Kayla bridled. "You thought it was a joke?"
She moved toward the girl again. The kid got between them, and Kayla scooped up the glass from where she had dropped it. Slashed it toward his throat –
And Aaron grabbed her arm, stopping the edge only a few inches from the young man's throat.
"Not now," he said. He looked at Susan. "Did your parents say what the point was? What the traps are?"
"Just that the front door was the only way out."
The toilet burbled. Water came out of it faster.
Aaron tried to ignore it as he thought. Trying to figure out what was going on, how to get through all this, why they were here, and how to beat the maze they had found themselves trapped within.
The water bubbled up from the toilet faster. Faster. The seat was dancing a mad tattoo off the rim below.
A moment later, the sinks and tub faucet all turned on. The shower turned on as well, all of them splashing water into sinks, into tubs. It was coming faster than it should have, the water spewing out in torrents. In only a few seconds water was spilling over the edges of the twin basins in the sink. The tub was over half full. Water was also spilling out from the bottom edges of the sink cabinets.
A quarter-inch of water sloshed against their feet.
"No timer," Aaron murmured.
He dropped to his hands and knees and began feeling around the edges of the door to the hall. Someone inhaled sharply behind him, no doubt sure he was going to be burnt, beaten, otherwise harmed by the contact.
Nothing happened.
He felt the bottom of the door, then stood and began feeling the frame, finally moving to the sinks. He plunged his hands into the basins, feeling something below the water.
"There's some kind of seal – doors, sinks, all plugged," he said.
"What does that mean?" the young man said. He looked at Rob. "What does he mean?"
Rob looked down at the water at their feet. Half-inch deep.
Water started cascading over the side of the tub.
"It means that water's coming in," said Rob, "but none's going out."
The water was an inch deep.
And rising.
35
Rob didn't want to look. Didn't want to stare.
But he couldn't help it.
TJ. TJ's here. What's he doing here?
Of course the answer was simple: TJ was here for him. Rob was the one driving all this. It was all about him.
My luck hasn't changed after all.
He forced himself to look away from TJ. Then the kid spoke, and the sound drew his gaze like a magnet. "So, what, we're gonna drown in toilet water?"
The teen girl laughed. The high-pitched, desperate laugh of someone gone mad.
Rob barely noticed. Another look at TJ.
How did he get here?
At that moment, the toilet started shaking. The shaking turned from a tremble to a full wobble as the fixture started dancing back and forth on its base.
Then it exploded. A jet of high-pressure water drove toward the ceiling, and everyone in the bathroom ducked as chunks of porcelain – some of them as big as Rob's head – flew through the air.
One of the biggest pieces almost hit him. He ducked away, and as he did he realized it was different than the rest. Not white, but dark. Rougher-seeming than the cleanly-sheared white pieces the rest of the toilet had broken into.
The piece fell to the floor.
The girl screamed.
Not a piece of the toilet. And there was a reason for its shape, for its size.
It was a severed head.
The head rolled across the floor, though the water that now came up to everyone's ankles. It came to rest in a corner beside the tub. Hair spread out from the head in a red halo. The eyes of the woman were wide, the face frozen in a shriek of terror and pain.
Everyone had pressed themselves away from the gory sight, pushing into walls as though they might simply shove themselves away from the nightmare that had trapped them.
Everyone but Kayla. She leaned forward, frowning as she looked at the head. "Nikki?" she said.
Rob looked at Kayla in surprise. "Who's Nikki?"
"Nikki's the one who gets the blueprints for the houses we're gonna hit. She works for the records department at city hall."
Everyone was silent as that sunk in.
This isn't just about me, after all.
It's about all of us.
He looked at Aaron. The other man had come to the same conclusion. So had Kayla.
TJ and the Crawford girl didn't understand. They just stared at the head in the corner with nauseated expressions.
The head began to float in the water that rapidly approached – then passed – their thighs.
"They knew we were coming," Rob finally managed. "Us." He looked at TJ when he said that last.
Again, Aaron noticed. Again, he didn't say anything. No time for questions. Which was good, because the only answers Rob could possibly give were ones he didn't want to admit.
TJ moved toward one of the walls. And it was as though everyone else had been waiting for permission. They all exploded into motion, slogging toward walls, looking for a way out through any surface possible.
Only the Crawford girl remained motionless, pressed so tightly against one of the walls she looked like a hanging sculpture. Eyes vacant, mind somewhere safer and happier.
Rob fought his way through the water –
(Past my waist!)
– to where the toilet had been. Water was still jetting out of the base of the toilet, but the level of the water in the room had risen so high that the jet no longer arced through the air, but only created a frothy storm at the surface.
Rob pounded on the wall. Any other place his fist would have crashed through the drywall. But the wall here was hard – some kind of plastic or maybe even metal below the paint. Other than bruised knuckles, he didn't get anything out of punching the wall, and stopped after a few moments.
"Anything?" he called over his shoulder.
"No!" screamed Aaron, followed quickly by Kayla, whose shouted obscenities were answer enough.
