The House Read online

  He would just have to stay alert, keep an eye on his mother, make sure nothing happened.

  He stopped playing outside, stopped going places with his friends. He told them that he was grounded, that his parents would not let him go out. He told his mother that Jim's and Paul's families had gone on vacation and that Madson was grounded.

  And he stayed in the house.

  Stayed near his mother.

  He still avoided Billingsly as much as possible, but he did not have to make an effort to stay away from Doneen .

  Either her father or his parents had talked to her, or she had decided on her own to keep her distance, and he saw only occasional glimpses of her in hallways or rooms or outside in the yard, and that was fine by him.

  A few evenings later, his father was cutting his hair, and the idea that he should save the cut hair occurred to him. He did not know why, did not know where this notion had come from, but almost as soon as it had flashed into his mind, it had solidified into a necessity, a priority, and after his father finished trimming his bangs and tossed away the newspapers that had been spread on the floor underneath his chair, Daniel snuck into the kitchen, took the crumpled paper with its cache of cut hair, and brought everything back up into his room.

  Over the next week, he collected other things: used Kleenex, discarded toothpicks, peach pits, chicken bones, an apple core. It became almost an obsession, this search for specific objects, and while he never knew exactly what he was looking for, he always recognized it when he found it.

  He understood that he was supposed to take all of the elements and combine them, make them into a cohesive whole, construct a figure that would serve as a talisman against. . . Against what?

  He did not know, but he worked on the figure nonetheless, adding his newest acquisitions to it at night before he went to bed, reshaping them in the morning when he awoke.

  He destroyed the figure as soon as he finished it. He had not noticed until the very end, until every element was in place, exactly what he'd been making, but when he saw the expression he'd created on the figure's face, saw the threatening stance and intimidating structure of the object, he realized instantly that he had not created a talisman to ward against something but had made a figure designed to attract something.

  Something bad.

  This was just what Doneen and her father and the house had wanted him to do, and he tore it up immediately, stomping and flattening the pieces, throwing them in a paper bag and taking the sack out to the backyard and burning it.

  He heard whispers that night. And his father came into his room and told him in a worried voice not to get out of bed, not even if he had to go to the bathroom, until the sun came out the next morning.

  He wet his bed for the first time since kindergarten, but he wasn't embarrassed and didn't get in trouble for it, and when he walked into the dining room for breakfast, he heard a portion of a conversation that ended instantly the second he walked through the door:

  "What are we going to do?" Mother.

  "Nothing we can do. They're back." Father.

  That night, again, he was told not to get out of bed, but something made him disobey those orders, and he crept silently across the floor of his room and slowly opened the door, peeking out.

  It emerged from the shadows, a small squat figure of dust and hair, paper clip and tape, bread crumb and lint.

  Gathered material from the rug underneath the furniture.

  A living counterpart to the static figure he had created and destroyed.

  Daniel stood in the doorway of his room, frozen, unable to even suck in a breath, watching as the horrible creature moved away from him, down the hall.

  To his parents' room.

  Their bedroom door opened. Closed.

  "No!" he screamed.

  "Daniel?" his father called from downstairs.

  His parents had not come up yet! They were safe from that . . . whatever it was.

  A relief so powerful that it seemed to weaken his muscles flooded over him, through him. He started left, toward the stairwell, when he heard the sound of a crash from his parents' room. The sound of something falling.

  And a partial yelp.

  "Mother!" he screamed, running.

  "Daniel!" his father bellowed from downstairs.

  He heard his father's heavy elephant tread from somewhere on the floor below, but he didn't, couldn't wait, and he rushed down the hall to his parents' bedroom and threw open the door.

  The creature was on the bed.

  His mother, naked, thrashed about, bucking wildly, as the figure forced itself into her open mouth. Daniel was screaming for his father, screaming at the top of his lungs, but he could not take his eyes off the bed, where his mother tried to first yank the figure from her mouth, then began beating herself violently in the face, trying to dislodge it. He knew he should do something, but he didn't know what, had no idea how he could help, and a moment later, before he could spur himself into action, his father was thundering down the hall and rushing through the open door and running up to the bed.

  The figure's feet disappeared down his mother's throat.

  "Help me!" his father ordered. He picked her up, began pounding her on the back. "Help me!"

  Daniel didn't know what to do, didn't know how to help, but he rushed over and his father had him grab his mother's arms and hold them up while he attempted to stick his fingers down her throat and pull out the creature.

  Her face was already turning blue, and the weak wheezy gasps that had been issuing from her mouth had silenced. Her too-wide eyes stared blankly straight ahead, and only the open-close-open-close fish motion of her lips indicated that she was still alive.

  Screaming crazily, a primal bellow of rage and pain, his father grabbed his mother around the waist, turned her upside down, and, holding her ankles, thumped his knee against her back in an effort to dislodge the dust creature.

