Bentley Little - The House

She had no idea where that came from, but it grew from a fear into a certainty as she saw her mother stride over to the barn and throw open the big door.

Laurie dashed back across the trampled grass. Her mother had run into the barn and opened up the can and was furiously splashing gasoline over the bodies of Dawn and her father, now on the dirt floor without their clothes. Her father was sputtering angrily, yelling sounds that were supposed to be words, but Dawn was laughing, and it was that high tinkling musical sound that scared Laurie more than anything else.

"No!" Laurie cried. "Stop!" But no one seemed to hear her, and her mother tossed the gasoline can aside and pulled out a matchbook and lit a match. Screaming crazily, she threw the lit match onto the gasoline covered bodies.

"You bastard!" she yelled. "She's mine! She's mine!"

There was a huge rush of flame, a sucking explosion that simultaneously drew in air and expelled agonizing heat.

"Mom!" Laurie cried.

Her mother pushed her aside and, stone-faced, strode through the door and across the yard toward the house.

Laurie saw Dawn's hair catch fire, the skin of her face darken and crinkle. Her father's back blistered and peeled open, his blood bubbling black the second it hit the flames. They were both writhing and rolling on the dirt, trying to get away, but the fire was not around them, it was on them, and there was no way they could escape from it.

Laurie ran around to the side of the barn, got the hose, turned it on full blast, and squirted water on the fire, but it didn't do any good, didn't make a dent, and she ran sobbing back to the house to tell Mr. Billington to call the firemen, knowing even as she did so that they would not arrive in time to save her father, Dawn, or the barn.

"Mr. Billington !" she screamed. "Mr. Billington !"

Her father's friend was nowhere to be seen, but her mother was lying on her back on the floor of the kitchen, her skirts hiked up.

With Dawn.

The girl was naked, but she was not burned and not dead, and the shock of seeing her here, alive, only seconds after watching her burn in the barn, overrode for a second the shock of what was happening.

Then Laurie noticed what was going on.

"Yes," her mother was saying, and Dawn's head was between her legs, moving slowly around. Laurie screamed at the top of her lungs, a desperate cry for help from someone, anyone.

All of a sudden, as her mother moaned in pleasure, the girl became a goat, arms turning to legs, gray hair growing over skin, and she started bucking, shoving her head forward with animal roughness, the horns spearing through the bare flesh of her mother's stomach, as her mother's expression of happiness and bliss changed instantly to one of horror and agony.

"Mom!" Laurie screamed.

For the first time since seeing her mother in the yard with the can of gasoline, her mom seemed to hear her, recognize her, acknowledge her. She was screaming in pain, trying to push the bucking goat away, but her eyes were hopeless, sad and despairing, filled with agonized regret, and they kept darting between Laurie and the door, and Laurie took the hint and ran.

She did not know where to go. The barn fire had not spread as she'd expected but seemed to have gone out, and that seemed ominous. Laurie ran unthinkingly, away from the barn, away from the house. Part of her wanted to find Mr.Billington , but another part of her, a deeper truer part, knew that he was somehow involved in this, so she did not call his name, did not call out anything, but simply ran.

She could not go into the woods--Laurie knew that much--but she was afraid to stay near the house, so she headed through the trees that paralleled the drive, heading toward the road. She heard Mr.Billington call her name, from somewhere far behind her, but she kept running.

She slept that night in a ditch by the side of the road, and the next day made it into Pine Creek, where she stumbled into the police station and blurted out everything that had happened.

No one believed her, of course. Or at least they didn't believe all of it, but they found the bodies of her parents --her father's charred corpse, her mother's gutted form--and Laurie spent several weeks in a foster home until one day, somehow, some way, Josh's parents showed up and took her away to live permanently with them.

Laurie glanced over at Josh and, not for the first time, she was grateful that she'd been adopted. What had happened to her real parents was terrible, horrifying, but as emotionally scarring as it had been, she was aware of the fact that she'd been better off without them, better off away from the house, better off with Josh and his parents.

Their parents.

Yes. Their parents. No matter who had sired her, they had raised her and it was their love, their values, their influence that had shaped her into the woman she was today.

"Are you all right?" Josh asked, looking over at her.

Not trusting herself to speak, she nodded.

Josh parked the car in front of the garage. Laurie got out silently, looked to her right at the barn, to her left at the house. Nothing had changed in all those years. It was as if the place had remained frozen in time, waiting for her return.

She thought of Dawn. Shivered.

"Where do we start?" Josh asked, squinting against the early afternoon sun. He stared up at the house.

"Damn. This place is as creepy as I remember it."

Laurie smiled wryly. "Tell me about it."

She walked toward the front of the house, saw in real life the angle they'd seen in the photograph.

"It is a place of power," Josh said.

She ignored him. She wasn't in the mood for metaphysical chats, and though she wasn't exactly sure what she hoped to find here or what she hoped to accomplish, she knew she wanted to get it all done this afternoon.

She did not want to be anywhere near the house when night fell.

Taking a deep breath, Laurie walked forward, gravel crunching beneath her feet. She reached the porch stairs, and it was as if her body were on automatic pilot. She grabbed a corner of the banister, leaned on it, then trailed her fingers along the wooden railing as she walked the four steps. It was the way she'd walked up these stairs as a child, and though the movements were instinctive, she was acutely aware of them, and she found it disconcerting to think that even though her mind had forgotten about the place for many years, her body apparently had not.

Josh followed close behind her, and the two of them stood on the porch for a moment, looking out at the yard, the drive, the surrounding trees. Everything seemed perfectly kept, well maintained, as though someone had been caring for the place all these years.

Mr.Billington .

No. That was impossible.

Still, the thought of it gave her a chill, and brave modern businesswoman that she was, she was glad Josh was here to protect her. Just in case.

She turned, looked at the front door. Dark brown wood with a small leaded-glass web window up above.

What if it was locked? Neither she nor Josh had a key.

It wouldn't be locked.

She knew that.

Laurie hesitated for a moment. She wanted to go inside, but what did she hope to see, what did she hope to find, what did she hope to discover? Did she really think that answers to the questions she had would be found within the house's empty rooms? It was pointless, really, to go inside. They'd probably learn more by talking to neighbors, hunting down members of the local historical society.

An alarm was going off in her head, some hunch or intuition telling her to stay out, but that was exactly why she had to push on. There was something in the house.

She didn't know what it was or how she knew of its existence, but she knew that she could only find out what she needed to know by going into her old home.