by Jeff Strand
“What do you want to do?” she said.
“About what?” Her question caught him off guard.
“About the doll. Are you going to take it back to Wilmington?”
“It’s worth millions,” he said.
“That’s a lot of money,” she said.
“So why would you ask me if I’m taking it back?”
“Donnie, don’t snap at me. You called me, remember? Obviously it bothers you, otherwise we wouldn’t be talking, right?”
She was right, of course. He was just mad at Marty for making this more difficult than it had to be. Abby didn’t deserve this.
“I’m coming home,” he said. “Sweetheart, we’re gonna be rich.”
“I always thought I’d look good married to a rich man.”
“You and me both, baby.”
* * * * *
He was driving through Greensboro, about ten minutes from home, when his phone rang. It was Herb Cowen’s number.
“Hey Herb, what’s—”
Donnie was cut off by the sound of something big, like a chandelier, shattering in his ear. The Subaru shimmied as he fumbled the phone. The driver of the beat-to-hell Ford pickup behind him laid on the horn. Donnie flinched. He hated driving. He could be a tiger when it came to auctions. He thrived on the ebb and flow of money, the electric mood of a room in a bidding frenzy. But behind the wheel, amid the ebb and flow of traffic, caught up with other drivers jockeying for position, he often felt rattled, even frightened. He tried to wave an apology to the angry redneck behind him, but the guy would have none of it. The pickup’s engine roared as the driver accelerated around Donnie, yelling something that sounded like “Get off the fucking phone, dickhead!” out the window as he surged by.
Donnie watched him go.
Hard, frantic breathing came through the phone. Donnie looked at the phone in surprise. He’d forgotten he was still holding it. He put it back to his ear and listened. There were voices on the other end, panicked voices bulleted by ragged breathing.
“Frank, is that you?”
The voices became inarticulate grunts.
“Frank?”
Donnie heard something thud, and then Frank—he was pretty sure it was Frank; his voice was deeper than Herb’s—said something Donnie didn’t quite catch.
“Frank? Hey, are you okay?”
No answer. The line was open, but nobody was talking. Maybe he butt-dialed me, Donnie thought. He was about to hang up when he heard something. A small sound, like somebody sobbing.
“Frank, is that you?” He waited a beat. “Herb?”
A car pulled away from the curb just ahead of him. He mashed down on his brakes, his stomach lurching into his throat as the distance to the other car closed at an alarming rate. But he missed it. He waited for the other guy, who didn’t wave an apology, Donnie noticed bitterly, turned right at the next corner and slipped away into a neighborhood.
He was still holding the phone, he realized. Enough of this. He hung up and tossed it onto the passenger seat. Focus on your driving, Donnie.
That was it, he told himself as he pulled into his driveway. They butt-dialed me. Had to be. Frankly, he was too tired to assign more meaning to it than that. It had been a long day of driving, of angry rednecks in traffic, of having Marty Wright twist him around her finger like he was made of rubber. He was exhausted. He didn’t even want to unpack. He just wanted a shower, maybe some dinner, and then bed. Getting to bed early would be nice.
Abigail greeted him at the back door and helped him bring in the boxes of stuff he’d taken from the attic back in Wilmington. They put it all in his office. She took the lid off the doll’s storage box and leaned it up against the backrest of the armchair in the corner of his office. Donnie didn’t want to look at it. But Abigail took a step back from it and crossed her arms over her chest, cocking her head from side to side as she studied the doll. “It is beautiful,” she said.
He grunted by way of a reply. Standing inside the storage box like that, it reminded him of the Old West outlaws they used to photograph in their coffins along with the men who brought them in.
“Hard to believe somebody would pay millions for it, though.”
When he turned to ask her about dinner, she was looking at the picture of the little dead girl.
“This is her?”
He nodded, his lips pressed firmly closed.
“It was a different time, wasn’t it?” she said. “Imagine posing your dead child like this. It must have been so painful.”
“Yeah. Listen, I’m gonna take a shower, okay?”
“Okay,” she said. She put the picture down. “Go take your shower. The steam’ll do you good.”