  It was to no avail. His mother died in front of their eyes, not professing her love for them, not reassuring them with last words, but gasping silently like a fish out of water, jerking and twitching spasmodically.

  The next week was a blur. There were doctors and police and morticians and other men in uniforms and suits who came in and out of the house. An autopsy was performed on his mother's body and he wanted, to ask if they found the dust monster within her, but he was told that the cause of death was heart failure, and he figured that the creature had either gotten out or had simply dissipated and come apart within her system.

  He knew, though. And his father knew. And the two of them started packing up their belongings, planning to leave.

  "Where are we going?" Daniel asked.

  "Anywhere," his father said in the defeated monotone that had become his normal voice.

  But they were only in the very earliest stages of packing when they were confronted by Billingsly . The servant knocked on the frame of the open doorway as usual and stood deferentially outside the room, and Daniel was immediately filled with a deep cold fear at the sight of him.

  He glanced over at his father and saw that his father appeared frightened as well. He'd put down the jewelry box he'd been holding and stood staring at the servant.

  "You can't go," Billingsly said quietly.

  Daniel's father said nothing.

  "You have a responsibility to uphold."

  For the first time since his mother's death, Daniel saw tears in his father's eyes. The sight made him uncomfortable and, on some level, frightened, but though he wanted to look away, he did not.

  "I can't," his father said.

  "You must," Billingsly insisted. He looked at them.

  "You both have to stay."

  They did stay. For several more years. Until Daniel entered high school. They remained in the house, battered and victimized by the same unseen forces that had killed his mother, each of them maintaining three bedrooms, never sure when one bed might be overrun by colored worms or stained with black water, or when the furniture
might decide to shift shape or a room disappear altogether.

  They never talked about it--any of it--this was simply the way they lived, and his mother's death became by unspoken agreement a secret memory, not discussed or referenced or even alluded to, part of an alternate history that did not conform to the lie they lived.

  And then, one day, they left. They packed nothing, took nothing with them. Daniel just received a call slip from the office on the first day of his freshman year in high school, and when he walked over, his father was waiting for him.

  The two of them got in the car and left.

  To Pennsylvania.

  They found an apartment, his father found a job, and although Daniel wanted to ask his father what had happened, how they had been able to escape, he was afraid to do so.

  His father died several years later, when he was a sophomore in college. They'd never mentioned or discussed the house after they'd left it, and by that time the memory of his other life had been completely buried and repressed.

  As amazing as it seemed, he'd forgotten all about Billingsly and Doneen and what had happened to his mother, and when he thought about his mother, which was rarely, his mind skipped over her death. If pressed, he would have had to admit that he did not know exactly how she'd died.

  It seemed strange even to him, and while most of the circumstances of his childhood had been buried in his memory over the years, not all of them had been completely forgotten. He had, for example, been dimly aware on some level that they'd had a servant in their house. It had never occurred to him to wonder how his family had been able to afford a servant, however, and even now the specifics of that arrangement eluded him.

  Probably the same way the Brady Bunch could afford their maid.

  No. It was nothing so benign as that.

  AndBillingsly had been much more than just a servant.

  Daniel stood before his wife, adamant but ashamed, dead set on the course of action he'd chosen but embarrassed by the melodrama of its origin, the potboiler nature of its cause.

  "I have to go," he said.

  Margot simply stared at him.

  "I know it sounds irrational. I know it sounds crazy, but trust me, that's what happened, and . . . whatever it was, it's starting again. And it's trying to involve Tony."

  She was silent for a moment. "I believe you," she said finally. "That's the scary part."

  He looked at her, stunned. "You do?"

  "Well, not completely maybe. But enough so that I

  trust your instincts." She paused. "Don't forget, I saw that doll, too. I know something's going on. And if you can somehow . . . exorcise this whatever-it-is and keep it away from Tony, well then I'm all for it."

  Daniel stared at his wife. It wasn't supposed to work this way, it wasn't supposed to be this easy. In books and movies, things worked out like this, but in real life it was supposed to be tougher. No one believed in ghosts and demons and the supernatural, and they didn't just accept someone's word on something like that. He tried to imagine what he would do, how he would react if Margot came to him with some wild story about seeing a UFO or something. He wasn't sure he'd buy into it or even if he'd automatically be on her side. He'd probably agree with her for love's sake, but he'd figure out some way to test her--or some way for her to get help. He doubted that he would completely change his worldview and suddenly believe in things he had never believed in before merely on the word of someone else.

  Even if that other person was Margot.

  He understood for the first time how truly lucky he was to have this woman for his wife.

  "It's in Maine," he said. "The town's called Matty Groves and I'm not even sure exactly where it is, but I know it's probably a day's drive from here. I know I shouldn't--"

  She put a firm arm on his, looked into his eyes.

  "Go," she told him.

