by Boris Bacic
“Lee! He’s not here!” It was his mom.
“They’re talking about the doll,” the boy said. “Quick! Take it to her!”
Charlie looked at the boy just in time for the patter of footsteps upstairs to get closer. His parents would be here any moment. Should he take the doll or not? The boy looked like he really needed Charlie’s help.
“Please, hurry!” the boy pleaded, his face now portraying impatience.
Charlie reached for the doll.
Chapter 38
Cheryl opened her eyes and gasped loudly. She felt as if she was choking when she abruptly woke up. The first thing she saw were the familiar objects of her room surrounding her.
I made it back! That was her first thought, and it was immediately followed by a million other thoughts that reminded her of everything that she saw just before passing out.
Shit, the doll!
Cheryl swung sideways and hopped off the bed. Her knees buckled, and she barely managed to stop herself from collapsing onto the floor. She was still in a weakened state from traveling through the crossroads. She wondered for a moment if she would have any long-term consequences from her astral projection, but right now, she didn’t really care.
She also wondered if she had managed to save Mom, but there would be time to worry about that later. Right now, she had to destroy Jill’s doll. As long as it lived, the trickster spirit would never let them go.
Cheryl propped herself into a standing position with a groan. Her legs felt like they were made of jelly, and she felt the urge to vomit. She swallowed and suppressed that urge as she made her way to the door.
As soon as she opened it, she heard a cacophony of voices downstairs. It sounded like Jill and… was that Lee? Yeah, Lee, and she heard Fabiola’s voice there, too. Cheryl held one hand on the wall as she made her way towards the stairs.
“J… Jill…” she tried to shout, but was barely able to mutter more than a faint sound.
No use. She would need to go downstairs. And she knew that the doll was in the basement. She didn’t know how, but she knew it. She had a connection with the trickster spirit; she knew that much. Again, she didn’t know anything more than what she felt.
Cheryl walked past Mom’s room. The door was open, and she saw Mom inside, sitting on the bed, muttering something to herself just as she had done in the crossroads. Sorrow would have overtaken her had she not been consumed by a sense of urgency to help Jill and Charlie.
The worried shouts of Jill and Lee calling after Charlie came from the living room, followed by frantic footsteps in various directions.
As Cheryl made her way towards the stairs, she started to regain her strength. Walking down the stairs was difficult, but step by step and holding on to the railing, Cheryl was able to climb down. She had three steps remaining to the bottom when she felt herself losing balance. Cheryl lurched forward, her body suddenly awake and ready, but it was too late.
She took a tumble down the stairs, each step that her body collided with sending sharp pangs of pain. Despite the fall being only a couple of feet, Cheryl’s ribs and knee hurt like hell. She writhed in pain for a moment, trying to compose herself enough to stand up.
“Cheryl!” she heard Jill’s voice from the door leading to the kitchen.
Cheryl looked at Jill and, through gritted teeth, muttered just one word.
***
It took Jill a moment to understand what Cheryl was telling her. Her sister was pale as she lay on the floor in front of the stairs, beads of sweat decorating her forehead.
“Basement!” Cheryl uttered with great effort.
Jill’s eyes widened as terror surged through her. She spun on her heel and rushed past a concerned Lee and Fabiola, not bothering to explain anything to them. She dashed through the living room and the kitchen, heading towards the basement.
The door was open. How had she not seen it before? So stupid of her not to notice such an important detail!
Jill didn’t even bother slowing down before she began descending the stairs. Luckily for her, the lights were on, and she saw the outline of a child squatting at the bottom, right in front of the pool table.
“Charlie!” she shouted.
Charlie turned around at the mention of his name, his eyes as wide as saucers. And that’s when Jill saw it.
A black figure was squatting under the pool table in front of Charlie. It almost looked comical, with its tall stature hunched, its knees on the same level as its head, its elbows touching the floor, with one hand limply splayed on the floor, and the other slightly in front of it. It was holding Lola in that hand, clutching it with sharp, elongated fingers.
