The House Read online

  The House

  Bentley Little

  Five complete strangers from across America are about to come together and open the door to a place of evil that they all call home. Inexplicably, four men and one woman are having heart-stopping nightmares revolving around the dark and forbidding houses where each of them were born. When recent terrifying events occur, they are each drawn to their identical childhood homes, only to confront a sinister supernatural presence which has pursued them all their lives, and is now closer than ever to capturing their souls....

  Amazon.com Review

  If you haven't had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Bentley Little, then The House will give you the perfect opportunity to get to know this fine sorcerer of horror. Haunted houses are an endless source of fascination for writers of the macabre--Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House and Henry James's classic The Turn of the Screw are excellent examples. But Bentley Little still manages to add something new to this well-trodden territory--and The House will scare your socks off.

  Five strangers simultaneously experience terrifying nightmares and strange hallucinations. These unnerving events reacquaint each of the individuals with a childhood they would rather forget and memories long repressed. It soon becomes apparent that each of these four men and one woman once lived in identical houses--right down to the arrangement of the furniture. Each character must return to that childhood home to confront the demons of the past and liberate their souls from the shackles of despair. Reading this battle of good versus evil is a nail-biting experience. For more of the same by this author, try The Store and The Ignored.

  The HOUSE

  Bentley Little

  A SIGNET BOOK

  Prologue

  California

  Teddy had lived in the airport for the past eight years.

  He knew it was a problem, knew it was a serious phobia, but he had not been able to venture outside the terminal in all that time. He could not remember exactly what had compelled him to seek refuge here, but it no longer mattered. This was his home, this was his world, and he was happy with it. He found money on the floor, in the coin returns of vending machines and pay phones; he begged for spare change when necessary; he bought his food in the snack bars and mini Pizza Huts and junior Burger Kings that made up the terminal's restaurant row. He purchased or shoplifted shorts and T-shirts from the gift shop. He read the magazines and newspapers that people left on chairs, the printed material they bought in order to waste time while waiting for their flights.

  The airport terminal was heated and air-conditioned, open twenty-four hours, and it was constantly filled with people, a broad cross section of society. He was never bored here. There was always someone to talk with, a lonely traveler or waiting relative, and he would strike up a conversation, absorb the distilled story of a person's life, make up some impressive lies about his own, and move on, a little richer for the encounter.

  He was a "people person," as they liked to say, and there was nothing he enjoyed more than meeting new people, making new friends, talking and listening, experiencing vicariously the life he had renounced.

  He kept himself well groomed, storing his clothes in a locker and changing each day, washing his laundry in a bathroom sink at night, drying everything with the wall mounted hand-dryers, giving himself sponge baths, washing and combing his hair with travelpak toiletries from the gift shop. Save for the times when he was compelled to ask for money, no one would ever mistake him for a homeless person, and while he had been here so long that he knew work schedules and shift changes, knew when security guards patrolled the airport and the routes they took, was able to easily avoid detection by airport personnel, he had still been seen often enough around the terminal that many of the store clerks, janitors, and other airport workers knew him, believed him to be a frequent flyer, and treated him with the utmost respect.

  But lately, he'd had the suspicion that he was not alone.

  Something was living in the airport with him.

  The idea chilled him to the bone. There was nothing concrete, no real proof, only a vague feeling that his living space was being invaded by another permanent resident, but that was enough to put him on edge.

  Something else was living here.

  Not someone.

  Something.

  He didn't know why he thought that, but he did, and it frightened him. He knew that he could, if necessary, leave the terminal, leave the airport, disappear into the chaotic bustle of Los Angeles, but he did not even consider that an option. Logically, intellectually, it made sense, but emotionally it was another story. Whether superstition or psychosis, he knew that he could never leave the terminal, and any plan that considered that a possibility was strictly off-limits.

  Which meant that he was stuck here.

  With whatever else lived in the airport.

  In the daytime, the idea didn't bother him. But at night, like now, when the crowds faded, when the lights were switched to half power, when the world outside turned black . . .

  He shivered.

  Last week, he had returned from the bathroom after a quick shampoo to his seat near the windowed east wall of the Delta wing, and his magazines had been moved.

  Not just moved. Tampered with. The page he'd marked in Newsweek had been ripped out, the Playboy he'd kept hidden between the other periodicals had been placed on top and opened to the centerfold, and his People magazine had been thrown on the floor.

  There'd been no one else in this wing of the terminal for the past hour and he'd seen no one on his way to or from the bathroom, but the proof was there, and he'd quickly gathered up his stuff and hurried back to a more populated section of the terminal.

  The next night, he'd had no magazines or newspapers with him and was about to settle down to a little nap when he saw, on the section of seats he'd chosen, an array of magazines spread out: Guns and Ammo, Hunting, American Hunter, Hunter and Prey. On the carpeted floor in front of the seats, drawn with spilled cherryIcee, was the outline of a bloody claw and, next to that, a toothy smile.

