The House That Death Built (18 page)

No. Not likely. Impossible.

We're on our own.

The gunfire ended. The automatic
weapons above ceased firing as one, the abrupt end of the noise sending yet
another shock through Aaron's frame. His ears weren't ringing, they were
shrieking
.
Rob was saying something, but he only knew that because he saw the other man's
lips moving.

Gradually, the shriek tapered
off. It was replaced by a cacophonous tangle of bells and rings, then those
eventually faded as well. Everything sounded like he had packed insulation in
his ears, and he ached from head to foot. But he
could
hear, and he
was
alive.

For now.

Kayla was the first to stand, and
she cursed suddenly. No anger in the sound, only dread.

Aaron managed to get to his hands
and knees, then looked around. They had fallen out of the range of the weapons
above, but what had they fallen
into
?

It was one of the rooms Aaron had
noted on their way to the master bedroom. The one that didn't belong with the
rest. The only one that, in and of itself, made him afraid.

The one that was
wrong
.

The empty room.

Sawdust still sifted down from
the wreckage above, and then something else fell. Kayla was standing directly
below the hole, and a trio of thin streams trickled down and splashed trails
against her forehead and cheeks. They were red.

Tommy's blood, what was left of
it draining from his perforated body and finding its way to the hole.

How? He wasn't close to the hole.
How could the blood get over here?

And he knew. Just like the traps,
just like everything else that had happened: this was planned. The floor of the
attic wasn't the typical flat plane, it had been crafted at a gentle angle,
sending anything liquid to the new drain Happyface and Sadface had known would
open.

They knew someone would die up
there.

Knew the others would fall.

Knew they would see the blood of
the dead rain down on them.

The blood cut red trails through
the grime on Kayla's face. She didn't shrink away, but instead turned her face
upward so it splashed across her forehead, eyes, mouth. She seemed transfixed.
Beyond grief, well on her way to madness.

Aaron looked away. Anything would
be better than watching her bathe in her brother's blood.

But he was wrong.

There was something worse.

The empty room was empty no
longer.

It had been empty, and that had
chilled him. Now the room was
not
empty, and it turned out this version
of the room was far worse. Still sparse, Spartan. But something new sat before
the fireplace.

A folding table.

And a note.

Aaron stared at the note,
wondering what nonsense would be written on this one, and if there would be another
treasure map beneath it.

Not treasure. Survival.

He thought of Dee. She was so
frail in the hospital. She had always been a small woman – barely
five-foot-five, and petite to boot. But when she was at her worst, her lowest,
she had barely weighed seventy pounds. Her skull strained against the skin of
her face, her few remaining wisps of hair hanging on with grim determination.

Her eyes had sunk so deep into
her face they were nothing but shadow sometimes. It made her look like she had
already died.

She whispered to him how sorry
she was, how ashamed of the burden she had become. His words to her that she
was never a burden, that she had nothing to be sorry about, fell on ears that
had shriveled against her skull, and often he knew she wasn't even hearing him.

But she had survived. Like he had
to survive. Life had dealt them such terrible hands, over and over. He wasn't
going to fold now. He was going to see her again. He was going to hold her
close, and if Rob ever threatened her again he would kill him.

Lies.

We're all going to die here.

Movement attracted his attention.
Rob was striding toward a window on the far wall. Expensive draperies covered
the window, and he held them aside and looked out the window.

"What are you doing?"
said Aaron.

"Getting out of here."

The stars were visible outside.
Aaron realized that the lights that had dimly illuminated the grounds when they
arrived had been extinguished.

Nothing but starlight. A window
leading to freedom.

Rob started feeling along the
edges of the window. Aaron almost asked him why he wanted to go out
that
way
instead of trying the door to the hall. Then he thought of the four big dogs.
What if they were waiting right outside the door?

But the window held its own
dangers.

"What about what happened to
Tommy? What if –" he began.

Rob waved him to silence. He
wasn't touching the window, just looking at it. He leaned to the side, looking
through the glass at a steep angle that wouldn't let him see much more than the
casing. Then he shifted and looked at it from the opposite angle.

"I don't see anything. I
don't think there's anything out there."

Rob hit the window with the gun
butt. It didn't break. Just a low thud.

Kayla moaned. Aaron hadn't even
known she was paying attention, but now he saw that she had moved away from the
still-streaming blood and was looking at Rob's futile attempts to get out.

"Damn," said Rob. Then,
louder, "Dammit, dammit, dammit!"

Something gleamed around them.
Again, Aaron couldn't tell where they came from, but red numbers flickered into
being on all the walls.

This time there was no pause
between their appearance and the beginning of the laser countdown.

2:00….

1:59….

Aaron grabbed the note off the
table. He didn't want to be playing this game, but he didn't see much choice,
either.

Rob and Kayla hung back as he
approached the card table and picked up the note. He glanced back at both and
saw the same expressions on their faces: fear, confusion.

Why is this happening to me?

How is going to end?

He picked up the card. Opened it.

"What's it say?" asked
Rob.

"The worst thieves steal
only time."

For some reason, this one scared
him more than the others. It was the word "thieves." He felt as
though this card was calling him out specifically. Naming his greatest failing,
his greatest sin, and so providing a hint of his final doom.

He flipped the card over. Another
scrap of photo. "5" on the back. Aaron put it on the card table, then
removed the other two pieces from his pocket.

They still didn't fit. They still
didn't show anything he could make out.

