The House That Death Built

by Michaelbrent Collings

  She was dying. That was why he did it. Dying, and the cruddy place they were going to ship her to wasn't really a hospital, it was a debtor's prison. No chains or walls keeping her in, just outdated equipment and barely-competent doctors who would restrict her to an old, sprung mattress and wait for her to finish dying.

  He couldn't let that happen.

  He did the job. Tommy and Kayla seemed different on that job, too – calmer and more in control. But that had just been another ruse. Another bit of play-acting, this one designed to fool him into believing that no one was getting hurt. Not really hurt. Money and jewels would either be replaced by insurance or would be lost by people who could damn well afford to lose them.

  Not like him. Not like Dee, who had finally been moved to the county hospital where she lay on a cot in the hall more often than she enjoyed even the basic privilege of dying in privacy. She had tubes going in and out, voided into a bag and a bedpan, and all of it for the world to see.

  He had to get her out.

  The first job wasn't enough. Nor the second.

  On the third, Rob turned over his cut to Aaron. "Take care of her," he said, and there were tears in his eyes. Tears. "Take care of Dee. She sounds like a good woman, and no good woman…." His voice strangled itself to nothing. He looked away. Waved Aaron off.

  Aaron heard noises coming from Rob's apartment, sounds he took to be concerned sobs.

  Another thing that, looking back, he saw as a lie. The man hadn't been crying, he'd been laughing.

  Aaron quit. He moved to a different, better job at another safe company. Then another. And a fourth. In the space of a few years he'd worked at half the companies producing high-end safes in the U.S. At every one that had an office or satellite factory in a hundred-mile radius.

  He kept meeting Rob. Floating him information and then accompanying him on the jobs themselves. And it was all worth it because Dee was getting good help and getting good medicine and getting better.

  She went into remission.

  He went to Rob – to his friend – and explained he was done.

  Rob broke his arm. Threatened to do much worse to Dee. And as soon as Aaron's arm was good enough, he went on another job.

  He had never shared details of what he knew with Rob. Had never shared how he kept his security clearance when he left each safe company, how he tunneled into back doors to find out if potential marks – their names supplied by Rob, though he had no idea how the man got them in the first place – had safes he could hack or crack. Rob had asked, but that information Aaron had kept close to the vest.

  Because, in his heart of hearts, in his deepest places, he already knew. From the beginning he knew who Rob was, what he was, and that he didn't give a damn about Dee. He knew from the beginning, in a place so far inside his heart it had no name, that Rob just wanted to help Rob, and that what he gave, he expected back a thousand fold.

  Aaron kept protesting. But he kept doing the jobs. Because Dee was still better, he owed it to Rob, he couldn't stop because who knew what would happen then?

  And, mostly, that lie worked for him. Even on the job – that terrible job a few years ago where the whole family had been butchered – even then, he somehow managed to convince himself it was worth it.

  For Dee.

  But now there were screams again. Not screams punctuated by guns firing, but the deep-throated screams of a big man on the floor. Tommy was rocking back and forth, blood spurting between the fingers he had wrapped around his shin. Kayla was saying something, but Aaron couldn't really tell what it was – his hearing was strange all of a sudden. Everything sounded like his ears had been stuffed full of cotton.

  A scream broke through. One he never thought he would hear.

  Rob.

  The man shrieked, a clipped sound that might have been humorous in other circumstances. Now it was a driving spike that bored into Aaron and pierced the defenses his mind had erected against whatever was happening.

  Tommy bleeding.

  My hands in his blood, holding down the handkerchief – how did it even get there, how did I even get here?

  Rob screaming.

  He looked at Rob, saw him stumble back, catching himself just before he would have plowed into the thin wire that stretched across the hall.

  What –?

  Then he followed Rob's gaze.

  Screamed.

  Inside the master bedroom they had just left, clearly visible from the hall, stood a figure.

  Something about the person's posture told Aaron that it was a man. But the outline and stance were all he had to go on, because the man had no face.

  He was dressed all in black. Head to toe, he looked almost like a fifth, previously unknown member of the team of thieves that had invaded this place. He even wore pants that bulged with extra pockets.

  Black, all black, all shadow in the shadowed space of the room beyond the door at the end of the hall.

  His face was covered by a mask. The mask was so white it seemed to glow – and after only an instant Aaron realized it was glowing. Not the green glow of most glow-in-the-dark paints, the mask had been treated with something that made it a bright white wound in the darkness. Made it stand out like the terrifying reality of a nightmare that simply won't let go.

  The perfect whiteness of the mask was broken by three black holes: two downward crescents that lay beside each other, and one larger, upward-tilting crescent. It was a Greek theater mask. The mask that symbolized comedy, half of a duality – comedy and tragedy – that the Greeks used to represent the sum of all emotion.

  His mind, suddenly spinning, wondered where the tragedy might be found.

  His mind, suddenly spinning, feared he might find out soon.

  The man in the mask raised a hand. His arm turned to an upright square and then he slowly waved. His arm seemed to sway back and forth, caught in an eddy that no one else could feel. With the mask standing out in such stark relief, the gesture was a mockery of goodwill.

