House (16 page)

“Are you innocent?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

He stood, shocked. Apparently her claim offended him to the core. “You're better than me?”

She didn't know where he was headed. If she continued to defy him, he might find the need to correct her.

“No.”

“Then why won't you eat like me?”

“Okay. Okay, I'll try.”

His face relaxed.

Leslie looked at the bowl. She put three fingers into the pasty mush and scooped a portion the size of a candy out. She'd just eaten no less and relished it. And she knew it was no different. Yet now, at the sight, the odor forced bile up her throat. Her hand began to tremble.

She tried, she did. She closed her eyes and held her breath, lifted the stuff to her face, opened her mouth, and gagged.

The day without food had left her stomach empty, and she dry-heaved twice. Then she flung the stuff off her fingers, lay on her side, and began to sob.

Pete was pacing, fists gripped tight, muttering, “Bad wife.”

With two long strides he crossed the room, stuck one hand into her waistband, clamped the other around her upper arm, and plucked her from the ground as if she were a Barbie doll.

He threw her on the bed and marched toward the round target board. “You have to learn,” he said.

He quickly untied straps on the edge of the board.

“What are you doing?”

“You have to learn.”

He grabbed her and slammed her against the board. Strapped her wrists tight. Then her ankles, spread-eagle. He was going to whip her?

“Please . . .”

He pulled a fistful of darts from a can on the ground, gave the wheel a turn, and stepped back.

Leslie's world spun.

“Tell me when you've learned,” he said. No doubt he was replaying his own mother's treatment of him. But it invoked no sympathy whatsoever.

“Stop! I've learned . . . I'm guilty!”

Pete either wasn't convinced or wanted to play anyway. He threw his first dart.

It struck her thigh.

Leslie screamed.

14

TWO SOUNDS REACHED OUT TO JACK AS HE sat in the black silence. The first was a distant scream. A woman's this time.

The second was the faint humming again. Closer, much closer than the scream.

He flicked the lighter and stood, listening intently.

Could it be pipes?

He stepped away from the wall and stopped.

Hmm, hmm, hmm
. No. Not pipes. The sound of a child humming, faint but clear. As if it was in the tunnel!

“Hello?”

His voice echoed, and the humming stopped.

He crept down the tunnel, nerves on edge.

Hmm, hmm, hmm.
Ahead and on the right. How was that possible? He'd already been up and down this tunnel.

A small door edged into the circle of light cast by the dwindling flame. How could he possibly have missed it?

Or was it the door he'd been pulled through, reappeared?

Jack lifted the light.

The door was smaller than the one he'd come through, no more than four feet high. He stopped in front of it.

Hmm, hmm, hmmm
.

Then silence.

“Hello?” he whispered, but his voice still sounded disruptively loud in the hollow chamber.

He put his hand on the knob, heart pounding.

This is ridiculous, Jack. Just open it
.

He twisted the doorknob and pulled.

A small storage space. A girl, seated on the floor, leaning against the back wall. Her face was pale, and her eyes were closed.

Dead.

The flame in Jack's hand went out, throwing him into darkness. He thumbed the lighter, desperate for light, light, any bit of light.
C'mon, c'mon.
Standing in a doorway facing a dead girl wasn't the time for . . .

The flame caught.

The girl's eyes were open, staring at him but not seeing. Dull circles of gray.

He cried out and slammed the door. Stumbled back to the opposite wall.

Hmm, hmm, hmm.

More singing? She was alive? Then why had she appeared dead? And how could she have hummed if she was dead?

You're losing your mind, Jack. Reality is being distorted by your fear. She's alive!

Still, opening the door again seemed like . . .

Like what? She was a victim, trapped and in need of help, and she'd been calling to them since they first entered the house. But why wasn't she yelling?

Hmm, hmm, hmm.

Jack stepped up to the door, forced his fears down, then flung it open and jumped back.

