House (31 page)

“Are you deaf, boy?” Lawdale snapped. He began to tremble. “Someone has to die here or we all do. Kill me!”

Jack instinctively lifted the gun. But he couldn't pull the trigger. He just couldn't, not without knowing for sure. Lawdale looked like a man who deserved a medal of honor rather than a bullet. How could he possibly be the Tin Man?

“Jaaack!” Susan's voice screamed from the upper level where Randy had evidently taken her.

What if Susan was working with the Tin Man to destroy their only hope of escape, namely, the lawman, who'd managed to rescue them from the basement?

“Jack?” Leslie's voice quavered.

Lawdale marched forward, angry now.

A small, useful bit of information dropped into Jack's mind. He hadn't chambered a round! He moved to his right with Leslie behind, forcing Lawdale around to their left.

“Randy's going to kill Susan,” Jack said, voice ragged.

“Not if you kill me first, Jack.” Lawdale walked right up to him. “Pull the trigger.”

Before Jack could do so, Lawdale grabbed the barrel with both hands and pulled it toward his forehead. It pressed into his skin just below the bandanna. He clamped his eyes shut.

“Do it before he kills her. Save her. Do it like you despise the ground I walk on, with malice and hate. With the evil sickness raging inside, boy. Do it!”

Jack's hands were shaking badly. He pumped the action to chamber a shell.

“Now!” Lawdale shouted, nostrils flaring with panic.

Jack's mind seemed to be folding in on itself. He gripped the shotgun with white knuckles and began to yell. “Ahhhhhh!”

“Do it!”

But he couldn't do it. Instead he jerked the barrel up, dislodging the blood-soaked bandanna. A two-inch gash over Lawdale's right eye glared at them. Red.

No smoke.

Jack's scream caught in his throat. He stared at the cut in shock.

No black smoke. He'd almost taken Susan's assumption at face value and killed an innocent man?

“Please, Jack,” Lawdale pleaded, eyes now clenched shut. He didn't seem to have a clue what Jack had just attempted to do. “I'm losing my nerve . . .”

No black smoke.

He'd come within a breath of blowing the cop's head from his shoulders because he'd been led to believe that he was Tin Man, but there was
no black smoke
!

Jack froze.

Lawdale's mouth gaped in a soft cry. Eyes still clenched tight, face wrinkled in agony, flesh quivering. The man was breaking, losing his nerve. And so was Jack. He'd come within an inch of blowing the man's head off!

Black smoke oozed from Lawdale's gash and fell past his right eye, smoking all the way to the floor—black, coal black.

How . . . how was that . . . what was happening?

Black smoke was happening.

Jack jerked the gun away and stepped back.

Lawdale's eyes were still clenched and his face was trembling with fear. A man about to die.

The black stuff began to flow freely now. A thin black fog pooled at Lawdale's feet, swirled around his boots.

“Kill me, Jack,” Lawdale pleaded, seemingly oblivious to what Jack now saw.

“Jack?” Leslie said. “He's leaking smoke, Jack.”

Clearly. Jack's hands shook.

“Kill him, Jack,” Leslie said.

“Kill me, Jack,” Lawdale cried.

“I . . . I . . .”

“Pull the trigger,” Leslie snapped.

He pulled the trigger.

Click!

Lawdale gasped. Mouth parted, eyes still closed, but no longer clenched. He looked unsure if he'd been shot.

Jack stepped back again. Pumped. Jerked the trigger again.

Click!

For a long moment the air seemed evacuated of oxygen. Someone had emptied his gun of all but one shell before saving Susan from the flying ax just a few minutes ago.

Lawdale. It could only have been Lawdale, so that the gun would be empty after he shot that last round in the foyer.

Empty so that when Jack tried to kill him he would be rewarded with nothing more than a click.

Empty so that Jack couldn't use it to kill Lawdale.

The man's face was still gripped by false surprise, mouth gaping, eyes closed. Lawdale closed his mouth. He swallowed deliberately, eyes still closed. He cocked his head down.

