The House That Death Built (17 page)

Kayla watched Rob as he took the
first few steps toward the table at the far end of the attic, then swung her
flashlight beam over to Tommy. Her brother had pulled what was left of his mask
from what was left of his face. She almost couldn't stand to look at it: one
eye gone, one side of his face pulped and still shining with dozens of ball
bearings and metal shards.

Tommy's mouth opened and closed,
opened and closed, and she knew he was seeing it, too. That he saw the table
and knew what she knew – what they all knew – that this wasn't any kind of
accident. Not just the trap on the stairs or the explosion Rob had caused by
turning on the "lights." This room itself was waiting for them. Had
been prepared for them all by someone whose purposes she couldn't even begin to
guess.

"No," he finally
managed. "No way."

He struggled to roll over, going
to hands and knees before pushing himself into an upright kneel. He tried to
rise to his feet but seemed to have forgotten the injured leg. He put that foot
down first, then cried out as the leg buckled under him. He pitched forward,
and Kayla barely managed to get under his arm and keep him from falling to the
floor. Aaron moved to take the big man's other arm.

"Get away from him,"
she snarled. Not even sure why it mattered that Aaron not touch him, but
convinced in that moment that the only way for her or Tommy was to get out
together – and get out alone.

We'll gut them all if we have to.
Me and Tommy are getting out of here.

"Why is this
happening?" Tommy whispered as she helped him to stand. She had no answer.

He began hobbling toward the
table. She almost shouted, "No, don't, we can't go that way!" before
she realized it wasn't the table he was headed for – it was the window beyond
it.

The window was small, but she
thought Tommy could probably push his way through – and that meant they all
could. More important, she could see the dim gleam of starlight beyond the
glass.

"I gotta get out of
here," said Tommy. He wasn't talking to her, she could tell. It was the
sound of a man dancing on the thin line between life and death, just the
smallest push required to make him tumble down one side or the other.

"I know," she said.
Tommy's remaining eye was glassy, and he stumbled without seeming to notice
what had happened. He actually shambled forward on his knee before she jerked
him back to his feet.

"Get up," she barked.
For the first time in her adult life, she wasn't enjoying this moment. The
feeling that had accompanied her entire existence – that she was invincible,
that no one could hurt her because she was just too important to the universe
to
be
hurt – had begun to ebb since she ran into the glass wall in the
hall. Her nose broke – it was still dripping blood, now she thought about it –
and with it broke the shell of seeming invincibility that had surrounded her.

Then the lights exploded. Shards
of metal in her arm, her side, her leg. Nothing had hit her face, and she
supposed she could have taken that as a kind of validation; that nothing
too
bad could happen to her. But she only felt dread. The fear that a perfect life
might end so miserably, so stupidly.

How am I gonna rule the world if
I die in this little room?

Tommy struggled to his feet.
"I gotta get outta here," he said again. "Gotta get to a
hospital."

The words were coming in breathy
gasps. Far from the deep sound of her brother's real voice. He seemed to have
aged decades in the last minutes.

She wondered if he could make it.
Even if they got out of the house, how would they get down from the roof? Over
the wall? Would he bleed out before then?

She kind of wanted to see that.

They swung wide of the table with
its card, as though both might carry some communicable disease that would
supply the final push into doom.

They reached the window. She
reached for the lower sash, pulled.

It didn't give.

Locked.

What if it's not locked, what if
it
can't
open? What if whoever's doing this has sealed –

Tommy had a gun in his hand – she
couldn't remember if he'd always held it or if he'd just gotten it out, and
that lapse in her mind was frightening, too – and he used the butt to knock the
glass out of the window. Then, without waiting, without even bothering to knock
away the stray shards of glass that still clung like broken teeth to the gaping
mouth of the window, he clambered through.

She had been right about it – the
window
was
small. She wasn't even sure if Tommy would be able to get
through at all, maybe he'd just be able to push his head and one shoulder
through and then get stuck and they'd all have to –

SHING
.

Blood spattered. Arcs of it
splashed over the inside wall of the attic, still more jetted out of Tommy's
body as it jerked back into the attic.

Not Tommy, that's not really
Tommy, it can't be Tommy because where's his head where's his HEAD?

