The House

by Christina Lauren

  For the first time in his life Gavin truly wondered if his reality were accurate. Every object in House could move, could feel, could think. But each lacked muscles, flowing blood, and a brain to process it all. Why wouldn’t House be able to hear his thoughts? What else could House do that he had never considered?

  Before Gavin could trip his way down the tangle of worries and thoughts that led to the dreaded question—where did I come from?—he heard the sound of a small fist against the front door.

  He wasn’t expecting a package or a grocery delivery, and nobody ever, ever just dropped by. The knock came again.

  “Gavin?”

  Through the thick oak of the door, Delilah’s voice sounded tinny and frail, when in reality and despite her size, her voice was low and scratchy, as if she’d grown up screaming everything and had only recently decided to tone it down. Gavin opened the front door and grinned. “What brings you here, Miss Blue?”

  She shrugged, slipping past him as if she owned the place and dropping her bag on the floor. “My hot boyfriend.”

  Gavin looked around the room in mock surprise. “He’s here too?”

  The corners of her eyes turned up as she smiled. “Yes! Could you get him for me? He’s short and burly and never stops talking. Just my type.”

  Gavin bent to kiss her forehead. “Sorry it took so long. I wasn’t expecting anyone. It took me a second to realize someone was at the door. People don’t stop by here.”

  “And now you can’t say that ever again.” She brushed her fingers across his chest as she walked past him and into the dining room. Delilah ran a hand over the top of Piano, and then with fingers from both hands pressed lightly into a few keys, playing a middle C chord.

  “Oh boy,” Gavin mumbled under his breath. As predicted, Piano held the notes far longer than Delilah’s fingers lingered, the sound of C, E, and G in harmony filling the cavernous room.

  “Wow, it has good reverb. Or whatever it’s called on a piano,” she said, starting to walk deeper into the room.

  “Piano is. . . ,” Gavin started and then trailed off, knowing what was coming anyway.

  “Is what?”

  But as soon as she asked, Piano played another chord, C-sharp major. And then, after a pause, another, D major. Piano made its way through the majors: E-flat, E, F, F-sharp, G, A-flat, A, B-flat, and finally ended with a lingering, pointed B.

  Delilah, who had turned back when the notes began, stood frozen, staring down at the keys. “I don’t actually play the piano. Is it expecting me to do that, too?”

  “It’s teaching you.” And on cue, Piano played the C-sharp major chord again and then paused. The room cooled impatiently as Delilah’s hesitation endured. Gavin could remember this exact routine over and over from when he was six. He hadn’t been allowed upstairs that night until he’d mastered every chord through the majors.

  “Does it know I don’t play?”

  Gavin laughed. “I think it assumes you don’t, because you didn’t put the right fingers down.”

  Delilah pressed her fingers down on the keys—her index, middle, and pinky—but no sound came out of the instrument.

  “Wrong fingers,” Gavin offered. He wished there’d been someone there to give him that prompt. That had been the longest part of learning to play: where to put his fingers, how to move them along the scales.

  “Cripes, Gavin, is this like Pitfall!? I have to finish this thing before I can see the rest of the house?”

  He stared at her, confused. “Pitfall?”

  She looked over her shoulder at him and grimaced. “Sorry. It’s a video game. My dad has an old Atari. Turns out before he turned into a cardboard-cutout dad, he was a geek.”

  With a wry smile, Gavin stepped closer and correctly positioned her fingers. “Who knew?” He’d never even seen her father, but from what she’d said about him—very little, to be honest—Gavin had a hard time imagining he’d ever done anything besides silently eat dinner and watch the news.

  Beneath his hands, her fingers were warm and long for her height, as if she were a puppy and would soon see a growth spurt. Gavin liked all of the ways otherwise-small Delilah was surprisingly big. He realized his fingers were running up and down her arm and stepped back to let her learn.

  “Stay close like that,” she said quietly, still staring down at the keys.

  He returned to her, aligning his front against her back, and she leaned her head against his chest as she let Piano teach her. She laughed every now and then, made goofy sounds when she messed up or little shouts of victory every time Piano moved on to a new chord. It seemed like she was having fun, and the lights brightened and the room warmed to perfect, and Oven began baking something so the entire house smelled like warm sugar and chocolate. Gavin kissed her hair and wondered if House had the ability to freeze time and hold this moment in reverb for an entire week.

  His heart seemed to grow three sizes too big for his body when Delilah looked over her shoulder at him, lips all ripe fruit and teasing and her smile a little dangerous. He was pretty sure he didn’t want to have sex inside House, but in the moment, he could probably be convinced.

  But instead of stretching and kissing him, she asked, “Do you know how to dance?”

  He shook his head, both relieved and disappointed.

  “That’s okay,” she said, turning in his arms. “I do.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Her

  Music filled the rooms, bounced off the walls and seemed to fill every dark corner. The piano didn’t stop playing for hours as Gavin spun her around the floor, his hands on her waist, his fingers pressing into the exposed skin just above her skirt.

  Delilah liked the way that Gavin held her almost too tightly. He was never really careful with her, not the way her family seemed to be or her friends were, back at her old school, considering every word before they said it, treating one another as if they were made of blown glass.