Then his eyes snapped open, and Jack stared into black, pupil-less eyes that sent a chill to his heels. He knew without a shred of doubt that he was looking into the eyes of the Tin Man.

A terrifying sight, this tall, well-muscled man with cropped blonde hair, head tilted down, black fog pouring from a cut in his forehead, eyes black.

Black.

Leslie screamed.

Tin Man's mouth twisted into a thin smile. “Never leave your gun unattended, Jack.”

“Run!” Jack shoved the shotgun at the Tin Man and bolted to his right. He grabbed the knife from the table and spun back, swinging the blade as he turned.

From the corner of his eye, he saw the man casually catch the shotgun with only a slight movement. Jack threw the knife, saw it lodge deep in the man's biceps.

Lawdale flinched, but no more. He held fast to the gun he'd caught in his now wounded arm. He was a man of supreme confidence. With good reason. He'd played his game flawlessly.

But he could be wounded, and if he could be wounded, he could be killed, just like Stewart. White reached for the knife with his free hand.

Jack bolted toward the foyer, hard on Leslie's heels.

A low chuckle reached through the wood. “Very good, Jack. Anger is good.”

Jack threw himself at the stairs. Susan was right about Lawdale, which meant her claim that White intended to kill all of them also had to be true.

“Randy!” Leslie screamed. “Don't do it! Wait!”

A scream.

It was too late?

Leslie pounded up the stairs as Jack swung around the banister at the top. “Randy!” He tore down the hall and spun into the first room.

He saw it all in a flash. The orange light of a dim overhead bulb. Stephanie standing to one side of the guest room; Randy beating at a locked closet door with a crowbar.

“Lawdale's the Tin Man,” Jack said. “The killer is Lawdale!”

Randy kicked at the door. His mind was on only one thing.

“He's going to kill us all if she dies,” Jack shouted.

The door splintered and caved in. Dust roiled. Jack dived at Randy, knocking him off balance. The man slammed into the wall, cursing bitterly.

“How do you know that?” Stephanie asked.

There was no sound of White's pursuit, but in this house that meant nothing. He could be on the stairs already.

Susan ran from the closet and sprinted out of Randy's reach, hid behind Stephanie.

“Jack!” Leslie screamed from the doorway, looking back at the stairs in terror.

She slammed the door shut. Spun and pressed back against the door, eyes like saucers.

“He's coming!”

“I don't believe you,” Randy said.

“Shut up, Randy!” Jack snapped.

“He's going to kill us!” Stephanie said.

Knuckles rapped on the door, and Leslie jumped away from it. She ran to Jack and whirled around behind him. They had no guns. No axes in here. No weapons of any kind except the crowbar.

The brass handle turned. The door swung in with a long creak.

Tin Man stood in the opening with his tin mask in place as they'd first seen him, only now dressed in the Budweiser T-shirt and the gray patrolman's pants. Blood soaked a strip of cloth that he'd hastily wrapped tightly around his wounded bicep.

He held Jack's empty shotgun in one hand, Randy's knife in the other.

“Hello,” he said.

35
5:59 am

THE GAME HAD PLAYED OUT BETTER THAN Barsidious White ever dared hope.

The girl was still alive, but that would soon change. He relished the thought of ending it all precisely as he'd foreseen.

The Tin Man stripped off the mask Susan had dropped and tossed it by the door. After taking a moment to study their drawn faces, he addressed them calmly.

“Sit along the wall.”

They moved obediently and sat.

Now he had them all in a row. Five of them. The one called Stephanie, the one called Randy, the one called Leslie, the one called Jack. And the one called Susan. Like five pigeons in a cage, staring at their captor.

He looked at Susan. The mysterious girl who'd appeared at the inn without warning three days ago. An apparently easy prey, but then she disappeared into the basement as if that was her intent the whole time. At first he tried to kill her, but then he discovered something quite unnerving about this child.

She was a good person.

Not a person who just
did
good things to show how good they were, but a person who really was good to the bone. Innocent. The rest were always “guilty as sin,” as he liked to say.

