The Tea Party - A Novel of Horror (35 page)

“And the Gang? Where’s the Gang, chief?”

“They . . .” Keith struggled and pushed himself away until he was kneeling in front of him. On his face were blotches of dirt, grass, a straggle of hair that put a crease on his brow. His white shirt was torn at the right shoulder.

“It’s all right, chief, it’s all right, take it easy.” Doug smiled and brushed at the blades clinging like leeches to the shirt. “It’s okay, you hear? Just take it easy, take a deep breath and take it easy.”

Keith swallowed, but the deep breath turned into another bout of sobbing, though now without tears. “The trees,” the boy insisted, peering over his shoulder. “They . . . Archie, Ian, Dirk . . . the trees, the flowers. It wasn’t me, it was the trees!”

“All right,” he said, and put an arm around his shoulder, climbed to his feet and started walking him back. “It’s okay, chief, it’s gonna be okay, you just take it easy.” A broken record, he thought; a damned broken record.

It’s time for dinner

They hobbled across the lawn while Keith muttered to himself and shook his head as if trying to drive something out. The house closed in on them, its amber light in rotoscopic flickering, dropping swatches of gold onto the lawn, reflecting off the underbelly of the clouds still roiling, still peeling off strips of white to test the strength of the wind.

The kids, he thought as they staggered into the backyard, and he lowered the boy into one of the white chairs; Jesus, even the kids. The party feeds the quests, and the guests feed the house. Oh god, those poor kids!

It wasn’t a matter of fighting now. He had to find Ollie and Liz and get them all out of here before it was too lat,e. Later, when they were safely beyond the thing’s influence, they’d figure out a way to get rid of it if they could. Later, when the nightmare was at arm’s length.

He started for the house, and Keith leapt from his chair, jumped around in front of him, and held out his arms.

“Where are you going?”

“Sit,” he ordered.

“But where are you going?”

“To get your mother,” he explained. “And Olivia. When I do, we’ll get out of here and go home, okay? Now stay here, Keith, please.”

“No,” the boy said, shaking his head and backing away. “I’m not going to stay here all by myself.”

“Then you can come—”

“No!” Keith screamed. “No!” He spun once in a direction-seeking circle, then sprinted for the corner, disappearing around it before Doug could take a step to follow. He called out Keith’s name, called again and slapped his hands to his head. Which way now? The boy? Liz?

The canvas tent snapped in the wind, the only sound in the yard.

The clouds began to smooth over.

He groaned with indecision, then raced off to the side of the house. Keith was already gone, and he realized the boy could be anywhere by now; they could end up chasing each other around the place like riding a carousel. He punched a fist against his leg, went back to the door, and shoved it again.

The house was silent.

The lights on the walls danced frozen in their bulbs; the corridor stretched ahead of him for what seemed like miles to the front entrance.

There was no trace of the people he had seen step inside, no voices, no footsteps overhead. The bare flooring was unscuffed and held no signs of damp shoes or boots tracking mud or grass over it. They were gone, yet he knew that the wall outside would prevent any of them from leaving the grounds.

“Liz! Ollie!”

No answer but the lights mocking him peacefully on the walls.

All right, he told himself; one step at a time.

He could see at a glance how much smaller the place was than it appeared from the yard, consistent with the probable height of the seventeenth-century man who had built it. Yet he could not help but admire the structure of the rooms, the way the walls and floors, though somewhat irregularly canted, gave it the bulk, the size, the sense of proportion one would need if—

He groaned, and clenched a fist until his nails almost punctured his skin.

Winterrest was disarming him, smothering his sense of danger with a show for his love of houses and his architect’s greedy eye.

Fuck you, he thought, and froze momentarily, as if expecting it would read his mind and kill him.

Two paneled doors flanked him; he jerked open the right-hand one and looked into a large kitchen empty save for aluminum foil-covered trays on a wall counter, a large trash can filled to brimming, and piles of dirty glasses.

The floor was made of tile-shaped stone.

“Nell? Wilbur?”

