Hellfire

by John Saul

  Suddenly there was a soft tapping at her door—two knocks, followed by a short silence, and then a third. It was the code she’d given Beth, telling her it would be a secret between them. And Beth, as Tracy had hoped, was too stupid to realize that all it did was give Tracy a chance to hide things before she let Beth into her room.

  The whole thing her father had demanded had, in fact, been a lot easier than Tracy had thought it would be. It was almost like a game, and the object was to find out just how stupid Beth and Carolyn really were.

  And with Beth, to find out how crazy she really was, so her father would finally have to send her away.

  So far, it looked like they were even dumber than Tracy had thought, though she still hadn’t figured out how to get Beth talking about Amy again.

  Beth, she’d decided, was really pathetic. When she’d opened the suitcase Beth had brought with her, it had been all she could do to keep from giggling out loud at the junk that was inside. It was nothing but faded jeans, and a bunch of blouses and dresses that had to have come from Penney’s. But she’d oohed and aahed and begged Beth to loan her some of the junk sometime, and Beth had fallen for it.

  And then, this morning, Tracy had dug around in her closet until she’d found a dress she hadn’t worn for two years but hadn’t bothered to throw away yet, and offered it to Beth to wear to the funerals. The dress had looked awful on her, as Tracy had known it would, but Beth hadn’t noticed, and neither had her mother.

  Instead, they’d both thanked her, as though she’d done something nice.

  Now, as the knock at the door was repeated, Tracy shut her grandmother’s jewelry box, and hurriedly shoved it up on the closet shelf before unlocking the door and opening it. Beth stood in the corridor, her eyes wide. Her face was the color of putty. The dress Tracy had loaned her was on a hanger that Beth held high enough so the hem wouldn’t touch the floor.

  “I … I got a spot on it,” Beth whispered, looking to Tracy like a frightened rabbit. “I’m sorry—I don’t know what happened.”

  Tracy composed her features into an expression of what she hoped was generous forgiveness. “It’s all right,” she said. “I’m sure it won’t cost much to have it cleaned.” She saw no point in telling Beth she was going to throw the dress away anyhow. “Come on in.”

  She opened the door wider, and Beth came into the could hardly wait to call Alison Babcock and tell her how Beth treated the old rag like it was a Halston gown.

  “I … I’m really sorry about your grandmother,” Beth said as she started backing toward the door.

  “It’s okay,” Tracy replied. “She was so old it’s a miracle she didn’t die years ago. I mean, it’s not like she was young, like your father.” Tracy forced herself not to snicker when Beth’s eyes flooded with tears. “I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “I guess you don’t want to talk about your father, do you?”

  Beth quickly wiped the tears away, and managed a smile. “I just can’t think about him very much yet. But Mom says I’ll get over it.” Then she frowned uncertainly. “But I don’t know. It just hurts so much. Did you feel like that when your mom died?”

  Tracy shrugged. “She died when I was born. I don’t even remember her. My grandmother raised me.”

  Beth’s frown deepened. “Then how come you don’t miss your grandmother like I miss my father?”

  “I told you. She was an old lady.” She glanced at Beth out of the corner of her eye, then did her best to work up some tears. “Besides, she didn’t love me anymore. She loved you more than she loved me.”

  Beth gasped. “That’s not true—”

  Now Tracy managed a little sob. “It is, too! She didn’t ask to see me when she was in the hospital. At least not the first night. She only wanted to see you.”

  “But that was about—” And then Beth stopped short, afraid to speak the name that Tracy had used against her for so long.

  “About Amy?” Tracy asked, her voice showing no hint of the mockery of the past.

  Hesitantly, Beth nodded.

  Tracy’s heart beat a little faster. She had to be careful now, or she might scare Beth off. “Grandmother talked about her,” she said, thinking as fast as she could. “She told me she wished you could come and live here again, because she wanted to know all about Amy.”

