The House That Death Built

by Michaelbrent Collings

  The clothes pressed in on him, and the light made it seem like he was trespassing a killing floor. Claustrophobic in spite of the fact that the closet was larger than should be legal.

  He saw the safe.

  A bit of him shriveled inside. He knew the safe was supposed to be there, but actually seeing it drove out the last remnants of hope. They were in the house, in the owners' room, but if the safe hadn't been here –

  What? You think Rob would have just walked out, whistling and smiling?

  Maybe it's better this way.

  He moved back to the closet door. Leaned out and gestured to Rob to join him.

  Rob did, moving quickly and quietly. Tommy and Kayla kept their guns pointed in the general direction of the bed, but they couldn't resist moving toward the closet as well. Looking in to see the prize.

  Aaron had already moved to the back of the closet, kneeling by the safe. It was four feet tall, maybe three feet deep. A good-size safe, certainly big enough to hide a lot of bearer bonds.

  Rob nudged him, gestured for him to get started. Aaron flicked his eyes toward the closet door. Not at Kayla and Tommy, who were looking in with naked greed. Beyond them. To the sleeping couple on the bed.

  What if they wake up?

  Rob's mask moved as he grinned beneath it. He drew a finger across his throat.

  Aaron knew that would be the answer. But it still stung. Every second of this night was a betrayal: a revelation of the lies Rob would speak, the violence he would commit.

  Aren't you doing it, too?

  No. Trying to stop it.

  Rob nudged him again. Aaron drew tools from his pocket. The safe had an electronic lock: a keypad built into the face of the door, a lever next to it that would open the safe after the right combination was entered.

  Aaron clicked off his red flashlight. Moving by touch he drew out another light from one of his pockets. He turned it on silently – it had originally clicked, but he adjusted it and now it slid on and off without a sound – and aimed the pale yellow light at the keypad.

  Unlike the red light, the yellow one wasn't designed to save his vision. Rather, it emitted a spectrum that reacted with the skin oils people left behind on everything they touched. It wouldn't give him the combination, but it was an important first step to getting it.

  All the metallic keys shone in the light, curved edges refracting the glare in different directions. None of them looked different from the others.

  Aaron shifted a button on the side of the light. Now it was green – a different spectrum. And now several of the keys looked different, like a darker green ink had been applied: hundreds of layers of fingerprints. These were the keys that the owners used when they opened the safe.

  He took out a grease pen and wrote the numbers on the front of the safe: "1, 2, 5, 7, 8," then turned off the light and returned the device to his pocket. He turned the red light back on, and removed a small screwdriver from his pack. The keypad was fastened by custom screws, but he had a series of adjustable heads that should work.

  He picked the right one after only two tries, and a moment later had the fasteners off and laying in a neat row atop the safe. The keypad dangled from a thick cord of braided wires, like a flat eye hanging from the optic nerve. It always disquieted Aaron to see, and he wasn't sure whether it was the image itself, or the fact of what he was doing when he saw it.

  Another tool came out of his pockets. This one was a device that looked like a multimeter of the type electricians use to measure current, complete with a red lead and a black one, each with a tiny alligator clip at the end.

  He clipped the leads to a pair of the wires leading to the keypad, twisting the clips slightly as he did so that they stripped off the insulation and lay bare the wiring beneath. The scanner had a small keypad below an LED screen, and he used it to type in the numbers he'd written on the safe.

  1-2-5-7-8.

  He hit another button, and the LED began blinking, numbers scrolling across it so quickly they were blurry masses of green and black.

  Rob edged close to him. He watched the scanner for a moment, then whispered, "How long?"

  Aaron didn't want to answer. He waited a moment, irrationally hoping that Rob would forget he'd asked and just leave. When Rob prodded him, he answered, "I have the base numbers… probably. But finding the right combination will take some time."

  Rob leaned in so close Aaron could tell what he'd eaten last. It was pizza. With anchovies. "How. Much. Time?" Each word was a whisper, but they somehow managed to convey Rob's willingness to escalate things if he didn't get the right answer.

  "Six to twenty minutes, best guess," he finally said. He looked past Rob, past Kayla and Tommy, again returning his gaze to the sleeping couple. "Please, Rob, we don't have to –"

  "Make it fast." Rob tapped Aaron's shoulder with his gun. "I'd hate to see what happens if anyone wakes up. Or if I have to wake them up."

  19

  Rob looked at his watch. Seven minutes and counting.

  He knew this was the one – he knew it. He could hear what was in the safe calling him, screaming for him to come to it, to take it.

  And yet every minute passed with nothing to show for it. Every second a new disappointment.

  Maybe my luck's not changing, after –

  The LED blinked. Not the way it had been, a strobe-flash of numbers flinging past too quickly to see. Now it blinked steadily, slowly. A set of numbers on the screen appeared, disappeared, then reappeared once more in an endless loop.

  "25178."

  The safe clicked.

