A Family Affair: A Novel of Horror (13 page)

Oblivious to where she was going, Jennifer ran in panic, crashing through the brush, stumbling and rushing. Her heart pounded in her chest, her breath came in short, uneven gasps. I'm too weak for this, she thought frantically. I can't go on.

With a small groan she fell face downward upon the ground, gasping for breath. Her legs simply would not carry her any farther. Her body refused to obey her commands to flee.

Let them kill me, she thought. I haven't the strength left to fight back.

“Jennifer.”

For a moment she lay with her face in the grass, trying to breathe.

“Jennifer,” the voice said again, and this time she recognized the voice. She looked up.

Marcella stood over her, staring down. Marcella. Had it been Marcella following her? She was afraid to ask. She had once again that feeling of being in a nightmare from which she must soon awaken.

She began to cry. She tried to get up, but she was too weak.

“Are you all right?” Marcella asked, kneeling beside her.

“Please,” Jennifer begged in a whisper. “Help me back to the house.”

A moment ago, she thought, I was begging to leave this place. And now I want to be back in Kelsey House. I too am possessed; possessed not by demons, but by the evil spirit of that house.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

It was the next day. At l
east, it seemed so to her, although her sense of time had long since abandoned her. Her fever had returned, but despite this fact, she was amazed to discover that she felt progressively stronger. Aside from her lightheadedness, she felt better than she had in several days.

But that, she reminded herself, could be a delusion. One thing was abundantly clear to her. Food or no food, assistance or no assistance, if she was to escape from Kelsey House it must be now, at once. Another day, another hour even, might be too much.

How long could a person survive without food, she wondered.

“How long,” she asked aloud, “have I been in this house?” She did not know the answer to either question.

There was still one avenue of escape left open to her; she had remembered it upon waking. Still one route left unexplored.

There was a path behind the house, a path that
wound
its way from the house up over a hill. A path must go somewhere. Paths did not just appear, they were formed, formed by people coming and going somewhere. She would go wherever that somewhere was. There was still the question of how far she could go without food, but she did feel stronger, and there was always the possibility that she would find another house quite nearby. It would be ironic if, all this time, there were another house just over that little hill.

Again she ignored Aunt Christine's summons at her door, and waited until she thought the family would be at breakfast. This time she did not want to see any of them, not even Marcella. There was no longer any hope left in her that she could obtain any help from any of them. Marcella, Wilfred, perhaps even Mr. Kelsey—any of them might have helped her, but there was something that held them in check. She did not know what it was; something about the house, perhaps, some unknown power that was stronger than their sympathy for her. She had felt it herself, a paralyzing fear, an unseen presence that was always near, ever dangerous. It seemed a part of Kelsey House itself.

Well, she would not be paralyzed today. With quiet determination she stole from her room and from the house. This time she was in no danger of getting lost. She knew just where she was going and, in the beginning at least, she was on familiar ground. She could move quickly, following the path around the corner of the house, into the thick growth at the side. She made her way carefully along the length of the building, never straying from the wall.

She came to the rear of the house, and paused when she reached the steps descending into the cellar of the house. Was this after all what she had been seeking? Was it possible that the kitchens they used for food preparation, and the food itself, were in the cellars? It could be only another blind alley; but the possibility was too strong to pass by without investigating.

She went down the steps slowly to the battered wooden doors. They sat at an angle, not quite horizontal in front of her. She hesitated and then reached for the handles. The doors were unlocked, and she swung them cautiously outward, half expecting cries of surprise from within. The doors moved slowly, laboriously on rusted hinges, and the only sound was the squeak of the hinges. Before her was a dark, musty interior into which the light penetrated but faintly.

“If only I had a flashlight,” she thought, gazing down into that blackness. She smiled ruefully, as her own words came back to her. If she were wishing, there was a long list of things she could wish for.

It was impossible to tell what that darkness concealed. Frightened, she took a step inside.