And it did, too. Donnie stood under the water, shoulders slumped, feeling tired and depleted.
He toweled off, pulled on a pair of jeans and a ragged Penn State t-shirt, and went out to the kitchen. His nose hadn’t completely cleared, but at least he could smell the stew now. He thought he might even be able to stay awake long enough to enjoy it.
Donnie passed through the saloon doors that separated the living room from the kitchen. He expected to see Abigail hovering over her cooking the way she liked to do, but instead saw the dining room table knocked askew, one of the black wooden chairs toppled, and, behind that, Abigail sprawled out on the floor.
“Abigail!”
He rushed to her side and turned her over in his arms.
Her body was stiff as a piece of furniture. But it was the look frozen on her face that caused him to recoil. Abigail’s eyes were wide open and staring at something beyond the ceiling. Her mouth was twisted into a scream. A long black lock of her beautiful hair hung over her cheek. Her expression was one of such abject horror and fear that he didn’t immediately recognize that she was dead.
“Abigail? No. Oh Jesus, no!”
He scrambled back from her until he ran into the wall and collapsed, his legs stretched out before him. Donnie froze there in panic. For a long moment, he sat staring at her, unable to take it all in. There was no sound but his own taxed breathing. Take her pulse, he thought. CPR, anything. Do something!
He extended a trembling hand toward her, but couldn’t make himself touch her. It was too horrible, that look on her face.
Something moved off to his right.
His gaze snapped toward the saloon doors, and his eyes widened. Beyond the doors, a pair of legs. Black shoes. Black stockings. The swish of a black, papery dress.
Donnie shook his head. He pressed his fists into his eyes, as though to grind the vision out, but when he took his hands away, the saloon doors were swinging inward.
He jumped to his feet and ran through the kitchen and into the front parlor. For a moment, the thought that played over and over in his head was: This is where they used to hold funerals, this is where they used to hold funerals—
She was behind him. The little dead girl. He couldn’t hear her, but he could sense her. He could feel the dust and the cold gathering at his back, creeping through the sun-bright kitchen, coming for him.
Again he bolted, this time to his office, where he slammed the door shut.
He came to a stop in the middle of the room, staring around at the clutter that came from a lifetime of hunting antiques. The doll, standing like a corpse in its white, casket box, stared back at him with its huge round eyes.
The little dead girl’s picture was there, too.
The color fell away from his face. His knees buckled. Her eyes were open, and they were locked on his, vacant and empty, yet somehow weighing him, judging him.
“No,” he said. His voice sounded like a sigh. “No.”
Lurching back, he turned to flee. But there was nowhere he could go. He realized that like a slap in the face. Donnie thought of the call he’d received from Herb and Frank. It was horror he’d heard in Frank’s voice. He knew that now. The same chest-clenching fear that had killed Abigail and put that awful death mask on her face.
And now, the little
dead girl was coming for him.
He heard her footsteps on the tile on the other side of the door. It was locked, but he knew that wouldn’t matter to her. He knew that just as surely as he knew she’d passed over Marty Wright, spared her because she’d refused to have anything to do with the doll. It was strange to him how clear and reasonable that knowledge was. He knew it was so, knew it just as he knew the little dead girl was coming now for her doll, the one she’d marked with her own blood.
Donnie began to scream. But that didn’t last long.
For a moment later, the doorknob creaked and turned, like something long dead groaning back toward life.
I Heard It Through the Grapevine
S. S. Michaels
My footsteps made the carpeted floor sound hollow as I ran along the upstairs hall, glancing over my shoulder. His lopsided footsteps were louder—so loud I thought he’d fall through the stairs, which wouldn’t be so bad. I tripped and almost fell and could hear him catching up.
“Daddy,” I yelled into my shoulder, “Stop! You’re scaring me!”
Heavy uneven stomping. Heavy breathing.
“I’ll scare you, you idiotic little shit!”
