“Everyone okay?” He looked up the staircase at the dark hall beyond. “Things are pretty dark outside.”
He kept his steps even as he walked to a table—careful to look like he didn’t understand why anything would be amiss—and went through a stack of mail that was sitting there. His hands shook as he flipped through the flyers and envelopes of coupons. They received junk mail and neighborhood flyers shoved into the box at the curb, but no bills. Nothing personal or that required a response had ever been delivered to House. He assumed since House didn’t really run on metered electricity or gas, and there was no cable TV, there were no bills. He didn’t even know if they paid taxes. House powered everything itself; there was nobody to pay.
But standing here now, clinging to the unreal possibility that his mother had been here in the house, he wondered: Weren’t there some things that required a signature? Who had enrolled him in school? Who had signed off when the doctor arrived, dazed and robotic, at the door? And why had he never thought to question any of this before Delilah came into his life? Gavin always assumed his reality was different from those around him, but beneath that assumption had always been a dark, secret belief that House also made him special.
A single word stabbed at his thoughts: How?
How could a boy be orphaned without people all over town knowing what happened to his mother?
How could he be so lucky that his house happened to step in and raise him?
How could he not immediately wonder, when the house began terrorizing Delilah, if the house had also hurt his mother?
What if House had never been good? What if he’d been here all his life, trusting and blind, and the only family he’d ever known was simply. . . evil?
Struggling to stay calm and choking back the tight swell of tears, Gavin continued to listen for any sound of human life in the house. He dropped the stack of mail on the table and went to Kitchen, pulled down a glass, and filled it with water from the tap.
As he drank, holding the glass with a trembling hand, Gavin tried to ignore the odd darkness outside. The resurgence of a fire in Fireplace had warmed the front rooms. A fresh plate of cookies sat on the counter. Daisies on the windowsill unfurled their petals and faced him.
“Think I might go upstairs and get a bit more sleep,” he said.
He reached for an apple in the crisper drawer and straightened, polishing the tender red skin on the fabric of his shirt. “I fell asleep practicing for the spring concert and have this horrible crick in my neck. A nap might do me a world of good. Maybe we can look at the sprinklers out front when I’m done? The twins aren’t looking so good.”
The daisies nodded their heads but made no movement to reach out for him as he placed his glass in the sink.
Gavin climbed the stairs one at a time, hoping he didn’t look as anxious as he felt. It was so quiet. There had always been an energy about House that he’d grown accustomed to, a tiny vibration, the sense of movement all around him that used to ease him to sleep at night and remind him that he wasn’t alone. He could feel it in the walls and the wood beneath his feet. He could feel it in the air. Today it was still there, but it was different.
It was tighter. Tenser. He felt like he was trapped in the belly of a clenched muscle, knowing House would do anything to keep from hurting him but sensing its pulsing fury.
The lights in the stairway illuminated, but they buzzed dissonantly. The stairs creaked with each step he took, somehow less solid, nearly brittle under his shoes.
“What’s going on?” he asked, swallowing so thickly he could hear it in the eerie silence. “Are you mad at me?”