He put them in his pocket.

"Thieves steal time?"
said Kayla. "What does that even mean?"

1:45….

Kayla spoke again, and this time
her voice was high and breathy. She sounded like a little girl who has looked
up and discovered she is alone in an unfamiliar place. "What's happening
to us?"

The laser lights shifted, as
though in answer. For a moment the countdown disappeared. In its place, the
outlines of four red skulls gleamed on four white walls.

Then the countdown resumed.

1:39….

1:38….

The skulls never quite
disappeared, though. Every few seconds they would take the place of one of the
numbers. A reminder of what would happen when the timer reached zero.

Kayla strode toward the door.
Which made sense, since it was the only remaining way out.

But
nothing
made sense
here.

Aaron looked at the spot where
the picture had been affixed. Another map. Another rectangle, another red area,
another spot marked in green.

He looked at it for a moment,
frowning. This time the red and green weren't marked as a box and an
"X." Instead they were just shaded portions of a simple rectangle.
One black line became red for a short section, another became green on a
different side of the shape.

He experienced an instant of
confusion – what did
these
markings mean? – then it snapped into place.

Kayla was reaching for the knob.

"No, wait! That's the wrong
–"

She grabbed the brass fixture.

Something sizzled.

Kayla screamed. She held up her
hand, and Aaron saw with horror that the palm of the glove she had been wearing
was gone, burnt away. The skin beneath sloughed off in ragged sheets. No blood
– whatever had happened, it had so utterly destroyed the blood vessels that nothing
flowed from them. They just burned, then charred, then disintegrated.

The sizzling sound continued, as
did Kayla's screams.

Acid. Someone coated the doorknob
with acid.

The sizzling slowly stopped as
Aaron watched. So did Kayla's screams, which petered into sobs. She clutched
her hand tightly to her chest. "Not fair," she said. "Not fair.
This isn't fair."

1:18…

1:17….

Rob was swiveling back and forth between
the countdown on the wall closest to him and the door to the hall. Aaron knew
what he was thinking – he was thinking it himself.

Acid on the doorknob. But Kayla
grabbed it. Did it all come off on her?

Does that mean we can get through
there?

Or is there something else
waiting for us?

"That's the only way
out," said Rob. He didn't seem to notice Kayla, his attention fully taken
by his possibilities of escape.

He'd leave us here if it meant he
could walk away. Wouldn't even think about it.

Aaron felt sudden disgust. Not
for Rob, but for himself.

Why did I get into this?

I had no choice. Dee –

Liar. You
chose
this.

Aaron looked back at the card –
the map. His hands were shaking so badly he had to consciously will them to be
still or he wouldn't even be able to see the small drawing.

He stepped to a spot near the
wall across from the fireplace. "Here."

Rob started to join him, but
turned and put an arm around Kayla's shoulders and helped her gently over. She
had her good hand wrapped hard around the wrist of her bad one. The blood and
dust that coated her face made her haunted eyes stand out in sharp relief. She
looked like the victim of a virulent plague, no longer worried about death but
waiting for it as a welcome relief.

Aaron was surprised that Rob
helped her over – that wasn't like him. Then he understood: the last escape had
occurred only when all of them had stood in the right spot together – maybe
they all had to be together to escape this room, too.

Rob wasn't being kind, he was
hedging his bets.

Maybe not just bringing her over
to be in the right spot with him, maybe he's counting on using her as a shield.

Doesn't matter. Just get out of
here. Get back to Dee.

They stood at the spot. Waited.

1:08….

"Nothing's happening,"
said Rob.

Aaron looked at the paper again,
even though he knew what it would tell him.

"This is it. This is the
spot," he said. He pointed out the features. "There's the door,
marked in red. So this has to be…." His voice fell away.

"What?" said Rob.
"What is it?"

Aaron showed him, pointing at the
small map. "Last time the drawing showed a green 'X.'"

"So?"

"So this time it's just part
of the outer perimeter – just a green line." He looked at the map, then
looked at the wall they stood before. "We have to go through."

"How do we go through a
wall?" said Kayla. Her voice was as dull and listless as her eyes. But she
hadn't given up completely. Aaron was surprised how glad he was of that fact.
She, like the rest of the group, had held him in contempt at best, been
outright hostile at worst.

But she doesn't deserve this.

None of us do.

(
except me
)

Aaron took off his gloves. He
rubbed his hands along the wall, feeling a bit foolish that he was
really
looking for something as clichéd as a hidden button or switch, but unable to
come up with anything better.

A moment later, Rob and Kayla
joined him. They swept their hands back and forth – Kayla using her good hand
while she kept the injured one shoved hard against her chest.

Aaron let them keep feeling their
way across the blank wall, abandoning the search for a moment so he could
remove something from one of his pockets.

The 3M Littman Master Cardiology
stethoscope was the gold standard among surgeons and trauma doctors. It had a
tunable diaphragm, allowing listeners to hear both low- and high-frequency
sounds; an amplifier that could turn the volume up so the faintest sounds could
be made out; and – perhaps one of the most important factors for ER doctors –
the ear tips were designed to block out ambient noise and allow you to listen
to breathing and heartbeat without having to weed out external sounds.

All of that made it an excellent
tool for safecrackers, too.

Aaron popped the ear pieces in,
then held the diaphragm against the wall in front of him. The gentle swish of
Rob's and Kayla's fingers against the wall turned to loud thrums in his ears,
but he tuned them out as background immediately.