"Talk to them," Carole urged.
Norton cleared his throat, and though all of those years, all of those decades had gone by, he felt like a little boy again, nervous and afraid. "I can't," he said.
"You have to."
"I can't."
"Have you seen Billings?" she asked.
He shook his head. Where was the hired hand? he wondered.
"He's dead," she said, and he heard a tremor of fear in her voice. "She had him killed."
"She?"
"Donna."
Norton felt the cold wash over him.
"Talk to your parents," Carole said. "Talk to your family."
She left then, not floating away, not fading into nothingness, but somehow . . . dispersing, her form devolving into separate elements and components that were absorbed into the floor, the walls, the ceiling, changing color, changing shape, blending in and disappearing.
He looked around, then stared at the spot where she'd been. Was she real? Or was she a part of the House?
Or both?
He didn't know, and he supposed in the end it didn't really matter. He believed her, she'd spoken the truth, and the important thing was that her message had gotten across. As much as he dreaded the idea, as much as he didn't want to do it, he knew that he had to meet with his family, he had to talk to them. About what, he didn't know. But he supposed that would work itself out.
As if on cue, he heard the sound of voices coming from up ahead. He recognized Darren's laugh, Estelle's whine. He moved forward, walking slowly, wiping his sweaty hands on his pants and trying desperately to think of what he would say to them.
Light spilled into the hall from an open doorway up ahead, and taking a fortifying breath, he stepped into the light.
They were all in the family room now: his sisters and brother on the floor in their pajamas, gathered around the radio; his mother in her chair next to the unlit fireplace, crocheting; his father in his chair next to the light, reading a book. In his mind, he saw their heads in the oven, blackened, peeling, stuck together, and he closed his eyes for a moment, breathing deeply, trying to will the image away.
When he opened his eyes, they were all looking at him. His mother's crocheting had stopped in mid-weave;
his father had put down his book. He knew this couldn't be real--a few minutes ago, they'd all been upstairs playing Parcheesi in the empty library, and there was no way they could have gotten downstairs and changed their clothes and settled into these new positions that fast-- but it felt real, and he understood that even if the physical specifics weren't what they were supposed to be, the underlying emotional realities were. He looked from his father to his mother. "Hello," he said.
"Where've you been?" his father asked gruffly. He picked up his book, settled down to read.
"Fibber McGee's on," his mother said, motioning toward the radio.
He was thrown a little off balance. He'd been expecting something . . . different. But his parents were treating him as though he were still a child and this was an ordinary evening, and he'd simply shown up late to listen to his favorite radio show. He wasn't sure what he should do, how he should react. Should he play along, pretend as though he were a child and try to fit into this cozy little scene? Or should he break the spell, be who he really was, say what he wanted to say, ask what he wanted to ask?
He thought for a moment, then walked across the family room to the radio, turning it off. His brother and sisters looked up at him, annoyed, but he ignored them and turned to face his parents. "We need to talk," he said. "We need to talk about Donna."
Once again, his father put his book down. His mother let her crocheting fall into her lap.
"She's a bad girl," Norton said.
His father nodded.
"She's nasty," Bella piped up. "She likes to play sex games."
He expected his parents to shush his sister, chastise her, tell her not to talk about such obscenities, but they did not even flinch, and their serious gazes remained focused on his.
He swallowed hard. "She is nasty," he said. "She does like to play sex games."
His parents looked at each other.
He was an old man, older than his father had ever lived to be, but he felt as embarrassed saying this in front of his family as he would have at ten years of age.
He felt hot, flushed, and he knew his face was beet red.
"I know because I've done it with her," he said, not meeting their eyes. "But I ... I stopped. She didn't like that. Now she plans to--" He cleared his throat. "She plans to kill you. All of you."
"She likes to play blood games," Bella said.
He looked from his father, to his mother, to his brother and sisters. "Don't you understand what I'm saying here? You are in danger. If you don't do something, you'll end up dead, your heads chopped off."
"What do you expect me to do?" his father said calmly.
"I don't know!" Norton was growing increasingly exasperated.
"Hunt her down! Kill her!"
"Kill Donna? Your little Mend?Billingson's daughter?"
Norton pressed forward, finger pointed in the air in the classic lecturing position. "She's notBillingson's daughter," he said. "The two aren't even related."
For the first time, something like worry crossed his parents' faces.
"Of course she's his daughter," his mother said.
"Did he ever say that? Did he ever tell you that?
Have you ever seen the two of them together?"
"Well, no. But..." She trailed off, obviously thinking.
Now he had his father's attention. "How do you know this?"
"He told me.Billingson . Before he disappeared."
"Disappeared? He's--"
"He's gone. She killed him. Or had him killed." He knelt down on the floor in front of his father. "You know what this House is. You know what it does. You know why we're here--"
His father fixed his mother with a look of black rage.
"I told you not to--"
"She didn't say anything. I found out on my own."
He looked into his father's eyes. "She's the one who told you not to say anything. She's the one who told you not to tell us, right?"
His father nodded reluctantly.
"She's evil."
"I know that! This whole House is evil!"
"No, it's not."
Darren and Bella and Estelle had been quiet all this time, and Norton glanced over at them. They looked scared, but not exactly surprised, as though what they'd feared had turned out to be true.
"She likes to play blood games," Bella repeated softly.
Their father nodded. "Yes," he said tiredly. "She does."
They talked. For the first and only time, he and his parents and his brother and his sisters talked like families in movies and on TV talked--openly, honestly--and it was a liberating experience. He felt as though a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders, and he learned that Donna had approached all of them, had appealed to each of them, had offered herself to his mother and father, had presented herself as a friend to his sisters, a girlfriend to his brother.