The color of the sky changed as she transformed from female to male and back again, the only indication that she and this terrifyingly empty world were connected.
He maneuvered his hands until he was finally able to reach her neck. He let go of her hands, and she punched him, clawed at him, but he felt nothing and her blows did no damage. His fingers were firmly around her throat, and he tried to squeeze shut her windpipe, to strangle her, but his efforts had no discernible effect. He was not sure if she could be strangled, if she were breathing or if she even had to breathe, but he knew that it would not make any difference either way. His mother had been right, he could not kill her.
She understood what he was trying to do, and she stopped struggling for a moment, long enough to laugh at him.
'You should've fucked me when you had the chance,'
she said.
She pushed him hard away with both feet and both hands.
He was holding on to her only by the neck, and the sudden application of force sent him flying back.
'They're mine,' she said, grinning. 'They're all mine.'
And she was gone.
Norton Norton awoke in the present.
The past was gone. He was back in the House that he'd shared with the others, only now he was alone.
There was no sign of Daniel or Laurie or Stormy or Mark, no indication that they were here or that they had ever been here. He was somewhere upstairs, somewhere in the center of the House that he didn't recognize. To his left, a hallway lined with opposing sets of closed doors stretched into the dimness. To his right, the same.
Behind him was a wall, and ahead of him another hallway, shorter, with no doors opening onto it, ending in a blue room.
He walked slowly forward, down the short hallway.
The air grew colder with each step, and by the time he reached the room he could see his breath. It felt like a meat locker, he thought, and that analogy left him feeling unsettled.
The room was empty, but to the right of the door, in the opposite wall, was another doorway, leading to another room, this one a lighter shade of blue. He passed through the vestibule, and the temperature went up a few degrees. Once again, there was another doorway, this one on the left wall, and it led into yet another room, an even lighter shade of blue.
Norton stood, looking around. There were no lamps or light fixtures, but the rooms were somehow illuminated, and that made him nervous.
It was one of the many things that made him nervous.
These rooms did not seem to him like part of the House. They were, he knew, but until now everything within the House had had a counterpart with the past, with his childhood. The solarium had been new, but like the bathroom, he had accepted it as part of the remodeling that must have occurred over the past half century.
These rooms did not seem like they had ever been a part of the House.
Maybe he wasn't in the present but in some future time. Or even some outside time. He definitely wasn't in the past, though. He knew that. He could feel it.
Perhaps this was some sort of test. Maybe he'd passed the first part of the test, with his family, and now he was being tested again.
Maybe if he successfully completed this part, he'd be allowed to go free.
It was that hope, that possibility, that pushed him forward.
The next room, a white room, was warmer.
There were nine rooms all together. It was like a maze, and he didn't understand how the center of the House could contain this much space, but he walked through increasingly warm chambers, until, finally, he reached the last room.
It was empty save for the girl.
She was naked, and she smiled slyly at Norton, slowly bending over, grabbing her ankles. 'Kiss my ass,' she said.
He stared at her.
'Kiss my ass,' she repeated softly, sensuously. 'You know you want to.'
He did want to--even after all he'd been through, even after all that had happened. He could see the small pink puckering between her spread buttocks and he longed to place his mouth there, to touch it with his tongue.
Wasn't that how the devil was supposed to have sealed his covenant with witches?
Norton closed his eyes. He didn't know what to think anymore. He was sweating, and he wiped his perspiring brow with the back of his hand. There were no other doors in this room, no way out save for the way he'd come in.
'I'm not the enemy,' she said. 'It's the Houses that are the enemies.'
'Th-that's not true,' he said.
Her smile grew wider, and it not only looked sensuous to him but curiously friendly. 'Yes it is. You know it is.
We're both trapped here. We're both prisoners. Why do you think you were lured back? You honestly think that the forces of good kidnapped you and planned to make you live out the rest of your life here? Because you're the only one who can save the world? Does that make any sense at all? Be serious.'
The expression on her face seemed open and honest to him, and he found himself following her logic. Maybe he and the others had been wrong. Maybe they'd been brainwashed by Billings and his Houses.
'I never touched your parents or anyone in your family. I was the one who tried to save them.
It was Mr.
Billings who did them in. And he's been trying to keep us apart ever since because he knew I'd tell you the truth.'
The ants.
He pushed that thought out of his mind.
She ran a finger slowly down the opened crack of her buttocks. 'Come on,' she said softly. 'Kiss it. Kiss my ass. What can it hurt?'
He licked his dry lips and found himself nodding.
'I've been waiting for this for a long time, Norton.'
He moved forward, knelt behind her, placed his face between the cheeks of her buttocks, closed his eyes, and began licking.
The girl moaned.
When he opened his eyes, he was in a black room, his face buried between two red pillows on the floor. He looked up and saw a marble table set up like an altar.
Strapped down, lying on top of the table, was Billings.
The assistant, hired hand, butler, whatever-he-was, was straining against his bonds. There was defiance in his face but no fear, and Norton walked slowly over and looked down at him. Billings was still in his formal attire, and even under these circumstances he seemed to retain a sense of dignity. He stared up at Norton, and it was clear that he wanted to be released, but he was not about to beg, and he said nothing.
There was a tug on his arm, and Norton looked down to see Donna pulling on his sleeve. 'Come here,' she said softly, and a slight smile played about her lips.
'Come look.'
He noticed for the first time that the room was crowded, filled with tables and display cases and huge heavy pieces of furniture that served functions he did not understand. He saw what looked like severed hands and genitalia lying on a long glass shelf on one wall.
Something small and dark and furry ran past his feet, chattering to itself.
He did not see either a door or a window, an entrance or an exit to the room.
Donna pulled him around a large stationary object of mirror and wood that he did not recognize, and he found himself in a corner area even more jumbled and chaotic than the rest of the room. There was no furniture here,
