by Amy Cross
“I think the house resets itself sometimes,” she replied, stepping through to join him in the dark hallway. “Like, a trap might not activate one time, but then later it goes off. Is that even possible?”
“Anything's possible,” he muttered. “We're dealing with the work of a genius, a man for whom no calculation was too extreme. He might have died more than a century ago, Jenna, but don't underestimate Cesar Marchionne for one moment.”
“I don't underestimate him,” she said bitterly, spotting the photo of Marchionne on the wall. “I hate him.” Feeling a sense of pure anger, she struggled to keep from going over and smashing the damn thing. “I heard his voice on that recording, Dad. He sounded like a sick, angry, evil old bastard. He knew this house would kill people, that's why he built it. He wanted to cause as much pain and suffering as possible, all to prove that he was some kind of monster genius.”
“Trust me,” Owen continued, making his way toward the kitchen, “I can spot his traps a mile off.”
“That's what I thought, but -”
“Trust me,” he said again, holding the piece of wood out and using it to probe the area around the door. “Cesar Marchionne might have been a genius, but your old man's not exactly an idiot. Everything about this house is logical, and it's all based on old tech. Weights, balances, springs, that sort of thing. We just have to be careful.”
“How do you know it hasn't been updated?” she asked. “Maybe the people who rented the house to us are in on the whole thing too?”
“Maybe,” he replied, “but look around the place. Nothing here has been updated since it was built. That'd go against everything Marchionne set out to achieve.”
He paused, before stepping through the doorway and into the kitchen.
“No!” Jenna shouted.
“See?” he continued, turning to her. “It's safe!”
“There was a blade earlier,” she told him, looking up at the thin gap at the top of the door. “I swear to God, I saw it come down.”
“Well, it's safe now!”
She shook her head.
“Jenna, we don't have time for this. Come into the kitchen!”
“This door is dangerous!”
“I just walked through it,” he pointed out, “and I'm fine.”
She tried to take a step forward, but her entire body was trembling with fear and she couldn't stop thinking about the blade that she'd seen slicing down earlier.
“I can't,” she whispered.
“Jenna...”
She shook her head again.
“Jenna,” Owen said with a sigh, “don't you trust me?”
“It's not that I don't trust you, it's...”
For a moment, in her mind's eye, she remembered the blade slicing down.
“Just walk carefully and slowly,” Owen continued, “and I promise, you'll be fine. I'm going to get us out of this place.” He paused, before reaching out to her. “Take my hand.”
“No!” she shouted, seeing that his elbow was directly under the spot from which the blade had emerged earlier. “Dad, stop!”
“Take my hand and come through the door.”
“Dad, please, it might happen again at any moment! If it comes down, it'll take your arm off!”
“I'm telling you,” he said firmly, “that there's definitely no trigger here. Without a trigger, there's nothing to tell the blade to move, and therefore it's safe. Jenna, this house might be a mechanical marvel, but there's no magic involved. Stay rational, trust me, and come through the door.”
She shook her head.
“I'd rather go round,” she told him, taking a step back. “There's another way into the kitchen...”
“And how many traps do you think you'd have to pass?” he asked. “How many blades or spikes? Jenna, I'm telling you, this doorway is safe.” His hand was still reaching out to her. “Trust me. I would never tell you to do this if I had even the slightest doubt.”
She paused, unable to stop looking at the gap from which the blade had appeared earlier, but finally she realized that she had to take the risk.
“Trust me,” he said again. “Nothing bad is going to happen.”
She counted to three in her head, before quickly grabbing her father's hand and stepping through.
When she realized she'd made it, she let out a gasp.
“There,” Owen said, patting her on the shoulder. “I was right, huh?”
She nodded, before glancing back at the doorway. “I swear there was a blade earlier. Why did it fire then, but not now?”
“I have no idea,” he replied, using the broken piece of wood to test the floorboards leading toward the back door. “We have to be logical, though. In the absence of a trigger, there can be no trap.”
“But -”
“No trigger, no trap,” he said again. “Repeat that after me. No trigger -”
“I know but -”
“Say it!”
She paused. “No trigger, no trap.”
“And now I'm going to get this door open,” he continued, turning and taking another step. Reaching the back door, he crouched down and began to examine the lock. “The key thing is to stay calm. Do you remember what I've always told you, Jenna?”
“You've always told me a lot of things.”
“No matter how bad a situation might seem, there's always a way out.”
“Getting out of this place isn't the same as slipping away from your goddamn creditors,” she told him.
“The principle is actually pretty similar.” He paused, still peering at the lock but not daring to touch it yet. “We just have to look for opportunities. It's reasonable to assume that this thing is booby-trapped. Turning it will probably set off some kind of trap.”
“We have to find Mum.”
“First we have to get out.”
“We can't leave her here!”