  It was indeed almost a day's drive, and Daniel reached MattyGroves just as the sun was setting. He should've left earlier--he'd set the alarm for five this morning-- but he hadn't wanted to part from Margot and Tony, and he'd ended up staying through breakfast.

  He was filled with the absurd conviction that this was the last time he'd ever see them.

  Although maybe, he thought as he approached the house, the idea wasn't so absurd.

  Against its cheerful forested backdrop, the three storied building looked even gloomier and more gothic, like a stereotypical haunted mansion. Its slatted wooden walls were a dark gray; the trim, door, and shutters black. Even the glass in the windows seemed dusky, although that may just have been a trick of the dying light.

  It was an imposing structure, with some of the same off putting air of impenetrability as a medieval fortress or cathedral, and Daniel stood in front of it, goose bumps on his arms. He had not seen the house since he and his father had fled, and had managed until now to block out all memory of it entirely, but once again he was here, and it was as though the house had been waiting for his return.

  So it could punish him.

  That was ridiculous.

  Was it? Whatever it was, whatever lived here, whatever made this house its home, had found him, over distance, over time, and it had reached out to his son, to Tony, had introduced the boy to Billingsly and Doneen, had taught the boy how to make the doll.

  It was crazy. All of it.

  But there was nothing there he doubted.

  He got out of the car, stared up at the dark building, taking it all in. The twin chimneys. The gables. The high window of his mother's corner bedroom. The wrap around porch where he and his friends had so often played, remaining always in the front because they were afraid of the sides and back of the house.

  Where were his friends? he wondered. What had happened to them? What did they remember?

  Something caught his eye. Movement in one of the lower windows. A dark face?

  A dust doll?

  He wanted to leave, wanted to turn tail and run, and if it had not been for Margot and Tony, he would have done exactly that. But he was not here only for himself.

  He was here to find out what was infiltrating his life and put a stop to it, to intercept and end the supernatural harassment of his family.

  Supernatural He hadn't thought of it in precisely those terms before, but that was exactly what was going on.

  He supposed, on some level, he'd always been subtly aware that despite his comfortably normal mainstream existence, there was more to the universe than the material, physical world, that despite the life he had made for himself, there was something else that was somehow . . .

  influencing him, guiding him. He'd repressed all memory of his childhood and had never seen any overt example or evidence of the supernatural, but all along there'd been small instances of deja vu, coincidences and coordinations that did not make any kind of logical sense but nonetheless bespoke Truth. It was as if he were a cog in a great machine and every once in a while he was allowed to glance over and see nearly identical cogs performing nearly identical functions. There were connections he could not understand but knew existed, and he knew now that it was all tied to whatever existed inside that house.

  Another small dark face at another low window.

  His entire body seemed to be covered with gooseflesh and his heart was pounding harder than he'd known it could, but Daniel steeled himself and pressed forward.

  Night appeared to be falling quicker than usual, sundown and dusk fairly speeding by, and if he had learned that this was a phenomenon which only happened here, that the power within the house somehow had the ability to influence the sun, he would not have been surprised.

  He walked up the porch steps, knocked on the heavy oak door.

  It was opened instantly.

  By Billingsly .

  Daniel sucked in his breath at the sight of the man.

  He was no longer a child and the servant an adult--they were both grown men of approximately the same size-- but the balance of power had not shifted in all these years, and Daniel instinctivel
y stepped back. Billingsly was still a frighteningly intimidating figure, alien and unknowable in his proper attire, the blankness in his eyes impossible to read. He bowed, smiling enigmatically.

  "You are the last."

  "What?" Daniel said.

  "I trust you had a pleasant trip?" The servant stepped aside, motioning him in.

  Daniel stepped over the threshold, acutely aware of the symbolism of that simple act.

  The door shut immediately behind him.

  Mark He was scared shitless, but he tried not to let it show.

  It was not merely the circumstances of his arrival c the air of menace that overhung the house which le:

  him feeling so terrified, but the fact that he wasn't exactly a guest, wasn't exactly a prisoner, but seemed t be somewhere in-between--and he had no idea what t do about it.

  Mark glanced nervously around the sitting room.

  was strange being back, seeing the high-vaulted ceiling and the patterned hardwood floors, all of the familiar furniture in all of the familiar places, mileposts of his childhood that were indelibly ingrained in his memory It was the smell of the house that affected him most strongly, though, the familiar odors of old flowers am fireplace smoke and dust; scents of his past that lingered in the room and remained behind, present but invisible like ghosts.

  Mark stared at Billings. What was he? Ghost"

  Demon? Monster? None of them seemed to hit the mark, but they were all close, they were all within the ballpark.

  Feigning a bravery he did not feel, he turned his back on the assistant and walked across the sitting room, pulling open the drapes covering the window. He tried peering out, but it was night outside and he could see nothing.

  "I should be able to see the lights of Dry River,"

  he said.