  She wondered if Gavin had ever laughed this much, and she watched as he fell into one of the dining room chairs, eyes bright, cheeks flushed and rosy. His perfect bow of a mouth curved up into a mischievous smile, close enough to kiss whenever she wanted.

  “You do know how to dance,” he said, reaching up to push his mess of dark hair from his eyes.

  “I’ve never really been allowed to dance before,” she said, breathless. “Not unless you count Saturday square dancing at Saint Benedicts.”

  “You didn’t have dances with other schools?” he asked, incredulous.

  “Well, okay,” she said after a moment. “We had a few. But the boys at Saint Joseph’s were even worse off than us. Imagine being sixteen and the only real chance you had to interact with girls your age was supervised by a bunch of crotchety old nuns.”

  “Sounds like a recipe for a lot of awkward groping,” he agreed. Gavin settled back into the chair, stretching his long legs and black Converses in front of him. A small serving tray rolled along the floor with a pitcher of lemonade and two glasses sitting neatly on top. The ice sloshed noisily inside as the table rolled to a stop at his side.

  Delilah was positive she would never get used to this. Outside, snow had begun to fall, dusting everything in white. Every once in a while the trees would quake from the tops of the leaves to the lowest branches, shaking off any flakes that had accumulated there. Delilah laughed when she saw this, thinking of the way Nonna’s old shepherd would do the same thing after a bath.

  “How could any other house ever compare?” she asked innocently.

  Gavin opened his mouth to speak but was cut off by a sudden and resounding clang from the piano, as if someone had brought their fists down over several keys at once. He jumped as the hinged lid slammed shut over the keys, the force so great it vibrated the strings inside.

  Delilah blinked into the ringing silence, her eyes darting between Gavin and the piano.

  “I guess it was tired of playing,” he said. He crossed the room and took her hand, lacing his fingers with hers
. “Piano has always been a bit temperamental.”

  “I didn’t mean—” she began, but he quickly cut her off with two fingers pressed to her lips.

  “This is better anyway,” he said with a shrug, pulling her forward and stopping only when his body was pressed all along hers. “I’ve been dying to kiss you.”

  • • •

  Sunday was long and boring and seemed to stretch on forever. Gavin had to work, and Delilah did her best to stay busy, but her house felt too small, her parents too. . . everywhere. She watched TV and cleaned her room; she arranged all her books by size, then again by color, finally deciding to arrange them by the number and manner of deaths that occurred in each one.

  But by late afternoon she was going crazy. She wanted to see him again, wanted to watch him smile in that way that made her stomach do strange things, wanted to run her hands through his wild hair and kiss him again until he looked at her in that savage way that felt positively obscene.

  Delilah didn’t normally text Gavin; her thoughts with him were usually too complicated to be contained in a few lines of text. There was also the matter of wanting to hear him speak, in that slow, unhurried way that he had. Gavin didn’t say much, but he rarely seemed to filter the content in person, and Delilah was greedy for his words, preferring the sound of his voice to his stilted, monosyllabic typical-boy-text response. But desperate times called for desperate measures.

  Are you home yet?

  Thankfully, his response came only a few moments later. Have to stay late.

  How late is late?

  An hour or two?

  Delilah considered this. She craved his company, but she had to admit she also craved the way she felt like she left this world and walked straight into another one when she went to his house. Would it be ok if I went over? I could wait for you.

  She held her breath while she waited for Gavin’s reply, the longest minute of her life so far. Uncertainty crawled under her skin as she wondered if her request was strange, or inappropriate. She liked the idea of being alone inside the house for a little while. She liked the idea of experiencing what Gavin had all these years.

  You sure?

  She smiled as she typed. Definitely.

  • • •

  Delilah waited until her parents went out for the night. She watched as her mother quietly got ready, applying her practically nonexistent makeup and just a spritz of Jean Naté. Not too much, she’d always said.

  Her father puttered around the house, straightening things that didn’t need to be straightened while the evening news droned on in the background. So boring, she thought, and so completely different from where I want to be.

  Delilah followed them to the front door and waved as they backed out of the driveway, noting the way neither one looked up at her as they drove away. As soon as their blue sedan turned the corner, Delilah was off like a flash, grabbing the spare keys from the hook in the laundry room and sprinting out into the fading daylight.

  • • •

  With her father’s car parked safely on the street, Delilah approached the gate.

  Nothing looked different in the muted dusk light; the house was still a strange collage of colors and sizes, half the yard just as green as the other half was dead. The walkway leading to the front porch was as unusual as the building it belonged to—a winding path of earth-toned pavers, a sprinkling of colored glass and assorted bottle caps thrown in for good measure. Above the house, pink and purple clouds hung like cotton candy.

  This time as she approached, Delilah noticed shutters on the outside of the windows. No one had those anymore. They had fancy plantation shutters on the inside, with thick slats painted white or made of polished wood. These were weathered and thin, cracked in places and polished in others, as if the job of tending to them fell to a hundred different people each assigned a single strip of wood.

