Hellfire

2

Alan Rogers turned off River Road, shifted his Fiat into low gear, and started up the drive.

“Almost there.” When there was no response from Beth, he glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. She sat huddled against the door, her eyes clouded with unhappiness.

“Act as if,” Alan said. Beth turned to face him.

“Act as if? What does that mean?”

“It means if you act as if things are all right, then maybe they will be. Don’t think about what’s wrong — think about what’s right. It helps.”

“How can it help? Pretending doesn’t change anything.”

“But it can change how you think about things. Like that apartment I lived in for a while. The one above the drugstore?”

A hint of a smile played around Beth’s mouth. “You hated that place.”

“Indeed I did. And why shouldn’t I have? I wasn’t living with you anymore, and I missed you terribly. And the apartment was small and dark and empty. It was awful. And then one day Judy came over.”

“Judy Parkins?”

“The very same. Anyway, I was griping about how bad the place was, and she asked me what I’d do with it if I liked it.”

“But you didn’t like it,” Beth protested. “You hated it!”

“That’s what I said. And Judy said, ‘So pretend you like it. What would you do with it?’ So I thought about it, then told her that I’d start by getting rid of the Venetian blinds, and put shutters in, and I’d paint it, and cover the floor with grass mats. And the next weekend she came over, and we did it. And guess what? It turned out the place wasn’t so bad after all.”

The Fiat passed through the gates of Hilltop House, and Alan drove slowly along the wide circular driveway that skirted a broad expanse of lawn in front of the Sturgess mansion. He brought the car to a halt between a Cadillac and a Mercedes, then sat for a moment staring at the immense house. As always, he was struck less by its size than its strange appearance. Whoever had designed it had apparently been less interested in creating a thing of beauty than in making a declaration of power.

“All right, all right,” he said, turning a deadpan face to his daughter as though she had spoken. “I’ll admit that grass mats and paint won’t help this place.”

Built primarily of carved stone, the house spread in two flat-roofed wings from a central core, the main feature of which was an immense stained-glass window — which Alan thought more appropriate to a cathedral than a home — over the massive double front doors. The facade was nearly devoid of decoration, and the only breaks in the roof line were provided by a few chimneys, scattered haphazardly wherever the floor plan had required them.

There was something vaguely forbidding about the structure, as if the house were trying to defend itself against a hostile world.

“It’s not like a house at all,” Beth said. “It’s like a museum. I always feel like I’m going to break something.”

“You’ve only lived here a few months, sweetheart. Give yourself a chance to get used to it.” But even as he spoke the words, Alan wondered if it would be possible for his daughter to be at home in a house such as this. Certainly, he knew, he never could have. “Come on,” he sighed. “Let’s get you back inside.”

Beth reluctantly got out of the Fiat as Alan held the door open for her, then slipped her hand into her father’s. “Couldn’t I stay with you tonight?” she pleaded. “Please?”

Alan pulled his daughter close, and dropped his arm over her shoulder. “Don’t make me feel like I’m feeding you to the lions,” he replied, but his attempt at humor sounded hollow even to himself. He reached out and pressed the bell. A moment later the door was opened by the old woman who had been the Sturgesses’ housekeeper for as long as anyone could remember.

“Beth! Why, where have you been? Your mother’s been looking everywhere for you!”

“She came down to say hello to me, Hannah. I guess she didn’t tell anyone where she was going.”

Hannah’s eyes narrowed in mock severity. “Well, you might have told me, mightn’t you, young lady?”

“I … I’m sorry, Hannah. But I just … I—”

“I know,” Hannah broke in. She glanced over her shoulder nervously, then lowered her voice. “All the swells standing around acting like they care about old Mr. Conrad, and each other too, for that matter. Don’t see how they can stand themselves.” She reached out and gently drew Beth away from her father and into the house. “Come on into the kitchen and have a cup of cocoa. You too, Alan—”

“I don’t think so, Hannah. I’d better—”

“Hannah?” Carolyn’s voice called from inside. “Hannah, who is it?” A second later Carolyn, her face drawn, appeared at the door. Seeing Alan, she fell silent for a few seconds, then nodded with sudden understanding. “She came to you again?”

Alan’s head bobbed in agreement, and Carolyn hesitated for a moment, then slipped her arms around her daughter. “Darling, what happened? Why didn’t you tell me where you were going?”

“Y-you were busy.”

“I’m never too busy for you. You know that—”

“It was just too much for her,” Alan interjected. “She didn’t know anyone, and—”

Carolyn glanced at him, then turned to Hannah. “Take her up to her room, will you, Hannah?”

“I was going to give her some cocoa, ma’am.”

