Bentley Little - The House

Next time?

Yes. There would be a next time.

Norton looked around. He'd lived in this House until he was eighteen, had spent the last few days in it (or a reasonable facsimile thereof), but right now he could not say precisely where in the House he was. The intersecting corridors and closed doors did not look familiar to him, and his sense of direction seemed to be off. He could not get his bearings. If he remembered right, the back stairs ended near the laundry and storage rooms.

This certainly didn't look like the laundry area, but he walked over to the closed door opposite him and pulled it open.

The room before him was huge, twice the size of the library, as big as the sitting room and the dining room combined. No pictures hung on its bare walls. There was no furniture.

The room was completely empty except for the books.

Still holding on to the doorknob, Norton stared.

Books, hundreds of them, had been placed on end and stood next to each other like dominoes, making a trail that snaked through an elaborate design covering almost the entire floor of the massive space, twisting and curving, circling around, making sudden sharp turns at sharp angles.

He didn't know whether it was what he was supposed to do or not supposed to do, but it was what he wanted to do, and he kicked over the first book, the one closest to the door, and watched as the rest of them all went down sequentially, the room suddenly echoing with a series of rapid-fire slaps and muffled thuds, dust jacket hitting dust jacket, cover smacking cover, everything hitting the floor.

It took a good two minutes for all of the books to go down, for the wave to pass through the room, and he stood there unmoving, his eyes following the falling books as the pattern wound around the opposite side of the room and then finally returned to the area near the door.

Now that the books were flat, he could see the design they had been arranged to make.

The same face as the chalk drawing.

The single-toothed mouth grinned crazily upward at the ceiling.

Norton backed away. Again, his first instinct was to run, but he checked that impulse and instead breathed deeply, forcing himself to remain in place. This face did not move, did not wink, did not laugh, showed no sign of animation. He thought for a moment, then walked into the room, kicking books to the right and to the left, destroying the carefully wrought pattern. He strode all the way to the opposite wall and all the way back, and when he was through it looked as though the books had simply been dumped into this room haphazardly, without any thought to their placement, and he closed the door behind him and started off down the hall toward where he thought the front of the House should be.

He ended up in another junction of two corridors. He turned left, and now he recognized where he was. This hallway led to the foyer and the front of the House.

A snake slithered across the floor in front of him--a green snake with a pale, barely visible underbelly--and he thought of Laurie. Where were the others now? He wondered. In their own childhood Houses? Going through their own tests and trials and tribulations?

He watched the snake flatten, slide through the thin space under the bathroom door.

It was amazing how quickly he'd fallen back into the rhythm of the House. He was scared--he couldn't claim to be unaffected by the manifestations thrown at him-- but they did not really surprise him, and he did not question them. He accepted their existence, considered them as much a part of the House as the wallpaper and light fixtures.

Just as he had all those decades ago.

He knew now that it was because the House was on the border, that it was the mixing of the material world and the . . . other world which created these surreal shifts in reality, but this understanding was on a purely intellectual level. As a child, long before he'd been made aware of the purpose of the House, he had adjusted to its wild displays and bizarre juxtapositions, and acceptance had been achieved long before understanding.

There was a noise behind him, a tapping. He turned And it was Carole.

Seeing her ghost was almost like seeing an old friend.

In life, they hadn't gotten along particularly well. At least not for the past half decade or so. And after her death, seeing her ghost around their home and last night, especially, had been frightening and disturbing. But his life had taken a 180-degree turn, and here, in this House, he was glad to see her ghost. It was comforting, a pleasant surprise, and he looked at her naked form and found himself smiling. "Carole," he said.

She did not smile back. "Your family is waiting for you."

He shook his head as though he had not heard correctly.

"What?"

"You need to talk to your family. Your parents. Your brother. Your sisters."

There was no expression on her face, only a dispassionate blankness, and his own smile had completely disappeared.

The last thing he wanted to do was talk to his family. "Why?" he asked.

"That is why you are here."

"To meet with them?"

The ghost nodded.

"I will," he said. "Eventually."

"No you won't."

He met her eyes. "Maybe I won't."

"You can't keep avoiding them," Carole said.

"Watch me."

The two of them faced each other, and he realized suddenly that the reason he was so apprehensive about meeting his family again was because he felt responsible for their deaths. It was his fault they had been killed. If he had not stopped seeing Donna, if he had not dumped her, she would not have taken this revenge on him. Hell, if he hadn't gotten involved with her in the first place, if he had not stoned seeing her, he would not have had to stop seeing her. No matter which way he sliced it, it was his fault that his parents, his brother, and his sisters had been murdered, and that was why he had been unwilling to talk to them, to meet them, why he had been so uncomfortable even seeing them again. He didn't know if this version of his family knew what had happened to them or what would happen to them, but he was afraid that they'd confront him about it, that they'd blame him, and while he could handle supernatural snakes and recurring ghosts and book-faces, he did not think he would be able to handle that.

"Talk to them," Carole urged.

Norton cleared his throat, and though all of those years, all of those decades had gone by, he felt like a little boy again, nervous and afraid. "I can't," he said.

"You have to."

"I can't."

"Have you seen Billings?" she asked.

He shook his head. Where was the hired hand? he wondered.

"He's dead," she said, and he heard a tremor of fear in her voice. "She had him killed."

"She?"

"Donna."

Norton felt the cold wash over him.

"Talk to your parents," Carole said. "Talk to your family."

She left then, not floating away, not fading into nothingness, but somehow . . . dispersing, her form devolving into separate elements and components that were absorbed into the floor, the walls, the ceiling, changing color, changing shape, blending in and disappearing.

He looked around, then stared at the spot where she'd been. Was she real? Or was she a part of the House?

Or both?

He didn't know, and he supposed in the end it didn't really matter. He believed her, she'd spoken the truth, and the important thing was that her message had gotten across. As much as he dreaded the idea, as much as he didn't want to do it, he knew that he had to meet with his family, he had to talk to them. About what, he didn't know. But he supposed that would work itself out.

As if on cue, he heard the sound of voices coming from up ahead. He recognized Darren's laugh, Estelle's whine. He moved forward, walking slowly, wiping his sweaty hands on his pants and trying desperately to think of what he would say to them.