The House That Death Built (24 page)

Rob shoved Sadface –

(
the woman who slept in the
bed upstairs the woman asleep in her bed five years ago the woman who died but
lived, who lived to kill
)

– toward the front door.

TJ had been a shock. Donna
another. But they were clarifying in their way. They made him remember who he
was. He wasn't just a thief, wasn't just someone plagued by bad luck.

He was a
survivor
.

He'd survived everything that had
happened. The bad jobs, the bad luck that harried and hounded him at every
step.

He'd survive this, too.

"Open it," he said. The
woman was laughing, laughing. The sound pierced him. Shudders writhed along his
spine.

"Open it!" he screamed.
"
OPEN IT OR YOU'RE DEAD
!"

"She can't open it."

Rob spun toward the sound,
whipping Sadface around so that she was between him and the source.

Two figures approached down the
hall. Happyface and Madface. Walking toward them.
Sauntering
toward
them.

For a moment Rob utterly forgot
that he was the one holding the knife. That he was the one in
control
.

They pulled off their masks as
they walked. Happyface revealed the face of Jason Crawford. Dark hair that was
graying at the edges, nose that had a bit of a hook to it. Madface was the girl
they had assumed was a victim, but who was instead some strange part of their
torment.

Then Crawford reached up and
pulled his nose off. It separated from his face, torn flesh hanging in thin
ribbons of skin.

Rob almost threw up until he
realized the madman wasn't really engaging in self-mutilation. The flaps of
skin weren't actually skin, any more than the nose had been a nose. It was just
the hook of the nose, a small prosthetic attached to his real nose underneath.
When it came away, it completely altered the man's face.

Rob saw the face of the man he
had tried to kill. Remembered his name –

(
Schaffer. James Schaffer. Why
would I remember that now? All those years ago. What does it matter? What did
it
ever
matter?
)

– just like he remembered the
girl who appeared beside him as the "Crawford girl" removed her dark
wig and contacts to reveal a blond, blue-eyed girl beneath.

The Crawfords were dead. Only the
Schaffers – who by all rights
should
be dead – remained. Them… and the
people who killed them.

"Only you can open the door,
Rob," said the man.

Aaron turned to grab the door
handle, not seeming to hear him.

"If you touch that door, you'll
die," said the girl. And the more Rob looked at her, the more he saw the
pre-teen she had been on the night of that robbery,
the
robbery.

Aaron's hand jerked back like the
handle was poisoned. Which, Rob supposed, it might very well be.

Aaron turned back to look, with
Rob, at the two people down the hall.

"You did this," Rob
breathed. "You did this." And of course he already knew that, of
course it was already obvious at this point. But at the same time, it didn't
seem
real
until he said the words.

All for us.

All for me.

Those words were the motto of his
life, the creed by which he had lived. And now he wished, for the first time,
that something his could instead belong to someone – anyone – else.

James Schaffer grinned. The smile
was wide and didn't reach his eyes, which remained hollow and hanging over a
mad abyss. "It took almost five years. To find you." The grin grew
wider. "But one thing thieves –
scum
– never really stop to
consider the ramifications of: the rich have money. Money to spend on the best
detectives in the world. To find thieves who always use the same m.o. To watch.
To ferret out everyone they know, everyone they love. To make…" and he
gestured, taking in the place around them which had gradually contracted during
the night to become the totality of Rob's world, "all this. For my
daughter to ‘accidentally' meet your son and ensure that he would be here
tonight.

The girl laughed. Not the
wheezing, mad laugh of the mother. It was a sharp bark, a knife-laugh that cut
others, but that would also cut herself. The laugh of someone who no longer
lives for anything but pain.

"To figure out each step,
each moment," continued James, "that would lead inevitably to this.
To
HAVE THEIR REVENGE
!" He screamed the last, and now his
expression reached his eyes. Pure rage.

James calmed himself. His smile
returned. "How does it feel? To lose everything?"

The girl beside him held up her
hand. Rob shrank back until he saw the remote control that she had used to call
down his son's death. And, seeing it, he shrank back more.

He hid behind the mother –

(
you knew her name once what
was it I can't remember oh why can't I remember
)

– and screamed, "Don't! Don't
or I swear!"

He held the knife so tight to the
woman's neck it was a wonder her throat hadn't already been slit.

And she laughed.

"You still don't understand,"
she said.

Then her laugh cut off with the
sudden completeness of a bullet to the heart.

She looked at the two people in
the hall – at her husband and daughter. They nodded, and Rob's innards froze.

"Those who have nothing
cannot be robbed," she whispered.

And he remembered the safe. The first
clue on this nightmare journey.

those who have nothing cannot be
robbed

He gasped. Coughed. Realizing the
words she said had been planted for them, and wondering what they truly meant.

James Schaffer nodded at his wife
once more. Then turned his horrible grin back to Rob. "We thought of
everything, Rob.
Everything
." He shook his head. "You always
knew one of us was going to die. Isn't that what you said, Rob? What you said
that night?"

The countdown appeared as the
safe locked. Twelve hours before it would open. Rob spoke, rage barely
contained behind a demon's grin. "I guess we always knew at least one of
you was going to die," he said. "Turns out it's going to be even
more."

James shook his head. "It
wasn't just one of us. Two people died that night. One of them just wanted to
hang on long enough to see you suffer."

In that instant, Rob remembered
the name of the woman he held at knifepoint.

Beth. Beth Schaffer.

In the next. She clapped her
hands over the hand that held a knife to her throat. Rob tensed, ready to fight
her for control of the weapon.

But she didn't try to wrench it
from his grasp. Didn't try to turn it on him.

She shoved it deep into her own
throat, sawing from right to left in a slash that would sever the jugular and
both carotids.

