Nothing.
Aaron followed him to the balcony overlooking the foyer. He gasped when he saw Kayla, fixed by razor blades to what looked like a piece of the ceiling. Her mouth open, her eyes open, looking as though she hung forever in a twilight place between life and death.
Another section of the ceiling hung down near her. There were no razors on this one, just flat board, and Aaron wondered what this one had been used for.
Then he remembered the kid, hanging in midair on a wire web. Surely he hadn't just voluntarily climbed out onto the thing, surely he hadn't jumped from the balcony.
He was pushed.
The pieces fell together quickly, with dreadful finality. He even noted the space between the boards. Remembered the young man dragging the Crawford girl – the Madface without a mask –
(Or maybe the face of a young, innocent girl was her mask. Maybe the Madface is what she really looks like inside.)
– down the hall to the balcony.
The space between the boards was just big enough. Just large enough for a teenage girl to stand between them as they fell to their grisly work.
That thought scared him as much – more – than any of the individual traps they had yet faced.
They've planned it all. They knew every step we'd take.
And the follow-up realization: They know us.
It was true. It was the only explanation. This wasn't a trap for whoever might come, this was a trap – a series of traps – designed for specific prey.
That was the first time he understood.
No. I knew before this.
He had understood subconsciously when he saw the woman beneath the Sadface mask. The woman he thought Tommy had killed five years ago. The time he moved from thief to accomplice to murder.
Even before that, he knew none of this could be an accident – how could it? But that thought, and all its implications, had been forced out of his mind by the simple need to survive.
That need, that will to live, makes anyone smarter, sharpens their wits and focuses them on the task at hand. It also makes them stupider, makes them ignore anything beyond their immediate attention.
Ahead of him, Rob made a sudden choking sound. He hadn't moved from behind Sadface, hadn't removed the knife he held at her throat. But he had glanced down, over the balustrade.
Aaron couldn't help himself. He looked, too.
Below them, he could see the chandelier, looking like it hung in midair. And on the foyer floor beneath it, smears of red on a white stone floor. The huge dogs were there, lapping up the blood and tearing at large chunks of what had once been human, reduced now to nothing but meat for the beasts.
"We're leaving!" Rob screamed. His voice sounded strangled. But still strong enough to believe him when he added, "Anyone stops us and I kill her!"
There was a long moment, then a whistle sounded, high and shrill. The instant it did, the dogs scattered, disappearing from view.
Nothing but a few red smears remained below. The rest had been lapped up, dragged away.
Eaten.
Rob pushed Sadface down the stairs. She began down ahead of him. Aaron hung back, terrified.
They know us. They know us so well they know what we will do, when we will do it.
He remembered the remote control in Madface's hand. The closed-circuit images on the huge television.
Maybe it wasn't planned like that. Maybe they set the traps, then simply watched to spring them. Not in some predetermined order, just when the opportunity arose.
That gave him the hope to take a single step. Because maybe they hadn't predicted this. Maybe Rob slamming into that room was the sign their plan had unraveled, that the people behind this had finally been caught unawares.
Then he froze again. The second step just wouldn't come.
And Rob was halfway down the stairs.
What happens if he leaves me behind?
Still he didn't move. Not until he thought of Dee, her smile, her arms that always opened wide to greet him when he came home.
He caught up with Rob three-quarters of the way down. He looked around as they walked down the stairs, seeing the white wall beside them, the other white walls in the foyer below.
Something new hit him – one more of those subtle clues that should have alerted him from the beginning. One more thing, like the fact that the rooms were all a bit too small to fit properly in the outer shell of the mansion.
"No pictures," he said.
"What?" Rob didn't look at him.
"There were no pictures in the house. I didn't notice before, but now…. No pictures of the family, no artwork at all. It's like –"
"Like it was all a fake. I know." One of Rob's hands held the knife at Sadface's throat. The other had been knotted up in her shirt at her back, pushing her ahead. Now he let go with that hand long enough to drive a savage punch into her kidney. The woman still didn't make a sound. A hit like that should have made her scream, even crippled her. But the only sound was Rob saying, "It was all a setup."
They stepped off the stairs. Aaron almost slipped when he did. The stone floor that had once shone white in the night was now streaked with dark red. There were small bits of meat here and there. All that remained of TJ.
He looked at Rob. Rob was looking at the floor, too. His face was a mask no less blank than the ones that had dogged them through this night.
Rob looked away. Toward the hall that led to the back of the house.
He began to shake.
Aaron looked, too. He had to know, because the only thing worse than knowing would be not knowing. The only way to avoid death would be to learn what their captors planned.
To know them the way they knew him and Rob.
He looked.
Rob's girlfriend, Donna, hung from the ceiling in the hall. She was very dead. Her feet hung two feet above the floor. One of her shoes had come off, which was a strange detail to notice. More obvious would have been her bulging eyes, her lolling tongue.
The blood that trickled from a thousand wounds on her body.
