Hell House

Hell House Page 16

6:48 P.M.

Barrett sat down gingerly. "My bag," he murmured. Edith let go of his arm and hurried to the Spanish table, lifting off the small black bag in which he kept his codeine and first-aid kit. Returning quickly to the bed, she set the bag beside him. Lionel was removing the handkerchief from his thumb with slow, careful movements, his teeth clenched at the pain.

The sight of the deep, blood-oozing cut made Edith hiss. "It's all right," Barrett told her. Reaching into the bag, he took out the first-aid kit and opened it. Removing a packet of sulfa powder, he tore it open. "Would you get me a glass of water, please?"

Edith turned to the bathroom. Barrett drew a box of gauze from the first-aid kit and started to break the seal on its cover.

When Edith returned, he handed her the box. "Would you bandage it?" he asked. She nodded, giving him the glass of water.

Taking his container of pills from the black bag, he got one out and washed it down.

Edith winced as she started bandaging. "This needs stitches."

"I don't think so." Barrett gritted his teeth, eyes narrowing, as she wrapped the gauze around the thumb. "Make it tight."

When the thumb was bandaged and taped, he eased up his left trouser leg. There was a dark-red burn on the calf. Edith looked at it in dismay. "You have to see a doctor."

"Put some Butesin picrate on it."

She looked at him for several moments indecisively. Then, kneeling beside him, she spread the yellow cream across the burn. Barrett hissed and closed his eyes. "It's all right," he muttered, knowing she was looking at him.

Edith wrapped some gauze around his leg, then helped him lie down. Barrett groaned and shifted onto his left side. "I am one gigantic mass of bruises," he said, trying to make it sound like a joke.

"Lionel, let's go home."

Barrett took another sip of water and handed her the glass. He slumped back on the pillows she had propped behind him.

"I'm all right," he said.

"What if it happens again?"

He shook his head. "It won't." He looked at her a moment. "You could go, though."

" Leave you here?"

Barrett raised his right hand as though making a pledge. "Believe me, it won't happen again."

"Then why should I leave?"

"I just don't want you hurt."

"You're the one who's hurt."

Barrett chuckled. "That I am. It had to be that way, of course. I'm the one who angered her."

"You're saying" - Edith hesitated - "she did all that?"

"Making use of the power in the room," he said. "Converting it to poltergeist-type phenomena directed at me."

Edith thought about the violence of what had happened. The gigantic table rocking back and forth, then hurled across the floor like an express train. The whipping movement of those massive hanging lamps. "My God," she said.

"I made a mistake," Barrett told her. "I accepted her genial attitude toward me at face value. You can never do that with a medium. You never know what's underneath. It might be absolute hostility, and if it is" - he blew out breath - "by making unconscious use of their power, they can inflict tremendous damage. Especially when that power can be amplified a hundredfold by the kind of energy that fills this house." His smile was grim. "I'll not make that mistake again."

"Is it so important that we stay?" she asked.

Lionel answered quietly. "You know it means everything to me."

Edith nodded, trying to suppress the rise of panic in herself. Five more days of this, she thought.

8:09 P.M.

As she paced restlessly, her mind kept going over it again and again. Was Barrett right? She couldn't make herself believe it.

Yet the evidence was there. She had been furious with him. The poltergeist phenomena had been directed primarily at him.

Her body did feel enervated, as it always did after psychic use.

She turned and crossed her room again. I was angry with him, yes, she thought, but I wouldn't try to hurt him just because our views are different.

No. She wouldn't accept it. She respected Dr. Barrett; loved him as a fellow human being, as a fellow soul. She'd die before she'd harm him. Truly. Truly!

With a faint sob, Florence knelt beside the bed and bowed her head to rest it on tightly clasping hands. Dear God, please help me. Show me the path to follow. I am yours to lead. I consecrate my heart and soul to your exalted works. Dear Lord, I beg you for an answer. Reach down your hand and lift my spirit, help me to walk in your light, along your blessed way.

She looked up suddenly, eyes opened. For several moments she was frozen to the spot, her expression one of indecision.

Then a radiant smile pulled back her lips, and standing eagerly, she crossed the room and went into the corridor. She glanced at her wristwatch; they would still be awake. Walking to the door of the Barretts' room, she knocked four times in quick succession.

Edith opened the door. Across her shoulder, Florence could see Dr. Barrett sitting up in bed, his legs beneath the covers.

"May I speak to you?" she asked.

Barrett hesitated, his face drawn with pain.

"I'll only be a moment," she said.

"Very well."

Edith stepped aside, and Florence crossed the room to Barrett's bed. "I know what happened now," she said. "It wasn't me. It was Belasco's son."

Barrett looked at her without response.

"Don't you see? He wants to separate us. Disunited, we are far less of a challenge to him."

Barrett didn't speak.

"Please believe me," Florence said. "I know I'm right. He's trying to turn us against each other." She looked at him with anxious eyes. "If you don't believe me, he'll have succeeded; can't you see that?"

Barrett sighed. "Miss Tanner - "

"I'll sit for you first thing in the morning," she broke in. "You'll see."

"There'll be no further sittings."

Florence stared at him, incredulous. "No further sittings?"

"It isn't necessary."

"But we've barely begun. We can't stop now. We've so much to learn."

"I've learned everything I wish to learn." Barrett was trying to control his temper, but the pain was making it difficult.

"You're cutting me off because of what happened before," Florence objected. "It wasn't my fault. I've told you that."