He crossed the room quickly—ignoring the sound of his heels snapping like dry twigs—to a closed door in the far wall. He hesitated only fractionally before flinging it open to face a long narrow pantry.

“Hey, Clearys!”

Running back to the corridor, he wondered what had happened to Piper. He hadn’t seen the old man at all since they’d talked earlier that afternoon, but there was no time to worry about it. He opened the opposite door and stepped into a square room against whose walls were tall ladder-back chairs and four walnut tables. A larger table took up most of the floor’s center, and the wall and ceiling beams were dark with age and rough-hewn.

He didn’t need to touch them to know they were only stone simulating wood.

“Hey, anybody! Hey!”

The next door opened onto what was probably a study. A polished roll-top desk, spartan chair, secretary, dusty shelves on the wall. A lantern. A braided oval rug. The walls not quite true, the dusty white ceiling sloping slightly toward the center of the house.

“Hey, is anybody here?”

He closed his eyes as he turned to walk back and took a deep breath. The air was unmoving, nothing to it but age and the faint clammy stench of ancient moist rock. He had smelled it before, during searches of old houses for designing ideas, when he walked into a just-finished home to check to be sure that his plans had been followed—it was emptiness, a void. No one lived here, no one spent time here, nothing in the air but the materials used to build it.

He had seen at least thirty people walk through that back door, and now it was as if they didn’t exist at all.

Walking the central hallway was like walking down the center of a deserted road—he heard nothing but his own footsteps, and had no desire to call out to see if anyone was there. Yet he knew someone was. He could feel it in the way his skin stretched tight across his shoulders, could feel it in the way the hair on hi? nape tingled as though brushed by static electricity.

At the foyer he found himself panting as if he’d just run a hard, fast mile. The double doors on the left had been opened, and he could see though a sparsely furnished sitting room to another room that stretched to the far corner. Low ceilings, white plastered walls, a fireplace in each room large enough to walk into, deep enough to place a narrow bench in when the winters grew too vicious.

But that was all.

No people.

On the right it was the same, though the setting was more formal: a dining room dominated by a refectory table surrounded by tall chairs with throne backs and scrolled arms; beyond it a smaller room, used only by the family on ordinary occasions, for dining, for evening reading, for the men to talk about the day’s work while the women worked on their knitting, their weaving, their planning for the future.

And still, as he stood in the foyer and peered up the shadowed, narrow stairwell to the balustrade that rimmed it on the second floor, he felt the watching again.

It was the house.

Winterrest was watching.

And soft footsteps were approaching him from the room on his right.

He spun with fists ready, and saw a woman coming toward him. He recognized her at once and almost ran to take her in his arms before he remembered.

“Judy,” he said dully.

She smiled. “You’ve been talking with him, I hear.”

A tremor raced the length of his spine, and he grit his teeth against it. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a cigarette. Then a match, which he struck several times before it ignited.

“Put it out!” she commanded sharply. “Put it out!”

He was so startled he shook the flame out immediately and shoved the match into his pocket. But he couldn’t move fast enough to prevent her from reaching up and grabbing a handful of his hair, yanking it until he yelped, until she pulled his head down close.

“Are you going to marry me?” she demanded, her breath ice on his lips.

“Judy—”

She took her free hand and ran it gently across his stomach. “Now is the time to decide, Douglas.” She leaned into him, and he could smell the must from her living room, could feel her moving beneath him on the rough, hard carpet. “You promise to marry me and I’ll protect you.” She kissed him, grinding her mouth against his until his teeth threatened to cut through his lips. A moment later she pulled away, chest rising, falling, perspiration on her brow. “And if you don’t, there’s nothing I can do to prevent him from making sure you don’t come back. You’ll be dead, Douglas. You’ll be dead, and buried.”

It was ludicrous, and terrifying, and he couldn’t help it—he started to laugh.

“Damnit, I want to protect you!” she cried. “I do, and you won’t let me!” Then, abruptly, her expression faded to dull resignation. The muscles around her eyes and mouth went slack, and for a moment there was nothing on her face at all.

“Liz Egan.”