  “She … she did?” Beth stammered, wondering if it could possibly be true, and if maybe Tracy didn’t think she was crazy anymore.

  Tracy nodded solemnly, remembering her grandmother’s last words. Maybe she could use them to get Beth talking. “And she said there was a fire.” At the look in Beth’s eyes, she knew she’d struck a bull’s-eye.

  “In the mill?” Beth breathed. “Did she really talk about the fire in the mill?”

  Now Tracy hesitated. What if Beth was lying too, trying to trap her just as she herself was trying to trap Beth? But that was silly—Beth wasn’t smart enough to do that. “I think so,” she said. “When she was in the hospital, what did she tell you?”

  “Nothing,” Beth replied, and Tracy’s heart sank. But then Beth spoke again. “Except that when she got home, she’d show me something that proved Amy’s real.”

  A surge of excitement seized Tracy. It’s in the box, she thought. It’s in the box Grandfather was always going through.

  But she said nothing.

  24

  It was a little past midnight. The house was silent, but from outside her open windows Tracy could hear the soft chirpings of crickets and the murmurs of tree frogs calling to their mates. Her feet bare, and only a light robe over her pajamas, she opened her closet and fished her grandmother’s jewelry box off the top shelf. Then she turned off the lights in her room, and carefully opened the door.

  The corridor outside was dark, but Tracy didn’t even consider turning on the night-light on the commode. Her grandmother’s door was only thirty feet away, and she could have walked it blindfolded if she’d had to.

  She was halfway down the hall, moving carefully to avoid bumping into the commode that stood at the midpoint, when she realized that the corridor was not completely dark after all. At the far end, there seemed to be a faint glowing, as if a dim light were spilling from beneath a door.

  Her grandmother’s door.

  She froze in the darkness, clutching the jewelry box tighter, her eyes fixed on the light. It seemed now to be flickering slightly. Why would there be light coming from her grandmother’s room? It was empty, wasn’t it?

  Unless it wasn’t empty.

  But who could be in there? She’d been awake all night, listening.

  Her father and stepmother had come in to say good night to her, and then she’d heard them going down the hall to the other end of the house. She’d even opened her door so she could listen, and been able to hear their voices until the closing of their door had cut off their words.

  Twice, she’d crept down the hall to listen at Beth’s door, and opened it just enough to hear the even rhythm of her stepsister’s breathing as she slept.

  The only other person in the house was Hannah.

  So it had to be Hannah.

  Hannah was in her grandmother’s room, going through her belongings, looking for things to steal.

  Her grandmother had told her about servants, and how they always stole things. “You have to expect it,” her grandmother had explained to her. “Servants resent you for what you have, and they think they deserve it. So they simply take things, because they have no sense of right and wrong. You can’t stop it—it’s simply the price we pay for what we have.”

  And now, with her grandmother barely dead, Hannah was in her room, using a flashlight to go through her things, looking for things to steal.

  Tracy smiled in the darkness, congratulating herself for having already removed the jewelry box from its place in her grandmother’s vanity. She turned, and started back toward her own room.

  But then she remembered how Hannah had always fawned over Beth, and how, for the last three days, she had refused to
do even the simplest thing for Tracy herself. Slowly another idea came to her, and she knew exactly what she would do. She would catch Hannah in her grandmother’s room, and then make her father fire her. Hannah could even be blamed for the pieces missing from the jewelry box. Maybe she could even fix it so the old housekeeper would go to jail.

  She moved quickly on down the hall, stopping outside the closed door to her grandmother’s room. Pressing her ear close, she listened, then stooped down to peer through the keyhole.

  The room was dark now, and she could hear nothing.

  Maybe Hannah had heard her.

  Gingerly, Tracy turned the knob, and pushed the door slightly open. Then she reached in, and flipped the switch just inside the door. The chandelier that hung from the center of the ceiling went on, and the room was flooded with bright light.

  Tracy pushed the door open, and looked around.

