House (15 page)

“You have to be strong.”

“How many people have you killed?”

He shrugged, then smiled. “White kills people too. He's strong.”

She had to keep him talking.

“Who is White?”

“White?”

“Yes. Who is he?”

“I think he's going to kill us if we don't kill the girl.”

“What girl?”

“Susan.”

“There's a girl hiding down here?”

The light went out of Pete's eyes. The expression on his face shifted from boyish innocence to irritation.

“You don't like Susan. Why?” Leslie had slipped into the role of psychoanalyst without thinking.

“She's worse than White.”

“Worse than the killer? What does she do?”

His eyes darkened. The flesh below his eyes sagged, and he stared at her as if he might be sick. “You can't trust her,” he said.

Pete clenched his eyes and screamed. Leslie caught her breath and stepped back. But as quickly as he gave vent to the terrible emotions, he stopped.

Opened his eyes. Stared at her, lost.

Did anyone hear his scream? Please, Jack. Please tell me you heard that.

“Why does White want you to kill her?” she asked.

No answer. Just that blank stare.

“I have to know things if I'm going to be your wife.”

Pete refused to respond.

“Why can't you find her? This is your basement, your house.”

“I don't want to talk anymore.”

Leslie knew she was losing him, but she pressed anyway. “You have to tell me everything. I have to know more about the girl. I have—”

“No!” His face reddened.

She'd pushed him too far.

“I'm sorry. I won't talk about her.”

They faced each other in a long silence. Pete still held the bag of dog food. He reached into it and withdrew a jar filled with the stuff, then dropped the bag.

“You like my pudding,” he said. “It's vanilla. I'll mix more with water and smash it for you.”

He hurried to the closet, picked up a bowlful of water from the floor, and returned, dumping the jar's contents into the bowl.

“It'll make you strong! Like me.”

Leslie blinked at the concoction he mixed. She glanced at the bowl of pudding she'd eaten from a few minutes earlier. The same stuff. But its appeal was now gone. Completely.

“Eat it.” He shoved the bowl in her face.

Leslie turned her face from a foul smell. It wasn't just dog food, it was rotten dog food. She thought about dipping her fingers in so eagerly and blanched.

“I already ate some,” she said.

“But you have to finish. Mama said. It'll make you strong like me,” he repeated. “Eat it.”

“No . . . No, really, I can't.”

“I know you like it! See?” He scooped some out with his fingers and pushed the mush into his mouth. “Sweet. See?” He picked up the bag and showed her the picture of the large juicy steak that evidently tantalized the dogs who ate this particular brand.

“I'm not going to eat dog food,” she said. “I don't like dog food.”

His face fell and his jaw slackened. She'd crushed him. But she drew the line here. She would throw up all over him if she even smelled that mush again.

“Eat it,” he pleaded. “My mama made me eat it. I'm strong.”

She just stared at him.

Pete dug his fingers into the mush and approached her with a scoop. “Here, please . . . please.” He came right for her, shoved the stuff in her face.

Leslie turned away and pushed his hand. “Stop it! I—”

He grabbed her hair and tried to force the mush into her mouth. “You were eating; I saw you! Eat it!”

Panicked, she flailed. “Stop it!”

The bowl flew free and clattered on concrete, upside down.

Pete stared at the mess in shock. His face darkened. He slowly lifted enraged eyes. It didn't take the psychologist in Leslie to know she had made a terrible mistake.

He lifted his fist like a hammer and slammed it down on her head. She staggered under the blow, dropped to her knees.

Pete screamed long and loud. Then he scraped the mush off the floor and back into the bowl. He set it in front of her. “You are my wife! Eat it!”

13

AT FIRST JACK WASN'T SURE HE WAS STILL alive.

He had to be. His heart was still hammering, his lungs were sucking and pushing—his breath echoed in the dark chamber into which he'd been sucked.

Maybe he was unconscious. He'd hit the wall hard enough to knock him senseless. But his hands and feet were moving under him, groping on the cool, damp concrete surface.

Were his eyes open? They were. It was just too dark to see.

Jack pushed himself to his knees, then turned and sat on his rear end, trying to clear his head. Where was Randy?

Slowly he reconstructed the events that had deposited him here. Betty and Stewart, the killer, the house, the basement. The black closet, assuming he was inside a closet.

No humming. Nothing but his own breathing.

He stood to his feet shakily and felt around. A wall to his back. Concrete. No door that he could feel.

He inched around, arms extended. Nothing. He walked farther, but he could no longer tell which direction he was walking. Not without light.

The lighter. He dug into his pocket, distinguished it from the spare shotgun shells, and withdrew it. That was some bright idea, putting those two in the same pocket. He made a mental note not to do it again and flicked the lighter. It ignited on the second spark.

A long passageway with a rough concrete floor and an arched brick ceiling ran in both directions. The door . . . there.

He turned back and tried the door in the wall, but it was locked tight.

No draft now. Then what had sucked him in? Could an underground draft be strong enough to do that?

Don't say we didn't warn you.

Jack felt a new kind of fear run through his bones.
Welcome to my house
. What if White knew something about this house that none of them had guessed? What if this game was all about the house? Not White, not the hosts, but the house?

He tried to dismiss the thought. Made no sense. A house was a house. White, on the other hand, was a demented psychopath driven by his thirst for killing. The house might be part of his sick plot, but they had to understand the real threat—flesh and blood, not concrete and brick.

They. He had to get back to the others.

