The House That Death Built (4 page)

Seeing, and screaming, and then
silent as Rob pulled the trigger.

Beth Schaffer heard the sound.
She had never shot a gun. Never been to a range, never heard someone else
shoot.

It was so loud.

The sound wasn't just noise, it
was the growl of a creature hungry, rabid. The scream of something beyond good
or evil. It was elemental. Pure force, without will.

The sound hammered its way
through the room. It would have bludgeoned her to her knees if she hadn't
already been there. As it was, she curled over so far her nose nearly touched
the floor.

She turned her head.

It was crazy. The final madness
in a night where sanity fled screaming into the darkest of places. She should
have looked away – that was what you did, right? When something so dangerous
reared its head and roared its most terrible roar? You looked away, you looked
anywhere but to its source.

But she did look.

And she
saw
.

The body had already fallen to
the floor. A long, limber form. Slim, but without any of the awkward gangliness
that marked so many of his peers. The body of a person making a near-seamless
transition from boy to man.

But that transition was over.
Stopped by the creature. The gun.

No. Not the gun. The man behind
it.

Does it matter who did it?

Evan was laying on his back on
the closet floor. Eyes looking right at her. The brightness that had always
been there dimmed slightly.

Still alive. He can make it
.

A ragged red circle was on his
chest. Growing as blood pulsed out.

He coughed. More blood escaped
his mouth. It leaped out like the tentacle of some awful creature that had been
born even as her son – her baby boy – began to die. Then the tentacle fell,
fell apart, splattered on the floor.

Evan somehow saw her. Somehow
understood what she was feeling. He smiled. Mouthed something.

Beth shook her head. Didn't know
why – what did it matter that she didn't understand what he was saying?

What does
anything
matter?

He mouthed it again. Again. And
on the fourth repetition she understood.

It's okay, Mom.

Then the last lingering
brightness dimmed. His eyes sagged. Not closed entirely, small crescents of
white still visible.

Gone.

She saw it. Saw the moment her
boy left a world too cruel to hold him.

As she did, her sanity also left.
But there was no transition from this awful place to another, better one.
Instead it threw off the tethers of rational thought, spun out of control. An
elemental creature just as dangerous in its own way as the thing that had ended
her son.

She screamed. Felt the carpet
beneath her, and it wasn't like she was pushing herself away from it, but like
it was falling away from her. Like the world itself fell away, withdrew from
something too awful to touch.

She threw herself at the nearest
of the people who had brought this madness to her. It was the big man, the one
who seemed the most evil of them all.

No. Not the most evil. Just the
most out of control.

The one who killed Evan is the
most evil. The men in the closet are the ones who will be destroyed.

But this one first.

The thoughts fired rapidly
through her mind, taking no more time than her short flight allowed.

Then the thoughts, the last
vestiges of Beth Schaffer, fell away with the ground below. She simply
was
.

She hit the big man. Didn't knock
him down, but that didn't matter. Her hands were already hooked, but now curved
still further, expensively-manicured nails extended into the razor claws of
something cold and reptilian.

She heard sobbing. Didn't know
who it was –

(
Ashley. My girl. My only
girl. Only
child
.
)

– and didn't care.

She yanked up the man's mask with
one hand. Slashed down with the other.

He screamed and clapped a hand to
his blooded face. Furrows led from his brow down to his cheek. Deep creases
that instantly covered his face in blood.

He shoved her away.

Screaming, one hand to his face.

The other raising something.
Another beast. Another elemental that –

BOOM
.

The creature screamed again. A
roar slightly different in tone, but no different in power.

Beth's head snapped back so hard
she was certain her neck was broken. She had somehow found her way back to the
floor. Face-up, staring at the textured ceiling. The nonsense patterns there
drew together into a face. A boy.

Evan.

Something was wet behind her.
Warm fluid that saturated her blond hair, crept down to her neck.

She had a fleeting moment to
realize she'd been shot in the head.

Then darkness took her. The
darkness of ultimate madness, followed quickly by a darkness far deeper.

The face in the ceiling was the
last thing she saw.

Rob watched the killing go down.
Watched the woman grab onto Tommy's face like some kind of goddam leach.
Watched her gash his face –

(
That's gonna leave a mark.
)

– then watched him toss her down
and shoot her point-blank in the head.

Rob was moving forward as it
happened, nearly running into the bedroom and wondering how this had all gone
to hell so fast. The deaths didn't bother him. Not like they had to clean up
the place after they left. But…

But the money! The jewels or
whatever was in that safe!

That stung. All this work,
everything he'd done to get ready for the job. For nothing.