“Fine. I’ll be there in a minute.” She waited until Hannah and Beth were gone, then faced her ex-husband. “Alan, did something happen? Something Beth won’t want to tell me about?”

Alan shook his head helplessly. “Carolyn, what can I say? If there’s anything she wants to tell you, she’ll tell you.”

“But you won’t,” Carolyn said, her voice cool.

“No, I won’t. We agreed long ago that—”

“We agreed that we wouldn’t use Beth against each other. But if something happened that I need to know about, you have to tell me.”

Alan considered his wife’s words carefully, then shook his head. “If you want to know what’s happening with Beth, talk to her. After all, she lives with you, not with me.”

Carolyn stood at the door until Alan was gone and she could no longer hear his car. Then she closed the immense carved-oak front door and started toward the kitchen. But before she had crossed the foyer, her mother-in-law’s icy voice stopped her.

“Carolyn, we still have guests.”

Carolyn hesitated, torn. Then, as if drawn like a puppet on a string, she turned to follow Abigail Sturgess back to the library.

It was nearly midnight when Carolyn finally went through the house for the last time, making her nightly check to be sure the windows were closed and the doors locked. It was unnecessary — she knew that. Hannah went through the house too, as she had done each night for the last four decades, but Carolyn did it anyway. When Phillip had asked her why one night, she hadn’t really been able to tell him. She’d said that checking the house helped make her feel that it was really hers, and that it was a habit left over from all the years before she’d married Phillip. But it was more than that.

Part of it was a simple need to reassure herself, for every night before she went to sleep, she listened to the old house creaking and groaning in the darkness until she could stand it no longer, and giving in to what she knew were irrational fears, got up to search through the rooms to make sure everything was as it should be. After the second month — last February — she had decided it was easier simply to make her rounds before she went to bed.

But it was more than that. There was something about Hilltop House at night — after Abigail had gone to bed — that drew her with a fascination she rarely felt in the daylight. During the day, Hilltop always seemed to her to be trying to shut her out. But at night, it all changed, and the cold stone took on a different feeling, less forbidding and chilly, cradling her, assuring her that no matter what else happened, the house would always be there.

She wandered slowly through the rooms, pausing in the dining room to gaze, as she often did, at the portraits of all the Sturgesses who had once lived in this house, and were now in the mausoleum or the small graveyard behind it. They gazed down on her, and she sometimes imagined that they — like Abigail — were disapproving of her. But of course that was ridiculous. Their expressions of vague contempt had nothing to do with her.

Nothing to do with her personally, at any rate.

Tonight she sank into the chair at the end of the immense dining table, and stared up at the portrait of Samuel Pruett Sturgess. The soft light from the crystal chandelier glowed over the old picture. Carolyn examined it carefully. For some reason she had almost expected the old man’s demeanor to have softened tonight, as if meeting his grandson that afternoon had pleased him.

But if it had, the portrait gave no hint. Samuel Pruett Sturgess glowered down from the wall as he always had, and Carolyn caught herself wondering once again if the founding Sturgess had been as cruel as he seemed in the artist’s depiction of him, a mean-faced, stern-looking patriarch.

Had the artist heard the rumors about Samuel Pruett, too, or had the rumors about him only begun after his death? There had been so many stories whispered about the old man, his rages, his ruthlessness, that some of them must have been true. And in Carolyn’s own family …

She shuddered involuntarily, and was once more glad that both her parents had died long before she married Phillip Sturgess. In her family, hatred for the Sturgesses had run deep, and all the rumors had been accepted as fact. For the last child of the Deavers to have married a Sturgess would have been, for both her father and mother, the ultimate shame.

The Deavers had lived in Westover as long as the Sturgesses, perhaps longer. And in Carolyn’s family, the legend had always been that Charles Cobb Deaver — Carolyn’s great-great-grandfather — had been in partnership with Samuel Pruett Sturgess. Charles Deaver had been a cobbler, and the legend had it that Samuel Pruett Sturgess had used him to get the shoe mill started, then squeezed him out. As the mill had grown, and the Sturgess fortunes risen, the Deaver fortunes had declined. Charles had ended up as nothing more than a shift foreman, and found himself in the position of overseeing the labor of his own children. In the end, he had killed himself, but it was an article of faith to Carolyn’s parents that Samuel Pruett Sturgess had murdered him, as surely as if he’d held the gun himself.

Looking at the portrait of Samuel Pruett Sturgess, Carolyn found it hard to doubt the legend. Certainly there was nothing in the man’s face that hinted at any sort of kindness. It was a pinched face, an avaricious face, and often Carolyn wished it didn’t hang in the dining room, where she had to see it every day. But at the same time, she found the portrait held a strange fascination for her, as if somewhere, buried in the portrait, was the truth behind all the legends.