Blood spewed from her. It rained
down Rob's knife hand, soaked his front.

And then he was holding nothing
but a corpse.

She sank from his grasp.

James and his daughter stepped
closer to the foyer, closer to Aaron and to
him
.

He held up the knife as they approached.
"Don't come any closer. Don't –"

The girl held up her remote. Rob
tensed, and Aaron grew rigid beside him.

The girl pressed a button.

The door at Rob's back – the
front door, the door to freedom and a new life – opened.

Rob eyed it for a moment,
suspicion curling his features. Then he looked back at James and his daughter.

"Go," said the man.

Rob didn't move. "I don't
believe you. I don't believe this," he said gesturing at the door.

The girl spoke. Her voice was
low, exhausted. Like the night had taken everything she had and left only a
husk behind. "You know what it is to lose everything. There's no more game
to play."

Rob stepped back. Again. His rear
leg broke the invisible line separating this house from the rest of the world.

Nothing happened.

Another step, and he was outside.
On the porch.

He finally let himself do what he
had wanted to do since he heard the little bitch's last words.

"You think
that
,"
he said, pointing the knife at Donna's gently swaying form, then at the smears
on the foyer floor, "matters to me?" He laughed again, and no matter
how hard he tried he knew he wouldn't be able to stop the cackles shaking his
entire frame.

"No," said James. His
smile was at its widest, so large it strained at his face. It looked exactly
like the mask he had worn.

And knew this was the moment the
mask had smiled for.

James' daughter hit a button on
her remote.

"The robbed that smiles,"
said James through his grin, "steals something from the thief."

A blade had just removed the head
from Tommy Leigh's body.

And before the blade, a table.

And on that table, a card.

the robbed that smiles

steals something from the thief

Rob's lip curled. "I'm gonna
kill you both. Gonna –"

The girl hit another button. A
shot rang out.

He felt it hit his chest. Felt it
blow through him, the strange sensation of organs turning inside out as the
bullet seared past.

Another shot. He reeled, and
blood poured down his cheek – the wound had skipped across the side of his
head.

He fell to his knees, and thunder
sounded again. This time the shot punctured his stomach.

He sank to his knees. Looked at James
and his daughter.

These were exactly the shots that
had taken down the family, in exactly the order they happened.

Shot in the chest, just like the
boy.

Shot in the head, just like the
woman.

Shot in the gut, just like the
man.

But what about –

A final shot rang out. It
traveled the opposite direction the first had gone. In through his back, out a
hole in his chest that opened in a spray of blood and bone before it.

How she died. The girl. How Kayla
shot her and shediedandthenweleftandalkchzckle –

Rob's thoughts turned to a
jumble. He heard sound, words. Some man speaking, some man he should know, but
whom he couldn't quite place.

"My son died. None of the
rest of us. We survived, after a fashion. We should have died, but we were
strong enough to come to this moment. What about you? Can you survive the
moment where everything you have is taken, and where your blood is spilled? Can
you survive watching everything disappear – even yourself?"

A dread moment of silence. Then
the man said, "I don't think so."

Rob fell forward. His balance was
gone, his sight was gone, his thoughts were gone.

And then, at the last, he was
gone.

Aaron saw Rob fall bonelessly to
the porch. He twitched once. Then one of the huge dogs flew out of the night
and quickly drag the body away.

Then the front door slammed shut.

He turned back to the man and the
teenage girl behind him. They stared, all expression gone from their faces.
Neither spared a single glance at the body on the floor, the body of their
mother/wife.

There was only him and them.

"I didn't…," he began. "I
wasn't the one who hurt your son. I tried to stop it." They kept staring,
impassive. "Please," he said. His voice had turned to a high-pitched
wheedle. He wasn't ashamed. He would beg – would do anything – if it meant he
could get out. Get back to Dee. "Please just let me –"

The girl pushed a button on the
remote. Several doors in the hall flew open. Three of the four pit bulls that
had forced the thieves into the attic came out of the doors. A moment later the
fourth arrived, coming in through the open door to the kitchen.

Must be the one that dragged Rob
off, Aaron thought, and wondered why he would bother trying to figure out where
the dogs had come from. It was enough that they were
here
, low rumbles
in their throats, blood on their muzzles and matting their fur.

The man and woman approached
Aaron, the pit bulls beside them. Aaron shrank back, retreating until his back
was against the front door.

For the first time, he was sorry
he had never brought a gun on the jobs.

The man reached slowly into his
pocket. Drew something out. Aaron cringed, not knowing what it was, but knowing
it would be something that brought death.

The man threw what was in his
hand. It landed at Aaron's feet with the clatter of plastic. It looked somewhat
like a thick calculator: a series of keys with an LED display over it.

No. Not a calculator. It looks
like – No. No no no no.

It was the mirror of the keypad
on the safe upstairs.

"You're a safecracker,"
said the man. "You can get yourself out."

The LED blinked to life. A
countdown.

2:00….

1:59….

The girl spoke. "We'll even
give you the same amount of time you and your friends gave us."

"Listen, Pops. I know you're
scared. But you've got two minutes to get this door open. And if you get it
wrong…." Rob slammed his gun down against the boy's shoulder. The boy
screamed, and so did his mother.

Aaron watched. Didn't move.
Waiting, hoping, for the man to give up the combination. To save himself.

And in every room, in every trap,
the timers appeared. 2:00. Two minutes to avoid a death ready to take them.

"I didn't," said Aaron.
"I didn't want any of –"

"Time's a-wastin',"
said the man.

"Please," said the
father. "No."

Rob just stared at him.
"Time's a-wastin', Pops," he said.

Aaron looked at the keypad. Numb.
Unsure.

Was there any way to beat this?
Was it all death?

No choice.

He picked up the keypad.