Something from the Nightside

'The house called me,' she said happily. 'It opened up a door, and I stepped through, and found myself in a whole new world. So bright and vivid; so alive. Like a movie going from black and white to colour. The house ... needed me. I'd never felt needed before. It felt so good. And so I came here, and gave myself to the house, and now ... I don't have to care about anything any more. The house made me happy, for the first time in my life. It loves me. It'll love you too.'

I wiped the blood from my nose on the back of my hand, leaving a long crimson smear. 'It's eating you, Cathy. The house is swallowing you up.'

'I know,' she said blissfully. 'Isn't it wonderful? It's going to make me a part of it. Make me part of something greater, something more important than I could ever have been on my own. And I'll never have to feel bad again, never feel lost or alone or unhappy. Never have to worry about anything, ever again.'

'That's because you'll be dead! It's lying to you, Cathy. Telling you what you want to hear. When the house attacked my mind, I was able to see it clearly at last, see it for what it really is. It's hungry. That's all it ever is. And you're just food, like all the other victims it's absorbed.'

Cathy smiled at me, dying by inches and not caring, because the house wouldn't let her care. Suzie moved in beside me and hauled me bodily to my feet. She held me upright by brute strength until my legs stabilised again, and stuck her face right into mine.

'Talk to me, John! What's happening here? What is this house, really?'

I took a deep breath. It didn't steady me nearly as much as I'd hoped, but at least the shakes were starting to wear off now. Like so many times before in the Nightside, I had found the truth at last, and it didn't please or comfort me one bit.

'The house is a predator,' I said. 'An alien thing, from some alien place, far outside our own space, where life has taken very different forms. It makes itself into what it needs to be, taking on the colour of its surroundings, hiding in plain sight, calling its prey to it with a voice that cannot be resisted. Its prey is the lost and the lonely, the unloved and the uncared for, the discarded flotsam and jetsam of the city that no-one ever misses when it washes up here, on Blais-ton Street. The house calls, in a voice that no-one ever disbelieves, because it tells them just what they want to hear. It even sucked in a few supposedly important people, people perhaps a little too susceptible for their own good. Being important doesn't necessarily protect you from the secret despairs of the hidden heart.'

'Stick to the point, John,' said Suzie, shaking me

by the shoulder. 'The house lures people into it, and then?'

'And then it feeds on them,' I said. 'It sucks them dry, absorbing all they are into itself. It grows strong by feeding on their strength, keeping them happy while they last, so they won't try to escape. So they won't even want to.'

'Jesus,' said Suzie, looking down at Cathy's emaciated body. 'From the look of the kid, the house has already taken most of her. Shame. We have to get out of here, John.'

'What?' I said, not understanding, or perhaps not wanting to.

'There's nothing we can do,' Suzie said flatly. 'We got here too late. Even if we could maybe cut the kid free from the floor, odds are she'd bleed to death before we even got her to the street. She's already as good as dead. So we leave her, and get the hell out of here while we still can. Before the house turns on us.'

I shook my head slowly. 'I can't do that, Suzie. I can't just walk away and leave her here.'

'Listen to me, John! I don't do lost causes. This case is over. All that's left to us is to give the kid a quick death, maybe cheat the house out of some of its victory. Then we get out of here, and come back with something heavy in the explosive line. You get Joanna moving. I'll take care of the kid.'

'I didn't come all this way, just to abandon her! She's coming back with us!'

'No-one's leaving,' said Cathy. 'No-one's going anywhere.'

Behind us, the door groaned loudly in its frame. Suzie and I looked round sharply, just in time to see the door slam shut and then vanish, its edges absorbed into the surrounding wall. The door's colours faded out, and within moments there was only an unmarked, unbroken expanse of wall, with no sign to show there'd ever been a door there. And all around us, the four walls of the enclosed room rippled suddenly, expanding and contracting in slow sluggish movements; becoming steadily more organic in appearance, soft and puffy and malleable. Thick purple traceries of veins spread across the walls, pulsing rhythmically. And a great inhuman eye opened in the ceiling above us, cold and alien, staring unblinkingly down at its new victims like some ancient and unsympathetic god. A sickly phosphorescent glow blazed from the walls, and I finally knew where the light had been coming from all along. There was a new smell on the air, thick and heavy, of blood and iron and caustic chemicals.

'No-one's going anywhere,' said Cathy. 'There's nowhere to go.' There was another voice under hers now, harsh and deliberate and utterly inhuman.

Suzie stalked over to where the door had been, reversed her gun and slammed the butt of the shotgun

against the wall. The awful pulsing surface gave a little under the blow, but it didn't break or even crack. Suzie hit it again and again, grunting with the effort she put into it, to no avail. She glared at the wall, breathing hard, and then kicked it in frustration. The leather toe of her boot clung stickily to the wall, and she had to use all her strength to pull it free. Part of the leather toe was missing, already absorbed. Drops of dark liquid fell from the ceiling, and more slid slowly down the walls and oozed up out of the floor. Suzie hissed suddenly, in surprise as much as pain, as a drop fell on her bare hand, and steam rose up from the scorched flesh.

'John, what the hell is this? What's going on?'

'Digestive juices,' I said. 'We're in a stomach. The house has decided we're too dangerous to absorb slowly, like Cathy. It doesn't want to savour us. We're going to be soup. Suzie, make us an exit. Blast a hole right through that wall.'

Suzie grinned fiercely. 'I thought you'd never ask. Stand back. This could splatter.'

She trained her shotgun on the wall where the door had been, and let fly. The wall absorbed the blast, the point-blank impact producing only ripples spreading slowly outwards, like when you throw a stone into a pond. Suzie swore briefly and tried again, reloading and firing repeatedly till the close air stank of cordite, and the sound was overwhelming. But even as the roar of the gun died away, the

ripples were already disappearing from the unmarked wall. Suzie looked back at me.

'We are in serious trouble, John. And don't look now, but your shoes are steaming.'

'Of course,' I said. 'The house isn't fussy about what it eats.'

Suzie looked at me steadily, waiting. Without an enemy she could hit or shoot, she was pretty much lost for another option; but she trusted me to find a way out of this mess. She'd always been too ready to trust me. That was one of the reasons why I'd left the Nightside in the first place. I got tired of letting my friends down. I thought hard. There had to be a way out of this. I hadn't come back after all these years, fought my way through all the madness, just to die in an oversized stomach. I hadn't come back to fail again. I looked at Cathy, and then I looked at Joanna, still standing very still by the living wall. She hadn't said a word or moved an inch since the house revealed itself. Her face was eerily calm, her eyes unfocused. She hadn't even flinched when Suzie opened fire right next to her. Shock, I supposed, then.

'Joanna!' I said loudly. 'Come over here and talk to your daughter. See if you can focus her mind on you, separate her from the house. I think I've got an idea on how to break her and us free, but I don't know what effect it might have on her... Joanna! Listen to me!'

She turned her head slowly to look at me, and

there was a slow horror forming in her eyes that made me want to look away.

'Why are you talking to her about me?' said Cathy.

'Because I need your mother's help in this,' I said.

'But that's not my mother,' said Cathy.

The words seemed to resonate endlessly in the quiet room, their sudden awful significance driving all other thoughts out of my head. It never even occurred to me to doubt Cathy's word. I could hear the truth in her voice, even if I didn't want to. So many little things that hadn't made sense suddenly came together, in one terrible moment of insight. Joanna looked at me, and there was nothing in her eyes but a calm, resigned sadness. All the vitality had gone out of her. As though she didn't have to pretend any more.

'I'm sorry, John,' she said slowly. 'But I think it's all over now. My purpose is over, now you're here. I think I