  The only time Delilah prayed on instinct was just before she got back exam results. But this day she found herself murmuring a prayer as she moved down the path to the house. From this vantage, at the foot of the stairs, she felt like she was about to walk into another world. For a brief pulse she wondered if she would ever come out again.

  Or whether she would ever want to.

  Delilah gripped the rail and climbed the steps, pushing down the tickle of unease that flared behind her ribs. It was one thing to want to be here with Gavin, to remember the way the euphoric magic of the house seemed to seep into her skin. But it was another thing entirely to be here with the night approaching, without him, knowing the house could feel exactly how close she was.

  Outside everything was quiet—unreasonably quiet, she noticed—and with her toes only inches from the front mat, she turned. Though winter seemed suspended in the yard and the trees were lush with leaves and more flowers than she could ever remember seeing in one place before, there were no birds. No bees darted from one blossom to the next. No spiderwebs shook in the evening breeze. In fact, beyond the wind that rustled through the branches overhead, nothing moved inside the vine-covered walls at all.

  She reasoned that the yard was creatureless because it was winter and not because organic life had opted to stay away from the house. Delilah reached for the brass knob, surprised when it turned and the door swung open easily.

  To look around now, one could almost call the house cozy. Washed in the golden glow of the final throes of sunset, everything looked rosy and warm. But no fire crackled in the fireplace, and a glance at the floor revealed shadows stretching along the carpet and playfully nipping at her heels.

  Delilah’s gaze skirted over to the silent piano, and she wondered if Gavin was right and it had simply been tired of playing, or if it had stopped because of what she’d said. She certainly hoped not.

  But just in case, she whispered, “Sorry about what I said. If I were him, I’d never want to leave.”

  A hollow silence rang through the room.

  Not willing to stand around in the dark, Delilah crossed the carpet to where a tall lamp stood near the entryway. She reached out, flipping the switch that would turn it on, but nothing happened. She pulled again; peering up under the wide shade, even tightening the bulb to make sure it was secure. Still nothing.

  Delilah bent at the knee, feeling around for the cord. When she found none, she crossed to the television, kneeling to find where it plugged into the wall.

  No cord, no outlet to plug it into. Her eyes moved around the room. No light switches, either.

  Delilah pulled her phone from her pocket, swiping along the screen to wake it up. She turned it outward, where it cast a small puddle of light in front of her, but not enough for her to see more than a few feet radius around where she stood. She felt the dull thump of her heartbeat as her pulse picked up, and with it came the comforting rush of adrenaline, that feeling she loved from slasher flicks, from gory art. This was her element: the creepy, the unknown. It’s why she wanted to come over in the first place.

  “Calm down, Delilah,” she told herself, trying out a laugh that came out breathless and a little tight.

  Her footsteps sounded unreasonably loud in the silent house; the soft soles of her shoes against wood were like a siren announcing her presence. All around her the house remained eerily still. Delilah noted that if this were one of the movies she watched late at night while her parents slept, now would be the precise moment when the killer would jump out at the unsuspecting victim, slashing them to pieces. She couldn’t help but glance over her shoulder, half expecting to find someone there.

  Delilah had always believed she was more clever than the average girl, but in that moment, with so much space between herself and the front door, she wasn’t so sure. Why was the house so still? Was it nervous? Was it confused? Or was it somehow lying in wait?

  Delilah texted Gavin again: I’m here. The house is so quiet. Are you sure this is ok? It doesn’t mind?

  Her phone buzzed only seconds later with his reply: Of course I’m sure.

  It’s re
ally dark, she told him, wincing in apology as she hit send. She didn’t want to come off as nervous or needy. . . but the lack of lights coming on in the house and the lack of a fire blooming to life in the fireplace was starting to feel a little odd.

  Really? he replied, and then immediately after, added, I’ve never needed a flashlight before, but I know there are candles in my nightstand.

  At the top of the stairs, a hallway stretched long and shadowed in front of her. Framed photographs of a smiling Gavin—spanning from toothless to the tall, lanky boy she knew today—covered the walls.

  She paused at a particularly large grouping of frames. In the first, Gavin stood alone with a much simpler version of the house looming behind him. In the second, both Gavin and the house had changed considerably: both had grown taller, and certain features had become more clearly defined while others had softened. And it continued: Each photo depicted a progressively older boy standing in front of a much larger and more complicated house.

  Delilah realized she was standing in front of what could only be considered a series of family portraits.

  Against the same wall stood a long, narrow table, a simple bowl of red apples she recognized from the tree out back resting on top. Delilah took a step back, her eyes following the ornate legs to where they ended, carved into what looked like the paws of some wild jungle animal, long claws digging into the wood floor. She wasn’t sure why this particular detail stood out to her as strange, surrounded as she was by a house that lived and breathed and had raised a seventeen-year-old boy, but it sent a chill through her anyway.

  She continued on and passed several rooms, doors ajar and filled with the same fading light as the rest of the house. Delilah hadn’t paid much attention to them before—with Gavin nearby, it was hard to concentrate on much else—but now each one seemed to call to her, as if every corner held some new and deliciously dark secret.