  The room was empty.

  But there had been light under the door, she was certain of it. Her eyes scanned the room again, and fell on the door that led to her grandmother’s dressing room, and the bathroom beyond.

  The dressing room, too, was empty, as was the bathroom. She paused on her way back to the bedroom, and put the jewelry box back in its accustomed place in the top drawer on the right side.

  Finally, she returned to the bedroom, and looked around once more. She couldn’t have been wrong—she couldn’t.

  And yet, nowhere was there any sign that anyone else had been in these rooms. All was exactly as it had been earlier when she had stolen in to take the jewelry box in the first place. All the clutter—the things her grandmother prized so much, and that Tracy regarded as just so much junk—was exactly as it had always been. The lights, all of them except the chandelier, were off, so that wouldn’t account for the strange light coming from beneath the door either.

  She went to the window, and looked out into the darkness. In the village there were still a few lights on, and in the distance she could barely make out the shape of the mill. And then, as she watched, she saw the strange flickering light again.

  This time, though, it was at the mill. It seemed to light up for just a moment, then disappear once more into the blackness of the night.

  And then Tracy was sure she knew what it was. A car, winding along the road, its headlights flashing briefly on the mill as it rounded a bend.

  The same thing must have happened when she’d been in the hall—it had been no more than a car coming up the hill, its lights flashing into the room for a few seconds.

  Tracy turned away from the window, and started toward the closet that had been her grandfather’s.

  Had she stayed at the window a few more seconds, she would have seen the strange light at the mill again. She would also have seen that there were no cars moving along River Road.

  She found the box where it had sat for as long as she could remember, on the highest shelf of her grandfather’s closet. She had seen it often there, but whenever she’d asked her grandfather what was in it, he’d told her only that when the time came, she would know.

  Now she stared at it for several moments. There didn’t seem to be anything special about it—it was simply a rectangular metal box, with a metal handle. She could tell just by looking at it that it was very old. She reached up and gently eased it off the shelf, then carried it gingerly back to the parlor, where she sat down in her grandmother’s chair. When she pressed the button on its front panel, the latch stuck for a second, then popped open.

  Inside, there was nothing but some sort of old book. She fingered it for a moment, wondering if she should read it here, then put the box back in her grandfather’s closet. But then, as the beginnings of an idea began to form in her mind, she picked up the box and left the suite of rooms, pulling the door shut behind her.

  Back in her own room, Tracy put the box on her desk, then took the strange-looking book out of it. Taking the book with her, she went to her bed, got under the covers, then opened the book to the first page.

  It was a journal of some sort, written by hand in black ink, that was barely legible. The spiky handwriting looked very old-fashioned, and for a moment Tracy wasn’t sure she would be able to read it at all. But then, remembering the book had something to do with Amy, she began studying the words more carefully. Slowly, deciphering the words one by one, she read through the old book.

  By the time morning came, and she woke up from what had been a fitful sleep, she knew exactly what she was going to do.

  She smiled, and hugged herself, luxuriating in the warmth of the summer morning, and the knowledge that by this time tomorrow, she would finally be rid of Beth Rogers.

  I’m being ridiculous, Carolyn told herself as she sat at the breakfast table that morning. Everything is fine. Tracy is behaving like a perfectly ordinary child, and I have no reason to be suspicious.

  And there was nothing going on at the table that should have made her suspicious, either. Beth and Tracy were talking together, and Tracy was suggesting that after breakfast, maybe she should give Beth a tennis lesson.

  “But I’ve never even played,” Beth said. “I’ll just mess up.”

  “Everybody messes up,” Tracy countered. “And besides, you can’t go to the club unless you play tennis.”

  Carolyn felt herself stiffen, ready for the scornful comment that was sure to come. But instead, Tracy simply went on talking, nothing in her voice betraying the contempt for Beth she had always expressed before.

  “Look. Everybody at the club plays tennis, right?”

