The House Read online

  There was no one in the room, though, and despite its unbearable atmosphere and visible remnants of past atrocities, there was nothing for him here, no sign of the girl, and he gratefully closed the door.

  He walked back down the hall.

  The Power.

  He'd feel better if he still had it, and he found himself wondering why only he and Kristen, out of all of the residents in all the Houses, had been granted such extrasensory abilities. It seemed strange to him, and he wondered if it wasn't a fluke, a mistake.

  Maybe he'd been chosen.

  That made no sense. Chosen that long ago? Selected as a child? Why? So that he could one day go up against the girl? It seemed both absurd and stupid to him that the House would know all of this was going to happen, would prepare for it by grooming him, yet would do nothing to prevent any of it from occurring.

  Still, the idea was not inconceivable, and he could not quite believe that his possession of The Power had been accidental.

  But why had it been taken from him?

  Maybe she had taken it.

  He should have asked Kristen.

  Mark forced himself to stop thinking, to concentrate only on the House around him and the task ahead of him. He could not allow himself to be distracted. One false move could cost him whatever small advantage he might have. He had to remain focused.

  Slowly, he climbed the stairs to the second floor.

  He stopped for a moment at the top of the stairs, hesitated. The mood up here was familiar, the ambience one of palpable malevolence. It was exactly the same thing he'd felt that day when he'd been alone in the house with the retarded girl, and it was everything he could do to keep from running back down the stairs. He felt like a kid again, a scared kid, and he forced that feeling into submission, knowing it was what she wanted, knowing it would give her the edge she needed.

  He moved carefully down the hall, alert for any sign that anything was out of the ordinary, and froze as he heard the sound of a child laughing. It was a chilling sound, the timbre that of a pre-adolescent but the cadence informed with the experience of an adult.

  It was coming from halfway down the hall.

  From Kristen's room.

  Mark could smell the sour stench of his own sweat as he approached the closed door. His hands were clenched, the palms sweaty. He still had no plan, no idea of what he was going to do or even what he should do.

  There was no choice but to plow ahead, however, and he stood before the door, took a deep breath, reached out.

  And opened it.

  The retarded girl was seated cross-legged on Kristen's bed. She looked over at him, and he saw for the first time that she looked exactly like Kristen had as a child.

  He'd never noticed that before.

  Had it been true before?

  He wasn't sure, couldn't remember.

  "Mark," the girl said.

  There were dolls surrounding her. Dozens of them.

  She'd been making them out of lint and fiber, thread and dust, and they covered the floor, the hope chest, the bed. Each was unique, with eyes and mouths of different materials, but there was an underlying uniformity to them all, a bedrock constant that marked them as her creations.

  They were all staring at him.

  And smiling.

  "You know how I like it," she said.

  In answer, he kicked the nearest doll. He kicked it as hard as he could, but there was no weight to it, no heft, no bulk, and instead of flying across the room, the figure flopped to the floor less than a foot away.

  The girl shook her head, and she no longer looked like his sister. "Good-bye," she said.

  She smiled at him, disappeared, but reappeared instantly, struggling against the binding arms of ...

  Daniel?

  It was him, but he was like Kristen, glowing and translucent, a Hollywood special effect, and Mark realized at that instant that Daniel was dead. The girl screamed, spit, tried to bite the glowing arm holding her. She must have fled to the Other Side, and Daniel had been there to capture her and bring her back. Once again Mark thought that there was no coincidence in all of this, that everything had been mapped out and planned ahead of time.

  By who or what he didn't know, but he didn't have time to speculate on it. The dolls were coming after him, moving quickly. Daniel and the girl still struggled atop the bed, and Mark faced the scurrying, crawling, leaping creatures, bracing himself for the onslaught.

  The first doll reached him, clambering up his leg. He tried to grab it, but there was nothing to grab, no skeleton or solid center. His fingers closed around a soft wispy mass of hair and met his palm on the other side.

  He felt the sharp prick of a needle on the skin of his forearm and saw that the doll was bending over to bite him. He grabbed the feet of the creature with his right hand, its head with his left, and pulled, ripping it apart.

  The individual elements devolved into their original components, separating, whatever power or force that held them together dissipating and disappearing.

  He pulled the needle out of his skin, and saw that the doll no longer even had a shape, was just a tangled, elongated mass of hair and lint and trash.

  The second doll reached him, and he tore it apart as well, his hands working crazily, arms flailing. He ripped it into pieces before it could even get a hold on him.

  He looked up, over at the bed, but Daniel was gone.

  The girl was jumping up and down on the mattress, pointing at him and gibbering excitedly in a language he did not understand. He didn't know whether she had beaten Daniel or he had accomplished what he'd set out to do and left on his own, but he didn't have time to dwell on it. More dolls had reached him, six or seven of them, and he lit into them, grabbing what he could and pulling, rending, severing, not knowing what he was grabbing or how many of them he was separating.

  They were easier to fight off than he would have thought, and although there were occasional pinpricks and scrapes, the dolls were unable to do any serious damage to him.