Something moved, off to her right. Someone was hiding here, waiting for her. Or perhaps not waiting. Perhaps this was after all what she had been seeking, and they meant to frighten her away before she could confirm that fact.

I will not run away, she promised herself. I will not let them scare me again.

She took another step, and again something moved. This time it dashed out to scurry across her foot.

A rat! She shuddered with disgust, turning to run up the stairs, back into the daylight. She did not bother to close the door after herself. There was nothing there, she was sure of it. The cellar had that air of emptiness about it that she had learned to identify at Kelsey. It was better to save her strength, and her time; she would need them to make good her escape.

She came to the path; for a time she had even doubted that it would still exist. She had been half afraid that she would find that it too had vanished, that it was only something she had imagined. But it was there, inviting her up the hill.

Panting from exertion and from excitement she made her way up the hill. The path was faint in a few places, but for the most part it was easy to follow, circling about the worst of the growth.

She rounded a clump of bushes and there before her was a cemetery. It was small and old, surrounded by a wooden fence that was too low to do much more than indicate the area. It appeared to be a family plot. Jennifer paused for several seconds, curious despite her eagerness to be on. A huge elm tree shaded the place from the morning sun. The stones all of them apparently old, were haphazardly tilted, and some had fallen to the ground, victims of years of weather and neglect. The place looked little cared for, and quite desolate.

She felt an urge to look at the stones, to learn some little thing about the house and the family. She knew so little; and here was, in a sense, the family history before her. It was strange, the people in Kelsey House were the only family that she had and yet for all the time she had been here she knew no more about them than when she had first come, except that they were strange and dangerous. But there must be more to them than that. Perhaps here would be some clue to explain their behavior, to make them less bewildering to her.

She shook her head resolutely. No, this was not the time for studying family history. Fascinating though the graveyard was, it would not be of any help to her in her plan to escape. And that was where her interest lay now.

The graveyard was, she noticed, where the path led. The trail she had been following stopped at the gate in the low wooden fence.

She looked about, uncertain. She was above the house now, out of sight of it, and the hill still rose above her. Path or not, the way was open, deep with weeds but free from trees and the dense growth nearer the house. Even without the path she could not get lost here. She decided to go on to the top of the hill.

She walked more rapidly now, making her way through the tall weeds that surrounded her and finally coming over the crest of the hill. Below her was a hollow, still weedy but open and rolling; and beyond that, the woods again, standing like an ominous wall that separated Kelsey from the world beyond.

She walked more slowly, down into the hollow and then
up again, although not so sharply, until she stood at the edge of the woods, the trees not so much like trees as like dark angels, hovering over her, watching her. Here she stopped. Should she go on, commit herself to the woods and hope that she found her way through them, or perhaps follow their border as far as possible?

She was still standing, undecided, when she heard the voices. At first she thought that the occupants of Kelsey House had come after her to carry her back. She had an urge to run, to hide herself in the darkness of the woods.

But it was not them at all. Two men emerged from the woods. They were hunters, judging from the bright plaid of their jackets. Sunlight gleamed on the barrel of the rifle as they made their way nearer, following the edge of the woods.

Strangers! Outsiders! With a cry of delight she started toward them, running as fast as her weak legs would carry her. She was saved at last. The thought echoed thunderously through her brain.

They saw her when she began to run, and stopped, watching her approach. She saw them exchange glances. Their guns were tilted down toward the ground. She thought their expressions, as they watched her approach, were strange, puzzled and even a little afraid.

There was nothing for them to be afraid of, after all. But she could not help realizing, as she ran up to them, how silly the entire scene was. The logical thing to do, the thing she had an impulse to do, was to run up to them and throw herself into their arms, but somehow she could not quite picture herself doing anything so, so emotional.

Anyway, they were not holding their arms open to her. They were just standing there, staring at her in that funny way. She stopped a few feet from them, panting from the effort of running, and swayed weakly back and forth.

