House (32 page)

“As you can see, the black stuff likes to burn. This place will go up in flames at first light. That's in six minutes. Six minutes to make your choice.”

He retreated to the room's entrance and picked the mask up off the floor. Opened the door. Backed out of the room.

“Six minutes.”

White slammed the door shut and began to tremble.

36
6:02 am

THE LINES BEGAN ETCHING THEMSELVES in Jack's mind as White talked, dividing competing forces deep at work behind the obvious here in this house empowered by evil.

Evil versus evil. Jack didn't totally buy White's claim. If there was evil, there was also good, and those forces were in some kind of battle here. Up to this point, except for the face-off in the boiler room, their abduction had felt little like a battle with two sides. But maybe that was the point. He'd been looking at it all wrong! He'd only seen one side, the evil. So where was the good?

And what if the standoff in the boiler room was only a foreshadowing of a greater contest to come? Jack against Jack. In some ways this night was nothing more than a stark playing out of the struggle he faced every day of his life. His own limited view of that struggle focused on what he allowed himself to see. But what if there was more?

What was the guilt that White seemed so preoccupied with? What were their sins?

Leslie seemed to be fighting long-hidden demons that had come to life in this impossible house of White's. Randy . . . Randy was showing his own obsession with power and control. Stephanie had come face-to-face with her own denial and was now terrified and weak without its facade.

And he? His was hiding behind bitterness, no better than any of the rest.

These were the thoughts racing, drumming, screaming as Tin Man talked. Then White was leveling his final challenge and that challenge was to kill someone.

“Six minutes.” Tin Man backed out of the room. The door slammed shut as a hundred doors had slammed this night, but now with such finality that for a moment none of them moved.

And then, as if in deliberate response, a hundred doors throughout the house, below them, around them, slammed in one mighty crash.
Bam!
The house shook and shifted.

An echo lingered. Something had changed in the house.

Jack twisted to his right and grabbed the knife handle. He saw Randy diving for the crowbar as he tugged. But the knife was stuck.

“Jack?”

Stephanie stared at him, pleading with desperate eyes.

“Help me,” he said.

She blinked then ran to his side. Her hand covered his over the knife handle, and together they pulled. In that single moment of desperation, he felt an overpowering sense of gratitude toward her. And he thought she might feel the same toward him. They were doing little more than reacting to the horrors that had pressed them to the breaking point, but in that moment, with their hands together grasping the one weapon that might save them, the bitterness and denial that had kept them from so much as a touch for over a year became nothing more than a petty distraction.

For the first time in a year, they hoped for the same thing, together. The knife.

But it refused to budge. It was so firmly embedded that it might as well be one of the steel bars that covered the windows.

Jack whirled around, still on his knees. Randy already had the crowbar in his hand, crouched like a tiger, grinning wickedly at Jack.

“Hold on!” Jack stuck his arm out and swept Stephanie behind him. “Just hold on!”

Randy's eyes swiveled to Susan, who was still bound and taped to Jack's left. She was trying to yell through the tape.

Jack shifted closer to the girl. “It's okay, Susan,” he said softly.

She quieted.

“He's going to kill us, no matter what we do,” Jack said. “Think about it! We've seen his face; we know he's Lawdale; why would he let us live?”

“Listen to him, Randy,” Stephanie said.

He removed his eyes from Susan and glanced at Stephanie, perhaps struck by her change. “I'll take my chances,” Randy said. “I'm not willing to risk my life based on some stupid theory. If you don't let me kill her, so help me, I'm coming for you.” He swung the crowbar once.

“What are you going to do, Randy? Beat her over the head?”

The man held his ground, but he didn't answer. At least he was thinking that through. Jack moved while Randy was at least partly preoccupied. He leaned over and grabbed the tape that covered Susan's mouth.

Yanked it free.

He held up his hands, tape dangling. “Just hear her out.”

Randy stared, unmoving.

“Five minutes,” Leslie whimpered.

“Tell him, Susan.”

“Tin Man's lying to you,” Susan said. “He won't let all of you live. Even if you kill me, at least some of you will die.”

“That's a lie,” Randy said. “If we don't kill her, we all die. She's trying to save herself at our expense.”

“I know how to get out,” the girl said. “That's one of the reasons he wants you to kill me.”

“You see, Randy?” Jack said. “Just calm down.”

Randy hesitated then spoke with a set jaw. “If she knew how to get out, she'd have told us already.”

“I've tried,” the girl said. “You aren't listening.”

“How do we get out, Susan?” Jack asked, keeping his eyes on Randy and his hand out to keep him away.

“I can show you how,” she said. “But you have to trust me.”

“She's going to get us all killed!” Randy said.

“If you look and listen, you can still win,” Susan said.

“Think of the mirror,” Jack said quickly. “We weren't seeing ourselves. The truth was hidden from us. We weren't really looking. She's making sense. For heaven's sake, listen to her!”

“What truth?” Randy demanded. “The only truth I'm aware of at this particular moment is that White will be stepping back into this room and killing her anyway. You may be willing to throw your life away because she says so, but we're not. Leslie?”

She was starting to waver, looking from Randy to Jack and then back. “What if she's trying to trick us?”

“She saved your life!” Jack snapped. “What's the matter with you?”

Her face wrinkled in confusion, and she stifled a cry. He might have expected this from Stephanie, but not Leslie.

Stephanie put her hand on Jack's elbow.

