The House

Laurie reached out, grabbed her mother's hand. "Dawn will kill you," she said. "She wants us all out off the House, she wants to leave the House unattended, and she will do whatever it takes to make that happen."

"Billington won't let that happen."

"Billington is gone!" Laurie said. "He's probably dead! She probably killed him!"

There was silence between them.

Her mother coughed. "You don't understand."

"No, you don't understand! You think Dawn's doing this for her health? You think she cares about you? She wants you out of the House. And if that means she has to kill you, then so be it."

Her mother was already shaking her head.

"Father's seeing her, too."

At that, her mother stiffened. Laurie had not been intending to reveal that fact, had not planned to say anything about it, had been hoping she could talk to both parents individually and get them each to stop seeing the girl, and she instantly regretted spilling the beans. The horrible thought occurred to her that she was the one responsible for sending her mother after her father, for setting into motion the events that led to her parents' deaths.

Had she done Dawn's work for her?

"Mother," she said earnestly. "You have to put a stop to this. You can't let her run your life. You're just a pawn to her. She'll use you up and toss you aside."

"It's okay," her mother said, and patted her hand. "I

know you mean well, but you don't understand everything."

She put a finger over Laurie's lips before she could respond. "I know you think you do, but believe me, you don't."

She didn't know what to say, didn't know what to do.

She wanted to cry from frustration.

"No matter what happens, I want you to always remember that I love you."

"I love you, too," Laurie said, although even as she spoke the words she was thinking that she loved her other mother more.

Love wasn't perfect, she realized. It didn't cure all ills and didn't solve all problems and wasn't always what was needed. It also wasn't equal. There was a hierarchy of love, some people you loved more than others, and it did make a difference. Sometimes just loving someone was not enough. Sometimes you had to love someone enough.

Would she have really traded her childhood and her new family for a life with this family in the House?

No.

Her father, her biological father, walked into the kitchen. "What's going on in here?" he asked. "What's taking so long? We're thirsty out there."

Her mother stared at him with a blank, unreadable expression, and whatever else he'd been intending to say died in his throat. "Go back out there with our guests,"

she said. "I'll bring the lemonade out in a minute."

He nodded.

"Father?" Laurie said.

"Yes?"

"Stop seeing her. Stop seeing Dawn."

His face reddened, tensed, and he was about to say something, to respond angrily, but he glanced over at her mother's face and closed his mouth.

"She's evil," Laurie said.

He nodded tiredly, started to turn away.

They were doomed, she saw now. There was no way she could change anything, no way any of their future could be avoided. Still, she was glad she'd talked to them, and she felt a little bit better knowing that she'd at least made an effort.

"Go out there with your father," her mother said. "I'll bring the drinks in a minute."

Laurie nodded, gave her mother's hand a small squeeze, and she and her father walked back into the dining room where her future family waited.

Daniel The Other Side.

It was not something he could have anticipated, not even from those views through the windows of the other House.

It was not like any afterlife he had ever imagined.

There were no blue skies or fields of green, no cloud palaces, no geographical distinctions at all. There were no hydras or unicorns or banshees, no gods or monsters, no recognizable beings. Occasional indistinct blobs of blackness flew by, shooting past him as though shot from a cannon, but for the most part this world was empty, barren, devoid of even the smallest sign of life or movement.

He was floating in nothingness.

Doneenkneed him in the midsection, trying to dislodge his grip, but he held tightly on to her, ignoring her shrieks and cries, her hideous yelps and growls, wrestling with her in the open air, clutching her close to his chest.

He felt no pain, but she was as strong or stronger than he was, and even if she could not hurt him, she could get away from him.

He had no idea what to do with her. He'd wanted only to get her as far away from Tony and Margot as possible, and the Other Side seemed perfect for that, but what was next? Was he supposed to fight with her forever, to wrestle here with her for years in order to keep her occupied and give Tony a chance to grow up? He had to admit that he felt no flagging of his energy, no decrease in strength, and he had no doubt that he could continue tangling with her through eternity without becoming fatigued. But he did not want to. He wanted to do something with her, to get rid of her, to imprison her or put her out of commission.

To kill her.

His anger had not flagged either, and he tried to think of some way he could stop her permanently. His mother had said that he could restrain her but not destroy her, and he tried to find some loophole in that, tried to come up with some means to do her in. That would solve not only his family problem but the problems of Laurie and Norton and Stormy and Mark. Doneen was the only real threat to the Houses, and if he could put a stop to her once and for all, everything would go back to the way it was supposed to be.

She squirmed in his grasp, was able to bend her arm and twist her hand in front of his face. Sharp claws snapped out from the ends of her fingers, and his first instinct was to push her away from him, but instead he butted her forehead with his, and used all of his strength and weight and the leverage granted him by size to twist her arm around her back.

She screamed wildly.

He still seemed to be tethered to the House, and for that he was grateful. He could see a line of Houses, far in the distance, the only discernible shapes in this horribly empty universe. There were a lot more than five of them. They stretched infinitely across what passed for a horizon, and although they appeared to be identical, one House, his House, blinked periodically from the highest window in its highest gable, an attic window, and at each pulse of light he- felt a slight tug, as though it were pulling on some sort of invisible cord connecting him to it.

That connection was the only thing keeping him from defeatism and despair.

God, he wished Billings were still alive.

He could've used some help.

Doneen changed in his hands, her left arm transforming into a green snake, her head morphing into that of Tony's first doll. He was supposed to be scared, frightened away, but he wasn't. She was the only constant in the world floating by them, her transformations at least contextually understandable and recognizable, and he continued to hold on to her as tightly as he could, as the doll head became a goat's head and snapped at him.

He kicked her crotch, was gratified to see her snap back into human form and howl in what sounded like pain.

In the opposite direction of the Houses, there were flashes of light in the far distance, flashes that looked like multicolored popcorn. Instead of flaring and fading, they remained, piled onto each other, slowly growing into something approximating a mountain. Both sky and ground were colors he did not recognize, but simply having a "sky" and a "ground," an up and a down, identifiable directions, was reassuring.

Where were his mother and father and all of the other generations of human dead? This world had seemed more hospitable before, and he was both puzzled and troubled by the absence of any presences. The thought occurred to him that there was not just the Other Side, that there were many sides, and that this one was her world, her hereafter.

This was where her kind went when they died.

The thought was not at all comforting.

She snarled at him, spit, and she was no longer a she but a he. A long red penis snaked up between them, its engorged head and wetslitted opening pressing against his closed lips, and he was tempted to open his mouth and bite it off, but he had the feeling that's what she wanted him to do, so he turned his head and maintained his pressure on her wrists, kicking at her lower section as hard as he could with his feet, sending them both tumbling head over heels.

