she was remembering something that had happened a long time ago. "She had her business and her money and her boyfriends ... She never needed me. I just got in the way. I'm free now. I'm happy here. I've got everything I ever wanted."
I didn't look around the empty room. "Cathy, we've come to take you out of here. Take you home."
"I am home," said Cathy, smiling her interminable smile. "And you're not taking me anywhere. The house won't let you."
And I fell screaming to the floor as something huge and dark and ravenously hungry smashed its way into my mind, revealing itself at last.
It hit me from all sides at once, tearing through my defences like they weren't even there. It was the house, and it was alive. Once it had looked like something else, and might again, but for now it was a house. And it was feeding.
Inch by inch I forced it out of my mind, my shields re-forming one by one until my thoughts were my own again, the house was gone, and the only one in my head was me. The effort alone would probably have killed anyone else. I came to myself again lying
curled up on the bare floor beside Cathy, shaking and shuddering. A vicious headache beat in my temples, and blood was dripping steadily from my nose. Suzie was kneeling beside me, one hand on my shoulder, shouting something, but I couldn't hear her. Joanna was watching from the doorway, her face completely blank. With my cheek pressed against the bare wood of the floor, I slowly realised how warm it was. Warm and sweaty and curiously smooth. Deep within the pale wood, I could feel a faint pulsing.
I struggled up onto my hands and knees, Suzie helping me as best she could. Blood dripped onto the floor from my nose. I watched almost emotionlessly as the pale wood soaked up the blood, until there was no trace of it left. I knew what was happening now. I knew just what kind of trap I'd walked into. I reached out and pulled Cathy's coat away from her, revealing the truth. Naked and horribly emaciated, Cathy's body was slowly melting into the wooden floor. Already I could no longer tell where her flesh ended, and the floor's began.
Eleven
All Masks Thrown Aside
"It's the house," I said. "It's alive. And it's hungry." I could feel the house all around me now, pulsing with alien life, roaring triumphantly at the edges of my mind. Laughing at me, now it didn't have to hide any more. I looked up and there was Suzie, breathing harshly, her knuckles showing white as she clung to her gun, the only thing that had always made sense to her. Her eyes darted wildly round the room, as she searched desperately for something she could hit or shoot. Joanna was standing very still by the doorway, not looking at Cathy. Her pale face was completely without expression, and when her gaze briefly
crossed mine, I might as well have been a stranger. I looked back at Cathy.
"Tell me," I said. "Tell me why, Cathy. Why did you come here, to this place, of your own free will?"
"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