House (33 page)

Leslie stood, unmoving, staring at the moving fog.

Jack followed at Stephanie's heels, down the stairs, keeping his eyes on the steps in front of him.

Susan dropped into the fog, which hit her at the waist. “Come on!”

Stephanie stopped on the last step before entering the black stuff. “Will it hurt?” she asked.

Susan ran toward the first door that Jack and Randy had entered.

He nudged Stephanie. “Go! Just go.”

She stepped into the fog and cried out with pain. But she was committed, and she rushed after Susan.

The moment Jack's foot passed the surface, pain seared his skin through his shoes and socks. He grunted and pushed on.

It was his third time in the fog, and the pain this time was by far the worst. Sharper, deeper.

He staggered out of the fog into the room with four sofas.

Susan threw the door shut. “Do you see it now?”

Jack looked around. “See what?”

“You're not looking!” she snapped angrily.

“What are we looking for?” Stephanie demanded. “Just tell us!”

“I have told you!”

“Told us wh—”

“The paintings!” Jack said.

The paintings on the walls were no longer actually on the walls. They hung in space a foot or two from the walls, moving slowly, facing him. All of them.

And they were all portraits of . . . of him! Odd and distorted, but unmistakably him!

The one directly in front of him showed him without eyes. The image's crooked smile sent a shiver down his back.

Jack dropped to one knee, eyes still on the portraits. Him, all of them—terrifying images that didn't really look like him at all. White's imagination was demented.

“What do you see?” Stephanie asked.

“They're me,” he said.

“That's not what I see. They're me. They . . . they're horrible!”

“He's doing this—”

“No,” Susan said. “This isn't White.”

The door from the study flew open, and Jack barged in, panting.

Jack?

Dressed exactly like him, the same kind of Jack that was in the boiler room, only this time Jack didn't pay them any attention whatsoever. It was as if he didn't see them.

He threw the door closed and quickly scanned the portraits.

“It's . . . that's me!” Stephanie whispered. She was seeing her own version of what Jack saw. They were both seeing themselves.

“Now do you understand?” Susan asked. She sounded urgent, demanding.

But Jack didn't understand. “I . . .” Jack didn't know what to say.

The new Jack focused on something across the room. His face twisted into a furious snarl, and his hands tightened into fists, a terrifying image of raw bitterness and rage.

Then he was moving like a tiger across the room, sweeping up a lamp as he went. Over a couch in a single leap.

Jack saw what he was looking at. Three of the portraits in the far corner were no longer images of him. Two of them were of people he knew from the publishing world—an agent who'd left him out to dry before his first novel was published, and a critic who'd trashed that same novel when it was finally published.

The other portrait was of Stephanie, posing dumbly in a yellow dress.

The new Jack went for the portrait of Stephanie, screaming. He swung the lamp at the canvas, tearing through Stephanie's face. Jack didn't stop there. He proceeded to rip the frame apart, stick from stick, breaking each piece over his knee.

Then he tore down the other two portraits and stomped on them. He finally stood back, assured himself that there were no other offenders in his presence, and strode angrily from the room, slamming the door.

When Jack looked back at the portraits he'd shredded, they were hanging in the air again, displaying his own distorted face.

“Do you understand?” Susan demanded. “We have to get out, but I can't get us out. If it were my house, I could do it, but it's yours, each of you. White made this
your
house. You have to get us out, and it won't be easy, so you have to—”

“I'm trying to think!” Jack said. He looked around. “
My
house? I don't see . . .”

His eyes settled on an old wooden placard that hung on the wall above the portraits. An old familiar saying was burned into the wood.

Home Is Where the Heart Is
. And he knew then what Susan was trying to show them.

“This house is mirroring our hearts.” He blinked. “It's drawing its power from the evil in us!”

“That's what I've been saying,” Susan said.

“It's a haunted house that reflects the hearts of those who enter?” Stephanie said.

“Possessed by a power to mirror our hearts,” Jack said. “You see the portraits of yourself, and I see them of me. Each of our experiences is unique. We're caught in a basement that's been empowered by White to reflect the evil in our hearts!”

“We've been fighting our own hearts?”

“No,” Susan said. “The evil in your hearts.”

“The ultimate haunted house,” Jack said, staring at the portraits again. “We've been facing ourselves this whole time.” He turned to Stephanie. “Our own sins are haunting us.”

“I'm sorry, Jack.” Her eyes were misted with both fear and sorrow, but he dismissed the fear and accepted only the sorrow. He felt it wash over his own heart. “I'm so sorry.”

“No.” Jack went to her, horrified by the image of himself tearing into the portrait of Stephanie with so much hatred. That was the truth of his heart!

“I'm the one who should be sorry. I've been so stubborn.” He took her in his arms and held her tight, hoping desperately that he wasn't reconciling for his own gain.

She clung to him and cried in his neck. “I'm sorry, Jack.”

He still loved her. Regardless of what happened tonight, he did love her. The realization made him squeeze her tighter.

“We have to hurry,” Susan said.

Jack faced her, his new understanding increasing his sense of urgency. The fact that none of the pictures on the walls had changed wasn't lost on him.

“If we defeat the sin, we take away the house's power?”

Susan eyed him for a few moments. “No. That's not the way it works. It's not about the sins. It's about the heart. It's about you.”

Stephanie stepped forward. “That doesn't make sense! We are what we do!”

“Follow me.” Susan hurried to the door that led into the study. “I'll show you the way.” If Jack was right, she was headed for the back exit.

