The House

by Christina Lauren

  Oh God.

  Gavin tried to push the thought of this type of physical battle from his head, but he couldn’t. He closed his eyes again and could see the image of him there, at the bottom of the stairs, limbs bent at grotesque right angles, neck turned oddly, eyes open and glassy. Would House prefer that Gavin died, because then he would never leave? The air left his lungs in a rush, and he moved to cover his mouth, swallowing the rise of bile in his throat. This wasn’t House being frustrated or wounded. For the first time in his life, Gavin knew that House was prepared to do whatever it took to keep him there.

  It never had any intention of letting me leave.

  He eyed his bedroom windows, covered with heavy curtains that could easily snare and trap him. He looked directly across the hall, into the open bathroom and the window he’d left wedged open with a block of wood.

  It was still there.

  If he was fast, he might be able to reach it and climb out. If House slammed the frame closed, he would shatter the glass. It was the only clear path. He narrowed his eyes and calculated the distance. Fifteen feet. That was as far as he needed to go. Fifteen feet from where he stood to the bathroom.

  He stared out into the hallway, took a deep breath, and then ran.

  Hallway Table scraped along the floor and planted itself between his body and the door, and he dove under it, sliding along the icy wood floor and out into the hall. His shoulder collided with the wall and it rippled, changing color and then shape right before his eyes, and suddenly, he had no idea where he was. There was supposed to be a hallway on his right, a door right there that led to the bathroom—to the window—and now there wasn’t. It was wallpaper he’d never seen before, covering walls beside a set of doors he’d never opened.

  “Mom!” he screamed. “Are you here? Mom!” The scratchy, hysterical cry was a sound he’d never made before. He pounded on the wall, sliding his hands along the smooth surface as he struggled to make his way down the rippling hallway.

  With no other choice, Gavin sprinted in the opposite direction, toward the stairs and the front door. The floor bucked up in front of him, the wooden planks parting with an earsplitting crack, and rose as if standing, melding into a solid wooden wall, forming door after door after door. He reached for one and then another, throwing them open to find a crooked staircase that rose up to nothing, a brick wall, a freezing black abyss.

  Behind him, the entire house shook, and it was so cold that Gavin could see his own breath, feel the burn of frost beneath his fingertips. The floor started to tip, and he felt himself slide backward, calling out for his mother the entire time. His fingers scrambled to find purchase on the slick wood, nails digging into the icy surface.

  A rope latch swung from the ceiling behind him, the pull for the door to the attic. Although he’d never been inside, he knew from the outside that there were windows up there, and Gavin struggled to roll over and reach for the catch. After three tries he managed to get his footing and caught it, watching as the door swung down, the ladder unfurling and crashing to the floor in front of him. Shrill screams tore through the air, but whose? Gavin had never heard another voice in this house besides Delilah’s and yet. . . they sounded familiar. Were these the voices Delilah had heard? The ones from her nightmare? They were saying his name, sobbing it, screaming it from every direction. The walls bowed, and light shone behind the cracks in the plaster, like a train was barreling down from the sky, zeroed in on the house.

  Gavin lunged for the ladder and began climbing, his hands slick with sweat and blood and God only knows what else. His feet slipped on the rungs, and beneath him, his legs felt limp and deadened with fear. Gavin had seen every horror movie played in the last four years at the Morton movie house but had never imagined anything like this. Terror gripped his heart in a solid fist, and his body didn’t seem to be his own. Pain pulsed in every muscle, and his hands wouldn’t steady, his feet missed nearly every rung as he scrambled to climb.

  “Stop!” he heard himself beg. “Please, please, stop.”

  Sooty dust covered the attic floor, nearly an inch thick, and as Gavin climbed inside, it billowed up, blurring the air like snowflakes in a storm, swirling. He’d tried to get into the attic when he was younger but could never manage to get the door open; the latch had been sealed shut. He wondered if something had dislodged it, if the shaking he felt under his feet had been enough to finally let it open. Or if whatever kept it closed had abandoned post, following the higher-priority order: Get him.

