The House That Death Built (21 page)

Then Kayla grabbed the teen girl
in their midst. She yanked her toward the sink, slamming her so hard against
the marble counter that the teen's head kept going and shattered the mirror on
the wall.

Kayla let go of the girl,
scooping up a long, thin triangle of glass that had fallen away from the mirror
frame and into the sink. She hung the point in front of the younger girl's left
eye.

"You got three seconds to
talk before I start cutting," she said.

No one moved. Aaron and the
younger man held their breaths, both of them afraid to move for fear of what
Kayla would do next.

Rob seemed at ease – as at ease
as possible given the circumstances – and folded his arms against his chest.

"It's… it's a game,"
the girl managed. "My parents joked about it." Her gaze went
somewhere else. A memory or a nightmare. "They joked," she whispered.

"How do we get out of here?"
said Kayla.

"I don't know. I just don't…."
The girl dissolved into sobs. Kayla looked like she might just cut the girl to
pieces, then threw down the glass in disgust. It broke against the floor.

The young man moved – stiffly and
painfully – to the girl. He checked the back of her head, then cradled her against
his chest.

"Who are you? All of you?"
he said

Rob pursed his lips, and again a
strange look crossed his expression. "People in the wrong place at the
wrong time. Just like you." He paused, then added, "You the
boyfriend?" The kid nodded. "You know what's going on?"

The kid shook his head. "No
clue."

"Sonofa…." Rob's voice
drifted away.

"What is it?" Aaron
said.

Rob aimed his flashlight at the
toilet. In that instant, a noise had been with them the entire time they were
in the room finally registered in Aaron's mind. Cloaked by the sound of flames
in the game room, the mayhem-sounds Kayla had caused. But now he heard it.
Looked toward it.

Water was coming from the toilet
bowl, streaming over the lip.

"Think it's just a plumbing
problem?" he said.

Rob snorted. At that instant, the
burbling rose in volume. The toilet seat – which was down – began to flip up
then slap down as the increasing water pressure below caused it to dance.

Aaron swung his own light around.
Back and forth in the bathroom, seeing….

"Uhh…."

"What is it?" said
Kayla.

"There's no clue in here. No
way to start the timer."

"That sounds like a good
thing," said the kid, still holding the girl. "Is that a good thing?"

They all looked at the girl. She
shrunk under their combined stares.

"I don't know what happens
next," she said. "My parents joked that this was their funhouse. That's
what they called it. They joked about setting traps. About killing…. I didn't
understand. It was a joke. I thought it was a joke."

Kayla bridled. "You thought
it was a
joke
?"

She moved toward the girl again.
The kid got between them, and Kayla scooped up the glass from where she had
dropped it. Slashed it toward his throat –

And Aaron grabbed her arm,
stopping the edge only a few inches from the young man's throat.

"Not now," he said. He
looked at Susan. "Did your parents say what the point was? What the traps
are?"

"Just that the front door
was the only way out."

The toilet burbled. Water came
out of it faster.

Aaron tried to ignore it as he
thought. Trying to figure out what was going on, how to get through all this,
why they were here, and how to beat the maze they had found themselves trapped
within.

The water bubbled up from the
toilet faster. Faster. The seat was dancing a mad tattoo off the rim below.

A moment later, the sinks and tub
faucet all turned on. The shower turned on as well, all of them splashing water
into sinks, into tubs. It was coming faster than it should have, the water
spewing out in torrents. In only a few seconds water was spilling over the edges
of the twin basins in the sink. The tub was over half full. Water was also
spilling out from the bottom edges of the sink cabinets.

A quarter-inch of water sloshed
against their feet.

"No timer," Aaron
murmured.

He dropped to his hands and knees
and began feeling around the edges of the door to the hall. Someone inhaled
sharply behind him, no doubt sure he was going to be burnt, beaten, otherwise
harmed by the contact.

Nothing happened.

He felt the bottom of the door,
then stood and began feeling the frame, finally moving to the sinks. He plunged
his hands into the basins, feeling something below the water.

"There's some kind of seal –
doors, sinks, all plugged," he said.

"What does that mean?"
the young man said. He looked at Rob. "What does he mean?"

Rob looked down at the water at
their feet. Half-inch deep.

Water started cascading over the
side of the tub.

"It means that water's
coming in," said Rob, "but none's going out."

The water was an inch deep.

And rising.

Rob didn't want to look. Didn't
want to stare.

But he couldn't help it.

TJ. TJ's here. What's he doing
here?

Of course the answer was simple:
TJ was here for him. Rob was the one driving all this. It was all about him.

My luck hasn't changed after all.

He forced himself to look away
from TJ. Then the kid spoke, and the sound drew his gaze like a magnet. "So,
what, we're gonna drown in toilet water?"

