The House That Death Built (19 page)

0:35….

He tapped on the wall. Listened
to the vibration it returned.

He moved the stethoscope over a foot.
Tapped again. Another spot. Another.

0:25….

0:24….

He tapped. And this time found
what he had been looking for. The wall itself was solid construction, no spots
that seemed thinner and that might be easily broken into.

But this spot was different. Only
the slightest of changes in the tone of his tap, and anyone but a trained
safecracker –

(
anyone but a
criminal)

– might have missed it.

He put the stethoscope away,
drawing out the light he had used to illuminate the fingerprints on the safe
earlier.

Seems like it happened so long
ago. A lifetime.

Certainly, for Tommy, that was exactly
how long ago it had been: the length of a life, punctuated by his death.

Aaron turned the light on. Ran it
over the wall in the general area he had heard the difference.

A smudge of fingertips glowed on
one spot.

Kayla and Rob had stopped
searching and were now watching him closely.

"What –" began Kayla.

Aaron shook his head quickly,
indicating she should be silent. He closed his eyes, blocking everything out
but the task at hand.

He reached out and lay his
fingertips on the wall. Traced them back and forth, feeling for….

There!

He pulled a pen knife from
another pocket. Pushed the tip against the nearly microscopic seam his
sensitive fingers had found. Nothing happened for a moment, then the point sunk
a millimeter into the wall. He wiggled the knife, and the blade pushed in a bit
further. He pulled it back and forth as it sank, and soon a seam was visible to
the eye.

He kept wiggling. Pushing.
Wiggling. Pushing.

As soon as it was big enough,
Aaron shoved the knife back in his pocket and jammed his fingers into the
crack, which went from the floor to the ceiling. He pulled.

Nothing budged.

"Help me!" he shouted.
He glanced at the wall.

0:15….

Kayla and Rob each put their
fingers into the crack. Pulled. The wall started to slide beneath their
fingers. Even though he'd been expecting something like that to happen, the
sensation of the wall itself moving was so strange Aaron nearly let go for a
moment.

They pulled, inch by inch.

And as soon as the opening was
wide enough – barely big enough to allow for a single person – Rob shoved both
Aaron and Kayla out of the way. Kayla went down on her butt with a scream of
pain. Rob didn't spare a single backward glance. Just shoved sideways through
the crack, exhaling so he could get through the tight squeeze.

0:05….

0:04….

Aaron saw the countdown. Knew he
had to get out.

Gotta live. Gotta get back to
Dee.

He turned away from the opening.
Grabbed Kayla. Jerked her to her feet.

0:03….

0:02….

He pulled himself through the
opening.

0:01….

Yanked her after.

Kayla squeezed through at the
last possible moment. Her trailing leg exited the empty room only a fraction of
an instant before the countdown ended.

Aaron heard a sound he'd never
heard before. It reminded him of a sword being unsheathed, or perhaps a knife
being sharpened. But this was faster – both quieter and at the same time more
lethal.

He could see beyond Kayla, into
the room they had just left.

Nothing. Four walls. Skulls
flashing on the walls. A table.

The table fell. It separated into
five pieces as it did: two-foot lengths of each leg collapsed in one direction,
while the table top and the upper foot of each leg affixed to it fell in
another.

Aaron couldn't process it at
first. It just looked like the table had spontaneously separated at an atomic
level, electrons giving up their hold on one another so the legs fell apart at
even heights.

Something had cut the table. Had
slashed across it so quickly and cleanly that the table had a full two seconds
to wonder what had happened before falling to pieces.

Aaron replayed the sound. That
snick
,
with a metallic undertone that chilled. He thought of Tommy, tumbling into a
wire so strong and fine it became a monofilament razor.

He looked at the table again. And
knew this was what would happen if that same line were whipped through the room
at knee level. He shuddered as the weight of what they had just avoided crashed
down on him.

Then the wall slid back into
place of its own accord. Shutting them out of the empty room… and into the next
trap.

TJ picked his way forward in
absolute darkness, wondering what was happening and how he had come to be
caught up in it.

Someone tried to hang Sue. Who
would do that?

That was the thought that kept
pinging through his head as he inched his way forward: a thought with no
satisfactory answer. He knew he was hiding from bigger questions – what was
going on in general and how did they get out of it chief among them – but he
couldn't seem to care. All that really mattered was that Sue was in danger. And
he had no idea how to get her out of it.

He didn't even know where he was,
exactly. He had followed Susan into the trapdoor –

(
Who has a trapdoor beneath
their bed?
)

– and found himself in a
crawlspace of sorts. Sickeningly tight at first, it had broadened out into a
tunnel in a few feet. Still claustrophobic, but he could at least get all the
way to hands and knees instead of having to worm his way forward on his belly.

