The House

by Bentley Little

  In the hall, in the front room, in the entryway, he saw bugs working their way out of the strawberry jam as he leaped over or hurriedly skirted the piles, hundreds of black bodies squirming in the thick red substance, trying to escape.

  He jumped off the steps, landing on the cement walkway and scattering the squares of burnt toast. His heart was pounding so furiously and painfully that he thought he might be having a heart attack, but he kept running and did not stop until he was two houses away and almost completely out of breath.

  In his mind, he still saw that dirty, sexy little girl, smiling evilly at him. He could not get the image out of his head, and it made him want to keep running, to get as far away from here as quickly as possible, but both his lungs and legs were rebelling, and no matter how frightened he was, he knew he had to rest for a few moments or he wouldn't be getting out of this neighborhood at all.

  Across the street, a dog-walking couple was staring at him and frowning, curious, no doubt, as to why an old man had run like hell from an empty house in which he was not supposed to be, and he looked over at them, grimaced, and waved. They turned away, embarrassed, and kept walking.

  Norton bent over, resting his hands on his knees and trying to catch his breath. The sun was now almost down, and the shadows had darkened into dusk. He did not want to be on the street when night fell, but he could not afford to push himself any more than he already had.

  He exhaled deeply, inhaled just as deeply, attempting to regulate and control his breathing.

  Jesus, he was in bad shape.

  A few minutes later, he straightened, stood. His heart continued to pound, but his breathing had calmed down, and he decided to chance it. He started walking, crossing the street and heading toward Oak Road and Main. He moved slowly, but he didn't have to stop, and five minutes later he was on his own street in his own neighborhood.

  The image of the dirty girl was still in his mind, and he started thinking that there was something familiar about her. He had not noticed it at first, but looking back on it, there'd been a spark of recognition in his initial reaction to her, a trace of the known in her appearance.

  He had seen her before.

  He reached his house, removed his keys from his pocket, unlocked the door, and stepped inside, flipping on the lights. He'd half expected to see Carole's ghost again, or some other manifestation, but the house was empty and for that he was grateful.

  He put down his briefcase, walked into the kitchen.

  Donna.

  That's who the girl reminded him of.

  The ants.

  Why hadn't he seen it immediately, the resemblance?

  It was so obvious now that he thought about it. The similarity between the two was frightening.

  He walked over to the cupboard, took out a shot glass and a bottle of scotch.

  Donna.

  The memories flooded back. They'd been friends. At least it had started out that way. They'd played with toys, made up games, imagined adventures. But something had changed somewhere along the way. He remembered the two of them beating up other children, making them cry. Burying a live hamster. Skinning a dog.

  The ants.

  It had been fun and he'd enjoyed it, but then things had changed.

  Then had come the sex.

  He'd enjoyed that, too. He'd never known anything like it, and he knew it was something his other friends weren't getting to do, and it was not only the physical pleasure it afforded, but the exclusivity of the act and the air of the forbidden which surrounded it that so heightened the experience, that made him feel the way he did.

  But then . . .

  Then it had gone too far.

  Donna had been younger than him but far more knowledgeable, and as things progressed, she had attempted to entice him into perversity. The sex she'd suggested had been unnatural, the acts she wanted him to perform with her things he had never even imagined. It had frightened him and he had pulled away, but he could not remember what happened after that. His memory was hazy. Had she moved? Had they simply stopped being friends?

  He couldn't recall.

  But he had an erection even now, just thinking about it, and for the first time since he'd been a child, he allowed himself to remember what he and Donna had done.

  He put down the bottle and the shot glass and walked out of the kitchen, down the hall to the bathroom.

  He thought not only of what they'd done, but of what she'd wanted to do, of the perverted acts she'd wanted him to engage in, and he recalled the way the girl in the empty house had looked with the window behind her and the meeting of her thighs visible through the thin material of her dirty shift.

  He imagined what she looked like without the shift.

  Breathing heavily, he pulled down his pants, knelt before the toilet bowl.

  He began to masturbate.

  Stormy Roberta was waiting for him when he got home.

  With a lawyer.

  The two of them sat on the chairs opposite the coffee table, and Stormy had no choice but to set himself down on the couch. The chairs were higher than the couch, so the two of them looked down on him while he looked up at them. He had to smile. An old movie trick. A

  visual metaphor. Place the good guys at a slightly higher angle so that there would be a subliminal sense of power and authority on their part, so that they were perceived to have the upper hand and the moral high ground.

  It was probably the lawyer's idea.

  This was entirely unexpected, completely out of the blue, but he pretended as though it was something he'd been anticipating, and he placed his briefcase on the shag next to the couch and smiled up at Roberta. "Did we have to bring the lawyers in at this stage?"

  She frowned. "What the hell are you talking about?"

  "Him." He nodded toward the lawyer, though he was suddenly unsure of himself.

  "Mr. Reynolds? He's here," she explained patiently, "because the Finnigan brothers declared bankruptcy and you're one of their creditors."

  "Is this a bad time?" the lawyer asked, looking from Roberta to Stormy.

