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The Host

What they were to expect, Owen could not have said—this house, the heart of the larger house, the center of the labyrinth, seemed as though it should’ve been a place of great and grave horror. But stepping through the front door, across the threshold, gave no such impression, at least not at first.

The house that awaited them offered one larger room, bisected by half of a brick wall, into which was built a small fireplace at the fore, and a set of shelves at the back. To the left of the brick sat a broad-shouldered galley kitchen, nearly all white, pristine in its cleanliness, with a small cutout two-chair breakfast nook. Right of the brick was the living room, where a round coffee table sat on a simple tan rug over speckled black linoleum. And orbiting them a long squared-off diamond sofa, a pair of smooth wooden chairs and, in the far corner, a chunky teal sitting chair with requisite ottoman. The back wall on the right was nearly all windows—though all that showed through them was darkness.

It was in the corner chair that someone sat.

He was slumped over so Owen almost didn’t notice him at first.

But as they stepped inside the house—

His head snapped up, to attention.

“Ah, guests,” the man said. He leaned forward, reaching up to the tall reading lamp that teetered next to the chair—and when he turned it on, the man was revealed to be someone in his mid-thirties. Square-jawed, with chestnut hair in a cresting rise over his head, slicked back. “Welcome to my home.”

But when he spoke these last four words—

Owen saw that he was not entirely…a person. Not made of person things, like skin, or hair, or teeth. Some of him was.

But not enough of him.

When he talked, his jaw moved like a puppet’s mouth—as if the jaw were just a square block set in his long head, juggling up and down. The lips looked real. They glistened as they remained stretched out in what looked to be a permanent smile. His teeth were too white, too plastic-looking. The eyes looked real, too, but they were set back in skin that looked less like skin and more like wood and leather.

“Come in,” he said. “Come on in, and have a seat.”

They all looked to one another. Nobody moved.

“Alfie Shawcatch,” Hamish said, spoken like an invocation.

“Sure thing,” he said, lifting an arm with a loose, rolling wrist—the hand at that arm, half-human fingers and half wood, gestured at them with an unlit pipe. “None of you are sooties, are you? This is a white neighborhood, after all.” Then he laughed—his teeth snapped together as he did so, tick-a-clack . “Oh I’m just joshing you. Come on in, come on in. No need to be chicken. You’re not a bunch of cluckers, are you? I should think not. You made it this far, after all. Tells me you’ve got a heapin’ helping of moxie .”

Still, they didn’t move.

His fixed smile suddenly twitched and cracked like a breaking branch—then it was a frown.

“Well, maybe you are cluckers.”

Shawcatch stood suddenly. His body rattled and clattered like a bunch of bowling pins knocking together as he stood—and the way he stood was like a marionette pulled to its feet. A herky-jerky motion, led by the shoulders.

He took an erratic step toward them. Then another. Each time his hips twitching, his legs plucked up in the air and thrust forward.

“I see you,” he said, his voice suddenly tinny, like it was playing out of a cheap speaker somewhere deep in his chest. “Been watching you all this time. Been sneakin’ around your rooms sure as you’ve been sneakin’ around mine.”

“You’re not Shawcatch,” Lore said.

And Owen realized she was right.

“You’re the house,” Owen said.

The Shawcatch automaton winked—his eyelids clicking together as he did—and then went slack. The life out of him, like a robot unplugged.

Then a voice from the other side of the room—a child’s voice.

“Right on the nose, cookie,” said a little tousle-haired boy in his teddy bear pajamas. He, like Alfie Shawcatch, seemed to be half human, half automaton. Cabinet knob eyes and stucco cheeks. A vent in the real flesh of his throat from which hung red curtain fabric. Next to him, another child, a little smaller, with darker hair. His face looked painted on, with shiny semi-gloss house paint. The two of them judder-stepped forward, toward their father’s limp, lifeless form.

“We just wanna leave,” Hamish said, a bleat of desperation.

“Door’s right behind you,” the dark-haired boy said.

They turned to look—

But the front door was gone.

And when they turned to look back at them—

The door was behind Shawcatch. Impossibly placed at a cockeyed angle in the set of windows—as if someone had hacked a game of The Sims and simply plunked it into a place it shouldn’t have been allowed to go.

The father’s head jerked upright again, the jaw clacking. “Oh, gosh, me oh my, the door’s here now, forgive my wool-headed nature.”

“Get out of our way and let us through,” Lore said.

Now, from the hallway off to the side, another shape: a woman. The wife, Judy. The blood coming out of the stab wounds that peppered her body hung in gleaming plastic beads, like cheap fake costume rubies. She brushed back her dish-towel hair. “Can’t let you pass, doll.”

“Fuck you, bitch,” Lore hissed.

Then Nick stepped up. Hamish tried to pull him back, but Nick pulled away and staggered forward. He shuffled toward Shawcatch, and they all looked to one another, unsure what to do next. Nick walked right up to Shawcatch, whose rickety, loose-socket head turned right toward him, eye to eye.

Alfie Shawcatch, Judy Shawcatch, and the two little boys all said the same thing, in unison. In the voice of the house, they sang:

“Welcome back, my boy.”

Then they went slack, and Nick turned toward them all, grinning.