The House That Death Built (23 page)

Rob vaguely understood that they
were trapped. That Aaron was screaming as he rammed into the closed door to the
hall. That each time he hit, he bounced back. Several times he fell.

But it was all far away. The only
thing up close – the only thing
real
– was Sadface. His knife against
her throat.

The downturned crescent frown on
the mask mocked him. Her silence under his knife – no whimpering, no pleading,
no
nothing
– enraged him.

She did this.

She caught us here. Her and Happyface.

They killed Tommy and Kayla.

They brought
TJ.

That last thought bit the
deepest. Full of complication, mired in a history half-lived.

Aaron's shouting suddenly
changed. The sound managed to yank Rob's attention from Sadface to the other
man.

Aaron was looking through a
window that had suddenly appeared in the door. A face hung there. The Crawford
girl, looking in on what was happening, like a visitor staring into an animal
cage at the world's strangest zoo.

"Hey!" Aaron screamed. "Can
you –" Then his tone changed again. No longer hope at seeing someone
outside this room, but raw terror. "Look out! Look out!"

Happyface had appeared in the
window. Right behind Susan.

At Aaron's words, Susan turned to
the other masked freak. She didn't shrink away, didn't scream in terror.

She turned away from him.

Her face was calm, not a trace of
fear – or anything else. It was a blank mask that betrayed nothing.

She moved below the level of the
window. Brought something into view. Put it on.

It was another mask –

(
Oh dear God, oh Jesus, oh
mommy please save me
)

– another Greek theater mask.
This one, though, was different. Not just the expression, but the mask itself
didn't seem…
right
. There were no crescent eyes, no frown or smile.
Instead, the eyes were uneven, mismatched circles. The mouth was open in an
asymmetrical oval.

Not happiness.

Not sadness.

Insanity.

Happyface, Sadface, and now
Madface.

Why is this happening to me?

It's not fair.

He turned away from the sight of
the two masks in the window, and told himself it was because staring at them
wouldn't help anything, he had his ticket to freedom right below him, right
under his blade.

But those were lies. He just
couldn't look at the two masks out there. They were too much, and to look at
them too long would be to join Madface in her insanity.

Rob leaned on Sadface. Pressed a
knee into her breastbone so it would be nearly impossible to breathe, even as
he increased pressure on the knife at her throat.

"Where's Kayla?" he
screamed. "Where's TJ?
Where's TJ
?"

The TV beside him flickered. The
crisscrossing views of multiple cameras in the rooms of the mansion
disappeared. Now there was only one picture, enormous on the hundred-inch
screen.

TJ.

The kid's form was splayed out,
arms and legs and head the spokes of his body's wheel.

And he was floating.

Floating
?

No. Not floating. He was hanging
on something. Rob could barely make it out, but something flashed in the dim
space over the foyer. As soon as it did, he remembered the wire that had cut so
deeply into Tommy's body. And, knowing what to look for, he could make out a
near-invisible net made of the same wires.

Blood dripped from TJ's form to
the floor of the foyer. The huge dogs were there, lapping it up. Waiting for
more.

Rob thought the kid must be dead,
and a sharp coldness spread through him. Then TJ's head turned. He looked up
and screamed. Rob heard it both on the television and filtering through the
closed hall door. High-fidelity sound that doubled the pain it communicated.

Rob's jaw dropped. He looked back
at the window.

The Crawford girl –

(
no no never again she never
was
she's Madface and that's all
)

– spoke. Like Happyface and Sadface,
her voice was altered, mechanical. A mockery of humanity. "None of you
even thought to ask: If I knew about the trapdoor and the passage, how could I
possibly
not know about what was happening here?" She held something up to the
window. It looked like a complicated remote control of some kind, bigger than a
television remote and covered in different-colored buttons whose functions were
mysteries to Rob. "Everything I did was so you would let me in. Let me be
with
you." She nodded toward Happyface. "It was enough for them to see
from far away. But I wanted to be close." She paused then added, "So
I could see your faces," and in the same instant pressed one of the
buttons on the remote.

Rob looked back at the television
beside him. At the huge screen that made its single image so much larger than
life, so much more painful.

The chandelier hanging above TJ
let go of the ceiling. It fell.

"No!" screamed Rob.

TJ had time for a single, sharp
gasp. Then the heavy corona of crystal and metal and wire fell directly on top
of him. The chandelier stopped exactly like TJ had. Halted by the net of wires.

The chandelier stopped.

TJ didn't.

The heavy weight of the
chandelier drove into his flesh, slammed it back into the wires. The wires
separated TJ into pieces that fell to the foyer floor with splats and thumps.

The pit bulls went mad. Dinner.

Rob screamed. His mind separated
into two parts: the part that was rage, the scream the only way it could
express what it was feeling; and the part that realized his scream sounded
somehow familiar. The sound of pure agony. The sound of loss.

A sound he had heard on others'
lips as he stole not only what they had, but what they
were
. Money and
riches lost, husbands and wives stolen away.

