A Family Affair: A Novel of Horror by V. J. Banis Page A

perhaps a library, judging from the case of books on one wall. This one had any number of exits, one of which led her into—what? A bedroom? There was a bed, a metal framed affair, but the bed seemed more like an afterthought. Perhaps, she concluded, a makeshift sickroom for some member of the family who had been unable to manage the long flight of stairs to the second floor.
    Room after room seemed as lacking in apparent function as the first, and each of them as empty of any occupants. She had intended to leave the doors open behind her, but the first two had swung stubbornly shut and she had given up the attempt. Now, as she tried to retrace her steps, she found herself in still more rooms; different ones, she thought, from the ones she had already seen. Or were they? It was impossible to say. The furnishings were not much different from one room to the next.
    Of course if she reentered the room with the bed or the little pantry-storage room, she would have recognized them, but despite the certainty that she was following the same route she had taken, she saw neither of these two rooms. She came into room after empty room, and there were doors, more doors than she would have thought possible in any single house.
    With sudden panic, she realized that she was lost. For a moment she felt an impulse to run from door to door.
    â€œThis is ridiculous,” she told herself firmly, fighting back that urge to hysteria. “No matter how big this house is, these rooms can’t go on forever.”
    The statement was lacking conviction. If ever a house could go on forever, she was ruefully afraid that Kelsey House would be the one. It wasn’t a house at all, it was a maze, a web of useless rooms and closed doors; and it was laughing at her. The house itself was watching her, laughing at her confusion and fright. She could feel it. At any moment she expected it to say, “Jenny, Jenny, eat a daisy, Jenny, Jenny, you are crazy.”
    â€œStop it,” she ordered herself. “You’re allowing your imagination to run away with you, Jennifer.”
    But it was there still, that feeling of being watched. She looked around again, but the room was still empty. Only instinct, some certainty that came from within, hinted that she was not alone. There was an eerie moment of conviction, when the presence that she felt was not physical at all, but had only intruded itself upon her mind. She shook her head firmly.
    â€œThe windows,” she said in a rising voice. The rooms all had windows, and from them she could see where she was. With a new burst of hope she ran to the window nearest her and peered out. A tree—what was it, a pear tree?—old and gnarled, hovered near the glass, all but blocking the view. There were bushes beyond it, and more trees. She had only seen the front of the house from outside, in the dark, and at the time she had been more observant of the scene on the lawn, that peculiar dancing that was going on, than she had been of the grounds. The growth outside gave her no clue to her location in the house, except that she was not at the front. She was sure of that.
    She had been at the front when she started out, though; she had followed the hall back to the front of the house, and had started from there. When had she turned? She tried to think back over the rooms she had come through, but they ran together in her mind. And the house was not straight, there was that funny angle to the wings.
    She wanted to cry with frustration. She had the same odd sensation of unreality that she had had last night in the woods, a sense of being apart from time and the world, in another dimension as it were.
    And then—had her senses been affected by all that had happened, or was that a breeze? Not just a breeze, more like a cold chill. She turned, startled, her eyes darting frantically about the room. The door across the room—was it the one through which she had entered—was swinging shut,