The House That Death Built

by Michaelbrent Collings

  But it never bothered him. Not like it did now.

  But it's not the pain that hurts, it's the nothing.

  That was it. The pain around the cut to his lower leg was actually minimal. But there was a distressing cold that had gathered there and was now reaching icy fingers up into his thigh, arcing toward his groin. The cold wasn't painful, either, it was just numb. The numb scared him, because what would happen when it got to his heart?

  He was pretty sure he had severed an artery when he ran into that wire. He had twisted slightly as he fell, and the wire had cut not just into his shin, but wrapped partly around the back of his leg, hacking into the calf muscle.

  Are there even arteries back there?

  Think so. Yeah. Remember that guy you cut a few years ago? How fast he bled out?

  "What's going on?" His sister's voice was ghostly, lost in the darkness of the landing. She sounded like she was already half-dead.

  Tommy looked at Rob. Aaron's red flashlight was still on, and Rob's masked face was a black, bloody skull in the light.

  Already dead. We're already dead. All of us.

  Rob looked unsure. Tommy had never seen him like this. Completely lost, nearly unhinged.

  "I… I don't," he began. Then his mouth slammed shut and some of the steel returned to his eyes. He turned toward the stairs.

  "What are you doing?" said Aaron.

  "Going up, dumbass," said Rob.

  One of the dogs slammed into the hall door again. Another thing that Tommy had never seen – he knew about pit bulls, but how were these so big? How was all this even possible?

  Rob looked pointedly at Aaron, then back at the door. "Unless you'd rather try your luck that way."

  The cold reached a bit higher. "Oh, damn," Tommy whispered. His skin stretched tight and clammy over his bones. "I think I'm in real trouble here."

  Kayla looked like she was going to say something – not to tell him it would all be all right or anything so simple. She wasn't the type. Whatever she said, he had a feeling it would be a slap to the face of whatever hope any of them still had.

  Whatever it was, she didn't say it. In the next moment, a sound cut her off. It was a strange, ratcheting noise - a sound like an old movie projector might make, deepened to a low roar and amplified a hundred times.

  Click… click… click-click-click –

  The noise was coming from the floor right in front of the door to the hall. Everyone instinctively crowded backward, none of them quite willing to get on the attic stairs, but no one wanting to be too close to the noise, either. Whatever it was, it wasn't a good sound, Tommy knew that in his bones.

  Click-click-click-cli –

  Then the sound of shattering wood and the screech of metal rang through the space. A line of ten-inch nails slammed up through the floor of the landing right in front of the attic door. They stretched from one wall to the other, and were about six inches deep, each nail placed an inch or so from its closest neighbors.

  Anyone standing there when it happened would have been skewered up to the shins.

  Click-click-click-cli –

  Another set of nails slammed through the floorboards. Another six-inch-deep section of the landing disappeared, replaced by a bed of sharp points.

  Click-click-cli –

  "Up! Get up the stairs!" Rob shouted.

  No one had to be told twice.

  They ran as fast as they could. Kayla moved with him onto the steps, and together they blocked the way past. Good thing, since this way Rob was pushing them, helping them move faster.

  He was pretty sure, if Rob could have, he would have left them behind to die.

  Can't blame him. I'd do the same.

  The nails shattered the floorboards, chewing up the remainder of the landing. Then they began following Tommy and the others right up the stairs.

  Click-click-cli – SLAM. And the first step dissolved.

  Click-click-cli – SLAM. The next step. Faster.

  The next one.

  Tommy pushed Kayla and Tommy as hard as he could, but heard the nails coming faster and faster behind them. Aaron was following them all at the end, and Tommy was pretty sure he wasn't going to make it.

  Kayla suddenly abandoned her spot below his arm.

  Bitch.

  She threw herself up the last step, rolling as far away from the stairs as she could. Rob shoved Tommy with panicked strength, and Tommy tripped the rest of the way up the stairs, rolling himself – though not as gracefully as his sister had done.

  Rob was out of the stairwell a moment later, tossing himself away from the stairs and the spikes that were devastating them. He rolled over to look at the mouth of the stairwell.

  At Aaron.

  The last man on the stairs –

  (Click-click-cli – SLAM. And the step right behind Aaron's feet was impaled to oblivion.)

  – looked ahead. But Tommy could see it in his eyes. He wasn't going to make it, and he knew he wasn't.

  Click-click-cli –

  At the last moment, the last instant, Aaron jumped. Not forward – he was too far away from the end of the stairwell to make it – but up.

  SLAM. The steel spikes went up in perfect sync with him, spearing into the air as he jumped, drawing his knees toward his chest for more height.

  Then he began to fall again.

  The spikes did not.

  Tommy, hurt as he was, couldn't help but stare. He liked to watch things die.

  And Aaron was definitely going to die.

  25

  A flurry of thoughts went through Aaron's mind during the few mad seconds of running.

  The house he'd grown up in.

  His mom and dad, both dead.

  Dee, waking him up with a kiss nearly every day of their marriage.

  The days she hadn't kissed him, because she was in the hospital or just too weak to move.