The color of the sky changed as she transformed from female to male and back again, the only indication that she and this terrifyingly empty world were connected.

He maneuvered his hands until he was finally able to reach her neck. He let go of her hands, and she punched him, clawed at him, but he felt nothing and her blows did no damage. His fingers were firmly around her throat, and he tried to squeeze shut her windpipe, to strangle her, but his efforts had no discernible effect. He was not sure if she could be strangled, if she were breathing or if she even had to breathe, but he knew that it would not make any difference either way. His mother had been right, he could not kill her.

She understood what he was trying to do, and she stopped struggling for a moment, long enough to laugh at him.

"You should've fucked me when you had the chance,"

she said.

She pushed him hard away with both feet and both hands.

He was holding on to her only by the neck, and the sudden application of force sent him flying back.

"They're mine," she said, grinning. "They're all mine."

And she was gone.

Norton Norton awoke in the present.

The past was gone. He was back in the House that he'd shared with the others, only now he was alone.

There was no sign of Daniel or Laurie or Stormy or Mark, no indication that they were here or that they had ever been here. He was somewhere upstairs, somewhere in the center of the House that he didn't recognize. To his left, a hallway lined with opposing sets of closed doors stretched into the dimness. To his right, the same.

Behind him was a wall, and ahead of him another hallway, shorter, with no doors opening onto it, ending in a blue room.

He walked slowly forward, down the short hallway.

The air grew colder with each step, and by the time he reached the room he could see his breath. It felt like a meat locker, he thought, and that analogy left him feeling unsettled.

The room was empty, but to the right of the door, in the opposite wall, was another doorway, leading to another room, this one a lighter shade of blue. He passed through the vestibule, and the temperature went up a few degrees. Once again, there was another doorway, this one on the left wall, and it led into yet another room, an even lighter shade of blue.

Norton stood, looking around. There were no lamps or light fixtures, but the rooms were somehow illuminated, and that made him nervous.

It was one of the many things that made him nervous.

These rooms did not seem to him like part of the House. They were, he knew, but until now everything within the House had had a counterpart with the past, with his childhood. The solarium had been new, but like the bathroom, he had accepted it as part of the remodeling that must have occurred over the past half century.

These rooms did not seem like they had ever been a part of the House.

Maybe he wasn't in the present but in some future time. Or even some outside time. He definitely wasn't in the past, though. He knew that. He could feel it.

Perhaps this was some sort of test. Maybe he'd passed the first part of the test, with his family, and now he was being tested again.

Maybe if he successfully completed this part, he'd be allowed to go free.

It was that hope, that possibility, that pushed him forward.

The next room, a white room, was warmer.

There were nine rooms all together. It was like a maze, and he didn't understand how the center of the House could contain this much space, but he walked through increasingly warm chambers, until, finally, he reached the last room.

It was empty save for the girl.

She was naked, and she smiled slyly at Norton, slowly bending over, grabbing her ankles. "Kiss my ass," she said.

He stared at her.

"Kiss my ass," she repeated softly, sensuously. "You know you want to."

He did want to--even after all he'd been through, even after all that had happened. He could see the small pink puckering between her spread buttocks and he longed to place his mouth there, to touch it with his tongue.

Wasn't that how the devil was supposed to have sealed his covenant with witches?

Norton closed his eyes. He didn't know what to think anymore. He was sweating, and he wiped his perspiring brow with the back of his hand. There were no other doors in this room, no way out save for the way he'd come in.

"I'm not the enemy," she said. "It's the Houses that are the enemies."

"Th-that's not true," he said.

Her smile grew wider, and it not only looked sensuous to him but curiously friendly. "Yes it is. You know it is.

We're both trapped here. We're both prisoners. Why do you think you were lured back? You honestly think that the forces of good kidnapped you and planned to make you live out the rest of your life here? Because you're the only one who can save the world? Does that make any sense at all? Be serious."

The expression on her face seemed open and honest to him, and he found himself following her logic. Maybe he and the others had been wrong. Maybe they'd been brainwashed by Billings and his Houses.

"I never touched your parents or anyone in your family. I was the one who tried to save them.

It was Mr.

Billings who did them in. And he's been trying to keep us apart ever since because he knew I'd tell you the truth."

The ants.

He pushed that thought out of his mind.

She ran a finger slowly down the opened crack of her buttocks. "Come on," she said softly. "Kiss it. Kiss my ass. What can it hurt?"

He licked his dry lips and found himself nodding.

"I've been waiting for this for a long time, Norton."

He moved forward, knelt behind her, placed his face between the cheeks of her buttocks, closed his eyes, and began licking.

The girl moaned.

When he opened his eyes, he was in a black room, his face buried between two red pillows on the floor. He looked up and saw a marble table set up like an altar.

Strapped down, lying on top of the table, was Billings.

The assistant, hired hand, butler, whatever-he-was, was straining against his bonds. There was defiance in his face but no fear, and Norton walked slowly over and looked down at him. Billings was still in his formal attire, and even under these circumstances he seemed to retain a sense of dignity. He stared up at Norton, and it was clear that he wanted to be released, but he was not about to beg, and he said nothing.

There was a tug on his arm, and Norton looked down to see Donna pulling on his sleeve. "Come here," she said softly, and a slight smile played about her lips.

"Come look."

He noticed for the first time that the room was crowded, filled with tables and display cases and huge heavy pieces of furniture that served functions he did not understand. He saw what looked like severed hands and genitalia lying on a long glass shelf on one wall.

Something small and dark and furry ran past his feet, chattering to itself.

He did not see either a door or a window, an entrance or an exit to the room.

Donna pulled him around a large stationary object of mirror and wood that he did not recognize, and he found himself in a corner area even more jumbled and chaotic than the rest of the room. There was no furniture here, though.

There were bodies.

And body parts.

His first instinct was to back away. The floor was sticky with blood, and what looked like deflated clouds, the pale empty husks of the ghosts he'd seen in the House on the Other Side, hung from staggered hooks on the black wall. The torso of some unknown rainbow colored creature sat atop a cube made from interlocking bones, next to the discarded head of an evil-looking old woman. The stench was horrendous, and he held his hand to his nose, gagging.

But Donna would not let him go. She held tightly to his wrist, her strength both unforced and unnatural, and she talked to him softly. There was no true death, she said. There was only a transformation from one form into another, a passage from one world to the next. Why should he hold on to his outdated notions of morality, his prudish small-town conceptions of what was right?

