The House That Death Built

by Michaelbrent Collings

  He knew his feelings were they weren't judging him, though – he was judging himself. Because he couldn't believe this was happening; couldn't believe that not only had the goddess descended from Heaven, but he'd actually been invited through the pearly gates to greet her family.

  He always came to the front door. Mr. and Mrs. Crawford – he never could call them Jason and Aimee, no matter how much they invited him to – were always waiting. Always offered him refreshment. Always waved goodbye when he and Sue drove off in his Bluebird.

  He always came to the front door.

  Until tonight.

  "Come to my room. I'll be waiting."

  He did. She played at protestation, but her hands traveled all over him as she whispered the words. Desire made her tremble almost as much as he himself was trembling.

  And, when it happened, it was beyond amazing. It was perfect. Just like she was perfect.

  But now his goddess was gone. There were screams in the house, and gunshots, and Sue was gone from the bed where he had fallen asleep, and for a moment he wondered if Mr. Crawford had peeked in on them and seen his daughter wrapped up in the arms of scum and had taken it on himself to end his daughter's shame with a bullet.

  No. He wouldn't. He couldn't. No one could hurt Sue. No one could ever hurt –

  He heard more screaming, and the screaming drove him to the door. He pulled on the door, then remembered it opened out – an architectural quirk he'd never understood but figured had to have something to do with being richer than God – and switched to pulling.

  Still no give.

  "Sue? Susan? SUSAN!"

  He rattled the doorknob as hard as he could, but it might as well have been embedded in a solid wall. There was no give whatever, no matter how hard he pulled.

  He drew back.

  Rammed into the door with his shoulder.

  Nothing.

  "Sue!" He screamed the name over and over, and punctuated every shout with the sound of his body hitting a door that refused to give.

  "Sue!"

  (slam)

  "Sue!"

  (slam)

  "Susan –

  (slam)

  "– where –

  (slam)

  "– ARE YOU?"

  (SLAM)

  There was no answer. He heard voices outside the door, sounds muffled and dim. But nothing like Susan's voice.

  She was gone.

  He kept hitting the door, but knew this was it. The dream was over, the goddess would flee.

  He would be alone.

  And there was no way he could go back to the way it had been. If anything happened he would go back to Ernesto's, get the sawed-off shotgun he kept under the front counter, and blow his brains out.

  But not until he had killed anyone and everyone who so much as touched a hair on Sue's head.

  22

  A moment after the masked freak appeared in the master bedroom –

  (Is that Crawford? What's he doing? Why is this happening to me?)

  – Rob heard a new sound. Screaming. Not Kayla's shrieks of pain and rage, or Tommy's lower screams that throbbed out in time with the blood gushing from his leg.

  It was coming from the room to the right. The girl's room. Not the high-pitched holler of a teen in distress, though. It was low, anguished.

  The guy. Whoever was in there with her.

  Something touched his arm, and Rob screamed and almost started shooting wildly before he saw it was just Aaron. Blood from the wound on his head poured over his temple and dripped over his left eye. Everything had a haze to it, making the whole scene more surreal.

  Aaron wrapped a hand around his bicep, took his forearm in his other hand. He pulled, helped Rob to his feet; even that seemed strange, like it was happening to someone else.

  The freak was still waving. And as soon as Rob looked at him, the mask tilted to the side, as though it had spotted something particularly amusing.

  Rob's gun came up. He knew the bullet had bounced back at him, but what about a lot of bullets? One of them had to punch through.

  There's not even a smear where the last bullet hit. Don't be an idiot.

  Aaron pulled Rob's gun hand down at the last moment. "Let's just get out of here," he said.

  The screaming in the girl's room continued. Someone was shouting, "Sue! Susan!" over and over.

  Rob threw one glance at the happy-faced lunatic in the master bedroom. Still waving.