But it was the shoe that held Aaron's attention. He didn't know why, but looking away was just about the hardest thing he'd ever done.
And, finally, Sadface made a sound.
She began to laugh.
It was a strange, wheezing sound. The laugh of madness come to call.
Rob's expression darkened. He looked like he was going to kill her, and he tensed for the final, killing blow.
"Don't," Aaron said. The look Rob shot at him was so enraged, so dangerous, that he took a step back. He raised his hands. "Let's just get out," he pleaded. "Rob, please. Let's just get out."
41
Rob shoved Sadface –
(the woman who slept in the bed upstairs the woman asleep in her bed five years ago the woman who died but lived, who lived to kill)
– toward the front door.
TJ had been a shock. Donna another. But they were clarifying in their way. They made him remember who he was. He wasn't just a thief, wasn't just someone plagued by bad luck.
He was a survivor.
He'd survived everything that had happened. The bad jobs, the bad luck that harried and hounded him at every step.
He'd survive this, too.
"Open it," he said. The woman was laughing, laughing. The sound pierced him. Shudders writhed along his spine.
"Open it!" he screamed. "OPEN IT OR YOU'RE DEAD!"
"She can't open it."
Rob spun toward the sound, whipping Sadface around so that she was between him and the source.
Two figures approached down the hall. Happyface and Madface. Walking toward them. Sauntering toward them.
For a moment Rob utterly forgot that he was the one holding the knife. That he was the one in control.
They pulled off their masks as they walked. Happyface revealed the face of Jason Crawford. Dark hair that was graying at the edges, nose that had a bit of a hook to it. Madface was the girl they had assumed was a
victim, but who was instead some strange part of their torment.
Then Crawford reached up and pulled his nose off. It separated from his face, torn flesh hanging in thin ribbons of skin.
Rob almost threw up until he realized the madman wasn't really engaging in self-mutilation. The flaps of skin weren't actually skin, any more than the nose had been a nose. It was just the hook of the nose, a small prosthetic attached to his real nose underneath. When it came away, it completely altered the man's face.
Rob saw the face of the man he had tried to kill. Remembered his name –
(Schaffer. James Schaffer. Why would I remember that now? All those years ago. What does it matter? What did it ever matter?)
– just like he remembered the girl who appeared beside him as the "Crawford girl" removed her dark wig and contacts to reveal a blond, blue-eyed girl beneath.
The Crawfords were dead. Only the Schaffers – who by all rights should be dead – remained. Them… and the people who killed them.
"Only you can open the door, Rob," said the man.
Aaron turned to grab the door handle, not seeming to hear him.
"If you touch that door, you'll die," said the girl. And the more Rob looked at her, the more he saw the pre-teen she had been on the night of that robbery, the robbery.
Aaron's hand jerked back like the handle was poisoned. Which, Rob supposed, it might very well be.
Aaron turned back to look, with Rob, at the two people down the hall.
"You did this," Rob breathed. "You did this." And of course he already knew that, of course it was already obvious at this point. But at the same time, it didn't seem real until he said the words.
All for us.
All for me.
Those words were the motto of his life, the creed by which he had lived. And now he wished, for the first time, that something his could instead belong to someone – anyone – else.
James Schaffer grinned. The smile was wide and didn't reach his eyes, which remained hollow and hanging over a mad abyss. "It took almost five years. To find you." The grin grew wider. "But one thing thieves – scum – never really stop to consider the ramifications of: the rich have money. Money to spend on the best detectives in the world. To find thieves who always use the same m.o. To watch. To ferret out everyone they know, everyone they love. To make…" and he gestured, taking in the place around them which had gradually contracted during the night to become the totality of Rob's world, "all this. For my daughter to ‘accidentally' meet your son and ensure that he would be here tonight.
The girl laughed. Not the wheezing, mad laugh of the mother. It was a sharp bark, a knife-laugh that cut others, but that would also cut herself. The laugh of someone who no longer lives for anything but pain.
"To figure out each step, each moment," continued James, "that would lead inevitably to this. To HAVE THEIR REVENGE!" He screamed the last, and now his expression reached his eyes. Pure rage.
James calmed himself. His smile returned. "How does it feel? To lose everything?"
The girl beside him held up her hand. Rob shrank back until he saw the remote control that she had used to call down his son's death. And, seeing it, he shrank back more.
He hid behind the mother –
(you knew her name once what was it I can't remember oh why can't I remember)
– and screamed, "Don't! Don't or I swear!"
He held the knife so tight to the woman's neck it was a wonder her throat hadn't already been slit.
And she laughed.
"You still don't understand," she said.
Then her laugh cut off with the sudden completeness of a bullet to the heart.
She looked at the two people in the hall – at her husband and daughter. They nodded, and Rob's innards froze.
"Those who have nothing cannot be robbed," she whispered.
And he remembered the safe. The first clue on this nightmare journey.
those who have nothing cannot be robbed
He gasped. Coughed. Realizing the words she said had been planted for them, and wondering what they truly meant.