The teen girl laughed. The
high-pitched, desperate laugh of someone gone mad.

Rob barely noticed. Another look
at TJ.

How did he get here?

At that moment, the toilet
started shaking. The shaking turned from a tremble to a full wobble as the
fixture started dancing back and forth on its base.

Then it exploded. A jet of
high-pressure water drove toward the ceiling, and everyone in the bathroom ducked
as chunks of porcelain – some of them as big as Rob's head – flew through the
air.

One of the biggest pieces almost
hit him. He ducked away, and as he did he realized it was different than the
rest. Not white, but dark. Rougher-seeming than the cleanly-sheared white
pieces the rest of the toilet had broken into.

The piece fell to the floor.

The girl screamed.

Not a piece of the toilet. And
there was a reason for its shape, for its size.

It was a severed head.

The head rolled across the floor,
though the water that now came up to everyone's ankles. It came to rest in a
corner beside the tub. Hair spread out from the head in a red halo. The eyes of
the woman were wide, the face frozen in a shriek of terror and pain.

Everyone had pressed themselves
away from the gory sight, pushing into walls as though they might simply shove
themselves away from the nightmare that had trapped them.

Everyone but Kayla. She leaned
forward, frowning as she looked at the head. "Nikki?" she said.

Rob looked at Kayla in surprise. "Who's
Nikki?"

"Nikki's the one who gets
the blueprints for the houses we're gonna hit. She works for the records
department at city hall."

Everyone was silent as that sunk
in.

This isn't just about me, after
all.

It's about all of us.

He looked at Aaron. The other man
had come to the same conclusion. So had Kayla.

TJ and the Crawford girl didn't
understand. They just stared at the head in the corner with nauseated
expressions.

The head began to float in the
water that rapidly approached – then passed – their thighs.

"They knew we were coming,"
Rob finally managed. "
Us
." He looked at TJ when he said that
last.

Again, Aaron noticed. Again, he
didn't say anything. No time for questions. Which was good, because the only
answers Rob could possibly give were ones he didn't want to admit.

TJ moved toward one of the walls.
And it was as though everyone else had been waiting for permission. They all
exploded into motion, slogging toward walls, looking for a way out through any
surface possible.

Only the Crawford girl remained
motionless, pressed so tightly against one of the walls she looked like a
hanging sculpture. Eyes vacant, mind somewhere safer and happier.

Rob fought his way through the
water –

(
Past my waist!
)

– to where the toilet had been.
Water was still jetting out of the base of the toilet, but the level of the
water in the room had risen so high that the jet no longer arced through the
air, but only created a frothy storm at the surface.

Rob pounded on the wall. Any
other place his fist would have crashed through the drywall. But the wall here
was hard – some kind of plastic or maybe even metal below the paint. Other than
bruised knuckles, he didn't get anything out of punching the wall, and stopped
after a few moments.

"Anything?" he called
over his shoulder.

"No!" screamed Aaron, followed
quickly by Kayla, whose shouted obscenities were answer enough.

Aaron was staring at Susan. He
looked so surprised and suddenly hopeful that Rob more than half expected a
cartoon lightbulb to appear over his head.

Aaron spun to TJ. "How'd you
guys get in that closet?"

TJ barely noticed the question.
He was hammering in vain on the door to the hall. "What?" he
screamed.

"The closet. You guys just…
appeared
.
How?"

"There was some tunnel. Went
under and came out –"

"You went under the floor?"

"I think so, yeah, I –"

Aaron spun to Rob. Hard to do
because the water was up to his chest now. "It's what was wrong."

Rob's brow wrinkled. "Whaddya
mean?"

"You said something about
the kitchen was wrong. But it wasn't the kitchen, it's the whole house. The
rooms are smaller than they should be."

He pulled out his pry bar. "So?"
said Rob.

"So there are spaces for the
traps, for the machinery they'd need." He started slamming his pry bar
into the wall. "There are voids in the walls. We can break through and
make drains!"

"It won't work!"
shouted Rob. "The walls are –"

An electronic popping interrupted
him. The buzz of a speaker, and Happyface's voice jarred its way into the room.
"I know what it's like to drown, you know. Oh, not literally. But there
are so many different
ways
to drown. Some worse than others."

Rob's feet left the floor as the
water level rose to the point where buoyancy overpowered gravity.

It was only a foot from the
ceiling. They were all treading water now, even the Crawford girl jerked
partially out of her shell-shocked demeanor by the water's rise.

They swam in a series of small
circles, everyone bumping into everyone as they darted back and forth, looking
for an escape that would never come.

Then Aaron stopped moving.

The water was only inches from
the ceiling. Rob had to tilt his head to keep breathing.

"The seals!" Aaron
shouted.

"What?"