She stood up, switched off the light, and made her way back through the vast expanse of the living room to the entry hall. She checked the front door once more, then started up the stairs. On the second-floor landing, she glanced down the north wing, and saw a sliver of light beneath the door to Abigail’s suite. For a moment, she was tempted to go and tap on the door and say good night to the old woman. But in the end, she turned away, knowing that it would do no good. She would only be rebuffed once more. She turned the other way, and hurried down the wide hall to the suite she and Phillip occupied at the opposite end of the house.

“Are we safe for another night?” Phillip asked as she came into the bedroom. He was propped up against the headboard of the king-size bed, clad in pajamas, paging through a magazine. “No thieves or rapists prowling the corridors?”

Carolyn stuck her tongue out at him, then went to perch on the edge of the bed, presenting her back to him. “The only rapist around here is you, and I happen to like it. Unzip me?”

She felt the warmth of Phillip’s fingers on her skin, and shivered with pleasure, but as he started to slip his arms around her, she wriggled away and stood up. Stepping out of the black dress, she started toward her dressing room.

“People should die around here more often,” she heard Phillip say. Startled, she turned around to find him grinning at her. “I like you in black.”

“I look terrible in black,” Carolyn protested. “And anyway, that’s a horrible thing to say.”

“I like to say horrible things. And you don’t look terrible in black. Anyway not in black undies.”

“Well, it’s still a horrible thing to say on the day we buried your father.”

“Who was beginning to show signs of never dying at all,” Phillip remarked dryly.

“Phillip!”

“Well, it’s true, isn’t it? And don’t go all pious on me. As for dear old Dad,” he went on, “I’m not going to pretend I’m sorry to see him go. At least not to you.”

“Your father was—” Carolyn began, but her husband cut her off.

“My father was a half-senile old man who had outlived his time. My God, Carolyn, you should be the first to admit that. He never faced up to the fact that the nineteenth century ended, even though he never lived in it.”

“All right, he was difficult,” Carolyn admitted. “But he was still your father, and you owe him some respect.”

The mischievous glint in Phillip’s eyes died, and his expression turned serious. “I don’t have to respect him at all,” he said. “We both know how he was, and we both know how he treated you. He acted as though you were one of the servants.”

“And I survived it, didn’t I?” Carolyn asked. “After all, we could have moved out, if we’d really wanted to.”

“Agreed,” Phillip sighed. “And we didn’t, which probably doesn’t speak very well for either one of us. Anyway, it’s over now.”

“Is it?” Carolyn asked. “What about your mother? And Tracy? They haven’t been a bed of roses either.” Then, at the look of pain that came into Phillip’s eyes, she wished she could take back the words. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that, should I?”

“You shouldn’t have had to say it,” Phillip replied quietly. Then his eyes met hers. “Carolyn, do you want to move? We can take the girls, and go anywhere we want. Away from Westover. Without Mother’s influence, Tracy will come around.”

It was something Carolyn had thought about often, and always, in the end, rejected. Leaving Westover, she knew, was not the solution. “We can’t, Phillip. You know we can’t. We can’t leave Abigail alone here — it would kill her. It’s going to be hard enough for her without your father. Without you and Tracy, she’d have nothing left. Besides,” she added, “this is your home.”

“And your home, too.”

Carolyn shook her head ruefully. “Not yet. Maybe someday, but not yet. This is your home — and your mother’s. And I’m afraid I still feel … like a guest here,” she offered hesitantly. She had almost said, “an unwelcome guest.”

“You don’t have to, you know.”

“I know,” Carolyn replied. “Lord knows you’ve told me to spend what I want redoing the place, but I can’t. I’d be afraid of bankrupting us, and besides, I wouldn’t know where to start. And I’m not about to open another front for Abigail.”

“She’s just set in her ways. If you just began—”

“She’s not just set in her ways, and you know it. She’s Abigail Sturgess, and she’s frozen in time.” Suddenly her voice broke. “And she thinks I’m a toy you found on the wrong side of the tracks, and brought home to play with for a while!”

Immediately, Phillip was on his feet, and his arms were around her. “Darling, don’t think that. Don’t think that for even a minute.”

Carolyn fought back the tears that were burning her eyes and shook her head. “I don’t. You know I don’t. I’m just having a weak moment. Let me finish undressing, and then let’s talk about something else, all right?”

Reluctantly Phillip released her, and went back to the bed. Carolyn moved through the dressing room into the bathroom, and quickly ran cold water in the sink, then washed her face, and began running a brush through her hair.

