House of Reckoning

by John Saul

  Angie turned around to face Sarah, drying her hands on her apron. “You have no rights at all,” she said, her cold eyes fixing on her. “You’re here because you need to be brought up properly in a good Christian home, and that’s exactly what we are going to provide. Your father is a sinner, and your mother died of sin, and you’re headed in that same direction unless you straighten up and start working and praying for your own salvation. Now stop arguing and get back to your work.”

  Sarah’s fingers tightened on the knife and she struggled to keep her fury under control. “My mother did not die of sin,” she said quietly. “She died of cancer.”

  “Same thing,” Zach said, and reached over for a handful of chopped carrots.

  It was all Sarah could do to keep from driving that kitchen knife right through his hand, pinning him to the cutting board.

  “Cancer is evil made manifest,” Angie said, draining the pasta into the sink amid a billowing cloud of steam. “All illness is caused by evil and sin, and if your mother had cancer, it was because she had fallen from God’s grace. Hand me that bowl.”

  For a moment Sarah gazed mutely at the blue bowl Angie was pointing at. Was it possible she’d heard her foster mother’s words right? But she knew she had—what Angie Garvey had just said wasn’t much different than what Reverend Keener had said only this morning at the church.

  And Angie had just called her mother evil.

  She’d called a woman she didn’t know—a woman she’d never met—evil!

  The fury she’d been holding in check began to erupt inside her. How could she live with these people? How could she even sit at a table and eat dinner with them?

  She couldn’t.

  Dropping the knife on the cutting board, she walked past Tiffany and Zach, through the door to the dining room, then on through the living room. Ignoring Angie’s demands that she come back and finish her work, she took her hat, her thin coat, and a scarf from the coat tree by the front door, and walked out.

  By the time she got to the corner of the block, where she paused to pull on the coat, wrap the scarf around her neck, and pull the knit cap over her ears, she already knew where she was going.

  Indeed, there was only one place she could go where she knew she would be welcome.

  Shutters.

  Shutters, and the “witch” who lived within its walls.

  Chapter Ten

  The looming mass of the ancient stone house looked even larger against the fast graying sky than the last time Sarah had seen it, when at least there was sunlight to wash away some of the mansion’s air of gloom. She paused, gazing at the gabled roof, and for a moment wondered if she’d been wrong.

  If instead of making her way up the long and winding driveway through the woods, she should have turned back.

  Turned back, returned to the Garveys’, and made her peace with Angie and Tiffany and Zach.

  But even as the thought formed, she found herself moving forward, closer to the old stone house. And even though it still reminded her of the house from her dreams, it didn’t seem frightening now that she was awake. Indeed, the house tugged at her as if it had a gravity of its own, and oddly, instead of fear, she felt a strange familiarity—almost a feeling of homecoming, as if something buried deep inside her had always known that this place was more than just something from her dreams, but was a real place that was waiting for her, patiently waiting, until she came back to it.

  Yet she’d only been here once before, and never set so much as a foot inside the house.

  She wiped her nose—running from the chill in the air—on a scrap of tissue she found in her coat pocket, then climbed the front steps and pressed the bell next to Shutters’ enormous oak front door.

  A solitary dog’s bark echoed from deep inside.

  Moments later Bettina Philips opened the door. “Sarah,” she said softly, neither looking nor sounding surprised to see her. “Come in.”

  Sarah stepped through the door and into the cavernous foyer, and immediately a feeling of warmth enveloped her, banishing the cold that had invaded her body as she made the long walk. And with the cold, all her doubts, nervousness, and anxiety drained away as well.

  And the house, too, seemed to change as she took another step. Though she knew it could be nothing but an illusion, the lights seemed to grow a little brighter, and the flames from the fire burning on the great hearth set into the wall of the entry hall halfway between the foyer and the far side of the house seemed to leap higher and throw off more heat.

  Bettina glanced into the fast-fading light outside before closing the door, then took a closer look at Sarah. “Are you all right? What’s happened?”

  Suddenly, all of Sarah’s anger at her foster family dropped away and for a moment she felt completely disoriented. Why had she come here? What force had drawn her? She shook her head and felt her face burn with embarrassment. Maybe she should just leave.

  But she didn’t want to leave.

  “I’ll make us a pot of tea,” Bettina said. “Take off your coat.”

  Leaving her cap, scarf, and coat on a great oaken tree surmounted with an ornately carved owl that stood just inside the foyer, Sarah followed Bettina through an enormous dining room, then a smaller room lined with sideboards that were filled with dusty crystal goblets of more shapes and sizes than she’d ever seen outside a department store, and into a kitchen at least six times the size of either the Garveys’ or the one back home on the farm.

  As Bettina pulled the teapot from the cupboard over the sink, put four tea bags into it, and filled it from the kettle that was already steaming on a huge eight-burner range, she tilted her head toward a table where a plate of sliced banana bread was already waiting. “Something must have happened,” she said. “You didn’t just decide to walk all the way up here for no reason at all, did you?”