Tommy finally quieted. He pulled
the mask over his face. Then swung his gun to the little girl who was staring
in open-mouthed shock at her mother's body.

Tommy glanced at Rob.
"Boss?" he said.

Rob turned in a rage. James –

(
Bastard sonofabitch why
couldn't you just get it right?
)

– had moved from his place beside
the safe to a spot beside his boy. Cradling the teen's head in his lap, sobbing
like a baby.

Rob aimed his gun again.

"Please," said Aaron.
And Rob almost shot
him
.
He'd
been the one whose job it was to
open the safe. He hadn't even bothered to watch Daddykins, but had actually let
the man run to his kid. "You don't have to do this."

"I didn't do it, Aaron.
You
did. Not because you screwed up with the safe, though. You killed all of them
the moment you said my name."

He saw it sink in. Saw Aaron
replaying the moment, the fact that he'd called Rob by name in the closet. The
fact that after that
Rob
had started calling everyone by name – because
it didn't matter.

Because from that instant, the
family had to die.

He shot the man beside his son. James
fell across him, arms outstretched as though trying to protect the boy a few
minutes too late.

Rob turned back to the master
bedroom fast enough to see the girl. Ashley. She bolted, running for the door
that led into the hall and the darkness beyond. He couldn't tell if it was a
calculated attempt to get away in the hubbub, or just the panic of someone
whose conscious thought had been replaced by simple will to survive.

Academic.

Kayla turned away from her
brother as the girl ran. Moving with languid calm, she brought her gun up.
Pulled the trigger. A ragged hole appeared on the girl's back. Blood flew in a
wide spatter against the doorframe she had been running for.

The girl dropped.

Rob sighed.

Fubar.

He looked back at Aaron. The idiot
hadn't moved. Just staring at the two bodies in the closet and very obviously
not
looking at Rob. Probably worried about what Rob would do.

For a moment Rob thought of
making Aaron's fears come true. Not killing him – that would be too easy.

There were other, worse things
the other man was worried about.

Reign it in, Rob. You might need
him again.

He turned to Tommy and Kayla.

"All right," he said.
"Let's make sure we're not tied to this place."

This is what the house looks
like.

This is the house where death has
come to call.

It is nice –
very
nice. It
is white, with a porch, with columns supporting ornate rooftops. Windows like
blind eyes.

And then one of the eyes seems to
wink.

There is a glimmer, as though the
house has awakened. Then the glimmer can be seen from another eye. Another.
Brighter and brighter, and then one of the eyes shatters outward and flames
lick up the white wall, carving a charred black scar from window to roof.

More windows light. More eyes
shatter. More white blackens.

Four shadows steal out of the
back door. Illuminated by the brightness behind them, but fleeing quickly to
the shadowed portion of the grounds.

One shadow stops at the edge of
the flickering light. It turns to look at the house that has stood for so long
and now must fall. The shadow leans toward the house, as though considering a
return.

Then, at last, it turns and joins
the other wraiths as they turn and flee over the wall and into the night.

She fell one day. Everyone falls,
but this was strange because she didn't stumble, she didn't trip. They were in
the park, they were standing still while they tossed breadcrumbs to the birds.

She just teetered for a moment,
tipped, and spent an impossible moment hanging in the air before she simply
crumpled. He tried to catch her, but unlike in movies and books, catching a
body that has gone limp without any warning is simply impossible.

It seemed like it must be
nothing. She was already getting back to her feet in the time it took to
realize anything was happening. She even said that: "I'm sure it's
nothing."

But a few days later, blood
streamed from her nose and would not stop, and when they went to the hospital,
doctors with wan faces and sad eyes said it was something, yes, definitely
something.

The illness was usually fatal,
they said. And he heard not "bad prognosis," but "she's going to
die." And on the heels of that, "And you'll die, too," because
what life is there when the light fades. When a sun breathes its last and
snuffs out, the planets in its orbit do not continue to spin as they always
have. They spiral into the darkness and are ended themselves.

"Bad prognosis" –
"she's going to die."

Then they said, "some small
chance," and that was worse. Because he knew that meant "only the
rich need apply."

He had always thought himself
rich. Always believed he had enough and too much of all the things that really
mattered. But now he found that hospitals would not accept an embrace as proof
of success, or tender feelings as tender of the legal sort.

She faded. Faded.

Nearly gone.

He waited beside her bed. A
second-rate bed, in a third-rate room with two other people who were also
dying, in a fourth-rate hospital that was all he could afford.

Another man came in the room.

"There may be a way,"
he said.