“Your mother's smart,” he replied, almost pressing the screwdriver's head against the edge of the lock, but not quite daring. “Jenna, we have to focus on this door right now.” He muttered something under his breath as he took a closer look at the lock. “Just give me a minute to figure it out.”
“Oh God,” Jenna stammered, turning and looking back out toward the dark hallway. Through the window next to the front door, she could see the faintest hint of morning light. “Why did we have to come here?” she asked, trying to stay calm. “We did we have to come to this house?” She turned to watch as her father examined the lock. “This is your fault!”
“Not now,” he muttered, tapping the side of the lock carefully.
She opened her mouth to tell him exactly what she thought, but after a moment she realized he was right. There was no point arguing, not while they were still inside the house. Looking around, she listened to the constant ticking sound, and she tried to imagine what was going on behind the walls.
“We could just take it apart,” she said finally. “That was my plan earlier. Wall by wall, floorboard by floorboard, dismantle the whole place.”
“The house repairs itself,” he pointed out. “I can't even begin to understand how Marchionne managed to hook that side of things up, but somehow it detects damage and moves to swap out the affected parts.”
“But it can't do that forever!” Jenna continued, struggling to hide her frustration. “It has to run out of parts eventually.”
“It's also defended. He anticipated that kind of attack.” He paused, cautiously pressing the screwdriver's head against the top of the lock. “Let's just do it my way,” he added.
“Your way never works out,” she sighed.
“Jenna -”
“It's true! Your way got us into this house in the first place!”
He worked in silence for a moment.
“You're being stubborn,” they both said finally, at the same time.
Owen turned to her. “I know what I'm doing. I was right about the door a moment ago, wasn't I?”
Jenna glanced back at the open doorway. “I still don't get
what happened,” she said after a moment. “Why was there a blade earlier, but not now? And why are there so many extra spikes and defenses on the door that leads to the laundry room?”
“I think Cesar Marchionne tried to predict every possible move that his victims would make,” he replied. “Different eventualities, different reactions... The house is constantly shifting behind the walls, repositioning its weapons based on the calculations Marchionne made more than a century ago.” He began to carefully unscrew the side of the lock. “He tried to predict every idea we might come up with.”
“Including what you're doing right now?” she asked.
Instead of answering, Owen focused on getting the first screw out.
“Dad -”
“Just be patient,” he replied, as he started work on the next screw. “If I can see what's inside this thing, I can look for triggers, and then I can work out how to get the door open. It's a little like defusing a bomb, Jenna. One wrong move, and I could set it off. There's just -”
He stopped suddenly, before turning to her.
“What did you say?” he asked.
“When?”
“A moment ago. You said the door to the laundry room has extra defenses.”
She nodded. “I thought maybe I could get out that way, but there was no chance.”
“Why would he do that?” he muttered. “There's no external door in the laundry room, there isn't even a window, so why go to such great lengths to keep us out?”
“Because...” Jenna paused for a few seconds as she began to realize what he meant. “Because there's something in there that he doesn't want us to find.”
Chapter Fifteen
“If this house has a brain,” Owen said cautiously a few minutes later, as they stood watching the door to the laundry room, “then I think it's in there.”
“A brain?” Jenna asked. “How can it have a brain? You said it's just some old machine that was built more than a century ago.”
“It is,” he replied, “but it must still require some kind of central control point. The house seems to be constantly aware of weight changes in the rooms, and you saw how it began to repair the wall you damaged. At least to some extent, there must be a section of machinery that coordinates the various messages. If we can destroy that, maybe we can disable the entire house.”
“He wouldn't have left a weak spot open, would he?” she asked. “He was too smart.”
“That's what I'd have thought, but then...”
He paused, before holding out a broken piece of wood and using it to press the side of the door-frame. Instantly, several spikes sliced out across the empty space before suddenly retracting. A moment after that, a blade crashed down to the floor before starting to rise again.
“You were right,” Owen continued, watching as the blade disappeared into a gap at the top of the frame. “Marchionne went to special lengths to protect the laundry room, it's almost as if he was trying to scare people away. He wouldn't have done that if there unless there was some kind of vulnerability in there.”
“So how do we get inside?”
He prodded the floorboards ahead. Instantly, another set of blades sliced through the open doorway.
“With great caution,” Owen replied.
“This is too dangerous,” Jenna continued. “Dad, there has to be some other way out. Maybe the doors are too obvious, but what about the upstairs windows? Or the basement? Or the attic?”
“Every time we explore another part of the house, we're just playing Marchionne's game. He'll have planned for any of those moves. The one thing he won't have planned for is for us to go into this room.”
“You don't know that for sure.”
“I'm trying to think like him.”
“How can you even start to do that?” she asked. “The guy was clearly insane.”
“He was ambitious,” Owen replied, staring at the door-frame as if he was already trying to come up with an idea. “I can relate to that. Can't you?”
Jenna paused, shuddering as she listened to the continued ticking of the house. “Maybe,” she said finally. “Kinda.”
