Hellfire

could make up her mind, she had blurted out the truth.

“It was Mom. We were hiking, and all of a sudden she fainted. She … she’s going to have a baby!”

There was a momentary silence, and then Alan said quietly, “Well, how about that. You finally get your wish.”

They were at the bottom of the stairs now, and he switched off the flashlight. In the dim light that filtered down the stairwell, he looked into his daughter’s face. But instead of the happiness he had been expecting to see, there was something else. “Hey! You always wanted a baby brother or sister. Aren’t you happy about your mom being pregnant?”

Beth hesitated, then seemed to come out of a reverie. But when she spoke, she wasn’t looking at him. Instead, her eyes were fixed on a spot somewhere in the darkness beneath the stairs. “I … I guess I’m glad,” she said, but Alan was sure she wasn’t thinking about what she was saying.

“Beth?” he asked now. “Honey, what is it? Is something wrong?”

Beth shook her head uncertainly. “I don’t know. I just — I thought I heard something—”

“Down here?” Alan started up the stairs, and Beth, almost reluctantly, followed.

“Unh-hunh. It was like a … a voice. Only not really, you know?”

“No,” Alan chuckled. “I don’t know. It was probably just a mouse or something.”

Beth stopped, shaking her head, and turned back to peer once again down into the darkness of the basement.

And then, barely audible, she could hear it again.

A chill passed through her, and she concentrated, straining her ears.

“Don’t you hear it, Daddy?” she asked. “Don’t you hear it at all?”

Alan paused, and turned back.

For the last hour, he’d heard all kinds of noises in the basement of the mill.

Rats had scrambled out of his way as he’d poked around the foundations of the building, and at least once a snake had slithered over his hand. That time, he’d clearly heard his own muffled yelp of sudden fright.

Now he listened again, but there was nothing. “Sorry, hon. I don’t hear a thing.”

But still Beth hesitated, frowning deeply.

It had been there. She knew it had.

It was a voice, and it was calling out to her.

Why couldn’t her father hear it?

And then, slowly, she realized what the answer was.

He couldn’t hear it, because he wasn’t supposed to.

The voice was calling out only to her.

A chill passed through her, and her skin suddenly felt as if something were crawling over it.

She knew she was right.

In the darkness of the basement, something had reached out and touched her.

Something in the blackness wanted her.

She had no idea what was in the basement, and part of her hoped never to find out. But another part of her felt a faint twinge of curiosity. That part of her, indeed, wanted to go back, wanted to plunge back into the darkness, and discover what was there.

She hesitated, struggling with that part of her that wanted to go back into the blackness. But the moment was gone. Her father had already turned away, going on up the stairs.

She followed him, her feet carrying her slowly, for the memory of what had happened filled her mind.

There was something there, something that wanted her.

Something that chilled her to the depths of her soul.

She hurried up the stairs after her father, catching up with him halfway across the great empty building.

“Take a good look at it,” she heard him say just before they stepped out into the sunlight. “It won’t look like this much longer.”

Beth looked up at her father. “It won’t? How come?”

Alan grinned happily. “You mean your mom didn’t tell you?”

Beth frowned. “Tell me what?”

“We’re going to reopen this place. Starting tomorrow, I’m going to begin partitioning it off, and putting in skylights, and sandblasting it, and by the end of the summer, it’s going to be open and functioning again. We’re turning it into a shopping mall.”

Beth turned and stared back into the gloomy depths of the building.

She tried to picture the dark, cavernous mill as her father had just described it, but she couldn’t.

Instead, her mind filled with the voice she had heard in the basement, and from deep in some part of her being she could not identify, a terrible knowledge surfaced. It was then Beth knew that what her father was saying was wrong.

They mustn’t change the mill. Not ever.

For some reason she didn’t yet understand, the mill should stay just as it was.

Abandoned, and empty.

But it wasn’t empty, not really.

In the basement, somewhere under the stairs, something lived.

7

“I’m fine,” Carolyn Sturgess insisted, gazing at her husband fondly, but with just a touch of annoyance. “This is all a bit ridiculous.”

Phillip merely leaned down to adjust one of the pillows, and brushed her forehead with his lips. “It’s not ridiculous. You heard what Dr. Blanchard said.”

“Of course I heard what he said,” Carolyn groused. “He said I should take it easy, which I fully intend to do. And I’m perfectly willing to admit that I probably shouldn’t have gone blundering through the underbrush, given my condition. But I didn’t know about my condition, did I?”

“No, you didn’t,” Phillip agreed. “But now you do, and I intend to see to it that you don’t go against doctor’s orders.”

Carolyn glanced around the big bedroom, and fleetingly wondered if Phillip really intended her simply to lie here for the next seven months, forcing Hannah to carry her meals up the stairs three times a day. But of course, she realized, he wouldn’t intend that at all.

He’d bring the meals himself.

And an ambulance to bring her home from the hospital. That, too, was just like Phillip.

She’d felt perfectly capable of walking out of the hospital, getting into the car, and driving herself home, but Phillip had insisted on a wheelchair and an ambulance, and it had been easier to give in than to argue with him.

Once they’d arrived at Hilltop, though, she’d wished she had argued, for there was Alan, just leaving the house after driving Beth home. The look of concern on his face when he’d first seen her had quickly given way to amusement, and she’d waited for him to make some allusion to Camille or Wuthering Heights. The fact that he’d confined himself to an arched eyebrow hadn’t made her feel any less foolish.

Now, she looked up at Phillip and shook her head. “I won’t do it, you know. You can’t stand guard over me through an entire pregnancy, and as soon as your back is turned, I’ll be up and about my business. All that happened was that I fainted. Even Dr. Blanchard didn’t think I was in any danger of losing the baby.”

“We’re not going to take any chances—” Phillip protested, but Carolyn didn’t let him finish.

“I don’t intend to take any chances,” she insisted. “If I’d known I was pregnant, I wouldn’t have gone with