The House Behind The Doors

Marco looked through the glass. Rain silvered the street. The fence ended at a gate hanging open, but beyond it the weeds had swallowed the path. There was no porch light. No mailbox. No sign of life.

A figure stepped from the darkness beside the gate.

Marco’s gun came up.

Vincent caught his wrist. “Not yet.”

The man wore a black suit beneath a clear plastic raincoat. His hair was slicked flat, and a pale scar ran from the corner of his mouth to his jaw. He walked toward the car without hurrying. When he reached the driver’s window, he bent until his face filled the glass.

“Mr. Rizzo,” he said.

Vincent lowered the window two inches. Rain slid through the gap and struck his sleeve.

“Who wants to know?”

“Father Karras sent me.”

“Then tell him to come outside.”

The man smiled without showing teeth. “Father Karras is occupied.”

“With what?”

“Prayer.”

Marco gave a short laugh. “Tell him prayer’s over. He owes our boss fifty thousand dollars.”

The smile vanished. The man looked from Marco to Vincent, measuring the car, the guns, the confidence neither of them had bothered to hide.

“Your boss is Don Claudio.”

“That’s right,” Vincent said. “And he wants his money before midnight.”

“Then he should have sent an accountant.”

Marco opened his door.

Vincent caught his shoulder. “Stay put.”

The man’s eyes flicked toward the movement. “There’s no need for violence.”

“There’s always a need,” Marco said.

Vincent studied the stranger’s face. “Name.”

“Elias.”

“Elias what?”

“Just Elias.”

“Where’s Karras?”

“Inside.”

“Then move.”

Elias looked at the house. The yellow window on the third floor flickered once. Vincent saw a shape pass behind it, too tall and too thin to be a man. The light steadied. Nothing remained.

Elias’s gaze returned to him. “Father Karras receives guests when he chooses.”

“He doesn’t choose tonight.”

“He does if the door is locked.”

Marco pushed his door wider. “We can solve that.”

Elias stepped back, but not far enough to look afraid. “You were told to meet him here. You were not told to enter.”

Vincent felt the rain cooling his knuckles. “We were told to finish a job.”

“Then finish it.”

“Where is he?”

Elias did not answer.

Marco’s hand settled inside his coat. “You’re running out of ways to be useful.”

The streetlamp above them buzzed and went dark. For a moment, the only light came from the dashboard and the third-floor window. In that weak glow, the house seemed to have changed. The front door was no longer centered beneath the roof. It stood several feet to the left, squeezed between two windows that had not been there before.

Vincent blinked.

The door remained.

“Did you see that?” he asked.

Marco stared at the house. “See what?”

Elias’s expression tightened. “You should come inside.”

“Not until Karras shows his face,” Vincent said.

“He is inside.”

“You keep saying that.”

“Because it remains true.”

A bell rang somewhere beyond the fence.

Not a doorbell. A deep iron note that traveled through the rain and settled in Vincent’s ribs.

Elias turned toward the house. “He is expecting you now.”

Marco came out of the car, rain darkening his shoulders. “You said he was praying.”

“He has finished.”

Vincent stepped onto the street. Water rushed along the gutter around his shoes. He shut the car door and faced the fence.

Marco leaned close. “This feels like a trap.”

“It is a trap.”

“That supposed to make me feel better?”

“No. It’s supposed to keep you awake.”

Elias walked through the open gate. Neither of them followed.

He stopped beneath the first-floor window and looked back. “If you leave, Don Claudio gets no answer, no money, and no Father Karras.”

Vincent’s jaw tightened. The deadline had never been a suggestion. Don Claudio had given them one night to recover the debt or remove the man who had stolen it. Either way, failure would come back to their neighborhood wearing a familiar face.

Marco glanced at the house. “We go in, we find him, we put him down.”

Vincent drew his pistol and checked the chamber. “And if this Elias fellow gets in the way?”

Marco smiled thinly. “Then he learns why we’re made.”

They crossed the street.

The gate swung shut behind them with a wet metal groan.

Vincent turned. The hinges had no chain, no latch, nothing that could have pulled them closed. He reached for the bars. They were cold enough to sting his palm.

“Vincent,” Marco called.

Elias stood at the front door. It was tall, painted black, and covered in small brass panels. Each panel held a different symbol: an eye, a hand, a child’s face with its mouth sewn shut. The rain did not touch the threshold. The stone there was dry.

Elias opened the door.

A corridor waited beyond it, narrow and red-walled. Doors lined both sides from floor to ceiling. Some were wooden, some metal, some white as bone. None had handles.

Vincent stopped on the threshold.

“Where’s the meeting room?” he asked.

Elias looked down the corridor. “The house will take you to Father Karras.”

“The house?”

“The house knows where he is.”

Marco stepped beside Vincent. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

“Neither does the house,” Elias said.

Something knocked from behind one of the doors.

Three slow blows.

Vincent raised his gun toward it. “What’s in there?”

“Nothing that belongs to you.”

Another door answered farther down the hall.

Then another.

The knocks traveled away from them, one after the next, as if something were moving through the walls.

Marco’s voice dropped. “We should drag Elias out and call the Don.”

Vincent looked behind them. The street had vanished.

Beyond the gate stood only a black wall slick with rain—no parked car. No streetlamp. No row of shuttered shops. Their sedan was gone.

Elias watched his face and understood.

“Father Karras is inside,” he said. “You came for him.”

Vincent kept his pistol trained on the corridor. “And if we don’t find him?”

“You will.”

“Where?”

Elias stepped backward. The darkness swallowed his shoes first, then his legs. “Behind the right door.”

The front door slammed.

Marco spun and fired.

The shot cracked through the corridor. Plaster burst beside the door, and the sound rolled through the house until it became something deeper, almost a growl.

Vincent grabbed Marco’s wrist. “Save your ammunition.”

“He disappeared.”

“He walked.”

“Into a wall.”

Vincent turned toward the entrance. The black door had no handle on their side. He ran his fingers over the panels. The brass eye was warm. Its painted pupil shifted beneath his touch.

He jerked his hand away.

Marco saw it. “What?”

“Nothing.”

The nearest door creaked open.

Inside, a small dining room held a table set for two. Steam rose from two untouched plates. At the far end, a chair faced the doorway. Father Lucien Karras sat in it with his back to them.

Vincent raised his weapon.

“Karras,” he called.

The figure did not move.

Marco approached, gun extended. “Father Karras, you owe Don Claudio fifty thousand dollars.”

The chair scraped backward by itself.

The man sitting in it turned.

He was not Karras.

His face was smooth and white, without eyes or a mouth. Rainwater poured from his empty features onto his black shirt. He lifted one hand and pointed toward the next door.

It opened.

Beyond it stood a hallway that should not have fit inside the house. Doors stretched into darkness on both sides, their frames crowded together like teeth.

A voice came from far within.

“Father Karras is waiting.”

Vincent’s grip tightened until the pistol’s metal bit into his palm.

Marco looked at him. “We go in?”

Vincent thought of Don Claudio, the deadline, the fifty thousand dollars, and the simple promise they had made when they crossed the street: find the target, finish the job, leave together.

The door behind them clicked shut.

Vincent stepped through the next one.

Marco followed.

The door closed softly behind them, and somewhere ahead, another lock turned.

End of chapter one. 39 more chapters and about 71,289 words in the full book.