Children killed.

He turned away from the
television, turned away from that part of him that wondered if this wasn't
right, if it wasn't
just
.

He turned to Sadface. Began
smashing her face with his free hand. He didn't bother taking off the mask,
just slammed down right through it. Smash, smash, smash, and every time his
fist fell he knew that the world hated him, that all this was wrong, that
nothing would ever be right again. The world hated him. And it just wasn't
fair.

"No!" he screamed. "No,
no, no, how could you do that how could you do that
to my son?
"

In his peripheral vision he saw
Aaron stumble, just go from standing to a near-fall as he heard Rob's words.
Rob looked at him, blinking away a curtain of tears. "He never knew,"
he said. "Never… never…."

The words drained him. Halted the
fist that had rained down on Sadface.

"You have a son?" said
Aaron. A strange comment, given where they were, what was happening around
them. A jarring pause in the terror of the night. But at the same time it
seemed right. Words spoken in eulogy over his boy.

"A long time ago,"
whispered Rob. "Before Donna. He never knew. And I thought…." The
hand that had pounded Sadface now lifted. He rubbed his palm against his
forehead. "I thought that keeping it that way – keeping myself away from
him – would be the best thing I could do for him." He chuckled. The sound
held no mirth. "It was probably the only good thing I've ever done."

He turned back to Sadface.
Smashed his fist into her face again. Again.

On the third hit, the mask split
and fell away from her face.

Rob reeled.

(
The man showed Robert
something inside his wallet. A picture of a smiling woman and a teenager, both
with dark shoulder-length hair and deep brown eyes. Both striking – beautiful.

"My wife and daughter,"
said the man.
)

The woman looked nothing like the
woman in the folder. Her hair wasn't blond, it was so dark as to be nearly
black. The hair was missing in a long patch from her temple to the back of the
head, and when he saw it he recognized her.

The woman. The woman from five
years ago. The job where it all started to go wrong.

"You're dead," he
whispered. "Tommy killed you."

But obviously he hadn't. The
bullet must have ricocheted off her skull – rare, but it did happen – and left
her bleeding, dead-looking, but still very much alive.

He heard Aaron gasp in shock, and
knew the other man had recognized her as well. Rob nearly fell off her,
surprise driving him back as hard as any punch to the gut. Then he pressed
himself forward again, forced himself through the anguish and the pain and
surprise. He pressed down with the knife. Looked to the window in the door –
Happyface –

(
it must be him, it must be
the guy from that night
)

– and Sadface –

(
and the daughter – Christ did
anyone actually die that night did that night even happen at all or was it just
a dream?
)

– stared back at him through the
glass and through their unmoving masks.

"I'm done!" Rob
shouted. "Done playing! You let us out or…."

He tapered off. The threat didn't
need to be stated. And sometimes the unstated ones carried more power.

A moment stretched into a minute.
Now Rob doubted: what could he do if they didn't back down? He couldn't just
kill Sadface –

(
What was her name what was
the name of the family?

Oh, yeah, it was Schaffer.

But that's not who they are
anymore.
)

– because killing her would
negate his only leverage.

What do I do? How do I –

Happyface and Madface disappeared
from the window. Madface moved away last, throwing a long look over her
shoulder before disappearing from view.

Rob exchanged a look with Aaron.
What was going to happen now?

The door clicked. It swung open a
few inches.

The sound should have been
encouraging: Rob had won the facedown. He had leverage that they cared about.

So why did the open door scare
him?

He looked at Aaron again. The
other man was experiencing the same confused emotions.

Rob moved. He hauled Sadface to
her feet.

"Come on, bitch."

Aaron looked sick. Looked like he
wasn't sure whether he should follow or not. Like maybe the shmuck thought they
somehow
deserved
all this.

Then he followed Rob out of the
room. Followed him the way he always did. He might gripe and moan about being
forced into things, but in the end he always had a choice.

And he chose to follow Rob.

Rob grinned a tight smile as he
forced Sadface into the hall before him.

It's all gonna be okay.

My luck changes here. I'll
make
it change.

Rob moved out of the room. Aaron
didn't want to follow him. But he did, because where else could he go?

Rob led them out of the media
room and into the hall. His eyes darted everywhere, looking for anything that
might leap out of the darkness. Anything that might maim or kill them.

Nothing.

Aaron followed him to the balcony
overlooking the foyer. He gasped when he saw Kayla, fixed by razor blades to
what looked like a piece of the ceiling. Her mouth open, her eyes open, looking
as though she hung forever in a twilight place between life and death.

Another section of the ceiling
hung down near her. There were no razors on this one, just flat board, and
Aaron wondered what this one had been used for.

Then he remembered the kid,
hanging in midair on a wire web. Surely he hadn't just voluntarily climbed out
onto the thing, surely he hadn't jumped from the balcony.

He was pushed.