There was nothing wrong with killing. It only facilitated the inevitable.

He heard her, understood her, and though he should have had arguments with which to dispute her, he did not. She led him through the abattoir, still softly talking, lovingly touching the remains of the dispatched.

There was beauty in the bones, he saw now, a poetry in the eviscerated flesh.

Donna reached the wall, and from a skin sheath hanging from a spike, she withdrew a dull rusty knife. She handed it to him. "Mr. Billings is yours."

"What?"

"It's time for him to move on, and you have been chosen to assist him." She pressed the knife into his hand. It felt heavy, good. "It's an opportunity for you."

She led him back through the furniture to the marble table, and he looked at Billings, strapped down and unable to move. Norton shook his head. He could not go through with this. He understood that death was not the end, but he still could not bring himself to kill someone, to murder in cold blood.

Donna must have sensed his hesitancy because she rubbed against him, placed a hand between his legs. "It's his time," she said. "He wants to go."

Billings did not look like he wanted to go. Norton glanced down at the defiant face and turned quickly away.

Donna faced him. Her legs were slightly spread, the thin material of her dirty shift stretched tight, and he found himself wishing she'd bend over again, wishing she'd let him between her thighs.

One of the wispy ghosts had been pinned to the wall behind the table and was weakly fluttering, its blue-gray essence seeping slowly out from a slit in the fabric of its being and floating into the girl's mouth even as she spoke, even as she whispered the words he wanted to hear.

"I'll drink your sperm and drink your piss and drink your blood. I'll take everything you give me and do anything you want me to. All you have to do is take care of Mr. Billings."

Norton nodded. He didn't know why he was doing what he was doing, but he held out the knife, walked up to the marble table.

"Do it," Donna said.

He did.

Even as Billings screamed, as he inserted the knife in the assistant's groin and jerked upward, Norton understood that he was the reason Billings had disappeared.

Wherever he was--whenever he was--it was after he had met Daniel and Laurie and Stormy and Mark but before the Houses had split apart. He had not known it then because his own life unfolded sequentially, no matter what happened, but the Houses did not follow such a conventional timetable, were not so circumscribed, and he had been wrenched back and forth, forced to be at the Houses' beck and call, to respond to whatever they put in front of him.

Donna was right. It was the Houses that were evil.

But he realized the fallacy of that reasoning even as it occurred to him. Billings' screams were now silent, his mouth frozen wide open, his eyes bulging with agony, and Norton knew with a certainty that could not be denied that he'd been right the first time, that his initial instincts had been correct. The girl was the evil one.

"Yes," Donna said, egging him on. And there was hunger in her eyes. "Gut the fucker!"

He stopped then and there. He pulled the knife out and dropped it, knowing that it was too late, that he had been corrupted by the girl Kiss my ass --that he had been caught in her web, that he was lost. He heard the knife hit the floor, and he stared down at his hands, covered to the elbows with hot blood, and he started to cry, but Donna knelt before him and, smiling up at him, unfastened the snaps on his pants.

"I'll take care of you," she promised. "I'll reward you."

He pulled back from her, jerked away. "What have you done?" he screamed at her.

She smiled up at him. "What have you done?"

"You didn't kill my family," he said, understanding finally dawning on him, "because you couldn't kill them."

Donna smiled. "Darcy did just as good a job. I was very proud of her."

Norton's stomach dropped. "No," he whispered, shaking his head. He thought of his old girlfriend, and though he didn't want to be able to imagine her cutting off heads and cooking them in the oven, he could.

But how had she done it? His father and Darren and his sisters--hell, even his mother--could have easily beaten Darcy in a fight. And all of them together would certainly have been able to not only resist her but overpower her.

Donna had made them sacrifice themselves.

It made perfect sense.

He stared at her with horror.

"But I can kill," she said. "You're wrong about that. I can fuck and I can kill."

"Then why do you make other people do it for you?"

She smiled. "Because it's fun."

He backed away from her.

"I killed Darcy after that. Skinned her in the garage.

And Mark's sister Kristen? The last true resident of the House? I sat on her face, made her eat me, suffocated her with my hot pussy. And--"

"Why didn't you kill Billings?"

Her face clouded over. "That's different."

"Why?"

"Because."

"You couldn't do it?"

"No, I needed you."

He looked back at the assistant's bloody, unmoving form on the table. "What have I done?" he cried.

"You've helped me."

And even as he screamed his anguish into the black and bone-cluttered room, she was on her knees in front of him, pulling down his pants.

Stormy The windows were back.

That was the first thing he noticed.

But the world outside was foggy and featureless, and although the front door of the House opened when he tried it, he was afraid to go out into that murk.

Stormy closed the door and looked around the entryway, down the hall. "Daniel!" he called. "Daniel!"

No answer.

"Norton! Laurie! . . . Mark!"

His voice died without echo in the heavy oppressive air, and there was no answering noise from anywhere else in the House.

Funny. He could have sworn he was back in the same House he'd shared with his compatriots. It certainly looked and felt that way to him. But he seemed to be completely alone, and he wondered if they'd been trapped somewhere else. In their own pasts, perhaps.

Or if they'd been killed.

He hoped to God that wasn't the case.

Stormy walked into the dining room, into the kitchen.

There were crackers in one of the cupboards, and he took out the box, grabbing a handful. He was hungry, he realized. He felt as though he'd been running a marathon or working out in a gym. He was drained, enervated, and he felt the need to bolster himself with nourishment. He searched through all of the other cupboards as well as the refrigerator, but he found only two other items.

A can of fruit cocktail.

And a hunk of cheddar cheese.

He ate neither, left them in the cupboard and refrigerator, respectively, feeling chilled.

He finished off the box of crackers, poured himself a glass of water.

So what was next?

It was clear that he had done something, accomplished something. He'd been set down in the household of his childhood for a reason, and while that reason was still unclear, the fact that he was back, had been returned, meant that he had completed whatever it was he'd been expected to do.

But the purpose of it was still unknown, even the assumptions behind it nebulous. How could changing the specifics of his own past life affect anything having to do with the Houses and this border that was supposed to protect--what?--the known universe from supernatural forces?

It was the mixture of the cosmic and the personal that he found so hard to accept. He had never bought into the Christian idea that God would ignore wars and atrocities and holocausts yet intervene on behalf of a housewife with marital problems. It seemed absurd and inconsistent to him. Highly illogical, to quote the great Mr. Spock.