I turned the corner, scraping my shoulder, and yanked the rope, pulling down the attic steps. He wouldn’t follow me up there. He never did. He was afraid his peg leg would get stuck in the ladder rungs. It wasn’t really a peg, but one of those metal fake leg things that had a little flipper on the end. He was always getting it caught on something. Plus, one time, I heard him telling Mommy that something happened up there, in our new attic. Something with a box. And music? I don’t know what could be so scary about music, but it must have been something really creepy to scare Daddy.
“You’d better not be going in that attic, you little puke!”
Boy, he was really mad this time.
I climbed the rough-hewn ladder and pulled it up behind me, slamming the trap door and engulfing myself in total darkness. Tears burned tracks down my cheeks, my left eye swelling and stinging from where he got me with his belt. I wiped my nose on the sleeve of my Quicksilver hoodie Grandma gave me for Christmas and fumbled for the light bulb. My hand finally closed around the chain and I gave it a quick tug. Washed in the yellowish glow of a sixty-watt bulb, I saw brownish-red streaks lining my gray sleeve. Guess he’d gotten me in the nose, too.
“You rotten little fucker! Come down from there!”
We just moved here a couple of weeks ago. Or maybe a month. Or two months—I’m not too good with time yet. We had to move on account of Daddy’s accident at the shop. He needed a different job so we had to move to this side of the state. It didn’t matter to me. I didn’t have many friends or anything back there. I think Mommy and Daddy don’t like it here, though, because everything got real bad here, real fast.
I found the attic one day while Mommy and Daddy were outside talking and drinking with the neighbors. It was a little scary up there at first. Dark, dirty, full of boxes of stuff we didn’t use. But, I started going up there when Mommy and Daddy would fight or I’d hear scary noises coming from their bedroom. Pretty soon, I had moved some of the boxes around so I could sit up there and get away from everything and just think or whatever.
I could hear my mommy’s muffled voice as I stripped off my hoodie, struggling to keep my t-shirt on. I don’t know if Mommy was with me or against me this time. I could never tell which way she was going to go, whose side she’d be on. I guessed with from the tone of her far-off voice. I could be wrong, though, ’cause sometimes I am.
“I swear to God, I’ll come up there!”
I sat holding my breath, not answering even though there were plenty of things I wanted to yell back at that big jerk. My eye stung so bad.
He wouldn’t come up here. The big one-legged chicken.
“I’m going to get the belt again, fuckhead. You know how much it’s going to cost me to fix Culverson’s window? Asshole!”
Blake, my new friend from down the street, and I had been playing ball in the front yard. Mommy told us it wasn’t a good idea, but she never said we couldn’t do it. She didn’t really care—she was busy talking on the phone to one of her friends from the old neighborhood and drinking a glass of wine. We were using a tennis ball—what could that hurt? Well, I’ll tell ya. Blake tossed me a softie and I spanked it good. Blam! Right through the Culversons’ living room window. Daddy picked just that second to drive up, home from work, his beat-up blue Dodge Ram slamming to a stop on our cracked driveway. Daddy jumped out and ran around the front end of the truck, catching his little metal flipper in a rut, tripping and scraping his palms on the pavement. Blake took one look at his gaping mouth and furrowed forehead and took off running. He knew what I was in for.
So did I.
After Daddy dragged me over to the neighbors’ by my ear and made me apologize, he pulled me into our own house where he whipped off his belt. Ffffwwwtt. Right there in the kitchen, he flicked it back, snapped his wrist, and sent it whistling through the air. It connected with my eye, and I guess my nose, too. That’s when I turned around and took off running through the house, tearing away from Mommy’s grasping fingers. There was one safe place I knew I could go in our new house. And it wasn’t Mommy’s arms.
It’s here, in the attic. The warm, quiet, boxed-in attic.
Daddy’s not yelling right now, and I don’t hear anything, pressing my ear flat against the rough particle board of the door. I climb over the giant box that has our giant fake pipe-cleaner Christmas tree in it, shove it over the door, and crawl to the other end of the attic. I sit there in my own little space, gently poking at my eye, listening to the quiet punctuated by the occasional thump or thud from two floors below. I wonder what they’re doing down there. I wish they’d given me up for adoption, like they say they almost did when they’re fighting with each other, which is all the time these days. They know I can hear them—I’m usually right in the same room. They don’t care, though.