Aaron was staring at Susan. He looked so surprised and suddenly hopeful that Rob more than half expected a cartoon lightbulb to appear over his head.
Aaron spun to TJ. "How'd you guys get in that closet?"
TJ barely noticed the question. He was hammering in vain on the door to the hall. "What?" he screamed.
"The closet. You guys just… appeared. How?"
"There was some tunnel. Went under and came out –"
"You went under the floor?"
"I think so, yeah, I –"
Aaron spun to Rob. Hard to do because the water was up to his chest now. "It's what was wrong."
Rob's brow wrinkled. "Whaddya mean?"
"You said something about the kitchen was wrong. But it wasn't the kitchen, it's the whole house. The rooms are smaller than they should be."
He pulled out his pry bar. "So?" said Rob.
"So there are spaces for the traps, for the machinery they'd need." He started slamming his pry bar into the wall. "There are voids in the walls. We can break through and make drains!"
"It won't work!" shouted Rob. "The walls are –"
An electronic popping interrupted him. The buzz of a speaker, and Happyface's voice jarred its way into the room. "I know what it's like to drown, you know. Oh, not literally. But there are so many different ways to drown. Some worse than others."
Rob's feet left the floor as the water level rose to the point where buoyancy overpowered gravity.
It was only a foot from the ceiling. They were all treading water now, even the Crawford girl jerked partially out of her shell-shocked demeanor by the water's rise.
They swam in a series of small circles, everyone bumping into everyone as they darted back and forth, looking for an escape that would never come.
Then Aaron stopped moving.
The water was only inches from the
ceiling. Rob had to tilt his head to keep breathing.
"The seals!" Aaron shouted.
"What?"
Aaron couldn't answer, because the voice came again. Happyface. "Drowning. It's the sensation of having nowhere to go. No one that you can possibly turn to for help."
Aaron splashed over to the door. He reached below the level of the water, and Rob could vaguely make out his hands, pry bar jabbing at the thin line between the frame and the door.
"The door opens out, remember?" Aaron shouted. "If we can break the seals, maybe the weight of the water will be enough to force the door open!"
Rob didn't have to wait for an invitation, and neither did Kayla. They both had their own pry bars out, they both started working on the seals.
Then, suddenly, there was no way to stay above the water.
They each took a last breath and dived. Pry bars still picking desperately around the outer edge of the door to the hall.
Happyface spoke again, waterproof speakers somewhere sending his voice into the water around them, the water swirling the sound around so it seemed to come from all directions at once. "Drowning is knowing you're going to die. Then not knowing you're going to die –"
Something cracked beneath Rob's pry bar. He moved with renewed vigor, trying to ignore the pounding in his head, the feeling like someone was pressing on his chest. Bubbles drifted out of Kayla's mouth and he knew she had only seconds before her body took control and made her inhale.
"– not knowing you're going to die, no. But terrified you won't." Happyface's voice was silent for a moment, then he spoke the final words. "No more games. You're all going to die."
Rob sensed motion nearby. He turned his head and now bubbles escaped from the Crawford girl's mouth and nose. She inhaled. Began convulsing in the gravity-less environment of a room full of water.
CRACK.
The noise of shredding wood, of architecture giving way, filled the water the same way Happyface's voice had done. But where his words had brought dread, the mechanical tone the sound of a demon spawned from a nightmare Hell, this sound made Rob's heart leap. He looked to where Aaron had managed to get his pry bar into the seal between the hall door and the frame.
Another crack as he pulled to one side. Then a third as he reversed the motion.
And then the door seemed to explode. Rob was jerked toward the opening with all the force that fifty thousand gallons could exert. He hit Kayla on the way out, her head spinning into the doorframe with a dull thock that could only barely be heard over the rush of the water.
Then he was out. Into the hall, water still coursing around him, then streaming, then trickling. He coughed, water exploding from his nose and dripping off his clothes, from his hair.
The joy of escape quickly turned to fear. "Where's my gun? Where's my gun?" he asked, scrambling around on hands and knees, swishing through water that still rained from the bathroom, waiting to hear the snuffle and growl of the giant dogs that had driven them into the beginning of this house of traps.
No. The beginning was the moment we stepped in the house.
Kayla spoke, addressing the fear that drove him to scramble around on hands and knees. "Where are the dogs?"
Rob stopped moving. Listened. There was only the low gurgle of the water. Then even that was gone. The water still trickled past, but it was silent and above the nothing-sounds he could hear no dogs, no growls, no sounds of death on four legs.
Kayla stood. She weaved on her feet, still shaking off the effects of a near-drowning. But hope shone in her eyes. The obvious belief that, having beaten certain death by drowning, she could make it out.
She started toward the steps that led to the foyer downstairs, murmuring something as she went. Rob thought it was "front door."
"Kayla, no!" shouted Aaron.
Kayla jerked to a halt. She was on the balcony, figure framed by the balustrade behind her.
"She said the front door was the only way out!" The words came out in a panicked, mad scream. Rob looked at Kayla and saw a complete lack of control, a burgeoning insanity either brought into being or simply brought to the surface by the events of the last minutes.