Where are we going?

What are we going to do?

He had no answer to either
question. He knew Sue was ahead, he could hear her scraping her way softly
forward, but that was about the sum of his knowledge.

Then he realized that he could
see. It had been pitch black when he started forward, but now something
illuminated the space. Not much, just a bare glow that turned everything into
dusky shades of black on black. But he could make out the general outlines of
his hands below him, the dim shading of Sue as she moved ahead.

On his left, it was just a blank
wall – the same kind of featureless expanse you'd probably see after being put
in a coffin. To the right, though, it wasn't featureless at all. He could make
out giant gears, wheels, and pulleys. Machinery of an unknown design, though it
reminded him a bit of the inside of a huge clock.

Something clicked. The machinery began
moving, the rumbling click of gears' teeth biting into levers, shifting cables.

What the hell –

"Susan?" he whispered.
The sound drowned out his words, so he raised his voice and said again, "Sue?
What's happening?"

She kept shuffling forward. The
gears kept turning. Then there was a sharp click as the gears sprung something
free. He heard a
snick
from somewhere overhead and then the machinery
stopped. He didn't know what had just happened, but it sounded ominous.

The image of an animal in a snare
flitted through his mind. A small creature caught in a loop, then yanked high
into the air where it would twitch helplessly until the hunter came to butcher
it.

He wasn't sure
why
the
image came, but it made him shiver. He'd never seen or heard of anything like
the machine to his side. But he knew in his gut that it was a dangerous thing,
a
bad
thing.

How can it even be here? Who
built it?

No answers. Only questions.

"Sue, where are we going?"

She finally spoke. Not to answer,
though. It was just the same thing she'd already said. The words made his guts
curl, made bile rise in his throat.

"They did it. They really
did it. I can't believe they did it. They did it…."

She crawled on. He followed.

And feared.

Rob saw what happened in the room
behind them. Heard the sound, saw a flash of something that glimmered in the
air, then the table fell to pieces.

This is impossible. Impossible.

But it wasn't, of course.
Unreasonable,
unlikely, unfair
, yes –

(
why does everything happen to
me?
)

– but clearly not impossible, because
it was happening to him right now.

They had come through what looked
like a solid wall. The moment after the trap sprung in the room they had just
left, that wall slid shut behind them of its own accord, becoming a wall again.

They had entered the next room in
line.

The game room.

Calling it that, even in his
mind, made Rob want to cringe.

What game are we going to play
now?

And what happens if I lose?

That was the important question.
He didn't really care what the game was, didn't really mind that the others
were playing. The only thing that mattered was how he could get through it.
Everything – and everyone – else was secondary.

The game room was as cavernous as
every other space in this horrible place. A rectangular room that in more
normal times would be the envy of anyone. On the outer wall, a sixty-inch
television sat on a cabinet. The cabinet itself had glass doors, allowing him
to see the gaming consoles – everything Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo had ever
dreamed up or probably
would
dream up in the next five years – the
Blu-ray player, the DVR, and a couple other rectangles of metal and plastic he
couldn't even identify at first glance.

A dart board hung in a cabinet
affixed to another wall, professional-quality with chalk scoreboards and
different-colored darts in neat rows.

A couch sat against another wall.

An air hockey table hunkered in
the middle of it all. A wood body clad in aluminum rails, the words "GOLD
STANDARD HOCKEY" written in gold lettering on the sides. A red puck and
two white mallets sitting inert on the blue table top. The kind of thing that
brought to mind dates at an arcade, or pizza places, or any of a million other
good memories.

Now, in this place, it looked
like a dark monster.

Especially with the folded card
sitting at the far end of the table.

Kayla coughed. She sagged against
the wall they had just come through. The sawdust on her face had mixed with her
sweat and her brother's blood to create a cracking mask that amplified her
pained expression. She still had her wounded hand –

(
how did that happen how did
they know someone would try the door?
)

– still jammed in the crook of
her other elbow.

Aaron moved slowly around the
side of the hockey table, heading for the card.

"Stop!" shouted Rob. To
his credit, Aaron froze instantly.

At least he can get
that
right.

It's his fault we're here. If he'd
just gotten the safe open the way he should've….

Rob knew he wasn't talking about
tonight's job. He was talking about the one that had started his downward
slide. The slide that had ended here.

His fault. All of it.

"What is it?" said
Aaron. He had been about to take another step when Rob spoke, and even now he
was balanced on his toes, leaning forward as though waiting for gravity to
tumble him into his next step.