“Charlie, get away from there!” Jill shouted as she skipped down the steps.
A line of white appeared on the figure’s face where the mouth should have been, and it let out an inhuman shriek that made Jill’s ears pulsate with pain. The ceiling light above Jill produced a popping sound, and the room was plunged into blackness. Somewhere in the basement, Jill heard Charlie screaming. Jill was overcome with a sense of déjà vu from last night as she froze, almost tripping and falling down the steps.
“Charlie! Charlie, where are you?!” she screamed.
“I’m right here!” Charlie shouted from somewhere in the darkness.
Jill couldn’t see a thing. She heard footsteps upstairs and then voices.
“Jill, are you down there?!” It was Lee.
“Lee! We’re here! Turn the lights on!” Jill shouted.
“I can’t! They’re not working! Hold on, I’ll grab my phone from the car!”
Jill just then remembered that she still had her phone in her pocket. She pulled it out and fumbled with trembling hands until she found the torch. As soon as she tapped on it, the basement was bathed in a weak, pale light. As meager as it was, it was better than being in the dark, and for that, Jill was grateful.
“Charlie! Where are you?!” Jill screeched.
There was no response.
“Cha—” her words cut off when she saw something black and slender run past her torch’s light.
Jill froze in her steps and moved the light in various directions, hoping to see what it was. She saw the slender figure’s tall shadow against the floor behind the old sofa covered in a sheet. It was just sitting there, waiting for Jill, maybe to ambush her. Or maybe hiding from her. Jill suddenly became aware of the deafening silence inside the basement. Up until a moment ago, she wasn’t even aware of her own panting, and now it was the only sound in the room.
“Charlie?” she called out timorously.
The adrenaline that ran through her muted the feeling of being overwhelmed by fear and panic. She had to confront the beast behind the sofa. Even if she didn’t manage to overpower it, she’d hopefully be able to buy Charlie some time to hide or run away.
She kept the light trained on the sofa and the shadow that swiveled under her light with each step she took closer to it. The figure was still, she suddenly realized; it was only its shadow that moved under the refraction of the light. She saw its round head and the elongated torso. It must have been really flexible to be able to hide behind a sofa despite its tall stature. Or maybe it truly had no physical body at all?
When Jill was only two steps away from the sofa, she swallowed. It sounded alarmingly loud against the silence in the room, and she was sure that the creature was already alerted to her arrival unless it was somehow blind to the light. Maybe it was preparing to jump out in front of her just as she was preparing to jump out in front of it.
Jill inhaled through her nose as slowly as she could, ignoring her trembling breathing. With one swift step forward, she jumped in front of the sofa with her light pointed at—
Lola.
Her old doll sat on the floor, facing Jill. It stared at her with its black eyes and smiled in a morbidly jovial fashion not suitable for this situation. At first, Jill could do no more than just stare at the doll.
And then a clatter came from somewhere else in
the basement.
“Charlie?!” Jill called out, the panic now threatening to supersede the adrenaline.
Quick footsteps resounded somewhere. Jill felt something brushing against her momentarily, just as the footsteps went past her. She screamed and fell on her rear, dropping the phone in the process.
She looked around the darkness, sure that the phone died when it fell on the concrete floor. But then she saw a small, rectangular glow. Realizing that the torch was face down, she scrambled to the phone and grabbed it, immediately shining her light around the basement once again.
There’s no one here, she thought as she allowed her panicked breathing to take over as the only noise in the room.
She turned her phone to the right, and a face jumped in front of her. Jill screamed, flailed, and kicked against the assailant who grabbed her shoulders with his icy cold hands.
“Jill! It’s me!” Cheryl shouted.
She must have shouted it at least three times before Jill actually heard the words, and once she did, she took a good look at the person in front of her. It was Cheryl, not the trickster spirit or someone disguised as her. She was pale, but it was definitely her.
“Cheryl! We have to find Charlie!”
