Her gaunt face smiled equally at all of us, peering
over the collar of the raincoat. I almost didn't recognise her. She'd lost a hell of a lot of weight since the photo Joanna had shown me, back in my office, in another world. The bones of her face pressed out against taut, grey skin, and her once golden hair hung down across her hollowed features in dark greasy strings. She looked half-starved, her great eyes sunk right back into the sockets. In fact, she looked like she hadn't eaten properly in months, not just the few weeks she was supposed to have been missing. I glanced at Joanna, wondering if I should have been quite so ready to believe everything she'd told me. But no; that wasn't it. My gift had shown me Cathy entering this house only a few days ago, and she'd looked nothing like this then.
Suzie glared about her, the pump-action shotgun steady in her hands. "This stinks, John. Something's very wrong here."
"I know," I said. "I can feel it. It's the house." "It's her!" said Joanna. "My Cathy. She's here!" "She's not the only one here," I said. "Suzie, keep an eye on Joanna. Don't let her do anything silly."
I moved slowly forwards and knelt beside Cathy. The wooden floor seemed to give slightly under my weight. Cathy smiled happily at me, as though there was nowhere else in the world she'd rather be. Up close, she smelled bad, as though she'd been sick for weeks.
"Hello, Cathy," I said. "Your mother asked me to come and find you."
She considered this for a moment, still smiling her awful smile. "Why?"
"She was worried about you."
"She never was before." Her voice was calm but empty, as though she was remembering something that had happened a long time ago. "She had her business and her money and her boyfriends ... She never needed me. I just got in the way. I'm free now. I'm happy here. I've got everything I ever wanted."
I didn't look around the empty room. "Cathy, we've come to take you out of here. Take you home."
"I am home," said Cathy, smiling her interminable smile. "And you're not taking me anywhere. The house won't let you."
And I fell screaming to the floor as something huge and dark and ravenously hungry smashed its way into my mind, revealing itself at last.
It hit me from all sides at once, tearing through my defences like they weren't even there. It was the house, and it was alive. Once it had looked like something else, and might again, but for now it was a house. And it was feeding.
Inch by inch I forced it out of my mind, my shields re-forming one by one until my thoughts were my own again, the house was gone, and the only one in my head was me. The effort alone would probably have killed anyone else. I came to myself again lying
curled up on the bare floor beside Cathy, shaking and shuddering. A vicious headache beat in my temples, and blood was dripping steadily from my nose. Suzie was kneeling beside me, one hand on my shoulder, shouting something, but I couldn't hear her. Joanna was watching from the doorway, her face completely blank. With my cheek pressed against the bare wood of the floor, I slowly realised how warm it was. Warm and sweaty and curiously smooth. Deep within the pale wood, I could feel a faint pulsing.
I struggled up onto my hands and knees, Suzie helping me as best she could. Blood dripped onto the floor from my nose. I watched almost emotionlessly as the pale wood soaked up the blood, until there was no trace of it left. I knew what was happening now. I knew just what kind of trap I'd walked into. I reached out and pulled Cathy's coat away from her, revealing the truth. Naked and horribly emaciated, Cathy's body was slowly melting into the wooden floor. Already I could no longer tell where her flesh ended, and the floor's began.
ELEVEN - All Masks Thrown Aside
"It's the house," I said. "It's alive. And it's hungry." I could feel the house all around me now, pulsing with alien life, roaring triumphantly at the edges of my mind. Laughing at me, now it didn't have to hide any more. I looked up and there was Suzie, breathing harshly, her knuckles showing white as she clung to her gun, the only thing that had always made sense to her. Her eyes darted wildly round the room, as she searched desperately for something she could hit or shoot. Joanna was standing very still by the doorway, not looking at Cathy. Her pale face was completely without expression, and when her gaze briefly
crossed mine, I might as well have been a stranger. I looked back at Cathy.
"Tell me," I said. "Tell me why, Cathy. Why did you come here, to this place, of your own free will?"
"The house called me," she said happily. "It opened up a door, and I stepped through, and found myself in a whole new world. So bright and vivid; so alive. Like a movie going from black and white to colour. The house ... needed me. I'd never felt needed before. It felt so good. And so I came here, and gave myself to the house, and now ... I don't have to care about anything any more. The house made me happy, for the first time in my life. It loves me. It'll love you too."
I wiped the blood from my nose on the back of my hand, leaving a long crimson smear. "It's eating you, Cathy. The house is swallowing you up."
"I know," she said blissfully. "Isn't it wonderful? It's going to make me a part of it. Make me part of something greater, something more important than I could ever have been on my own. And I'll never have to feel bad again, never feel lost or alone or unhappy. Never have to worry about anything, ever again."
"That's because you'll be dead! It's lying to you, Cathy. Telling you what you want to hear. When the house attacked my mind, I was able to see it clearly at last, see it for what it really is. It's hungry. That's all it ever is. And you're just food, like all the other victims it's absorbed."
Cathy smiled at me, dying by inches and not caring, because the house wouldn't let her care. Suzie moved in beside me and hauled me bodily to my feet. She held me upright by brute strength until my legs stabilised again, and stuck her face right into mine.
"Talk to me, John! What's happening here? What is this house, really?"
I took a deep breath. It didn't steady me nearly as much as I'd hoped, but at least the shakes were starting to wear off now. Like so many times before in the Nightside, I had found the truth at last, and it didn't please or comfort me one bit.
"The house is a predator," I said. "An alien thing, from some alien place, far outside our own space, where life has taken very different forms. It makes itself into what it needs to be, taking on the colour of its surroundings, hiding in plain sight, calling its prey to it with a voice that cannot be resisted. Its prey is the lost and the lonely, the unloved and the uncared for, the discarded flotsam and jetsam of the city that no-one ever misses when it washes up here, on Blais-ton Street. The house calls, in a voice that no-one ever disbelieves, because it tells them just what they want to hear. It even sucked in a few supposedly important people, people perhaps a little too susceptible for their own good. Being important doesn't necessarily protect you from the secret despairs of the hidden heart."
"Stick to the point, John," said Suzie, shaking me
by the shoulder. "The house lures people into it, and then?"