Bentley Little - The House

she said, staring at her father's skeleton, talking more to herself than him.

It was amazing how much he'd blocked out. Even the film didn't come close to capturing the craziness of the household, the unsettling irrationality of its workings. It was coming back to him now, what it had been like living here. Not just the broad brush strokes but the details, not just the events that had occurred but the feelings they generated within him.

He realized now why he had hated living here so much.

And why the one family vacation they'd taken, their trip to New Mexico, had been so important to him, had made such a big impression.

His mother grasped his shoulder, pointed at the skeleton.

"That's the monster," she said. "It's a bone monster."

"Yeah." He pulled away from her, started back down the narrow hidden hallway to the House proper.

He could already hear his father bellowing from the study, and Stormy made his way over there, pushing apart the sliding wooden doors that opened onto the hallway.

"Billingham!" his father ordered. "I want a knife and a sack of cotton balls--" He paused, frowned, looked at Stormy. "I didn't call for you. I called forBillingham ."

"Sorry," Stormy said.

"Billingham!" his father yelled. He paused, waited.

"Billingham!"

The butler did not come.

Stormy looked behind him, saw only empty hallway.

Billinghamhad never, to his knowledge, failed to come on his father's order, had never had to be called more than once, and Stormy saw here the present intruding on the past. Whatever had happened to the butler in the House he'd shared with Norton and Mark and Daniel and Laurie, whatever had caused his absence for the past two days, was affecting life in this House, too.

It was a pretty good indication that the butler was dead.

That worried him. Like the others, he had originally ,, believed that the butler and the girl were allies, working *

together. But though both were intimately and inexorably connected with the Houses, he now saw them as antagonists, opposing forces, and the idea that the butler was dead, that the girl was now free to do as she chose, with no one to stop her, frightened him to the core.

A door opened in the hallway behind him, and Stormy turned to look, hoping and praying for it to beBillingham , but it was his grandmother who emerged from one of the bathrooms, hobbling out with the assistance of a bone-handled cane.

"Hi, Grandma," he said, but the old lady ignored him, turned the other direction, walked away.

"Billingham!" his father bellowed again.

Facing forward, Stormy glanced around the study. He had seldom been asked in here as a child, and he had always been too afraid of his father to take the initiative and enter on his own, so his memories of the room were hazy. One whole wall, he saw now, was covered with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. A big picture window on the opposite wall looked out onto the back garden.

There was a desk and a pair of identical leather chairs.

Two dark wood filing cabinets. A potted palm.

And a doll.

Stormy'sbreath caught in his throat. It was lying on the floor directly behind his father, as though his father had dropped it there. The face was upside down, but the wide white eyes seemed to be staring into his, the disturbing inverted smile trained directly on him. He didn't know why he hadn't seen the figure immediately, and the thought occurred to him that his father had been holding it behind his back, hiding it.

He met his father's eyes, and the old man looked quickly and guiltily away.

Stormy knew now what had happened in this House, though he had not understood it as a child. They'd been corrupted in their purpose, his parents. His entire family.

They'd been seduced by Donielle and had neglected their duties, their responsibilities, defecting under the watchful but naive and uncomprehending eyes of Billingham. It had affected their relationship with him, their own son, had erected the barrier between them that had stood for the rest of their lives, and the fact that they'd allowed themselves to be drawn in by the girl, that they had so easily been manipulated by her, had led him to disassociate himself from them. He might not have been able to articulate it at the time, but subliminally, subconsciously, he'd been able to read the signs even then, and it was why he'd never really had any respect for his parents. He'd been afraid of them, intimidated by them, but he hadn't respected them.

And it was why he had eventually left and moved west.

He had changed, though. He had grown over the years, and he was no longer the hesitant, easily cowed, easily intimidated child he had been. He'd come back to the House, to his family, a new person, an adult, a successful businessman and entrepreneur, and he would no longer be bullied into submission by his father's words, by his mother's demands.

Maybe he'd been given the opportunity to right the wrongs of the past. Maybe he'd been sent back here to stop the girl early, before she was able to do any major damage. To head her off at the pass, as it were.

Whatever the reason, whatever the motive, he felt he had the chance to change things, to do things differently, and it was not a chance he was going to waste. He walked across the study, bent down, and picked up the doll. "What's this?" he asked.

His father snatched the figure from him. "Don't you dare touch that!"

Behind him, he heard his mother enter the room.

Good. Both of them needed to hear this.

He faced his father. "Why are we here?" he asked.

"In this House?"

"This is our home!"

"We're here for a reason," Stormy said patiently.

"And it's not to fuck that little urchin girl."

"Oh!" his mother gasped.

His father glared at him. "I will not be spoken to that way by my own son!"

"Why don't you want me to see her, then? Why can't I seeDonielle ?"

His father hesitated. "Because . . . because she's a bad influence on you."

"And she's a bad influence on you, too. She's a bad influence on all of us." He met his parents' eyes. Both of them looked away, embarrassed.

"Does Billingham know about Donielle ?"

"Billingham?" His parents exchanged a quick look.

"What does Billingham have to do with this?"

"You know."

"Stormy--"

"You know why the House must be maintained. You know what it does. And you know you're not supposed to do anything to jeopardize that." He pointed at the doll, still clutched in his father's fingers. "What's that, Dad?"

"It's none of your damn business."

"She gave it to you. It's hers. You're busy trying to keep me from going anywhere or doing anything with her, pretending that she's not good enough for our family, and you're seeing her behind my back. She's a child, Dad. A child."

His father shook his head. He looked suddenly old.

"She's no child," he said.

"And we're only trying to protect you," his mother said. "She is a bad influence."

"Then how come you keep seeing her yourselves?"

Neither of them answered.

"Don't you want it back the way it was? The way it used to be?"

"It can't go back," his father said.

"Why not?"

"Because it's gone too far."

"No," Stormy said. "Not yet it hasn't."

"You're wrong." His father looked down at the doll in his hand. "You don't understand."

"What don't I understand?"

"I fucked her, okay?" There was anger in his voice.

"I fucked her ass."

Stormy stared at him.

His voice dropped to a whisper. "Now I'm hers forever."

"No." Stormy grabbed the doll from his father, threw it onto the ground. He felt shaken, sickened. It was one thing to suspect something or to know it deductively, and it was quite another to be confronted with its specifics outright, but still he pressed on. "You have a choice, Dad. You always have a choice. Right now, you're just choosing to give up, choosing to give in. You can break free if you want to. There's nothing binding you to Donielle . Tell her to fuck off. Take control of your life, for God's sake."