I'm just saying that I don't entirely trust him."
"Why did you come to me? Why are you telling me this?"
"You seem ... I feel like we maybe have more in common than some of the others. I don't want your ego to get too swollen, but you seem smart. Confident.
Straightforward. And I guess the bottom line is that I
trust you the most."
Daniel couldn't help smiling. "I'm flattered."
"Look. Just think about it. Just keep your eyes open.
That's all I'm saying." She stood up. "It's getting late.
We'd better go down to breakfast."
"I'm not hungry," Daniel said.
"But--"
"But what? Our faithful servant will get mad at me?
Let him."
Laurie nodded, understanding dawning in her eyes.
"Maybe these rituals give the Houses power."
"It's a possibility."
"I'll tell the others."
"You going to skip breakfast too?"
"Starting tomorrow." She smiled embarrassedly. "I'm hungry."
Daniel laughed. "Go on, then. I'll see you guys later."
But he couldn't fall back asleep, and after a fruitless forty-five minutes tossing and turning restlessly, he put on his clothes and headed downstairs to the dining room.
The table was set, but there was no food on it and no one was eating. Whatever conversation there had been had died, and Laurie, Mark, Norton, and Stormy sat in separate sections of the long table, playing with their silverware or staring into space.
"Where's Billings?" Daniel asked, sitting down.
Stormy shrugged. "That's the big question."
"Has anyone tried to look for him?"
"I did," Laurie said. "No sign of him. On this floor at least."
"So . . . what? We're going to starve?"
Stormy stood. "I'll make the damn breakfast." He looked around the table. "But we're switching off. This is not my regular gig."
"I'll take dinner," Laurie said.
"And we can each make our own lunch." Daniel smiled. "I know the schedule."
"You'd better like scrambled eggs," Stormy said. "It's all I can make." He disappeared into the kitchen and emerged a moment later, looking perplexed, carrying a tray of bacon and a pitcher of orange juice.
"It's ready," he said.
"What?"
"Our breakfast is in there. It's all cooked and ready."
"It wasn't there before," Laurie said. "I checked."
"Somebody want to come in here and give me a hand?"
They all stood, followed him into the kitchen, picked up assorted dishes. There were pancakes and bagels, muffins and fresh fruit. Neither the stove nor the oven appeared to have been used, and there were no dirty knives or cooking utensils on the counters or in the sink.
It was as if the food had just . . . appeared.
Daniel picked up the coffeepot and a plate of sausage and headed back to the dining room. He couldn't put his finger on it, but there seemed something different about the kitchen. It seemed larger than he remembered, the positioning of its elements changed slightly. He wondered if the room was a composite of all of their old kitchens and if a modification or remodeling on the part of one of the families had thrown it off a little bit. Until now, everything in the House looked exactly the same as it had in Matty Groves.
Maybe that was knowledge that could be used to their advantage.
They ate, for the most part, in silence, occasional mini conversations breaking out and then dying. He did find himself watching Mark, paying attention to what the young man did and the few things he said, and he was angry with Laurie for planting the seeds of doubt in his mind.
But he couldn't be too angry with her. He really was flattered that she trusted him, that she respected his honesty and intelligence, and had chosen him to confide in.
He smiled to himself. Anyone with perceptions that astute couldn't be completely wrong.
But it was a bad precedent. They'd only been together for, what? Twelve hours, House time? What would it be like in a week? A month?
Hopefully, they wouldn't be here by then. Hopefully, they would have found a way out by that time.
But if they hadn't?
They'd probably be at each other's throats, like that old Twilight Zone episode, "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street," where a group of aliens shut off water and power and watched the residents of a neighborhood scapegoat each other, blame each other, distrust each other, finally kill each other.
He glanced over at Laurie. She gave him a wan smile.
They had to get out of here.
They spent the day exploring the House: the basement to the attic, and the three floors in between. He would have thought that sealing off the windows, removing all trace of the world--or worlds--outside the House would make it seem more claustrophobic, smaller, but that was not the case. Instead, it seemed even bigger, its corridors more labyrinthine, the number of rooms greater.
Except he knew that wasn't true. He knew where all of the room doors were, knew what was behind most of them, and there were no more than there had been when he'd lived here as a child.
So why did the interior of the House seem to be expanding?
He did not know and he did not want to know, and after the maddening frustration of their fruitless day, he was grateful when he was finally able to retire to his room.
He took off his clothes. Were they really going to be trapped inside this damn House for the rest of their lives?
Margot and Tony had never been far from his mind, but seeing Laurie in his room this morning had reminded him even more acutely how much he missed his wife and how desperately he needed to get back to her. The thought that he might never see her again stabbed at his heart.
He folded his pants and shirt, hanging them over a chair, thinking that he was going to have to wash them soon, that if he did not do so they'd be so encrusted with filth he wouldn't be able to fold them at all.