Blood fountained for a few
moments from the stump that had once connected neck to head. Then the gouts
turned to trickles, then to seepage. She could see bone and flesh and holes
that were his trachea and esophagus in cross-section.

His head was gone.

She looked back at the window.
The glass was still knocked out, but she couldn't see starlight anymore. There
was only an unbroken sheet of metal, gore-streaked and dripping – the blade of
what she intuited was a guillotine.

The window was gone. Better said,
it had never really been there in the first place. Just a lie that was – like
the nails under the stairs – a trap.

And Tommy was gone.

She knelt beside what was left of
him and screamed. Pain, the terror born of a sudden realization that she could
be hurt driving a shriek so loud and harsh that it tore at her throat –

(
just like Tommy's throat cut
in two and now he's dead and what if it can happen to me too it's not possible
but what IF
)

– and turned to a strangled
whisper almost as fast as it had come.

She looked at Rob, who was now
standing beside the table. Aaron was standing behind him, neither of them
looking at her or Tommy, both of them just staring at the card on the table.

Rob picked it up after a moment.
Flipped it open.

"The robbed that
smiles/Steals something from the thief." He spoke the words almost as a
question. The voice of a man who can't quite believe that what he's seeing is
actually happening. "What the –" He couldn't even finish the
question, just threw the card back on the table, then threw his hands in the
air in utter helplessness.

The movement made his flashlight
jitter, the light in the room weaving and dancing drunkenly. So she didn't
notice at first. But when he dropped his hands she noticed consciously a detail
that had tickled her subconscious when Rob first tossed the card to the table.

The light had changed.

Not Rob's flashlight, not even
Aaron's red light. It was something else – a shift to the overall lighting that
most people probably wouldn't even notice.

But she wasn't most people. She
was someone whose existence was measured in the smallest spaces between light
and dark. She noticed.

She looked away from Tommy, from
Aaron and Rob and the table and the smear of blood and gristle that had once
been a window.

She looked at the wall to her
side.

There were numbers there. They hadn't
been there when the thieves entered this place, she was sure of it.

As if to confirm the thought, to
show that the numbers were the newest entry in this game, they appeared on the
other three walls of the attic. Each number was red, about a foot tall and six
inches wide. They gleamed and flickered in the way peculiar to images created
by a laser. She looked for the source, but couldn't find it. Just the numbers,
the same on every wall.

2:00

Then, as she watched, the letters
blinked and changed simultaneously.

1:59….

1:58….

Rob had seen them, too.
"What is this?" he asked in a weary-sounding voice.

The words penetrated Kayla's
grief over her brother's fate – and the more-important realization of her own
mortality. She lowered her brother's headless corpse to the ground. Stood.

1:50….

1:49….

"It's a countdown,"
said Aaron.

"Are you
shitting me
?"
screamed Kayla. Her voice was higher than she'd ever heard it. Still hoarse
from her recent scream over Tommy's body, but all the more jagged for that
rough edge. "I'm gonna find who's doing this and I'm gonna shove my fist
so far up –"

Rob reached out and slapped her.
Hard. The pain sent shockwaves through her broken nose and she yowled.

"Now's not the time,"
said Rob.

A series of clicks sounded in the
room. Not like before, when the nails had shredded their way up through the
floor, this was a lighter sound. Not machinery moving, but something else….

"There!" said Aaron.

1:40….

He pointed, and Kayla saw that a
series of holes, each about two inches in circumference, had opened on the
walls. Varying height, anywhere from one foot to six feet high, placed
irregularly along every wall. She couldn't tell what was behind them, or what
they were for, but they did
not
look good.

Rob was spinning around. Looking
for an exit in a place whose only way out was blocked by a blade.

"What do we do?" he
said. "What are we supposed to
do
?"

No one answered.

No one could.

Aaron saw the numbers –

(
1:28….

1:27….
)

– but they didn't register the
way they should. When he finally understood that it was a countdown, it jarred
him. Another small shock to the system when the holes opened in all the walls.
They reminded him of a nature show he'd seen once on deep sea life. There had
been sharks, squid, deep sea jellyfish with stings that could paralyze.

