John Saul: Hellfire

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.”