  Beth nodded.

  “So if you don’t play tennis, what are you going to do? Just sit there?”

  “Maybe I won’t go to the club at all,” Beth suggested.

  Now Tracy rolled her eyes, and again Carolyn felt a pang of apprehension.

  “So what are you going to do? Sit up here all by yourself? What fun will that be? And you know you don’t have any friends down in the village anymore—”

  “Tracy—” Phillip interrupted, shooting his daughter a warning look. Instantly, Tracy looked apologetic.

  “I’m sorry,” she said to Beth. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

  Beth shrugged, and stared at her half-eaten grapefruit. “Why not? It’s true. They all think I’m crazy.”

  “Who cares what they think?” Tracy asked.

  Beth eyed Tracy suspiciously. “You think I’m crazy too. You said so.”

  “That was before,” Tracy replied. “I can change my mind, can’t I?”

  “But what about all your friends?”

  “Stop worrying so much. Just let me teach you how to play tennis, and then next week I’ll take you to the club. And I’ll even let you wear some of my clothes. Or we’ll make Daddy take us to Boston, and buy you some of your own.”

  “But what if I’m no good?” Beth asked, though her eyes were starting to betray her eagerness. “What if I’m terrible at it?”

  “You can’t be any worse than Alison Babcock,” Tracy answered. “She can barely even hit the ball over the net. And when she serves, it’s like getting free points.”

  “You won’t laugh at me?”

  “I won’t laugh at you,” Tracy promised, suddenly grinning. “Anyway, I won’t laugh very much. Besides, who’s going to see you?”

  Ten minutes later the girls dutifully cleared the table of everything except their parents’ coffee cups, and then were gone. A few minutes later, Carolyn saw them walking across the lawn toward the tennis court, Tracy already showing Beth how to hold a racket.

  “Well?” Phillip asked, as if he’d been reading her thoughts for the last half-hour. “You don’t believe it, do you?”

  Carolyn sighed. “I wish I could, but nobody changes as quickly as Tracy has. So, no, I don’t believe it at all. I’m absolutely convinced that she’s putting on some kind of performance, but I can’t figure out what it’s all about.”

  “Don’t forget,” Phillip replied. “I gave her a choice—she either behaves herself, or s
he goes away.”

  But Carolyn shook her head. “What she’s doing goes beyond that, Phillip, and you know it as well as I do. I keep getting the feeling that she’s up to something, and that she needs to get Beth’s confidence.” Then, at the hurt she saw in Phillip’s eyes, she tried to apologize. “I’m sorry. I suppose I’m not being fair to her. But I just can’t see her changing overnight.”

  “She probably hasn’t,” Phillip conceded. “But even if it’s just an act, it’s better than the way things were. And we have to give her a chance, don’t we? You know as well as I do that if she gets to know Beth, she’ll like her.”

  I don’t know that at all, Carolyn thought to herself. All I know is that I don’t believe any of this. I feel like I’m living in a play, and I don’t know what it’s about. But despite her private feelings, she made herself smile at her husband. “A couple of months ago that was certainly true enough. But after all that’s happened—”

  “It’s all over now,” Phillip declared.

  Carolyn wished she thought he was right. “Is it?” she asked. “What about Beth’s friend Amy?”

  Phillip’s eyes clouded, and Carolyn had the feeling he was keeping something from her. But he shook his head. “She’ll forget about her. Beth was going through a rough period when she dreamed Amy up, but as things get better, she won’t need Amy anymore.” He looked at his wife pleadingly. “Honey, haven’t we had enough problems this summer? Do we have to start looking for more? And besides,” he added, “Beth hasn’t mentioned Amy even once since she’s been home, has she?”

  “Can you blame her?” Carolyn replied more sharply than she’d intended. “Talking about Amy cost her every friend she had. If I’d been her, I’d have stopped talking about Amy long ago. But that wouldn’t mean I’d stopped thinking about her.”