The pieces fell together quickly,
with dreadful finality. He even noted the space between the boards. Remembered
the young man dragging the Crawford girl – the Madface without a mask –

(
Or maybe the face of a young,
innocent girl was her mask. Maybe the Madface is what she really looks like
inside.
)

– down the hall to the balcony.

The space between the boards was
just big enough. Just large enough for a teenage girl to stand between them as
they fell to their grisly work.

That thought scared him as much –
more – than any of the individual traps they had yet faced.

They've planned it all. They knew
every step we'd take.

And the follow-up realization:
They
know
us.

It was true. It was the only
explanation. This wasn't a trap for whoever might come, this was a trap – a
series of traps – designed for specific prey.

That was the first time he
understood.

No. I knew before this.

He had understood subconsciously
when he saw the woman beneath the Sadface mask. The woman he thought Tommy had
killed five years ago. The time he moved from thief to accomplice to murder.

Even before that, he knew none of
this could be an accident – how could it? But that thought, and all its
implications, had been forced out of his mind by the simple need to survive.

That need, that will to live,
makes anyone smarter, sharpens their wits and focuses them on the task at hand.
It also makes them stupider, makes them ignore anything beyond their immediate
attention.

Ahead of him, Rob made a sudden
choking sound. He hadn't moved from behind Sadface, hadn't removed the knife he
held at her throat. But he had glanced down, over the balustrade.

Aaron couldn't help himself. He
looked, too.

Below them, he could see the
chandelier, looking like it hung in midair. And on the foyer floor beneath it,
smears of red on a white stone floor. The huge dogs were there, lapping up the
blood and tearing at large chunks of what had once been human, reduced now to
nothing but meat for the beasts.

"We're leaving!" Rob
screamed. His voice sounded strangled. But still strong enough to believe him
when he added, "Anyone stops us and I kill her!"

There was a long moment, then a
whistle sounded, high and shrill. The instant it did, the dogs scattered,
disappearing from view.

Nothing but a few red smears
remained below. The rest had been lapped up, dragged away.

Eaten.

Rob pushed Sadface down the
stairs. She began down ahead of him. Aaron hung back, terrified.

They know us. They know us so
well they know what we will do, when we will do it.

He remembered the remote control
in Madface's hand. The closed-circuit images on the huge television.

Maybe it wasn't planned like
that. Maybe they set the traps, then simply watched to spring them. Not in some
predetermined order, just when the opportunity arose.

That gave him the hope to take a
single step. Because maybe they hadn't predicted this. Maybe Rob slamming into
that room was the sign their plan had unraveled, that the people behind this
had finally been caught unawares.

Then he froze again. The second
step just wouldn't come.

And Rob was halfway down the
stairs.

What happens if he leaves me
behind?

Still he didn't move. Not until
he thought of Dee, her smile, her arms that always opened wide to greet him
when he came home.

He caught up with Rob
three-quarters of the way down. He looked around as they walked down the
stairs, seeing the white wall beside them, the other white walls in the foyer
below.

Something new hit him – one more
of those subtle clues that should have alerted him from the beginning. One more
thing, like the fact that the rooms were all a bit too small to fit properly in
the outer shell of the mansion.

"No pictures," he said.

"What?" Rob didn't look
at him.

"There were no pictures in
the house. I didn't notice before, but now…. No pictures of the family, no
artwork at all. It's like –"

"Like it was all a fake. I
know." One of Rob's hands held the knife at Sadface's throat. The other
had been knotted up in her shirt at her back, pushing her ahead. Now he let go
with that hand long enough to drive a savage punch into her kidney. The woman
still didn't make a sound. A hit like that should have made her scream, even
crippled her. But the only sound was Rob saying, "It was all a setup."

They stepped off the stairs.
Aaron almost slipped when he did. The stone floor that had once shone white in
the night was now streaked with dark red. There were small bits of meat here
and there. All that remained of TJ.

He looked at Rob. Rob was looking
at the floor, too. His face was a mask no less blank than the ones that had
dogged them through this night.

Rob looked away. Toward the hall
that led to the back of the house.

He began to shake.

Aaron looked, too. He had to
know, because the only thing worse than knowing would be
not
knowing.
The only way to avoid death would be to learn what their captors planned.

To know them the way they knew
him and Rob.

He looked.

Rob's girlfriend, Donna, hung
from the ceiling in the hall. She was very dead. Her feet hung two feet above
the floor. One of her shoes had come off, which was a strange detail to notice.
More obvious would have been her bulging eyes, her lolling tongue.

The blood that trickled from a
thousand wounds on her body.

But it was the shoe that held
Aaron's attention. He didn't know why, but looking away was just about the
hardest thing he'd ever done.

And, finally, Sadface made a
sound.

She began to laugh.

It was a strange, wheezing sound.
The laugh of madness come to call.

Rob's expression darkened. He
looked like he was going to kill her, and he tensed for the final, killing
blow.

"Don't," Aaron said.
The look Rob shot at him was so enraged, so dangerous, that he took a step
back. He raised his hands. "Let's just get out," he pleaded. "Rob,
please. Let's just get out."