The notion that all the evil he'd confronted in the last seven hours had been mostly his own doing flogged at Jack's mind. He was evil? Or was the evil so strong in him that he couldn't see the good?

Susan? She was one of White's victims, come into the killer's own world, but she was more. She was the light in this darkness, wasn't she?

A dozen meaningless sayings cried out to him. A house divided cannot stand. Love your neighbor as yourself.

Light came into the darkness, but the darkness did not understand it.

Susan pulled the door open, took a deep breath, then stepped back. Jack saw what she saw over her shoulder. Stewart, Betty, and Pete stood abreast, bearing shotguns, standing in black fog, glaring at them with glowing eyes. Behind them, the room was filled with twenty or thirty men wearing Tin Man masks, armed with axes. They were all dressed like Jack.

Were Jacks.

“They're me!” Stephanie whispered.

Not possible, not possible. But real, very real, standing right before him.

For a moment, none of them moved. The house moaned. There was a terrible wail behind the deep, guttural sound.

“Guilty as sin,” Betty said. She thrust out her finger. “Kill them!”

The Jacks surged forward.

Susan slammed the door, locked it, and ran past Jack. “Run! After me!”

The room reverberated with the sound of splintering wood.

“Run!”

38
6:05 am

TIME CAME TO A STANDSTILL FOR RANDY the moment he put his foot on the first step leading into the basement.

Fear stopped him—terrible waves of fear that felt like real waves crashing into his body.
Whump, whump, whump
. His ears rang in their wake.

Leslie began to move again, down the steps toward the fog.

“Leslie?”

His voice was hoarse and soft, so he said it again.

“Leslie?”

She looked back up at him, and he saw that her cheeks were wet. She jerked her head around and stepped down. Into the fog. Up to her knees. And ran, fog swirling in her wake.

Then she was gone.

Randy forced himself down slowly, every step meeting him with a new wave of fear. Which was confusing to him, because he'd been sure that White wanted him to do his business. He'd let him have the knife, hadn't he?

He walked a few steps with more confidence and stopped just above the sea of black fog. Another wave of fear hit him full in the face.

It was Stewart, standing bald and glaring with bulging eyes. Not just Stewart. Six Stewarts, each unique in their own way. All armed with shotguns or axes.

He jumped back up one step and lifted the crowbar.

But they weren't coming at him. Right? They stood still, legs planted in the fog, staring at him without moving.

Maybe they weren't a threat to him anymore. In some ways he was on the same team now, trying like them to kill the girl. He'd killed a Stewart, so they probably had some fear of him. Mutual respect.

“I'm going after Susan,” he said. His voice echoed softly in the hall.

They didn't move. Neither did he.

The house began to moan, then wail. For a couple of seconds he thought about running back upstairs.

“Hello, Randy.”

He whirled around.

The Tin Man stood at the top of the stairs, framed in a gray light from some supernatural source. He was wearing his mask, and he held a shotgun in both hands.

Randy opened his mouth to tell White what his plans were—that he needed just a few extra minutes to take care of the girl. “I—”

That was as far as he got.

White swung his gun down. “Good-bye, Randy.”

Randy waited for the fist of lead to hit him. He felt his bladder go. The knife fell from his hand.

“I'll do anything,” he said, dropping the crowbar too. “I swear, I'll do anything.”

Still no blast. That was good. That was real good. So he said more of the same.

“Anything, I swear, anything . . . I want to be . . . I'll do anything.”

Still no blast. The Tin Man had his shotgun angled down so that the shot from its barrel would strike Randy's chest. But he wasn't pulling the trigger. And Tin Man didn't strike him as the kind to hesitate without good reason.

That was good, right?

“Kill her,” Tin Man said.

“I'm going to, I swear. That's what I'm doing.”

One of the hall doors busted open behind Randy, and he jerked his head around. Leslie stumbled out, pushed by Stewart and another bald inbred who stepped into the hall behind her. Stewarts. Demons, for all she knew.

“Leslie,” Tin Man said. “Use the knife.”

“Randy?” Leslie sobbed. “What's happening, Randy?”

Tin Man stared at him past the mask, then stepped back and shut the door on the basement, leaving Randy to carry out his orders. Or be killed, for sure. Kill or be killed. No doubt about that.

“Randy! Answer me!” Leslie was broken to pieces anyway. No way she was going to survive this mess. He'd just be putting her out of her misery.

But Randy's legs wobbled like rubber bands as he crouched, felt for the knife beneath the fog, and lifted the weapon into the clear.

“Randy, you can't possibly be thinking about killing me!” Her face wrinkled with terror. “Randy, sweetie . . . Randy?”

He looked at the knife in his hands. He felt nothing for her. Nothing at all. He was going to do this. That's all there was to it. He was going to kill Leslie because he was really on Team Stewart, and the Stewarts always obeyed White.

Randy walked through the fog, toward the woman who had tried to control him without knowing how much he resented it. This was his house. White's house. Stewart's house. Randy's house. Leslie was no longer welcome.

“Randy, you stop right there!” she screamed, spittle flying. “Stop!”

Randy stopped in front of her. Then he thrust the knife forward, into her chest. Deep into her chest. And let go. The Stewarts let go of her too.

She staggered back one step, eyes wide, and fell backward into the fog. Randy found the look of shock on her face interesting.

He stared at the fog where she'd fallen until it settled completely, rich and oily thick. When he lifted his eyes to the closest Stewart—the same Stewart who'd first chased him, the same Stewart who'd drowned—the thing returned a long, expressionless look. Then Stewart turned and headed through the door, followed by the others.