Aaron couldn't answer, because
the voice came again. Happyface. "Drowning. It's the sensation of having
nowhere to go. No one that you can possibly turn to for help."

Aaron splashed over to the door.
He reached below the level of the water, and Rob could vaguely make out his
hands, pry bar jabbing at the thin line between the frame and the door.

"The door opens out,
remember?" Aaron shouted. "If we can break the seals, maybe the
weight of the water will be enough to force the door open!"

Rob didn't have to wait for an
invitation, and neither did Kayla. They both had their own pry bars out, they
both started working on the seals.

Then, suddenly, there was no way
to stay above the water.

They each took a last breath and
dived. Pry bars still picking desperately around the outer edge of the door to
the hall.

Happyface spoke again, waterproof
speakers somewhere sending his voice into the water around them, the water
swirling the sound around so it seemed to come from all directions at once. "Drowning
is knowing you're going to die. Then
not
knowing you're going to die –"

Something cracked beneath Rob's
pry bar. He moved with renewed vigor, trying to ignore the pounding in his
head, the feeling like someone was pressing on his chest. Bubbles drifted out
of Kayla's mouth and he knew she had only seconds before her body took control
and made her inhale.

"– not knowing you're going
to die, no. But terrified you
won't
." Happyface's voice was silent
for a moment, then he spoke the final words. "No more games. You're all
going to die."

Rob sensed motion nearby. He
turned his head and now bubbles escaped from the Crawford girl's mouth and
nose. She inhaled. Began convulsing in the gravity-less environment of a room
full of water.

CRACK
.

The noise of shredding wood, of
architecture giving way, filled the water the same way Happyface's voice had
done. But where his words had brought dread, the mechanical tone the sound of a
demon spawned from a nightmare Hell, this sound made Rob's heart leap. He
looked to where Aaron had managed to get his pry bar into the seal between the
hall door and the frame.

Another crack as he pulled to one
side. Then a third as he reversed the motion.

And then the door seemed to
explode. Rob was jerked toward the opening with all the force that fifty
thousand gallons could exert. He hit Kayla on the way out, her head spinning
into the doorframe with a dull
thock
that could only barely be heard
over the rush of the water.

Then he was out. Into the hall,
water still coursing around him, then streaming, then trickling. He coughed,
water exploding from his nose and dripping off his clothes, from his hair.

The joy of escape quickly turned
to fear. "Where's my gun? Where's my gun?" he asked, scrambling
around on hands and knees, swishing through water that still rained from the
bathroom, waiting to hear the snuffle and growl of the giant dogs that had
driven them into the beginning of this house of traps.

No. The beginning was the moment
we stepped in the house.

Kayla spoke, addressing the fear
that drove him to scramble around on hands and knees. "Where are the dogs?"

Rob stopped moving. Listened.
There was only the low gurgle of the water. Then even that was gone. The water
still trickled past, but it was silent and above the nothing-sounds he could
hear no dogs, no growls, no sounds of death on four legs.

Kayla stood. She weaved on her
feet, still shaking off the effects of a near-drowning. But hope shone in her
eyes. The obvious belief that, having beaten certain death by drowning, she
could make it out.

She started toward the steps that
led to the foyer downstairs, murmuring something as she went. Rob thought it
was "front door."

"Kayla, no!" shouted
Aaron.

Kayla jerked to a halt. She was
on the balcony, figure framed by the balustrade behind her.

"She said the front door was
the only way out!" The words came out in a panicked, mad scream. Rob
looked at Kayla and saw a complete lack of control, a burgeoning insanity
either brought into being or simply brought to the surface by the events of the
last minutes.

Minutes. Less than five minutes
in each room but the night feels like a lifetime.

"Don't you think they'll
expect –"

TJ seemed not to hear any of
this. He suddenly grabbed his girlfriend and pulled her toward Kayla. Toward
the stairs beyond. He was making a break for it. He hadn't been through the
beginning, didn't realize.

TJ, no!

The sight of the young man
barreling past him touched something inside Rob. "I ain't playin' this
game no more!" he shrieked.

To go down was what they would
expect. To move forward was to play into their hands. To go the obvious way… it
was death.

So Rob didn't move forward. He
went
sideways
.

He ran to the opposite side of
the hallway. To one of the doors they had passed on the way to the master
bedroom. He hit it hard. Harder than he thought he
could
.

The door splintered, and he fell
through the sudden opening. He sprawled full-length on the floor, then launched
back to his feet

Gotta act. Gotta stop this. Gotta
stop it from happening to TJ.

He was in the media room. Rows of
theater seats. Popcorn machine in the back.

And Sadface, standing in front of
the enormous television.

The television was divided into a
ten-by-ten grid, showing what looked like closed-circuit views of every inch of
the house.