But by far the most frightening
to him had been a small creature that barely moved. The sea cucumber looked
like nothing so much as a deep-sea turd. But when attacked, when threatened by
creatures that ventured too close to its domain, it was willing to literally
tear itself apart. It had no teeth, no claws, but it had a mouth. And through
that mouth it literally turned itself inside-out, expelling all its guts in a
sticky mass that frightened larger predators and entangled smaller ones.

Something willing to die time and
again in order to live was something to be feared.

And these holes made him think of
that fact. Reminded him of a creature that would die to murder.

1:26….

They had come to this place as
intruders. Predators.

But what was behind the walls… it
would die to kill them all.

He felt panic welling up inside
him. Veiled it with action. When threatened, there are two options: to curl up
and accept the onrushing violence to body, to mind, to self; or to move.
Sometimes that motion is careful, composed, thoughtful. Other times it is
motion for movement's sake: a simple, last-ditch gesture of defiance.

Aaron moved, and wasn't sure
which kind of movement it was. It didn't matter, he guessed. It was better than
simply waiting and accepting death.

He grabbed the card from where
Rob had tossed it. Same as the first card had been: a simple piece of thick,
folded paper. Words on it in enraged scribbles:

the robbed that smiles,

steals something from the thief

He turned the paper over, and saw
something Rob had failed to notice in his rage. There was a bit of photo taped
to the back. Like the first bit, it was a close-up: grays and whites and reds
and blacks in angry swatches of color that made no sense at all.

Aaron pulled at the photo gently,
dimly aware that Kayla and Rob were screaming at each other in the background.
Knowing they were spinning their wheels, leading themselves to death.

The only thing that was important
– the only thing that mattered at all – was right here in his hands. He felt
it.

The photo came away with the
minute sucking of tape that has settled deep into paper. When it came free, he
lifted it closer to his eyes, using the ambient lighting to peer at it for a
moment.

Still nothing. No sense to be
found, no hope to be had.

He turned the bit of photo over
in his hand. Like the first –

(
1:16….
)

– it had a number on the back.
"2," written in the same way as the cryptic message on the front of
the card.

He looked at it for a moment,
then realized there was something else on the paper. It had been hidden by the
photo, but now he could see it clearly.

He absently shoved the bit of
photo into one of his pockets, focusing on what had been beneath.

An irregular shape had been drawn
on the card. A rectangle with a shorter, thinner rectangle jutting from one
side of it. The smaller rectangle was colored in red.

Another corner of the shape,
opposite the red rectangle, had a green "X" on it.

Aaron felt something hot on his
shoulder, and realized it was Rob, leaning over him and emitting a panicked
heat that made Aaron's own pulse race a bit faster.

"And what does
that
mean?" said Rob. Apparently he and Kayla had finally stopped fighting.
Kayla was staring at her brother's body – what was left of it. She nudged it
with her foot, as though he were only napping and would sit up and screw his
head back on –

(
Maybe he'd get it on right
this time, not crazy and broken like it has been
.)

– and yawn before rejoining them.

Tommy kept being dead.

Kayla turned and joined them.

0:51….

0:50….

"What is that?" she
said.

Aaron frowned. "I don't
know." He pulled the photo from his pocket again, then drew the first
photo – the one they had found in the safe – and put both pieces next to the
drawing. Nothing new. The drawing appeared to have nothing to do with the photo
pieces, and the pieces themselves didn't fit together to create anything more
understandable.

"Gimme that." Rob
grabbed the paper. Looked at it. His face creased into thought-lines, then
relaxed back into a confused look.

Snick-CHICK
.

The sound, again, came from the
walls. From the
holes
in the walls. They made Aaron shiver, and visible
shudders rolled through Rob and Kayla as well.

A few sounds have made their way
into human consciousness. Sounds that mean specific, primal things, and which cause
specific, primal reactions: the rumble of an earthquake, the rattle at the end
of a viper's tail. The gasp of someone in the throes of sex, the sounds of an
infant's first cry.

A sound much newer in human
history, but no less powerful for its recent birth, was the cocking of a
firearm. The cocking of a gun was a sound that immediately said:
RUN, HIDE.

The sound that had come from the
walls was no mere handgun, not even a shotgun. It was something much heavier.

Many
somethings.

And suddenly Aaron understood
what the holes were. What would come from them.

What would happen to the attic
and everything still in it when the countdown reached zero.

