"Are you okay?" Josh asked, and she remembered his baby voice, remembered when he had talked this way, and that instigated another flood of tears. She pulled away from her mother, wiped her eyes, smiled through her sobs, and dropped to one knee to hug her brother. Although he was obviously confused, he did not struggle against her and there was something that looked like understanding in his eyes. Neither he nor his parents broke character--they all pretended as though she were the daughter of the people they'd come to visit, a girl they liked and felt sorry for but didn't really know--but more was at work here than that, and beneath that surface level was an underlying complicity, an acknowledgment that something else was going on.
Her biological mother offered a grim smile. "We were looking for you. It's time for lunch."
"I'm starving!" Her father clapped his hands together.
"Let's eat!"
Laurie felt suddenly embarrassed, self-conscious, and she dropped back behind the rest of them as they walked up the steps to the porch.
"It's such a beautiful place you have," Josh's mother said, turning and looking around the property from over the railing.
Her father, her biological father, nodded proudly.
"We like it."
Lunch was already on the table, and they ate soup and salad and sandwiches, the adults engaging in polite conversation and completely ignoring what had just happened outside. Laurie and Josh ate in silence.
After they finished, her mother collected all the plates, refusing an offer of assistance from Josh's mom, and promised to return with glasses of homemade lemonade for everyone.
"You should taste her lemonade," her father said.
"Best in California."
Conversation started up again, the war this time, and she excused herself from the table and walked into the kitchen, where her mother was using an ice pick to chop ice on the sink counter.
She took a deep breath. "We have to talk," she said.
Her mother did not even look up. "About what?"
"You have to stop seeing that girl," she said. "Stop seeing Dawn."
A moment of silence.
"So you know," her mother said flatly.
Laurie nodded.
Her mother continued to chop ice. "I can't."
"What do you mean, 'you can't'?"
"I don't want to." Her mother faced her, not embarrassed but defiant, the expression giving her already too serious face an even grimmer cast.
"Jesus."
"She does for me what your father can't do anymore."
"The girl is evil," she told her mother.
Her mother looked away, continued chopping. "You don't think I know that?"
"Then why--"
"I am the mother here. You are the daughter. I do not want to talk about this with you."
Laurie pounded a fist on the counter. "We have to talk about it!"
Her mother looked up at her, surprised, apparently taken aback by the vehemence of her response.
"I don't know if you've noticed, Mother, but I'm not a child anymore. I'm an adult. Aren't you even a little curious why that is?"
Her mother said nothing.
Laurie reached out, grabbed her mother's hand. "Dawn will kill you," she said. "She wants us all out off the House, she wants to leave the House unattended, and she will do whatever it takes to make that happen."
"Billington won't let that happen."
"Billington is gone!" Laurie said. "He's probably dead! She probably killed him!"
There was silence between them.
Her mother coughed. "You don't understand."
"No, you don't understand! You think Dawn's doing this for her health? You think she cares about you? She wants you out of the House. And if that means she has to kill you, then so be it."
Her mother was already shaking her head.
"Father's seeing her, too."
At that, her mother stiffened. Laurie had not been intending to reveal that fact, had not planned to say anything about it, had been hoping she could talk to both parents individually and get them each to stop seeing the girl, and she instantly regretted spilling the beans. The horrible thought occurred to her that she was the one responsible for sending her mother after her father, for setting into motion the events that led to her parents' deaths.
Had she done Dawn's work for her?
"Mother," she said earnestly. "You have to put a stop to this. You can't let her run your life. You're just a pawn to her. She'll use you up and toss you aside."
"It's okay," her mother said, and patted her hand. "I
know you mean well, but you don't understand everything."
She put a finger over Laurie's lips before she could respond. "I know you think you do, but believe me, you don't."
She didn't know what to say, didn't know what to do.
She wanted to cry from frustration.
"No matter what happens, I want you to always remember that I love you."
"I love you, too," Laurie said, although even as she spoke the words she was thinking that she loved her other mother more.
Love wasn't perfect, she realized. It didn't cure all ills and didn't solve all problems and wasn't always what was needed. It also wasn't equal. There was a hierarchy of love, some people you loved more than others, and it did make a difference. Sometimes just loving someone was not enough. Sometimes you had to love someone enough.
Would she have really traded her childhood and her new family for a life with this family in the House?
No.
Her father, her biological father, walked into the kitchen. "What's going on in here?" he asked. "What's taking so long? We're thirsty out there."
Her mother stared at him with a blank, unreadable expression, and whatever else he'd been intending to say died in his throat. "Go back out there with our guests,"
she said. "I'll bring the lemonade out in a minute."
He nodded.
"Father?" Laurie said.
"Yes?"
"Stop seeing her. Stop seeing Dawn."
His face reddened, tensed, and he was about to say something, to respond angrily, but he glanced over at her mother's face and closed his mouth.
