The Haunting of Bell Mansion

by James Hunt

  “You didn’t have to come here,” Sarah said, this time forcing her gaze into Brent’s eyes. “I’m not a threat.”

  Brent laughed. “Not in the way you think, sweetheart, no.” He readjusted the grip on his pistol and flicked the end of it toward the road. “Get moving, honey.”

  Sarah turned back to Pat one last time.

  Brent raised the pistol and pressed it against her forehead with his finger on the trigger. But she didn’t turn away this time. She faced him, stiffening in courage.

  “You want to kill me?” Sarah asked. “Then just fucking do it. C’mon.” She taunted him, leaning into the revolver’s barrel. “Do it!”

  He paused as if he was going to pull the trigger, but he only laughed. “Son of a bitch.” He lowered the revolver. “I really wish I could, sweetheart, but I can’t. You’ve made a lot of trouble for me, and now I’m going to have to take you back to New York, so let’s go.”

  Brent picked her up by force, and Sarah screamed, crying and fighting back as hard as she could, but it was no use. He was too big, and she was too tired. He tossed her into the GTO like a rag doll, and was cried out by the time he zip-tied her wrists together, then put on her seatbelt.

  He climbed into the driver’s seat and started the car. “You know, you had me fooled.” Brent laughed, shaking his head. “But you’re all kinds of fucked up in the head, aren’t you?” He nodded. “Yeah, you are.” He leaned closer, his lips barely touching her ear, his voice tickling her skin. “And I know that from all that crazy shit you liked to do in bed.”

  Brent kissed her ear, and Sarah slammed the side of her skull into his face. The harsh crack of bone against bone caused both of them to wince, and Sarah opened her eyes just in time to see the backhand coming toward her face.

  Brent’s heavy knuckles pounded her mouth, smashing the thin cushion of her lips against her teeth and knocking her entire body toward the window.

  “Dumb bitch!”

  The curse was followed by the pressure of a pistol to the back of her skull, and Brent used it to jam her face up against the window.

  “I told you no funny business!”

  Sarah struggled for breath with her face pressed against the glass, her mouth numb. More pressure was applied to the back of her head, and then with one final push, it ended. Brent settled behind the wheel, and Bell faded into the rearview mirror.

  Head throbbing, Sarah gently sat back in the seat. The GTO’s engine hummed loudly, the pistons firing on all cylinders as the muscle car’s tires chewed up the road ahead on their way back to New York City.

  “I won’t make it,” Sarah said, her head gently swaying left and right with the curves of the highway. She stared at the exit for Redford, watching the sign grow smaller in the rearview mirror until it was completely gone.

  “Bit of a pessimistic outlook, don’t you think?” Brent asked, smiling. “I’m not gonna kill you, Sarah. If I wanted to that, I would have just done it back in town.” He shook his head. “No, I need you alive to take the fall for me.”

  “I’m not going to do that,” Sarah said.

  “If you want what’s left of your friends in New York to survive, you will,” Brent replied, his tongue sharp and forceful. “How many deaths do you want on your conscience, huh? Three? Four?” He shook his head. “I can keep piling them up for you, Sarah. Stack ’em as high as the fuckin’ Empire State Building.”

  Sarah’s eyes watered as she wondered who he’d already killed. At least half a dozen names scrolled through her mind, all of them good people. She had no doubt that he’d killed at least one of them, probably Moss or Cassie. She hoped they hadn’t suffered.

  When the first tear fell, Sarah turned her face away so Brent wouldn’t see, but she couldn’t hide her reflection in the mirror.

  Brent started laughing. “Oh, don’t be sad, sweetheart. Listen, I’ll tell you what.” He inched closer, keeping his left hand on the wheel while he rested his elbow on the center console. “When we get back to the city, I’ll arrange a quick little meet for you at the graveyard so you can say your goodbyes before they lock you away and throw away the key.”

  More gut-bursting laughter rolled off of Brent’s tongue, lashing her ears with a wicked laugh that echoed through her mind. But the laughter faded, and Sarah’s stomach churned sourly. Beads of sweat broke out on her forehead. It was happening.

