Hellfire

16

“What do you say we have supper at the Red Hen?” Alan asked dolefully as he stared into the nearly empty refrigerator. He hadn’t expected to have Beth with him that evening, so hadn’t stocked up on the food he knew she liked. Nor had he bothered to stop at the store on the way back to his apartment from the hospital. He was too tired, and he’d known from Beth’s silence that something was wrong. Now, when she didn’t answer his question, he decided to face the issue directly.

“You might as well tell me what’s up,” he said, closing the refrigerator door and moving into the tiny living room of the apartment. He dropped down onto the sofa next to Beth, and slipped his arm around her. “If you can’t tell your old dad, who can you tell?”

Beth looked up at him, her eyes filled with worry.

“I … I think I know what happened to Mrs. Sturgess,” she said after a silence that had threatened to stretch into minutes. “I think Amy must have done something to her, just like she did to Jeff Bailey.”

Alan frowned thoughtfully, and wished — not for the first time — that he knew more about psychology. Then he reminded himself that parents had dealt with children for centuries before psychologists had ever invented themselves, and decided that his own instincts were all he needed. Right now, his instincts told him not to challenge the existence of Beth’s imaginary friend. “Why would Amy want to do something to Mrs. Sturgess?” he asked.

“I’m not sure,” Beth replied. “I think she hates the Sturgesses, though. And I think she hates all their friends, too.”

“But why?” Alan pressed. “That doesn’t really make sense, does it?” But of course he knew that it did. Amy, as Beth’s “friend,” would be angry at all the people who had hurt Beth, but whom Beth would not let herself hate. But how could he explain that to his daughter now, after what had happened that morning? She was already feeling friendless, and taking Amy away from her — trying to explain to her that the child didn’t exist outside her own imagination — seemed to him as if it would be too much.

He’d heard about what had happened up on the hill that morning. At least he’d heard what Peggy Russell had had to say when she’d come bursting into the Red Hen while Alan was having lunch that afternoon.

But he hadn’t, he now realized ruefully, connected Peggy’s wild tale with Abigail Sturgess’s unexpected visit to the mill. He should have, especially when the old woman insisted on going into the basement, but he hadn’t.

Beth, obviously, had, and now it was up to him to try to find a way to convince his daughter that what had happened to Abigail was nothing more than a heart attack brought on only by her age. But it was certainly not connected to the presence in the mill of any sort of being, either real or imaginary. He was trying to figure out how to explain this to Beth when the doorbell rang. To his surprise, he found Phillip and Carolyn, with Tracy between them, standing in the hall.

Instinctively, he stepped out of the apartment and closed the door behind him, rather than invite them all inside. As Phillip began to explain the reason they were there, Alan’s feeling of apprehension grew. There could only be one possible reason why Abigail wanted to talk to Beth, and the last thing he wanted to do was discuss that subject in front of Tracy. Why, he wondered, couldn’t they have left her at home?

“Beth and I were just going out for supper,” he said at last, not really intending the statement as anything more than an attempt to buy some time to think. But Phillip immediately suggested that they all go together, and Alan, taken off guard, was unable to invent a polite way to refuse.

It was a mistake.

Alan realized it was a mistake even as he pulled into the parking lot at the Red Hen, to be greeted warmly a few moments later by Eileen Russell. When the Sturgesses appeared behind him, Eileen’s welcoming smile all but disappeared, and Alan felt a distinct chill between Carolyn and Eileen as Eileen led them to a large round table near the fireplace, that, even on this warm early-summer evening, was ablaze with the false warmth of poorly designed gas logs.

“This is totally tacky,” Tracy announced as they spread themselves around the table. “No wonder Grandmother never comes here.”

“How is Mrs. Sturgess?” Alan asked immediately. Out of the corner of his eye, he’d seen Phillip opening his mouth to admonish his daughter, and all his instincts told him that if he let that happen, Tracy would do her best to make the meal as difficult as possible for all of them. And for Beth, it would become sheer misery. As if to confirm his feeling, he saw Carolyn shoot him a grateful look.

“Much better,” Phillip replied, his attention diverted from Tracy. “In fact, she’s doing her best to make life miserable for everyone at the hospital, which, for Mother, is a good sign.”

“Did she say what happened?” Alan asked warily, still certain the woman’s experience in the mill had to be the reason she now wanted to talk to Beth.

Phillip hesitated, but shook his head. “Not really. She said something in the basement frightened her, but she couldn’t say exactly what.”

A nervous silence fell over the table, which Alan finally broke with an attempt at a lightness he didn’t feel. But he still wasn’t ready to discuss Abigail’s request with Beth, so he tried to put it off with black humor. “Aside from the darkness, the smell, and the rats that live down there, what’s to be scared of?”