But he knew now that the Infinite was illogical, that the epic and the intimate were inexorably intertwined, and while it might be hard to grasp and difficult to adjust to, a missed appointment could have as much consequence as the troop movements of an army a thousand soldiers strong, could lead to the movement of an army a thousand soldiers strong. In the grand scheme of things, individual actions and large-scale events were both equally important. Here in the House and on the Other Side, that truism seemed to be even more pronounced.

Feelings and emotions were as tangible as actions, and while he might not understand the specifics of it, he knew that reconnecting with his parents and confronting Doniellehad somehow had a profound impact on the House and therefore the world.

He looked out the kitchen windows at the white fog that obscured whatever lay outside.

The Ones Who Went Before.

For the first time since Billings had spoken that terrifying name to him, Stormy thought about the builders of the Houses. What did they look like? Did they have a definite shape and form? He would never know and was not sure that he wanted to know.

What about the Houses themselves? If they had been around as long as Billings had intimated, they could not have always looked like this. What had been here before them? Teepees? Caves?

It was a creepy line of thought, and Stormy forced himself to back away from it. There would be time for that later. There were more immediate concerns at present.

He needed to find out where he was, when he was, where the others were, and how they were going to escape from here.

Crackers were stuck between his teeth, and he poured himself another glass of water and rinsed his mouth out in the sink before embarking on a floor-by-floor search of the House.

He went through every room on the first floor, then wandered upstairs, looking for one of the others, looking for ... something. He saw nothing unusual until he reached the third story. There, across the hall from his bedroom, was a door that had not been there before, a door he did not remember. He felt suddenly nervous and was not sure he wanted to look inside, especially not alone, but he forced himself to be brave, opened the door, and peeked into the room.

"Oh, Jesus," he breathed.

Butchery.

This deserved the title. The black room before him was the site of almost unbelievable carnage. Faces hung from hooks on the wall like hats, the drooping, sagging skin contorting their former shapes into stretched mockeries of human forms. Bones and skulls and pieces of flesh lay strewn across the blood-spattered floor next to a pile of discarded gossamer that looked like the empty bodies of the cloudlike ghosts he'd seen on the Other Side. Metal instruments that could only be tools of torture were scattered about the room.

On the top of a marble table was Billings.

The butler had been stabbed. No, not just stabbed.

Slit open. His mouth was frozen in arictus of agony, and his eyes were wide, staring. The red imprint of a kiss--lipstick? blood?--could be seen on his white forehead.

Stormy remained in the doorway, afraid to enter the room. He didn't know what this meant, where it fit into anything, but it scared the hell out of him, and the confirmation that Billings was dead hit him much harder than expected.

What were they going to do now? Their guiding light was gone.

What was he going to do now? That was the big question.

Because the others weren't anywhere to be found.

For all he knew, they had been killed as well and their bloody corpses awaited him in some other room of the House.

He thought he detected movement to the right of Billings'

body, and immediately he shifted his attention in that direction. At first he saw nothing, but he squinted his eyes, looked more carefully.

A shade, a shadow--Norton?--was standing near the foot of the table, its indistinct form covered with blood, staring at its own outstretched hands with an expression that could be read as horror, could be read as awe. The face was obscure, faded into transparency, but there was something about the shape of its body, its stance, the movement of its head and arms, that reminded him of Norton, and he was suddenly sure that the old man was dead.

He called out Norton's name, tried to communicate with the ghost or whatever it was, but no matter what he said or how much he gesticulated, he could not seem to capture the figure's attention.

There was additional movement in the far corner of the dark room, a flash of white in his peripheral vision, and Stormy quickly glanced over at that area.

Donielle.

She had no trouble seeing him. The girl smiled in his direction, and her lips were bright crimson, there were flecks of blood on her teeth. She lifted her shift, and he saw smears of red on her crotch where she'd been . . .

touching herself. "Come and get it," she said, giggling.

Her voice seemed to come from far away.

Looking at her now, Stormy could not understand how he had ever even been tempted.

She turned around and bent over, still giggling. "Kiss it!" she said.

He slammed the door of the room as hard as he could, backing toward his bedroom across the hall. More than anything, he needed time to think, time to sort things out, but he had the feeling that was exactly what he was not going to get. He was filled with the sudden conviction that things were coming to a head, that whatever it had all been building toward had arrived, that the girl had almost achieved her goal.

That he was next.

Reaching behind him, his hands felt the jamb of his bedroom doorway and he turned around. But it was not his room. It was the black room again, and amid the bloody mayhem,Donielle stood at the foot ofBillings's table with her shift hiked up and rubbed herself with bloody hands.

He turned, and the door he had slammed shut was now open again, and he saw the identical room across the hall. He tried to think of what he should do, how he could get out of this, but his mind was a blank.

"You can't escape,"Donielle said.

And advanced on him from both directions.

Mark He walked slowly through the House, looking for the girl.

Mark trod carefully down the halls, hyper-aware of each shadow and sound. He wished he had a weapon, but he did not think it would make any difference if he did. Traditional concepts did not apply here, and though it would have made him feel slightly more secure having something to hold in his hand, he knew that was just a mental crutch.

He had no idea how he was going to fight her, but years of being on the road had made him pretty good at thinking quickly on his feet, and he trusted himself to figure something out when the time came.

Ahead was the door that led to the solarium. The hall around it was dark, a single candle bulb in a candelabra wall fixture throwing a weak light onto the door itself, leaving the surrounding space in blackness.

He wished Kristen had come with him. Or that Daniel or Laurie or Norton or Stormy were here.

He wished Billings were around.

Mark never would have thought he'd actually desire the assistant's company, but his mind set had gone through some hard changes since he'd learned Kristen had died and returned to the House. Almost everything he'd thought growing up had turned out to be wrong, his reality had been reversed, and he could not help thinking that all of this could have been avoided had he and his parents or he and Billings just talked, just communicated.

He reached the door, hesitating before opening it. Did he really think he could kill the girl? Kristen seemed to believe that he could, and he supposed that's what gave him the little confidence he had. Her belief in him might be nothing more than faith or hope, but it was reassuring nonetheless, and it made him feel that he at least had a fighting chance.

He reached for the door handle. Turned it. Pulled.

The solarium was gone. The door opened onto a black room with blood-spattered walls, floor, and ceiling. The room was empty, but smeared swaths of blood, and scrapes and scratches on the floor, made it look as though heavy objects had been recently moved out.

There was an aura of corruption and violent depravity about the room, a sensation so clear and strong that for a second Mark thought The Power had returned. But he realized almost instantly that the evil here was so thick and concentrated that even the most dull and unimaginative man would have no trouble detecting it.