Maybe it had been a mistake to marry Phillip — maybe, no matter how badly she wanted it to work, it was an impossible situation.

But she had to make it work.

After Alan—

She tried to force the thought out of her mind, but couldn’t. The problem, she knew, was that Phillip and Alan were too much alike.

Good, kind, decent men.

And she’d lost Alan, simply because she hadn’t been able to accept him as he was. She’d always wanted more.

She wouldn’t make the same mistake with Phillip. Westover was his home; this house was his home. He belonged here. And no matter what happened, she wouldn’t ask him to leave. She would figure out a way to deal with his mother, and she would win his daughter over. And she would never ask him to leave.

She’d married him for what he was. A large part of that identity was defined by the fact that Phillip was a Sturgess. And Sturgesses lived at Hilltop.

Suddenly fragments of the old stories flitted through her mind — stories she’d grown up with, stories about the Sturgesses. But as quickly as they came, she rejected them. They were only the unkind whisperings of people who had less than the Sturgesses and therefore envied them. Legends. And they had nothing to do with Phillip.

She put the hairbrush away, and returned to the bedroom, then slid into the bed next to her husband. Switching off the lamp on her bed table, she snuggled close, feeling the tension drain out of her body. And then a thought occurred to her.

“Phillip …”

“Hm?”

“Phillip, that plan you’ve been working on — the one to refurbish the mill?”

“Mm-hmm. What about it?”

“You’re not … you’re not thinking of going ahead with it, are you?”

Phillip drew away slightly, and looked down at her. “Don’t tell me you’ve been talking to Mother?”

“Abigail? What made you think that?”

“Because we were talking about the mill today. On the way up here, after the church service. She asked me if the plan was ready.”

Carolyn felt her heart beat faster. “What did you tell her?”

“That it was all set. Everything’s on paper.”

“And what did Abigail say?” Carolyn realized that she was holding her breath.

Phillip chuckled. “For once, Mother agreed with me. She said that now that Father’s gone, it’s time I went ahead with that project.”

Carolyn lay silent for a long time, then spoke again. “Phillip, maybe you shouldn’t go ahead. Maybe … maybe your father was right.”

Now Phillip sat full upright, and turned on the light. When she looked at him, she saw his eyes flashing angrily.

“Right? All Father would ever say about the mill was that it was evil, and should never be touched. Not restored, not converted to some other use, not even torn down. Just left to rot, for God’s sake! How can that be right?”

Carolyn shook her head unhappily. “I don’t know. But there have been so many stories. And you don’t know how everyone in town feels about the mill.”

“They feel the same way I feel about it,” Phillip declared. “That it’s a hideous old eyesore, and that something ought to be done with it.”

“But that’s not it,” Carolyn replied. “It’s something else. It’s a reminder of how things used to be here—” She stopped herself, not wanting to hurt her husband, but it was already too late: she could see the pain in Phillip’s eyes.

“You mean a reminder of the bad old days, when my family used to work children to death in the shoe factory?”

Mutely, Carolyn nodded.

Phillip stared at her for a moment, then flopped back down on his pillow, averting his eyes.

“I think that’s another reason to renovate it,” he said tiredly. “Perhaps the best reason. Maybe all those old stories will finally be forgotten if I do something with the mill and some people in Westover make some honest money from it.”

“But maybe … maybe the stories shouldn’t be forgotten, Phillip. Maybe we always need to remember what happened there.”

“My God,” Phillip groaned. “You sound just like Father. Except that he’d never say exactly what he was talking about. It was always vague references, and dark hints. But nothing I could ever put my finger on.” He propped himself up on one elbow, and his tone lightened. “And you know why I could never put my finger on any of it?” he asked.

Carolyn shook her head.

“Because maybe there was nothing to put my finger on! Just a bunch of stories and legends about terrible abuses in the shoe mill. But that sort of thing went on all over New England. Christ, child labor was our answer to slavery. But it’s all over now, Carolyn. Why should we keep torturing ourselves with it?”

“I don’t know,” Carolyn admitted. “But I just can’t help feeling that somehow your father was right about the mill.”

Phillip reached over and turned off his light again, then drew her close. “Well, he wasn’t,” he said. “He was as wrong about the mill as he was about everything else. He was my father, darling, but I have to confess I didn’t like him very much.”

Carolyn made no reply, and lay still in her husband’s arms. Here, in bed with Phillip, she felt secure and safe, and she would do nothing to threaten that security. But as Phillip drifted into sleep, and she lay awake, she couldn’t help feeling that Phillip was wrong about the mill, and that old Conrad Sturgess, whom they had buried that day, was right.

The mill should be left alone; left to crumble away until there was nothing left of it but dust.