Minutes. Less than five minutes in each room but the night feels like a lifetime.
"Don't you think they'll expect –"
TJ seemed not to hear any of this. He suddenly grabbed his girlfriend and pulled her toward Kayla. Toward the stairs beyond. He was making a break for it. He hadn't been through the beginning, didn't realize.
TJ, no!
The sight of the young man barreling past him touched something inside Rob. "I ain't playin' this game no more!" he shrieked.
To go down was what they would expect. To move forward was to play into their hands. To go the obvious way… it was death.
So Rob didn't move forward. He went sideways.
He ran to the opposite side of the hallway. To one of the doors they had passed on the way to the master bedroom. He hit it hard. Harder than he thought he could.
The door splintered, and he fell through the sudden opening. He sprawled full-length on the floor, then launched back to his feet
Gotta act. Gotta stop this. Gotta stop it from happening to TJ.
He was in the media room. Rows of theater seats. Popcorn machine in the back.
And Sadface, standing in front of the enormous television.
The television was divided into a ten-by-ten grid, showing what looked like closed-circuit views of every inch of the house.
Sadface turned, and even through the mask he could sense her surprise. Rob heard the sound of someone – Aaron – coming into the room behind him.
Sadface took a step back.
Rob rushed at her. And the only thought in his mind was that he would visit on her a thousand pains for every drop of blood she had helped spill.
He would stop her. He would stop the traps. He would save TJ, save the others, save himself.
His fingers reached for her.
For the first time since all this began, he smiled.
36
TJ shoved the woman out of the way. He didn't know who she was and didn't care. All he knew was that he was getting Sue out of here. Now.
Sue resisted. She pulled back, trailing behind him. Then they were past the other woman –
(the one who tried to hurt Sue tried to stab her cut her with that glass)
– and TJ felt like this would all end. He would get Sue out of here, they would go to the cops and find a way to make everything right.
She thought her parents had done this. Had they? How could something as perfect as Sue come from something as… insane as whoever crafted this house?
No. Not true. Can't be.
As soon as they passed the woman who had tried to hurt Sue, she seemed to find the strength to move forward of her own volition. She was almost pushing him, straining to get out just as much as he was.
Hurry. Hurry. Get out. Get Sue out.
He glanced down. No real reason why, other than that they were almost to the stairs. Wouldn't it be a joke, to get this far, this close, and then fall down the stairs and break a leg?
He wasn't going to let that happen. He'd watch his step. So he looked down…
… in time to see the red dot on his leg. It was thigh-high, a pinprick of light that he instantly knew was a laser beam striking him.
What?
He heard something click. Spun to see a five-foot section of the ceiling detach. It must have been attached by hinges to whatever was above it, because it didn't drop straight down but instead swung in a short arc.
It was headed straight for the woman behind Sue.
It took less than a second for the piece of the ceiling to reach her. Before it hit, TJ saw something shift. The face of the length of wood shimmered. Even rows of metal sprang out from it, snapping into place perpendicular to the ceiling piece. Thousands of them, glinting in a way that left no doubt what they were.
The ceiling piece hit the woman. She turned
her head away, and the three-inch razors that covered the entirety of it smashed right through the balustrade and plunged into her chest, her arms and legs.
The side of her face. Her skull.
She didn't even scream. Just inhaled, then stopped moving. She didn't fall, though, pinned there in midair. She looked oddly peaceful, the razors that had killed her buried on the dark side of her body. Only her open mouth and eyes and the blood already pooling at her feet told TJ she was gone.
It all happened in an instant. Too fast to be completely processed, certainly too fast to be stopped.
Just like what happened next
Another piece of ceiling fell. This one fell in the opposite direction, not arcing inward toward the balcony and balustrade, but outward.
It happened fast. Too fast to be completely processed.
Certainly too fast to be stopped.
No razors snapped out. No death on the face of the board that swung down. Just the flat plane itself.
It hit TJ. It almost felt soft, though his clavicle shattered and his shoulder dislocated. Then any pain he might have felt was swallowed by the sensation of flying through the air. The board was heavy, and it catapulted him forward and up as though he weighed nothing at all. He hit what was left of the balustrade, had an instant to see a stone floor a good twenty feet below, then began to flip over the rail.
I'm going to die.
He jerked to a halt.
His mind didn't process what was happening. Not at first. He was staring up at the ceiling – at the huge chandelier that hung above the foyer. It took him a full second – an eternity when suspended over nothing – to understand what had happened.
Sue.
She had caught him on the edge of the rail. The perfect moment where backward turned into down. She had been wrecked by the night, by whatever was going on, but she had managed to come out of himself in order to catch him. To save him.
He heard something below. Turned his head enough to see the same huge dogs he had seen earlier in the hall below. Looking up. Just looking.
Waiting for dinner to drop from the sky.
He looked back at Susan. Smiled at her. The thought that they were going to have to find a way past the beasts below was pushed out of his mind by simple gratitude.
The House That Death Built Page 17
