Bentley Little - The House

She tried the door handle. It wasn't locked, and she glanced over her shoulder at Josh. "Let's go in," she said.

She walked through the doorway.

And the door slammed shut behind her.

"Josh!" she screamed.

The door had obviously caught him as he was trying to enter. There was a thin line of blood on the edge of the wood, a small clump of hair at head level. Her heart was pounding crazily, and from the other side of the door she heard her brother scream.

"Josh!" she yelled. She tried the door, but now it was locked, and the pounding of her heart, the thumping of blood in her head, was almost as loud as her pounding on the door.

"Josh!" she demanded. "Are you all right?"

"I'm okay!"

She heard his voice as if from a distance, as if more than simply a closed door separated them. It was a strange sensation and a frightening one, and she kept talking to him, telling him to push on the door the same time she pulled, as his voice grew fainter and fainter and then finally disappeared entirely.

She yanked once more on the door handle, then looked frantically around. There were no windows in the entryway save for the one high above the door, no way she could look out and see her brother, so she ran around to the front sitting room to look out the window, but when she pushed aside the lace curtains and pulled up the shade, she saw not the drive, not the yard, not the trees, not the porch, not Josh, but thick white fog that pressed flat against the glass, obscuring the entire world beyond.

She felt like a child again, like a little girl, scared and frightened and alone, and she wished that, dreams or no dreams, strange experiences or no strange experiences, they'd never come up here.

There was the sound of movement, the quiet shuffle of shoes on hardwood floor. A chill stabbed through her, but she did not turn around.

The clearing of a throat.

A man's voice.

She recognized it, and though she didn't want to, she knew that she had to look behind her.

She turned, faced him.

It was exactly who she'd known it would be.

"Laurie," he said quietly. "It's so nice to see you again."

Norton When Norton awoke, his bed was covered with burnt toast.

Pieces fell as he stirred, dropped off the bed as he sat up, but he could tell that someone something --sometime during the night had placed burnt toast over every square inch of his bed: the quilt on top of him, the empty pillow next to him, the spaces of open mattress.

Donna.

For some reason, he did not suspect Carole's ghost. It was that evil little girl whom he believed had covered his bed. A burnt toast trail had led him to her, had been laid for him to follow, and he assumed that the consistent use of the toast here was purposeful, was meant to send him a message.

The pressure was being increased. Whatever lay behind this campaign desperately wanted him to hurry up and get back to Oakdale.

Return.

He picked up a piece of toast, smelled it, tentatively touched it to his tongue. It was real. It was burnt bread, not some sort of disguised alien substance or supernatural manifestation.

What was the significance of it? he wondered. What did it symbolize? What did it mean?

He got out of bed, searching through the house for something else out of the ordinary or out of place, but everything was normal, everything was as it should be.

He walked back into the bedroom to get dressed, saw the blackened squares on the bed and the surrounding floor, and he imagined that evil child placing them there, her slight shift blowing in the cold night breeze that passed through his perpetually open window, and he found himself becoming aroused.

Norton walked into the bathroom, looked at his unshaven face in the mirror, at his baggy eyes and wildly uncombed white hair. He was still erect, and he considered masturbating in the shower, but he resisted the temptation.

This couldn't go on, he realized. The pressure was only going to escalate and sooner or later he was going to have to return to Oakdale. He did not know why, he did not know what would happen, but as frightening and intimidating as he found the prospect, it also offered the only relief he could see from this dark situation in which he found himself.

He shaved, combed his hair, dressed, then called the district office. No one was there yet, so he left a message on the answering machine, telling them he was sick and specifically asking for Gail Doig to be his substitute. Gail was an ex-student, and she'd subbed for him last year on the one day he'd been ill and had done an excellent job.

It was still early, only six-thirty, so he made himself breakfast--no toast--and ate it, reading the morning paper, before giving Hal a call.

His friend was already up, had been up for several hours. Norton hadn't told Hal about his encounter with the girl, but he told him now and he described waking up with the burnt toast covering his bed.

He took a deep breath. "I have to go," he said. "Back to Oakdale. Will you come with me?"

Hal sounded annoyed. "I told you I would, didn't I?"

"It's far. It'll be almost a day's drive, and I don't know what's going to happen when I get there or how long I'll be staying--"

"Are you deaf? I told you I'm going with you."

"What's the bee in your bonnet?"

There was silence on the other end of the line.

"Hal?"

Norton heard his friend sigh even over the phone. "I

felt Mariette's presence in the house."

"Did you see her?"

"No. It was like before. I could just tell that she was here."

"You think it's connected to what's happening to me?"

"I don't know," Hal said tiredly. "Maybe it's because we're both going to die soon. Hell, I don't know.

But ..." He trailed off.

"But?" Norton prompted.

"Her presence isn't comforting like it was before.

It's . . . scary."

"What does that have to do with me?"

"Nothing, asshole! I just want to get out of the house and get away from here! Is that all right with you?"

"Jesus, bite my head off."

"Do you want me to come or not?"

"Of course I do. That's why I called."

"Then when are we going to go?"

Norton looked up at the clock. Seven-ten. "I'll pick you up in an hour. Bring a suitcase and a couple days'clothes just in case."

"I'll be ready."

There was a click on the other end and Norton gingerly put the receiver back on its hook. Hal sounded shaken, and he found that a little disconcerting. He also didn't like the fact that Hal believed the ghost of his wife had returned. It was too close to be unrelated, and he didn't like the idea that whatever supernatural forces were trained on him had also focused their attention on his friend. Hal was frightened, and he didn't think he'd known Hal ever to be frightened.

Oakdale loomed before him. And the house.

He knew that whatever had happened there was bad, that its horror was so overpowering and overwhelming it had erased any trace of its existence from his mind, blanking out his memory. Within the past weeks, his worldview, his belief system, the rational tenets of thought that had supported his intellectual life for the past half century, had been turned upside down, and now he was seeing ghosts and encountering evil children and witnessing unexplainable events, but he had the feeling that that change was minuscule compared to what lay ahead.

He was terrified by the thought of returning to Oak dale, and only the fact that Hal was accompanying him, would be there to offer moral, intellectual, spiritual, and, weak as it was, physical support, kept him from feeling totally incapacitated in the face of his fear.

But Hal was being targeted. By telling Hal what had happened, by bringing him into this, Norton had quite possibly put his friend in danger. A danger that neither of them understood.