Well.
Again with this shit, she thought.
It hadn’t been a spiral staircase last night. Of course it hadn’t. It had been a regular old staircase. Straight up to the goddamn landing. And now it, too, had altered its shape and dimensions in accordance with the overall creepy-manor motif.
You can’t let it bother you, she reminded herself.
There were only a few doors left.
The pattern of failure remained unchanging until she was three doors from the end of the hallway. She reached for a doorknob that wasn’t there. The door stood open, and she heard sounds of human activity in the room. Panting. Groans. A woman’s voice. Two people. She was sure the other person was a man. She was also sure they were having sex. Hence the groans. She was hesitant to spur an act of coitus interruptus, but she didn’t see that she had a choice.
Somebody had to help her.
So she stepped into the room.
And saw right away that the room’s occupants weren’t having sex.
A nude man was locked in a pillory. Dream had never seen one outside of movies, but she recognized it for what it was instantly. The man’s head and hands were visible through holes, and his scarlet rear end quivered on the other side. A lithe young woman with hair so blond it was nearly white cocked her head to one side and stared at Dream with open curiosity. She had on black garters, stiletto heels, and a black leather bustier. A corner of her mouth turned up.
She spoke to Dream. “Hell-o, pretty?
She twirled a cat-o’-nine-tails.
“Will you join us?”
Dream numbly backed out of the room, the Glock forgotten at her side. She stood in the hallway and watched the blond approach her. The girl’s blue eyes were chilling. There was nothing like a soul behind them. Just a dark center of evil. Dream intuited this the way she’d read Zarah’s malevolent thoughts. She knew it. It was fact. The lovely girl was a monster. And her smile was insidious. An invitation to debasement.
The girl’s fingers curled around the edge of the door.
“Good-bye, pretty.”
And she threw the door shut.
Dream shook with relief.
Relief so profound she wasn’t aware of the door opening behind her until it was too late. She whirled around in time to feel Ms. Wickman’s hand closing around her wrist to peel the Glock from her hand.
King’s cruel-eyed housekeeper brandished the weapon in her face.
“My, my.”
Dream tried to speak, but she was shaking too hard.
“Shush, dear.” Ms. Wickman placed the Glock’s muzzle against Dream’s left temple, pushing her head to the side. “I wonder what The Master would think of this, eh? Skulking about his home, the home he so generously opened to you, with a firearm.”
Dream again tried to say something, but the austere woman clamped her free hand about Dream’s jaw and slammed her against the wall. The woman leaned against Dream, her face so close she could feel her breath.
“I’m not a stupid woman.” The muzzle pressed so hard now it scraped her temple. “I know something is amiss.”
Dream whimpered.
“The Master is in trouble.” She laughed without humor. “I suppose it had to happen eventually. I further suppose there’s nothing to be gained by killing you, though I would derive great pleasure from doing so. There may even be something to gain by allowing you to live.”
She detected something in Dream’s gaze then, some subtle flicker of knowledge.
“Oh, I keep my ears to the ground, young lady. You see, I serve The Master and I am loyal to him, but my loyalty has its limits.” Her lips grazed Dream’s mouth, making the captive girl quiver. “I will weather this storm.”
She relinquished Dream. “So go, whore. Enjoy hell.”
Ms. Wickman turned away from Dream and disappeared around the corner to the landing. High heels clicked down the winding staircase, echoing like pebbles dropped down a well. Her mocking laughter was the deranged laughter of hell’s warden.
Dream, demoralized and scared shitless, slumped to the floor.
And she stayed right there until she had the shaking under control.
Her friends were dead.
No way they’d survived the night in this place. Anger began to displace Dream’s terror of the strange housekeeper. Whatever shred of illusion she’d been clinging to was irreparably tattered. She didn’t want to join King in some redeeming eternal afterlife.
What she felt for him wasn’t natural.
That was so clear now.
He’d done something to her.
Some kind of… sex magic.
Yes, he would be capable of that.
Dream tried to get a grip on her warring emotions.
It was tempting to let anger guide her actions now, but she saw immediately how counterproductive that would be. She had to remain focused on the goal. Had to maintain the illusion of conspiracy with King. He needed to keep right on believing she wanted to be with him.
Until he was dead.
Until they were both dead.
Defeated and devoid of hope, Dream got to her feet and returned to King’s room.
In its true form, the house on the mountain existed in a state of stasis. The dilapidated structure consisted of matter suspended. For more than forty years, the old beams that made up the house’s sagging skeletal infrastructure did not decay. The rot that had already begun could not progress. The water stains that made the kitchen ceiling droop did not spread. In the living room, the property’s old caretaker sat on a plastic-covered sofa, his throat slit and his head cocked to the right. The perfectly preserved body had been there since January of 1960. The plastic cover and the man’s overalls were stained with blood that had never coagulated.
This house, the true house, was a kind of purgatory.
Cold, unchanging, and invisible.
It provided the framework for the illusions created by the creature that had invaded and forever changed this forgotten slice of land back in those final pre-Camelot days. The dimensions and appearance of the illusory house changed daily, sometimes in a subtle way, occasionally in a very drastic way. The power that created the illusions and kept the true house out of view was immense, stronger than the forces of the natural world.
The illusion was unassailable.
The true house impregnable.
Untouched by time.
Until today.
When something stirred.
Somewhere, perhaps in one of the empty upper rooms, a board faintly creaked.
A sigh was almost audible.
The sound of something very old and very tired awakening one more time.
The gunshot knocked Cindy off her feet, lifting her momentarily off the ground. Chad knew next to nothing about guns, but this one was powerful. Cindy flopped face first on the ground and didn’t move. Didn’t even twitch. The bullet had taken out most of her brain. Chad watched with slackjawed horror and disbelief as the guards retrieved their wounded colleague and departed.