"She's evil," Laurie said.
He nodded tiredly, started to turn away.
They were doomed, she saw now. There was no way she could change anything, no way any of their future could be avoided. Still, she was glad she'd talked to them, and she felt a little bit better knowing that she'd at least made an effort.
"Go out there with your father," her mother said. "I'll bring the drinks in a minute."
Laurie nodded, gave her mother's hand a small squeeze, and she and her father walked back into the dining room where her future family waited.
Daniel The Other Side.
It was not something he could have anticipated, not even from those views through the windows of the other House.
It was not like any afterlife he had ever imagined.
There were no blue skies or fields of green, no cloud palaces, no geographical distinctions at all. There were no hydras or unicorns or banshees, no gods or monsters, no recognizable beings. Occasional indistinct blobs of blackness flew by, shooting past him as though shot from a cannon, but for the most part this world was empty, barren, devoid of even the smallest sign of life or movement.
He was floating in nothingness.
Doneenkneed him in the midsection, trying to dislodge his grip, but he held tightly on to her, ignoring her shrieks and cries, her hideous yelps and growls, wrestling with her in the open air, clutching her close to his chest.
He felt no pain, but she was as strong or stronger than he was, and even if she could not hurt him, she could get away from him.
He had no idea what to do with her. He'd wanted only to get her as far away from Tony and Margot as possible, and the Other Side seemed perfect for that, but what was next? Was he supposed to fight with her forever, to wrestle here with her for years in order to keep her occupied and giv
e Tony a chance to grow up? He had to admit that he felt no flagging of his energy, no decrease in strength, and he had no doubt that he could continue tangling with her through eternity without becoming fatigued. But he did not want to. He wanted to do something with her, to get rid of her, to imprison her or put her out of commission.
To kill her.
His anger had not flagged either, and he tried to think of some way he could stop her permanently. His mother had said that he could restrain her but not destroy her, and he tried to find some loophole in that, tried to come up with some means to do her in. That would solve not only his family problem but the problems of Laurie and Norton and Stormy and Mark. Doneen was the only real threat to the Houses, and if he could put a stop to her once and for all, everything would go back to the way it was supposed to be.
She squirmed in his grasp, was able to bend her arm and twist her hand in front of his face. Sharp claws snapped out from the ends of her fingers, and his first instinct was to push her away from him, but instead he butted her forehead with his, and used all of his strength and weight and the leverage granted him by size to twist her arm around her back.
She screamed wildly.
He still seemed to be tethered to the House, and for that he was grateful. He could see a line of Houses, far in the distance, the only discernible shapes in this horribly empty universe. There were a lot more than five of them. They stretched infinitely across what passed for a horizon, and although they appeared to be identical, one House, his House, blinked periodically from the highest window in its highest gable, an attic window, and at each pulse of light he- felt a slight tug, as though it were pulling on some sort of invisible cord connecting him to it.
That connection was the only thing keeping him from defeatism and despair.
God, he wished Billings were still alive.
He could've used some help.
Doneen changed in his hands, her left arm transforming into a green snake, her head morphing into that of Tony's first doll. He was supposed to be scared, frightened away, but he wasn't. She was the only constant in the world floating by them, her transformations at least contextually understandable and recognizable, and he continued to hold on to her as tightly as he could, as the doll head became a goat's head and snapped at him.
He kicked her crotch, was gratified to see her snap back into human form and howl in what sounded like pain.
In the opposite direction of the Houses, there were flashes of light in the far distance, flashes that looked like multicolored popcorn. Instead of flaring and fading, they remained, piled onto each other, slowly growing into something approximating a mountain. Both sky and ground were colors he did not recognize, but simply having a "sky" and a "ground," an up and a down, identifiable directions, was reassuring.
Where were his mother and father and all of the other generations of human dead? This world had seemed more hospitable before, and he was both puzzled and troubled by the absence of any presences. The thought occurred to him that there was not just the Other Side, that there were many sides, and that this one was her world, her hereafter.
This was where her kind went when they died.
The thought was not at all comforting.
She snarled at him, spit, and she was no longer a she but a he. A long red penis snaked up between them, its engorged head and wetslitted opening pressing against his closed lips, and he was tempted to open his mouth and bite it off, but he had the feeling that's what she wanted him to do, so he turned his head and maintained his pressure on her wrists, kicking at her lower section as hard as he could with his feet, sending them both tumbling head over heels.
The color of the sky changed as she transformed from female to male and back again, the only indication that she and this terrifyingly empty world were connected.
He maneuvered his hands until he was finally able to reach her neck. He let go of her hands, and she punched him, clawed at him, but he felt nothing and her blows did no damage. His fingers were firmly around her throat, and he tried to squeeze shut her windpipe, to strangle her, but his efforts had no discernible effect. He was not sure if she could be strangled, if she were breathing or if she even had to breathe, but he knew that it would not make any difference either way. His mother had been right, he could not kill her.