  He remembered, suddenly and strangely, the look Rob gave him earlier in the night, the veiled hints that he would kill Dee.

  For some reason, that look no longer struck him as terrifying. He wondered if he might have been able to do something if he'd just stood up to Rob. Told him to go to hell and walked out.

  And then the thoughts dissolved the way the stairs were dissolving, flitted madly away like the remnants of balloons popped not by a pin but by ten-inch spears.

  Click-click-cli – SLAM.

  It sounded like gears shifting each time, some mechanism he couldn't see rolling into place below his feet. It gave him a second to know the next nails were coming, an instant to wonder if this was the one that would finally outrun him.

  Click-click-cli – SLAM.

  Kayla and Tommy disappeared from his sight as they launched themselves forward and upward, off the stairs.

  Click-click-cli – SLAM.

  Rob was gone.

  Click-click-cli – SLAM.

  Aaron jumped. There was no way to make it off the stairs, so he didn't try. He jumped straight up, and below him the air itself was shoved aside to make way for something coming through it bullet-fast.

  He hung there in midair. An impossible minute. More thoughts –

  (dee's smile the way she looks at me when she's mad the way she looks at me when we make love rob's face and why oh why didn't i just tell him to go to hell)

  – tumbled and jumbled their way through his mind.

  He fell.

  The spikes were below. Below and –

  (Click-click-cli – SLAM.)

  – ahead and nowhere to land but death. Falling on the nails with his body weight, falling forward and impaling legs and chest and neck and face with the others and then dying stuck to them like a bug on a display board.

  (dee's smile)

  He jerked in midair. His legs splayed out, the soles of both feet finding their way to either side of the stairwell. They hit the walls and he shifted his ankles so the soles were pressed as flat against the walls as he could get them. His hands mirrored the motion, each hand goin
g out as far as it could, each palm finding an opposite wall.

  He pressed with hands and feet as hard as he could. The wall slid under his gloves, his feet kept slipping down. Too fast, too far.

  Gonna die.

  The death would be worse this way, too. No sudden pain, no quick shearing of flesh. He was going to hit the nails slowly, they were going to drive through him by the slow force of his body weight alone.

  The wall still slid.

  The nails pushed through the side of his right shoe. Blood began to trickle.

  And he stopped falling.

  He looked down. His left foot was planted hard against the stairwell wall on that side, and had slowed to a stop only an inch or so above the line of nails below. His right foot had stopped at the line – the feeling he had of the nails ripping through his skin was real. He had sunk down to the nails on that side, and they had pierced the downturned side of his shoe, pricking his flesh. Not badly, though. Just enough to hurt.

  Just enough to make it hard to stay where he was.

  His arms began to shake. He couldn't stay like this long.

  He looked forward. Rob was looking at him, jaw open like he'd just witnessed a miracle: not Jesus walking on water, but a thief walking on air and steel.

  Tommy was looking at him, too, pain and interest warring in the big man's eyes.

  He wants me to die. He'll enjoy it.

  The thought drove away the sudden fatigue in his arms and legs. He leaned his body weight forward, jerked his hands away from the walls, then repositioned them against the wall about a foot ahead and a foot above where they had been.

  The hard part: he did the same thing with his feet. It wasn't just that his hands were bearing his bodyweight with nothing more than his upper body strength and friction on their side, it was the fire that lit in his right foot when he pulled it away from the nails on that side. He would have sworn he heard a sucking, tearing sound.

  Then he was loose. Everything fell on his hands. He jerked his feet forward. Up. A horrible moment when they scrabbled against the walls, failed to gain purchase.

  Dee. She's waiting for me.

  His feet jerked into place. He repeated the motion, traversing the area above the last five steps – all of which had disappeared before the onslaught of the nails. The sounds had stopped: whatever had happened, it only happened to the stairs. The attic was safe.

  For now.

  The small voice in his head was clear on this. There was no way this was over. No way the nails were all there was.

  What about the note?

  The card from the safe was still in his pocket, along with the bit of – what was it, a photo? – that it had held inside.

  those who have nothing cannot be robbed

  He actually frowned as he crawl-climbed his way up the stairwell. Wondering what it meant. Wondering what was happening.

  Wondering what would be next.

  The last step of the way was hardest. Almost to the top of the stairs – at the top, really – but the wall on one side of the stairwell ended and there were still spikes below him and now no real way to get forward and over them. Rob or Kayla could have given him a hand and he could have made it that last little bit with ease. But neither of them showed any inclination to move closer to the steps.

  "Help," he managed through gritted teeth. No one moved.

  Tommy actually smiled. Aaron could see the blood still pooling under his leg, could see the man's lips growing paler and paler, but still Tommy found some sick pleasure in what was happening.

  Forget it. Just go.

  Get home to Dee.

  He braced his hands, then pulled his feet up an extra few inches. After they were firmly against the walls, he let go with his hands and lunged forward as hard as he could.

  It was almost too hard. Instead of an awkward jump, the force of his push tore his feet loose from where they were pressed and he did a clumsy layout, his body going more or less parallel to the stairs, his lower half still hanging over the spikes even though his upper half was beyond them.

  I'll only be maimed and crippled. Not killed.