There was no one in the room, though, and despite its unbearable atmosphere and visible remnants of past atrocities, there was nothing for him here, no sign of the girl, and he gratefully closed the door.

He walked back down the hall.

The Power.

He'd feel better if he still had it, and he found himself wondering why only he and Kristen, out of all of the residents in all the Houses, had been granted such extrasensory abilities. It seemed strange to him, and he wondered if it wasn't a fluke, a mistake.

Maybe he'd been chosen.

That made no sense. Chosen that long ago? Selected as a child? Why? So that he could one day go up against the girl? It seemed both absurd and stupid to him that the House would know all of this was going to happen, would prepare for it by grooming him, yet would do nothing to prevent any of it from occurring.

Still, the idea was not inconceivable, and he could not quite believe that his possession of The Power had been accidental.

But why had it been taken from him?

Maybe she had taken it.

He should have asked Kristen.

Mark forced himself to stop thinking, to concentrate only on the House around him and the task ahead of him. He could not allow himself to be distracted. One false move could cost him whatever small advantage he might have. He had to remain focused.

Slowly, he climbed the stairs to the second floor.

He stopped for a moment at the top of the stairs, hesitated. The mood up here was familiar, the ambience one of palpable malevolence. It was exactly the same thing he'd felt that day when he'd been alone in the house with the retarded girl, and it was everything he could do to keep from running back down the stairs. He felt like a kid again, a scared kid, and he forced that feeling into submission, knowing it was what she wanted, knowing it would give her the edge she needed.

He moved carefully down the hall, alert for any sign that anything was out of the ordinary, and froze as he heard the sound of a child laughing. It was a chilling sound, the timbre that of a pre-adolescent but the cadence informed with the experience of an adult.

It was coming from halfway down the hall.

From Kristen's room.

Mark could smell the sour stench of his own sweat as he approached the closed door. His hands were clenched, the palms sweaty. He still had no plan, no idea of what he was going to do or even what he should do.

There was no choice but to plow ahead, however, and he stood before the door, took a deep breath, reached out.

And opened it.

The retarded girl was seated cross-legged on Kristen's bed. She looked over at him, and he saw for the first time that she looked exactly like Kristen had as a child.

He'd never noticed that before.

Had it been true before?

He wasn't sure, couldn't remember.

"Mark," the girl said.

There were dolls surrounding her. Dozens of them.

She'd been making them out of lint and fiber, thread and dust, and they covered the floor, the hope chest, the bed. Each was unique, with eyes and mouths of different materials, but there was an underlying uniformity to them all, a bedrock constant that marked them as her creations.

They were all staring at him.

And smiling.

"You know how I like it," she said.

In answer, he kicked the nearest doll. He kicked it as hard as he could, but there was no weight to it, no heft, no bulk, and instead of flying across the room, the figure flopped to the floor less than a foot away.

The girl shook her head, and she no longer looked like his sister. "Good-bye," she said.

She smiled at him, disappeared, but reappeared instantly, struggling against the binding arms of ...

Daniel?

It was him, but he was like Kristen, glowing and translucent, a Hollywood special effect, and Mark realized at that instant that Daniel was dead. The girl screamed, spit, tried to bite the glowing arm holding her. She must have fled to the Other Side, and Daniel had been there to capture her and bring her back. Once again Mark thought that there was no coincidence in all of this, that everything had been mapped out and planned ahead of time.

By who or what he didn't know, but he didn't have time to speculate on it. The dolls were coming after him, moving quickly. Daniel and the girl still struggled atop the bed, and Mark faced the scurrying, crawling, leaping creatures, bracing himself for the onslaught.

The first doll reached him, clambering up his leg. He tried to grab it, but there was nothing to grab, no skeleton or solid center. His fingers closed around a soft wispy mass of hair and met his palm on the other side.

He felt the sharp prick of a needle on the skin of his forearm and saw that the doll was bending over to bite him. He grabbed the feet of the creature with his right hand, its head with his left, and pulled, ripping it apart.

The individual elements devolved into their original components, separating, whatever power or force that held them together dissipating and disappearing.

He pulled the needle out of his skin, and saw that the doll no longer even had a shape, was just a tangled, elongated mass of hair and lint and trash.

The second doll reached him, and he tore it apart as well, his hands working crazily, arms flailing. He ripped it into pieces before it could even get a hold on him.

He looked up, over at the bed, but Daniel was gone.

The girl was jumping up and down on the mattress, pointing at him and gibbering excitedly in a language he did not understand. He didn't know whether she had beaten Daniel or he had accomplished what he'd set out to do and left on his own, but he didn't have time to dwell on it. More dolls had reached him, six or seven of them, and he lit into them, grabbing what he could and pulling, rending, severing, not knowing what he was grabbing or how many of them he was separating.

They were easier to fight off than he would have thought, and although there were occasional pinpricks and scrapes, the dolls were unable to do any serious damage to him.

They also weren't nearly as frightening as he had been led to believe.

Paper tigers.

Several of them were partially made of paper, and he found himself wondering if all of the girl's threats were like this, if they'd always been more illusionary than real, more psychological than physical. Perhaps the only hold she'd ever had on any of them was her ability to exploit their own fears.

No. She'd killed Kristen. And she'd probably killed Daniel.

He still had to be careful. He couldn't underestimate her.

He destroyed all of the dolls. The girl did not jump in at any point and try to help, and Mark thought that odd. She could have attacked him while he was busy and distracted. She could probably have gained serious advantage. But she remained on the bed, jumping up and down and screaming in that strange unnatural tongue.

He tore the head off the last doll, ripped out the punch holes that had been its eyes, and stood amid the pile of dust and dirt and hair and trash. He glanced over, stared at the girl.

She was afraid of him!

The realization surprised him. He did not know why or how this had happened, did not know to what he should attribute this sudden empowerment, but he knew enough to take advantage of it, and before his nerve failed, he rushed the bed.

She tried to get away, but she wasn't fast enough. She hadn't anticipated this move, and he tackled her around the midsection, slamming her into the wall. She was stronger than he was, he could feel the strength in her muscles, could sense the coiled power within her, but surprise and her own apprehension had given him the momentary advantage, and he kneed her in the crotch and elbowed her in the chest and got his arms around her throat.

He'd been waiting for this, wanting it. It was what Kristen had told him to do, what Daniel and the others obviously desired. But his hands were around her neck and he was about to twist them --and he couldn't.

