House of Reckoning (38 page)

Mitch Garvey moved forward, and once more the house trembled with a nearly inaudible rumble. “You keep a civil tongue in your head when you talk to my wife. You’re no better than your father—you killed Conner and almost killed Tiffany.”

He continued to move toward Sarah, then Nick Dunnigan stepped in front of him.

“Don’t touch her,” Nick said softly. Though his voice was low, there
was a note of confidence in it that even he had never heard before, and as he faced Mitch Garvey, he felt not even a flicker of fear. “You don’t know anything. You don’t know anything about this house, and you don’t know anything about us. So stay away. We haven’t done anything wrong.”

Mitch’s eyes narrowed as his fury built. What was going on? Nick Dunnigan was telling
him
what to do? “Who the hell do you think you are?” he said, his eyes fixing on Nick with the cold look he used to stare down even the worst of the inmates at the prison. All of them knew what came after that look, and Nick Dunnigan was about to find out. His right hand clenching into a hard fist, he took a step toward the boy.

“Don’t,” Nick said softly.

But it was too late. Mitch’s arm had already come up, and now he was swinging his fist toward Nick Dunnigan’s jaw.

The low rumble that had energized the house before erupted into a crack of thunder, and Mitch felt the floor buckle beneath him. Struggling to keep his balance, he flailed at the air with his arms, but tumbled to the floor.

As Bettina put her arms around Sarah and Nick and drew them closer to her, Angie Garvey stared dumbstruck at her husband. It looked like Mitch had been seized by some kind of demon, and now he was thrashing on the floor fighting some enemy she could neither see nor hear. She watched mutely as he crawled toward the study as if trying to escape his invisible assailant. Then he was through the door and into the paneled room, and the door slammed shut, and Angie had a terrible feeling that she would never see Mitch again.

The room was hot—hotter than anything Mitch had ever felt before. Once again he tried to regain his feet, but despite the carpeting, the floor felt slippery—so slippery he lost his footing and fell again. He tried to catch himself, but as soon as his hands touched the floor it felt as if he’d put them on a hot iron.

Then he saw it.

Ants—red ants—swarming over the floor, millions of them, so thick there was not a sign of the carpet beneath them.

Mitch opened his mouth to scream, but as soon as he did, the ants
were in his mouth, swarming over his tongue, stinging the inside of his cheeks, moving down his throat like a searing flame, and in an instant he knew he would never scream again. Once again he thrashed, but the ants were everywhere, crawling down the walls, streaming over the furniture, pouring under the door from the hall. Only the fireplace seemed free of them, and he struggled toward it, his entire body burning not only with the heat, but the poison as well. He scrabbled across the floor, clawing his way, feeling his strength drain away in the burning heat.

And then he was there, dragging himself across the hearth and into the fireplace itself. His head was swimming and the ants were still swarming over him and the heat—

Flames burst all around him, and for a moment he felt a ray of hope. Even the ants couldn’t withstand the fire blazing around him now. But in the next moment, as he watched his clothes burning away through eyes nearly swollen shut, he realized the truth.

It was himself—his own body—that had turned into a conflagration, and now his nostrils filled with the sweet odor of burning flesh.

He gasped for air, but his lungs were already on fire and he could no longer breathe.

He was dying—he knew he was dying, and he knew there was nothing he could do about it, and he knew with a terrible certainty where he was going.

He was going to Hell, and he was going to burn forever, burn like he was burning now, but the pain would never end, and he would never escape it and it would go on and on and on and on until—

“Stand back!” a voice ordered.

A voice? How could there be a voice? He was in Hell and he was burning and—

“Back!” the voice commanded. “You hear me?”

Mitch Garvey’s eyes snapped open, but all he saw was gray stone. His arms were still flailing, but there were no more ants.

And his body was still burning up, but there were no more flames.

He heard the jangle of metal on metal, the same jangle he heard every day when he opened a barred door.

The sound of a key.