“Time's going to run out,” Susan said. “You have to choose who you're going to believe. If you don't follow me, you'll all die. But we have to go now!”

“That's the stupidest—”

“You're not listening!” Susan cried. “I've been here longer than you have! You have to trust me, or you'll die!”

“White will
kill
us!” Randy screamed.

Jack threw himself at Randy then, like a torpedo. The crowbar swung, but Randy was caught off guard and his swing was weak. The iron glanced off his back as his head struck Randy's hips.

They hit the floor hard, with Jack on top. He wasn't a fighter under normal circumstances, but this was anything but normal. Randy began to thrash. A knee crashed into Jack's side, and he felt himself losing the advantage as quickly as he'd gained it.

Jack did the only thing that came to him at that moment. He screamed at the top of his lungs, a raging cry that flooded his veins with adrenaline.

Another voice joined his. Stephanie's, screaming.

He heard Randy cry out in pain as he rolled to his knees. Stephanie had stomped on the hand clinging to the crowbar.

Jack watched her plant her left foot on the floor like a world-class punter and take a swing at him with her right foot.

She was wearing spring sandals, but the toes were hard and pointed, and Randy was kneeling, presenting a broad target for her. Her sharp shoe slammed into the side of his head.

He rolled to his side, dazed.

Susan was already beside Stephanie. “Get my hands free! Hurry!”

She spun Susan around and attacked the tape.

“Jack?” Leslie was watching, frozen.

Randy was still a threat, but they didn't have time to secure him.

“Follow me!” Susan said.

Randy was already pushing himself up.

Jack held a hand out to Leslie. “Come on!”

She hesitated then took a step.

Jack hurried after Susan and Stephanie, who'd reached the door.

“Ready?” Susan said, hand on the door handle.

“He's coming around,” Jack said.

“Whatever happens, follow me. Open your eyes. Don't let the house turn you back.”

“Where are we going?”

“Downstairs,” she said and pulled the door open.

A rushing sound swallowed Jack. The door opened to blackness, not the hall.

Then he saw the stairs, the black fog, the dim bulbs, and he knew that this door now led into the basement. The house had shifted under them when White had slammed the door.

Fear pinged along Jack's nerves from the top of his head to the soles of his feet.

“Follow me,” Susan cried and plunged down the dark stairwell.

37
6:04 am

RANDY STAGGERED TO HIS FEET, DAZED. Confusion swirled through his mind like a thick black fog, rushing with the sound of a gale-force wind.

Then he realized that the sound wasn't in his head. It was coming from the open door that the others had just run through. The doorway gaped like a black throat that descended into hell.

Into the basement.

He stood, swaying on his feet, fighting the confusion. Follow Susan? Not a chance in hell. The fools were actually listening to a girl who'd been trapped in the house for three days.

He inched forward on shaking legs and peered down. Leslie had stopped halfway down and was staring at the black fog that covered the basement floor at the bottom of the steps. The rest of them, including Susan, were already out of sight.

Leslie didn't move. She'd lost her nerve. Funny how he'd lost interest in her over the last few hours. Funny how he had to fight back an urge to kick her in the head now, while her back faced him. Funny how he hated her as much as he hated himself.

How much time? He still had time, didn't he? The Tin Man didn't say the time would end if they left the room. No way six minutes had passed. He could still get to them. Maybe this way was better, because they wouldn't expect him from behind. If he killed the girl, the Stewarts would vanish or something. He would shake hands with White, and then he would walk away from this place the one free man who'd used his head to escape certain death.

Randy looked around for a weapon and saw the knife stuck in the wall. He scooped up the crowbar and ran to the wall. Grabbed the knife and pulled.

It came out like it was set in butter.

A small grin nudged his lips. See, now White was helping. Or the house was. Either way, he was doing the right thing.

He ran to the stairs and stopped at the top. The black fog was thick on the basement floor. No Stewarts. No White. Just Leslie, a step or two higher than a moment ago.

There was something moving in the fog below. Swimming just under the surface—he could see its wake, sweeping slowly across the fog.

Randy gripped the knife in his left hand, the crowbar in his right hand, and put one foot on the landing. Then the other.

He stood shaking, momentarily stalled. Then he forced himself down the stairs.

Leslie watched the moving fog, glued to the steps. Jack and Stephanie had followed Susan into the fog, but as they disappeared, she realized that she couldn't make it.

Wouldn't make it. Panic had seized her feet. And her mind. Susan's words drummed through her skull, but Leslie couldn't accept them. Running into the basement was suicide. And based on the urging of a girl who couldn't possibly know what she was talking about.

At the same time, Leslie couldn't ignore the evidence. The moving house. The shifting fog. She knew now, staring into the pit of hell, what was happening to her. She was facing her own sin. She'd been abused as a child, but as an adult she'd embraced that abuse by becoming an active participant.

What was abuse, except the bending of something that doesn't want to be bent? Any psychologist could attest to the fact that circumstances are subject to the participant caught within the circumstance. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

So is evil.

She'd become promiscuous and inviting, and she thrived on the power that she held over men. More important, she allowed that power to shape her identity.

The horrors of this night were highlighted by the one thin voice that had haunted her for the last two hours: she didn't hate Pete. Or what he'd done to her. In fact, in many ways she
was
Pete.

They shared a terrifying bond. The truth of it made her ill. But she had always been ill.

She briefly wondered if she should go to his room now. See how sick she really was.

Yet she was who she was.