As evil as she was, as many problems as she had caused over the years, over the centuries perhaps, he could not bring himself to kill her. When all was said and done, she was a child. As evil as she might be, she was still not an adult, and that made a difference. He knew now why inner-city gangs used kids to commit some of their hits. No matter how heinous the crime they committed might be, it was almost impossible to sentence children to death, and their punishment was invariably lightened because of their juvenile status.

She wasn't a child, though. Not really. She was much more than that.

But when he looked down at her face, felt the smallness of her form beneath him, he could not bring himself to finish her off.

She looked up at him, all innocence, and then that innocence was slowly washed away. She smiled at him lewdly, wickedness and a base sensuality creeping across her corrupt features, and he finally understood emotionally, not just intellectually, that she was not a child. That she had never been a child.

His grip tightened around her neck, and he wondered why she had done that, why she had revealed herself to him. Did she want him to kill her? Would that somehow make her stronger? Or was she simply teasing him, playing with him, leading him on before finally doing him in?

He felt her muscles tighten beneath him, felt a surge of strength in her chest.

There was a sudden flash of brightness, an abrupt incandescence at the side of the bed that distracted her attention for a second.

And Mark snapped her neck.

He saw knowledge flood into her face in that last second, as the life drained from her, and he thought that she had not expected this, had not even considered its possibility.

She spit at him with her last breath.

Daniel stood by the side of the bed, the source of the brightness. "Quick thinking," he said.

Mark looked at the ghost of the other man. He had not had time to determine the source of that flaring incandescence, had assumed it was something she had created and was going to use against him, and he'd moved quickly only because of his certainty that this would be his final chance. He had not expected it to be a diversion intentionally created by Daniel's ghost, and he climbed off the bed and the girl's lifeless body, facing the glowing form.

"Daniel?"

"In the flesh." The ghost smiled. "Well ... in the spirit."

"You're dead, aren't you?"

Daniel laughed, and the sound was like music, like Kristen's laugh. "Oh, yes."

"What's it like?"

"Being dead?"

Mark nodded.

"I don't know," Daniel said thoughtfully.

"You don't know?"

"It's confusing. I'm just as in the dark as I was before.

Even more so, really. Because at least I knew how living worked. I knew what I had to do and where I could go. I knew my body's needs and limits. I

knew about the world I lived in. Now . . . I'm just lost. There's no handbook, no guide, no one to really explain anything to me.

I'm just . . . I'm trying to sort it all out right now."

"Did she kill you?"

"Yes." Daniel explained what had happened, how he'd been back at home with his wife and son, how she'd tricked him into death by promising to stay away from his boy, how he'd met his mother and she'd told him he could bring the girl back to the House, how he'd done that and had ended up in some sort of limbo, how the girl had escaped, and how she'd suddenly reappeared in the other House and he'd brought her back.

"What was she?" Mark asked.

Daniel shrugged. "You got me."

"Is it over now? Is that it?"

"I hope so."

Mark looked over at the girl's corpse, still lying on the bed. In death, it looked like the body of a child.

There was nothing unusual about it, nothing out of the ordinary, nothing to indicate that it had been anything other than a little girl. He met Daniel's eyes, saw understanding there.

The two of them were silent for several moments.

"Did it hurt when she killed you?" Mark asked finally.

"When you died?"

"My body hurt. But once I was out of it, I felt no pain."

Mark nodded, thought of his sister. "So what's on the Other Side? Beyond the Houses, I mean."

"I don't know. I haven't seen it yet."

"What do you mean you haven't seen it? You're dead!"

"I seem to be ... trapped. In the Houses. That's all I've seen. What I told you."

"Have you met my sister, Kristen?"

Daniel shook his head. "I haven't met anybody. I've seen my mother. That's it. I suppose all that comes next. I don't really know."

"You haven't disappeared yet. You're still here."

"I know," Daniel said worriedly.

"So what are you going to do now?" Mark asked.

"Go home," Daniel said. "If I can."

"And if you can't?"

He shrugged.

"Is there . . ." Mark cleared his throat awkwardly. "Is there anything we should, you know, tell your wife? Or your son?"

Daniel was shaking his head. "No. Don't . . ." He trailed off, thought for a moment. "Tell my wife . . . tell Margot . . . tell her ... I don't know, tell her something she can believe and she can understand. And let her know that I love her and that she and Tony were what I was thinking about and concerned about."

Mark nodded.

"Make sure she knows that I love her."

"Where does she live?"

Daniel gave him the address.

They stood there for a few moments longer, but they had nothing left to say to each other. There was an awkward silence between them, and finally Daniel said, "I'm going to try to go home, try to see Margot and Tony myself."

"Good luck," Mark told him.

Daniel smiled, nodded.

And before Mark could say another word, he was gone.

He was left alone in the room, the broken-necked body on the bed, the floor strewn with lint and dust and the other ingredients that had made up the dolls. He didn't know what was supposed to happen now, where he was to go from here, and he closed his eyes for a moment.

"Hello, Mark."

He opened his eyes.

It was Kristen.

She was standing next to him, and she put an arm around his shoulder, and he felt warmth, sunlight. "I'm proud of you, big brother."

"I thought I was a goner there for a sec."

She smiled. "I wasn't worried."

"You didn't think she could take me?"

Kristen shook her head. "Things can only work out the way they do."

Before he had time to ask her about that deterministic statement, she had moved over to the bed and was staring down at the girl's body.

Mark followed her, joined her. "Billings and the girl,"

he said. "What were they?"

"Meddlers in the natural process."

"Stormy thought maybe he was God and she was the devil."

"They have been called that."

He blinked. "So ... so God really is dead?"

"Not exactly."

"What do you mean, 'not exactly'?"

"They were merely representatives of other, higher forces. Pawns. You could call them good and evil, but good and evil are not all there is. There is something beyond all that."

"What?"

"I can't tell you."

"And I wouldn't understand?"

She nodded, smiling. "And you wouldn't understand."

"Do you?"

"Not completely. Not yet."

"But it's over now?"

"Nothing's ever over."

"You're more annoying dead than alive. Do you know that?"

Kristen laughed, and he laughed with her. It was the first time he'd allowed himself to laugh in a long, long while, and it felt good, it felt right.

When he stopped laughing, he saw that the girl's body was gone. It had disappeared. He turned toward his sister.

"Where did she go?"

"She's still here."

"I don't see her."

"Think of her as a sacrifice. A sacrifice to the House."

"The House demands sacrifices?"

Kristen smiled. "No."

"I don't--"

"You don't need to."

"So what happens now?"

"That's up to you."

"Are the others--?"

"You'll see them in a minute."

"And then what?"

"That's up to you." She kissed his cheek, and a flood of pleasant feelings passed through him. "You can leave now if you want. The doors are open."

