House (8 page)

He passed the can to Randy, who read the message to himself. Stephanie began to shake. Leslie touched her arm, and this time, Stephanie took her hand.

Above them, the sound of boot heels crossed the roof, descended the back side, and then stepped off.

Silence.

7
10:27 pm

STEPHANIE WAS THE LAST ONE TO HOLD THE can, rotating it back and forth as she read the message several times over. Jack could hear her quick breaths. “Does he mean . . . ?”

“It means he's one sick character,” Randy said, scanning the room like a sentry.

“It's psychological,” Leslie said. “He's playing a mind game.”

“Except for the dead people,” Randy replied, nodding toward the newspaper on the hearth.

“But that's impossible.” Leslie looked at Randy, then Jack, then Stephanie. “He doesn't actually expect us to kill each other.”

“Not each other.” Randy snatched the can from Stephanie and read it one more time. “Just one.”

Jack favored Leslie's theory. “I think he wants to divide us, get us at each other's throats.”

Betty cackled low.

“Something funny?” Randy asked.

“That'll be easy enough,” she said.

Randy leaned toward her. “You're speaking for yourself, of course?”

“We'll find out, won't we?”

“What
is
it with you?”

Jack extended his hand, not touching either of them, just enough to slip in a word. “Hey, come on. We don't have to play his game. We can choose.”

“Hoooo!” Betty hooted, twisting her neck to look up at him. “Listen to
you.
”

Leslie brought her wristwatch closer to the lamp. “Ten thirty. Dawn's at six. That gives us seven and a half hours.”

“Six seventeen, to be precise.” Everyone looked at Stewart. He shrugged. “I have an interest in these things.”

Randy snorted. “I won't need that long. I'm ending this right now.” He grabbed the lamp off the hearth and strode toward the foyer, shotgun in hand.

Betty took a seat on one of the chairs, mildly interested. Stewart sank onto the couch, a comfortable spectator.

Jack went after him. “Randy.”

“Stay back. This'll only take a second.”

Leslie followed as far as the archway, then turned back to the living room and said, “Take cover. He's really going to do it.”

Before Jack could stop him, Randy had reached the front door, set the lamp on the floor, and taken aim.

Jack wasn't concerned about the door, just Randy and all human bystanders. “Randy, be sure you know—”

Boom!
The shotgun spit white fire, and the percussion rattled the house. The lead shot shattered the stained glass.

To Jack, the hole looked large enough to squeeze through. “That should do it. Why don't you put the gun down—”

Randy pumped and fired again, peppering the door, the jamb, the bolt. In the living room, Stephanie screamed. The door quivered as chips of wood flew into the room. The foyer filled with blue smoke.

Randy grunted as he chambered a third cartridge. He leveled the shotgun at his hip and centered the barrel on the lock. Fire, lead, and smoke exploded from the barrel; the recoil bruised him. The doorjamb shattered. The dead bolt fell free.

He knew even as he pulled the trigger that his crazy display was asinine given their predicament, but he couldn't stop himself. His own fear had taken over. The realization only steeped his anger.

Try to mess with my mind . . .

One more round rattled the windows, and the door's hinges creaked. He pumped the action, ready to go again—

The chamber was empty. He patted his pockets, then hollered over his shoulder at Jack, “Give me more shells.”

Jack just stood there, almost hidden behind the lamp-lit smoke. Randy knew he had more rounds in his pockets, but he wasn't digging after them. “Randy,” he said, “the door's open. Give it a rest.”

“You bet your life the door's open! Give me some shells before that creep crawls in here!”

Jack still didn't move.

Jack knew Randy's point was valid; they were vulnerable now to danger from outside. But that didn't mean things weren't dangerous inside too.
Give me one dead body . . .
“Why don't you let me take the gun for a while?”

Randy put his face within an inch of Jack's. “Gimme those shells! That creep's still out there!”

“Randy. Just take a short break. Let me have the gun.”

Randy wrapped both hands around the weapon. “
I've
got the gun!” He shouted toward the women, “Come on! Let's move, let's get out of here! The shells, Jack! Let's have 'em!”

Leslie spoke from the shadows, “Randy, just let Jack hold the gun until—”

“Shut up! I'm in charge here!”

Jack heard an engine rev. Through the open front door he could see headlights playing about the front yard.

“All right,” Leslie conceded, her voice controlled. “You're in charge, Randy.” She and Stephanie stepped into the foyer. Leslie went to Randy and put an arm around him. “You're in charge.” She stroked his shoulders. “You're the one, Randy. Good job.” It seemed to settle him, at least make him reasonable.

Stephanie stood alone in the haze, clutching herself in fear. Her eyes were on those headlights sweeping around out front—

With a lurch, a rattle, and the growl of a half-muffled engine, the headlights lumbered over a flower bed, through a hedge, and onto the flagstone walk. From the fenders and the roundish cab stark against the stone wall, Jack realized it was an old pickup truck. It turned toward the house, disappearing behind the blinding headlights, backlighting a curtain of pouring rain. The light beams blasted through the front door, cutting a rectangular tunnel of brilliance through the smoke.

Jack found himself in that rectangle, his shadow extending behind him as he stood mesmerized, wondering, guessing—but only for an instant.

