Hell House (2 page)
Florence Tanner crossed the yard which separated her small house from the church and walked along the alley to the street. She stood on the sidewalk and gazed at her church. It was only a converted store, but it had been everything to her these past six years. She looked at the sign in the painted window: TEMPLE OF SPIRITUAL HARMONY. She smiled. It was indeed. Those six years had been the most spiritually harmonious of her life.
She walked to the door, unlocked it, and went inside. The warmth felt good. Shivering, she turned on the wall lamp in the vestibule. Her eye was caught by the bulletin board:
Sunday Services-11:00 am. – 8:00 p.m.
Healing and Prophecy-Tuesdays, 7:45 p.m.
Lectures and Spirit Greetings-Wednesdays, 7:45 p.m.
Messages and Revelations-Thursdays, 7:45 p.m.
Holy Communion-1st Sunday of Month
She turned and gazed at her photograph tacked to the wall, the printed words above it:
The Reverend Florence Tanner
. For several moments she was pleased to be reminded of her beauty. Forty-three, she still retained it unimpaired, her long red hair untouched by grayness, her tall, Junoesque figure almost as trim as it had been in her twenties. She smiled in self-depreciation then. Vanity of vanities, she thought.
She went into the church, walked along the carpeted aisle, and stepped onto the platform, taking a familiar pose behind the lectern. She looked at the rows of chairs, the hymnals set on every third one. She visualized her congregation sitting before her. "My dears," she murmured.
She had told them at the morning and evening services. Told them of the need for her to be away from them for the next week. Told them of the answer to their prayers-the means to build a true church on their own property. Asked them to pray for her while she was gone.
Florence clasped her hands on the lectern and closed her eyes. Her lips moved slightly as she prayed for the strength to cleanse the Belasco house. It had such a dreadful history of death and suicide and madness. It was a house most horribly defiled. She prayed to end its curse.
The prayer completed, Florence lifted her head and gazed at her church. She loved it deeply. Still, to be able to build a real church for her congregation was truly a gift from heaven. And at Christmastime… She smiled, eyes glistening with tears.
God was good.
Edith finished brushing her teeth and gazed at her reflection in the mirror-at her short-cut auburn hair, her strong, almost masculine features. Her expression was a worried one. Disturbed by the sight of it, she switched off the bathroom light and returned to the bedroom.
Lionel was asleep. She sat on her bed and looked at him, listening to the sound of his heavy breathing. Poor dear, she thought. There had been so much to do. By ten o'clock he'd been exhausted, and she'd made him go to bed.
Edith lay on her side and continued looking at him. She'd never seen him so concerned before. He'd made her promise that she'd never leave his side once they'd entered the Belasco house. Could it be that bad? She'd been to haunted houses with Lionel and never been frightened. He was always so calm, so confident; it was impossible to be afraid when he was near.
Yet, he was disturbed enough about the Belasco house to make an issue of her staying by his side at all times. Edith shivered. Would her presence harm him? Would looking after her use up so much of his limited energy that his work would suffer? She didn't want that. She knew how much his work meant to him.
Still, she had to go. She'd face anything rather than be alone. She'd never told Lionel how close she'd come to a mental breakdown during those three weeks he'd been gone in 1962. It would only have distressed him, and he'd needed all his concentration for the work he was doing. So she'd lied and sounded cheerful on the telephone the three times he'd called-and, alone, she'd wept and shaken, taken tranquilizers, hadn't slept or eaten, lost thirteen pounds, fought off compulsions to end it all. Met him at the airport finally, pale and smiling, told him that she'd had the flu.
Edith closed her eyes and drew her legs up. She couldn't face that again. The worst haunted house in the world threatened her less than being alone.
He couldn't sleep. Fischer opened his eyes and looked around the cabin of Deutsch's private plane. Strange to be sitting in an armchair in an airplane, he thought. Strange to be sitting in an airplane at all. He'd never flown in his life.
Fischer reached for the coffeepot and poured himself another cupful. He rubbed a hand across his eyes and picked up one of the magazines lying on the coffee table in front of him. It was one of Deutsch's. What else? he thought.
After a while his eyes went out of focus, and the words on the page began to blur together. Going back, he thought. The only one of nine people still walking around, and he was going back for more.
They'd found him lying on the front porch of the house that morning in September 1940, naked, curled up like a fetus, shivering and staring into space. When they'd put him on a stretcher, he'd begun to scream and vomit blood, his muscles knotting, rocklike. He'd lain in a coma three months in the Caribou Falls Hospital. When he'd opened his eyes, he'd looked like a haggard man of thirty, a month short of his sixteenth birthday. Now he was forty-five, a lean, gray-haired man with dark eyes, his expression one of hard, suspicious readiness.
