The House Read online

  Tony cowered before him. "You don't have to go crazy."

  He was a little more out of control than he should be, more adamant than he wanted, and he tried to calm down. "I specifically told you--"

  "Mom!"

  Daniel turned to see Margot standing in the doorway.

  She hadn't known about the doll. There was a split second expression of surprise upon her face, then what looked like fear crossed her features as her gaze passed over the figure. Her eyes met Daniel's, and the two of them exchanged a wordless understanding.

  Margot stepped into the room, her face set. "Your father told you not to make another one of those dolls."

  "It's not a doll!"

  "You purposely disobeyed him."

  "But, Mom!"

  "No 'buts,' " Daniel said. He was still holding the doll in his hand, but he wanted to drop it, get rid of it. The irrational fear that it would come to life and suddenly attack him, biting his face with its newsprint mouth, had come over him and refused to be dislodged from his brain. He could not let his son see that he was afraid of the figure, though, and he shook it again at the boy.

  "You're grounded for a week. And if I ever catch you doing this again, you're going to be in big, big trouble."

  Margot looked at him again, her eyes worried, before turning once more toward Tony. "Why is this thing so important to you? Why are you doing this?"

  Tony stared down at his shoes. "Nothing," he said.

  "The answer to 'why?' is never 'nothing.' "

  "I don't know."

  "Look at me, young man." He glanced up at his mother. "There's something going on here that you're not telling us."

  "I'm sorry. I won't do it again."

  "What is the big deal about this doll?"

  "It's not--"

  "It's a doll," she said flatly.

  "Where did you learn how to make it?" Daniel asked.

  "Doneen," Tony said reluctantly. "Doneen taught me how to do it."

  Doneen?

  Margot's expression was blank. She'd obviously never heard of anyone named Doneen .

  But he had.

  In the House.

  "Who's Doneen ?" he asked.

  "A new girl. She lives over on Edgecomb ."

  "When did you meet her?" Margot asked. "And why haven't you said anything to us about her?"

  Tony shrugged uncomfortably.

  "Is she in your class?"

  "Not exactly."

  Daniel felt cold. "You can't see her anymore," he said. "You understand me?"

  "Why not?"

  "I don't want you to."

  "She's a nice girl."

  "I don't care."

  "Her dad said he wanted to talk to you."

  "Her dad?"

  "Mr. Billingsly ."

  The coldness intensified.

  Billingsly.

  He'd heard that name before, too.

  Daniel dropped the doll in the trash can, wary of holding on to it any longer. He'd pick it up later and make sure it was destroyed. He sat down on the bed next to Tony, putting an arm around his son's shoulders.

  "Look," he said. "Whether you believe it or not, we're doing this for your own good."

  "But--"

  Daniel held up his hand. "Let me finish. I'll go talk to this Mr. Billingsly tomorrow, but until your mother or I tell you otherwise, you are not to see this girl Do neen and you are not to make any more dolls."

  Tony stared up at him. There was no duplicity in the boy's eyes, no indication that he was lying or intentionally trying to deceive them. Daniel had the feeling that his son didn't really know why the doll was so important to him or why he was so compelled to work on the object.

  He found that frightening.

  His anger had abated somewhat, and for the first time he saw both himself and Tony as pawns, small players in a much larger game. He had no clue as to what that game was or who was playing it or what its purpose might be, but he was determined to find out before anything happened to his family.

  He glanced up at Margot, saw both concern and confusion in her eyes.

  "I'm sorry," Tony said.

  "You're off the hook this time," Daniel told him.

  "Just don't let it happen again."

  They lay in bed, reading their respective magazines.

  Or pretending to. The television murmured softly in the background.

  Margot put down her Time and shifted in the bed, turning toward Daniel. "I'm scared," she said.

  He wrapped a protective arm around her shoulder.

  "I thought you were overreacting about Tony's . . .

  'project.' I'm sorry I didn't back you up. I didn't realize it was this obsession with him."

  "At least it's not drugs."

  "I almost wish it were," she said softly. "At least we'd know how to deal with it."

  "You don't mean that," Daniel said.

  She sighed. "I suppose not. But it's not normal, his fixation on making this doll. It's like he has to do it, like he's driven to do it. And he has to use exactly the same things to make it with." She twisted her neck to meet his eyes. "And what's with this girl and her father?"

  "I don't know."

  "The father of the girl who taught him to make this doll wants to meet you? What's that all about?"

  He shook his head, hoping his face didn't betray the unease he felt.

  Margot's voice was flat. "Maybe he's involved in a cult," she said. "Maybe he's turning into one of those suburban kids who are into devil worship."

  "I don't think so."

  "What is it then?" Margot asked.

  It was his chance to come clean, to tell her about the shadow and what he remembered about the House, what he thought and what he suspected, everything. But he wanted to protect her, didn't want her involved.

  "I don't know," he said.

  Doneen and Billingsly .

  Daniel started the car, turned on the windshield wipers.

  The names were connected in his mind with the House, but he could not recall their origins or put a face to either of them. He'd heard the names before, though.

