The Spite House(86)

Yes, there were other, more distant relatives he could have handed them off to. Or he could have bought a more traditional house for them to live in with a hired caregiver. He had the money for that. So why didn’t he do it? Why was he asking himself that now? It wasn’t important. It was all rooted in a lie. He wasn’t hateful enough to want to hurt Lukas, much less his niece and nephew. There were sound reasons for all he’d done. Tradition and justice and righteousness. Any suggestion to the contrary was a lie. He was not a hateful man. He was a wronged man, damn it, and he built this house to remind people of that, not just to anger them because he was angry. She was wrong about him. Wrong, wrong, absolutely wrong. And a liar. Maybe worse. What did she do to her brother? What would it mean for Peter if Owen was hurt?

“Do you know what you’ve done, Eleanor?” he said. “Do you know what they’ll say of me if your brother’s been hurt? Do you understand?”

He shook her harder with each question, once so fiercely that he lost his grip. Her temple cracked against the edge of the hardwood table as she fell.

Eleanor slumped to the floor in a way that looked sickeningly familiar. He’d seen it too often in the fields in France to forget it. He’d been trained on what to do when he saw it, and that training brought him to his knees and his fingers to her left wrist. Her pulse slowed and weakened under his fingertips. He reached for his waist, for one of the pockets of a medical belt. Ammonia aromatics might rouse her, and with that accomplished he could then address her head injury before any swelling or discoloration started appearing.

He had no medical belt, though. No ammonia, or any of the other supplies that he’d kept on him in the field where he fought to saves lives, but ultimately could not save his own.

No, no, I never died.

And you never hated Lukas for what he did, either?

Another voice that mimicked his thrust that question into his mind. It was heavier than his own voice, though, and frighteningly dark, like a cliff’s edge you couldn’t see at night. It was the voice of the man Eleanor said he was. The man everyone else in Degener thought he was. The spiteful man. The man who claimed to be driven by a need to honor his murdered ancestor, but who was instead consumed by rage he wished to make contagious. A man whose enmity was too big for him, so he built a house to contain it all, and that still wasn’t enough.

“Do you know what they’ll say of me?” he had yelled at Eleanor seconds ago.

Worse things now, the other voice told him. It seemed to come from within and also all around him. Like the house was speaking to him, and was also a part of him. When they find her like this, what will you say to them? They’ll say you hurt the boy, too. They’ll say they’re only surprised that it didn’t happen sooner. Even if they prove it was an accident, they’ll still say you’re guilty. They’ll see you for what they’ve always known you to be.

Not if I save her, he thought. He got up and rushed downstairs. Once outside, he ran downhill toward Everlasting Arms, where he could see the nuns supervising some of the children in the play area. They could help him save Eleanor. The orphanage had to have emergency supplies for when one of their children got hurt. It wasn’t too late. It wasn’t.

Halfway to the orphanage, he stopped. You should go back and bring Eleanor with you.

No. It’s not good to move someone who’s suffered head trauma.

You know that. The Sisters don’t. They’ll wonder why you left her behind. It will look suspicious to them. Go back and get her. You’ll have to move her eventually anyway.

There was no real sense to this, yet Peter followed the advice of this other voice. He went back into the house and took the stairs hesitantly. A glacial coldness surrounded him. It brought to mind something he worked very hard to block out. The memory of his own death, which he often revisited in his sleep, and which he considered a product of an injured brain, nothing more. Here he was, though, reacquainted with the coldness of death, which was comparable to nothing but itself.

That other voice—the voice of the house—must have known this was waiting for him. That was why it told him to come back inside. When he came to the kitchen and saw that Eleanor was missing, it said to him, She’s gone, but she’s still here. You won’t find her. Just like the boy. If you went to the Sisters and told them Eleanor was hurt, then brought them back to this, you know what they would say. Even if they can’t prove you did something to the children, they’ll tell everyone about how you ran for help and brought them back to an empty house like a madman. They will conspire with authorities to get you locked away in a sanitarium. And then they will have this house taken down, and that can’t happen. Now you’ll have time to think of a simple story about sending the children away.

“Where are they?” he screamed at the house.

Here with me.

“Who are you?”

Stop pretending not to know. I am what brought you back to life, and I am in turn what you have brought to life. I am something that shouldn’t exist, because you should not have returned. The children understand it now, and you should see what that has done for them. They understand how much more there is to this house. Right now they’re moving through doors and halls that you can’t see because you are still lying to yourself. It is time to stop saying you never died. Stop denying—

“Stop it! Stop talking to me. I have to concentrate. I have to find my brother’s children.”