The House That Death Built (14 page)

"Sue? Susan?
SUSAN
!"

He rattled the doorknob as hard
as he could, but it might as well have been embedded in a solid wall. There was
no give whatever, no matter how hard he pulled.

He drew back.

Rammed into the door with his
shoulder.

Nothing.

"Sue!" He screamed the
name over and over, and punctuated every shout with the sound of his body
hitting a door that refused to give.

"Sue!"

(
slam
)

"Sue!"

(
slam
)

"
Susan –

(
slam
)

"–
where
–

(slam
)

"–
ARE YOU
?"

(
SLAM
)

There was no answer. He heard
voices outside the door, sounds muffled and dim. But nothing like Susan's
voice.

She was gone.

He kept hitting the door, but
knew this was it. The dream was over, the goddess would flee.

He would be alone.

And there was no way he could go
back to the way it had been. If anything happened he would go back to
Ernesto's, get the sawed-off shotgun he kept under the front counter, and blow
his brains out.

But not until he had killed
anyone and everyone who so much as touched a hair on Sue's head.

A moment after the masked freak appeared
in the master bedroom –

(
Is that Crawford? What's he
doing? Why is this happening to me?
)

– Rob heard a new sound.
Screaming. Not Kayla's shrieks of pain and rage, or Tommy's lower screams that
throbbed out in time with the blood gushing from his leg.

It was coming from the room to
the right. The girl's room. Not the high-pitched holler of a teen in distress,
though. It was low, anguished.

The guy. Whoever was in there
with her.

Something touched his arm, and
Rob screamed and almost started shooting wildly before he saw it was just
Aaron. Blood from the wound on his head poured over his temple and dripped over
his left eye. Everything had a haze to it, making the whole scene more surreal.

Aaron wrapped a hand around his
bicep, took his forearm in his other hand. He pulled, helped Rob to his feet;
even that seemed strange, like it was happening to someone else.

The freak was still waving. And
as soon as Rob looked at him, the mask tilted to the side, as though it had
spotted something particularly amusing.

Rob's gun came up. He knew the
bullet had bounced back at him, but what about a
lot
of bullets? One of
them had to punch through.

There's not even a smear where
the last bullet hit. Don't be an idiot.

Aaron pulled Rob's gun hand down
at the last moment. "Let's just get out of here," he said.

The screaming in the girl's room
continued. Someone was shouting, "Sue! Susan!" over and over.

Rob threw one glance at the
happy-faced lunatic in the master bedroom. Still waving.

And then another figure seemed to
appear in the doorway of the master bedroom. Like Happyface, this one was
dressed all in black. But it was a shorter figure. A woman. She wore a mask,
too, but the downturned half-moon eyes were hung over a downturned mouth.
Tragedy. Sadface.

The Crawfords? Are
they
doing this? What are they
doing? Why are they –

Sadface was dragging something. A
struggling, screaming bundle whose feet kicked helplessly on the carpet as Sadface
dragged her by long strands of dark hair.

The girl from the bedroom. Rob
recognized her instantly, as much by her outfit – still in tank top and boxers
– as by her hair or face.

The girl's hands were clamped
over Sadface's wrists, trying to alleviate some of the pressure on her scalp as
she was hauled into view.

Not the Crawfords. This can't be
them – they wouldn't do this to their own daughter.

So who is it?

Someone in the girl's bedroom was
still screaming. But Kayla's shouts were gone, and even Tommy's agonized shouts
had turned to low gasps. Aaron was absolutely silent.

They were all captivated.
Captured by the horrible sight of something so strange it became truly alien.

The teen twisted slightly, saw
Rob and the others standing beyond the glass. Her screams changed from wordless
wails to pleading: "Help me! Help me, please help –"

Her words ended, punctuated by
another scream as Sadface yanked the girl fully into the hall. Happyface
followed, his eyes – the eyes of the mask – clearly looking not at the girl or
at his companion in madness. They bored into Rob, into his skull and beyond to
the darkness of his soul.

It was that unblinking stare that
scared him worse than anything that had gone before.

Until Sadface reached the lamp.

The teenage girl was still
screaming, shrieking, as Sadface jerked her to the side, yanking her hair so
hard that the girl followed it and continued into the wall beyond. She hit
hard, a resounding
thunk
that Rob could feel in the souls of his feet.

The girl fell, dazed. Her screams
became a bloody moan.

At the same time, Happyface
reached up. Up to the lamp – that strange lamp, that lamp that had looked so
drab and utilitarian and out-of-place in this house. He stood on tiptoe,
fingertips barely making it above the upper lip of the lamp. He pulled his hand
back down, two items now clenched in his fist.

One side was a rope, which he
tossed to Sadface.

The other side was a rope, too.
But it ended in a noose.

Happyface dropped the noose
around the teen girl's neck, and any lingering thought that the masked
intruders might be her parents disappeared from Rob's mind as Sadface pulled on
the rope.

Something popped out of the
ceiling – some kind of pulley system that had been hidden above the lamp. It
rolled silently, and as Sadface pulled, the rope yanked the teen girl upward.
First to her hands and knees, then to her knees alone. Then to feet.

And then to nothing.

The lamp wasn't very high –
couldn't have been more than eight feet – but that that was enough to suspend
the teen in midair. Her feet kicked only a few inches above the ground,
struggling to find the ground that was so close yet completely out of reach.

"Stop it!" Aaron ran
past Rob. He pounded on the glass between them and the dying girl. Between them
and the freaks. "Stop it, you're killing her!"

Happyface moved past the
struggling girl. To the glass. He put his hand against it. A creepy gesture,
his gloved hand silhouetted against the darkness of the hall. It was almost….