  He heard Kayla gasp out a quick, "What the –"

  The end of her sentence swallowed in sound as Kayla screamed again. This time the scream wasn't surprise or terror, it was a sudden rage. The sound of a wild animal that went to sleep free and woke in a cage.

  She was up and running before her sharp screech ended. She didn't seem to remember the gun in her hand, either, just ran at the happyface figure in the master bedroom. She got up speed in only a few steps, her legs pumping faster than Aaron would have thought possible in such a short time. She ran three steps, four, five… then Kayla bounced off nothing but air.

  Aaron heard the distinctive crack of a nose breaking. Blood arced from her face, and hung in the empty air where she had come to so sudden a stop.

  Rob moved as she fell. He stepped aside, allowing her to crumple in a graceless heap on the floor, then approached the spot where the blood hung in the air –

  (What's going on, how is any of this happening?)

  – and put his hands up. One held his gun, the other clutched his flashlight. As he reached out, in the instant his hands stopped in midair, something glinted. A reflection from a transparent wall that cut across the hall, creating a wall even more invisible than had been the wire that slashed Tommy's leg.

  "How did this get –" began Rob. Then he stopped himself, raised the gun, and fired at Happyface.

  The bullet-whine shrieked, but in the wrong direction. The buzz of an angry hornet sizzled past Aaron's ringing ears. Rob went down at the same moment, and several stunned seconds passed before Aaron realized what had happened.

  Not just glass. Bulletproof. Maybe plexiglass or polycarbonate or –

  WHAT THE HELL DOES IT MATTER WHAT IT IS?

  Rob moaned. He sat up and touched the sticky streak on his temple where the bullet passed after bouncing off the invisible wall; he had come this close to canoeing his own skull.

  Aaron looked at Happyface.

  The figure waved again. And it was Aaron's imagination –


  (has to be my imagination has to be what's going on am I going crazy what's happening?)

  – but the dark smile seemed somehow to widen. The unmoving blackness of the man's mouth seemed to speak to him.

  I'm going to kill you. Kill you all, and it will be just. So. FUN!

  21

  Perfect night.

  Perfect night, so why was it wrong, why was there that sound why was there so much screaming?

  TJ woke and his hand flung out automatically but there was nothing but sheets and blankets beside him. An empty bed that had been full only a few minutes ago.

  Was it minutes? Did I fall asleep? Did she? How long have I been here?

  That jerked him nearly to full wakefulness; made him sit upright in bed, shaking off the last of the sleep that had grabbed him.

  Don't wanna get found.

  He was half into his pants before he realized that something specific had pulled him out of his slumber. Something completely unrelated to the sleep-soaked fear that Sue's parents might find him in here.

  Something that didn't belong.

  He looked at the bed, and it only registered that he was alone in the same moment that the second scream came.

  Where's Sue?

  Panic drove the breath from his body.

  Several more screams sounded.

  Then something louder. So loud, even through the closed door, that it made him wince and step back.

  A gunshot.

  TJ knew what guns sounded like. He heard them a lot in his neighborhood – a place where on some streets the kids did their homework or watched TV on the floor. Sitting on a couch or at a table was an open invitation to get hit by stray bullets from drive-bys or drug disputes or just the random arguments that could so easily escalate when the added pressure of a life without hope was tossed in.

  Nothing beautiful happened where he lived. That's why Sue had been such a surprise. Her car had broken down and the tow truck took her to the nearest garage – the place where TJ worked. Her presence alone wasn't a surprise – in one of those quirks of big city life, the ghetto world he inhabited was only a few miles away from one of the most expensive shopping malls around, so expensive cars driven by expensive people were not unusual at the garage.

  The surprise was that she noticed him. Usually the kind of people who drove cars that got towed in from a few miles to the west were the kind of people who expected nothing to inconvenience them. They paid not to be inconvenienced – personal assistants who not only arranged their schedules, but picked up and dropped off their dry cleaning; nannies to watch whatever children they'd cranked out as a self-commentary on their own value to society; cars that were expensive enough that any performance less than perfection was not just unacceptable, but offensive.

  Usually those people came in angry, got angrier when they saw the kind of place they'd been towed to, and raged once they heard what the problem was with their cars.

  Not Sue. She'd just asked if she could be told as soon as possible what the problem was. She said she'd be happy to wait until then.

  No one like her had ever stayed for the outcome. They all called cabs and hightailed it out as quickly as possible, like they were afraid poverty was a disease they might catch if they stayed in this place long enough. Sue didn't call a cab or a friend or a rich daddy (and TJ'd been working at the garage long enough to know they all had a rich daddy). She went into the "waiting room" that was more of a "broom closet with seats," sat down in one of the two vinyl seats against the dirty wall, and began leafing through a copy of Motor Trend that TJ was pretty sure featured the Model-T as the Best Car of the Year.

  TJ figured out what was wrong with the car – enough metal shavings in the oil to cover a junkyard magnet and a spun rod as a consequence. It wasn't normal to find that, and he figured he must be looking at a super-rich bitch whose "employees" (what he'd learned was the modern name for slaves) had taken some petty revenge on her while the car was parked at L'Estate de Familia.