Fischer straightened in the chair. Never mind; it's time, he thought. He wasn't fifteen anymore, wasn't naive or gullible, wasn't the credulous prey he'd been in 1940. Things would be different this time.
He'd never dreamed in his wildest fancies that he'd be given a second chance at the house. After his mother had died, he'd traveled to the West Coast. Probably, he later realized, to get as far away as possible from Maine. He'd committed clumsy fraud in Los Angeles and San Francisco, deliberately alienating Spiritualists and scientists alike in order to be free of them. He'd existed barely for thirty years, washing dishes, doing farmwork, selling door to door, janitoring, anything to earn money without using his mind.
Yet, somehow, he'd protected his ability and nurtured it. It was still there, maybe not as spectacular as it had been when he was fifteen, but very much intact-and backed now by the thoughtful caution of a man rather than the suicidal arrogance of a teenager. He was ready to shake loose the dormant psychic muscles, exercise and strengthen them, use them once more. Against that pesthole up in Maine.
Against Hell House.
The two black Cadillacs moved along the road, which twisted through dense forest. In the lead car was Deutsch's representative. Dr. Barrett, Edith, Florence Tanner, and Fischer rode in the second, chauffeur-driven limousine, Fischer sitting on the pull-down seat, facing the other three.
Florence put her hand on Edith's. "I hope you didn't think me unfriendly before," she said. "It was only that I felt concern for you, going into that house."
"I understand," said Edith. She drew her hand away.
"I'd appreciate it, Miss Tanner," Barrett told her, "if you wouldn't alarm my wife prematurely."
"I had no intention of doing that, Doctor. Still-" Florence hesitated, then went on. "You
have
prepared Mrs. Barrett, I trust."
"My wife has been advised that there will be occurrences."
Fischer grunted. "One way of putting it," he said. It was the first time he'd spoken in an hour.
Barrett turned to him. "She has also been advised," he said, "that these occurrences will not, in any way, signify the presence of the dead."
Fischer nodded, taking out a pack of cigarettes. "All right if I smoke?" he asked. His gaze flicked across their faces. Seeing no objection, he lit one.
Florence was about to say something more to Barrett, then changed her mind. "Odd that a project such as this should be financed by a man like Deutsch," she said. "I would never have thought him genuinely interested in these matters."
"He's an old man," Barrett said. "He's thinking about dying, and wants to believe it isn't the end."
"It isn't, of course."
Barrett smiled.
"You look familiar," Edith said to Florence. "Why is that?"
"I used to be an actress years ago. Television mostly, an occasional film. My acting name was Florence Michaels."
Edith nodded.
Florence looked at Barrett, then at Fischer. "Well, this
is
exciting," she said. "To work with two such giants. How can that house not fall before us?"
"Why is it called Hell House?" Edith asked.
"Because its owner, Emeric Belasco, created a private hell there," Barrett told her.
"Is he supposed to be the one who haunts the house?"
"Among many," Florence said. "The phenomena are too complex to be the work of one surviving spirit. It's obviously a case of multiple haunting."
"Let's just say there's something there," said Barrett.
Florence smiled. "Agreed."
"Will you get rid of it with your machine?" asked Edith.
Florence and Fischer looked at Barrett. "I'll explain it presently," he said.
They all looked toward the windows as the car angled downward. "We're almost there," Barrett said. He looked at Edith. "The house is in the Matawaskie Valley."
All of them gazed at the hill-ringed valley lying ahead, its floor obscured by fog. Fischer stubbed his cigarette in the ashtray, blowing out smoke. Looking forward again, he winced. "We're going in."
The car was suddenly immersed in greenish mist. Its speed was decreased by the driver, and they saw him leaning forward, peering through the windshield. After several moments he switched on the fog lights and wipers.
"How could anyone want to build a house in such a place?" asked Florence.
"This was sunshine to Belasco," Fischer said.
They all stared through the windows at the curling fog. It was as though they rode inside a submarine, slowly navigating downward through a sea of curdled milk. At various moments, trees or bushes or boulder formations would appear beside the car, then disappear. The only sound was the hum of the engine.
At last the car was braked. They all looked forward to see the other Cadillac in front of them. There was a faint sound as its door was closed. Then the figure of Deutsch's representative loomed from the mist. Barrett depressed a button, and the window by his side slid down. He grimaced at the fetid odor of the mist.
