Bentley Little - The House

He didn't seem to understand what he was doing or why.

He was like . . . like a baby playing with fire.

What made him think of that analogy?

Daniel didn't know, but it was accurate nevertheless.

There was a danger here. He sensed it. And he would not feel comfortable until that thing was out of his son's room and out of his house.

Margot finished the dishes and came out in the living room with him. She sat next to him on the couch, read the newspaper, snuggled into the crook of his arm, but there was tension between them, and though they tried, they could not regain the relaxed and happy atmosphere of dinner.

The doll.

The shadow in the alley.

`Something was going on here that he couldn't quite grasp. It was like a word on the tip of his tongue that he knew but could not immediately articulate. He had the strong feeling that on some level he did understand what was happening, that somewhere inside him was the key that would unlock this puzzle, but he could not seem to find it.

They went to bed at eleven, made love quietly, perfunctorily, then rolled over, automatically moving to opposite sides of the mattress.

He lay awake long after Margot fell asleep, long after the timer shut off the TV, staring up at the ceiling through the silent darkness.

Silent?

No, not quite.

There was a rustling whisper of movement from down the hall.

From Tony's room.

Ordinarily, he would not have been able to hear the noise, so subtle was its intonation, but in this quiet the faint sibilance was clearly audible, its changing location pinpointed by slight increases and decreases in volume.

He listened carefully. It was a sound he had heard before, a long time ago In the House --and, soft as it was, it sent a powerful chill through him. He could not quite place it, but its origin was in his past and there was something about it that frightened him. Daniel closed his eyes, concentrated on listening.

The noise faded, moving away from their bedroom door, then grew louder, returning.

It was the sound of ... a doll patrolling the halls, hunting little boys who dared to leave their rooms.

What in God's name had made him think of that?

He didn't know, but it was the image that came to his mind, and it stayed there, refusing to budge. His first instinct was to get Tony and Margot out of the house.

They might be in danger. But he could not act on that impulse. As concerned as he was for their safety, he was paralyzed, afraid to get out of bed, afraid to wake up Margot, afraid even to move.

It would not harm Tony, he told himself. Tony had made it.

And it wasn't after Margot.

It was after him.

Just as it had been in the House.

He heard it outside, shuffling by on toilet-paper-tube feet.

He held his breath, praying that it would not stop in front of their bedroom, praying that Margot had locked their door.

He waited until both Margot and Tony left.

Then he searched through Tony's room.

Daniel wasn't sure what he thought he'd find. Some clue, he supposed. Something that would jog his memory, something that would let him know what was going on.

Something.

But there was only the doll itself, at the bottom of his son's closet, in a plastic grocery sack sitting atop a jumbled pile of old worn-out sneakers. There were no notes, no diary, no hints as to why Tony was working on the disturbing figure, no reference of any kind to anything remotely connected to the object. There were only Tony's books and toys and tapes and clothes. His rock collection and bug collection and a pile of old homework.

And the doll.

Daniel carried the sack out of the closet and put it on the bed, taking out the nearly finished figure. He picked the doll up gingerly.

It was as repugnant as it had been before, and once again it seemed familiar to him. He thought of the noises in the night, in the hall, his certainty that the doll was on the prowl, looking for him, and though it was daytime and he could hear the sounds of the street outside, the television in the family room, he was acutely aware of the fact that he was alone in the house with this horrible figure.

Its expression was fixed, formed from the newspaper photos, but it seemed different from yesterday, more purposely hostile, its eyes narrowed, its teeth bared.

Maybe he remembered it incorrectly, but he could have sworn the eyes had been more open, the mouth closed.

Maybe Tony had altered the face after their confrontation.

There was no indication that the doll could ever be mobile, much less animate, and its taped and stapled limbs hung limply down as he gripped the midsection, but Daniel had the impression that it was playing possum, pretending to be dead when it wasn't.

That was ridiculous.

Of course it was. This whole thing was ridiculous. It was ridiculous for him to be secretly searching through his son's room in the first place. But he felt no embarrassment, and no matter how much he tried to intellectually discount his feelings, they were still there.

He looked down at the doll and was suddenly afraid.

What would happen when Tony finished his "project,"

when the doll was complete?

He didn't know and he didn't want to find out.

He knew what he had to do.

Daniel shoved the doll back in the bag and carried it outside. He dropped it on the grass next to the back porch and walked into the garage, wheeling out the barbecue.

Opening the lid, he picked the sack up off the ground and unceremoniously dumped the doll into the ashes.

He walked back into the garage, emerged with lighter fluid and a book of matches. He knew this was going to extremes, but he could not be sure if he simply tore the doll up and threw it away that it wouldn't return, that it wouldn't drag its pieces out of the alley and over the fence and through the backyard to his bedroom. He couldn't afford to chance that.

He'd seen the Telly Savalas Twilight Zone. He knew how these things worked.

His feelings did not make any kind of rational sense-- the fact that he was referencing a TV

show as validation for his actions should have told him that--but as he doused the doll with lighter fluid and put a match to it, he felt an absurd sense of exhilaration. He saw the face go up in flames, the toilet-paper tubes blacken and crumble, the Big Gulp cup melt off its wax and burn, and for the first time since he'd seen Tony with the doll, he was able to breathe easily.

He would tell Tony that he had gotten rid of the doll when his son came home, and he would forbid him to make another one. He should have done that last night.

It might seem irrational to Margot, but he was still the boy's father, and if he wanted to enforce an irrational rule or prohibition, well, he wouldn't be the first father to have done so.

The components of the doll had all burned themselves out, but he turned on the hose and soaked everything with water, just to make sure, before going back into the garage and getting a shovel. He scooped up the ashes from the barbecue, dumped them in the plastic sack, and tossed everything in one of the trash cans in the alley.

He mashed down the sack with his foot, transferred garbage from one of the other cans to throw on top of it, then replaced the lid. Once again, he found himself looking up the alley for any sign of the small strange shadow he'd seen before.

Nothing.

He hurried back into his yard.

Were these things connected? The doll and the shadow? The inexplicable feelings of fear and discomposure he'd been experiencing? He had the sense that they were, but he could not imagine how and he could not begin to comprehend the meaning behind it.

He pushed the barbecue and carried the shovel back into the garage, then walked into the house and washed his hands in the kitchen sink before getting himself a Diet Coke from the fridge. He'd left the television on in the family room and, coincidentally enough, The Twilight Zone was on the Sci-Fi channel. It was the episode in which a girl disappeared into the wall of her house, the one he'd always assumed had been the inspiration for Poltergeist, and as he watched it for the fiftieth time, alarm bells began going off in his head once again. There was a connection here, something he knew he should be picking up on but just couldn't quite figure out.