everything in the House looked exactly the same as it had in Matty Groves.
Maybe that was knowledge that could be used to their advantage.
They ate, for the most part, in silence, occasional mini conversations breaking out and then dying. He did find himself watching Mark, paying attention to what the young man did and the few things he said, and he was angry with Laurie for planting the seeds of doubt in his mind.
But he couldn't be too angry with her. He really was flattered that she trusted him, that she respected his honesty and intelligence, and had chosen him to confide in.
He smiled to himself. Anyone with perceptions that astute couldn't be completely wrong.
But it was a bad precedent. They'd only been together for, what? Twelve hours, House time? What would it be like in a week? A month?
Hopefully, they wouldn't be here by then. Hopefully, they would have found a way out by that time.
But if they hadn't?
They'd probably be at each other's throats, like that old Twilight Zone episode, 'The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street,' where a group of aliens shut off water and power and watched the residents of a neighborhood scapegoat each other, blame each other, distrust each other, finally kill each other.
He glanced over at Laurie. She gave him a wan smile.
They had to get out of here.
They spent the day exploring the House: the basement to the attic, and the three floors in between. He would have thought that sealing off the windows, removing all trace of the world--or worlds--outside the House would make it seem more claustrophobic, smaller, but that was not the case. Instead, it seemed even bigger, its corridors more labyrinthine, the number of rooms greater.
Except he knew that wasn't true. He knew where all of the room doors were, knew what was behind most of them, and there were no more than there had been when he'd lived here as a child.
So why did the interior of the House seem to be expanding?
He did not know and he did not want to know, and after the maddening frustration of their fruitless day, he was grateful when he was finally able to retire to his room.
He took off his clothes. Were they really going to be trapped inside this damn House for the rest of their lives?
Margot and Tony had never been far from his mind, but seeing Laurie in his room this morning had reminded him even more acutely how much he missed his wife and how desperately he needed to get back to her. The thought that he might never see her again stabbed at his heart.
He folded his pants and shirt, hanging them over a chair, thinking that he was going to have to wash them soon, that if he did not do so they'd be so encrusted with filth he wouldn't be able to fold them at all.
But his mind returned to Margot as he slipped under the covers, and he thought of how she looked while she was sleeping, the cute sound of her little half snore, the comforting feel of her warm body snuggling next to his in the middle of the cold night. He missed her, he wanted her, he needed her, and for the first time since he'd been a child in the House, he cried himself to sleep.
Mark Mark lay on his bed staring up at the ceiling. He was exhausted and drenched with sweat, having tried in vain for the past half hour to once again access The Power, to focus his mind and concentrate completely on reviving the abilities he'd possessed and, until recently, taken for granted.
He wiped the perspiration from his forehead, felt a small rivulet trickle down the side of his face into his ear. What was he doing here? What did he have in common with these residents of other Houses? He felt closer to Billings than he did to Norton or Laurie--and the servant scared the living shit out of him.
Was he even supposed to be here or was it all some fluke of bad timing? Because the fact remained that although Billings had obviously been expecting him when he arrived, he was the only one who hadn't been specifically summoned.
He was the only one who hadn't had a recent encounter with the girl.
That was at the root of his concern, and he found himself wondering if maybe some other force had led him back here, had compelled him to return home.
No, it was Kristen's death. There was no higher power pushing him. No overall design. He'd come back simply because his sister had died and he wanted to find out what had happened to her.
Whatever the reason, though, he was here, a prisoner like the rest of them, and he felt that it was his responsibility to get them out of this. He had not mentioned The Power to anyone, and while he knew he should have come clean instantly, that time was past. It would be too awkward now, would raise too many questions. None of them seemed to have ever possessed any sort of extrasensory abilities or to suspect that he had.
Did Billings even know?
He wasn't sure.
That might give him an advantage.
He decided to try again. If anything was going to help him get them out of here and escape, it would be The Power. If he could just get an opportunity to read Billings, to scan the House . . .
He took a deep breath.
Concentrated hard.
Nothing.
His head hurt, the blood pounding in his temples, and his muscles were starting to ache from the strain as his body grew rigid and relaxed, rigid and relaxed. He wiped the sweat from his face, looked upward once again, and pushed until it felt as though his eyes were going to pop from his head.
And a figure flickered into existence at the foot of his bed.
He saw the form at the bottom of his peripheral vision, and he sat up instantly, facing it full on.
Kristen.
She was older, the way she must have looked when she died, but he recognized her instantly. She was not solid, not flesh, but she was not transparent either. Instead, she seemed to be sort of... glowing. And translucent. Like a computer-generated specter in a big-budget movie.
He was suspicious of that at first, not believing that reality would hew so closely to the middle-of the-road imaginations of anonymous film craftsmen, but then she turned her head, craned her neck, looking around as if uncertain for a second where she was, and her eyes alighted on Mark.
She smiled, her entire face lighting up.
And he knew it was her.
'We've still got it,' she said to him, and there was a playfulness to the smile on her lips. Her hand reached out to touch his foot and he felt not pressure but a pleasant warmth, as though a ray of sunlight had been concentrated on that section of his skin. 'How are you, Mark?'
He nodded, not knowing what to say.
'It's not your fault,' she said. 'About me dying, I
mean.'
'I never--'
'Yes you did.' She laughed, a sound that reminded him of tinkling chimes, the wind in the trees. 'I know you, Mark.'
'I should've come back for you. I should've been there.'
'You made your choices. I made mine.'
He swung his legs off the bed, stood up, and walked over to where she stood. Reaching out to touch her face, his fingers passed through her form and he felt only that pleasant warmth.
He took a deep breath. 'How did you die?' he asked.
It was why he had come here. It was what he most wanted to know.
A frown crossed her features. 'I can't talk about that.'
'Kristen!'
'That's not why I'm here. That's not why I came back.'
'Did I bring you back?'