  He frantically searched the space, gaze landing on two dormer windows on the far side of the attic. If he could get to them, somehow manage to pry them open, maybe he could get out onto the ledge, slide down the eaves, or at the very least cry for help.

  He’d taken only one step when he felt something slither up his leg, cold and rough as if covered in thorns. He looked down to see a vine wrap itself around his calf and pull, knocking his feet out from under him. Pain radiated along the entire front of his body as he landed heavily on the floor. He coughed violently, and his lungs filled with dust, gagging him.

  Gavin rolled to his back, trying to catch his breath. He blinked into the darkness, his vision black and fuzzy around the edges. There were shapes above him, vague shadows flitting through the trusses and exposed beams.

  Sweet Gavin.

  Our Gavin.

  She couldn’t have you either.

  The vine’s grip tightened, wrapping farther up his leg and around his waist, slowly dragging him back toward the attic door.

  “No!” He tried to scream, still choking and gasping for air. His fingers clawed at the floor, nails dragging through the grime, splinters digging into his skin as he searched blindly for something to hold on to.

  He felt himself being pulled back toward the ladder, felt the shaking all around him and wondered how the house was even still standing. Voices he’d never heard before—scratchy and thin, thick and wet—filled the hallways and rooms just below him.

  Gavin.

  Look what we did for you.

  Gavin didn’t want to die here, and he knew that if he didn’t fight back, he would. The image he’d seen of his body broken at the bottom of the stairs wasn’t just his imagination; it would happen. If not the stairs, it would be a tangled shower curtain holding him underwater in the bath, cookies made with rat poison, or maybe a fire while he slept. This wasn’t the house he’d grown up in. It wasn’t the same house that had taken care of him when he was sick and that had listened to him talk for hours about airplanes and given him books to answer his questions about the planets and stars.

  Like one of Belinda Blue’s little figurines in her hutch, House had kept him here as a toy under glass, and whatever was inside House would kill him before he could ever leave it.

  And then it would kill Delilah.

  He reached for one of the rungs on the ladder, using the leverage to kick at whatever had him. Gavin slipped part of the way down, slamming his chin against the wood and screaming out in pain. The sound must have distracted House enough that the vine’s hold loosened. Gavin fell to the floor and was able to jerk away, scramble to his feet and stagger down the hall. The sound of a whip cracked through the air, and a sharp breeze snapped by his head only a pulse before the sound came again and something sliced sharply into his face. Crying out, Gavin raised his hand to his cheek and felt liquid running in a hot stream down to his neck. He could taste his blood, smell the dust in the air and the scent of rotting wood and fresh earth everywhere.

  “Mom!” Tears stung at his eyes and made it hard to see in the darkness; he didn’t know where he was anymore. He reached out to feel along the wall, but it seemed to undulate under his fingers, wiggling cold and wet.

  He jerked away and ran blindly toward a light in front of him, the glow from a window. He could see his yard on the other side, no longer dead but lush and green. There were people out there, tossing a ball back and forth in the sunshine. He didn’t know what he was seeing, if it was real or
some kind of game House was playing with him, but he didn’t care. He had to get to them.

  “Help!” he yelled. “Help me!”

  They didn’t look up. He pulled on the sash with every bit of strength he had, but it wouldn’t budge. “Help!” he screamed again, pounding with bloody fists on the glass.

  Gavin looked around for something to break the window. A lamp lay on the floor, as still and lifeless as any other lamp. He reached for it and slammed the base into the glass. It shattered, and the House shook, agonizing and desperate screams sounding from somewhere deep inside it. He kicked at the broken shards, ignoring the way they tore at his pant legs. This was his last hope. He climbed to the ledge and looked back behind him. Darkness swirled there, pulsing. He held his breath and jumped.

  • • •

  When Gavin opened his eyes again, he wasn’t outside.