  Of that he was sure, and he pulled out of the driveway and drove around the block to Edgecomb Avenue.

  The rain had abated during the night, but it had started up again a half hour ago, and he drove slowly through the puddle at the intersection, careful not to splash a pair of raincoated kids waiting on the sidewalk to cross.

  Tony had stuck to his story about the girl and her father, had insisted that Mr. Billingsly wanted to talk to him, but it was obvious that his son did not want him to go over and meet either of them. He was purposely vague about which house the Billingslys lived in, and he kept insisting that it was over, he'd learned his lesson, he'd never make another doll again.

  Something was going on here.

  Daniel vowed that he'd find the Billingslys if he had to knock on every door and ask every single person in every single house on Edgecomb .

  He parked at the end of the street and got out of the car, opening his umbrella. The rain was back down to a drizzle. Daniel was grateful for that, and he hopped over the running gutter onto the sidewalk. He felt a little strange walking up to the door of the first house, a little foolish, but by the time he reached the fifth house, he had his spiel down pat and his embarrassment had given way to uneasiness.

  Before he'd finished with the first side of the street, he knew the truth.

  There was no one named Billingsly living on Edgecomb .

  No one had seen or heard of a girl named Doneen .

  He went up the opposite side of the street just in case, but the result was the same. Neither adult nor child knew anything about Tony's mysterious acquaintances.

  Daniel got back into the car and sat for a moment behind the steering wheel, staring out the windshield at the rainy street.

  What bothered him the most was that he knew his son was not lying. Doneen was not simply a made-up person or a figment of Tony's imagination. She and her father we
re real. Or, rather, Tony had really met them.

  How did he know that? How could he be so sure?

  Because he'd met them himself as a child.

  There it was again, on the tip of his consciousness, just that side of recollection. He knew he'd met them but could not recall any specifics. He tried not to derail this train of thought, tried to keep his mind on that narrow track, but other thoughts intruded, expanding his concentration outward, and his brief tenuous grasp of the past slipped, any hope he had of pinning down those memories gone. There remained only the certainty, not backed up by detail, that he had once metDoneen and Mr.Billingsly , and that Tony had too.

  He started the car, pulled out into the street. Rather than back up or execute a three-point turn in the rain, he drove down to the end ofEdgecomb and turned left, intending to drive around the block and return to their street.

  He was halfway down Edgecomb when he saw it.

  There, in the rain, in the middle of the street, a small shadow, the same shadow he'd seen before in the alley.

  Doneen?

  He braked to a halt, jumped out of the car, but it was gone. The street was empty, the sidewalks vacant, no sign of anyone or anything out of the ordinary. The rain chose that moment to stop entirely, and through a thin curtain of white amid the dark clouds above, the light of the sun poked through, illuminating the neighborhood.

  Nothing.

  That was it, the last straw. This was enough. He had to know. He'd had his fill of these half remembrances and partial sightings and nebulous portents. He wanted to know about the House. He wanted to know what had happened to him there and what it had to do with Margot and Tony. He wanted to know why he couldn't remember his past. He wanted to know what the hell was going on.

  He'd talk to Margot about it, call a psychiatrist tomorrow, one that specialized in hypnosis and regression therapy.

  Her insurance had to have some type of mental health provisions. He could say he suspected that he'd been molested as a child. Hell, he could just tell the truth, explain what he'd been seeing and hearing and thinking, and he'd have no problem finding a shrink willing to uncover the dark secrets of his past.

  He didn't have to go to a psychiatrist, though.

  It came back on its own.

  All of it.

  Laurie Laurie dug through the box of her parents' photographs looking for a clue, trying to find some documentation of her previous life, some hint of her pre-adoptive days.

  Josh sat next to her on the floor, sorting through additional piles of pictures, attempting to help her reconstruct a past that neither of them knew anything about.

  She stared at a photo of herself and Josh at Disney land, waving and smiling in front of It's A Small World.

  She was adopted.

  It shouldn't have affected anything, but it did, and already she felt distanced from Josh, not as close to him as she had been before. She'd give anything in the world to bring back her old feelings, but the knowledge that they were not really related had completely changed the emotional dynamics of their relationship, and she felt simultaneously as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders and as if she were floating off into space, her tether broken.

  She had to bear in mind that it was only her feelings that had changed. He had known all along, so his perception of her was exactly the same as it had always been.

  He loved her like a sister.

  She felt guilty that she was allowing the concrete sciences of biology and genetics to affect the fragile nature of her own feelings and emotions.

  "Hey," Josh said excitedly. "I think we have something here. Look at this."

  He scooted next to her on the floor, handing her an old black-and-white photo.

  Their parents were standing with her biological parents.

  In front of the house.

  It was everything at once, in one picture, and she stared at it dumbly, taking it all in. There was the forest behind the house: old growth redwoods, holding in darkness.

  The Victorian mansion: black gables and shuttered windows and wraparound porch, retaining even in the photo the aura of spookiness she so clearly remembered.