  And then another figure seemed to appear in the doorway of the master bedroom. Like Happyface, this one was dressed all in black. But it was a shorter figure. A woman. She wore a mask, too, but the downturned half-moon eyes were hung over a downturned mouth. Tragedy. Sadface.

  The Crawfords? Are they doing this? What are they doing? Why are they –

  Sadface was dragging something. A struggling, screaming bundle whose feet kicked helplessly on the carpet as Sadface dragged her by long strands of dark hair.

  The girl from the bedroom. Rob recognized her instantly, as much by her outfit – still in tank top and boxers – as by her hair or face.

  The girl's hands were clamped over Sadface's wrists, trying to alleviate some of the pressure on her scalp as she was hauled into view.

  Not the Crawfords. This can't be them – they wouldn't do this to their own daughter.

  So who is it?

  Someone in the girl's bedroom was still screaming. But Kayla's shouts were gone, and even Tommy's agonized shouts had turned to low gasps. Aaron was absolutely silent.

  They were all captivated. Captured by the horrible sight of something so strange it became truly alien.

  The teen twisted slightly, saw Rob and the others standing beyond the glass. Her screams changed from wordless wails to pleading: "Help me! Help me, please help –"

  Her words ended, punctuated by another scream as Sadface yanked the girl fully into the hall. Happyface followed, his eyes – the eyes of the mask – clearly looking not at the girl or at his companion in madness. They bored into Rob, into his skull and beyond to the darkness of his soul.

  It was that unblinking stare that scared him worse than anything that had gone before.

  Until Sadface reached the lamp.

  The teenage girl was still screaming, shrieking, as Sadface jerked her to the side, yanking her hair so hard that the girl followed it and continued into the wall beyond. She hit hard, a resounding thunk that Rob could feel in the souls of his feet.

  The girl fell, dazed. Her screams became a bloody moan.

  At the same time, Happyface reached up. Up to the lamp – that strange lamp, that lamp that had looked so drab and utilitarian and out-of-place in this house. He stood on tiptoe, fingertips barely making it above the upper lip of the lamp. He pulled his hand back down, two items now clenched in his fist.

  One side was a rope, which he tossed to Sadface.

  The other side was a rope, too. But it ended in a noose.

  Happyface dropped the noose around the teen girl's neck, and any lingering thought that the masked intruders might be her parents disappeared from Rob's mind as Sadface pulled on the rope.

  Something popped out of the ceiling – some kind of pulley system that had been hidden above the lamp. It rolled silently, and as Sadface pulled, the rope yanked the teen girl upward. First to her hands and knees, then to her knees alone. Then to feet.

  And then to nothing.

  The lamp wasn't very high – couldn't have been more than eight feet – but that that was enough to suspend the teen in midair. Her feet kicked only a few inches above the ground, struggling to find the ground that was so close yet completely out of reach.

  "Stop it!" Aaron ran past Rob. He pounded on the glass between them and the dying girl. Between them and the freaks. "Stop it, you're killing her!"

  Happyface moved past the struggling girl. To the glass. He put his hand against it. A creepy gesture, his gloved hand silhouetted against the darkness of the hall. It was almost….

  Familiar. Like
he's still waving. Or raising his arm to embrace us.

  Rob darted forward without thinking. Grabbed Aaron and dragged him back. A tiny part of him was surprised that he would bother with someone like Aaron, but that part was answered by the reptilian, pragmatic – and much larger – portion of his brain that somehow knew they had to stick together.

  Safety in numbers.

  Kayla had apparently come to the same conclusion, because when Rob turned toward her she had already gotten Tommy's arm around her shoulder. She hoisted her brother bodily to his feet, his one leg bearing most of his weight while the rest streamed blood. Tommy's lips were visible beneath his mask, and Rob noted how blue they were and wondered how much more blood the big man could stand to lose.

  No time to worry about that now.

  He shouldered past the two of them, leading the way to the balcony above the foyer, the stairs.

  Time to get going.