  Sarah flung her back against the car seat and shut her eyes, her muscles starting to tremble as she gritted her teeth in pain. “GRAAAHHHHH!”

  “Hey!” Brent said, ending his laughter and leaning away from Sarah. “Knock it off!” He placed one hand on his pistol. “I said—”

  But Sarah thrashed back and forth, the pain reemerging in her leg as she reached for her jeans with her bound hands. The burning sensation crawled up her thigh, the pain growing more intense with every passing second.

  “Calm down!” Brent backhanded Sarah once more, this time striking the center of her nose.

  The force of the blow should have knocked her into unconsciousness, but the pain crawling up her leg made the blow feel like nothing more than a light breeze against her cheek.

  In retaliation, Sarah flung herself into Brent, grabbing hold of the wheel and turning it hard.

  The world immediately spun, tires screeching, and centrifugal force flung Sarah back into her seat. She cracked her head against the glass, which shattered, and the last thing that Sarah remembered before she blacked out was watching the road pass beneath her, the world upside down, and a loud crunch when the car rolled into the ditch on the side of the road.

  17

  The moment Dell was out of Bell, he floored the gas pedal. The cruiser sped down the two-lane highway, lights flashing red and blue against the backdrop of the forest.

  Dell gripped the steering wheel tightly, his vision focused on only the road ahead. A sense of urgency flooded through him, and while the consequences of failing to obtain a cure for Sarah had gone unsaid, he understood them perfectly clear. If the doctor couldn’t cure her, she’d die. But when that would happen and how long it would take, Dell had no idea.

  And what was more was how the idea of Sarah’s death affected him. It was a thought he refused to let fester in his consciousness. But despite his efforts, he couldn’t shake it. And he wasn’t sure what to make of that.

  Sarah wasn’t exactly his type. She was pretty, of course, but there was a reckless danger to her that clashed against his own ideals. Not to mention she was stubborn and seemed to find trouble wherever she went. Not exactly a “bring her home to Mom” kind of girl.

  And still, Dell couldn’t get her out of his mind.

  Once he was west of Redford and onto the mountainous dirt roads, Dell’s GPS lost its signal. Luckily, he had a vague remembrance of the doctor’s location. There was a lookout point in the same area where high school kids would go on dates. It was a popular destination for kids to lose their virginity. It was where Dell had taken his high school girlfriend. He was sixteen and she was fifteen. It was hard to believe he was ever that young. And even harder to believe he was ever that scared.

  Maybe it was the fact that he was returning to a place where innocence was lost, but those same nerves returned to him on the dirt road, and it didn’t take long for a layer of cold sweat to accumulate beneath his uniform.

  The cruiser’s shocks were tested on the rocky road, and Dell was tossed left and right behind the wheel like a rag doll as he kept his eyes peeled for any sudden turns. Northern Maine’s back roads had claimed more tourists than Dell could count, and a few drunk locals. The moon and stars being covered by a thick blanket of clouds only made the night darker.

  Headlights flashed on a small road sign, barely two feet off the ground, and Dell slammed on his brakes, the cruiser sliding forward in the gravel. Dell leaned across his center console and squinted to make out the sign’s text.

  Black paint had been used in the lettering, and the wooden plank that it had been written on had faded to a
dull gray, making it unreadable from inside the car. So Dell unbuckled his seatbelt and stepped out.

  With the headlights from the cruiser illuminating his path, Dell dropped to a knee in front of the sign and wiped away some of the crud that had collected over the wood’s surface. Beneath it, he found the doctor’s address.

  Dell looked down the road that the sign marked and found that its path was even narrower and less maintained than the dirt road behind him.

  Back in the car, Dell reversed a few feet and then carefully turned down the narrow path, which climbed upward on a steep incline. The cruiser’s tires slipped multiple times on the way up, the seatbelt over Dell’s chest tightening with every jerk, and twice the decline backward nearly resulted in contact with one of the thick maples that lined the road. But Dell maintained a slow and steady pace, and eventually the gravel gave way to more compacted dirt, which allowed for a smoother ride.

