The House Read online

  He was confused. Was he on the Other Side now?

  Was the House allowing him to visit the ghosts, the souls, the spirits of his murdered family? Or, with the bizarre concept of time that seemed to exist in the House, were all time periods still extant? Could the House pop him in and out of different eras at will?

  Either way, he could not face his family now, could not meet them. He would do so later, when he felt stronger, but for now he needed to be alone, to think, to sort things out.

  One thing he'd always tried to impart to his students was the effect of the past on the present, the extent to which actions had reactions and events had repercussions that rippled forward into the future. Perhaps that was at the root of what was happening to him now.

  Maybe the House was giving him an opportunity to discover the source of the ripples that had spread outward to resurrect Carole and affect the lives of Daniel and Stormy and Laurie and Mark.

  Maybe it was giving him a chance to change it.

  The thought was at once exciting and terrifying, but both emotions were small and intensely personal. If what Billingson--Billings--said was true, if the House--the Houses--really did maintain a barrier protecting the physical material world from the intrusion of the Other Side, then this was as big as ... no, bigger than . . .

  being granted the chance to go back into time and kill the pre-Nazi Hitler.

  But emotionally it didn't feel that way. He supposed it was because these were things he had just learned and the enormity of Nazi Germany and World War II had been validated by society, by the world, and had been drilled into him for over half a century, but the fact remained that this seemed much smaller in scope, much more personal and localized.

  Considering the consequences, he supposed that was a good thing.

  Norton moved away from the doorway, back down the hall, careful not to make a sound. Even after all these years, he remembered the location of the creaky spots in the floor, and he made a concerted effort to avoid them.

  Once again, he found himself at the top of the stairs.

  He started down, but when he glanced up from the steps, he saw graffiti on the wall of the stairwell ahead of him, a huge blue chalk drawing of a face, a simplistic rendering that looked as though it had been done by a not particularly talented five-year-old.

  The chalk figure winked at him.

  Smiled.

  There was only one tooth in its poorly drawn mouth and that should have made it look goofy, comical, but instead it lent the face an air of wildness, and Norton was afraid to continue down the steps, afraid to pass beneath the gaze of the face. It was a strange facet of human nature, but horror was much more frightening on a small scale than a large one. More than all of the talk of the Other Side and the afterlife, more than the possibility of dire epic consequences, it was the intimate simplicity of this chalk drawing that spoke directly to his fear center, that dried up the saliva in his mouth and made his heart pound wildly, his blood run cold.

  The round face tilted to the left, to the right, its single toothed mouth opening and closing.

  It was laughing.

  Norton ran. He did it without thinking, without planning, without pausing to consider his options and weigh the outcomes. At that second, he wanted only to get away from that horrible drawing and its terrifying movements, and he bolted back up the few steps he'd descended and took off down the hallway as fast as his old legs would carry him. He considered stopping before reaching the library, not wanting to see his family or let them know he was here, but he could still visualize in his mind the rocking movement of the laughing face, the opening and closing mouth, and in his imagination it was making a horrible clicking noise, like a school film projector, the individual sounds synchronized precisely with the drawing's movements, and that made him run all the faster.

  He sped by the library door, hoping no one saw him but not pausing to check. His plan was to go down the back stairs, but here, finally, he stopped, afraid he'd see another graffiti drawing on this back wall. There was nothing there, though. At least nothing he could see in the dim light. He took a deep breath, gathered his courage, and ran downstairs.

  He reached the bottom of the steps without incident, and immediately moved away from the stairwell. His heart was still thumping in his chest so hard that he felt as if he would go into cardiac arrest any second, but already he was ashamed of himself for running, and even as he backed away from the staircase, he swore that he would not give in to fear again. He'd panicked, acted on instinct, and he was determined that next time he would stand his ground, would think before he acted.

  Next time?

  Yes. There would be a next time.

  Norton looked around. He'd lived in this House until he was eighteen, had spent the last few days in it (or a reasonable facsimile thereof), but right now he could not say precisely where in the House he was. The intersecting corridors and closed doors did not look familiar to him, and his sense of direction seemed to be off. He could not get his bearings. If he remembered right, the back stairs ended near the laundry and storage rooms.

  This certainly didn't look like the laundry area, but he walked over to the closed door opposite him and pulled it open.

  The room before him was huge, twice the size of the library, as big as the sitting room and the dining room combined. No pictures hung on its bare walls. There was no furniture.

  The room was completely empty except for the books.

  Still holding on to the doorknob, Norton stared.

  Books, hundreds of them, had been placed on end and stood next to each other like dominoes, making a trail that snaked through an elaborate design covering almost the entire floor of the massive space, twisting and curving, circling around, making sudden sharp turns at sharp angles.

  He didn't know whether it was what he was supposed to do or not supposed to do, but it was what he wanted to do, and he kicked over the first book, the one closest to the door, and watched as the rest of them all went down sequentially, the room suddenly echoing with a series of rapid-fire slaps and muffled thuds, dust jacket hitting dust jacket, cover smacking cover, everything hitting the floor.