But his mind returned to Margot as he slipped under the covers, and he thought of how she looked while she was sleeping, the cute sound of her little half snore, the comforting feel of her warm body snuggling next to his in the middle of the cold night. He missed her, he wanted her, he needed her, and for the first time since he'd been a child in the House, he cried himself to sleep.
Mark Mark lay on his bed staring up at the ceiling. He was exhausted and drenched with sweat, having tried in vain for the past half hour to once again access The Power, to focus his mind and concentrate completely on reviving the abilities he'd possessed and, until recently, taken for granted.
He wiped the perspiration from his forehead, felt a small rivulet trickle down the side of his face into his ear. What was he doing here? What did he have in common with these residents of other Houses? He felt closer to Billings than he did to Norton or Laurie--and the servant scared the living shit out of him.
Was he even supposed to be here or was it all some fluke of bad timing? Because the fact remained that although Billings had obviously been expecting him when he arrived, he was the only one who hadn't been specifically summoned.
He was the only one who hadn't had a recent encounter with the girl.
That was at the root of his concern, and he found himself wondering if maybe some other force had led him back here, had compelled him to return home.
No, it was Kristen's death. There was no higher power pushing him. No overall design. He'd come back simply because his sister had died and he wanted to find out what had happened to her.
Whatever the reason, though, he was here, a prisoner like the rest of them, and he felt that it was his responsibility to get them out of this. He had not mentioned The Power to anyone, and while he knew he should have come clean instantly, that time was past. It would be too awkward now, would raise too many questions. None of them seemed to have ever possessed any sort of extrasensory abilities or to suspect that he had.
Did Billings
even know?
He wasn't sure.
That might give him an advantage.
He decided to try again. If anything was going to help him get them out of here and escape, it would be The Power. If he could just get an opportunity to read Billings, to scan the House . . .
He took a deep breath.
Concentrated hard.
Nothing.
His head hurt, the blood pounding in his temples, and his muscles were starting to ache from the strain as his body grew rigid and relaxed, rigid and relaxed. He wiped the sweat from his face, looked upward once again, and pushed until it felt as though his eyes were going to pop from his head.
And a figure flickered into existence at the foot of his bed.
He saw the form at the bottom of his peripheral vision, and he sat up instantly, facing it full on.
Kristen.
She was older, the way she must have looked when she died, but he recognized her instantly. She was not solid, not flesh, but she was not transparent either. Instead, she seemed to be sort of... glowing. And translucent. Like a computer-generated specter in a big-budget movie.
He was suspicious of that at first, not believing that reality would hew so closely to the middle-of the-road imaginations of anonymous film craftsmen, but then she turned her head, craned her neck, looking around as if uncertain for a second where she was, and her eyes alighted on Mark.
She smiled, her entire face lighting up.
And he knew it was her.
"We've still got it," she said to him, and there was a playfulness to the smile on her lips. Her hand reached out to touch his foot and he felt not pressure but a pleasant warmth, as though a ray of sunlight had been concentrated on that section of his skin. "How are you, Mark?"
He nodded, not knowing what to say.
"It's not your fault," she said. "About me dying, I
mean."
"I never--"
"Yes you did." She laughed, a sound that reminded him of tinkling chimes, the wind in the trees. "I know you, Mark."
"I should've come back for you. I should've been there."
"You made your choices. I made mine."
He swung his legs off the bed, stood up, and walked over to where she stood. Reaching out to touch her face, his fingers passed through her form and he felt only that pleasant warmth.
He took a deep breath. "How did you die?" he asked.
It was why he had come here. It was what he most wanted to know.
A frown crossed her features. "I can't talk about that."
"Kristen!"
"That's not why I'm here. That's not why I came back."
"Did I bring you back?"
She smiled again. "You helped."
"How did you die?"
"I told you--"
"I need to know!" His eyes did not leave hers, and he saw a struggle there.
"I'm not supposed to talk to you about that."
"Kristen . . ."
She glanced furtively around, as if checking to make sure no one was eavesdropping. "You know how," she said and looked at him meaningfully.
Her warmth was replaced by a wave of cold that came entirely from within him. "The girl?" he said.
She nodded.
"I knew it! What happened?"
"I can't--"
"Kristen ..."
Another furtive look around. "She sat on my face.
And smothered me."
"Jesus!"
"She was always wanting to have sex with me. And I always refused. And I guess, finally, she took the initiative. I was sleeping and when I woke up she was sitting on my face and I couldn't breathe. I tried to push her off me, but even though she's still a child, she weighed as much as a sumo wrestler. I couldn't get her off. I
tried to hit her, tried to buck her off, tried to roll over, but she just sat there on top of me, and finally I passed out. And I died."
"I should've been there," Mark said. "I should've come back after Dad died."
"There's nothing you could've done."
"I could've protected you."
"Not unless you slept with me every night. And I
don't think even you're that weird." She smiled teasingly, and he had to smile back.
