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House in a House

The stairs changed as they went. From oiled wood to iron grate to old stone. Handrails of mahogany, cherry, brass. Some steps had leaves on them and other forest detritus, and when Owen saw that, he thought, We’re almost there, we’re almost home, this is it —

But then the stairs kept going, kept changing. It became a spiral staircase for a while, dizzying in its tightening coils down, down, down, the whole thing swaying and groaning, their heads spinning with vertigo.

He didn’t know how long they descended. The burning in his calves and thighs was almost loud enough to drown out the pain in his fingers and arms.

And then—

—

It wasn’t there, and then—it was.

Owen stepped forward, expecting another step in the staircase.

But instead, his foot landed dully in a patch of fresh grass. The smell of it—cut lawn, crushed onion grass—hit him fully, and again rose in him the sudden hope that they had done it, they had escaped, they had tricked the house and gotten away.

But reality soon refuted the certainty of their freedom.

Ahead of him waited a house. A small house. Siding the color of a cloudless summer sky. Like something out of the early 1950s—an overhanging carport to the side, a poured concrete walkway to the daffodil-yellow front door, high-silled bedroom windows, a partial second floor, which was more than you’d get with just a Cape Cod. An expanse of perfectly cut lawn was all around it, and around that a perimeter of white picket fence. And past the fence—

Well, was nothing.

No other houses, no other lawns, no streets, no daylight.

Only darkness, like what he’d just fallen through.

And above the house? A byzantine tangle of bent pipes and draped wires, all descending from the darkness and plunging into the newly shingled roof of this starter home. The wires sparked. The pipes hissed and steamed and shook.

Behind him, the others stepped forward. And behind them, the staircase was gone. It had returned to the void from whence it came. In its place sat an asphalt driveway, and beyond that a shiny metal mailbox. Glinting like it was in the sun, even though all around was only the thickest pitch black.

“Everybody okay?” he asked.

Hamish gave a half-hearted nod, but then darted his eyes to Nick, whose eyes had lost all focus. His skin had turned the color of Sheetrock. When he blinked, Owen thought he saw in his eyes a flashing of window glass. And something moving behind that glass.

Lore said nothing. She just stared at the house, a panic buzzing around her like a cloud of flies.

“You okay?” he asked her directly.

“I hoped we were getting out.”

“It’s not over yet.” He lowered his voice. “Nick isn’t doing well, Lore. We need to…I don’t know what we need to do, but we need to do it soon.”

“Is this it?” Hamish asked, rubbing his neck and staring at the house. “The house inside the house? The Dreamboat model from Harrowstown?”

“Home is where the heart is,” Owen said, without even really meaning to. “The heart is where the home is. That’s what this is. This is the heart of it.”

“The center of the labyrinth,” Lore said. “Heart of the beast.”

Hamish walked to the mailbox, and sure enough, painted purposefully on the side, in nice writing, was a name:

Shawcatch.

“It’s Shawcatch’s name on the mailbox,” Hamish said. “So what do we do now?”

Just then, down the walkway, the front door gently and silently opened.

Owen took a deep breath. “I think we go inside.”