  It only took a few steps to reach the balcony. A few more to the right and he was on the first step. His back leg rose, ready to drop to the next step down – one step closer to getting away from whatever the hell this was.

  He froze.

  Something glinted on the steps below. A good twenty feet away, a patch of night that had gathered and pooled into a shadow that stood out sharply even in the dim of a world without lights.

  But still, in that dark… the glimmer.

  Rob wondered what that was. Something jostled him from behind and he realized he had utterly frozen, Kayla and Tommy pushing into him as they kept moving for a moment after he stopped.

  Then they stopped, too. Froze just as he had.

  A deep, menacing sound issued from the shadow. Not just a growl, but a thrum that shivered Rob's bones in his skin.

  The glimmers – eyes – moved up the stairs as the deep noise shifted from a rumble to something akin to an earthquake.

  "Oh, shi –" Kayla began, seeing what the glimmer was in the same moment Rob did.

  A pit bull.

  Rob knew about pit bulls. He'd grown up with a friend whose father was a "dogman" – someone who watched dogfights that were still fought in underground, very illegal competitions throughout the United States. Whenever Rob went over to the place – a crappy tenement apartment he only tolerated because his friend usually had beer on hand, and his father usually shared it – the guy talked about dogs, the fights, the money he'd won and lost.

  Dogfights typically went on until one dog couldn't even scratch its opponent, jumped out of the ring, or was killed outright. And the weapon of choice in the ring was a pit bull. The dogs in the arenas were bred for aggression, typically around fifty pounds of solid muscle, with a bite reflex that would not only clamp down but shake back and forth so that muscle shredded and bone broke.

  Rob saw one dogfight. And it was among the most brutal things he ever witnessed. The winner was bloody from head to toe, one ear chewed off and one eye scratched out. She'd been huge, a female weighing in at sixty-five pounds.

  Huge.

  And the pit bull that was coming up the stairs toward him was easily double her weight. More. It looked almost freakish, a hundred-and-fifty-pound monster bred to match the nightmare wishes of a madman.

  It stepped forward, and as it did another growl joined the first. A second black pit stepped out of the night, just behind the first.

  And a third, a fourth.

  Rob backpedaled, falling more than walking. He toppled into Tommy and Kayla, and their weight was all that kept him from going down on his butt.

  His finger jerked the trigger of his gun. A crappy, reflexive shot that went wide and hit the wall behind the lead pit. Still, it should have spooked the beasts. Should have sent them running or at the very least made them flinch.

  It did neither.

  He glanced back. Aaron was running from door to door in the hall. Trying all the ones that lay on this side of the glass. Locked, locked, locked.

  The teen girl still twisted in mid-air. Her struggles weakening.

  Happyface and Sadface were nowhere to be seen.

  Rob turned back to the pit bulls. They were more than halfway up the stairs. Approaching slowly, confidently.

  "Here!" Rob looked back and saw Aaron standing in front of an open door – the one that had led to the attic.

  Tommy and Kayla were already turned around, hobbling toward him in a macabre imitation of a three-legged race.

  Rob turned back to the pits. They were too close, too frightening. He shot again.

  This time the bullet went where he wanted it to – more or less. It hit the lead pit bull in the shoulder.

  And still it kept coming. Its growl spiked to a painfully high pitch for an instant, then settled back to the throaty sound that signaled an apex predator.

  It ran. Straight for Rob.

  And the others followed.

  He spun, screamed, backpedaled in a manic ballet that had no form or rhythm, no music – just panic, driving him in a leaping dance toward the door that Aaron still held open. The other man gestured for him to move move faster move move –

  MOVE!

  Rob heard them on his heels. Felt the hard puffs of air as they exhaled. A rank smell, the stench of half-rotted beef chewed in too-wide mouths, chased him.

  Rob reached. Grabbed Aaron's hand.

  Aaron jerked him forward and sideways, jamming him into the small landing before the attic steps.