  It took a good two minutes for all of the books to go down, for the wave to pass through the room, and he stood there unmoving, his eyes following the falling books as the pattern wound around the opposite side of the room and then finally returned to the area near the door.

  Now that the books were flat, he could see the design they had been arranged to make.

  The same face as the chalk drawing.

  The single-toothed mouth grinned crazily upward at the ceiling.

  Norton backed away. Again, his first instinct was to run, but he checked that impulse and instead breathed deeply, forcing himself to remain in place. This face did not move, did not wink, did not laugh, showed no sign of animation. He thought for a moment, then walked into the room, kicking books to the right and to the left, destroying the carefully wrought pattern. He strode all the way to the opposite wall and all the way back, and when he was through it looked as though the books had simply been dumped into this room haphazardly, without any thought to their placement, and he closed the door behind him and started off down the hall toward where he thought the front of the House should be.

  He ended up in another junction of two corridors. He turned left, and now he recognized where he was. This hallway led to the foyer and the front of the House.

  A snake slithered across the floor in front of him--a green snake with a pale, barely visible underbelly--and he thought of Laurie. Where were the others now? He wondered. In their own childhood Houses? Going through their own tests and trials and tribulations?

  He watched the snake flatten, slide through the thin space under the bathroom door.

  It was amazing how quickly he'd fallen back into the rhythm of the House. He was scared--he couldn't claim to be unaffected by the manifestations thrown at him-- but they did not really surprise him, and he did not question them. He
accepted their existence, considered them as much a part of the House as the wallpaper and light fixtures.

  Just as he had all those decades ago.

  He knew now that it was because the House was on the border, that it was the mixing of the material world and the . . . other world which created these surreal shifts in reality, but this understanding was on a purely intellectual level. As a child, long before he'd been made aware of the purpose of the House, he had adjusted to its wild displays and bizarre juxtapositions, and acceptance had been achieved long before understanding.

  There was a noise behind him, a tapping. He turned And it was Carole.

  Seeing her ghost was almost like seeing an old friend.

  In life, they hadn't gotten along particularly well. At least not for the past half decade or so. And after her death, seeing her ghost around their home and last night, especially, had been frightening and disturbing. But his life had taken a 180-degree turn, and here, in this House, he was glad to see her ghost. It was comforting, a pleasant surprise, and he looked at her naked form and found himself smiling. "Carole," he said.

  She did not smile back. "Your family is waiting for you."

  He shook his head as though he had not heard correctly.

  "What?"

  "You need to talk to your family. Your parents. Your brother. Your sisters."

  There was no expression on her face, only a dispassionate blankness, and his own smile had completely disappeared.

  The last thing he wanted to do was talk to his family. "Why?" he asked.

  "That is why you are here."

  "To meet with them?"

  The ghost nodded.

  "I will," he said. "Eventually."

  "No you won't."

  He met her eyes. "Maybe I won't."

  "You can't keep avoiding them," Carole said.

  "Watch me."

  The two of them faced each other, and he realized suddenly that the reason he was so apprehensive about meeting his family again was because he felt responsible for their deaths. It was his fault they had been killed. If he had not stopped seeing Donna, if he had not dumped her, she would not have taken this revenge on him. Hell, if he hadn't gotten involved with her in the first place, if he had not stoned seeing her, he would not have had to stop seeing her. No matter which way he sliced it, it was his fault that his parents, his brother, and his sisters had been murdered, and that was why he had been unwilling to talk to them, to meet them, why he had been so uncomfortable even seeing them again. He didn't know if this version of his family knew what had happened to them or what would happen to them, but he was afraid that they'd confront him about it, that they'd blame him, and while he could handle supernatural snakes and recurring ghosts and book-faces, he did not think he would be able to handle that.

  "Talk to them," Carole urged.

  Norton cleared his throat, and though all of those years, all of those decades had gone by, he felt like a little boy again, nervous and afraid. "I can't," he said.

  "You have to."

  "I can't."

  "Have you seen Billings?" she asked.

  He shook his head. Where was the hired hand? he wondered.

  "He's dead," she said, and he heard a tremor of fear in her voice. "She had him killed."

  "She?"

  "Donna."

  Norton felt the cold wash over him.

  "Talk to your parents," Carole said. "Talk to your family."

  She left then, not floating away, not fading into nothingness, but somehow . . . dispersing, her form devolving into separate elements and components that were absorbed into the floor, the walls, the ceiling, changing color, changing shape, blending in and disappearing.

  He looked around, then stared at the spot where she'd been. Was she real? Or was she a part of the House?

  Or both?

  He didn't know, and he supposed in the end it didn't really matter. He believed her, she'd spoken the truth, and the important thing was that her message had gotten across. As much as he dreaded the idea, as much as he didn't want to do it, he knew that he had to meet with his family, he had to talk to them. About what, he didn't know. But he supposed that would work itself out.

