She smiled again. 'You helped.'
'How did you die?'
'I told you--'
'I need to know!' His eyes did not leave hers, and he saw a struggle there.
'I'm not supposed to talk to you about that.'
'Kristen . . .'
She glanced furtively around, as if checking to make sure no one was eavesdropping. 'You know how,' she said and looked at him meaningfully.
Her warmth was replaced by a wave of cold that came entirely from within him. 'The girl?' he said.
She nodded.
'I knew it! What happened?'
'I can't--'
'Kristen ...'
Another furtive look around. 'She sat on my face.
And smothered me.'
'Jesus!'
'She was always wanting to have sex with me. And I always refused. And I guess, finally, she took the initiative. I was sleeping and when I woke up she was sitting on my face and I couldn't breathe. I tried to push her off me, but even though she's still a child, she weighed as much as a sumo wrestler. I couldn't get her off. I
tried to hit her, tried to buck her off, tried to roll over, but she just sat there on top of me, and finally I passed out. And I died.'
'I should've been there,' Mark said. 'I should've come back after Dad died.'
'There's nothing you could've done.'
'I could've protected you.'
'Not unless you slept with me every night. And I
don't think even you're that weird.' She smiled teasingly, and he had to smile back.
'I miss you,' he said.
'I miss you.'
'Did you ever try to get her out of the House? Her or Billings?'
Kristen shook her head. 'They're part of the House.'
'But did you ever try?'
'I didn't know how. I just avoided them. Like we used to.'
'And now we're both trapped here.'
'Maybe,' she said.
'Come on. Billings won't let us leave.'
'First of all, I'm not really here. I'm . . . visiting.'
'Then he's trapped me here.'
'You're trapped,' she told him, 'but Billings hasn't done it to you. He's not keeping you here. Any of you.
You're keeping yourselves here. As long as you remain tied to your homes, as long as you have unresolved issues with those on the Other Side, you will remain on the border. It is the only hold the Houses have over you, this connection to the past, to the dead.'
'Unresolved issues?'
Kristen nodded.
Bentley Little 'With you?'
She shook her head, smiled. 'We always understood one another,' she said. She touched his cheek, and he felt the warmth of sunshine. 'We still do.'
'Who, then?'
She paused. 'Mother. Father.'
Mark grew silent.
'That is why you can't leave.'
'Because I never came back and made it up with Mom and Dad?'
She nodded.
'I can't believe this.'
'The House keeps them tied the same way. Those threads that bind you to the House and to the Other Side bind them to the House as well.'
'What if those threads are broken?'
'It is complicated.'
'What happens?'
She shook her head.
'Will the barrier be ... weakened?'
'Possibly.'
'Is that good or bad?' he asked.
Her luminescent face grew grave. 'It is bad,' she said.
'The two sides must not mix.'
Mark smiled. 'You'd be able to visit more often,'
he said.
Kristen laughed, that tinkling musical sound that wasn't quite human. 'Mark,' she said fondly. 'I really do miss you.'
'I know,' he said, and he felt the tears welling up as he looked at her face. She was as beautiful as he'd known she'd be, and she'd grown from a gawky teenager into a confident self-assured woman. God, if she'd only been allowed to live . . .
He wiped his eyes. 'So that's it. I'm stuck here. We're all stuck here. We're screwed.'
'No, that's not it,' Kristen said.
'What, then?'
'The Houses do need people,' she admitted. 'But that doesn't necessarily mean it has to be you. It could be anyone. And if you guys leave, someone will come to take your place. Nature, as they say, abhors a vacuum.'
She paused. 'But when someone else comes, it will be voluntary. It will be their decision. They won't be coerced or forced or held prisoner against their will.
They'll be like I was.'
'But how can we leave?'
'Resolve your problems.'
'And how do we do that?'
'It will come of its own.'
'What will?'
'You'll see.'
'What? Can't you say?'
'No. But you will have that chance. Be prepared for it when it happens.'
He didn't like the vagueness of her answer, and every opportunity that he could come up with for reconciling with his parents filled him full of dread.
He did not want to see his dead mother or father.
'There's one other thing you have to do, though,'
Kristen said.
'What's that?'
'Kill her.' And there was a look of uncharacteristic fierceness on her face. 'Kill the bitch. She's the one who's doing this, who's perverted the Houses for her own purposes, who's tried to bring down the barrier.