"Kristen," he said.

He reached for her.

And she was gone.

Stormy There was no earthquake this time, only a silent temporary blurring of wall and floor and ceiling as the Houses came together.

He'd been standing in that previously unknown room Butchery --facing the oncomingDonielle , and she had suddenly stopped in place, eyes widening. She fell to the floor, flailing about, then stiffened and was still. He'd turned around, and the otherDonielle was lying on the floor, too. He remained there for a moment, unmoving, then walked toward her to make sure she was dead.

She was.

They both were.

He felt for a pulse, looked for any indication that there was life within the still bodies, and was gratified to learn that there were none. He was still in one of those black rooms, still staring at the girl's body, but when the change occurred, when the Houses again came together, he was in the sitting room, and the girl's body was nowhere in sight.

Once more, the House felt different. He didn't know why, didn't know how, but the aura of dread that had been in the background, like white noise, since he'd first stepped through the door of the House, was gone, replaced with a surprisingly benign sense of calm.

The windows of the sitting room were fogged with condensation, but there was light outside and shapes behind the obscuring blur of the glass.

He had the feeling that the real world was once again within reach.

Laurie walked in from the dining room, followed by Mark. Norton emerged from the entryway.

The four of them stood staring at each other for a long moment.

It was Mark who broke the silence. "Daniel's dead,"

he said. "She killed him. Or had him killed."

He explained what had happened, how he had confronted her in his sister's bedroom, how he had killed her and Daniel had helped.

The rest of them remained silent through his story, not interrupting, and even after he had finished none of them had any questions.

Stormy sighed tiredly. "I guess it's my turn."

They each described what had happened in their absence.

As before, while the details were different, the stories were remarkably similar Also, as before, Norton's was the most horrific.

Stormy was shocked by the old man's confession, and he found that he was disgusted, horrified, and slightly afraid of the teacher. He'd been surprised to see Norton alive, and happy about it at first, but as the other man related the events that had befallen him, Stormy recalled that bloody transparent figure he'd seen in the black room, and he understood what had happened there.

He did not like Norton, he realized, and as embarrassed and apologetic as the old man was, Stormy detected something hard and dark beneath that surface contrition, and he felt uncomfortable being in the same room with him.

He edged a little closer to Laurie.

"So what next?" Laurie asked after Norton had finished talking. She gestured toward the sitting-room window.

"It's light out there. Anybody want to try to go outside? See if we can finally get out of here?"

"Count me in," Stormy told her.

"The doors are open," Mark said. "There's nothing holding you here. You can go."

Laurie looked at him. " 'You'?"

Mark cleared his throat nervously. "I'm staying."

They looked at him.

"What?" Stormy said, incredulous.

Norton sucked in a deep breath. "I am, too."

"This is crazy!" Stormy looked from one man to the other. "Have you both lost your fucking minds? Billings is dead.Donielle's dead. The Houses are open. There's nothing keeping us here. We're free! We can go back to our normal lives and pretend this never happened!"

Mark's voice was quiet. "Yes, Billings and the girl are gone, but we don't know what that means. What we do know, is that with someone living in at least one of the Houses, the barrier holds."

"You still want to stay? After everything that's happened to you here?"

"Especially after everything that's happened. Think of what we've seen. Think of what we know. Can you leave here with a clear conscience, knowing that if the Houses are empty it'll all happen again? You had dead people popping up on your Indian reservation. And that kind of shit was happening all over the country, all over the world maybe. You know what would happen if the border fell entirely?" He shook his head. "I can't let that occur."

"We've been prisoners here!"

Norton smiled sadly. "I'm not a prisoner anymore.

This time it's my choice. And perhaps, in some small way, I can make up for ... for what happened before."

Laurie faced him. "Penance?"

"If you like."

Stormy waved his arms, exasperated. "But maybe normal people can live here and it'll do the same thing.

Hell, they don't even need to know about it--"

"It's still on the borderline," Mark said. "They'll still see things they can't understand. It'll still be haunted."

Norton shrugged. "Besides, I'm up for it. I'd like to explore this border. I'm not that far away from passing over to the Other Side myself, and I'd like to know where I'm going, I'd like to find out a little bit about it first."

"Well, my duty as border guard is over. I'm through with this shit."

Laurie smiled sympathetically. "I'm getting out of here, too, if I can. I've spent enough of my life in this House. I don't want to spend any more of it here." She looked at Norton. "You I can understand." She turned toward Mark. "But you're still young. You have your whole life ahead of you. Don't you want to do something with it?"

"I am," he said.

They were silent for a moment.

"Well," Laurie said. "At least you won't be trapped inside anymore. It'll be more like when we were kids, probably. You'll be able to go outside, go into town, leave whenever you want. This'll just be ... your home."

"Yeah," Mark said.

Silence settled over them, and Stormy cleared his throat. It was rude, perhaps, but he didn't want to hang around here one more second. As far as he was concerned, this little adventure was over, and it was time for him to get the hell out of here and back to his real life. The rest of them could go or stay or do whatever they wanted to do, but he wanted to get as far away from the Houses as he could, as quickly as he could.

"It's been fun," he said. "But I have important things to do."

Laurie smiled. "Videos?"

"You got it."

"Wait up," she said. "I'm coming with you."

All four of them walked out to the entryway and stood awkwardly a moment before the door. Were they supposed to hug, cry, shake hands? Stormy felt like doing none of those things. Oddly enough, he'd felt closer to the others when he'd first met them than he did now, and before anyone else could initiate some sort of bogus parting gesture, he opened the front door. The sun, white and hot, was shining in his eyes, its brightness obscuring the view outside.

"Later," he said. He waved good-bye, stepped through the doorway --and emerged alone onto the porch. Across the street was the fire-gutted building. Next to the curb, in front of the House, right where he'd left it, was his rental car.

He was in Chicago.

He turned to look behind him, but there were no other people in the entryway of the House. There was only a dirty dusty floor in a foyer that looked as though it had been abandoned for years. The only footprints in the dust were his own.

He hurried down the steps and off the porch, feeling cold. There were goose bumps on his arms, hair prickling on the back of his neck. He strode quickly down the walk, trying to get away from the House as fast as possible.

He still did not understand where the House in which they'd met was located, but he did not really care, he did not want to find out.

He walked around the front of his car, fumbled in his pocket for the keys, quickly opened the driver's door.

On the seat of his car was a rose.

He hesitated less than a second, then tossed the flower onto the floor.

For the first time since he'd seen the television in his bedroom, he thought of Roberta. Was she really dead?

he wondered. Or had that been part of the show put on for him?

