John Saul: Hellfire

“Home?” Beth asked, her eyes suddenly hopeful. “To your house?”

“No,” Alan replied. “I’ll drive you back to Hilltop. That’s where you live now, isn’t it?”

Though Beth said nothing, the eager light faded from her eyes.

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.