  It was hunting him.

  It had been a warning, Teddy thought. Or a game being played with him. Either way, he didn't like it, and he quickly gathered together today's belongings as he suddenly noticed that this area of the terminal was emptying out and that outside night had already fallen. He saw himself reflected in the huge window that faced the runway, a ghost against the blackness, and the insubstantiality of his form made him nervous, made him feel as though he'd already died.

  He quickly headed back toward the shops. Ever since the warning, he'd stayed near people, stayed near the light. Security guards had looked at him suspiciously several times, and he realized that he was in danger of giving himself away, of breaking cover, but he could not help it. He was afraid to be alone.

  Afraid of what might find him.

  Afraid of what it might do to him.

  He looked behind him as he walked. At the far end of the darkened wing, by the empty lounge and boarding area that had once been occupied by Pan Am, he saw a jet-black shadow, a shifting amorphous shape that fluttered from an unused flight desk down the corridor to the seat where he'd been sitting.

  He started running. Sweat was pouring down his face and his heart was pounding crazily. He was gripped by the absurd but unshakable notion that the shadow, the creature, the monster, the whatever-it-was, had seen him and was chasing after him and was going to down him and devour him in front of the snack bar.

  But he reached the snack bar with no problem, saw a security guard and a cashier, a businessman reading a newspaper at a small table, a young couple trying to soothe a crying baby, and when he looked back toward the darkened wing he saw nothing out of the ordinary.

  Breathing heavily, still shaking, he
walked into the snack bar. He was aware of how he looked and when he walked up to the cashier, asked for a cup of water, wiped the sweat from his forehead, and saw the look she shot the security guard, he immediately dug through his pocket for spare change and amended his order to a small coffee.

  He didn't really want coffee, but he wanted to sit down and get his equilibrium back, wanted to be near other people, and he thanked the cashier and grabbed a seat near the pile of luncheon trays at the back of the small eating area.

  What the hell was going on? Was he going crazy?

  Possibly. He knew he wasn't the most normal person in the world to begin with. But he didn't think he was hallucinating here, didn't think he was suffering from delusions. Something had tampered with his magazines, something had drawn thatIcee picture.

  And he had seen that black shadow shape.

  He glanced up from the Formica table. The security guard was still looking at him, and he thought that he should check himself out in a mirror to make sure his appearance was presentable. He couldn't afford to destroy his entire life, to blow almost a decade's worth of clean responsible living simply because he was frightened.

  Because something was hunting him.

  There were rest rooms adjacent to the snack bar, and he left his newspaper, briefcase, and coffee on the table as he walked over to the men's room.

  "Could you watch my stuff?" he called to the cashier.

  He put on his best Important Traveler voice, and she smiled at him and nodded. "Sure."

  "Thanks."

  He felt a little better. His disguise was in place and he was safely ensconced here with other people. He walked into the bathroom, looked at himself in the mirror.

  He hadn't shaved yet today and was starting to look a little raggedy, but his sweat-clumped hair was the main problem, and he took out a comb, held it under the faucet and ran it through his hair.

  Much better.

  He realized suddenly that he had to take a whiz, and he walked over to the closest urinal, unzipping his pants --and saw out of the corner of his eye a fluttering black shape.

  It was there for only a second, in one of the mirrors, and he whirled around, already zipping up, his mouth suddenly dry, his heart once again pounding.

  A cold hand touched his shoulder.

  "No!" he screamed, jerking around.

  But there was nothing there.

  He ran out of the rest room as fast as he could.

  Wyoming It was an omen, her mother would have said, and Patty was not so sure she disagreed. Hube would laugh at her if she told him that, would make fun of her and her mother and her entire family, would tell her to move into the twentieth century, but Hube didn't know as much as he thought he did. There were a lot of things science could explain, but there were a lot of things it couldn't, and Patty wasn't so close-minded that she automatically dismissed anything that didn't agree with her preconceived notions.

  She stared at the crow sitting atop the garbage can.

  The crow stared back at her, blinked.

  It had been there when she'd come out to hang the wash on the line, the biggest crow she'd ever seen, and it had not flown away as she walked past it but had sat and watched her as she hung up the underwear and the socks and the towels. She'd told it to shoo, had stomped her foot and made threatening movements, but the crow had not been afraid. It seemed to know that she wouldn't hurt it, and it seemed to have its own agenda.

  It wasn't going to leave until it did what it had come here to do.

  Just what that was, Patty didn't know, but she couldn't help thinking that the black bird was trying to warn her, that it had been sent here for a purpose, in order to tell her something, and it was up to her to figure out exactly what that was.

  She wished her mother were here.

  Patty stared at the crow for a few moments longer, then walked past it, into the house. She'd call her mother. That's what she'd do. She'd describe the crow, spell out the precise chain of events, and see if her mother could figure it out.

  The crow cawed once as she entered the house. Twice more at the precise second she picked up the kitchen phone to dial.