  Rob saw the dogs….

  Saw teeth, white and terrible….

  Jaws snapped open so wide they could sever a man at the waist….

  And Aaron slammed the attic door. It clicked shut, and in the same instant something hit the wood so hard Rob was sure the entire door would simply dissolve before the power of the beast beyond.

  The four of them – Rob, Kayla, Tommy, and Aaron – huddled in terror as the dogs bounced off the door. Time after time, each one sounding like a shotgun blast in the close confines of the stairwell.

  Kayla had her flashlight clenched in the hand that still circled Tommy's waist. She aimed it at each of them, and Rob saw their faces. Still masked, but there was no hiding the terror in their eyes, in the thin set of their mouths.

  Aaron finally spoke the words they were all hearing, the words that had no answer but which needed to be said.

  "What's happening?"

  23

  TJ kept hitting the door, refusing to slow down no matter how much his flesh bruised, no matter how much he screamed inside that it was useless and this was the necessary end of something too good to be true.

  He left a red smear on the door after one of the hits and the farthest part of his mind told him that it was blood; that he had smashed his skin to pieces and was now bleeding all over the perfect paint job.

  He didn't stop. Pain coursed through him, but he didn't stop didn't stop just kept going and didn't –

  Click.

  He had reared back, moving as far as he could with the bed in the way, then took a running start at the door when the sound made it through his fevered mind.

  The door swung open before him.

  He had a single instant to realize that there was no one in the doorway; that no hand had unlocked or opened the door. Then he was through, falling to his knees when the obstacle he had expected simply disappeared.

  He would have fallen farther – would have dropped right to his belly – but something else stopped him. Strange-feeling. Not hard like the door had been. Loose. But still solid.

  Whatever it was moved.

  He wheeled back and finally saw what he had fallen into.

  "Sue!"

  She was dangling from a rope around her neck, a thick cord that continued up above a ceiling lamp above her head.

  She had managed to get the fingers of one hand between the noose and her neck. The other hung listlessly at her side as she devoted what little strength she had left to a feeble kick that would never help.

  TJ launched himself to his feet, wrapped both arms around her waist,
and lifted with all his strength. She weighed nothing at all in his arms. He hoisted her as high as he could, and was relieved when he heard her take in a deep, ragged gasp of air.

  He hoisted her up higher, until his arms were around her hips. Then he let go of her with one arm - still so easy to hold her, even one-handed, like the air she had lost had stolen everything else she had as well – and reached up with the other. He fumbled at her neck, and she cried out as he rubbed his fingers across her abraded skin. He didn't stop, though, not until he had gotten the noose loosened, then lifted it over her head.

  She dropped into his arms. Fell against his embrace. Sobbed.

  "Sue," he said. "Sue, you all right?"

  She kept crying for a moment, and he looked up at the noose that still hung overhead, wondering how it had gotten there and what was going on.

  "Sue?" he repeated. He tried to make his voice soft, but adrenaline turned the word into a shout. "Sue, you okay?"

  Sue finally looked at him. Her eyes were aglow with tears, and the neck of her tank top was stained by blood that had flowed from her neck where the rope tore into it.

  "They did it," she said. "They're doing it. Oh, God, they're doing it."

  24

  Tommy had felt pain before. A lot of it. When he was a kid he was small and he got knocked around by everyone he knew. When he got older, he got bigger, and learned to take pleasure in others' pain. But pain still came for him there, too: bruised knuckles, broken fingers, the occasional tooth knocked out of his jaw when someone fought back harder than expected.

  He liked it. Liked the pain. Not because he enjoyed pain in and of itself – he wasn't some head case – but because of what it inevitably represented.

  Someone who fought, but lost.

  Someone who resisted, but surrendered.

  Someone who was once whole, but whom Tommy had finally broken.

  Pain was a companion, a thing that he led from place to place and visited on others, so it was natural that he would feel it himself as well.