He had the feeling that she was dead, and though he knew their marriage was over and that no matter what happened they would never get together again, he hoped that she was all right, he hoped that she was unharmed.

He didn't love her, but he still cared about her in a way, and the thought that anything from the House, anything to which he was remotely connected, had hurt Roberta or had caused her death made him feel sick inside.

But he'd find out about all that when he got back to New Mexico. Right now, he just wanted to get away from the House and get out of Chicago.

He closed the door, turned the key in the ignition, and put the car into gear. Grinding the rose underneath the heel of his boot, he sped down the street as fast as his rental car would accelerate.

Laurie Josh was waiting for her when she emerged from the House.

As was a crew of firefighters and several policemen and an ambulance.

They hadn't yet tried to break into the House, but it was clear that was what they intended to do, and two firemen carrying axes stopped when they saw her walk out onto the porch. She turned back, looking through the open door the way she'd come, but as she'd expected, as she'd known, there was no sign of either Mark or Norton.

Josh leaped up the steps, grabbed her, hugged her.

"Thank God you're all right!"

"How long was I in there?" she asked.

"A long time. At least three or four hours. I thought you might be dead."

"Three or four hours?" She shook her head. " The spirits have done it all in one night.' "

"What?"

She shook her head. "Nothing."

There was a bandage on the side of Josh's head where he'd been clipped by the door, and a circle of red had leaked through the white. He looked back at the firemen.

"I didn't want to leave you in there alone, but I

yelled and yelled and I couldn't hear you anymore. I

tried to get in, but I couldn't, and when I tried to break a window, the rock was just . . . absorbed. So I took a chance. I left you there and drove into town and brought back ..." He gestured toward the ambulance, fire truck, and police car.

He met her eyes. "What happened in there?"

She looked behind him, saw two policemen walking up, shook her head.

He understood. "The cops said the owners may press charges," he said. "Breaking and entering."

"Who are the owners?"

"I don't know," he admitted.

The policemen reached them, asked her what happened, and she concocted an impromptu story about wanting to see the house of her birth parents and passing out inside the kitchen that sounded ludicrously unbelievable to her, but they nodded as she spoke, and one of the policemen suggested that she have one of the paramedics look her over.

"I will," she said. "Just let me . . . collect myself first."

They nodded, and Josh walked with them over to a fireman in a white uniform who appeared to be in charge of the rescue effort.

Laurie looked up at the dark bulk of the House and shivered as she thought of everything that had happened to her since she'd gone in there.

"Miss?" She turned to see an old white-haired man in a police uniform walk up to where she was standing.

There was a strange expression on his face, and it made her feel a trifle uneasy. She looked around for Josh, saw him standing by the vehicles, talking.

"I always wondered what happened to you," the white-haired cop said.

She shook her head, not recognizing him. "I'm sorry . . ."

He smiled sadly. "I'm the one who was in charge of your parents' case. The one you talked to when you first came into the station."

She still did not recognize him, but she understood now why his appearance had made her uneasy. She licked her lips, not knowing what to say.

He moved next to her. "What really happened in there?" he asked softly.

"I don't ... I don't know what you mean."

"I know about that house," he said, looking up at it.

"I know what happens there."

Part of her wanted to tell him, wanted to confide in him, Bentley Little but she resisted the impulse, for his sake as well as her own.

She might tell Josh what had occurred, but that would be it.

Her lips were sealed. This was not something she wanted to share, not something anyone needed to know.

"I don't remember," she lied.

"But something happened."

"I think so," she told him, feigning confidentiality.

"But I've either blocked it out or . . ." She trailed off.

He nodded, satisfied.

"My brother says they're pressing charges against us?"

"Don't worry," he said. "There won't be any charges.

I'll make sure of it."

"Thank you," she told him.

Behind him, she saw Josh wave to her, finished with the fireman, and she said, "My brother's calling me."

She stepped around the policeman, and her heart was pounding as though she'd done something wrong, as though she was afraid he'd arrest her.

"I would suggest staying away from here," the cop said.

"Don't worry," she told him. "I plan to."

Josh took her arm. "They have our names and everything. I gave them my address and phone number, so they wouldn't bug you." He motioned toward the car.

"You want to go? Or is there something else--"

"No," she said quickly. "Let's go. Let's get out of here."

"The paramedics wanted to look at you, but they said they don't have to if you don't want to, and I said you didn't."

She nodded.

They walked to the car in silence, one of the police vehicles already pulling away, the rest of the men packing up their gear.

"An exciting day for Pine Creek," Josh said.

"Yeah." Laurie smiled.

He took out his keys, opened the passenger door for her. "What did happen in there?" he said. "Really?"

She gave him a quick hug and a peck on the cheek.

"Get in the car," she said. "I'll explain it all on the way home."

Epilogue Brian left after dinner, giving her a big hug and shadowboxing with Tony, and Margot watched his car drive away as Tony went into his bedroom to get his homework.

The house felt lonely, the absence of a man's presence especially noticeable after her brother's departure.

She stared into the night, her eyes focusing on the streetlight across the way, and thought of Daniel.

Daniel.

Burying an empty coffin had been the hardest part. It was difficult enough to accept the death of someone you loved, but when there was no body, the loss was somehow magnified and made even greater.

Even after all these months, it was still a raw wound to her, a bleeding slash across her emotions and her psyche, and though it was even worse at night, alone, in bed, it hurt all the time, and just standing here in the kitchen after dinner, she felt a huge painful emptiness in her gut. She wanted to sob out loud, wanted to cry out her anguish and burst into tears, but she knew that Tony would be back with his homework in a minute, and she didn't want him to see her cry. She needed to be strong for him. She needed to provide him with as stable a home life as she could manage under the circumstances.

She thought of Daniel's "friends." She believed what they'd said, as far as it went, but she thought there was probably more, and while she knew they weren't about to share it with her now, she was willing to wait. She would find out eventually.

A light breeze caressed her cheek, a movement of air Bentley Little through the torn screen that seemed at once cooler and warmer than the night outside.

She thought she heard her name, whispered.

Margot Tony walked into the kitchen, put his books out on the table, took out his paper and pencil. She wanted to tell him to be quiet so she could listen, so she could hear the whisper again, but she said nothing, continued to stare.

Margot She opened the screen door, looked around, but there was nothing. No movement, no sound.

"What is it?" Tony asked, coming up behind her.

She let the screen door fall closed, continued to stare straight ahead, into the night, not wanting him to see her tears.

Margot "The wind," she said softly. "It's just the wind."