"Telling me is not convincing me," Barrett answered in a tightly restrained voice. "Now, if you don't mind - "

"Doctor, we can't stop the sittings!"

"I am doing so, Miss Tanner."

"You think it was me who - "

"Not only think it, Miss Tanner, but know it," he interrupted. "Now, please, I'm in considerable pain."

"Doctor, I was not responsible! It was Belasco's son!"

"Miss Tanner, there is no such person! "

The sharpness of his voice made Florence shrink away from him. "I know you're in pain - " she started faintly.

"Miss Tanner, will you go? " he asked through gritted teeth.

"Miss Tanner - " Edith began.

Florence looked around at her. She wanted desperately to convince Barrett, but the look of concern on his wife's face stopped her. She looked back at him. "You're wrong," she said. Turning away, she started for the door. "I'm sorry," she murmured to Edith. "Please forgive me."

She held herself in check until she'd returned to her room. There she sat down on the edge of her bed and started to cry.

"You're wrong," she whispered. "Don't you see? You're wrong. You're wrong."

10:18 P.M.

Edith lay on her back, staring at the ceiling. She'd closed her eyes a dozen times, only to open them again in seconds. She couldn't conceive of falling asleep. It seemed an impossibility to her.

She turned her head on the pillow and looked at Lionel. He was heavily asleep. It was no wonder, after what he'd been through. She'd been appalled when she'd helped him undress and put on his pajamas. His entire body was discolored by bruises.

She closed her eyes again, a terrible uneasiness inside her - nervousness with no apparent source. It was probably the house that made her feel it. What in God's name was this power Lionel kept talking about? That it was present was undeniable. What had happened in the dining hall had been terrifying proof of its existence. The thought that Miss Tanner could utilize that power against them was unnerving.

Edith sat up, turning back the bedclothes. Frowning, she slid her feet into her slippers and stood. She wandered across the rug and stopped by the octagonal table, looking at the box in which Lionel kept his manuscript. Abruptly she turned and walked across the room. Stopping in front of the fireplace, she looked inside. There was a low-burning fire, mostly glowing wood coals. She thought of putting on another log, sitting in the rocking chair, and staring at the fire until sleep came. She glanced uneasily at the rocking chair. What would she do if it started moving by itself again?

She rubbed a hand across her face. There was a tingling underneath the skin. She drew in a shaking breath and looked around. She should have brought a book to read. Something light and undemanding. A mystery novel would be good. Better still, some humor; that would be perfect. Some H. Allen Smith or Perelman.

She moved to the cabinet to the right of the fireplace and opened one of its doors. "Oh, good," she murmured. There were shelves of leatherbound volumes inside. None of them were titled. She pulled one out and opened it. It was a treatise on Conation and Volition. She frowned and slid it back onto its shelf; drew out another. It was printed in German. "Wonderful."

She replaced it on the shelf, pulled out a third book. It dealt with eighteenth-century military tactics. Edith's smile was pained.

Water, water everywhere, she thought. Sighing, she pushed the book back onto its shelf and pulled out a larger volume bound in blue leather with gold-edged pages.

The book was false, its center hollowed out. As she opened the cover, a pack of photographs fell out and spilled across the rug. Edith started, almost dropping the book. Her heartbeat quickened as she stared down at the fading photographs.

Swallowing, she stooped and picked one up. A shudder rippled through her flesh. The photograph was of two women in a sexual embrace. All the photographs were pornographic -  men and women in a variety of poses. Some of them made it evident that the men and women were performing on the huge round table in the great hall while other men and women sat around the table, watching avidly.

Edith pressed her lips together as she picked up all the photographs and pressed them into a bundle. What an ugly house this is, she thought. She put the photographs into the hollow book and thrust it back onto its shelf. As she closed the cabinet door, she saw, on one of the upper shelves, a decanter of brandy on a silver tray with two small silver cups beside it.

She walked across the room and sat on her bed again. She felt uncomfortable and restless. Why did she have to look in that cabinet? Why, of all the books inside it, did she have to pick out that one?

She lay down on her side and drew her legs up, crossing her arms. She shivered. Cold, she thought. She stared at Lionel. If only she could lie beside him; not for sex, just to feel his warmth.

Not for sex. She closed her eyes, a look of self-reproach on her face. Had she ever wanted sex with him? She made a pained sound. Would she have even married him if he hadn't been twenty years her senior and left virtually impotent by the polio?

Edith twisted on her back and glared up at the ceiling. What's the matter with me, anyway? she thought. Just because my mother told me sex is evil and degrading, do I have to fear it all my life? My mother was a bitter woman, married to an alcoholic woman-chaser. I'm married to another kind of man entirely. I have no reason to feel like this; no reason at all.

She sat up suddenly and looked around in terror. Someone's watching me again, she thought. She felt the skin on the back of her neck begin to crawl. Her scalp was covered with an icy tingling. Someone's looking at me, knowing what I feel.

Pushing up, she walked to Lionel's bed and looked at him. She mustn't wake him up; he needed rest. Turning hurriedly, she moved to the octagonal table and dragged its chair beside Lionel's bed. She sat on the chair, and carefully, so as not to wake him, put her hand on his arm. There couldn't be anyone looking at her. There were no such things as ghosts. Lionel had said so; Lionel knew. She closed her eyes. There are no such things as ghosts, she told herself. No one is looking at me. There are no such things as ghosts. Dear God in heaven, there are no such things as ghosts.