Whoever was driving that old heap opened the throttle. The vehicle lurched forward, accelerating up the flagstone walk.

Right for the front door.

“Look out! Look out!”

They scattered to the left and right, running for cover, knocking things over, tripping in the shadows and smoke.

Jack was close to the dining room and fled in that direction, the headlights burning against his back, his frantic shadow running in front of him.

The engine's roar, the smashing and splintering of lumber, the screech of metal, the shattering of glass, the crunching of wallboard, trim, and fixtures, all melded into one bone-jarring, earsplitting
crash
as the truck climbed the steps, leaped over the veranda, and punched its way through the front wall of the house. Jack heard screams as he dived and hit the table as bits of wallboard, shards of vases, and a spray of rotten food rained down on him from a roiling cloud of plaster dust.

The skewed lights from the truck flickered, then died.

“Stephanie!” he yelled.

He pulled his feet under him and stood, unsteady, unsure which direction the foyer was. Turning, squinting, searching through the dark and dust, he sighted a fuzzy center of orange light bouncing and swinging in the haze. He followed it, stumbling on debris.

“Leslie!” Randy called, the light moving about in the murk as Randy searched. “Leslie!”

“Over here,” came Leslie's voice.

The light zipped across Jack's vision, across the foyer into the dining room.

“You're bleeding,” Randy cried.

“Stephanie!” Jack called. “Are you all right?”

“I'm okay,” she answered, and then he saw her emerge as out of a fog, meeting him in the middle of the foyer. He held her and, under the circumstances, she let him.

The oil lamp returned to the foyer, floating in the cloud, held high in Randy's hand. Randy was helping Leslie along with his other arm. She held a hanky to her forehead. A trickle of blood stained her right cheek, a mirror twin to the cut she'd sustained during dinner.

“I'm all right,” she kept insisting, as if trying to convince herself. “I'm all right. It's just a scratch.”

Randy turned his lamp toward the damage. The front doorway was gone—no frame, no door, no lintel. Shards of glass, splintered molding, broken pottery, and dashed houseplants lay everywhere; puzzle pieces of wallboard dangled from shreds of wallpaper. In place of the door was the battered, crumpled nose of a brown truck, its windshield cracked like a collage of spiderwebs, the roof collapsed, the fenders folded back, the headlights broken and walleyed. Steam hissed from the radiator as water trickled onto the hardwood.

Randy let go of Leslie. “Where's the shotgun?”

Nobody saw it.

Randy spun, casting the lamplight in all directions. The dust was still thick in the air. “Where's the shotgun?”

He held the lamp high, letting the light penetrate the crack-webbed windshield and the collapsed cab.

No sign of the driver.

For several long seconds they stood in the gritty air with the taste of dust in their mouths and the pricking particles in their eyes—staring, disbelieving, and then realizing that the front wall had sagged and closed around the hulk of the truck, sealing off the exit.

Jack could read in their silence what he was feeling himself: the game had not ended. If anything, it was just beginning. “I think we should try to find that shotgun.”

“Find the shotgun,” Randy said, starting to search again.

“Looking for this?” came a rumbling voice out of the haze.

The other lamp came their way from the living room, illuminating two ghostly, furrowed faces. Betty was holding the light. Stewart was holding the shotgun, loading cartridges.

“You dropped it,” Stewart said, unhappy about it. “Is this how you treat other people's property?”

Randy rolled his eyes and moved forward, shining the lamp in Stewart's face. “We don't have time for complaints, Stewart.”

Stewart brushed past him and perused the damage to the house, in no particular hurry. “Now look what you've done.” Outside, the rain intensified, pummeling the roof and pinging off the protruding bed of the truck. A strong gust blew in under the crumpled carriage and extinguished the flame in Randy's lamp. He swore and set it down.

Randy pressed into Stewart's space, reaching for the weapon. “He means business, Stewart. We can't wait around—”

Stewart pumped the action and raised the barrel, pointing it at Randy's chest.

Horrified, Randy bobbed, first down, then sideways. “Hey! What are you doing?”

Stewart kept the barrel aimed at his head. “One dead body, huh? Maybe it should be yours.”

Randy ducked again and ended up on the floor crawling, rolling, backing away while Stewart followed his every move, chuckling with wicked amusement.

“Yeah,” Stewart rumbled. “Crawl on the floor.
Squirm.
It's right where you belong!”

Jack ticked off his options. Randy was on the floor between him and Stewart, which put Jack—and Stephanie, still clinging to him—only inches from Stewart's line of fire. “Stewart, easy now . . . just take it easy.”

Stewart didn't take his eyes or his shotgun off the cowering Randy. “Don't worry. This punk's not bothering me one bit.” Stewart turned to Randy, “
Are
you?”

Leslie sidled close to Betty and whispered, “Betty, can you talk to him?”

Betty just held the lamp high, seemingly mesmerized.

“Are you?”
Stewart growled.

“No, no,” Randy said, his voice trembling.

“Betty,” Leslie whispered. “Do something.”

Betty looked at Leslie, then said to Stewart, “Stewart, don't you make a big mess now.”

Leslie fell back, stunned. Jack searched the woman's half-crazy eyes but could not read them.

“Up against the wall, all of you,” Stewart growled, swinging the barrel in an arc toward them.