The Spite House(80)

She wanted to get home. The only thing that could stop her was getting tired. That was how she’d gotten lost in the first place. Getting tired, falling asleep so hard that Mom and Dad let her sleep in her nice clothes, in a box. No, it wasn’t just a box. What was it?

Stacy shook her head hard. She didn’t want these memories. She refused them. They were lies. This house contained evil things that told lies so well they made you think they were your own thoughts and memories. It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be.

The door at the end of the hall opened and the light came back on. Stacy saw her father and wanted to run to him, but hesitated, because he did not look happy to see her. There was a stern look on his face. Something was wrong.

He held out his arms for her to come to him. “It’s okay, Stacy. I’m here. Now you get up, you come right over to me, and do not look behind you.”





CHAPTER 37



Eric



Eric didn’t know what he would do until the moment he entered the house.

PROTECT. KILL. That was as far as he thought it out. Then he heard someone upstairs. A man talking. A man long dead.

He’d lived chapters of Peter Masson’s story for the past two nights. He knew the man’s voice. He heard Max Renner’s voice as well, but he was oddly less important than Masson right now. Eric knew he could not negotiate with Renner, and didn’t want to directly confront him and risk something happening to Stacy. He might be able to appeal to Masson, the man who built the house and surely understood how it could do the things it did. How it made certain doors stick when it wanted to trap someone. How it made some people disappear, like the man from Eunice’s story, Clyde Carmichael. How it could make you see your doppelg?nger, like Eric had in the hall on their second night in the house. Masson might even have mastery over all of that. If he did, or if he knew anything that could help now, Eric would find a way to make him talk. He failed at that last night. Today would be different.

Eric chose not to rush up the stairs. It would be impossible for him not to be heard, so he wasn’t concerned with softening his footsteps. Instead he wanted to be sure his pace wouldn’t cause alarm. Rapid, stamping footsteps could give the impression of an incoming attack. They could be mistaken for more than one set of footsteps. They could inspire a cornered, armed man to make a rash decision. The kind that he’d beg to be forgiven for at a trial months later, while still deflecting blame for his unspeakable crime. I wasn’t thinking clearly. I was scared. I heard their footsteps and I knew I was out of time. If they’d just left me alone for a little while longer, then I wouldn’t have done it.

As Eric passed the third floor, Max stopped talking and Eric could only hear Masson’s troubled muttering above him. Eric saw that the door to the first bedroom was closed, as well as the door to the floating hallway. It should have been more tempting to open either door and see what was on the other side, especially since the electric tingle that stretched from his nape to his heels told him that Stacy was behind one of those doors. Probably in that damn hallway that even Dana felt anxious about, and that the phantom woman—Jane Renner—lured him into two nights ago. Where he briefly saw himself standing apart from himself.

He kept going upstairs to the master bedroom. When he opened the door, the room’s cold retreated from him. To his right, in his periphery, he saw Dana standing in the corner behind the door like an intruder waiting to attack. When she saw him she looked less relieved than suspicious, as if unsure if he was really himself.

“Where were you? This man has your daughter,” Dana said.

“I know. I’ll get her. You can get out. The way is clear.” She hesitated and he told her, “You’ll just be in the way. I’ve got her.”

Dana went past him after he stepped aside. The cold pulled away from him again when he moved farther into the room. He took another step and it retreated once more. Then again until it packed itself into the corner on the other side of the bed. There the density of the cold formed an elastic wall that let Eric come forward only so far before it pushed him back. The nausea born of being in touch with death boiled within him, burned and scraped, but he did not buckle to it now as he had at the orphanage.

Eric stared at the corner. No human form appeared there for several seconds, but at last Peter Masson could remain unseen no longer. He sat on the floor, knees held to his chest, a small and frail old man whose words were still indiscernible.

“I see you,” Eric said. Masson either could not hear him or chose to ignore him. “I know you,” Eric said. “I told you last night, I saw it all. I know why you built this house. I felt your pain, all of your anger and hate. Only thing I don’t know is what happened to those kids.”

Masson shook his head at this and rocked in place.

“Whatever happened,” Eric said, “whatever you did, this is your one chance to make up for it.”

“I never hurt them,” Masson said. He’d been saying it the whole time, but now at last he spoke forcefully enough for Eric to hear him clearly. “I never hurt them. I never hurt them.”

“Like you never died?”

Masson groaned and dipped his head lower. “I never hurt them. I never hurt them.”

“This is your chance, Peter. You can’t bring those kids back, but you can save my daughter. You can do something. Or you can stay up here forever, stuck in your own guilt for whatever you did. It’ll be a lot worse for you if you do nothing. Help me save her, damn it.”