  In front of the house, on the circular dirt drive, were her parents.

  All four of them.

  The ones who had brought her up, the only parents she knew, Josh's parents, were smiling for the camera, their flowered paisley clothes loud even in black-and white, a large trunk on the ground to the left of them.

  On the other side of the trunk, unsmiling, wearing formal clothes and equally formal expressions, were her real parents, her biological parents.

  She looked closely at first her mother's face, then her father's, then back again. She recognized the faces now, but they engendered no response, triggered no emotion within her. She didn't know what she'd expected--some cathartic rush of long pent-up feeling perhaps--but she wasn't prepared for this detached, objective reaction. As she stared at the photo, her feelings were for her other parents, her adoptive parents, and for the first time since she'd learned what had happened to her, she was glad Josh's parents had adopted her, glad she had not grown up with this sober, grimly humorless couple.

  She looked over at Josh, and once again he felt like her real brother.

  She focused her attention on the photograph. It was all familiar to her, everything in the picture, and, despite her lack of feeling for the man and woman who had brought her into this world, the relentless curiosity about her past and compulsive thirst for self-knowledge that had been driving her for the past several days, ever since she found out she'd been adopted, had not abated at all.

  If anything, those impulses were stronger, and her desire to know what had happened to her, why she'd been adopted why her parents had been murdered --was a palpable hunger, almost a physical need. She felt strongly that whatever had happened at that house, whatever cataclysm had destroyed her family, was connected with the dreams she was having now, with the girl.

  Dawn.

  "Do you know this place?" she asked, pointing at the photo. "Do you know where it is?"

  Josh nodded. "I remember that house." He thought for a moment, turned to her. "Do you?"

  She shivered. "How could anyone forget it?"

  "It's on a vortex," he said.

  Cut out the New Age crap, she wanted to tell him, but something kept her from it.

  "Of course, we didn't know what that was back then.

  Especially not me. I was what? Four? But even I could tell there was something . . . powerful about that house."

  "You mean it was haunted."

  "Is that what you remember?"

  She nodded.

  He took the photo from her. "That's how I remember it, too."

  "Do you know where it is?" she repeated.

  He stared at the picture. "I was pretty young, but I

  know we were traveling around northern California for a month or so. I can't recall if we were on a vacation or just bumming around--you know how Mom and Dad were--but we'd stopped in this small gold-rush town somewhere in the Sierras. I don't remember the name, but I'd probably be able to pick it out if I saw a map or something."

  She smiled at him, punched his arm playfully. "And you were only four years old? That's pretty impressive."

  "I grew up to be an under achiever."

  "So what happened?"

  "We stayed in town for a day or so, then we went out to visit these people. They might've been friends of Mom and Dad's or maybe someone in town told them about them. I can't remember. All I know is that pretty soon we were driving down this winding little road through the forest, looking for these people who sold lamb's wool blankets. We passed through a clearing where there were people selling juice and fruit from a little roadside stand, and Dad bought me some blackberry juice. That part's pretty clear. Then the next thing I remember is being at this big giant house in the middle of nowhere." He tapped a finger on the picture. "This house." He frowned. "Come to think of it, I think they might'v
e been friends. It seemed like they knew each other from somewhere before, because they greeted each other like they were old pals."

  "Did you stay there?"

  "Oh, yeah. For several days."

  Laurie shook her head wonderingly. "How come I

  don't remember any of this?"

  "That's the funny thing. I don't remember you either. I mean, you must've been there, but I

  just remember this weird old couple--" He looked at her. "Sorry. No offense--and this . . . overpowering house. I mean, I know now that the house was on a vortex, but back then I just thought it was scary."

  "So you don't remember me at all?"

  He shook his head.

  What about the man who'd lived with them? she wondered.

  Her father's friend. She thought hard, tried to remember his name. She could see his face, hear his voice, but she couldn't quite- Billington.

  That was it.

  "Do you remember anyone else?" she asked.

  He frowned. "No . . ." he said slowly. "I don't think so."

  "Who took the picture?"

  He looked at it again. "I don't remember. A man, I think."

  "Was his name Billington or something like that?"

  "I don't remember."

  "Did you see anyone else while you were there?" She licked her lips. "A girl maybe?"

  He picked up on it instantly, glancing sharply at her.

  "The girl in your dreams?"

  She nodded a reluctant acknowledgment. "I think her name was Dawn."

  "And that's the same girl you saw in the alley?"

  Already there were goose bumps on her arm. "I

  think so."

  "Why didn't you tell me this before?"

  "I didn't know before. I just sort of ... It's coming back slowly. And I can't remember half as much as you remember. And you were younger than me." She paused. "Trauma, probably."

  "Trauma?"

  "I think my parents were killed."

  A pause. "I figured it was probably something like that."

  "You don't remember anyone except my parents?"

  "Sorry." He shook his head. "But I want to know more about this girl. Dawn. When you saw her in the alley, when you dreamed about her, she looked like she did ... then?"

  "She looked exactly the same."

  "You think she was killed, too?"