Read Online The House That Death Built by Michaelbrent Collings - Free Book Online Page B

ordinary folks understood the terms, they
were more like the New World's answer to the castles of feudal times. Each held
in its quiet grasp a Lord or Lady, master of all they surveyed. Safe behind
their privacy walls and their security systems.
    Until the marauders come. The
invaders.
    Us.

13

    This is what the house looks
like.
    It is nice – very nice –
though its obvious value comes not so much from its size (though it is large)
or its spacious grounds (though spacious they are), or even the topiaries and
fountains that grace its surroundings (though there are, of course, many of
those).
    No, its value can be seen, even
by the least discerning eye, in the details. In the whole .
    This house, unlike many others in
the surrounding miles of estates, is not white. It is a tan that darkens to
gray-brown in the night. A place the darkness has begun to infect with a quiet,
ugly disease.
    A cancer not of body, not of
heart or lungs or lymph. A cancer of the soul.
    A place where death has come to
call.
    The house is surrounded by a lawn
big enough to be called a meadow. Trees that lend shade during the day, and
that deepen shadows at night. Bushes that bring beauty in the light, that transform
to malignant growths in the dark.
    There are fountains, but they are
silent. No water passes through them, and the stone cherubim stand motionless
as death, imprisoned forever in silent moments of torture.
    Many windows stare out from the
sides of the house. In daytime they shine, during the early hours of the night
they glow warmly.
    Now, they are dark – eyes blinded
nightly by the dark cataracts of a black sky. All but one – a single blazing
square of light through glass on the second floor. The light brings no courage,
no cheer. It seems out of place. A beacon that will serve not to guide ships
through rocky shoals, but to guide evil to its prey.
    There are shadows all around.
    One of the shadows moves.
    Heads toward the single bright
window.
    Begins to climb.

14

    It was an anniversary day, and
Dad had come home happier than he ever was. Some anniversaries could do that to
you: anniversaries that were so special they required one's full attention.
Days so important they merited nothing but cheer, nothing but brightness.
    Even at seventeen years old,
Susan Crawford knew this. She knew that this was a special, important day.
    That was why she was in here. She
had stayed up long enough to greet her dad, to see his special smile, to hear
him say loving words to Mom.
    Then off to her bedroom. Mom and
Dad would be in bed soon – she knew what that meant, too. And that meant she got
to make a call. One she'd been looking forward to for a while. Ever since she
met him .
    TJ Field had been a surprise. Not
like the kids Susan knew at school. He was rougher, harder in a certain light.
The rough edges didn't detract from his good looks, though – they heightened
them, the way shadows will heighten reliefs carved into a wall.
    But he made everything better. He
completed the world she and her parents had made here, in a house she could
never help but think was too big for them.
    When TJ came, he filled it – or
at least, filled it enough. And sometimes enough was just right.
    She looked at the clock that sat
on her dresser. All of five minutes later than it had been the last time she
looked.
    She returned her gaze to the book
that sat on the bed in front of her. AP Physics . Normally it wasn't hard
to concentrate on the information it held – she had a special affinity for the
way things were built, for the way they came together at the smallest levels –
but tonight she stared at the lines of text and math and none of it made sense.
    There was only the night. This night.
    And a noise.
    She glanced at her window.
    Did I hear something?
    She waited a moment, staring out
at the night. The small hairs on the back of her neck rose with a feeling of…
what?
    Expectation.
    Hope.
    The night seemed to stretch on
forever beyond her window.
    And,