  “They were telling me my father’s going to Hell,” Sarah replied. “I didn’t want to start yelling at them, and I didn’t know where else to go.” She paused for a second, then went on. “You’ve been so nice to me.” Then, as Bettina brought the pot and two mugs to the table, Sarah’s body trembled with a sense of déjà vu: she had been here before, sat on this very chair, eaten a piece of banana bread off this same Franciscan-ware plate.

  Sipped tea from that blue stoneware mug.

  But instead of fading away, the déjà vu grew stronger, and as she looked around at the high ceiling, the scrubbed wooden table that could easily seat twelve, the old wavy-glass-fronted cabinets that lined the kitchen walls, Sarah felt as if she had eaten countless meals at that table, read a hundred books while curled in that window seat by the door to the side entrance.

  This was her house.

  She cast around in her mind for something to say that wouldn’t betray her strange certainty that she had been here—even lived here—before. “D-Do you live here all by yourself?” she finally asked, unable to keep from stammering. But Bettina Philips didn’t seem to notice.

  “My great-great-grandfather moved in here when he was the first warden of the old prison. Then when he retired, he bought the place from the state, since the prison was closing. I grew up here.”

  “It’s huge.”

  Bettina’s brows arched. “Huge heating bills, I can tell you that.” Then she picked up her cup. “C’mon, let’s go have a look at my studio—you’re going to love it.”

  Sarah followed Bettina back the way they had come until they were once more in the mansion’s great central hall, the walls of which were studded with half a dozen heavy mahogany doors, all of them closed. “I keep these rooms shut up tight during the winter,” Bettina said. As they moved toward the north side of the house, the teacher pointed to the doors they passed. “That goes to my grandfather’s study, that one to the formal parlor with the music room on the other side. Up the stairs”—she gestured at the curving staircase to the second and third floors—“are more bedrooms than you’d think possible, but only two bathrooms. And above that, on the third floo
r, is a ballroom. Just what I need, right?”

  And as Sarah passed each of the closed doors, she was certain—absolutely certain—that she knew exactly what each of the invisible rooms looked like. Even the music room, which she knew contained not only a grand piano, but a harpsichord as well, upon which someone—who?—used to play Vivaldi on a spring morning.

  And she could name each of the upstairs bedrooms and describe how each of them was decorated.

  She peered up at the crystal chandelier that hung twenty feet above her head, then gazed down at the intricately inlaid marble floor. The shapes of the crystals and the patterns of the floor were as familiar as her face in the mirror.

  Then the black lab mix that Sarah had seen on the driveway the other day stuck its nose through the spindles on the staircase and looked down on them. This evening, though, it did not bark.

  “That’s Cooper,” Bettina said. “Sometimes he’s friendly, but not often.”

  As if to prove her point, Cooper backed away and soundlessly disappeared.

  Bettina moved on to the last pair of big doors on the left, slid them aside into their pockets. “And this,” she announced, “is my studio.”

  Sarah’s breath caught in her throat as Bettina switched on the lights in what had once been a conservatory. Glass walls soared to a glass ceiling nearly as high as the one in the entry hall. For a split second Sarah saw it exactly as it had once been, filled with tropical plants, a potted palm and ficus tree, a riot of flowers and foliage that could never have survived a Vermont winter. Then the vision faded and she gazed at the worn area rug at the far end, with a sofa, two chairs, and a coffee table arranged around a freestanding gas fireplace, along with books, teacups, notepads, and woolen throws.

  The rest of the space was mainly occupied by a drafting table, several easels, and makeshift brick-and-board shelving, every square foot of which was jammed full of paints, brushes, pencils, books, and papers.

  Beyond the windows, Sarah could still barely see the sweep of overgrown lawn that stretched all the way down to the shores of the lake whose waters were shining silver in the cloudy twilight.

  And this, she knew, was where she belonged.

  Here, despite the house’s rotting facades and overgrown grounds, and peeling wallpaper and faded upholstery.

  Not in the Garveys’ house, despite its neatness and its tidiness, with nothing ever out of place.

  Then her eyes were drawn to one of the easels and the fresh sheet of thick paper that seemed to be waiting for someone to draw on it.

  For her to draw.

  The stub of a charcoal stick lay in the tray, and without thinking, Sarah walked over, picked it up, and drew a dark vertical line.

  Her fingertips began to tingle, and she set her mug down and drew another line.

  The tingling increased, moved up her fingertips to her hands, and as her hand moved with increasing certainty, as if guided by some unseen force, she let herself drift into a warm and welcoming world of inspiration.

  “Good, Sarah,” Bettina whispered. “Keep going. Just let it happen.”

  Sarah barely heard her. The drawing consumed her—she was the charcoal—she was the image. It was as if she were a mere medium that allowed the image to emerge from the paper of its own volition.

  Every mark seemed preordained, as though the paper, with the image already hidden inside it, had been waiting for her to show it to the world.

  Then it was finished.

  There was not another stroke to be made.

  The tingling began to recede, first from her fingers and hands, then her arms. Finally it seemed to drain out through her legs and feet, vanishing into the floor like lightning going to ground. Sarah’s cramped fingers relaxed, and the charcoal stick dropped to the floor.

  She blinked, disoriented, as if awakening from a dream.

  She looked at what she’d done.