"I miss you," he said.
"I miss you."
"Did you ever try to get her out of the House? Her or Billings?"
Kristen shook her head. "They're part of the House."
"But did you ever try?"
"I didn't know how. I just avoided them. Like we used to."
"And now we're both trapped here."
"Maybe," she said.
"Come on. Billings won't let us leave."
"First of all, I'm not really here. I'm . . . visiting."
"Then he's trapped me here."
"You're trapped," she told him, "but Billings hasn't done it to you. He's not keeping you here. Any of you.
You're keeping yourselves here. As long as you remain tied to your homes, as long as you have unresolved issues with those on the Other Side, you will remain on the border. It is the only hold the Houses have over you, this connection to the past, to the dead."
"Unresolved issues?"
Kristen nodded.
Bentley Little "With you?"
She shook her head, smiled. "We always understood one another," she said. She touched his cheek, and he felt the warmth of sunshine. "We still do."
"Who, then?"
She paused. "Mother. Father."
Mark grew silent.
"That is why you can't leave."
"Because I never came back and made it up with Mom and Dad?"
She nodded.
"I can't believe this."
"The House keeps them tied the same way. Those threads that bind you to the House and to the Other Side bind them to the House as well."
"What if those threads are broken?"
"It is complicated."
"What happens?"
She shook her head.
"Will the barrier be ... weakened?"
"Possibly."
"Is that good or bad?" he asked.
Her luminescent face grew grave. "It is bad," she said.
"The two sides must not mix."
Mark smiled. "You'd be able to visit more often,"
he said.
Kristen laughed, that tinkling musical sound that wasn't quite human. "Mark," she said fondly. "I really do miss you."
"I know," he said, and he felt the tears welling up as he looked at her face. She was as beautiful as he'd known she'd be, and she'd grown from a gawky teenager into a confident self-assured woman. God, if she'd only been allowed to live . . .
He wiped his eyes. "So that's it. I'm stuck here. We're all stuck here. We're screwed."
"No, that's not it," Kristen said.
"What, then?"
"The Houses do need people," she admitted. "But that doesn't necessarily mean it has to be you. It could be anyone. And if you guys leave, someone will come to take your place. Nature, as they say, abhors a vacuum."
She paused. "But when someone else comes, it will be voluntary. It will be their decision. They won't be coerced or forced or held prisoner against their will.
They'll be like I was."
"But how can we leave?"
"Resolve your problems."
"And how do we do that?"
"It will come of its own."
"What will?"
"You'll see."
"What? Can't you say?"
"No. But you will have that chance. Be prepared for it when it happens."
He didn't like the vagueness of her answer, and every opportunity that he could come up with for reconciling with his parents filled him full of dread.
He did not want to see his dead mother or father.
"There's one other thing you have to do, though,"
Kristen said.
"What's that?"
"Kill her." And there was a look of uncharacteristic fierceness on her face. "Kill the bitch. She
's the one who's doing this, who's perverted the Houses for her own purposes, who's tried to bring down the barrier.
Once she's out of the way, everything will return to normal and will be back the way it should, with voluntary border guards and the Other Side safely separated."
"She's evil," Mark said.
Kristen nodded, and for the first time she looked afraid. "Yes," she said. "She's evil."
"I'll do it," Mark told her.
There was a slight gasp, and an expression of pain crossed Kristen's face. She hugged him, but she was already fading quickly, her warmth cooling into nothingness.
"I love you," she whispered, her voice barely audible.
"I love you too," he said.
But before he reached the word "love," she was gone.
Stormy So where was Billings?
They hadn't seen the butler all day yesterday, and now he was missing again this morning. It was pretty obvious that something had happened to him, and they were at a loss as to what to do about it. None of them liked the butler, and they all seemed to be afraid of him, but he was their link to the House, the translator between themselves and the horrific impersonality of the events that occurred here.
Maybe he'd served his purpose, Norton suggested.
Maybe he was only needed to lure them here and to keep them imprisoned until the House was charged up again. It sounded plausible, but Stormy didn't quite buy it. Nothing logical happened here, and even the most benign and minor events inevitably had ominous implications.
He figured the butler had been captured by the girl.
Or killed.
Or both.
Stormy sipped his coffee. Once again, breakfast had been made for them. Just as dinner had been last night.
They'd had to serve themselves, but someone--or something --else had cooked and prepared the food. Laurie suggested that one of them stake out the kitchen this afternoon, an hour or so before dinner, to try and find out who or what was making their meals, and Mark volunteered for a tour of duty.
They'd finished eating for the most part, but they remained in the dining room, sipping juice and coffee, nibbling on muffin crumbs, bored, having run out of things to do and having a difficult time thinking of things to say. He'd felt an instinctive camaraderie with the others the instant he met them, but that feeling had been fading ever since. These weren't really people with whom he'd choose to spend his time if he had a choice.
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