  Rob almost dropped his gun in his excitement. He looked back and saw Kayla and Tommy staring in: they'd heard the noise. He should probably make them pay attention to the couple on the bed, rather than what was going on here. But his excitement swallowed everything else. All there was – the sum of the universe – was the safe, was him, was his long-awaited right to return to the top.

  Aaron unclipped the scanner, then pulled the safe's lever to the side. The door pulled open with satisfying slowness. The heft of something crafted to protect the most valuable of objects, the most precious of –

  "The hell?"

  The words were spoken at full volume, and Rob nearly scolded the speaker for forgetting to whisper, until he realized that the voice was his own.

  He said it again. "The hell?"

  There was nearly nothing in the safe. Certainly there were no bearer bonds, no jewels, no money, not even a manila envelope that might hold birth certificates or passports or social security information.

  There was only a single paper. It was thick, nearly construction paper, folded in half so it stood like a tent on the single shelf that bisected the interior of the safe. And on it, scrawled in dark, angry slashes of ink, was, under the circumstances, the strangest sentence Rob had ever seen.

  those who have nothing cannot be robbed

  Rob stared at it for a moment, his mind completely stalled.

  Not here. The bonds aren't here. My money isn't here!

  Aaron reached out and took the paper. As he did, another piece of paper fell from inside it. He picked up the smaller piece and looked at it under his light. It looked like it might be part of a photo, but too small to make out what it was a picture of. He flipped it over, and on the back was a number: "1."

  Rob stared at it all for another angry beat. Blood surged through his chest, rocketing skyward and filling his head and ears with a thundering pulse. Rage took control of his muscles and his hand tightened on his gun to the point of being painful.

  "What the hell is this?" he growled. He still didn't whisper. Whispering was done, the time for stealth was past. "Where's the money? Where are the bearer bonds and –" He cut himself off, spinning to where Tommy and Kayla were still looking at the safe. "Get them up," he said.

  "Rob, please don't –" Aaron began.

  "Get them up!" Rob roared. "I want –"

  The words ended. His voice silenced. His mouth hung open, like
he'd had his jaw broken not by a surprise punch but by the mere sight of what lay beyond the closet door.

  Kayla and Tommy saw him looking beyond them. They turned, again moving in that creepy unison that always made Rob uneasy.

  Tommy cursed. Kayla made a small noise that might have been a gasp.

  The bed, the beautiful four-poster bed in the center of the room.

  It was empty.

  Crawford and his wife were gone.

  Rob ran out of the closet. He sensed Aaron scooping up his tools and shoving them into a pocket behind him. Then he was standing beside Kayla and Tommy in the bedroom as shocked silence gave way to shocked speech.

  "Where'd they –" Tommy began, with Kayla saying, "We just looked away for a minute –" at the same time before Rob cut them both off with a terse, "Shut up. Find them."

  All of them had been moving by ambient light until now – flashlights were always a double-edged sword during a burglary. Now Rob, Tommy, and Kayla all grabbed Maglites from their pockets and turned them on. The beams slashed through the room, creating phantom movement as new shadows sprung into being.

  Rob moved toward the closest bathroom door as Kayla ran to the other and Tommy dropped to his knees to check under the bed. Aaron was standing in the doorway to the closet, staring down at the paper and the bit of photo that had been in the safe.

  "Help, you idiot!" he snapped.

  Aaron moved, but Rob didn't see where he went. He was already in the bathroom – easily discerned as the "his" bathroom by the shaving articles on the sink, the tight circle of expensive colognes beside them.

  Other than that and the fixtures, there was nothing in the bathroom that shouldn't be here; certainly no one cowering in the bath or hiding in the linen closet at the back of the room.

  Rob rushed out just as Kayla emerged from the other bathroom. She shook her head, and so did Tommy, who was still kneeling beside the bed. Aaron had managed to move all of three feet out of the closet before he was apparently paralyzed by indecision.

  Dumb, stupid idiot.

  I'm gonna kill him.

  Later.

  Rob motioned for Kayla and Tommy to follow him out – he didn't so much as look at Aaron. If he had, he might have killed him right then. And as nice as that would be, it would add too much of a mess for the current situation.

  He rushed out of the master bedroom, back into the long hall that traversed the rest of the second floor.

  A bit past the ceiling lamp that still hung awkwardly overhead, he skidded to a stop.

  Tommy stopped right beside him: he had seen it, too. Rob shared a look with the big man.

  The doors in the hall – all of them – were closed.

  They were open. Just a minute ago, they were all open.

  Now they were tightly shut. It couldn't be that Crawford and his wife took shelter in two different rooms and shut the doors behind them, either: that would account for two more rooms with closed doors, not six.

  There's no way they could have done this. Even if they wanted to run room to room, closing doors all the way, there's no way. There was no time.

  Tommy darted out a hand and pulled on the door that led to the media room. Any pretense of stealth was gone now, so when he gripped the knob it wasn't with the quiet motion of a thief, it was just a hard grab followed by a quick rattling as he first tried to turn it then actively shook it.

  Locked.

  And something inside him told Rob that all the doors would be the same.

  What's going on?

  Kayla had drawn even with them, pressed close behind her brother. Looking from left to right with wide eyes.