“Thank God you've found me,” she cried breathlessly.

“Were you lost?” One of the men asked. They were older men, although nowhere near as old as Mr. Kelsey, or Wilfred. One, the one who had spoken, was gray haired, handsome in a tall gaunt way; the other was plump and had a cherubic face, round and pink.

“Yes,” she said, and then, “No.” She really wasn't lost this time, but how did she go about explaining that. “I've been down there, in the house. They've kept me a prisoner for days.”

They followed the direction of her pointing finger and looked back at her doubtfully. But of course, she realized, they couldn't see anything from here. Kelsey House was out of sight behind the hill.

“Kelsey House,” she explained, her voice rising a little. “My aunts have kept me there without any food. I've been sick, and I...I have a fever, and they took my purse....”

She was babbling rather hysterically, and she knew it, but strangely she could not make herself stop. If only they would not stare at her in that peculiar way, as though they were frightened of her. Frightened of her, for Heaven's sake? What did they think she could do?

“Kelsey House?” the short plump one repeated. “Never heard of any Kelseys around here.”

“There were, Pete,” the other one said. He was speaking without looking at Jennifer. “There's a graveyard down the woods a ways.”

“The graveyard, yes,” she exclaimed. At least this one knew the area. “And the house, Kelsey House.”

“The house burned down thirty years ago, as I remember it,” he said.

Pete, the one with the pink face, said, “Oh Lord, is that where we are?”

Burned down, Jennifer was thinking. Yes, Aunt Christine had mentioned the fire. But surely this man must know that the house was rebuilt

“The Kelseys have been around here for years,” she insisted, a sense of helplessness welling up within her. They acted like they didn't believe her, like they didn't want to help her.

“I grew up around here, lady,” the tall man argued,
watching her intently, “and I haven't known of any Kelseys around here since I was a kid.”

“Then your memory is very bad,” she snapped. “The house is just over the hill there.”

“Nearest place around here is Sam Williams,” the one called Pete said. “About ten miles over the hollow.”

Jennifer lifted a hand to her throat. Had she escaped one band of lunatics only to find another? Or was she truly out of her mind?

“Please,” she said desperately. “I've been a prisoner there, I know it exists, it's as real as I am.”

The tall one seemed the most sympathetic. It was he who said, “Look, I'll tell you what. You say the house is just over that hill?”

Jennifer nodded.

“All right. We'll go up the hill and have a look.”

“Ben, I don't know,” the other one started to object, but Ben silenced him with a gesture.

“Only take a minute,” he said decisively.

“I'll come with you,” Jennifer said.

“No.” His answer was quick and sharp. “You stay here. Why don't you sit down on that log there and rest, and we'll go see if we see this house you're talking about.”

“Well of course you'll see it,” she said petulantly. “It's there.” But she did as he said, and went to the fallen log and seated herself. She was tired, and wanted to get her breath back, and if it was necessary to humor them for a few minutes, she was willing to do so. She had been humoring her “family” for days now. She had been humoring people all her life. Two minutes more couldn't matter very much.

They went up the hill. She could see them whispering to one another earnestly. It annoyed her. They were like schoolboys. They were being difficult. She would be patient.

They walked more rapidly than she had done. They came to the top of the hill. She saw them turning their heads, looking from right to left.

Now it will be over, she thought. They will come back for me, and take me away from here, and it will all be over. She closed her eyes for a moment, so tired that her head seemed to be spinning.

She opened her eyes and saw that they were still at the top of the hill. They were talking to one another, and looking back at her. They looked anxious.

The tall one called, “Look, you just stay there, okay?”

She stood up, frightened by something in their manner. “You see it, don't you?” she called back, her voice echoing through the hollow. “You see Kelsey House?”

The pause before he answered was long. “Yes, sure,” he yelled a minute later. “Look, you stay there, we'll be right back.”