Familiar. Like he's still waving.
Or raising his arm to embrace us.

Rob darted forward without
thinking. Grabbed Aaron and dragged him back. A tiny part of him was surprised
that he would bother with someone like Aaron, but that part was answered by the
reptilian, pragmatic – and much larger – portion of his brain that somehow knew
they had to stick together.

Safety in numbers
.

Kayla had apparently come to the
same conclusion, because when Rob turned toward her she had already gotten
Tommy's arm around her shoulder. She hoisted her brother bodily to his feet,
his one leg bearing most of his weight while the rest streamed blood. Tommy's
lips were visible beneath his mask, and Rob noted how blue they were and
wondered how much more blood the big man could stand to lose.

No time to worry about that now.

He shouldered past the two of
them, leading the way to the balcony above the foyer, the stairs.

Time to get going.

It only took a few steps to reach
the balcony. A few more to the right and he was on the first step. His back leg
rose, ready to drop to the next step down – one step closer to getting away
from whatever the hell this was.

He froze.

Something glinted on the steps
below. A good twenty feet away, a patch of night that had gathered and pooled
into a shadow that stood out sharply even in the dim of a world without lights.

But still, in that dark… the
glimmer.

Rob wondered what that was. Something
jostled him from behind and he realized he had utterly frozen, Kayla and Tommy
pushing into him as they kept moving for a moment after he stopped.

Then they stopped, too. Froze
just as he had.

A deep, menacing sound issued
from the shadow. Not just a growl, but a thrum that shivered Rob's bones in his
skin.

The glimmers – eyes – moved up
the stairs as the deep noise shifted from a rumble to something akin to an earthquake.

"Oh, shi –" Kayla
began, seeing what the glimmer was in the same moment Rob did.

A pit bull.

Rob knew about pit bulls. He'd
grown up with a friend whose father was a "dogman" – someone who
watched dogfights that were still fought in underground, very illegal competitions
throughout the United States. Whenever Rob went over to the place – a crappy
tenement apartment he only tolerated because his friend usually had beer on
hand, and his father usually shared it – the guy talked about dogs, the fights,
the money he'd won and lost.

Dogfights typically went on until
one dog couldn't even scratch its opponent, jumped out of the ring, or was
killed outright. And the weapon of choice in the ring was a pit bull. The dogs
in the arenas were bred for aggression, typically around fifty pounds of solid
muscle, with a bite reflex that would not only clamp down but shake back and
forth so that muscle shredded and bone broke.

Rob saw one dogfight. And it was
among the most brutal things he ever witnessed. The winner was bloody from head
to toe, one ear chewed off and one eye scratched out. She'd been huge, a female
weighing in at sixty-five pounds.

Huge.

And the pit bull that was coming
up the stairs toward him was easily double her weight. More. It looked almost
freakish, a hundred-and-fifty-pound monster bred to match the nightmare wishes
of a madman.

It stepped forward, and as it did
another growl joined the first. A second black pit stepped out of the night,
just behind the first.

And a third, a fourth.

Rob backpedaled, falling more
than walking. He toppled into Tommy and Kayla, and their weight was all that
kept him from going down on his butt.

His finger jerked the trigger of
his gun. A crappy, reflexive shot that went wide and hit the wall behind the
lead pit. Still, it should have spooked the beasts. Should have sent them
running or at the very least made them
flinch
.

It did neither.

He glanced back. Aaron was running
from door to door in the hall. Trying all the ones that lay on this side of the
glass. Locked, locked, locked.

The teen girl still twisted in
mid-air. Her struggles weakening.

Happyface and Sadface were
nowhere to be seen.

Rob turned back to the pit bulls.
They were more than halfway up the stairs. Approaching slowly, confidently.

"Here!" Rob looked back
and saw Aaron standing in front of an open door – the one that had led to the
attic.

Tommy and Kayla were already
turned around, hobbling toward him in a macabre imitation of a three-legged
race.

Rob turned back to the pits. They
were too close, too frightening. He shot again.

This time the bullet went where
he wanted it to – more or less. It hit the lead pit bull in the shoulder.

And still it kept coming. Its
growl spiked to a painfully high pitch for an instant, then settled back to the
throaty sound that signaled an apex predator.

It ran. Straight for Rob.

And the others followed.

He spun, screamed, backpedaled in
a manic ballet that had no form or rhythm, no music – just panic, driving him
in a leaping dance toward the door that Aaron still held open. The other man
gestured for him to move move faster move move –

MOVE!

Rob heard them on his heels. Felt
the hard puffs of air as they exhaled. A rank smell, the stench of half-rotted
beef chewed in too-wide mouths, chased him.

Rob reached. Grabbed Aaron's
hand.

Aaron jerked him forward and
sideways, jamming him into the small landing before the attic steps.

Rob saw the dogs….

Saw teeth, white and terrible….

Jaws snapped open so wide they
could sever a man at the waist….

And Aaron slammed the attic door.
It clicked shut, and in the same instant something hit the wood so hard Rob was
sure the entire door would simply dissolve before the power of the beast
beyond.

The four of them – Rob, Kayla,
Tommy, and Aaron – huddled in terror as the dogs bounced off the door. Time
after time, each one sounding like a shotgun blast in the close confines of the
stairwell.

Kayla had her flashlight clenched
in the hand that still circled Tommy's waist. She aimed it at each of them, and
Rob saw their faces. Still masked, but there was no hiding the terror in their
eyes, in the thin set of their mouths.

Aaron finally spoke the words
they were all hearing, the words that had no answer but which needed to be
said.