“He’s right here!” Cheryl pointed under her arm.
Jill shone her phone’s light down, and sure enough, there he was.
“Mommy!” Charlie leaped into Jill’s arms and hugged her tightly.
He felt somewhat cold and was shivering. His eyes were wide as if he had just seen a ghost—which he had. Jill ran a hand through his hair to soothe him, but it ended up comforting her more, instead.
“We need to get out of here!” Jill said as she jumped to her feet.
“No, not yet! We have to find your doll!”
“Lola? Why?!”
“I’ll explain later, just tell me where she is!”
Cheryl sounded desperate. Jill shone the light behind Cheryl and pointed a finger at the sofa.
“There! Stay with Charlie!”
She ran past Cheryl, and sure enough, the doll was still there, motionless—as it should be. Jill suddenly didn’t want to go anywhere near Lola, not after seeing the trickster spirit touching it, but in the heat of the moment, she was on autopilot.
She bent down to pick it up, and just like that, something black and blurry grabbed Lola before Jill could and it scurried back out of sight in the blink of an eye. Jill screamed, and so did Charlie and Cheryl.
And so did the trickster spirit, with a shrill cry that pierced the air.
More screams came from the kitchen, and Jill realized it was Lee and Fabiola.
“What the fuck was that?!” Lee shouted.
There was a moment of commotion while Jill, Cheryl, and Charlie found each other in the dark again.
“Jill!” Lee’s voice came from upstairs.
Jill looked up to see a strong beam illuminating the basement. It was the most divine thing Jill had ever witnessed, to see the darkness disperse in an instant. Lee stood at the bottom of the stairs with a bright flashlight, and was scanning the faces in the basement, a worried look on his face.
When he saw Charlie, Jill, and Cheryl, visible relief washed over his face, and he motioned for the three to follow him. Cheryl picked Charlie up and carried him up the stairs, with Jill running closely behind.
Fabiola was at the top of the stairs, urging them to hurry up. Her face was contorted into one of palpable fear, and it didn’t suit the mambo one bit. It also instilled a primordial fear in Jill because it told her that Fabiola hasn’t dealt with anything like this in the past.
The entire house was dark, Jill noticed as she ran upstairs and slammed the basement door shut, so the dark entity must have done something to kill the electricity.
“We need to get out of the house, come on!” Lee shouted.
“The back door!” Jill pointed to the door leading out of the kitchen.
Fabiola rushed to the door and grabbed the knob. A rattling sound ensued, but the door wouldn’t budge.
“It’s locked!” she shouted.
“Shit!” Jill cursed.
“Language!” Lee reprimanded her absently.
Cheryl put Charlie down, and the group huddled near the kitchen door, the visibility of the sky outside giving a sort of unreachable solace. A clatter nearby made everyone turn towards the living room. Charlie screamed and cried.
“It’s okay, buddy. We’ll be fine, alright?” Lee comforted Charlie as he pulled him closer and allowed him to hug him around the waist.
Another clatter, and then something sounding like glass shattering in the living room. And then a shriek.
“What the hell is going on?!” Jill asked in frustration in no more than a whimpery whisper.
“I don’t know. I thought we banished the spirit!” Fabiola said defeatedly.
“No, we didn’t,” Cheryl exclaimed calmly.
Everyone turned to face her, visibly waiting for an answer. Even Charlie, who had no idea what was going on, stared at Aunt Cheryl. Another short screech came from the living room, followed by what sounded like bare feet running across the room. Jill and Lee kept the lights trained on the entrance of the living room. For some reason, Jill had the impression that as long as they did that, they’d be safe.
Cheryl sighed and shook her head. Everyone looked back at her.
“The trickster spirit was never supposed to be banished in the first place. We messed it up big time. When Mom returned from Haiti, something followed her here. She tried everything to get rid of that thing, including trying to transfer the spirit on to Barbara, but nothing worked. The only thing she could do was cast protection spells, but even they didn’t last for long. As time went on, she started losing more and more of her mind.”