  Stormy shook his head tiredly. "No, it's fine." He found that he was a little disappointed Roberta was not trying to divorce him, and he tried to pay attention as Reynolds explained that the status of the downtown Albuquerque theater he'd bought with theFinnigan brothers with the intention of turning it into an art theater was now in limbo, but his mind kept wandering. He accepted the forms and folders given him, listened to his options, but figured he'd go over the details later at his leisure.

  There were still questions as to whether, as a distributor, he was legally allowed to own a theater, and he'd remained a minority partner, owning forty-nine percent of the enterprise to theFinnigans ' fifty-one. There were a lot of cases pending before various courts that addressed this issue and he'd hoped to avoid it entirely, but apparently unless he could get another majority partner, he'd either have to jump in and buy the entire business or forfeit his interest in the project to the bankruptcy court and accept whatever they could get for the theater at auction.

  His mind was still on divorce, though. Somehow, this false alarm seemed to have lent him the confidence he'd lacked until now. He realized, for the first time, that an end to the marriage was a realistic possibility. Before now, it had been an abstraction, a fantasy almost, and for some stupid reason he'd assumed that if there was going to be a divorce, it would be initiated by her.

  But why?

  He could start divorce proceedings himself. He could take an active role in this. Instead of passively waiting for something to happen to him, he could take the initiative and do it himself.

  Reynolds stood, handed him a card. "I guess that concludes it. If you have any questions over the next few days, feel free to call."

  "I'll talk to my lawyer," Stormy said, "and have him get in touch with you."

  Reynolds nodded. "My phone and fax number are on the card."

  Stormy saw the other man to the door, watched him get into his b
lack Bronco, and waved good-bye. He shut the door and looked back toward Roberta, who was still standing next to the coffee table.

  She stared at him. "You really thought I wanted a divorce?"

  He nodded. "Yeah."

  She said nothing, only nodded and walked into the kitchen, an unreadable expression on her face.

  He drove down to Albuquerque the next day.

  Overnight, he'd pretty much given up his dream of owning an art theater. It was an old dream anyway, concocted in L.A. during his college days, when such places were the hip spots for hip students to hang out. Times had changed, though, and cable TV and the multiplexes had pretty well killed off the independently owned art house. Today's viewers were simply not as willing to make the effort to leave their homes and take a chance on quirky, unknown films when they knew they could catch the movies on cable in six months.

  Hell, more people saw art films on video today than had ever seen them in a theater.

  But it was still depressing.

  He pulled up in front of the building and got out of the car to take a last look around. Now that he was out of the project, divorced from the hopes and wishes connected with it, he could see that the idea had been a shaky one. The neighborhood surrounding the theater was not commercial but industrial, having shifted some twenty years ago when downtown retail businesses moved to a newer area of the city. Not the greatest part of town even in the daytime, at night it would be downright spooky to anyone living above the poverty line.

  He stared up at the broken marquee and peeling, weathered facade. They'd purchased the building but had not yet started on any of the renovations. Not that there were going to be that many. Art theater patrons liked a dingy, slightly seedy low-tech ambience. It differentiated them from other moviegoers, imparted a feeling of exclusivity to the viewing experience, made them think they were intellectual because they were willing to endure hardship for their love of art.

  Still, the building was not up to code and its deteriorated condition was a little too run-down even for the art crowd.

  Stormy walked up to the front doors, unlocked and opened them. He was supposed to drop his keys off at the real-estate office, but he wanted to see his baby one final time before putting it up for adoption.

  He walked into the lobby and immediately the hair on the back of his neck prickled. It was a physical sensation, a biologic response, not something originating in his mind. Some instinctive animal part of his nature sensed danger here, and though he would ordinarily put such a reaction down to stress or psychological factors and immediately dismiss it, this time he was not quite so ready to ignore his response.

  He thought of what Ken had said about Tom Utchaca and his father, about what was happening on the reservation.

  Once again, the idea of a living doll jogged his memory, but he couldn't quite recollect what in his past would provide a correlation.

  Maybe there was a doll somewhere in the theater.

  His goose bumps doubled, tripled, and he was tempted to walk out the way he'd come, drive straight to the real-estate office, and drop off the keys. Even with the front door open, the lobby was dark, its edges shadowed, and both the stairway to the balcony and the open door to the theater proper were pitch-black.

  He moved over to the ticket booth, flipped the series of light switches for the building. Soft yellow bulbs flickered on but did little to dissipate the gloom.

  The idea that there was akachina doll--a living kachi nadoll--somewhere in the theater was stupid, but the image was undeniably powerful. In his mind, he could see one of the strange figures skulking under the projector in the booth, crawling under the seats in the theater, lurking behind the screen in the storage area.

  He'd never been one to let fear get the best of him, though. If he even suspected he was scared of something, he'd meet it head-on, fight it and tame it. He'd had a fear of flying. Now he had a pilot's license. He'd had a fear of the ocean. He'd taken a cruise to Alaska. This was smaller, more specific, but that didn't make it any less acceptable, and he wasn't going to let doubt and fear and superstition run him out of his own building in the middle of the day.