  They also weren't nearly as frightening as he had been led to believe.

  Paper tigers.

  Several of them were partially made of paper, and he found himself wondering if all of the girl's threats were like this, if they'd always been more illusionary than real, more psychological than physical. Perhaps the only hold she'd ever had on any of them was her ability to exploit their own fears.

  No. She'd killed Kristen. And she'd probably killed Daniel.

  He still had to be careful. He couldn't underestimate her.

  He destroyed all of the dolls. The girl did not jump in at any point and try to help, and Mark thought that odd. She could have attacked him while he was busy and distracted. She could probably have gained serious advantage. But she remained on the bed, jumping up and down and screaming in that strange unnatural tongue.

  He tore the head off the last doll, ripped out the punch holes that had been its eyes, and stood amid the pile of dust and dirt and hair and trash. He glanced over, stared at the girl.

  She was afraid of him!

  The realization surprised him. He did not know why or how this had happened, did not know to what he should attribute this sudden empowerment, but he knew enough to take advantage of it, and before his nerve failed, he rushed the bed.

  She tried to get away, but she wasn't fast enough. She hadn't anticipated this move, and he tackled her around the midsection, slamming her into the wall. She was stronger than he was, he could feel the strength in her muscles, could sense the coiled power within her, but surprise and her own apprehension had given him the momentary advantage, and he kneed her in the crotch and elbowed her in the chest and got his arms around her throat.

  He'd been waiting for this, wanting it. It was what Kristen had told him to do, what Daniel and the others obviously desired. But his hands were around her neck and he was about to twist them --and he couldn't.

  As evil as she was, as many problems as she had caused over the years, over the cent
uries perhaps, he could not bring himself to kill her. When all was said and done, she was a child. As evil as she might be, she was still not an adult, and that made a difference. He knew now why inner-city gangs used kids to commit some of their hits. No matter how heinous the crime they committed might be, it was almost impossible to sentence children to death, and their punishment was invariably lightened because of their juvenile status.

  She wasn't a child, though. Not really. She was much more than that.

  But when he looked down at her face, felt the smallness of her form beneath him, he could not bring himself to finish her off.

  She looked up at him, all innocence, and then that innocence was slowly washed away. She smiled at him lewdly, wickedness and a base sensuality creeping across her corrupt features, and he finally understood emotionally, not just intellectually, that she was not a child. That she had never been a child.

  His grip tightened around her neck, and he wondered why she had done that, why she had revealed herself to him. Did she want him to kill her? Would that somehow make her stronger? Or was she simply teasing him, playing with him, leading him on before finally doing him in?

  He felt her muscles tighten beneath him, felt a surge of strength in her chest.

  There was a sudden flash of brightness, an abrupt incandescence at the side of the bed that distracted her attention for a second.

  And Mark snapped her neck.

  He saw knowledge flood into her face in that last second, as the life drained from her, and he thought that she had not expected this, had not even considered its possibility.

  She spit at him with her last breath.

  Daniel stood by the side of the bed, the source of the brightness. "Quick thinking," he said.

  Mark looked at the ghost of the other man. He had not had time to determine the source of that flaring incandescence, had assumed it was something she had created and was going to use against him, and he'd moved quickly only because of his certainty that this would be his final chance. He had not expected it to be a diversion intentionally created by Daniel's ghost, and he climbed off the bed and the girl's lifeless body, facing the glowing form.

  "Daniel?"

  "In the flesh." The ghost smiled. "Well ... in the spirit."

  "You're dead, aren't you?"

  Daniel laughed, and the sound was like music, like Kristen's laugh. "Oh, yes."

  "What's it like?"

  "Being dead?"

  Mark nodded.

  "I don't know," Daniel said thoughtfully.

  "You don't know?"

  "It's confusing. I'm just as in the dark as I was before.

  Even more so, really. Because at least I knew how living worked. I knew what I had to do and where I could go. I knew my body's needs and limits. I

  knew about the world I lived in. Now . . . I'm just lost. There's no handbook, no guide, no one to really explain anything to me.

  I'm just . . . I'm trying to sort it all out right now."

  "Did she kill you?"

  "Yes." Daniel explained what had happened, how he'd been back at home with his wife and son, how she'd tricked him into death by promising to stay away from his boy, how he'd met his mother and she'd told him he could bring the girl back to the House, how he'd done that and had ended up in some sort of limbo, how the girl had escaped, and how she'd suddenly reappeared in the other House and he'd brought her back.

  "What was she?" Mark asked.

  Daniel shrugged. "You got me."

  "Is it over now? Is that it?"

  "I hope so."

  Mark looked over at the girl's corpse, still lying on the bed. In death, it looked like the body of a child.

  There was nothing unusual about it, nothing out of the ordinary, nothing to indicate that it had been anything other than a little girl. He met Daniel's eyes, saw understanding there.

  The two of them were silent for several moments.

  "Did it hurt when she killed you?" Mark asked finally.

  "When you died?"

  "My body hurt. But once I was out of it, I felt no pain."