Jack breathed deep, focused on calming the tremble in his hands. The silence, the stillness, the not knowing why or what was getting to him. He should be running down this tunnel, desperate to find a way out. Instead, he stood here frozen, contemplating.

Contemplating and suddenly dizzy. It occurred to him that he was breathing too hard. He closed his mouth and breathed through his nose.

The lighter grew hot, and he released the butane trigger. The tunnel went black. He waited a few seconds, then reignited it.

Both directions looked the same to him, so he headed right. The draft had come from somewhere, maybe from an opening beyond the house. If he could find the exit, he could slip past White, head for the highway, and come back with the authorities.

But he knew that Leslie wouldn't survive long enough for that, even though she was a strong woman. Maybe it was why he had decided to come after her.

Randy, he didn't care about. Unfortunate but true. He'd concluded that the man was a self-absorbed pig.

Stephanie . . . also in the self-absorbed category. He wasn't sure how he felt about Stephanie, but right now he honestly didn't care if she stayed in that closet or not. She could make her choice and let it lead to its natural conclusion for once. How much longer could he protect her from herself ? He'd stick to her as he always had, but it was getting harder and harder—

Jack stopped. He wasn't a bitter person by nature. Was he? No. Steph could take the heat for bringing that on. He grunted. The sound echoed down the chamber. His light reached out twenty feet or so before blackness overtook it. Why wasn't he running? He had no business taking a Sunday stroll down this tunnel.

He let go of the lighter again. In that moment, in the pitch blackness, the terror he'd felt earlier came roaring back to the surface, now without any distraction from contemplation.

There was something evil in this house.

He had to find a way out before the lighter decided to give out. How long had he been down here? Jack put flame to the lighter and began to jog.

A long scream reached him from somewhere beyond the brick walls. He pulled up and whirled. The scream ran on, a throaty wail that sounded more male than female.

It ended abruptly.

He ran thirty feet and slid to a stop when the tunnel came to a sudden end at a large wooden door. He tried the handle. Locked. Like every other miserable door in this miserable basement.

Jack raced back in the direction he'd come. It took him less time, much less time, to reach the other end of the tunnel.

Same dead end. Same kind of door. Locked.

How was that possible!? Where had the draft come from? He'd gotten in; there had to be a way out!

The lighter wasn't going to hold out forever. How long did these things last, anyway? The idea of being trapped forever in a dark concrete tunnel filled him with a new urgency. Something close to panic.

He searched for the door he'd come through. Maybe he'd get back out to the study.

He traveled the length of the tunnel. Nothing. The door had vanished.

Impossible.
He made a return trip to the other end, sprinting, with one hand holding out the lighter and the other shielding it from being blown out.

But nothing had changed. The wooden door was locked. He kicked it and found it solid. He cranked on the knob to no avail.

One final sprint to the far side sealed his understanding of his predicament.

There was no way out.

The faint sound of singing reached his ears. The same voice he'd heard a half dozen times since entering the house. A sweet song trapped in his head.

The flame was beginning to wane. He had to save the fuel, for what he didn't know, but the thought of running out terrified him.

Jack slid to his seat along the wall, let the tunnel go dark, and tried to slow his racing pulse.

There were times when being a trained psychologist came in handy, such as the times when deft mental manipulation justified her choices and her past. And there were times when it was as useful as a degree in stone rolling, such as now. Leslie contemplated this fact in the back of her mind where the subconscious did its thing.

Her head hurt. She wanted to satisfy Pete's childish expectations, but she couldn't bring herself to eat the mush. Unlike him, she wasn't a child who had been forced into a pattern of behavior before the mind was fully formed. Her brain had long ago learned that it was not healthy to ingest food that smelled like something sewers washed away. Her mouth and throat were already reacting—she couldn't will the stuff down if her life depended on it.

And it did,
she thought.

She knelt on the floor in front of the mush and began to cry.

That seemed to soften Pete. He backed up and watched her for a few seconds. Minutes.

“Please,” he said. “I don't want to hurt you, but you have to be a good wife and eat your pudding. It will make you strong. Do you want to die?”

She was crying too hard to respond.

“Don't cry; please don't cry.” He sounded frantic.

“I can't eat it,” she managed.

“But you're guilty,” he said. “If you don't eat your sin, it will eat you; that's what Mama says. You ate the pudding already. I saw you. Everyone likes the pudding when they try it.”

What was it with these people and sin? “I'm not guilty!” she cried, angry now. “I don't care what that witch who calls herself your mother has stuffed into your head. It's sickening!”

Even as she yelled, she knew that she had eaten the pudding. Quite eagerly. And she had eaten something like this pudding before, many times. Like a pig wallowing in its sty.

The thought enraged her. “If your mother forced you to eat this crap, she's a pig,” she said.

He put his hands over his ears and paced. “No, no, no, no. Guilty, guilty. You have to eat, you have to eat.”

“I'll throw up. I can't—”

He crouched in front of her, desperation etched in his face. “Please, please.” He bent to one knee and scooped up some mush. “Please, see?” He eagerly shoved it into his mouth. His eyes begged her. Sweat beaded his forehead.

Okay now. Mind over matter. Eating this garbage was a pivotal part of Pete's psyche. It was part of his religion. As real as heaven and hell to him. An extension of society's obsession with faith in the nonexistent powers of God and Satan.

Leslie had never hated religion as much as she did at that moment.

She had to try; she had to show him that she at least wanted to please him.