  He went into the waiting room, noting what she was reading – another surprise since it wasn't the expected view of a woman with her nose deep in her iPhone 18 or whatever model they were up to now. When he told her what the problem was, she asked if it could be fixed quickly, and when he told her it was going to take a specialist and a couple days, she neither ranted at him nor cursed the horrible luck that was going to have her slumming some other car that would cost enough to feed a family of four for several years. She just asked if he would be so kind as to drive her home.

  She said it like that, too. "Would you be so kind?" There was no tremor in her voice. She wasn't angry, wasn't even afraid – which a pretty, rich, white girl should have been in this part of the city. She just asked if he would take her home.

  TJ almost laughed. Almost asked if she thought this was a cab service.

  He didn't. He just told Ernesto he'd be back when he got back, then got his car – a junker 1980 Datsun Bluebird that smelled heavily of oil and only held together thanks to the serious intercession of duct tape and baling wire – and walked her to it.

  Again, surprise: she didn't recoil at the car, didn't shrink from placing her Special Flower body against the worn seats. She just got in.

  He closed the door for her. It wasn't like she waited for him to do it, like she expected it – he just reached out and started closing the door while saying, "You all the way inside?" She flashed him a quick smile and nodded, and he didn't feel like a servant before a Lady, he felt for the first time in his life like a man. Not an easy feeling for a guy who grew up with a mom who still disappeared to crack houses whenever she could manage it, and with a father whose identity he'd never known.

  He liked it, though. Liked it a lot. It made him think all the way to her "house" – which was bigger than five of Ernesto's garages put together – what it would be like to have someone like her in his life. Someone he could worship, but that would be okay because it would be someone worth worshipping.

  He wished he could ask her out. Knew that it would never happen. She was from a different world, a different universe entirely. People from different universes don't mix.

  He didn't ask her out.

  So she asked him, instead.

  He was so stunned he didn't answer for – well, it seemed like forever. She didn't move. Just stood there outside his car, one hand on the sill of his open window, leaning in so close he could smell her hair.

  That was the clearest memory he had of that day – her hair. It smelled like some flower. He didn't know what flower it was, but he knew he would remember it for the rest of his life. The day a princess came down the castle steps and asked for his company.

  He finally nodded, drove off – and it was nearly an hour before he realized he hadn't gotten her number, she hadn't gotten his. No way it would happen now.

  He wanted to turn around and drive back, but knew she would have come to her senses by now, and didn't want to face the humiliation of asking for something he would never get.

  He went back to work. Ernesto only screamed at him for ten minutes, which meant he still had a job – also more than he deserved.

  He'd never see her again. That was all right, he guessed. Not just because they didn't belong together, but because the memory alone might be enough to get him through the craptastic thing he called a life.

  He finished work about nine that night. Ernesto didn't pay by the hour, he paid by the job – not strictly legal, but hardly the type of thing TJ could complain about – and there were a couple tough ones that he had to finish if he hoped to have enough dough for splurging on food or rent.

  He tossed his tools in their boxes. Wiped his hands on some shop towels that had forgotten what color they originally were, then walked out the back door. Headed back to the Bluebird that was so emblematic of his life.

  And she was there.

  He stopped in his tracks when he saw her – leaning not against the shiny Mercedes nearby, but against his own car – and for the sec
ond time that day his mouth hung open and he couldn't speak.

  She shrugged. "I didn't know when you'd get around to calling me, and I wanted to see you." Then, incredibly, she looked embarrassed, as though suddenly unsure; as though she were the one imposing on him. "I hope you don't mind."

  He strode forward, grabbed her in his arms, and kissed her.

  It wasn't a conquest. It wasn't a proof that he could do it – most of his friends approached women with one of those two things as their goal at all times.

  This wasn't anything so easy. It was….

  It was catching a dream. Wrapping around and holding tight to it in the one moment it impossibly solidified into a reality.

  She kissed him back.

  He saw her every chance he could after that. He was twenty, she was only seventeen, but coming from a place where girls regularly turned up pregnant at twelve, the difference in their ages didn't bother him overmuch.

  And it wasn't like they'd ever had sex. He was interested, sure – his body literally ached with desire sometimes. But she wasn't ready, he could feel that. And he wouldn't make a move until she did.

  Which was what made tonight so perfect. She'd been dropping veiled hints for a long time. Just little words or looks that said she was considering moving their relationship to a new, far more physical level.

  When she told him to come by her room – not her house, but her room – tonight, he knew it was happening.

  He'd met her parents on several occasions. She'd never snuck out to meet him, never seemed ashamed of him in any way. When she invited him to pick her up the first time, he expected to meet her at the gate or at a servants' quarters or something. But the gate swung open and he heard her voice on the intercom saying, "Come on up to the house, TJ!" and Mr. and Mrs. Crawford were cordially waiting inside the foyer.

  They were nice. They didn't seem overly worried about where he came from or why their daughter would bother with him.

  Still, he got a weird vibe from them. Like they were judging something about him that not even he was aware of. They were all smiles and kindness, offered him food or drink, but he still got a case of the heebies that brought along its pal, jeebies.