  He walked forward, through the double doors on the left side of the concession stand. Before him, rows of red seats sloped slightly downward. He saw no sign of movement in the aisles or on the abbreviated stage below the ripped screen, but he was still chilled, and he stood there for a moment, waiting, watching.

  Nothing.

  The interior of the theater was quiet, the only sound came from outside, and the silence made him feel a little better. He heard no claws on cement floor, no soft rustling, none of the sounds a doll would make if it was looking for him, coming after him.

  If it was looking for him? Coming after him?

  Where had he come up with that?

  He didn't know.

  But he knew the sounds.

  He'd heard them before.

  The silence was no longer quite so reassuring. He backtracked into the lobby. There was no reason for him to be here. He should lock up, turn in the keys, sign the papers, and get his butt back to Santa Fe before the afternoon rain started.

  But he didn't want to feel like he was running away.

  He stood for a moment, staring at the dust-covered popcorn machine, then turned and walked upstairs to the balcony.

  By rights, this should have been scarier. It was darker, smaller, more claustrophobic, but the tension he'd felt downstairs faded up here, and as he looked down at the screen he felt nothing. It was an old run-down building, that's all. There was nothing unusual here, nothing out of the ordinary.

  Why did he think he knew the sounds a doll would make if it was alive and coming after him?

  Why did he think he'd heard them before?

  He didn't want to even consider that.

  He walked slowly back downstairs, intending to lock up and leave. He was past the curve of the stairwell, looking down at his feet, when movement caught his eye. He glanced up from the steps.

  And saw the door to the men's rest room closing.

  Ten minutes ago, he would've freaked and run out.

  But his fear seemed to have fled, and all Stormy thought now was that he'd left the front door open, and some homeless guy had wandered in. He was going to have to find some way to get him out.

  Great, he thought.

  He hurried down the remaining steps, pushed the restroom door open, and said loudly, "All right--"

  And stopped.

  There was no one there.

  Like the rest of the building, the bathrooms had fallen into a state of serious disrepair, and there were no stalls, no urinals, only a sink and one toilet amid the rubble and pipe fixtures.

  The toilet had been used recently. Splashes of water dripped down from the lip, had wet the surrounding floor. Stormy stepped closer. The toilet had not been flushed, but what lay in the bowl water did not look like human waste. It looked like a fruit salad, and there was something about the incongruity of the fruit salad's appearance and its placement that set his already jangled nerves on edge.

  He glanced over at the sink, saw a long-stemmed red rose embedded in a chunk of cheddar cheese that protruded from the drain.

  This was too weird. This was too fucking creepy. He had no idea what was happening here or what it meant, all he knew was that he did not want to be a part of it.

  He no longer owned any portion of this building, and at this point he didn't care if they razed it and replaced it with a nuclear power plant. He just wanted to get the hell out.

  He stared at the rose.

  Living dolls were spooky enough, but they were at least understandable. They were within the range of acknowledged supernatural phenomena, like ghosts and witches and demons. But this was something else entirely.

  This was . . .

  He didn't know what this was.

  All he knew was that it scared the shit out of him.

  He ran through the deserted lobby and, with trembling fingers,
locked the theater doors. He hurried back to his car.

  Maybe this was an isolated occurrence. Maybe this was entirely unconnected to what was going on up at the reservation.

  Maybe.

  But he didn't think so.

  He drove to the real-estate office, turned in his keys, signed the papers, and got the hell out of Albuquerque as quickly as he could.

  But the fear followed him all the way to Santa Fe.

  And it did not abate that night or the following day.

  Mark Dry River.

  Rounded propane tanks in white trash backyards, tilted clotheslines of rusty pipe, plastic toys in sandy dirt, Dobermans behind chain-link fence. Liquor store, no name market, Texaco gas station. The familiar hues and shades of the surrounding country: dark against light as the irregular shadows of clouds drifted, shifting, across low desert mountains.

  Mark nodded his thanks to the man who'd dropped him off in front of the post office, watching him drive away before turning to survey the town. It was depressingly familiar after all these years, changed hardly at all. Past the bridge that spanned the town's namesake, huge cottonwoods lined the street, shading the buildings below. There were several bicycles parked in front of the small brick library, cars in front of the bar. Two barefoot boys walked toward the trailer park pool, carrying towels. The only noises in the still air were the competing mechanical hums of swamp coolers and air conditioners, and the occasional cry of a high-circling hawk.

  Down the road to his left was a new subdivision that had not made it--six identical homes on a dead-end cul de-sac surrounded by several acres of cleared desert-- but other than that, everything seemed to be the same.

  He started walking, moving past the diner, the tack and feed store, and an empty lot filled with enormous spools of telephone cable, until he could look east toward the ranches.

  Sure enough, their house still towered over everything on the plain, its black bulk intimidating even from here.

  Kristen.

  His gaze swept immediately toward the cemetery on the opposite side of town. Should he go there first? Or should he seek out the mortuary?