  Hooray for me!

  He fell.

  And a hand grabbed him. Yanked him forward and away from the stairs.

  He landed with his rear toe touching the final line of nails. His whole body ached worse than it ever had – not just the actual exertion of what he'd done, but the palpable reality of how close he was to death.

  He shuddered. The hand that had pulled him forward disentangled itself from his own. He looked at Kayla as she wiped her gloved hand on her chest, as though his own hand had been covered in grease.

  "Thank you," he said.

  "Don't," she answered. "Just help get us out of here."

  That made sense. She didn't care about him, any more than Tommy did. But she was perhaps the most pragmatic of the group. She'd help him stay alive as long as that seemed to improve her chances of getting through… whatever this was.

  I can live with that.

  You just did live with that.

  "Thank you," he said again.

  She rolled her eyes. Then turned her flashlight beam on Rob. "Where did you bring us, Rob?"

  Aaron nodded. "How did you find this guy?"

  Rob's eyes flashed. Angry the way only a guilty man can be. "Same way I found all of them. Waited for the idiot to tell me about himself, give me his address, show that he's a good mark."

  Rob stared them down for a moment. Aaron looked away first, staring down at Tommy. The big man had slumped backward and was now flat on his back on the floor. Aaron knelt beside him. Fumbled for the wound on his leg, not sure what he could do or even if anything could be done at all, but Tommy knocked his hand away hard enough that it bruised him.

  "Don't you goddam touch me!" he shouted hoarsely. The words themselves seemed to exhaust him, and he slumped again.

  Aaron looked back at Rob and Kayla, who were still engaged in a staring contest, standing a foot away with nothing but air and threat between them.

  Rob was the first to blink. He swung his light around, and Aaron caught sight of two naked lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling rafters: one at each end of the huge and (as far as he could see) empty attic.

  Rob saw them, too, and turned his light to the side. Near the stairwell was a light switch. Rob flicked it.

  The bulbs didn't turn on.

  Instead, there was a sharp double-pop – not as loud as a gunshot, but certainly loud enough to make Aaron's ears ring in the closed space of the attic. He reacted instinctively, throwing himself to the floor beside Aaron.

  He heard the swish of something small moving past his head. Heard sounds similar to – though smaller than – the noises the nails had made when they came up through the wood steps.

  Kayla screamed. A moment later, so did Rob. Tommy shrieked as well.

  Over faster than it began. One moment there was a bright light followed by something that happened so quickly Aaron couldn't understand it. He sat up and looked around. Rob's light had spun across the floor, and now sat at the top of the once-stairs, illuminating the area enough for Aaron to see what had just happened.

  Enough for Aaron to see that the stairs were just the beginning.

  26

  TJ didn't see anything but Susan. Didn't hear anything but her raspy breathing as she tried to pull air in and out of her damaged throat.

  Hurt. But alive.

  He hugged her. Held her so tight he thought he might hurt her. She held him back, though, just as tight.

  Then stiffened.

  He looked at her, fearful that the hanging might have caused some other pain.

  Can you get nerve damage like that?

  He didn't know. He was good with cars, but people were a mystery.

  He looked at Sue, terrified he would see her eyes open and unseeing; that the clenching of her muscles would turn out to be a final spasm before death.

  Her eyes were open, but they were definitely seeing somet
hing. They looked over his shoulder. Wide, shocked, terrified.

  He turned. Slowly. Afraid he was going to see whoever had strung her up from the lamp, come back to see the job done right this time – and come to make him watch.

  No one was there. No person who could have done this.

  No person.

  Instead, he found himself staring eye-to-eye at the largest pit bull he had ever seen. The thing had to be three feet tall at the shoulders, and long enough that if he went up on hind legs, he'd be able to lick TJ's face with ease.

  Or bite my face off.

  He twisted, facing the dog while keeping Susan behind him. The dog was staring straight at him. Just staring. And for some reason that was more terrifying than any growl.

  There were more pit bulls behind that one, too. They were all milling around a closed door, taking turns scratching at it. Occasionally one would take a flying leap at the door, smashing into it with a shoulder or just bulling into it headfirst.

  Sue's gasps had changed. No longer the sound of pained breathing, this was terror flooding in and out of her. He knew, because that's what he was feeling himself.

  The pit bull that was staring at them didn't move. It was a statue. But TJ knew that the instant he got bored, they'd be dead meat. He thought about turning and running with Sue back to her bedroom, but rejected the idea. The dog would bring them down before they got halfway there.

  So all that was left was for her to run to the room. He'd stay behind. There was no hope of standing up to a monster like that – let alone four of them – but maybe he could buy her a bit of time. Enough.

  "Get ready to –" he began, then stopped.

  The air was dirty.

  He squinted, not sure how he could be seeing what he was seeing – but there it was. Some kind of smudge just hung there in midair between him and the dog. It was even… was it dripping?

  It was. And even though it was dark, the absence of light turning everything to varying shades of gray, even so he could tell what color the smudge would have been in the daylight: bright red. Blood.

  The dog seemed to notice the impossibly-located spot at the same time. It went back on hind legs and placed its forepaws –