  On the easel she saw a charcoal drawing of a room.

  A small, dark room, filled with skeletons.

  But the skeletons were still wearing clothes—nothing more than tattered rags.

  And they still stood, as if supported by some unseen force.

  She looked down at her hand; her fingers were black with charcoal dust from smudging shadows and lines.

  She looked over at Bettina. “Did I do that?”

  Bettina nodded slowly.

  Sarah backed away from the horrific image. “No,” she whispered, her hands trembling now as much as her voice. “I couldn’t have.”

  “Sit down and drink your tea,” Bettina said. “We need to talk.”

  Nick Dunnigan fixed his eyes on the perfectly browned rib roast, and willed the voices in his head to keep silent. But even as he tried to deafen himself to them, he knew it was useless; they’d begun whispering before he even came downstairs, and though he tried to ignore them, their chatter grew steadily louder, demanding more and more of his attention. “Roast looks great, Mom,” he said too loudly, but though his mother shot him a worried glance, his father seemed not to have heard.

  Shep Dunnigan was gazing hungrily at the beef as he shook out his napkin and placed it on his lap while his wife sliced off a thick slab, placed it on a plate, and passed it to him. “Smells as good as it looks,” he said, scooping into the bowl of mashed potatoes, then ladling gravy over everything.

  Nick was about to take the first bite of his own meal when a dark line—as thick and black as if it had been drawn with charcoal—slashed across the left side of his vision.

  No, he thought. Not now. Not with Dad sitting right here.

  He made himself stay perfectly still as he waited for the dark line to fade away, and after a moment or two it did.

  But so also had his appetite.

  Nor, he was certain, was it actually over. How many times had he been given a flickering hint of what the demons were about to show him, only to be lulled into thinking the hallucination was over when it actually was only beginning?

  “Honey?” His mom’s face filled with concern. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m okay,” Nick said, but the words rang hollow even to his own ears, and his fork rattled against his plate as his heart began to hammer in his chest.

  He carefully set the fork down and tried to will his heart back to normality. But it was no good—things were getting worse. The hallucinations had become so dark lately—so violent—that he was starting to worry about what he might do to himself.

  Or to somebody else.

  What if they got so bad he couldn’t find his way back to reality?

  What if he got trapped forever in some unspeakable horror that might not be real but might as well be?

  But he already knew the answer to those questions: his father would take him back to the hospital, and they’d never let him out again.

  And he’d never see Sarah again.

  The thought came unbidden into his mind, and for a moment the voices actually fell utterly silent. When had the idea of never seeing Sarah Crane again become even more frightening than the thought of going back to the hospital? he wondered. Then there was another flicker at the edge of his vision—another great, thick, dark line.

  The medicine! Take another dose of the medicine!

  Even as the thought flashed into his mind, he was sliding his chair back. “Excuse me,” he mumbled. “I need to go to the bathroom.”

  His mother frowned worriedly but nodded and didn’t ask him any questions.

  Nick ran up to his room, tore open his backpack, and retrieved the pill bottle. He shook out one of the pills, but before he could even put it into his mouth, let alone wash it down with a swallow of water, his vision narrowed, then darkened.

  A moment later he could see nothing at all.

  But he could hear the voices rising, hear the moaning and wailing growing louder.

  So loud it would soon consume him.

  His hands shaking uncontrollably now, he somehow managed to force the pill between his lips and to swallow it with
what little saliva he could muster in his suddenly bone-dry mouth.

  Now he began feeling his way toward the bed, knowing that if his parents found him on the floor, they’d call an ambulance. At least if he made it to the bed they might just let him sleep.

  If he could sleep.

  He found the bed, crept onto it and lay still. After a few moments, points of light began to appear, then spread. He was in a room, a dark, fetid, stinking room, with—

  “Help us!” The voices erupted in his brain and began to shriek. “Save us.”

  Nick whimpered, but his brain was no longer his to command, and he lay writhing on the bed watching helplessly as the visions rose before his eyes and the howling, pleading demons filled his ears.

  Corpses!

  There were rotting corpses everywhere!

  Corpses that were still standing and gazing at him and—

  Nick shoved a corner of his quilt into his mouth to keep himself from screaming at the vision of the dead and the dying howling in their agony in the dank prison where they were mired in their own filth.

  The visions grew more lurid, and the screaming rose, and now he could smell the putrefaction in his nostrils and taste the rot on his tongue, and all he could do was lie on his bed, listening, crying, mutely begging for them to stop, for the horror finally to pass.

  But it didn’t pass, and when he was finally exhausted, he lay still, trying desperately to hold on to whatever might remain of his sanity.

  Or was it already gone?

  Was he already lost forever?

  Time no longer had any meaning, and he didn’t hear the sound of his parents entering his room. But at the touch of his mother’s hand, he jerked spasmodically upright and clung to her, his moans echoing those of the creatures in his head.

  She held him and rocked him as he sobbed, and slowly he began to feel her tears on his cheeks.

  But he never felt the needle that slid deep into his arm, and barely noticed his consciousness begin to fade away before a quiet darkness enveloped him and he relaxed into an exhausted, dreamless sleep.