  Mark nodded, thought of his sister. "So what's on the Other Side? Beyond the Houses, I mean."

  "I don't know. I haven't seen it yet."

  "What do you mean you haven't seen it? You're dead!"

  "I seem to be ... trapped. In the Houses. That's all I've seen. What I told you."

  "Have you met my sister, Kristen?"

  Daniel shook his head. "I haven't met anybody. I've seen my mother. That's it. I suppose all that comes next. I don't really know."

  "You haven't disappeared yet. You're still here."

  "I know," Daniel said worriedly.

  "So what are you going to do now?" Mark asked.

  "Go home," Daniel said. "If I can."

  "And if you can't?"

  He shrugged.

  "Is there . . ." Mark cleared his throat awkwardly. "Is there anything we should, you know, tell your wife? Or your son?"

  Daniel was shaking his head. "No. Don't . . ." He trailed off, thought for a moment. "Tell my wife . . . tell Margot . . . tell her ... I don't know, tell her something she can believe and she can understand. And let her know that I love her and that she and Tony were what I was thinking about and concerned about."

  Mark nodded.

  "Make sure she knows that I love her."

  "Where does she live?"

  Daniel gave him the address.

  They stood there for a few moments longer, but they had nothing left to say to each other. There was an awkward silence between them, and finally Daniel said, "I'm going to try to go home, try to see Margot and Tony myself."

  "Good luck," Mark told him.

  Daniel smiled, nodded.

  And before Mark could say another word, he was gone.

  He was left alone in the room, the broken-necked body on the bed, the floor strewn with lint and dust and the other ingredients that had made up the dolls. He didn't know what was supposed to happen now, where he was to go from here, and he closed his eyes for a moment.

  "Hello, Mark."

  He opened his eyes.

  It was Kristen.

  She was standing next to him, and she put an arm around his shoulder, and he felt warmth, sunlight. "I'm proud of you, big brother."

  "I thought I was a goner there for a sec."

  She smiled. "I wasn't worried."

  "You didn't think she could take me?"

  Kristen shook her head. "Things can only work out the way they do."

  Before he had time to ask her about that deterministic statement, she had moved over to the bed and was staring down at the girl's body.

  Mark followed her, joined her. "Billings and the girl,"

  he said. "What were they?"

  "Meddlers in the natural process."

  "Stormy thought maybe he was God and she was the devil."

  "They have been called that."

  He blinked. "So ... so God really is dead?"

  "Not exactly."

  "What do you mean, 'not exactly'?"

  "They were merely representatives of other, higher forces. Pawns. You could call them good and evil, but good and evil are not all there is. There is something beyond all that."

  "What?"

  "I can't tell you."

  "And I wouldn't understand?"

  She nodded, smiling. "And you wouldn't understand."

  "Do you?"

  "Not completely. Not yet."

  "But it's over now?"

  "Nothing's ever over."

  "You're more annoying dead than alive. Do you know that?"

  Kristen laughed, and he laughed with her. It was the first time he'd allowed himself to laugh in a long, long while, and it felt good, it felt right.

  When he stopped laughing, he saw that the girl's body was gone. It had disappeared. He turned toward his sister.

  "Where did she go?"

  "She's still here."

  "I don't see her."

  "Think of her as a sacr
ifice. A sacrifice to the House."

  "The House demands sacrifices?"

  Kristen smiled. "No."

  "I don't--"

  "You don't need to."

  "So what happens now?"

  "That's up to you."

  "Are the others--?"

  "You'll see them in a minute."

  "And then what?"

  "That's up to you." She kissed his cheek, and a flood of pleasant feelings passed through him. "You can leave now if you want. The doors are open."

  "Kristen," he said.

  He reached for her.

  And she was gone.

  Stormy There was no earthquake this time, only a silent temporary blurring of wall and floor and ceiling as the Houses came together.

  He'd been standing in that previously unknown room Butchery --facing the oncomingDonielle , and she had suddenly stopped in place, eyes widening. She fell to the floor, flailing about, then stiffened and was still. He'd turned around, and the otherDonielle was lying on the floor, too. He remained there for a moment, unmoving, then walked toward her to make sure she was dead.

  She was.

  They both were.

  He felt for a pulse, looked for any indication that there was life within the still bodies, and was gratified to learn that there were none. He was still in one of those black rooms, still staring at the girl's body, but when the change occurred, when the Houses again came together, he was in the sitting room, and the girl's body was nowhere in sight.

  Once more, the House felt different. He didn't know why, didn't know how, but the aura of dread that had been in the background, like white noise, since he'd first stepped through the door of the House, was gone, replaced with a surprisingly benign sense of calm.

  The windows of the sitting room were fogged with condensation, but there was light outside and shapes behind the obscuring blur of the glass.

  He had the feeling that the real world was once again within reach.

  Laurie walked in from the dining room, followed by Mark. Norton emerged from the entryway.

  The four of them stood staring at each other for a long moment.

  It was Mark who broke the silence. "Daniel's dead,"

  he said. "She killed him. Or had him killed."