#48

“Congratulations, Jacob!” Doctor Kai said as he climbed down in the Vecchio house.

“NO!!” Jacob replied. “W-what the fuck was that?! I just suddenly started screaming and...”

“Well, you have been infected with a sudden culture-virus at the hands of our foe. The infection manifested in the form of the suddenly-dreary life. You basically became a shitty Gothic heroine or a rom-com chap or something generally close to that for a second. Fortunately, you channeled the power correctly and The House was able to escape from your dream-confines into...”

“What are you doing in my house?!” Lex shouted.

“And what the fuck are you even talking about, you pretentious...” Jacob's voice fell apart, growling something about “Karloff”.

“Like I said, our enemy infected you. Turned you into the embodiment of a particular type, or character. Shifted your fictions around. You escaped by reaching into absurdity, in your own particular way, and thus into fiction—which is the fuel for the engine of The House. You adapted, with that bad fiction in you.” He had been standing only a few feet away, but now lurched even more uncomfortably close. “Which is why I need somewhere of your own innate type.”

“Please leave me alone,” Jacob replied, in the flattest voice he could conjure.

“This is the turning point for your Earth, Jacob!” Kai yelled then, jumping back. “This is when it begins to become more fictional. Soon a bunch of people will turn into characters, some able to fight it, some unable. It's a mass empowering event.”

Jacob turned to Lex, looking at him with mild panic. Lex nodded, indicating at once that this was not a dream, not a hallucination, and not an imaginary story. Unless Lex nodding was part of it all as well. Jacob would never know.

“Do you not believe me?” said Doctor Kai. Jacob was just realizing that Kai or Kay or whoever had literally walked through the ceiling to enter. “Turn on the TV.”

Jacob sighed, his resolve collapsing like one of the cheap Jenga sets they used for the campaigns. (He felt the lingering traces of his infection—just as one might have a final coughing fit before being well again—make him sense the grammar of that simile, and feel that it was terrible. This almost sold the idea of the “infection” right to him.) He turned on the TV as ordered; and fittingly enough with the rest of coincidences, it seemed the first channel that popped up was the one Kai wanted. It was Fox News, something Lex's parents always watched, but it was the local branch.

“We go live to the town of Maurice, site of the recent attack,” the reporter was saying.

“Maurice?” Jacob asked aloud.

The view shifted unsteadily, indicating the cameraman was on the move. A male reporter was ahead of him. All around them Jacob could see the familiar cornfields and pastures around the town that he had seen when he visited the campus.

“...right behind us!” the reporter cried. “Keep moving!”

The shot came into focus slowly, showing a male reporter trying to work his earpiece. “We're on...? We're on, we're on!!” He seemed out of breath. “I stand now at the site of Maurice, Minnesota, where the University of Minnesota had—has, has—a campus. The campus and the town itself are presently...under attack by a group of terrorists...clad in...” The image seemed to flicker out for a second.

The shot turned back for a second, showing only a plume of smoke. Jacob felt his throat closing.

“...attackers have managed to devastate the town and, and have been assaulting people...with a variety of weapons...” He paused to breathe, and seemed to sob. “These weapons are...oh God...they seem to be transforming...”

Just then, the shot cut out. The screen was black, and the original reporter was talking. She seemed to be trying to figure out what was going on, and how to get the connection back.

Soon even this blackness was gone, and a message denoting technical difficulties was all that was left.

“What's going on?”

“Maurice is under attack,” Doctor Kay replied.

“I figured that part out.”

“And a detachment of the United States Army is being sent there to deal with the assailants.”

Lex suddenly shook his mood to look at the man. “Is my brother going with them?”

“In all likelihood. Perhaps he volunteered, to go be with his friend, if such a thing is possible.”

Jacob questioned how Kai knew about the friendship between Amos and Marcel, but he figured it was all just part of the hallucination. This was simultaneously too contrived and too horrible for him to deal with.

“Can you get us to Maurice in time?” he asked.

“Maybe not in time,” the Doctor responded. “But McGee Manor can fly. And travel very, very fast. I can get you there.”

“McGee Manor?” Lex said. “Jacob. Your bro and my bro had a campaign together. It was set in 1920s Boston. Your bro's character was a millionaire with a huge mansion called Snaps McGee. His house was called McGee Manor.” His face barely emoted at all.

“All a coincidence, most likely,” Doctor Kai said, his voice suddenly snooty. “Now if you're coming at all, we'll have to move quickly. I can't keep a House docked over another house for very long—even if the neighbors assume this is just another expansion.”

Moving on an invisible cue, The House outside began to move; it slid down, to the outdoor deck extending not far from where Jacob was standing, in the living room. A severed porch, with marble stairs leading up to a front door, beckoned. Every detail of the Manor—save for the fact that it was floating, revealing several contained basement chambers dangling precariously over Lex's lawn—was just as it was in the dream. Which wasn't a dream at all, naturally.

The front doors opened by themselves with a sinister creaking sound, also on cue. Doctor Kai said nothing as he began to approach the door.

Lex and Jacob had no choice but to follow.