It didn’t work. Beth, who had said nothing until then, turned serious eyes to him. “Smell? What kind of smell?”

Alan winked at his daughter. “The smell of dirt, damp, and age. That place was closed up so long, I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to get it aired out.”

“Of course you will,” Phillip replied. “It’s just a matter of getting a decent furnace in, and letting it dry out.”

“It might not be that simple,” Carolyn said quietly. “With the mill, it seems that nothing is as simple as it appears, doesn’t it?”

Alan eyed his ex-wife carefully. “Do I hear a note of skepticism?” he asked. “Don’t tell me you’ve joined forces with your mother-in-law and decided the mill shouldn’t be reopened.”

Carolyn shot him a look of annoyance, but then decided that under his bantering tone, he’d meant the question seriously. “It has to do with a lot of things,” she replied. “Aside from the history of the place, it just seems to me that Westover isn’t big enough to support the kind of shops that always go into places like Ye Olde Mill.” In an attempt to take the sting out of her words, she purposely pronounced the final E in “olde,” and was relieved when Phillip joined in Alan’s chuckle.

But then Phillip’s laughter died away, and when he spoke, his voice was serious. “I’m afraid that despite what everyone else thinks — including my wife — I’m still convinced it’ll be a success. If it turns out the way Alan and I have planned it, I’m hoping it will draw people from the whole area. And that could give the entire town a boost.”

“Well, God knows Westover could use that,” Alan sighed. He picked up his menu, and glanced at the list of appetizers. “How does escargots sound?”

“Here?” Tracy asked. “You’ve got to be kidding.” Her father shot her a warning glance, but Tracy ignored it. “Why couldn’t we have gone to a nice restaurant?”

“There’s nothing wrong with this place, Tracy,” Phillip said quietly.

Tracy’s eyes narrowed, and her mouth set into a sullen pout. “If Grandmother weren’t in the hospital, we wouldn’t have had to come here at all.”

“We’re here because we want to be,” Phillip replied, and though his voice remained quiet, it had taken on a certain edge.

Carolyn seemed to be doing her best to ignore the exchange, and Alan, certain that anything else he said — no matter how innocuous — would only exacerbate the situation, concentrated on his menu even though he was quickly losing his appetite. And this, he thought as he began eliminating entrées to narrow his choices, is what Carolyn and Beth have to put up with every day. He felt a flicker of sympathy for Carolyn, and wondered if this marriage, like their own, was also going to be a failure for her. If Tracy had anything to do with it, he was certain it would be.

And more and more, it was becoming clear to him why Beth had found it necessary to invent a friend.

Surreptitiously, he stole a glance at his daughter. She seemed to be trying to disappear behind the menu. But she couldn’t disappear all the time. How did she cope with Tracy’s constant hostility and snobbery?

And why should she have to? Maybe, after all, he should try to find a way to make it possible for her to come and live with him. “Anything look good to you, honey?” he finally asked when the silence at the table began to become uncomfortable.

“I like the shrimp,” Beth replied, but when she tried to tell Tracy how they were cooked, Tracy merely glared at her, and turned away. Beth once more fell silent, and as the meal wore on, the conversation became increasingly strained.

Then, over coffee, Phillip Sturgess suddenly came to the point of their unannounced visit to Alan’s apartment. Without a word to Alan, he turned to Beth.

“Beth, Tracy’s grandmother would like to see you.”

Carolyn stiffened slightly, as Beth’s eyes widened in surprise. Alan, who had been sipping his coffee, set his cup down as he felt his daughter staring at him accusingly from across the table.

“Is that why they came to the apartment?” she asked.

“Well, we didn’t come because we wanted to see you,” Tracy hissed, then fell silent when her father glared at her.

“I’m afraid so, honey,” Alan confessed. He turned to Phillip. “But I really don’t understand why she wants to see Beth,” he went on. “I thought—” Then he stopped himself, embarrassed to utter the words that had been on the tip of his tongue.

“That Mother isn’t particularly fond of Beth?” Phillip finished. Then, when everyone except Tracy — whose mouth was now twisted into a smug smile — seemed as embarrassed as Alan had been, he went on. “I don’t think there’s any reason for any of us to pretend the truth doesn’t exist. But today she specifically asked to see Beth. I don’t know why — she wouldn’t tell me. But she did say that Beth doesn’t have to come if she doesn’t want to.” He turned to Beth, who was now looking at him with a mixture of fear and curiosity. “And she also told me that if you do decide to come and see her, you can leave anytime you want to.”

Alan frowned. “What in the world did she mean by that?”

