Free Hell House by Richard Matheson Page A

started back along the pool edge. It was imagination, Edith thought. She repressed a smile Who ever heard of a ghost in a steam room?
    7:33 A.M.
    Florence knocked softly on the door to Fischer's room. When there was no answer, she knocked again. "Ben?" she called.
    He was sitting up in bed, eyes closed, head leaning back against the wall. On the table to his right, his candle was almost guttered. Florence drifted across the room, protecting the flame of her candle with an upraised hand. Poor man, she thought, stopping by the bed. His face was drawn and pale. She wondered when he'd gotten to sleep. Benjamin Franklin Fischer: the greatest American physical medium of the century. His sittings in Professor Galbreath's house at Marks College had been the most incredible display of power since the heyday of Home and Palladino. She shook her head with pity. Now he was emotionally crippled, a latter-day Samson, selfshorn of might.
    She returned to the corridor and shut the door as quietly as possible. She looked toward the door to Belasco's room. She and Fischer had gone there yesterday afternoon, but its atmosphere had been curiously flat, not at all what she'd expected.
    She crossed the corridor and entered it again. It was the only duplex apartment in the house, its sitting room and bath located on the lower level, its bedroom on a balcony reached by a curved stairway. Florence moved to it and ascended the steps.

21
    The bed had been constructed in seventeenth-century French style, its intricately carved columns as thick as telephone poles, the initials "E. B." carved in the center of the headboard. Sitting down on it, Florence closed her eyes and opened herself to impressions, wanting to verify that it had not been Belasco in her room the night before. She released her mind as much as possible without going into a trance.
    A tumble of images began to cross her consciousness. The room at night, lamps burning. Someone lying on the bed. A figure chuckling. Lucid, staring eyes. A calendar for 1921. A man in black. A smell of pungent incense in her nostrils. A man and woman on the bed. A painting. A cursing voice. A wine bottle hurled against the wall. A sobbing woman flung across the balcony rail. Blood oozing on the teakwood floor. A photograph. A crib. New York. A calendar for 1903. A pregnant woman.
    The birth of a child; a boy.
    Florence opened her eyes. "Yes." She nodded. " Yes ."
    She went down the stairs and left the room. A minute later, she was entering the dining hall, where Barrett and his wife were breakfasting.
    "Ah, good, you're up," Barrett said. "Breakfast just arrived."
    Florence sat at the table and served herself a small portion of scrambled eggs, a piece of toast; she wouldn't be sitting until later in the day, since they had to wait for a cabinet to be built. She exchanged a few remarks with Mrs. Barrett, answered Barrett's questions by saying that she felt it would be better to let Fischer sleep than wake him up, then, finally, said, "I think I have a partial answer to the haunting of the house."
    "Oh?" Barrett looked at her with interest that was clearly more polite than genuine.
    "That voice warning us. That pounding on the table. The personality that approached me in my room last night. A young man."
    "Who?" asked Barrett.
    "Belasco's son."
    They looked at her in silence.
    "You recall that Mr. Fischer mentioned him."
    "But didn't he say that no one was sure whether Belasco had a son or not?" Barrett said.
    Florence nodded. "But he did. He's here now, suffering, tormented. He must have gone into spirit at an early age— just past twenty, I feel. He's very young and very frightened— and, because he's frightened, very angry, very hostile. I believe if we can convince him to go on, a portion of the haunting force will be eliminated."
    Barrett nodded. Don't believe a word of it, he thought. "That's very interesting."
    Florence thought, I know he doesn't believe me, but it's better that I tell him what I