  He tried to feel whatever was in front of him but couldn’t. Pain shot through the right half of his body, and he realized that something was holding his arms to his sides, wrapping around his chest and waist and all the way down to his feet. It was a crushing pressure that made it hard for him to breathe. Every centimeter of skin ached, throbbing and bruised. He could feel the solid weight of a wall at his back, but darkness swallowed everything. He saw only black, and the weight of it surrounded him, somehow both close and deep.

  There were no more voices, only his own ragged breaths as he struggled to find enough air. He would have cried out, screamed, but something covered his mouth, pressing dusty and dank against his tongue. A cloth. A gag. The yard was huge and the fence seemed to insulate the house from even the closest neighbor. Nobody would be able to hear him scream anyway.

  He could smell dirt again. He wasn’t sure why, but the phrase “fresh grave” drifted through his head. He wondered where the smell came from, whether House had managed to tear itself open like a wound from the top of the roof straight down to the dirt beneath it. It smelled like rotten meat and worms, and he gagged, struggling to breathe in through his mouth again.

  Gavin longed for the oblivion of only a year ago. He wanted his room and his warm bed. But more than that, he wanted Delilah. He wanted her safe. Gavin knew now that even if he somehow managed to get out, he would never escape. Whatever kindness had lived here and watched over him was gone, and only a monster was left in its place. It would follow him here or down the street, or down a hundred streets. It would hunt him down until he was brought back, and then he would be here, forever. Maybe House didn’t know that he wouldn’t stay the same, that if it killed him he wouldn’t be baby Gavin again, or even the Gavin with the ice-cream cone that hung in the upstairs hall. Those Gavins were as good as dead too.

  As if House could read his thoughts, he felt something slither around him, tightening. “Shhh,” it hissed. “Shhh.”

  Finally, for a minute—only a minute—because he was mourning and terrified and blind in the blackness, Gavin let himself cry. House hadn’t killed him yet. It was waiting. And if they knew each other as well as he thought they did, he knew exactly what it was waiting for.

  Delilah would be waiting at the bank at eleven just like they’d planned, and she would know he wasn’t coming. House knew that. And then she’d come looking for him, hoping to save him. House knew that, too.

  It hadn’t killed him yet because now he was the bait.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Her

  Once she reached the porch, Delilah realized there were about a million things she hadn’t considered until she stood here, in almost total blackness. Namely, would the front door even be unlocked? Or would she need to break through a window? She eyed the ax in her hand with a mixture of relief and dread. Were the windows even made of glass, or were they some poltergeist-filled medium that wouldn’t crack or snap or shatter?

  A sound built from behind the heavy wood door, a deep groan, like wind coming up from underground, rattling the frame of the house, vibrating through the shingles outside, the shuttered windows. It knew she was here. She closed her eyes, taking a steadying breath.

  This is it.

  Delilah drew strength from every heroine she’d ever worshipped: Buffy standing with a fist curled around a stake. Michonne wielding her gleaming katana. Kirsty Cotton against Pinhead, Ginny versus Jason. Clarice Starling as she faced Hannibal Lecter, Alice Johnson versus Freddy Krueger—twice.

  This house expects you to fail.

  But the knowledge that Gavin would have answered the door if he were able, that he wasn’t able and was trapped in here—alive, please let him be alive—propelled her forward. She lifted her hand to the knob, biting back a terrified cry and jumping away as something pressed out from the wood grain of the door, impressions of screaming beasts with horrible tortured faces, teeth dripping blood and claws that could slice her in half. They took their shape in the wood, swirling in front of her and pressing and retreating, reaching for her, and all at once Delilah had a sickening thought: What if one of them breaks free?

  From the sidewalk, Vani yelled, “You must go in, Delilah!”

  She looked over her shoulder to see Dhaval and Vani sprint from the car and around the side of the house. With a deep, shaking breath, Delilah quickly reached through the gnashing demons, crying out when one slashed at her forearm. Teeth sank into her flesh, and she smacked at it with her free hand, grabbing the knob.

