Bentley Little - The House

"I can't," his father said weakly.

"Look at Mom." He motioned toward his mother, wearing the oversized cutoff suit. "Look what's happened to her, what she's become. And you know why!

You know what's done this to her! Don't you even care enough about her to put a stop to this?"

On the floor, the doll shifted, rolled onto its side.

Stormy was not sure whether it had moved of its own accord or it had simply landed on a precarious angle and was settling, but the motion frightened him anyway, and he kicked the doll as hard as he could, watching it slide across the hardwood floor and under the desk. There were goose bumps on his arms, and he saw that both of his parents were looking under the desk at the figure.

"Donielleasked me to marry her," Stormy said.

That brought them back.

His father's gaze snapped onto his, and there was anger on his face, confusion beneath the anger, fear beneath the confusion. His mother gasped, clapped a hand to her mouth.

"She knows you forbid me to talk to her, and she suggested we elope. She said she wants to take me away from the House"--he paused--"and away from you."

"She . . . she can't!" his father exclaimed.

His mother began quietly sobbing.

"She thinks she can," Stormy said, but he was suddenly uncertain as to whether his parents were upset because they didn't want to lose him--or didn't want to lose her.

He took a deep breath. "Is she more important to you than me?"

"No!" his mother said, shocked.

"Of course not, son."

"Then what if I told you that you had to choose?

What if I said it's either her or me?"

His father's face clouded over. "She's trying to break up the family."

"Who would you choose?"

"It's not that little slut who's causing all the problems,"

his mother announced.

Stormy turned to her. "Who is it, then?"

"It's the bone monster," she said, eyes widening.

His father stared at him silently, looking lost.

"Would you choose me, Dad?"

A tear rolled down his father's right cheek. "I would if I could."

Stormy smiled at them sadly. "I love you," he said.

"I love you both."

For a moment, his mother's gaze was lucid, his father's expression softened. "We love you, too," his mother told him, putting her arms around him. His father nodded.

A chime rang out, a deeply resonant almost churchy sound. The doorbell.

"Billingham!" his father bellowed.

His mother pulled away from him.

Another chime.

"Billingham!"

Stormy sighed. "I'll get it," he said.

He walked out of the den and down the hall to the foyer. The doorbell rang again, and he sped up, unlocking and opening the door.

A girl was standing on the porch in front of him.

Donielle.

He caught his breath at the sight of her. He was an adult now and she was a child, but the feelings she evoked within him were the same as those engendered all those years ago. His heart was racing, and there was a pleasant tingling in his groin. Despite everything he knew, despite everything that had happened, the attraction was still there, and his first impulse was to reach out and grab her hands and hold them in his. He wanted to touch her, but he held back, remained holding on to the door. "Yes?" he said coldly.

"Oh, Stormy!" She rushed forward, threw her arms around him, and against his will his body responded.

Beneath his jeans, his growing penis pressed against her midsection, and she held him tighter, rubbing herself against it.

Stormy grabbed her arms, pulled her away from him.

"What's the matter?" she said, looking up at him. Her eyes were full of hurt innocence.

He steeled himself. "You know what's the matter."

"I love you, Stormy."

He held on to her arms, looked away from her face.

"I don't love you."

"I don't like what you're trying to do."

"I'm on your side! I'm the one who told you you have to stand up for yourself, you can't let your family boss you around and make all your decisions!"

"I am standing up for myself."

"That's why your family hates me!"

"And I'm standing up for my family."

"I have nothing against them," she said, and tears welled up in her eyes. "They're the ones who don't like me! They don't like me because I'm poor. They don't like me because I love you more than they do and I

think about your feelings and what's good for you and not just what'll look good and save face for the family."

"They don't want me to see you anymore," he said.

"And I don't want to see you either."

"Fuck your family," Donielle told him.

"No," he said. "Fuck you."

The tears stopped flowing, her face hardened. "What did you say?"

"You heard me."

"That's the way you want it?"

"That's the way it's going to be. Get out of here. I

never want to see you again."

"What you want and what you'll get are two different things." With a flip of her hair, she turned and walked away, and he thought that from behind she didn't look like a child at all, she looked like a dwarf.

That lessened the attraction somewhat.

Lessened it.

But did not get rid of it.

He closed the door. Behind him he heard the click-tap of his grandmother's cane on the floor, and he turned to see her standing by the foot of the stairs.

"I can't find Billingham ," she said.

"I ... I think he's gone," Stormy told her.

There was a brief flash of lucidity, a quick second in which he saw panic and fear and incomprehension on her face. She knew the butler had been part of the House, and she knew that if he was gone, something was seriously amiss. Then her usual tight expression of stoic immobility settled into place, and she said, "You will have to serve in his place, then."

Stormy nodded. "Do you want me to help you up the stairs?"

"No," she told him. "I want you to draw my bath. I will bathe tonight in blood. Have my tub filled with goat's blood. Temperature tepid."

He nodded dumbly, watched her struggle up the steps.

From far down the first-floor hall, he heard his mother wailing, heard his father bellow, "Billingham!"

He stood in the foyer, unmoving. What had he accomplished?

Nothing. He'd tried his damnedest and confronted his parents, put it all on the line, and they had remained unmovable, entrenched, fatalistically resigned to things as they were. Everything was exactly the same as it was before.

He sighed. You really couldn't go home again.

Still, he felt better for having talked to his parents, for having confronted them, for having at least tried to stop their abandonment of Billingham and the House, to change their increasing reliance on Donielle.

If he had it to do over again, he would not run away from home. He would stay in the House with his parents, and try to work things out with them.

There was no sign of his grandmother on the stairs, he could not hear the tapping of her cane, so he walked up the steps to make sure she was all right. She was not in the second- or third-floor hallways, and he knocked on the door of her bedroom. "Grandma?"

No answer.

He tried to open the door, but it was locked.

He knocked on the door of her bathroom, but again there was no answer, and he put his ear to the wood, listening for sound.

Nothing.

Could she have gone somewhere else? He started toward the stairs again, but his eye was caught by the open door to his bedroom. Had it been open before?

He didn't think so.

"Hello?" he called out tentatively. He poked his head into the room, and there was a sudden shift of atmosphere and air pressure, a lightening of mood. He saw earthquake debris strewn across the floor of the bedroom, and against the opposite wall, a broken television.

He was back.

Norton Norton understood the change immediately.