run over the day before.

He knew who she was now.

He’d grown up in his father’s family, so he had very little recognition of her.

Growing up, he'd watched the way his grandmother conducted herself and wondered if his mother shared some of her idiosyncrasies -- if she hummed when she brushed her hair, or if she paced and whispered curses to herself when she was angry.

Now she stood before him -- close enough for him to reach out and touch her -- with the bristles of a paintbrush pressed against her plump lips as she examined the painting.

He reached out to touch her shoulder and withdrew his hand fearing that she'd turn to smoke.

The house turned icy all the sudden -- so cold that his jaw twitched, and his hands numbed. Steam rose from his mouth as he exhaled.

Apparently, she noticed it too; because she turned around and stripped an overcoat off the backrest of the wooden chair behind her, pulled it over her shoulders, and then she looked around the room frowning.

"Ted?" she called.

A tremor went through the room like a small earthquake -- strong enough to cause the Gerber jars of paint in the tray on the easel to rattle against one another. The single light bulb over the table razed leaving them in darkness.

An ozone smell filled the air.

He looked at his mother who glanced wide-eyed around the room.

"Ted," she screamed.

An echoing laugh answered her.

Then the room shook. Canvases propped against the walls fell to the floor like dominoes. The jars on the tray of the easel shattered, spraying paint across his mother's nightgown. Then all was still.

The temperature dropped yet a few more degrees. The sweat that had collected on Ben's forehead burned. The ozone smell, turned into a sulfur-like stench.

The two candles on the center of the workbench flared and blazed white hot, in front of his mother.

Ben ducked into a corner.

"We don't have what you want anymore!" she screamed.

An invisible force lifted her off the floor suspending her, thrashing, in midair. "Ted," she cried -- her voice suffocated.

The skin of her face bowed inward as if she were sucking her cheeks together.

Her bones began to snap like dry twigs. And her jaw fell open and dark blood oozed from her mouth. She whimpered. With a wet crunch, like a melon spitting, her head imploded.

Ben lurched from his seat in the study and grabbed the edge of the desk panting, and then he eyed the closed photo album that sat in his lap wishing he’d never laid eyes on it.

(Continue to scenes 7-8)