  The door shook against her, but the knob turned easily and she stumbled inside, falling onto the wooden floor as the door slammed shut behind her. With a tight popping in her ears, all outdoor sound evaporated—sealing her in—and as she looked up at the decrepit house in front of her, she wondered in a fevered heartbeat if the opposite was true: Would anyone outside be able to hear her scream?

  The house looked abandoned: The furniture was crumbling, the walls were sagging and water-stained. Cobwebs hung in thick, dusty tendrils from the ceilings and in every corner. Piles of charred wood tumbled from the fireplace, ash littering the floor like dirty snow. Whatever had kept this place looking new and cared for had vacated the downstairs entirely. Delilah had a flashing fantasy that she was in the wrong house. That Gavin had simply moved down the road, and the past four months in this monster had been nothing but a figment of her wild imagination.

  But a droning creak from the floorboards overhead told her that everything was above her, lying in wait upstairs.

  With Gavin.

  Delilah shook from the cold. The cold bothered her more than the creaking, because at least the creaking came from some distance. The cold wasn’t natural; it drifted down from the ceiling, frosty and thick, and spread all along her skin, icy fingers slipping under the collar of her shirt, sliding its hands down over her breasts, her ribs. She crossed her arms over her chest, gripping her elbows so tight she could feel the knobby, rigid shape of her bones. She called out in a shaking voice, “Gavin?”

  The creaking stopped, and silence hollowed out her thoughts. So strange, she thought, that silence can feel so enormous, so consuming.

  In this sort of moment Delilah had always assumed she would be either brave or mute with terror, but she felt neither of those extremes. She was alert in her fear and listening more intently than she ever had before for any single human sound.

  But the next sound that came wasn’t human at all. It was a mad little growl that slid from beneath an unknown doorway to her left and felt cold when it reached her. Cold and broken and evil.

  The sound of wood cracking, of plaster splitting, echoed in its wake.

  Delilah swallowed a surge of panic, her heart throbbing, and pushed off the banister to keep moving. Her momentum propelled her toward the stairs, and she fought the terror of the emptiness, how no furniture was visible, as if it had all gathered in one room to ambush her.

  “Gavin?” she called, jumping in surprise when the television flickered to life only feet from where she stood. How had she not seen it before? Had it slid into view so quietly?

  “Gavin?” her own voice echoed
from the dark box, a crackly, hollow copy of herself. “Gavin, your house is going to kill me and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

  “No,” Delilah said, stumbling forward and pressing her body flat to the hallway wall to shimmy past the television. The ax clanged loudly against the plaster, startling her more. “Tell me where he is.”

  Her own voice laughed back at her, sickly sweet and mocking. “You can dream, Delilah.”

  As the television spoke, Delilah felt tiny, hysterical sobs form in her chest and begin to push up her throat and out into the air in front of her. The voice coming from the television warped from something recognizable to a high-pitched, terrifying squeal: “Don’t cry, don’t cry, crybaby, don’t cry, don’t cry, crybaby, cry, baby, cry.”

  She could get stuck here, terrified by the television come to life and inching toward her. She could be swallowed by this moment, heart beating so hard she worried she could die from it, the fear of what she would find upstairs making her sweat, making her throat tight, making tears stream wet down her cheeks.

  Or, she thought with a deep breath, she could get her ass upstairs and put the ax to use.

  Shaking herself into motion, Delilah pushed past, swinging her foot as hard as she could and cracking it against the side of the television, sending it sliding into the opposite wall. A crunch of glass sounded and filled the hall. Tendrils of wallpaper rolled down from above her, crinkling at her ears, tickling at her collar and growing sharper and more savage until they pierced at the flesh of her neck.

  She shoved them away, ripping at them with her hands and kicking the television hard again, as she lunged for the banister, propelling herself up the stairs.

  The house will try to swallow you, she told herself. It will try, but you are faster. You are smarter. Find him.

  Beneath the wind and the creaking, the mad little cackles and the freezing chill in the hall, Delilah could start to make out a faint, hollow noise. Something repeatedly hitting a wall, a

  thunk, thunk,