Almost like a real family.
This time he did cry. He couldn't help it. Maybe that's what the House wanted, maybe he was falling right into the trap that had been set for him, but he didn't give a shit. He sat on the floor, next to the couch, and let the tears flow.
After the movie, both Margot and Tony went to bed.
It was early for Margot, past Tony's bedtime, but these obviously weren't ordinary circumstances, and Daniel walked with them, standing next to Margot as she watched Tony brush his teeth and then kissed him good night.
He followed her into the bedroom, watched her take off her clothes and then climb into bed, forgoing her usual shower. She pulled the covers up to her neck, clasped her hands.
Prayed.
That surprised him. To his knowledge, his wife had never been a religious woman, and he did not think he had ever seen her pray in all their years of marriage.
Had she always done so, hiding it from him, doing it when he was asleep or out of the room? Or had she only started recently, after his abrupt departure? Either way, he was oddly touched by her actions. He wished he could kiss her, even if it was just a simple peck on the forehead, but the barrier was still in place.
Margot had closed the bedroom door, and he walked over to see if he could open it. He could not, but it was as if the door were not there for him and he passed right through it. Could he walk through walls too? He tried it, got a bump on the head for his attempt.
His headache even worse now, he walked down the short hallway, passed through Tony's door.
His son was making another doll.
Daniel stared in horror as he watched the boy open the closet door, glance furtively around, and pull out a new doll. This one had a body made from a McDonald's sack tied with rubber bands. Its arms and legs were twigs, its head a scruffy and nearly bald tennis ball with carefully pasted string segments positioned into crudely simplistic facial features.
Tony carried the figure to the bed, placed it on his pillow. He withdrew from his pocket a folded Baggie filled with what looked like dead spiders. Smiling to himself, he reached into the plastic sandwich bag, tore off the legs of a dead daddy longlegs, and placed them on a strip of exposed tape atop the doll's head.
He was making hair.
"Tony!" Daniel screamed. "Goddamn it, Tony!"
The boy's concentration was focused completely on the doll. Daniel looked back at the door, saw that it was locked. He hurried outside, back to Margot, hoping that she'd be awakened by Tony's movements or at least alerted on some psychic level to what was going on in the next room, but she was sound asleep, a mild frown furrowing her brow.
Daniel sped back to Tony's bedroom. The overhead light was off, the only illumination anorangish circle emanating from the small desk lamp, and it looked like a spotlight was being trained on the boy and the doll.
"Tony!" he screamed again.
The boy did not even hesitate, kept applying spider legs to the doll head.
There was a loud creak from somewhere else in the house, settling engendered by temperature and humidity and the contrast between the wet rainy world outside and the dry warm world inside. Tony froze, not even daring to breathe, his eyes staring at the closed bedroom door as he waited to see whether his mother was on her way.
Daniel caught a hint of movement out of the corner of his eye and adjusted his focus. He found himself staring at the doll.
The figure turned its head, looked at him, grinned, the corners of its string mouth turning up.
Daniel grabbed for the doll, but again it, like everything in the room, was behind Plexiglas. His hand hit an invisible border and pain flared up his arm, across his shoulders.
He wiggled his fingers weakly, felt searing flashes of agony that corresponded precisely to the movements, and realized that he'd broken or sprained at least three of his fingers.
Tony was already back at work on the hair, not noticing the new tilt of the figure's head, the new expression on its face, and Daniel wanted to scream with rage.
What the hell was going on here? Tony couldn't see him but that thing could? What was that all about?
Maybe he was a ghost.
"No!" he said aloud.
"I can help you."
At the sound of the voice, Daniel jerked his head to the right.
Doneenwas sitting on Tony's desk chair. She was seated like a man, flat-footed, leg spread, and even in the dimorangish light he could see up her dirty ragged shift to the nearly hairless cleft between her thighs. He knew what she wanted You don't really want me to leave --and although he found himself, against his will and as sick as it was, tempted, he suppressed those thoughts and faced the girl. She was smiling at him, that same mocking derisive smile she'd had for him when he'd leaped out of the bathtub as a child, and anger helped hold the fear at bay. "Get out of here," he ordered.
She stood, walked slowly toward him. Tony, oblivious to both of them, placed the last two spider legs on the strip of tape. "I can take this away from him," she said softly. "He'll never see me again or make another doll."
"Get out of here," Daniel repeated.
Doneengiggled. "He'll never see Mr. Billings again.
So that part of your nightmare's taken care of." She reached him, rubbed a hand between his legs.
Daniel pulled back.
"There's only me to contend with now, and I can put your lives back to normal just like"--she snapped her fingers--"that."
He grimaced distastefully. "What do you want?"
"What do you want?"
He shook his head. "I'm not playing this."
"You do something for me, and I'll do something for you."
"What?"
"Lick me." She bent over, pulled up her shift. "Lick me clean."
"No," he said.
She looked over her shoulder at him, smiled. "We never finished what we started."
"And we never will."
She remained bent over, trailed a languorous finger over the smooth skin of her buttocks, let it slide down her crack. "It would be a shame if Tony woke up to find his doll shoving its way down his mommy's throat."
"You little bitch!" He reached for her, found that he could grab her; there was no barrier between them. His fingers dug into the soft flesh of her arm.
She flinched, moaned. "Rape me," she whispered.
"Take me any way you want."
He let go, pushed her away. She laughed. "What's the matter? Not man enough?"
"I'm not going to do it, and I'm not going to let you goad me into it."
She stood, suddenly serious, smoothing down her dirty shift. "Fine."
"And if anything happens to them ..."
"There is another way," she said matter-offactly .
"What?"
"There's no sex involved."
"What is it?"
"The only thing is: you're going to have to do something you might not like."
"What's that?"
She smiled, and a cold shiver ran down his spine.
"Trust me," she said.
Laurie When Laurie came to, she was lying on the bed. She'd been in the doorway of the kitchen when the Houses separated, and she must have gotten hit on the head or fainted or something because she could remember no further than that. Someone had obviously carried her up to her bedroom, though, and for that she was grateful.
She sat up warily. Her head hurt, but when she felt around, there were no bumps or blood. She didn't know what was going on and she was about to search the House, see if any of the others had remained with her, find out who had brought her to her room, when her question was answered.
"Laurie! Come down here!"
It was her mother.
Her biological mother.
She recognized the voice though she hadn't heard it since early childhood. Her recent remembrances had rendered everything from that time period as sharp and immediate as if they had happened yesterday, and her mother's voice brought the feelings back as well. She was suddenly anxious to obey, filled with an almost Pavloviancompulsion to respond. She still wasn't sure if she was here as an observer or a participant, if her mother was yelling at her or at a younger version of her that was also around somewhere, but when her mother called "Laurie!" once again and there was no answer, she hollered back "Coming!"