The man leaned over. "We're at the turnoff," he said. "Your chauffeur is going into Caribou Falls with us, so one of you will have to drive to the house-it's just a little way. The telephone has been connected, the electricity is on, and your rooms are ready." He glanced at the floor. "The food in that basket should see you through the afternoon. Supper will be delivered at six. Any questions?"
"Will we need a key for the front door?" Barrett asked.
"No, it's unlocked."
"Get one anyway," Fischer said.
Barrett looked at him, then back at the man. "Perhaps we'd better."
The man withdrew a ring of keys from his overcoat pocket and disconnected one of them, handing it to Barrett. "Anything else?"
"We'll phone if there is."
The man smiled briefly. "Good-bye, then," he said. He turned away.
"I trust he meant
au revoir
," said Edith.
Barrett smiled as he raised the window.
"I'll drive," Fischer said. He clambered over the seat and got in front. Starting the motor, he turned left onto the rutted blacktop road.
Edith drew in sudden breath. "I wish I knew what to expect."
Fischer answered without looking back. "Expect anything," he said.
For the past five minutes Fischer had been inching the Cadillac along the narrow, fog-bound road. Now he braked and stopped the engine. "We're here." he said. He wrenched up the door handle and ducked outside, buttoning his Navy pea coat.
Edith turned as Lionel opened the door beside him. She waited as he struggled out, then edged across the seat after him. She shivered as she got out. "Cold," she said, "and that
smell
."
"Probably a swamp around here somewhere."
Florence joined them, and the four stood silent for a few moments, looking around.
"That way," Fischer said then. He was gazing across the hood of the car.
"Let's take a look," said Barrett. "We can get our luggage afterward." He turned to Fischer. "Would you lead?"
Fischer moved off.
They had gone only a few yards when they reached a narrow concrete bridge. As they walked across it, Edith looked over the edge. If there was water below, the mist obscured it from sight. She glanced back. Already the limousine was swallowed by fog.
"Don't fall in the tarn." Fischer's voice drifted back. Edith turned and saw a body of water ahead, a gravel path curving to its left. The surface of the water looked like clouded gelatin sprinkled with a thin debris of leaves and grass. A miasma of decay hovered above it, and the stones which lined its shore were green with slime.
"Now we know where the odor comes from," Barrett said. He shook his head. "Belasco
would
have a tarn."
"Bastard Bog," said Fischer.
"Why do you call it that?"
Fischer didn't answer. Finally he said, "I'll tell you later."
They walked in silence now, the only sound the crunching of gravel underneath their shoes. The cold was numbing, a clammy chill that seemed to dew itself around their bones. Edith drew up the collar of her coat and stayed close to Lionel, holding on to his arm and looking at the ground. Just behind them walked Florence Tanner.
When Lionel stopped at last, Edith looked up quickly.
It stood before them in the fog, a massive, looming specter of a house.
"
Hideous
," said Florence, sounding almost angry. Edith looked at her. "We haven't even gone inside, Miss Tanner," Barrett said.
"I don't have to go inside." Florence turned to Fischer, who was staring at the house. As she looked at him, he shuddered. Reaching out, she put her hand in his. He gripped it so hard it made her wince.
Barrett and Edith gazed up at the shrouded edifice. In the mist, it resembled some ghostly escarpment blocking their path. Edith leaned forward suddenly. "
It has no windows
," she said.
"He had them bricked up," Barrett said.
"Why?"
"I don't know. Perhaps-"
"We're wasting time," Fischer cut him off. He let go of Florence's hand and lurched forward.
They walked the final yards along the gravel path, then started up the wide porch steps. Edith saw that all the steps were cracked, fungus and frosted yellow grass sprouting from the fissures.
They stopped before the massive double doors.
"If they open by themselves, I'm going home," Edith said, trying to sound amused. Barrett gripped the handle on the door and depressed its thumb plate. The door held fast. He glanced at Fischer. "This happen to you?"
"More than once."
"Good we have the key, then." Barrett removed it from his overcoat pocket and slid it into the lock. It wouldn't turn. He wiggled the key back and forth, attempting to loosen the bolt.
Abruptly the key turned over, and the heavy door began to swing in. Edith twitched as Florence caught her breath. "What is it?" she asked. Florence shook her head. "No cause for alarm," Barrett said. Edith glanced at him in surprise.
"It's just reaction, Mrs. Barrett," Florence explained. "Your husband is quite right. It's nothing to be alarmed about."