  She wished Hube were here as well. He might have some smart answer for why the crow's cries were timed so specifically to her movements, but she doubted that even he could fail to notice the correlation.

  The line was busy, and she heard one more quick caw as she hung up the receiver. She opened the back door to check on the crow once again, but it was gone. She walked outside, hurried around the house, but it was nowhere to be seen. Not on the roof, not on the porch, not on the ground or any of the trees. She didn't even see any birds in the sky. It was as if it had just disappeared.

  She walked up the front steps of the house and turned for a moment to look at the view. She could see the Tetons, rising grandly up, the permanent snowcaps blending in with today's white ceiling of autumn sky.

  Directly before her, on the other side of the pasture, the overgrown meadow, its grass brown and dry, sloped up and away from their ranch, the end of the meadow indistinguishable from the beginning of the foothills.

  She looked to her right, past the garage at the side of the house, but saw no dust trail clouding up the road.

  She wished Hube would hurry up and get back. He was supposed to have gone into town for coffee and bread flour, but it seemed like he'd been away for far too long. She hoped the truck hadn't had engine trouble again. The last thing they needed was another mechanic's bill. They were still paying off the water pump from July. They couldn't afford to have anything else go wrong. Not with winter coming on.

  Patty walked into the house, automatically stomping her feet on the outside of the doorsill though she hadn't walked through any mud. She reached for the living room phone on the small oak table next to the couch and was about to dial her mother's number once again when out of the corner of her eye, through the mesh of the screen, she saw movement outside. She stopped, slowly put the receiver back in its cradle, and walked back over to the doorway.

  She could see them coming from the mountains. Dozens of them. It looked like a small army, speeding down the side of the hill toward the sloping meadow.

  A small army.

  For the runners were all the size of children. She could see that even from here. Only they weren't children.

  Something about the build of their bodies, the way they moved, indicated to her that they were older than that.

  Much older.

  They reached the high grass and leaped into it, and then she could see only the movement of the grass stalks, what looked like a narrow band of wind whipping through the center of the meadow.

  What were they? Leprechauns? Elves? Something supernatural.

  Not dwarves or midgets or children. Even from this far away, their strangeness, their otherness, was apparent. They were not human.

  She watched the grass whip back and forth, the narrow stream of movement heading straight toward the ranch. She stood her ground, not moving, and she realized that she was not as afraid as she should have been.

  But that changed.

  The grass in front of the pasture began to thrash wildly and then they emerged into the open, clutching weapons made of baseball bats and animal skulls, horseshoes and bones. They were made up like clowns: red noses, white faces, colored lips, and rainbow hair.

  Only she wasn't sure it was makeup.

  They kept streaming into the pasture from the tall grass. Five of them. Ten. Fifteen. Twenty. Nothing slowed them down, and their stubby legs pumped for all they were worth, carrying them around the clump of boulders in the center of the pasture, jumping over the small fenceHube had built for the cows. They were accompanied by what looked like a swarm of insects.

  Bees, maybe. Or beetles.

  Patty closed the front door, locked it. But she knew, even as she did so, that she would not be safe in the house. Her only hope was to run, to get out before they overran her home and hope that it slowed them down enough to l
et her escape. She had no idea what they were or what they wanted, but she knew it was not good, and she could not believe she'd been so stupid as to just stand there and watch them approach when she could have been fleeing.

  This was what the crow's appearance had foretold, she knew. The crow had been an omen, a warning, and she probably would have known that if she'd paid a little more attention to her mother growing up and a little less attention to boys.

  A judgmental review of her entire life passed through her mind as she ran through the house and out the back door, locking it behind her. A critique of her faults and shortcomings, an analysis in hindsight of her mistakes and misjudgments. The thrust of it all seemed to be that she could have avoided finding herself in this predicament if she'd done things differently, but she did not really believe that to be the case.

  She could not hope to outrun them. She knew that.

  So she ran toward the barn, thinking that if she could get to the old root cellar and lock it from the inside, she might be able to survive. The house was between her and the creatures and she was counting on it to hide her movements, to shield her whereabouts, at least until she could get into the cellar, but even before she reached the barn she heard the rattle of bones behind her.

  Grunts and the sharp exhalation of breath. She looked over her shoulder as she ran and they were upon her, moving faster than humanly possible, streaming around the house, over the dirt. Tiny hands grabbed her upper thighs, reached between her legs to pull at her crotch.

  They were already swarming past her, around her, and even as the hands on her legs yanked her down, she was tripping over the ones in front. One, the leader apparently, stood on the stump to the right of the clothesline, jumping up and down and shaking what looked like a maraca made from the skull of a rat.

  The creatures were even smaller than she'd originally thought, two feet high at the most, but they were powerfully built and they all had weapons and there were far too many of them. They rolled her over, onto her back, and one held each side of her head. Two took her left arm, two her right, two more each foot, spreading her limbs.