  Rob suddenly didn't care what was going on. He didn't want to know.

  Tommy began moving – fast – toward the stairs. Rob followed instantly. This wasn't time to solve mysteries, it was time to get the hell out.

  He heard Kayla behind him, and a third set of footsteps that meant that coward Aaron was bugging out as well.

  Only he's not a coward, is he? We're all running.

  And we should. We need to get outta here fast.

  "I don't like this. Something's –" Kayla began, again overlapping her brother's speech as he said, "Where did these ass –"

  Then Tommy went down. Just fell hard like he'd been kneecapped by a thug with a baseball bat. And he screamed just like it, too, his free hand clapping against his shin. Rob swung his flashlight to look at it, and saw blood sheeting between and over the big man's fingers.

  "Tommy!" screamed Kayla. She rushed to her brother, tried to hold her own small hand against his. Both hands were red in an instant.

  Rob stared. Just stared, and couldn't understand.

  What's happening?

  He swung the light away from Tommy, nausea settling like a lead ball in his stomach. He wasn't afraid of blood – he'd caused more than a little of it to flow in his day – but for some reason the sight of the big man howling on the floor, bloodied by some unknown force… it –

  (scared frightened terrified)

  – deeply unnerved him.

  His flashlight beam swung toward the end of the hall, toward the balcony and the stairs. It caught the bottom edges of the crystalline chandelier that hung above the foyer and sent it sparkling back. A light too bright and beautiful for this dark night that had begun so right and suddenly felt so wrong.

  He swept the light back and forth, side to side. Looking for something, anything, that might explain what had just happened.

  Tommy was still screaming. Aaron was beside him now as well, removing a dark blue handkerchief from a pocket and binding it against the man's shin.

  The handkerchief soaked immediately. Dark blue deepened to arterial red.

  Rob kept sweeping the flashlight back and forth. And saw something.

  It was just a glisten, the barest flicker. And it wasn't so much the gleam of… whatever it was… it was the placement.

  Something was hanging in midair. Just hanging there, impossibly suspended in what seemed to be the air itself. Rob cast his light back to where he had spotted the glint.

  It was blood. A few drops just hanging. Red jewels that had spewed from Tommy's leg, not falling to the carpet but simply gathering in midair about a foot –

  (about shin-height)

  – above the carpet.

  How? How can it be there?

  He drew closer. Knelt before it almost like he was worshipping the sudden, dark miracle that had appeared before them.

  But it wasn't a miracle. A thin wire of some kind – nearly invisible as spider silk – stretched across the hall. A trip wire, yes, but one built not simply to halt, but to maim.

  Tommy's blood finally fell from where it had beaded on the wire. Surface tension released its pull, and the droplets drooped and plummeted to the carpet.

  Rob swung his light to the right, to the left. The wire wasn't attached to the wall, wasn't looped around eyelets or anchored by screws.

  It simply disappeared into the wall on either side. Anchored somewhere beyond the paint and wood and drywall.

  How could they have –

  The thought cut off. The answer was obvious before it completed: They couldn't have.

  Just like the doors all closing.

  No way to do any of this.

  And, finally, a repeat of the thought that kept bouncing around his mind, an echo in an endless loop. An echo that didn't fade, but instead grew louder with each repetition.

  What's happening?

  What's happening?

  WHAT'S HAPPENING?

  Then he looked behind him. Looked away from the wire because it and the sudden lack of control it represented were too terrifying to contemplate.

  He looked behind him.

  And screamed.

  THREE:

  ... who lived in

  the house ...

  She got better.

  He moved her to a different hospital. One that was not third- or second- or even first-rate. This was a place reserved
for the truly wealthy, for those so famous that no one knew their names, only the things they had done, the fantastic inventions and innovations and practices and products that moved the world.

  The woman improved, bit by bit.

  He needed money for it, to be sure. And he hated how he got it. But each time he wanted to stop, he asked himself how long she would survive without what he was doing.

  He kept working.

  Kept giving money to her.

  She got better, bit by bit, and the light gradually returned to his life.

  But in his quiet moments, the seconds and minutes of his life when he was alone with himself and had no one to lie to, he admitted that the light was different. It was shaded at the edges.

  The darkness was his.

  And his alone.

  20

  Aaron hadn't wanted to be here.

  Hadn't wanted to do the job.

  Hadn't wanted to do any of the jobs.

  At first it started slowly. Nothing he thought would hurt anyone. Rob had met him in a bar. Found out he worked for a safe company and plied him with both drink and questions for the rest of the night.

  Rob was so pleasant. So personable. So kind.

  They became friends – or so Aaron thought. Though looking back he could see that the friendship, the offers to buy round after round when they started meeting regularly at the bar, the questions into his family and personal life had all been for deeper, darker purposes than mere friendship.

  Dee got sick. And Rob told him he had a way to get her some money. To pay for the hospital bills that had mounted so quickly there was no hope he could ever pay for them. The hospitals were calling, their debt collectors giving lie to their outward protestations that her health was their primary concern.