Fischer had been reaching in to locate the light switch. Now he found it, and they heard him flick it up and down without result. "So much for restored electrical service," he said.
"Obviously the generator is too old," Barrett said.
"Generator?" Edith looked surprised again. "There's no electrical service here?"
"There aren't enough houses in the valley to make it worth the effort," Barrett answered.
"How could they put in a telephone, then?"
"It's a field telephone," Barrett said. He looked into the house. "Well, Mr. Deutsch will have to provide us with a new generator, that's all."
"You think that's the answer, do you?" Fischer sounded dubious.
"Of course," said Barrett. "The breakdown of an antique generator can scarcely be classified as a psychic phenomenon."
"What are we going to do?" asked Edith. "Stay in Caribou Falls until the new generator is installed?"
"That might take days," said Barrett. "We'll use candles until it arrives."
"Candles," Edith said.
Barrett smiled at her expression. "Just for a day or so."
She nodded, her returned smile wan. Barrett looked inside the house. "The question now," he said, "is how do we find some candles? I assume there must be some inside-" He broke off, looking at the flashlight Fischer had taken out of his coat pocket."
Ah
," he said.
Fischer switched on the flashlight, pointed the beam inside, then, bracing himself, stepped across the threshold.
Barrett went in next. He stepped through the doorway, seemed to listen briefly. Turning then, he extended his hand to Edith. She entered the house, clutching at his hand. "That
smell
," she said. "It's even worse than outside."
"It's a very old house with no aeration," Barrett said. "It could also be the furnace, which hasn't been used in more than twenty-nine years." He turned to Florence. "Coming, Miss Tanner?" he asked.
She nodded, smiling faintly. "Yes." She took a deep breath, held herself erect, and stepped inside. She looked around. "The
atmosphere
in here-" She sounded queasy.
"An atmosphere of this world, not the next," said Barrett dryly.
Fischer played the flashlight beam around the dark immensity of the entry hall. The narrow cone of light jumped fitfully from place to place, freezing momentarily on hulking groups of furniture; huge, leaden-colored paintings; giant tapestries filmed with dust; a staircase, broad and curving, leading upward into blackness; a second-story corridor overlooking the entry hall; and far above, engulfed by shadows, a vast expanse of paneled ceiling.
"Be it ever so humble," Barrett said.
"It isn't humble at all," said Florence. "It reeks of arrogance."
Barrett sighed. "It reeks, at any rate." He looked to his right. "According to the floor plan, the kitchen should be that way."
Edith walked beside him as they started across the entry hall, the sound of their footsteps loud on the hardwood floor.
Florence looked around. "It knows we're here," she said.
"Miss Tanner-" Barrett frowned. "Please don't think I'm trying to restrict you-"
"Sorry." Florence said. "I'll try to keep my observations to myself."
They reached a corridor and walked along it, Fischer in the lead, Barrett and Edith behind him, Florence last. At the end of the corridor stood a pair of metal-faced swinging doors. Fischer pushed one of them open and stepped into the kitchen, holding the door ajar for the others. When all of them had gone inside, he let the door swing back and turned.
"Good Lord." Edith's eyes moved with the flashlight beam as Fischer shifted it around the room.
The kitchen was twenty-five by fifty feet, its perimeter rimmed by steel counters and dark-paneled cupboards, a long, double-basin sink, a gigantic stove with three ovens, and a massive walk-in refrigerator. In the center of the room, like a giant's steel-topped casket, stood a huge steam table.
"He must have entertained a good deal," Edith said.
Fischer pointed the flashlight at the large electric wall clock above the stove. Its hands were stopped at 7:31. A.M. or P.M., and on what day? Barrett wondered as he limped along the wall to his right, pulling open drawers. Edith and Florence stood together, watching him. Barrett pulled open one of the cupboard doors and grunted as Fischer shone the light over. "Genuine spirits," he said, looking at the shelves of dust-filmed bottles. "Perhaps we'll raise some after supper."
Fischer pulled a sheet of yellow-edged cardboard from one of the drawers and pointed the flashlight at it.
"What's that?" Barrett asked.
"One of their menus, dated March 27, 1928. Shrimp bisque. Sweetbreads in gravy. Stewed capon. Bread sauce in gravy. Creamed cauliflower. For dessert,
amandes en crème
: crushed almonds in whipped egg whites and heavy cream."
Barrett chuckled. "His guests must have all had heartburn."
"The food wasn't aimed at their hearts," said Fischer, taking a box of candles from the drawer.