She understood what he was trying to do, and she stopped struggling for a moment, long enough to laugh at him.
"You should've fucked me when you had the chance,"
she said.
She pushed him hard away with both feet and both hands.
He was holding on to her only by the neck, and the sudden application of force sent him flying back.
"They're mine," she said, grinning. "They're all mine."
And she was gone.
Norton Norton awoke in the present.
The past was gone. He was back in the House that he'd shared with the others, only now he was alone.
There was no sign of Daniel or Laurie or Stormy or Mark, no indication that they were here or that they had ever been here. He was somewhere upstairs, somewhere in the center of the House that he didn't recognize. To his left, a hallway lined with opposing sets of closed doors stretched into the dimness. To his right, the same.
Behind him was a wall, and ahead of him another hallway, shorter, with no doors opening onto it, ending in a blue room.
He walked slowly forward, down the short hallway.
The air grew colder with each step, and by the time he reached the room he could see his breath. It felt like a meat locker, he thought, and that analogy left him feeling unsettled.
The room was empty, but to the right of the door, in the opposite wall, was another doorway, leading to another room, this one a lighter shade of blue. He passed through the vestibule, and the temperature went up a few degrees. Once again, there was another doorway, this one on the left wall, and it led into yet another room, an even lighter shade of blue.
Norton stood, looking around. There were no lamps or light fixtures, but the rooms were somehow illuminated, and that made him nervous.
It was one of the many things that made him nervous.
These rooms did not seem to him like part of the House. They were, he knew, but until now everything within the House had had a counterpart with the past, with his childhood. The solarium had been new, but like the bathroom, he had accepted it as part of the remodeling that must have occurred over the past half century.
These rooms did not seem like they had ever been a part of the House.
Maybe he wasn't in the present but in some future time. Or even some outside time. He definitely wasn't in the past, though. He knew that. He could feel it.
Perhaps this was some sort of test. Maybe he'd passed the first part of the test, with his family, and now he was being tested again.
Maybe if he successfully completed this part, he'd be allowed to go free.
It was that hope, that possibility, that pushed him forward.
The next room, a white room, was warmer.
There were nine rooms all together. It was like a maze, and he didn't understand how the center of the House could contain this much space, but he walked through increasingly warm chambers, until, finally, he reached the last room.
It was empty save for the girl.
She was naked, and she smiled slyly at Norton, slowly bending over, grabbing her ankles. "Kiss my ass," she said.
He stared at her.
"Kiss my ass," she repeated softly, sensuously. "You know you want to."
He did want to--even after all he'd been through, even after all that had happened. He could see the small pink puckering between her spread buttocks and he longed to place his mouth there, to touch it with his tongue.
Wasn't that how the devil was supposed to have sealed his covenant with witches?
Norton closed his eyes. He didn't know what to think anymore. He was sweating, and he wiped his perspiring brow with the back of his hand. There were no other doors in this room, no
way out save for the way he'd come in.
"I'm not the enemy," she said. "It's the Houses that are the enemies."
"Th-that's not true," he said.
Her smile grew wider, and it not only looked sensuous to him but curiously friendly. "Yes it is. You know it is.
We're both trapped here. We're both prisoners. Why do you think you were lured back? You honestly think that the forces of good kidnapped you and planned to make you live out the rest of your life here? Because you're the only one who can save the world? Does that make any sense at all? Be serious."
The expression on her face seemed open and honest to him, and he found himself following her logic. Maybe he and the others had been wrong. Maybe they'd been brainwashed by Billings and his Houses.
"I never touched your parents or anyone in your family. I was the one who tried to save them.
It was Mr.
Billings who did them in. And he's been trying to keep us apart ever since because he knew I'd tell you the truth."
The ants.
He pushed that thought out of his mind.
She ran a finger slowly down the opened crack of her buttocks. "Come on," she said softly. "Kiss it. Kiss my ass. What can it hurt?"
He licked his dry lips and found himself nodding.
"I've been waiting for this for a long time, Norton."
He moved forward, knelt behind her, placed his face between the cheeks of her buttocks, closed his eyes, and began licking.
The girl moaned.
When he opened his eyes, he was in a black room, his face buried between two red pillows on the floor. He looked up and saw a marble table set up like an altar.
Strapped down, lying on top of the table, was Billings.
The assistant, hired hand, butler, whatever-he-was, was straining against his bonds. There was defiance in his face but no fear, and Norton walked slowly over and looked down at him. Billings was still in his formal attire, and even under these circumstances he seemed to retain a sense of dignity. He stared up at Norton, and it was clear that he wanted to be released, but he was not about to beg, and he said nothing.
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