  Maintaining a crawling pace forward, Dell kept his eyes peeled for any other signs or roads that veered off his path. But the longer he drove up the hillside and through the forest the more his confidence shrank.

  The address Faye had pulled from the system was three years old, which meant that the doctor could have moved somewhere else. It wasn’t uncommon for the elderly to flock south, selling off everything they owned, and disappear to warmer weather without notifying the appropriate agencies of their departure. It was an easy way for them to avoid certain tax payments.

  A lot of them also rented out their houses through the winter and fall to tourists, which helped pay for their tiny beach condos down in Florida. So the possibility that Dell was about to walk into a winter-break holiday party with a house crammed full with wasted college kids was just as likely as waking up an old man from his bed in the dead of night.

  The rough path continued for another mile, and just when Dell was about to find a spot to turn around, he saw a break in the path ahead, and beyond that break was a shimmer of taillights.

  Dell breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that the truck was parked at the end of a long drive, blocking the path toward a small cottage nestled quaintly in a grove of trees.

  With no sign of a family or college kids inhabiting the place, Dell parked his cruiser directly behind the truck in the long drive.

  Dell’s vision adjusted to the darkness, the features of the forest taking shape as he scanned his surroundings on the walk toward the front door.

  Leaves rustled from a steady breeze coming down from the northwest. The cold stiffened Dell’s movements. He kept one hand on his service pistol, the strap over the handle already unbuckled in case he needed to draw quickly.

  The windows of the cottage were darkened, and the closer Dell moved toward the house, the more he saw its age and imperfections. The rain gutters were clogged and overflowing with leaves, and the small plot of land that had been cleared in the trees was overgrown with grass and weeds.

  A three-foot-high, rusted iron fence surrounded the house, a lattice with dying ivy leaves crawling over it acting as a sort of bridged entrance. The gate’s hinges groaned as Dell entered, and a few critters scattered from the untouched landscape.

  The grass was so overgrown that there wasn’t even a worn path from the gate to the front door. He approached warily and checked the window to the left of the door. The view was limited, the interior even darker than outside.

  Unsure if anyone was even home, Dell pounded his fist on the door, rattling the old wood and ending the quaint silence of the forest. “Doctor Wagner, Redford Police Department. Open up!”

  Dell waited for a response or the flick of a light but saw no movement inside the house. He peered through the window again, hoping to see an elderly figure heading his way, but there was nothing. He pounded on the door again.

  “Doctor Wagner, this is Deputy Dell Parker with the Redford Sheriff’s Department!” With his hand still on the handle of his service pistol, he stepped back, examining the sides of the house, and then looked back toward the truck down the worn drive.

  Dell pounded again. “Doctor Wag—”

  A light flicked on, and mumbled groans penetrated the sleepy, sagging walls of the cottage, followed by the noisy turn of the lock. The door opened only a crack, and Dell stepped back when he saw that he was staring down the barrel of a twelve-gauge shotgun, held by an old man with a walker standing in front of him.

  “What do you want?” Doctor Wagner asked, his expression a snarl ensnared by hundreds of wrinkles that puckered his face like a raisin.

  Dell slowly raised his hands, knowing the old man’s bark was worse than his bite. “I’m Deputy Dell—”

  “I already heard that,” Doctor Wagner spat from behind the crack of his door. “I’m old and immobile, not deaf and dumb. What do you want?”

  Dell stared at the shotgun. “Do you mind lowering the weapon, sir?”

  Wagner grunted and reluctantly complied with the request. He opened the door and set the shotgun in the corner near the entrance, both hands now gripping a silver walker that looked as fragile as the man who used it for support.

  “Thank you,” Dell answered. “May I come inside?”

  “Fine.” Wagner spun around, shuffling toward the kitchen as Dell entered the foyer. “I was finally drifting off to sleep when you started pounding on my door!” He flicked on a light as he entered the kitchen, Dell watching him through the tiny cutout in the wall overlooking the sink. “You know how difficult it is to get rest at my age? Might as well try and run up this mountain in my bare feet, that’s how impossible. So whatever ended my chance at some peace and rest better be good.”