Now it was Phillip who looked uncomfortable. “I’m not sure about that either,” he replied. “But I have to assume that Mother is well aware of how she’s treated Beth, and this is her way of apologizing for it.”

Alan felt a sudden surge of anger for his daughter. “It seems to me,” he said tightly, “that your mother is still busy acting like the queen of the world. If she’s been mean to Beth — and I think we all know damned well that she has — then I see no reason for Beth to go see her now. Frankly, I’m surprised you’d even ask, Phillip.”

Tracy’s eyes flashed angrily. “Don’t you talk about my grandmother that way—” she began, but Alan had finally had enough.

“Shut up, Tracy,” he said, not even glancing at the girl, but instead keeping his eyes on Phillip, as if challenging him to try to defend his daughter’s rudeness. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the shock on Tracy’s face. Apparently her own father had never spoken that way to her.

“Of course you’re right,” Phillip said quietly, his shoulders slumping. “Mother’s treated Beth shamefully — and Carolyn too, for that matter. And perhaps I should have simply told her it was out of the question.” He turned to Beth. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have even brought it up.”

“I don’t see why Grandmother even wants to talk to Beth at all,” Tracy said as her father fell silent.

Beth, who had been sitting silently as the others talked, turned to face her stepsister. “Why not?” she asked. “Why wouldn’t she want to talk to me?”

Tracy glared malevolently at Beth. “Because you’re nothing but trash,” she said, her voice quivering with anger. “You should be living with your stupid father in that crummy apartment, and you never should have come to Hilltop in the first place.”

“Tracy!” Phillip interrupted. He put his napkin aside, and for a split second, Alan thought he might actually be about to strike the girl. But suddenly Carolyn, her voice low, stopped him.

“Leave her alone, Phillip,” she said. “We might as well let her speak her piece.” She turned to Tracy. “Go on,” she said.

The reasonableness of Carolyn’s voice only seemed to fuel Tracy’s fury, and her eyes flashed dangerously. “Don’t you talk to my father like that,” she said, her voice rising to fill the room so that people at other tables turned to stare. “All you ever do is try to tell us what to do. Well, why don’t you do something about Beth, instead of picking on me all the time? She’s the one who’s crazy, and everybody knows it!”

A deathly silence fell over the entire restaurant. After a moment Alan laid his napkin aside and stood up. “Come on, sweetheart,” he said to his daughter. “I think we’ve heard all we need to hear.”

But Beth didn’t move. Instead she stared silently at Tracy for a moment, then shook her head. “It’s all right,” she said quietly. “I’ll go see Mrs. Sturgess. And I don’t care what you think, Tracy. I don’t care what you think, and I don’t care what you say. I’m not crazy, and your grandmother knows it.” She said the words with as much bravado as she could summon up, but it wasn’t enough to still the pain Tracy’s words had caused her.

The only way she could shut out that pain was to concentrate on something else, on something that wouldn’t hurt her.

And right now, the only thing that wouldn’t hurt her was Amy.

From now on, she would concentrate on Amy, and then she would be safe from whatever Tracy might say or do.

Beth glanced nervously down the corridor to the waiting room where her mother, Phillip, and Tracy were waiting. Phillip nodded to her, and her mother gave her an encouraging smile, and she reached out and shyly knocked at the closed door. From inside, Abigail Sturgess’s voice weakly called out for her to come in. She opened the door, and slipped inside.

The room was much bigger than she’d thought it would be, and there were flowers everywhere. It seemed as if there should have been a second bed in the room, but it wasn’t there. She wondered if they’d really taken it out just for Mrs. Sturgess. Finally, after taking in the room, she made her eyes go to the bed. There, propped up against two pillows, and looking much smaller than Beth remembered her, was the old woman.

For her own part, Abigail surveyed the child with more interest than she ever had before. Until today, Beth had been nothing more to her than an unwelcome intrusion in her life, one best ignored until such time as Phillip finally came to his senses and left Carolyn.

Now, as she studied the girl, she slowly came to realize what a pretty child she truly was. Not that she wasn’t perfectly familiar with Beth’s features; she was. But today, for the first time, she really looked at Beth. There was a softness to her face, she realized, that was totally lacking in Tracy’s face. Indeed, there was an innocence in Beth’s eyes that she couldn’t remember having seen in a child for years. Until now, she’d simply attributed the sophistication of Tracy and her friends to the hardening effect of growing up in the modern world. But in Beth, there was no trace of a knowing glint in her eyes. Rather, they appeared to be totally guileless.

“Come here, Beth,” she said softly, patting the edge of the bed. “I—” She hesitated, almost unable to speak the words. “I want to thank you for coming to see a sick old lady,” she finally managed.