  As if on cue, he heard the sound of voices coming from up ahead. He recognized Darren's laugh, Estelle's whine. He moved forward, walking slowly, wiping his sweaty hands on his pants and trying desperately to think of what he would say to them.

  Light spilled into the hall from an open doorway up ahead, and taking a fortifying breath, he stepped into the light.

  They were all in the family room now: his sisters and brother on the floor in their pajamas, gathered around the radio; his mother in her chair next to the unlit fireplace, crocheting; his father in his chair next to the light, reading a book. In his mind, he saw their heads in the oven, blackened, peeling, stuck together, and he closed his eyes for a moment, breathing deeply, trying to will the image away.

  When he opened his eyes, they were all looking at him. His mother's crocheting had stopped in mid-weave;

  his father had put down his book. He knew this couldn't be real--a few minutes ago, they'd all been upstairs playing Parcheesi in the empty library, and there was no way they could have gotten downstairs and changed their clothes and settled into these new positions that fast-- but it felt real, and he understood that even if the physical specifics weren't what they were supposed to be, the underlying emotional realities were. He looked from his father to his mother. "Hello," he said.

  "Where've you been?" his father asked gruffly. He picked up his book, settled down to read.

  "Fibber McGee's on," his mother said, motioning toward the radio.

  He was thrown a little off balance. He'd been expecting something . . . different. But his parents were treating him as though he were still a child and this was an ordinary evening, and he'd simply shown up late to listen to his favorite radio show. He wasn't sure what he should do, how he should react. Should he play along, pretend as though he were a child and try to fit into this cozy little scene? Or should he break the spell, be who he really was, say what he wanted to say, ask what he wanted to ask?

  He thought for a moment, then walked across the family room to the radio, turning it off. His brother and sisters looked up at him, annoyed, but he ignored them and turned to face his parents. "We need to talk," he said. "We need to talk about Donna."

  Once again, his father put his book down. His mother let her crocheting fall into her lap.

  "She's a bad girl," Norton said.

  His father nodded.

  "She's nasty," Bella piped up. "She likes to play sex games."

  He expected his parents to shush his sister, chastise her, tell her not to talk about such obscenities, but they did not even flinch, and their serious gazes remained focused on his.

  He swallowed hard. "She is nasty," he said. "She does like to play sex games."

  His parents looked at each other.

  He was an old man, older than his father had ever lived to be, but he felt as embarrassed saying this in front of his family as he would have at ten years of age.

  He felt hot, flushed, and he knew his face was beet red.

  "I know because I've done it with her," he said, not meeting their eyes. "But I ... I stopped. She didn't like that. Now she plans to--" He cleared his throat. "She plans to kill you. All of you."

  "She likes to play blood games," Bella said.

  He looked from his father, to his mother, to his brother and sisters. "Don't you understand what I'm saying here? You are in danger. If you don't do something, you'll end up dead, your heads chopped off."

  "What do you expect me to do?" his father said calmly.

  "I don't know!" Norton was growing increasingly exasperated.

  "Hunt her down! Kill her!"

  "Kill Donna? Your little Mend?Billingson's daughter?"

  Norton pressed forward, finger pointed in the air in the classic lecturing position. "She's notBillingson's daughter," he said. "The two aren'
t even related."

  For the first time, something like worry crossed his parents' faces.

  "Of course she's his daughter," his mother said.

  "Did he ever say that? Did he ever tell you that?

  Have you ever seen the two of them together?"

  "Well, no. But..." She trailed off, obviously thinking.

  Now he had his father's attention. "How do you know this?"

  "He told me.Billingson . Before he disappeared."

  "Disappeared? He's--"

  "He's gone. She killed him. Or had him killed." He knelt down on the floor in front of his father. "You know what this House is. You know what it does. You know why we're here--"

  His father fixed his mother with a look of black rage.

  "I told you not to--"

  "She didn't say anything. I found out on my own."

  He looked into his father's eyes. "She's the one who told you not to say anything. She's the one who told you not to tell us, right?"

  His father nodded reluctantly.

  "She's evil."

  "I know that! This whole House is evil!"

  "No, it's not."

  Darren and Bella and Estelle had been quiet all this time, and Norton glanced over at them. They looked scared, but not exactly surprised, as though what they'd feared had turned out to be true.

  "She likes to play blood games," Bella repeated softly.

  Their father nodded. "Yes," he said tiredly. "She does."

  They talked. For the first and only time, he and his parents and his brother and his sisters talked like families in movies and on TV talked--openly, honestly--and it was a liberating experience. He felt as though a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders, and he learned that Donna had approached all of them, had appealed to each of them, had offered herself to his mother and father, had presented herself as a friend to his sisters, a girlfriend to his brother.

  He himself was the only one who had taken the bait, and while they'd all known about it, while she'd practically flaunted it in front of them, they had never mentioned it to him, never brought it up between themselves.