Rob moved the instant after the
sound. He threw himself against the bloody guillotine at the window, intent on bashing
his way out. Blood and thick clots of meat spattered between him and the blade,
splashing in ever-wider designs each time Rob battered uselessly at the metal.

Kayla was murmuring, "We're
gonna die. We're all gonna die." She looked – what was it?

Shocked. She's amazed that this
could even be happening to her.

Aaron had known Kayla was a
sociopath. And what must it be like for someone who thought they were the only
thing that mattered in the world to find out that the world actually didn't
care at all. Or, worse, actively hated you?

Rob yanked a small pry bar from a
loop on his pants. He attacked the wood frame around the guillotine. Bits of
wood splintered, but Aaron could see instantly that it wasn't enough. The
guillotine wasn't going anywhere, and the wood was strong, sturdy.

0:35….

Aaron looked back at the card. Began
walking around the room as his body began to realize something his mind had yet
to grasp.

0:33….

He stopped suddenly.

"It's a treasure map,"
he murmured.

"To what?" Kayla's
voice was so close he almost dropped the card. She was almost hanging
off
him.

"To get out."

0:30….

0:29….

"But what does it mean? I
don't –

"It's the attic." Aaron
pointed at the small, red rectangle sticking out on the side. "This is the
stairs. The red must mean the nail trap."

"And the green?" Rob
this time. He had left his fruitless attack on the window, and like Kayla was
hovering so close to Aaron it was oppressive.

0:20….

0:19….

Aaron glanced at the numbers. The
blood rushed away from his extremities, rendering them frozen while at the same
time panic stoked painful fires in his chest.

He looked back at the map. Spun
it around in his hands until it was oriented at the same relative position as
the room.

He pointed at the far corner.
"There."

He started for it, but Rob
grabbed his arm before he'd gone two steps. "That could be another
trap!"

0:10….

Aaron yanked his arm away.
"You got a better idea?"

0:09….

He turned and walked quickly but
alertly. Ready for the air itself to come alive and try to kill him.

Rob and Kayla fell into step. Rob
was looking back and forth so fast Aaron could hear the other man's vertebrae
popping and clicking.

He's gonna feel that in the
morning.

If there is a morning.

They got to the spot that
corresponded to the green "X" on the map.

Nothing was there. Nothing but
floor and the intersection of two walls.

"You sure –" Rob began.

"Nothing's happening –"
said Kayla.

0:04….

"I don't –" said Aaron.

0:03….

"Oh, dear God," said
Rob. The words carried a fervent reverence that would have made any ordained
priest blush at his own paltry prayers.

0:02….

The floor broke apart beneath
their feet with the sound of shearing wood, the crackle of boards ripped asunder.

They fell as one, dropping into
the room below.

Aaron hit the floor first, his
feet hitting absolutely flat and then feeling like they drove right up through
his shins. A fraction of a second later, Kayla and Rob plowed into him, the
three of them driving downward in a mass so hard that Aaron thought it likely
they would continue past this floor as well, just breaking through into
whatever was below, then whatever was below
that
, and on and on forever
until they finally fell to Hell itself.

It'd be what I deserve.

I could have stopped this. I
could have stood up.

I could have –

The rest of his thoughts
disappeared in the firestorm that erupted above. A storm of firepower shattered
the world, so many bullets flying so fast they quickly ceased to be individual
explosions and merged instead into a single rolling thunderclap. Dust and wood
rained down through the hole he and the others had fallen through, coating
their hair and skin and clothes and turning the blood that covered them to a
thick brown sludge.

The shots went on forever, and
more. Eternity wasn't an afterlife, it was a prolonged moment cowering as the
room above you disintegrated.

Someone will come. Someone's
going to hear that.

But that was a lie. This house
had no neighbors to speak of. The drive through Spurwing Green had been a
gradual shift from mansions to
mansions
to estates, houses beside each
other giving way to houses so far from one another they probably had their own
zip codes.

Worse, he suspected that even
someone standing right outside the house wouldn't hear. These people – whoever
they were – had thought of everything. They'd engineered a way to drop a
bulletproof shield between them and their attackers, they'd trained
magnificently deadly dogs to herd them into this maze of traps and maps. Would
they forget to soundproof the place?