Bentley Little - The House

But he changed his mind about that.

Ghosts did come.

Later.

And he longed for the benign manifestation of hairs in the bathtub.

Daniel Billingsly looked different in the morning. Better, healthier, as though he were suddenly well again after a long illness.

He himself looked like hell.

He'd had a bad night.

Daniel had been almost asleep when the doll had come to visit. He was tired from driving and from stress, and he'd lain down on the bed, intending only to close his eyes and rest for a moment before attempting to find an escape route out of this loony bin, but when he felt himself drifting off, he figured he might as well pack it in for the night and wait for morning, when he'd have a clear mind and refreshed body and his chances would be better. He took off his clothes, crawled under the covers, closed his eyes.

And heard something scuttling in the corner.

He jerked up in bed, eyes wide open, heart pounding.

He recognized that sound, and he glanced immediately toward the corner of the room from which the noise had come, but it was too dark for him to see anything.

He flipped on the nightstand lamp, then rushed over to the door and turned on the overhead light.

There it was, between a wastepaper basket and his toy chest.

The doll.

It stared at him with feather eyes, its head a mass of dust and hair strands, its open mouth an empty hole crisscrossed by broken toothpicks. It was not quite the doll he remembered from the past, not quite the figure Tony had been making, but some unwholesome hybrid.

He stayed by the door, hand still on the light switch, afraid to move. Fully dressed and wearing protective combat gear, he still would have felt unprepared to face the small figure; barefoot and naked, he felt completely vulnerable. It stared at him from its corner with an intensity and malevolence he had never seen before, and the thought occurred to him that it knew he had destroyed its brethren, Tony's creations.

And it wanted revenge.

That was stupid, he told himself.

But he could not make himself believe it.

The horrid figure shifted against the toy chest, its feather eyes never once leaving his. What had the doll been planning? To kill him the way his mother had been killed, to stuff itself down his throat as he slept? Daniel trembled as he thought of how close he had come to that fate. He was so dead tired tonight that if he had fallen fully asleep, nothing could have awakened him.

By the time he was roused, it would have been too late.

He glanced around for a weapon, saw the handle of his old baseball bat peeking out from beneath the bed.

Did he dare try for it? It was a good five steps away.

He'd have to rush halfway across the room, duck down and grab it. What would the doll be able to do in that time?

It didn't matter. Unless he wanted to run out into the hallway naked and let the doll escape to boot, the bat was his only hope.

The good thing was that the bat was sticking out from under the foot of the bed, the part nearest the door. It would be difficult to grab, but not impossible, and even if the doll ran for the door while he was grabbing the weapon, it would not have time to open the door and he would be able to whale on it and destroy it before it could escape.

What if it attacked him instead?

He did not even want to think about that.

Daniel shot one more glance at the dark shifting figure, then moved quickly, dashing across the carpet. He bent down, acutely aware of the vulnerability of his dangling genitals, and braced himself for an attack as he reached under the bed and hurriedly grasped the familiar tape-covered handle.

The door clicked open behind him, and he whirled around to see the doll running out of the bedroom, laughing in a whispery sibilant way that reminded him of the sound of broom bristles on hardwood floor.

He followed it into the hall. He was still naked, but embarrassment was the least of his concerns, and, grunting, he swung the bat low, as hard as he could, hoping the doll had not gotten too far away and that he'd be able to hit it.

No such luck.

Still laughing, the figure hurried down the dark hallway, blending in with the shadows against the sideboard, disappearing into the gloom.

"Damn!" he said.

He looked up, and on the far wall, in a dim half circle of what appeared to be reflected moonlight, he thought he saw a shadow.

The shadow of a girl.

Doneen.

Beckoning him.

He'd gone back into his room after that, locking his door, and although he dozed off eventually, he tried to stay awake all night, and what little sleep he did get was troubled and intermittent. He was as tired when he woke up as he had been the night before.

Daniel walked into the dining room.Billingsly smiled cheerfully at him and, lifting a silver pot, said, "Coffee?"

The butler had laid out an elaborate breakfast on the oversized banquet table, and Daniel sat down at its foot, nodding his acknowledgment.

He felt like shit. Billingsly , by contrast, was in peak condition. If yesterday he had accentuated the spookiness of the House with his pale, cadaverous appearance, today he complemented it with his visible robustness.

He was no less creepy for his newfound vigor, however, and improved health only served to emphasize those things that were so disturbing about him in the first place.

Daniel looked from the rejuvenated Billingsly to his own enervated reflection in a mirror above the sideboard.

The dichotomy was too striking not to notice.

Maybe Billingsly was a vampire. Maybe the butler was feeding off him, sucking the life out of him for his own nourishment.

No. More likely, the butler's health was connected with that of the House. And now that the House was getting charged back up, oldBillingsly was receiving a power boost as well.

Billingsly smirked at him as he poured his coffee. "I trust you had a pleasant evening?"

Daniel smiled sweetly up at him. "Couldn't have been better." He sipped the hot drink. It tasted wonderful.

"So why didn't you recruit new people to live in the House? I assume that's what you did before. I know my family didn't live here for generations."

"No, they didn't. But they knew why they were here, they knew what they were doing. They were recruited by the previous occupants, specifically selected to maintain the barrier, and they did so, following all of the rules and rituals bequeathed them by their predecessors." His expression hardened suddenly, and the change in expression was so quick and complete that Daniel nearly spilled his coffee. "As you remember, Danny boy, breakfast is promptly at six. No later. You will be allowed to slide today, but tomorrow ..." His voice trailed off, an implied threat.

Daniel's heart was pounding, but he feigned nonchalance, tried to keep the tremble out of his hand. "Your daughter," he found himself saying. "She predicted my mother's death. And she was somehow involved with it." His eyes metBillingsly's . "I thought you were, too."

The butler shook his head. "No."

"Then why did you force us to stay, me and my dad?"

"As I told you, the House needed occupants."

"But you knew she died?"

"I did not know how."

"A doll, a doll made out of dust and lint and gum wrappers, shoved itself down her throat and strangled her."

The butler's voice remained even. "I did not know that."

"You didn't know that I was making one of those dolls, too? You don't know that my son saw her and she taught him how to make them, as well?"

"She was obviously trying to keep you from the House, trying to remind you of what had happened and scare you away."

"And you? Tony said he saw you, too."

"I was trying to entice you back."

"And you knew nothing about her? This is all news to you?"