“She couldn’t cast the right spells and draw the vèvès properly anymore because of her memory, and then one day the spirit took her. Yeah, we already knew that,” Jill said.
Cheryl shook her head.
“That’s what we initially thought. But Mom didn’t mess up in the protection spells and vèvès. She knew that her time was almost up, and that she had no way of making it out of this mess unscathed, so she instead purposely messed up the protection spells.”
“Why? To make it quicker?” Jill incredulously asked.
Fabiola looked just as confused.
“No,” Cheryl said. “To lure the trickster spirit and imprison the both of them in the crossroads. Don’t you get it? It was trapped there. It wanted us to go there. When I freed Mom, I also freed it from its imprisonment.”
Silence fell on the room. It was interrupted by more footsteps somewhere in the house, followed by a muffled bang upstairs. Everyone instinctively looked up at the ceiling.
“Mom is up there,” Jill said.
“She’ll be fine. The spirit is no longer interested in her.”
“How do you know that?” Fabiola asked.
“I saw it in a sort of vision. The trickster spirit latches on to a member of the family and feeds on them. When there’s nothing left to eat, then it moves on to the younger generations in the same family. In this case, it’s you and me, Jill.”
Jill suddenly remembered everything from her childhood. The boy… there was never a boy. Instead, she suddenly saw something else in her memory. A black figure towering above her, always by her side, never doing anything, just gleefully watching. It was never a friend. The spirit had latched on to Jill from an early age like a parasite. It was her that it wanted.
As much as she wanted to protect Cheryl from this entity, she also wanted to protect Charlie. If the spirit latched on to Jill, then Charlie would be next in the line of succession. She couldn’t let that happen.
“How do we stop it?!” she asked impatiently.
A loud bang, followed by scraping, and then another blood-curdling screech.
“The doll. We need to find it,” Cheryl said.
Chapter 39
Everyone in the room stared at Cheryl
incredulously. Their looks screamed the exact same thing Jill thought to herself.
Have you lost your damn mind?!
“You want us to go up there and retrieve Lola, right under the spirit’s nose?” Jill asked with a sardonic, nervous chuckle.
“We have to. It’s the only way to get rid of it,” Cheryl said.
She was alarmingly calm, given the situation.
“Look, we can just get out of here. Let it keep the doll, right?” Lee shrugged.
“I told you,” Cheryl frowned. “Running won’t solve anything. The spirit attaches itself to family members. No matter where you run, it will find us.”
“And I’m next,” Jill put a hand on Charlie’s cheek. “And then Charlie.”
Charlie looked up in confusion. He obviously had no idea what was going on, but he was scared nonetheless. Poor kid. He was probably going to have nightmares for months after this. Might even need some therapy. Jill would make sure to let him sleep with her and Lee, with the lights on, if necessary.
“Okay, so we find the doll, and what then?” Jill asked.
“Then we destroy it,” Fabiola said, and looked over at Cheryl, as if looking for confirmation from her.
Cheryl nodded in agreement.
“But do we know if that’s even going to stop it?” Jill asked, with a timbre that turned more desperate by the minute.
“We do,” Fabiola interjected. “Trickster spirits have difficulties staying in our world just by attaching themselves to a person. However, they can extend their stay if they transfer a part of themselves into a cherished object. Once a spirit attaches to an object in a manner like this one, its essence is tied to it. Destroying it will not destroy the spirit, but it will send it back to where it came from and cover your tracks, at least for a little bit.”
“But it can return again?”
“Yes. You have to understand, trickster spirits can always find their way into our realm, but the odds of this happening are close to nil. I’ll teach you some protection spells that you can cast to stay safe.”
Silence fell on the room for a moment. Not even the ruckus upstairs could be heard anymore. For some reason, that caused Jill to feel even more on edge. When she heard the racket, she at least knew where the spirit was. When it was quiet like this, it could be anywhere, possibly even standing right behind her this very moment, just staring and waiting.