He pulled the needle out of his skin, and saw that the doll no longer even had a shape, was just a tangled, elongated mass of hair and lint and trash.
The second doll reached him, and he tore it apart as well, his hands working crazily, arms flailing. He ripped it into pieces before it could even get a hold on him.
He looked up, over at the bed, but Daniel was gone.
The girl was jumping up and down on the mattress, pointing at him and gibbering excitedly in a language he did not understand. He didn't know whether she had beaten Daniel or he had accomplished what he'd set out to do and left on his own, but he didn't have time to dwell on it. More dolls had reached him, six or seven of them, and he lit into them, grabbing what he could and pulling, rending, severing, not knowing what he was grabbing or how many of them he was separating.
They were easier to fight off than he would have thought, and although there were occasional pinpricks and scrapes, the dolls were unable to do any serious damage to him.
They also weren't nearly as frightening as he had been led to believe.
Paper tigers.
Several of them were partially made of paper, and he found himself wondering if all of the girl's threats were like this, if they'd always been more illusionary than real, more psychological than physical. Perhaps the only hold she'd ever had on any of them was her ability to exploit their own fears.
No. She'd killed Kristen. And she'd probably killed Daniel.
He still had to be careful. He couldn't underestimate her.
He destroyed all of the dolls. The girl did not jump in at any point and try to help, and Mark thought that odd. She could have attacked him while he was busy and distracted. She could probably have gained serious advantage. But she remained on the bed, jumping up and down and screaming in that strange unnatural tongue.
He tore the head off the last doll, ripped out the punch holes that had been its eyes, and stood amid the pile of dust and dirt and hair and trash. He glanced over, stared at the girl.
She was afraid of him!
The realization surprised him. He did not know why or how this had happened, did not know to what he should attribute this sudden empowerment, but he knew enough to take advantage of it, and before his nerve failed, he rushed the bed.
She tried to get away, but she wasn't fast enough. She hadn't anticipated this move, and he tackled her around the midsection, slamming her into the wall. She was stronger than he was, he could feel the strength in her muscles, could sense the coiled power within her, but surprise and her own apprehension had given him the momentary advantage, and he kneed her in the crotch and elbowed her in the chest and got his arms around her throat.
He'd been waiting for this, wanting it. It was what Kristen had told him to do, what Daniel and the others obviously desired. But his hands were around her neck and he was about to twist them --and he couldn't.
As evil as she was, as many problems as she had caused over the years, over the centuries perhaps, he could not bring himself to kill her. When all was said and done, she was a child. As evil as she might be, she was still not an adult, and that made a difference. He knew now why inner-city gangs used kids to commit some of their hits. No matter how heinous the crime they committed might be, it was almost impossible to sentence children to death, and their punishment was invariably lightened because of their juvenile status.
She wasn't a child, though. Not really. She was much more than that.
But when he looked down at her face, felt the smallness of her form beneath him, he could not bring himself to finish her off.
She looked up at him, all innocence, and then that innocence was slowly washed away. She smiled at him lewdly, wickedness and a base sensuality creeping across her corrupt features, and he finally understood emotionally, not just intellectually, that she was not a child. That she had never been a child.
His grip tightened around her neck, and he wondered why she had done that, why she had revealed herself to him. Did she want him to kill her? Would that somehow make her stronger? Or was she simply teasing him, playing with him, leading him on before finally doing him in?
He felt her muscles tighten beneath him, felt a surge of strength in her chest.
There was a sudden flash of brightness, an abrupt incandescence at the side of the bed that distracted her attention for a second.
And Mark snapped her neck.
He saw knowledge flood into her face in that last second, as the life drained from her, and he thought that she had not expected this, had not even considered its possibility.
She spit at him with her last breath.
Daniel stood by the side of the bed, the source of the brightness. 'Quick thinking,' he said.
Mark looked at the ghost of the other man. He had not had time to determine the source of that flaring incandescence, had assumed it was something she had created and was going to use against him, and he'd moved quickly only because of his certainty that this would be his final chance. He had not expected it to be a diversion intentionally created by Daniel's ghost, and he climbed off the bed and the girl's lifeless body, facing the glowing form.
'Daniel?'
'In the flesh.' The ghost smiled. 'Well ... in the spirit.'
'You're dead, aren't you?'
Daniel laughed, and the sound was like music, like Kristen's laugh. 'Oh, yes.'
'What's it like?'
'Being dead?'
Mark nodded.
'I don't know,' Daniel said thoughtfully.
'You don't know?'
'It's confusing. I'm just as in the dark as I was before.
Even more so, really. Because at least I knew how living worked. I knew what I had to do and where I could go. I knew my body's needs and limits. I
knew about the world I lived in. Now . . . I'm just lost. There's no handbook, no guide, no one to really explain anything to me.
I'm just . . . I'm trying to sort it all out right now.'
'Did she kill you?'
'Yes.' Daniel explained what had happened, how he'd been back at home with his wife and son, how she'd tricked him into death by promising to stay away from his boy, how he'd met his mother and she'd told him he could bring the girl back to the House, how he'd done that and had ended up in some sort of limbo, how the girl had escaped, and how she'd suddenly reappeared in the other House and he'd brought her back.
'What was she?' Mark asked.
Daniel shrugged. 'You got me.'
'Is it over now? Is that it?'
'I hope so.'
Mark looked over at the girl's corpse, still lying on the bed. In death, it looked like the body of a child.
There was nothing unusual about it, nothing out of the ordinary, nothing to indicate that it had been anything other than a little girl. He met Daniel's eyes, saw understanding there.
The two of them were silent for several moments.
'Did it hurt when she killed you?' Mark asked finally.
'When you died?'
'My body hurt. But once I was out of it, I felt no pain.'
Mark nodded, thought of his sister. 'So what's on the Other Side? Beyond the Houses, I mean.'
'I don't know. I haven't seen it yet.'
'What do you mean you haven't seen it? You're dead!'
'I seem to be ... trapped. In the Houses. That's all I've seen. What I told you.'
'Have you met my sister, Kristen?'