"How did they get all this
going?"

Aaron shook his head. "I don't
– what do you mean?"

"The freaks in the masks.
Happyface and Sadface. The people doing this. How did they get it all going so
fast? The doors and that bulletproof shield and… and
everything
?"

Aaron shrugged. "Automatic.
Has to be. They couldn't be triggering things manually, not and have them so
precise and fast."

"Yeah," said Rob. He
looked around. "But triggered by what? And what will trigger this room?"

"Thermal sensor?" Kayla
said. Her voice was weak and ragged, but at least she had her head in the game.
Rob had thought she might have completely checked out mentally. Which didn't
mean she'd be useless, he guessed – sometimes when you're being chased by
wolves, you don't need to be faster than they are to get away… you just need to
throw them someone slower than you are.

Rob shook his head. "A
thermal or a motion sensor would have triggered the second we came in. This….
Something's starting things up after we get in each room." He looked
around. "I don't see any cams."

"Me, either," said
Aaron. "I don't think they're watching."

"You hope," said Kayla.

Rob's fists balled in frustration
as he looked around. There was a closet door, hanging half-open nearby, but he
didn't bother going in there. Whatever was triggering them would be out in the
open, something they'd have to interact with somehow.

He took a step toward the air
hockey table.

"Wait," Aaron said. Now
it was Rob's turn to halt mid-step, bouncing lightly on his toes, ready to move
– to run – at any moment.

Aaron was on the side of the air
hockey table that faced the TV and game consoles. There were a few folding
chairs stacked against the wall, and for a moment Rob thought the other man was
looking at them.

Something hidden there?

Then Aaron crouched and Rob saw
he was staring at the game consoles in the cabinet. Red power lights gleamed on
the faces of each, cyclopean eyes glaring out from their cage of glass.

Aaron frowned. He drew something
from his pocket. It was a cylinder, about six inches long and an inch in
diameter. Aaron pressed a button on top, and a whiff of mist puffed out.

Red lines appeared in the mist. Laser
tripwires stretched like silken strands from the red eyes of the game consoles
that weren't really consoles at all, but security measures.

The red lines were staggered so
they couldn't be simply stepped over – stepping over one would put you right in
the path of another beam, tripping whatever mechanism was in place.

Aaron had been only an inch or
two from the first laser beam when Rob told him to stop.

I saved your wife, now I've saved
you. You owe me another one.

And someday… someday it's all
gonna come due.

"Clever," said Rob. "Where's
the refractor?"

Aaron stood. He turned away from
the consoles, looking at the wall opposite. He aimed his flashlight there, a
frown on his face. Then said, "There."

Rob looked. For a moment he saw
only wall. Then Aaron waved his light and he saw a few spots – each
corresponding to a laser tripwire – flash. Not wall, but tiny, nearly
perfectly-hidden mirrors that would bounce the lasers back to one or more
receptors. Anything breaking the beams would set off the countdown.

Aaron put his flashlight in his
pocket, then started to climb onto the air hockey table.

"Wait!" Kayla shouted.

The sound almost surprised Aaron
right off the table. He jerked and his leg slipped over the side. Headed right
for the spot where Rob knew the first laser beam – now invisible since Aaron's
mist had already dissipated – passed.

Aaron jerked himself to a halt,
freezing half-on and half-off the table. No one moved. Waiting for the
countdown.

It didn't come.

Aaron pulled himself fully onto
the table, then swiveled his head to look at Kayla.

"Dammit, Kay, what the –"

"What are we doing?"
she broke in.

Aaron shook his head. "Hopefully
finding out what we have to do next without starting the timer. Giving us a bit
more time. Now… will you please
shut the hell up?
"

Kay looked like she was going to
argue the point, then she nodded. Not cowed, just choosing to be quiet for now.

It was actually the first time
Rob had ever seen Aaron stand up to anyone.

So you have a pair after all.
Good to know.

Aaron crawled over the surface of
the air hockey table. Rob held his breath, not sure what he was expecting, only
that he was expecting
something
– and that it would be something bad.

The hockey table popped under
Aaron's hands at one point – the plastic tabletop not really designed to take a
grown man's entire weight. Aaron went rigid, and Rob heard Kayla gasp.

Nothing happened. After a moment,
Aaron kept moving forward. Past the points where the beams should be passing
under the table. Home free.

Rob exhaled explosively. Aaron
looked back at him and threw an exhausted thumbs-up. But the half-smile on his
face disappeared as fast as it came.

Rob looked at what Aaron had
seen.

The closet.

The half-open closet.

Now the
all-the-way
-open
closet.

And a form, lurching out of it,
straight at Kayla.