He had stalled long enough. Whatever it was he was facing, whatever it was that called itself Judith Lockhart, was of less concern now than finding Liz and getting her out. He started for the stairs, was halfway to the landing when she screamed, “I love you, you goddamned son of a bitch!”

The vehemence and language stopped him like a slap, and turned him to look. She was at the foot of the stairs, a large brass candlestick in her hand. She glared, and in a single whipping motion threw it at his head. He ducked as she raced after it, felt it graze his shoulder before crashing behind him. He snatched it up and spun just as she reached him, and there was nothing he could do but bring it down on her head. On her forehead. Splitting skin, cracking bone, reeling her backward until she fell.

The candlestick dropped from his hand.

The house trembled. A vague distant rumbling more sensed than felt turned him cold as he pulled himself up by the railing.

Judy sat up.

Oh god, he thought; dear god.

She rose easily to her feet, paying no attention to the gap in her skull that exposed the white bone, the grey brain behind.

“Oh Christ, Douglas,” she said sadly. “I wanted to show you I could protect you.”

Then she took a step up, and he could see she was not bleeding.

Dead,
Parrish had told him. They were dead, and they were alive through Winterrest’s grace.

And he had made love to the woman, to the
thing
coming after him up the stairs.

There was no time to try to understand. As soon as she took the first step he launched himself to the landing and grabbed a post, flinging himself into the hallway to race toward the front. He shouted for Liz, for Ollie, and yanked open the first door he found. He had turned to run away from the empty room when he stopped, looked back, and saw clothes stretched out on the floor, piled on an armchair, spread out on a mattress sagging in a thin wooden frame. Six or seven, he was unable to count, though he recognized Wanda Hallman’s flame pink dress.

Jesus, he thought, staggering back and stumbling to the next door; Jesus.

The second room was the same.

And the third.

He ran back to the junction at the stairwell and saw Judy halfway up and looking at him pityingly.

He sprinted for the north corridor this time, and wasn’t surprised when he opened a bedroom door and saw Clark Davermain standing against the far wall. The lawyer looked astonished, then somewhat fearful, then terrified as the wall curved inward, reached outward, and embraced him until only his face was showing. Doug almost stepped in, until the wall took Clark completely, leaving only his clothes to slither down to the floor.

He slammed the door and raced on, shutting off thought, refusing to feel.

The middle room was the same as the others.

The door nearest the stairs was locked.

“Liz!” he shouted, pounding on the door, kicking at it, pushing and yanking on the doorknob. “Liz, it’s Doug!”

He heard nothing, and whirled just as Judy rounded the corner.

“Doug,” she said, smiling encouragingly. “Douglas, please, you don’t understand.”

“The hell I don’t,” he countered, backing away fearfully. “This place is . . . taking these people, right? Taking them, damnit!”

“Not all of us. I thought Eban spoke to you.” She was still advancing, still smiling.

“He did.” Still backing away.

She stretched out her hands. “Doug, love me again. Please? Love me and we’ll never have to say till death do us part.” Her forehead was clear. “We’re not dead, not really. We gave a little, the house gives a little back. That’s all. That’s all it is.” Her skull was un-marred. “What’s a little hurt for fifty years of barely aging? She pulled the neckline of her blouse down with one finger. “You could have me, Doug. You could have me for almost ever.”

He felt bile rising in his throat, and he wanted to gag.

“Doug, love me.”

He pressed himself against the wall and, just as she reached him, punched her square on the chin. Without waiting to see her fall, he ran to the stairwell, to the back corridor and checked the single room on the left. The door opened, the room was empty, and he was beginning to sob now as he heard Judy struggling to her feet. The door on the right gave as he punched and kicked it, and he had begun to spin around and leave when he spotted a foot poking out from under a low bed in the corner.

He dove for it, grabbed the ankle and pulled Liz slowly toward him. Whispering her name. Pleading with her. Tbrning her over and placing a hand over her heart, sobbing when he felt it beating. He slapped her cheeks gently and closed his eyes briefly when her eyelids began to flutter. Whispering her name and pulling her to her feet, he saw in her expression no need to explain. Either Parrish had already spoken to her, or she had already figured out as much as she wanted.