A lock was opened.

Mitch stared at the heavy oak door whose planks were strapped together with thick wrought iron, and in a moment it began to swing open.

Two men appeared, holding a large fire hose.

“Didn’t we tell you to stop hurting yourself?” one of them demanded.

Mitch’s mind reeled. Where was he? How did he get here? What was going on? Then he looked down at himself.

Blood was dripping from his arms where he’d tried to scrape away the ants.

His nostrils were no longer filled with the stink of burning flesh, but with a far more foul stench, and then he could feel the mess he’d made in his own clothing.

He peered up at the men and reached out a trembling and supplicating hand. “Please,” he whispered, his voice rasping through vocal cords worn raw from screaming. “Help me … please … help me.”

“Oh, we’ll help you, you crazy bastard,” one of the men said. They tightened their grip on the hose’s nozzle, and one of them nodded.

Before Mitch realized what was about to happen, a thick jet of ice-cold water slammed into him and he sprawled out on the floor. When he opened his mouth to beg them to stop, they hit him full in the face with the stream and he felt water forcing its way down his throat.

He was going to drown!

He was going to drown right here, with two people blasting him mercilessly with a stream of water that held him pinned to the floor.

And then it stopped.

“That’ll keep ’im quiet for the rest of the day,” one of the guards said.

Mitch rolled over in the puddle as the door was closed and relocked. Finally, he gathered enough strength to crawl over to the door and pull himself up to peer through a small barred window, to find himself gazing at the flickering mantel of an old-fashioned gas sconce. His eyes moved away from the light and he peered down a long narrow hallway, with more of the old gas lamps placed just close enough together to fill the corridor with dim light.

Between the sconces were more doors, doors with barred windows just like the one he was looking through.

From one or two of them Mitch thought he saw insane eyes peering back at him.

From the others there was nothing.

Nothing except the occasional scream, or a hopeless moan.

He sank back to the wet floor, the cries and whimpers of his future echoing through the corridors of the hell he knew he would never escape.

A
ngie Garvey turned away from the reflection of herself she caught in the mirror that hung on the wall next to the coat tree, but it was too late. The image of her bloodless face, twisted with terror and fury, was seared into her mind. Even worse than her expression, though, was that what she’d seen in the mirror bore no resemblance to what Angie knew she looked like. The face in the mirror had aged; it was as if she were looking fifty years into the future. Her hair, thin and gray, hung lank around a face dominated by a pair of empty and hopeless eyes. Her skin was sagging and deeply creased, and though there was nothing in her reflection that she recognized, she knew it was her. What was happening? Dan West had vanished and now Mitch—
Mitch!
Panic rising, she moved to the door through which he had scrabbled. It swung open even as she reached for the knob, and Angie felt a surge of relief. Mitch was all right, and he was opening the door, and—

The door swung open to reveal the study just as it had been a few moments ago.

Empty.

Empty, and silent.

“M-Mitch?” Angie said, but now her utterance was heavy with her fading hope.

“He’s gone,” Nick Dunnigan said quietly, though his voice echoed in Angie’s ears with the slow cadence of a funeral march.

… gone … gone … gone … gone …

She wheeled on Nick. “Where?” she screamed. “What did you do to him? Where did he go?”

“We don’t know, Angie,” Bettina said, reaching out as if to offer her hand to the distraught woman.

Out!
She had to get out, and she had to get out before whatever had happened to Mitch and Dan West happened to her, too. Spurning Bettina Philips’s outstretched hand, Angie turned to flee toward the front door, but after taking only a single step, she abruptly veered around and found herself lurching toward the staircase.