Slowly, like a nervous animal, Beth approached the bed, but stopped short before she was within range of Abigail’s hands. “I’m sorry you’re sick,” she offered shyly, then stood as if waiting to have her sympathy rebuffed.

“Well, perhaps I’m not that sick,” Abigail replied. Then she twisted her lips into a grimace that was intended to be a warm smile. “Don’t you want to know why I asked that you be brought here?”

Beth hesitated, then nodded silently.

“I want to talk to you about your friend,” Abigail went on. She searched Beth’s face for a reaction, but saw none. “Amy,” she added.

For a moment, she thought Beth was going to turn around and flee from the room. But instead, Beth’s eyes only showed the hurt of betrayal. “Tracy shouldn’t have told you,” she said. “She wasn’t even supposed to know about Amy.”

“I agree with you,” Abigail said evenly, then watched carefully to see what Beth’s reaction would be. As she’d hoped, Beth’s eyes brightened slightly. “But since she did tell me about Amy, I thought we might talk about her.” When Beth’s forehead creased into a worried frown, Abigail hastened to reassure her. “It will be our secret. I promise not to tell anyone else about Amy, unless you say it’s all right.”

Beth chewed thoughtfully on her lip, then looked warily at the old woman in the bed. “Wh-what do you want to know about her?” she stammered.

Abigail let herself relax. It was going to be all right. “Well, to start with, how old is she?”

Beth hesitated. She wasn’t quite sure. “My age,” she said at last. “I think she’s eleven, going on twelve.”

“Eleven,” Abigail repeated. “And do you know what she looks like?”

Beth shook her head.

“But I thought she was your friend,” Abigail pressed. “Haven’t you ever seen her?”

“Y-yes—”

“Then you must know what she looks like, mustn’t you?”

“It … it was dark.”

“Dark. Like it is in the mill?”

Beth nodded.

“And is that where you saw her? In the mill?” Once more, Beth nodded. “What does she do there?”

“She … she lives there,” Beth replied, then stepped back almost as if she expected to be punished for what she’d said.

“But I thought — I thought she was dead,” Abigail said.

Beth’s eyes widened once more, and again Abigail was afraid she was going to run from the room. But instead, she swallowed hard, and stood her ground.

“She is dead,” she said. “She used to work in the mill a long time ago, and something terrible happened to her. And she’s still there.”

“I see,” Abigail breathed. “Do you know what happened to her?”

Beth thought, and then remembered the smell she’d noticed when she’d been in the basement of the mill with her father. “I think there was a fire,” she whispered. “I think there was a fire, and she couldn’t get out.”

Abigail gasped, suddenly sitting up in the bed. Her hand shot out, clutching Beth’s arm. “How do you know that?” she demanded. “How do you know there was a fire?”

Beth, suddenly terrified, wrenched herself loose from Abigail’s grip, and ran to the door. Then she turned back to face the old woman once again,

“I know!” she said, her voice reflecting her sudden desperation. She wished she hadn’t come here after all, wished she hadn’t agreed to come and see this old woman who hated her for reasons she couldn’t understand at all. “I just know, that’s all!” she repeated.

She reached for the door handle, but just as she was about to pull on it and run from the room, Abigail spoke again.

“I can tell you about Amy,” the old woman said. “I can tell you everything about her that you want to know.”

Beth froze, and then, very slowly, turned away from the door. Abigail’s eyes seemed to reach out to her, gripping her, drawing her inexorably back toward the bed.…

Tracy sat in the waiting room, her fury growing inside her.

It should have been her her grandmother wanted to see, not that stupid Beth. What could they possibly be talking about? Her grandmother didn’t even like Beth — in fact, she hated her almost as much as Tracy herself did.

Then she remembered the conversation she’d had that afternoon when she’d told her grandmother how crazy Beth was. And her grandmother hadn’t really said anything.

But she’d gone down to the mill later on.

Was it possible that her grandmother didn’t believe Beth was crazy? Could she actually believe what Beth had been saying?

It wasn’t fair.

None of it was fair!

Everyone was paying attention to Beth, and no one was paying attention to her!

In fact, her own father hadn’t even done anything when that horrible Alan Rogers at dinner had told her to shut up. Instead of defending her, he’d actually apologized to Beth, like he was Beth’s father, instead of her own.

And now her grandmother was acting like Beth was her grandchild, instead of herself.

All of a sudden, Tracy knew what was happening. Beth was stealing her family. She was stealing her father, and she was stealing her grandmother.

Tracy clutched at the magazine she was pretending to read, and saw her knuckles turn white as her anger turned her hands into tight fists.

Well, she wouldn’t put up with it, and if any of them thought she would, they were wrong!

She’d get even. She’d get even with them all!