“The blades are sharp enough and fast enough to cut through wood,” Owen continued, “so simply blocking the door isn't going to be enough. Plus, there might be other traps too, like that hatch that opened and pulled you down earlier. Still...” He paused, clearly thinking things through, before pushing down on the floorboards again. This time, however, he kept pushing even as the blades flashed through the open space. He waited as they retracted, and then he counted out loud.
“One. Two. Three -”
Suddenly the blades appeared again, and then again they retracted.
“One. Two. Three -”
And again.
“One. Two. Three -”
The same thing happened.
“They can only repeat at a certain interval,” he continued, releasing the floorboard. “They physically can't go any faster. The mechanism obviously has to reset itself.”
“That doesn't help,” she replied. “Even if we get through, there'll be other traps right on the other side.”
He nodded.
“So what do we do?” she asked.
“We time them,” he continued. “All of them. We use longer pieces of wood to reach further into the room, and we make sure there can't be any nasty surprises waiting for us.” He paused, before turning to her. “And then I go in. Not you, it's too risky. I'm going to fix this.”
“Dad -”
“You have to trust me on this,” he told her. “Cesar Marchionne might have been a genius, but I'm no slouch either.” He continued to stare at the door-frame for a moment, with a hint of awe in his eyes. “Whatever he built here, I can beat it.”
***
Morning sunlight was starting to stream through the hall window as Jenna scribbled some more numbers on a piece of paper. She and her father had spent the past half hour testing the area on both side of the door, teasing the house and setting off every trap they could find. They'd been timing the devices, too, and jotting down the intervals of every spike, every blade and every click. Adding them up, Jenna muttered to herself under her breath as she turned the paper over and made some more notes.
She paused, before checking the numbers again, then again, and then she ran them for a fourth time, just to be absolutely sure.
“There's a gap,” she said finally. “If the traps are set off in a certain order, there's a four second gap where a person could get through. I think so, anyway...”
“Let me see.” Taking the piece of paper, Owen took a look for a moment before handing it back to her. “I think you're right.”
“You should go over it,” she told him. “I might have made a mistake.”
He shook his head. “I trust you.”
“Dad, please -”
“I trust you,” he said again, as the walls continued to tick all around them. “There's no point delaying this. I'm going to go through, and then I'll find whatever the hell's in there that Marchionne doesn't want us to reach.” He paused, before picking up the piece of wood and holding it out, ready to activate the first trap.
“Wait,” Jenna said suddenly, grabbing his arm. “It's too dangerous. There has to be another way.”
He shook his head.
“Dad, you don't even know that there's anything in there. What if... What if that's what Marchionne wants you to think? What if it's a bluff, like another layer of the trap?”
“No matter how much of a genius he was,” Owen replied, “he was working in the late nineteenth century, which means he had certain technological limits. He had to work around those, and we can use them against him. Think about it, a guy building a house like this in the modern day would have access to motion sensors, cameras, heat traps and a million other devices. Marchionne was limited to wood, metal, weights and... Well, that's about it. He had a brilliant mind, but there were limits to what he could achieve. He'd have been aware of those limits, of course, so he'd
have tried to mitigate against them.” He turned and looked toward the open doorway. “Basically, all I have to do is not rush. And get the counting part right, obviously.”
He slipped his arm from Jenna's grasp.
“And then we'll find Mum, right?” she asked.
He hesitated. “Sure.”
Turning, he took a deep breath as he faced the doorway. After a moment, he held the piece of wood out and activated the first trap. A fraction of a second later, the three spikes shot out from the frame. As soon as they'd retracted, Owen took a step forward. He waited, counting to three, and then the blade sliced down, missing him by inches. As soon as the blade shot up again, he stepped through the doorway, counting out loud as he activated the next trap.
“Dad -”
“Don't distract me!” he hissed, as he continued to count.
Jenna stepped back, holding her breath as she watched the next set of spikes shoot out and miss her father. Just as she was about to tell him to be careful, however, she heard a bumping sound from upstairs.
“There,” Owen said, once the next set of blades had retracted. “I'm in. Now I...”
His voice trailed off for a moment.
“There's a louder ticking sound from the panel at the far end,” he continued. “I'm going to take it apart.”
“Be careful,” Jenna replied, while still staring at the ceiling. She'd heard a couple of fake bumps over the previous few seconds, and she was starting to think that someone was trying to get her attention. The bumps sounded different somehow, less regular and mechanical than the rest of the machinery.
“Crap!” Owen said suddenly.
Jenna turned just in time to see him ducking down, narrowly avoiding another set of spikes.
“Cesar Marchionne really didn't want anyone coming into this room,” he pointed out, watching as the spikes retracted. “There's definitely something in here.”
Before Jenna could reply, she heard another bump from upstairs.
“Dad,” she said cautiously, taking another step back as she watched the ceiling, “I think...”
She paused, listening to a faint scrabbling sound.
“I think Mum might be up there.”