  Dell shut the door behind him, examining the bare-bones interior of the living room. A single reclining chair with a tabletop next to it was positioned directly in front of a television that had to have been more than thirty years old. The face of the box still had dials on it, and a pair of rabbit ears stuck out the back, sagging like everything else in the house.

  A few pictures lined the walls, and Dell spotted one of a young woman, the picture black and white, but even the lack of color couldn’t hide her beauty.

  “My wife,” Wagner said, reappearing from the kitchen without a sound, his tone gentler than his earlier greeting. “God rest her soul. Passed away for nearly ten years now, and I still can’t figure out what the hell the bastard is keeping us apart for. I was ready to go when she did, but—” He shrugged and shuffled toward the recliner. “Here I am.”

  Wagner transitioned from the walker to the recliner with a practiced motion, though it still took some time. Dell nearly asked if the old man needed help but thought better of it. The elderly didn’t need reminding of their own frailty. They lived with it every day.

  “Doctor Wagner—”

  “I haven’t practiced medicine for over thirty years,” he said. “Mister will do just fine.”

  “Mister Wagner,” Dell said. “I’m here because of a patient you treated back in the early eighties.”

  Wagner laughed, folding his swollen, arthritic, liver-spotted hands. “Deputy, do you have any idea how many patients I’ve had over the years?”

  Without any other place to sit, Dell stood, arms crossed. “But you only had one case that made headlines.”

  Wagner sank deeper into the back of his chair, the already sagging features of his face slackening. He nodded, his jowls wobbling like a turkey neck. “No, I don’t remember that.” He worked his fingers over one another, wincing from the arthritis, and lowered his head, the lamp to his right illuminating half his face while casting the rest into darkness.

  “The patient was Iris Bell,” Dell continued, knowing that the doctor was lying. “She had a rare infection spreading up her leg.” He stepped closer. “You were reported as saying that it was a new disease.”

  “Which the Maine medical board denied and nearly voted to suspend my license to practice medicine,” Wagner replied.

  “So you do remember the case,” Dell said.

  Wagner kept his h
ead down, still fumbling with his fingers as he fidgeted uncomfortably in his seat. “I have always prided myself on being a man of science and reason. I’ve never believed in legends and myths, though I must concede that I am not above the fear of evil.” He lifted his eyes to meet Dell’s. “Of true evil.”

  “That infection you treated,” Dell said. “Another person has come down with it, and she needs your help.”

  Wagner remained seated, staring at Dell with curiosity and a healthy dose of skepticism. A smile crept up the left side of his face, triggering a ripple of wrinkles that faded into his balding scalp. “That’s not possible.”

  “It is.” Dell reached into his jacket and removed the article they’d found in Pat’s trunk. “Everything that you describe in that article is happening to another woman.”

  Wagner examined the article, the paper as brittle as the trembling pair of hands that held it. After a moment, he set it aside, head still down, and only nodded to himself but said nothing.

  “Doctor Wagner,” Dell said, his tone growing impatient. “I need you to come with me so you can fix this woman like you did Iris Bell.”

  Wagner shook his head, finally looking up from his lap. “You don’t understand, boy.” He tightened his hands into fists and pounded the armrests of his chair. “Whatever’s happened to this woman is beyond my help.”

  Dell shook his head. “But you said in the article—”

  “I know what I said.” Wagner dismissively waved his hands toward Dell, the gesture meant to shoo him away. “I was there. I think I would remember what I said.” He rolled his eyes around, which were the only sharp thing left about him besides perhaps his mind. “The article doesn’t tell the whole story.”

  Dell snatched the article from his lap then shoved it in the old man’s face. “You said you cured it! You even brought it to the Maine medical board!”

  “To advance my career!” Wagner barked back. “Do you have any idea what the mundane life of a family physician in this tiny little town was like? I studied at Johns Hopkins under some of the best minds in the field. I could have gone anywhere, but I got a woman pregnant who happened to live in this godforsaken town, and back in my day, when you did something like that you had to take responsibility!”