James Schaffer nodded at his wife once more. Then turned his horrible grin back to Rob. "We thought of everything, Rob. Everything." He shook his head. "You always knew one of us was going to die. Isn't that what you said, Rob? What you said that night?"
The countdown appeared as the safe locked. Twelve hours before it would open. Rob spoke, rage barely contained behind a demon's grin. "I guess we always knew at least one of you was going to die," he said. "Turns out it's going to be even more."
James shook his head. "It wasn't just one of us. Two people died that night. One of them just wanted to hang on long enough to see you suffer."
In that instant, Rob remembered the name of the woman he held at knifepoint.
Beth. Beth Schaffer.
In the next. She clapped her hands over the hand that held a knife to her throat. Rob tensed, ready to fight her for control of the weapon.
But she didn't try to wrench it from his grasp. Didn't try to turn it on him.
She shoved it deep into her own throat, sawing from right to left in a slash that would sever the jugular and both carotids.
Blood spewed from her. It rained down Rob's knife hand, soaked his front.
And then he was holding nothing but a corpse.
She sank from his grasp.
James and his daughter stepped closer to the foyer, closer to Aaron and to him.
He held up the knife as they approached. "Don't come any closer. Don't –"
The girl held up her remote. Rob tensed, and Aaron grew rigid beside him.
The girl pressed a button.
The door at Rob's back – the front door, the door to freedom and a new life – opened.
Rob eyed it for a moment, suspicion curling his features. Then he looked back at James and his daughter.
"Go," said the man.
Rob didn't move. "I don't believe you. I don't believe this," he said gesturing at the door.
The girl spoke. Her voice was low, exhausted. Like the night had taken everything she had and left only a husk behind. "You know what it is to lose everything. There's no more game to play."
Rob stepped back. Again. His rear leg broke the invisible line separating this house from the rest of the world.
Nothing happened.
Another step, and he was outside. On the porch.
He finally let himself do what he had wanted to do since he heard the little bitch's last words.
"You think that," he said, pointing the knife at Donna's gently swaying form, then at the smears on the foyer floor, "matters to me?" He laughed again, and no matter how hard he tried he knew he wouldn't be able to stop the cackles shaking his entire frame.
"No," said James. His smile was at its widest, so large it strained at his face. It looked exactly like the mask he had worn.
And knew this was the moment the mask had smiled for.
James' daughter hit a button on her remote.
"The robbed that smiles," said James through his grin, "steals something from the thief."
A blade had just removed the head from Tommy Leigh's body.
And before the blade, a table.
And on that table, a card.
the robbed that smiles
steals something from the thief
Rob's lip curled. "I'm gonna kill you both. Gonna –"
The girl hit another button. A shot rang out.
He felt it hit his chest. Felt it blow through him, the strange sensation of organs turning inside out as the bullet seared past.
Another shot. He reeled, and blood poured down his cheek – the wound had skipped across the side of his head.
He fell to his knees, and thunder sounded again. This time the shot punctured his stomach.
He sank to his knees. Looked at James and his daughter.
These were exactly the shots that had taken down the family, in exactly the order they happened.
Shot in the chest, just like the boy.
Shot in the head, just like the woman.
Shot in the gut, just like the man.
But what about –
A final shot rang out. It traveled the opposite direction the first had gone. In through his back, out a hole in his chest that opened in a spray of blood and bone before it.
How she died. The girl. How Kayla shot her and shediedandthenweleftandalkchzckle –
Rob's thoughts turned to a jumble. He heard sound, words. Some man speaking, some man he should know, but whom he couldn't quite place.
"My son died. None of the rest of us. We survived, after a fashion. We should have died, but we were strong enough to come to this moment. What about you? Can you survive the moment where everything you have is taken, and where your blood is spilled? Can you survive watching everything disappear – even yourself?"
A dread moment of silence. Then the man said, "I don't think so."
Rob fell forward. His balance was gone, his sight was gone, his thoughts were gone.
And then, at the last, he was gone.
42
Aaron saw Rob fall bonelessly to the porch. He twitched once. Then one of the huge dogs flew out of the night and quickly drag the body away.
Then the front door slammed shut.
He turned back to the man and the teenage girl behind him. They stared, all expression gone from their faces. Neither spared a single glance at the body on the floor, the body of their mother/wife.
There was only him and them.
"I didn't…," he began. "I wasn't the one who hurt your son. I tried to stop it." They kept staring, impassive. "Please," he said. His voice had turned to a high-pitched wheedle. He wasn't ashamed. He would beg – would do anything – if it meant he could get out. Get back to Dee. "Please just let me –"
The girl pushed a button on the remote. Several doors in the hall flew open. Three of the four pit bulls that had forced the thieves into the attic came out of the doors. A moment later the fourth arrived, coming in through the open door to the kitchen.
The House That Death Built Page 19