hall. He tried to think of what he should do, how he could get out of this, but his mind was a blank.
'You can't escape,'Donielle said.
And advanced on him from both directions.
Mark He walked slowly through the House, looking for the girl.
Mark trod carefully down the halls, hyper-aware of each shadow and sound. He wished he had a weapon, but he did not think it would make any difference if he did. Traditional concepts did not apply here, and though it would have made him feel slightly more secure having something to hold in his hand, he knew that was just a mental crutch.
He had no idea how he was going to fight her, but years of being on the road had made him pretty good at thinking quickly on his feet, and he trusted himself to figure something out when the time came.
Ahead was the door that led to the solarium. The hall around it was dark, a single candle bulb in a candelabra wall fixture throwing a weak light onto the door itself, leaving the surrounding space in blackness.
He wished Kristen had come with him. Or that Daniel or Laurie or Norton or Stormy were here.
He wished Billings were around.
Mark never would have thought he'd actually desire the assistant's company, but his mind set had gone through some hard changes since he'd learned Kristen had died and returned to the House. Almost everything he'd thought growing up had turned out to be wrong, his reality had been reversed, and he could not help thinking that all of this could have been avoided had he and his parents or he and Billings just talked, just communicated.
He reached the door, hesitating before opening it. Did he really think he could kill the girl? Kristen seemed to believe that he could, and he supposed that's what gave him the little confidence he had. Her belief in him might be nothing more than faith or hope, but it was reassuring nonetheless, and it made him feel that he at least had a fighting chance.
He reached for the door handle. Turned it. Pulled.
The solarium was gone. The door opened onto a black room with blood-spattered walls, floor, and ceiling. The room was empty, but smeared swaths of blood, and scrapes and scratches on the floor, made it look as though heavy objects had been recently moved out.
There was an aura of corruption and violent depravity about the room, a sensation so clear and strong that for a second Mark thought The Power had returned. But he realized almost instantly that the evil here was so thick and concentrated that even the most dull and unimaginative man would have no trouble detecting it.
There was no one in the room, though, and despite its unbearable atmosphere and visible remnants of past atrocities, there was nothing for him here, no sign of the girl, and he gratefully closed the door.
He walked back down the hall.
The Power.
He'd feel better if he still had it, and he found himself wondering why only he and Kristen, out of all of the residents in all the Houses, had been granted such extrasensory abilities. It seemed strange to him, and he wondered if it wasn't a fluke, a mistake.
Maybe he'd been chosen.
That made no sense. Chosen that long ago? Selected as a child? Why? So that he could one day go up against the girl? It seemed both absurd and stupid to him that the House would know all of this was going to happen, would prepare for it by grooming him, yet would do nothing to prevent any of it from occurring.
Still, the idea was not inconceivable, and he could not quite believe that his possession of The Power had been accidental.
But why had it been taken from him?
Maybe she had taken it.
He should have asked Kristen.
Mark forced himself to stop thinking, to concentrate only on the House around him and the task ahead of him. He could not allow himself to be distracted. One false move could cost him whatever small advantage he might have. He had to remain focused.
Slowly, he climbed the stairs to the second floor.
He stopped for a moment at the top of the stairs, hesitated. The mood up here was familiar, the ambience one of palpable malevolence. It was exactly the same thing he'd felt that day when he'd been alone in the house with the retarded girl, and it was everything he could do to keep from running back down the stairs. He felt like a kid again, a scared kid, and he forced that feeling into submission, knowing it was what she wanted, knowing it would give her the edge she needed.
He moved carefully down the hall, alert for any sign that anything was out of the ordinary, and froze as he heard the sound of a child laughing. It was a chilling sound, the timbre that of a pre-adolescent but the cadence informed with the experience of an adult.
It was coming from halfway down the hall.
From Kristen's room.
Mark could smell the sour stench of his own sweat as he approached the closed door. His hands were clenched, the palms sweaty. He still had no plan, no idea of what he was going to do or even what he should do.
There was no choice but to plow ahead, however, and he stood before the door, took a deep breath, reached out.
And opened it.
The retarded girl was seated cross-legged on Kristen's bed. She looked over at him, and he saw for the first time that she looked exactly like Kristen had as a child.
He'd never noticed that before.
Had it been true before?
He wasn't sure, couldn't remember.
'Mark,' the girl said.
There were dolls surrounding her. Dozens of them.
She'd been making them out of lint and fiber, thread and dust, and they covered the floor, the hope chest, the bed. Each was unique, with eyes and mouths of different materials, but there was an underlying uniformity to them all, a bedrock constant that marked them as her creations.
They were all staring at him.
And smiling.
'You know how I like it,' she said.
In answer, he kicked the nearest doll. He kicked it as hard as he could, but there was no weight to it, no heft, no bulk, and instead of flying across the room, the figure flopped to the floor less than a foot away.
The girl shook her head, and she no longer looked like his sister. 'Good-bye,' she said.
She smiled at him, disappeared, but reappeared instantly, struggling against the binding arms of ...
Daniel?
It was him, but he was like Kristen, glowing and translucent, a Hollywood special effect, and Mark realized at that instant that Daniel was dead. The girl screamed, spit, tried to bite the glowing arm holding her. She must have fled to the Other Side, and Daniel had been there to capture her and bring her back. Once again Mark thought that there was no coincidence in all of this, that everything had been mapped out and planned ahead of time.
By who or what he didn't know, but he didn't have time to speculate on it. The dolls were coming after him, moving quickly. Daniel and the girl still struggled atop the bed, and Mark faced the scurrying, crawling, leaping creatures, bracing himself for the onslaught.
The first doll reached him, clambering up his leg. He tried to grab it, but there was nothing to grab, no skeleton or solid center. His fingers closed around a soft wispy mass of hair and met his palm on the other side.
He felt the sharp prick of a needle on the skin of his forearm and saw that the doll was bending over to bite him. He grabbed the feet of the creature with his right hand, its head with his left, and pulled, ripping it apart.
The individual elements devolved into their original components, separating, whatever power or force that held them together dissipating and disappearing.