I don’t care anymore, either.
Something hits the latched and barricaded door and I jump like someone poked me with something hot. He won’t come up here.
“Hey, fucker, I’m coming for you!”
He says that, but he won’t come up. I know he won’t. He’s too scared of whatever happened that one day, right after we moved in. With the music box or whatever.
Stuff gets quiet again and I settle back against some old moving boxes filled with junk we never unpacked after we moved in. Stuff we used in our old house, fun stuff we used before Daddy got mean and Mommy started drinking wine in the daytime. The Christmas cookie plate we leave out for Santa, all the games we used to play on family game night, Halloween costumes and decorations…
Music.
I hear music.
A very soft, faint Motown sound. (I know what Motown is on account of I’ve seen it on an infomercial. They had some funny music in the olden days.)
I sit up straight and look around in the gloom. I can’t tell where it’s coming from. I’ve been up here a bunch of times, but I don’t think there’s a radio up here. I guess it could be coming from downstairs, so I settle back with a heavy sigh, crying a little to myself, wishing I was somewhere, anywhere, else. Back at our old house, where no one drank wine or swung a belt. Back at our old house, where I at least had a family.
Something hits the door again and I jump again.
“What, you got that fucking thing locked? There’s a lock on that fucking door? You gotta be kidding me. Christ, you think that’ll stop me, you little dickhead?”
I hear him stomp away, one-footedly. He won’t come up here.
I hope.
The music had stopped but it’s started up again. Maybe it’s the music Daddy heard that day. This time, it’s a little louder. It’s definitely not coming from downstairs. Mommy and Daddy don’t listen to that kind of music—“nigger music,” Daddy called it when we saw the infomercial. Mommy laughed when he said that. I know that’s not a nice thing to
say. I hate it when Daddy talks now.
I don’t want to be here, part of this crazy un-family, in this stupid new house, with these crazy people who hate me. I wish I had a dog. He would love me, protect me from these whacked-out meanies.
I crawl around the dusty floorboards, listening. The music is coming from an old cardboard U-Haul box. One marked with Mommy’s name. “Mommy’s Old Shit,” it says. They think I still can’t read, I guess. Or that I don’t know what bad words are. Like I don’t hear them enough around here.
They don’t care.
I press my ear to the box and listen to a snatch of something that might be called “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.” Huh? Must be some old radio or something in there.
Then I feel it in my ear—like a hit or a kick from inside the box. A hard one.
I fall backwards and scoot away, crab-style, fast, breathing heavy. What was that? What just hit me in the ear? What the heck is in that box?
I hear something thumping beneath the attic door.
“I’m coming for you, sonny. We’re not done talking yet.”
He always calls it “talking.” Even last month, when I had to have surgery to reset my broken arm, we were just “talking.” The doctors had to put screws in my wrist. It’s kind of cool ’cause it makes me feel like a cyborg or something, but it makes me sad, too. Makes it kind of hard to use the attic door and carry my school books, too, but I manage.
I creep back over to the box. It’s sealed with brown tape. What’s in there? I wish I had something sharp to open it with, but I don’t. They took away my Swiss Army knife when I carved my name into the old oak in our old backyard. I’d just wanted someone to know I’d been there.
I start picking at one end of the tape and it peels away pretty good. Pretty soon, I have the whole piece ripped off and the top flaps can be lifted open, if I’ve got the balls.
Pounding on the attic door. Like with a hammer or something.
He’s coming up here!
Fuck it. I rip open the box. “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” comes blasting out and I almost pee in my pants. I peek over the edge of the upright flap and find the box is full of old toys and junk: a Rubik’s cube, some old action figures, a couple of those pretty pony things girls like to play with, a few Beanie Babies…I’d like to go through this stuff, maybe play with some of it. I mean, it’s not all girl stuff. I’m looking at this Star Wars action figure—I think it’s Boba Fett, but I’m not sure because I’m not allowed to watch my movies very often—when the top layer of stuff starts to move in a couple of places. It starts, like, sinking down. In rough whirlpools.