What was happening? She didn’t want to go upstairs! She wanted to leave! Leave before—

She wheeled around, clinging to the banister as she raged at the three people who were looking up at her. “Let me go!” she screamed. “What have you done? What have you done to Mitch—” Her voice broke and she began sobbing as she lost her grip on the rail and started climbing the stairs once more, her hands still reaching for something to hang on to, her voice reduced to a nearly incoherent babble. “No … let me go … I’m sorry … sorry for everything … sorry for—” She was at the landing now, and as she made the turn to climb to the second floor, her eyes suddenly fastened on Sarah and her fury erupted. “You!” she screamed. “This is your doing! You’re evil and you’ve always been evil and you should burn in—”

Her words were cut short and she felt herself being hurled up the stairs, her head slamming against the steps, her body crashing first against the wall to one side, then against the thick wooden balusters on the other.

Then she was at the top of the stairs. Regaining her footing, she fled down the corridor.

Doors!

There seemed to be doors everywhere. If she got through one of them—found a window—

Locked!

All of them, locked so tight they might as well have been nailed shut.

She came to the end of the corridor. There was only one door left now. She reached for the knob, but even before she touched it the door swung open and she hurtled into a second staircase, a narrow staircase.

Down!

If she could get down, maybe she could get out! But as she turned to start down the steep flight, she saw something move.

Something small, coming up the stairs.

A second later she recognized it.

A rat
.

Huge, and gray, and coming right at her!

Behind it was another.

And another and another and a—

Screaming, Angie turned back to the door, but it slammed shut even as she lunged toward it, and her right hip smashed against it, sending a terrible pain shooting down her leg.

The rats were coming closer now, and Angie stumbled up to the third floor, pulling herself on the banister, her right leg dragging limply, the pain from her shattered hip slashing through her body like a whip. She came to the top of the stairs and found herself at the end of another corridor, this one far narrower than the one on the floor below, but up ahead she saw a door.

An open door!

Behind her the rats were flooding up the last flight of stairs, and Angie forced herself to stand up.

Clumsily, bracing herself against the walls with both her outstretched arms, she began hopping toward the open door.

Now the rats were coming at her not only from the stairs behind her, but from under the closed doors on either side of the hallway.

She flung herself through the open door, slammed it shut behind her and collapsed on the floor, her heart pounding, her lungs straining to suck in enough air to let her catch her breath, her ruined hip burning beneath her.

Outside the closed door she could hear the rats chittering, and she crept a little farther into the room, which was so brightly lit it almost blinded her.

The noise changed, and for a moment she didn’t know what was happening. Then it came to her: the rats were no longer chittering.

Now they were gnawing, and soon they would gnaw their way through the door.

She pulled herself a little farther from the door.
A way out! There had to be a way out—all she had to do was find it!

Her eyes adjusted to the light, and then she saw it.

For a moment she couldn’t believe her eyes: One whole wall was lined with French doors opening onto a terrace, and beyond the terrace she saw a broad lawn sweeping past a huge stone building—perfectly rectangular, with a black slate roof that looked like pictures she’d seen of the old institute that had been torn down so many years ago—down to the edge of a shimmering Shutters Lake. Leafed trees swayed in the breeze.

An illusion—it had to be an illusion!

Then she understood. An illusion was exactly what it was! It was nothing more than a painting. There was a name for it: tramp … tromp …

Trompe l’oeil!

That was it—a painting that looked perfectly real, so you felt like you were looking out windows even though it was only a wall.

A blank wall!

She heard the chittering then, and the scraping, as the rats began to penetrate the door behind her. She glanced back and saw them, coming through the door, and out of the walls, and—

Panic seized her, and without thinking, Angie pulled herself to her feet, ignoring the agony in her right leg and hip as a stream of adrenaline surged through her, spurring her onward.

Out!
She had to get out before the rats could reach her. If she couldn’t—

She could already feel them, biting into her legs, tearing her flesh from her bones, ripping at her until—

She hurled herself toward the image of the world outside, where the sun was shining and the flowers were in bloom and it was a perfect summer day and—

One of the French doors flew open before her, and Angie tumbled through it, falling into a swirling maelstrom of air and and light.

Bright light, light that hurt her eyes.

Unearthly light.