them down. The House was too big and this was too good an opportunity to waste.
He could come back for them later, rescue them.
Rescue them?
Who was he kidding? That was a crock and he knew it. He was running now on pure coward's energy, and despite all of his moral superiority, his lofty talk about sacrificing individual desires for the greater good, when push came to shove he was just like anyone else. A good Nazi. Willing to save his own ass at the expense of others.
Hell, at any cost.
He walked faster.
He'd been the one playing devil's advocate, taking Billings' side, defending the purpose of the Houses, suggesting that they be content with their lot, that they accept the roles fate selected for them because they had been chosen to do important work, to not only save the free world but to protect the structural integrity of the entire universe. Had it all been rationalization, merely his own way of attempting to make the best of a bad situation? He didn't think so. He had believed it--at least some of it. But he also had to admit that the prospect of escaping, of actually being able to get away from this prison filled him with a joy and hope he had not experienced in ... years.
If ever.
Freedom became so much more precious when it was taken away.
He stopped in front of the den. The door was open and through the windows of the room he could see the lights of the next farm over.
It was as if a great weight had been lifted from his chest.
He walked quickly into the den, not bothering to turn on the light. The door he'd gone through before was locked, but he could still see farmland through the windows, hay bales lit blue by the moon. He remembered what Stormy had told them about trying to break a window, and though it hadn't worked for Stormy, Norton figured it was worth another try. He glanced around the den, looking for something he could use to smash the glass. His gaze alighted on a small three-legged table next to a high-backed leather smoking chair. There was a heavy ashtray atop the table, and he tried that first, cocking his arm back and throwing the ashtray as hard as he could at one of the windows.
It sank into the glass, reappeared on top of the table.
He picked up the table itself, letting the ashtray fall to the floor. Using both hands to grasp two of the table's legs, he stationed himself to the left of the window, pulled back, and swung the table as hard as he could into the glass. He did not let go of the legs, and there was a strangeliquidy tremor as the tabletop hit the window, a wobbling transmitted by the wooden legs that he could feel throughout his entire body.
A portion of the table reappeared next to the chair.
He stared at the window. He could still see farmland, hay bales, the Iowa sky, but everything was blurry, indistinct, as though the glass had been soaped over or smeared with Vaseline. The legs of the table and one corner of its top were still visible on this side of the window, but they had no counterpart beyond it, and he released his grip, let the legs go. The rest of the table was immediately sucked into the window and the entire piece of furniture returned to its normal location in the room.
His spirits sank. It was a mirage, an illusion. There was no Iowa outside. There was no way he could escape from the House into that farmland and make his way back to Oakdale.
He turned. There were new shadows in the den now, shadows that had not been there before, sleek, furtive swaths of darkness that had no distinct features but that he knew were watching him. One on top of a bookcase.
One in the fireplace. One beneath the pool table. They moved, switched positions, changed shape.
Something passed by him, brushed him.
He felt tickling hairs, whiskers.
He instinctively backed up, not screaming only through a sheer effort of will.
The light was switched on.
Billings was standing in the doorway.
The butler was smiling at him, and something in that smile made Norton take a step back. His heart was pounding painfully and he wondered if he was having a heart attack.
It would serve him right if he did.
'Is the door locked?' Billings asked.
Norton stared at him.
'It's not supposed to be. Not at this hour.'
The butler strode across the room, removing a full key chain from his pocket. Sorting through keys, he found the one he was looking for and placed it in the small keyhole beneath the doorknob, turning it.
He pocketed the key chain. 'It's open,' he said, gesturing toward the door.
Norton remained unmoving. This was a trick. It had to be.
Billings smiled at him.
Norton swiveled around, reached out, grasped the knob. It turned in his hand.
He yanked open the door, felt the coolness of night on his face, smelled the fertile scent of a newly plowed field.
There was a jolt like a small earthquake, a tremor that passed through the house, swinging the chandelier, knocking a bust of Plato to the floor. It was accompanied by an electronic hum, a low sustained tone that hurt his ears and made his stomach feel queasy.
Billings smiled. 'The House is ready,' he said, and his skin appeared suddenly tanned. His eyes were sparkling.
'It has finally regained its full strength.'
He bowed toward Norton. 'Thank you.'
It was then that the doors and windows were sealed shut.
Daniel They met in the entryway.
They'd all been awakened by the shaking of the House, by the earthquake or whatever it was, and they'd rushed downstairs, panicked and frightened. A veteran of several major California quakes, Laurie appeared to be a little less rattled than the rest of them, but the fact that the shaking had occurred here, in the House, had obviously put her on guard as well.
Norton was already downstairs. They were staring at where the front door had been when he emerge'! from the den, walking down the hall toward them. His face was white, his hands shaking, and he explained what had happened, describing his first view of Oakdale through the bedroom window, his attempt to wake up Mark, his experience in the den.
Daniel looked around the entryway as Norton talked.
Where window had been was only wall. The door had become a decorative piece of solid oak, an extension of the wainscoting.
'So the doors and windows were just . . . sealed up?'
Laurie asked. 'The walls came down over them?'
'Yeah. Basically.'
'But what caused it to happen? Did Billings say something or do something?'
'I told you. I ... I just opened the door. And I guess that triggered it.'
Laurie shook her head. 'But that doesn't make sense.'
'Like he said, it doesn't have to make sense.' Mark's voice was low. 'Magic isn't logical. It follows its own logic.'
They all turned toward him. He'd been so quiet until now, had spoken so rarely, that it was something of an event when he talked, and Daniel wondered if that wasn't on purpose.
A passive-aggressive attention-grabber.
Then he looked into the young man's face, saw the anguish there, and immediately felt guilty for harboring such a thought. They were all going through enough without ascribing petty motives to each other's words and