The storage space was gone. In its place was a small room filled with junk, lit by an oil lamp. The girl stood now, braced with a board in her hands, ready to strike him. Her face was pale and smudged, but not dead, and her eyes were brown and clear, not gray like the grave. Her dark-brown hair was swept up on both sides and tied at the back. Maybe thirteen years old, but she couldn't be an inch over five feet tall.

She blinked, judging him. But she didn't seem frightened. Resolved to hit him if necessary, but not frightened. By the looks of the rumpled blankets and empty soda cans, she'd been hiding in the room for some time.

“Are . . . are you okay?”

The girl mumbled something that he couldn't understand. He wasn't sure she was entirely lucid.

“Are you okay?”

“Do I look okay?” she asked. “What's your name?”

“Jack. I'm . . .” He glanced up the hall. “I'm trapped down here.”

She lowered the board and cautiously walked out of the room, glanced in either direction, and looked up at him. She seemed to be okay.

“Who are you?” he asked.

Again she said something softly, then she paused and spoke clearly. “Susan,” she said. “Are you alone?”

“No. There are four of us.”

She walked up to Jack, dropped the board on the ground, and wrapped her arms around his waist. She clung to him.

He put his hand on her head, awkward. She was clearly a victim in the same predicament as they were. He let the lighter die and took her in both of his arms.

“Thank God,” she breathed. “Thank God.”

He wanted to say something that would comfort her, but his nerves were so shot that he was at a loss. All he could do was stroke her hair, forcing back the knot in his own throat.

“It'll be okay,” she whispered. “It'll be . . .” He didn't catch the rest.

What a strange thing for her to say. The poor girl was delusional. He hated to think of what events had brought her here. Or kept her here.

“I . . . you looked like you were sleeping or something when I first opened the door,” he said. “Then you were standing. Were you singing? Why didn't you yell?”

Susan stepped back. “There's something wrong with this house,” she said. “You know that much, don't you?”

“Wrong?”

“It's haunted.”

Jack wasn't a big believer in haunted houses. As a matter of simple fact, there was no such thing.

“How long have you been here?” he asked She looked toward one of the locked wooden doors. “We should hurry. They might find us now.”

The poor girl's fear had been replaced by desperation, he thought. Had the killer done this? Brought her here as part of his game? Jack swallowed.

“Do you know how to get out of this tunnel?”

She reached into a pocket sewn on the front of her white cotton dress, withdrew a key, and held it up. “They don't know about this room.”

Jack sighed with relief. “Smart girl. Okay. Do you know where the tunnel leads?”

“Yes. But you have to be fast.”

“Do you know the whole house?”

“No.”

Jack paused for a fraction of a second. Could he trust her? Of course he could trust her; she was in the same predicament as he was. He couldn't possibly look into her eyes and
not
trust her.

“Do you know where Pete is? Or Leslie?”

“Who's Leslie?”

Of course. “One of us four. I'm pretty sure she's down here somewhere.” Jack looked up the tunnel. “What kind of basement is this?”

“A freaky one, that's for sure. Follow me.”

“Hold on. Do you know how to get
out
of the house?”

“Don't
you
know how to get out of the house?”

She had expected him to take her to safety. “No, not yet,” he said.

She nodded, remarkably composed.

“We have to find Leslie first.”

“Follow me,” she said.

15

STEPHANIE SAT IN THE CLOSET, TREMBLING And crying.

Her predicament had become completely . . .

There was no word to describe how bad her situation was.
Death,
maybe. She was actually dying. Or had died and was now in hell. The hell the priests of her childhood had warned her about.

She couldn't think straight. It was dark; she only had to open her eyes to remember that. Except for a distant hiss that sounded like it might be rain, the house was quiet. But Betty and Stewart were out there. She'd heard them thundering around after they broke free of the meat locker. After a while she could hear them creeping around, smell them when they passed. They stopped in front of the closet once but didn't enter. She didn't know why. None of it could be real, but she was having a hard time convincing herself of that.

