She understood what he was trying to do, and she stopped struggling for a moment, long enough to laugh at him.

“You should’ve fucked me when you had the chance,” she said.

She pushed him hard away with both feet and both hands.

He was holding on to her only by the neck, and the sudden application of force sent him flying back.

“They’re mine,” she said, grinning. “They’re all mine.”

And she was gone.

EIGHTEEN

Norton

Norton awoke in the present.

The past was gone. He was back in the House that he’d shared with the others, only now he was alone. There was no sign of Daniel or Laurie or Stormy or Mark, no indication that they were here or that they had ever been here. He was somewhere upstairs, somewhere in the center of the House that he didn’t recognize. To his left, a hallway lined with opposing sets of closed doors stretched into the dimness. To his right, the same. Behind him was a wall, and ahead of him another hallway, shorter, with no doors opening onto it, ending in a blue room.

He walked slowly forward, down the short hallway. The air grew colder with each step, and by the time he reached the room he could see his breath. It felt like a meat locker, he thought, and that analogy left him feeling unsettled.

The room was empty, but to the right of the door, in the opposite wall, was another doorway, leading to another room, this one a lighter shade of blue. He passed through the vestibule, and the temperature went up a few degrees. Once again, there was another doorway, this one on the left wall, and it led into yet another room, an even lighter shade of blue.

Norton stood, looking around. There were no lamps or light fixtures, but the rooms were somehow illuminated, and that made him nervous.

It was one of the many things that made him nervous.

These rooms did not seem to him like part of the House. They were, he knew, but until now everything within the House had had a counterpart with the past, with his childhood. The solarium had been new, but like the bathroom, he had accepted it as part of the remodeling that must have occurred over the past half century.

These rooms did not seem like they had ever been a part of the House.

Maybe he wasn’t in the present but in some future time. Or even some outside time. He definitely wasn’t in the past, though. He knew that. He could feel it.

Perhaps this was some sort of test. Maybe he’d passed the first part of the test, with his family, and now he was being tested again.

Maybe if he successfully completed this part, he’d be allowed to go free.

It was that hope, that possibility, that pushed him forward.