But he wasn't so sure that Susan was guilty at all. She hadn't once talked maliciously or revealed any character trait less than virtuous. He always killed the guilty, proving to them that they were as guilty as his own murderous self; every single one of them eventually turned to murder to save their necks.

For the first time he'd met a participant who didn't fit the profile and therefore wreaked significant havoc with his game.

So he'd made her part of the game. Now it wasn't just
kill each other, all ye who are as guilty as sin
. Now it was
kill this innocent one, removing from amongst you the last vestiges of goodness, all ye who are as guilty as sin
.

She stared at him, fearless, then opened her mouth to speak. “I know how—”

Tin Man put a round into the wall next to Leslie, who shrieked.

Susan shut her mouth. She understood.
If you speak, I will kill one of them.

He withdrew the small roll of tape from his pocket, crossed to her, and placed a long strip over her mouth and around her head. Then he tied her hands. He didn't know how well the house could obscure what she said, but he didn't want them listening, especially now. She knew too much.

He picked up the knife and paced the floor deliberately, enjoying the sound of his boots on the wood.

“It's time for you to know your own fate. We still have a few minutes to play.”

They stared at him.

“I have a confession,” he said. “Officer Lawdale won't be coming by to rescue you. Unless by ‘rescue,' you think in terms of being delivered unto death.”

They still didn't move. Pigeons. Stupid pigeons.

“You must appreciate the considerable care I've taken in planning your deaths.”

Jack and Leslie stared at him stoically. Randy's eyes glared. Stephanie looked confused.

“I went down to the highway patrolman's house two miles down the road, cut his throat, and took his cruiser. This to be sure I had enough players for tonight's game.”

“You . . . you're going to kill us?” Stephanie asked.

“If you don't kill each other yourselves,” White said. “And if you ask any more stupid questions, you'll be first.”

“Why don't you just kill us now?” Jack asked.

Of them all, only Jack was still thinking straight. The man was strong. Resolute. He'd faced his daughter's death and come away bitter but more seasoned. His death would be the most satisfying.

“Patience, Jack. I will kill you. I will because my eyes are black. Aren't you going to ask about my eyes, Jack?”

Jack hesitated. “Why are your eyes black?”

“Because I'm not really White in the house, I'm really Black in the box, and this is my showdown. Good versus evil, only in your case it's evil versus evil. No contest.”

He could tell by their expressions that none of them understood. Except for the girl. Which bothered him.

He threw the knife with a flip of his wrist. It twirled twice and sank cleanly into the wall between Jack's and Leslie's heads.
Thunk!

“Do you know anything about evil, Jack? Hmmm? The black stuff.”

Jack didn't respond.

White lifted up his bandanna and let the black fog dribble then pour out of his gash. It pooled on the floor and began to work its way toward them.

“Evil, the stuff in your heart. It's in my head too.”

He replaced the bandanna.

“I've decided to give you all one last chance to figure this mess out. Most people are quite dense. They like little white houses with big stained-glassed churches and prefer to do their killing with looks and words behind one another's backs.”

He paused.

“Welcome to my house. No secrets allowed. Here we all do our killing with guns and axes and knives. It's more bloody than what most people are accustomed to, yes, but it's far less brutal.”

Surely they understood some of this.

“The wages of sin is death, and this time we're going to show the blood, what do you say? No more stained glass or white houses. Now it's White's house, and in White's house we follow White's rules. House rules.”

White could hear his breathing thicken, but he easily calmed himself.

“One last chance to rethink rule number three. The girl was right. On two counts: you haven't been listening to her. Well, blame that on the house. And, yes, I do want you to kill her. The game would have gone on until she was dead. But she's also wrong. If you do kill her, I will let whoever's still alive, live.”

He let that sink in for just a few beats.

“And if you don't kill her, I'm going to slaughter you like lambs. All five of you. Starting with the girl, just to show you how you should have done it.”

Randy's eyes flittered to his left, then back. A good sign.

“Dawn is coming. I never let the game go past dawn.”

He withdrew a match, struck it on his belt, and tossed the flame at the pool of black fog that had fallen from his brow. The fog burned with a whoosh as if it were gasoline. Firelight danced on their frozen faces.