The house seemed alive, looking for her. Eccentrics or inbreds or devils, it didn't matter; they were all the same to her. She thought they might be in the dining room, sliding around, waiting for her to make a sound.

She mumbled a silent prayer. “Oh God oh God oh God.” But she didn't really mean
oh God
.

She really meant,
I'm going to strangle you, Jack. I hate you, I hate you, I hate you! I hate you for meeting me, for screwing up my life, for dragging me out here, for leaving me in this closet! For blaming our daughter's death on me. For your unforgiving bitterness. For the way you look at Leslie.

But her nerves were too frayed to consciously process that long thought over and over, so she just compressed it all into a habitual pseudo-prayer.
Oh God.

She'd whispered a thousand such prayers since stepping foot into this black space. She even tried to dredge up something from the Book of Common Prayer, which contained a few sentiments she'd memorized, oh, so long ago, but those words eluded her. In any case, she didn't have any illusions that some great being would actually swoop down from the sky, reach his long hand through the roof, and pluck her safely from the closet.

She needed something to hold on to, and it wasn't Jack. And it wasn't a song. Within minutes of Jack's abandoning her in this pit, she'd realized that such a childish, foolish means of escape was no match for this particular reality. In fact, reduced to her shriveling self, she found the idea of singing repulsive.

And she found her raw surging emotion at least somewhat comforting. So she held on to this hatred she felt for Jack.

She hated him for his bitterness.

She hated him for not leaving her, knowing good and well she deserved nothing less.

She hated him for going after Leslie. The tramp might actually seduce him.

She hated him for leaving her to rot in this black closet.

She hated him for making her so angry, because anger meant she still cared for that stubborn, pigheaded mule.

Her mind had snapped again; she knew that much. It snapped first a year ago, when she stood staring at cracked ice over the pond where just a moment earlier her daughter had been standing.

It wasn't really her fault, they all said. There was snow on the ice, and she was from the South—no way to know that the ice was too thin.

No way she could be blamed for posing Melissa on what she thought was snow so that she could take a picture of the toddler in her darling little yellow coat.

No way she could know that the camera would run out of juice at that moment, forcing her to remove her attention from Melissa for those thirty seconds as she replaced the batteries.

She'd spent every waking moment since the tragedy breathing denial; she did know that much. Everything was going to be all right. She just had to move on in the flow of life. Slap on a smile and sing. But here, in this suffocating space, all of that nonsense had been jerked from her.

Give me one dead body, and I might let rule two slide.
She'd given her dead body—Melissa—but that wouldn't impress this killer.

While that inbred Stewart had been busy calling them all atheists, Stephanie thought more than once that he might be right. She thought she believed in God. At least she used to, when she was a kid. But someone had once said something to her about being a Christian and still being a “practical atheist,” that is, someone who believed in God but didn't follow his ways. Heck, even the demons believed in God and shook, didn't the Bible say that?

She was shaking now. Not because she was a demon, but because she was pretty sure something similar to demons was outside the closet.

Her problem was that she wasn't completely sure she did believe in God. The only demon she knew was herself.

And Jack.

“Oh God oh God oh God . . .”

16

WHEN RANDY HIT THE CONCRETE WALL, HE was running at a full clip in pitch darkness, away from the thumping boots.

Fifteen or twenty seconds at a fast run, then
smack!
He bounced back a few feet and dropped to his butt, dazed and barely conscious. The shotgun clattered to the ground, and he ran his hands about quickly, searching for it.

He needed that gun, needed it like he needed air. He had the knife, but with any luck he wouldn't ever be close enough to Stewart for the blade to do any good. And if the gun didn't work, he'd use it like a bat. Old Stew had a thing or two to learn about baseball.

More than a few times he'd been tempted to stop in his tracks, turn around, and wait for the running feet to catch up before blasting away. Or whaling away.