And what’s the point of this?
“Ooo-kay. This is weird.”
My voice even sounds like a six-year-old’s. Distant, too, foggy and echoey like nothing here is quite real. That works, since I’m sure this is not real. With nothing else coming to mind to do, I walk toward the house. The dry grass comes up to my chest and in some places, is too tall for me to see over.
Eventually, I stumble onto a dirt road, rutted with narrow tire tracks. Something trying to be a pickup truck is parked quite a ways ahead where the road ends by the house. Its tires look more like they belong on a bike than a car, and a couple bales of hay sit in the tiny bed. Yeah, I’m seeing way in the past. Like the twenties or so.
Since the house is the only object of note within miles, I walk down the road toward it. The occasional bug drones by, about as interested in me as I’m interested in being here. A few minutes into the walk, the clanking and scuffing of shovels comes from the right where a group of men in filthy coveralls and white shirts dig post holes and carry lumber around, continuing the path of an incomplete wooden fence. None of them look like they’ve seen the inside of a bathtub for months, shaggy, sweaty, and weary. Of the seven or so guys, most glance at me only out of reflex at seeing someone moving and go back to their work. Two smile and wave, one making goofy faces at me. The last guy, however, sets my skin crawling. He’s frozen still with his shovel stuck in the ground, staring at me with an unsettling intensity.
Whatever child I’ve embodied thinks she’s annoyed him for interrupting their work, but my read on his body language is much darker. This guy wants to hurt me. Like this child’s mere existence offends him on some deeply primordial level. Maybe if I were really six, I’d take his glare the same way this kid does. But I know this guy is bad news. As much as I want to run away, my feet remain rooted to the dirt.
The other workers briefly talk about how cute I am, and how lucky Mr. Westcott is to have such a beautiful family. At that, the man giving me the look of death clenches his grip on the shovel so hard his knuckles turn white. Any second, I expect him to run over and take my head off with it.
Come on, kid. Run the hell away before this guy snaps.
“Bye,” I say, though I don’t.
I mean, the voice came out of me, but I didn’t do it.
Guess that’s my cue to walk onward.
My feet break free from the force holding me still, and I run down the road. Inside, I’m frightened for this kid, but she’s singing to herself and trying to chase tiny white butterflies on the way to the house.
Two somewhat older girls, I’d say around eight and nine, sit on the porch steps, both in dresses and barefoot. All three of us have the same mouse-brown hair, long and straight, and equal amounts of dirt. The oldest girl’s dress appears to be made from a cloth flour sack. The middle girl has a store-bought one, but it’s well worn. Mine’s even more threadbare, so I’m guessing clothes make their way down the family line and the girl whose memory I’m seeing is the youngest.
The other two barely acknowledge me as they continue to play with their dolls. I don’t get a note of hostility, or even deliberate indifference. It’s almost like I really am in a video game and I don’t exist to them until I try to interact. Whatever. I’m not here to play. I need to find Rebecca and go home.
I scoot past them and struggle to push the front door open. Two men stand in the living room, arguing. One is reasonably well dressed for a farmer, with the slightest bit of a belly. Something tells me that’s my father. The other guy’s skinnier, dressed somewhat like a cowboy, but his shirt and jeans look like he’s been wearing them nonstop for years. Neither man pays me any attention, their argument continuing in distorted warbling tones rather than voices, almost like I’m in a Peanuts cartoon. While I can’t understand words, I have the feeling they’re having a dispute about money. He’s late paying workers.
Considering this kid’s older sister is wearing a flour sack for a dress, yeah I think there’s probably some financial issues going on. The doll’s got to be somewhere in the house. I bet as soon as I find it, I’ll get out of here. With any luck, all of this is happening in the span of a few minutes while I’m really standing in Sam’s room like a zone-out.
I follow the hall out the back of the living room. Admittedly, it is kinda cool and interesting to see a house as it looked so long ago. After roaming a study, a small sitting room, and a little bathroom with a giant wooden tub, I wind up in the kitchen.
A beautiful raven-haired woman who looks younger than Mom, barely thirty if even that old, smiles at me. Her dark blue eyes sparkle with love. “There you are, Sally Ann. Where have you been? I’ve been worried to death.”
“Out in the field,” says my avatar. “Chasin’ butterflies.”
She pulls me close and pats me on the back. “I told you to stay close to the house, okay? At least until the work is finished.”
“Why?”
The woman glances nervously at the window. She knows. She’s probably noticed the way that man looks at her, looks at the kids, too. “Because they’re doing dangerous work, and I don’t want you to get hurt. Okay? Stay near the house.”
My avatar child grinds her toe into the kitchen floor and emits a sulky, “Okay, Mama.”
I can’t help but get the feeling that something bad is going to happen, and soon. “That man’s going to hurt us!”
“What’s that, sweet pea?” asks the woman.
“I said, that worker is going to do something bad to us!”
She smiles, brushing my hair off my face. “I’m sorry, sweet pea, I’m not sure what you said.”
Oh. Grr. Damn. This dream isn’t going to let me change anything, is it? Of course not. What happened, happened already. Maybe it’s because I’m not talking like a six-year-old.
“Mommy! I’m scared of that man. Make him go away,” I wail.
A note of mourning flickers across her eyes, as if she’d hoped to keep her youngest child oblivious to that. “I am as well, sweet pea.” The woman stoops and hugs me. “But your father needed work done, and we don’t have the money to hire the usual people. Stay in the house, okay?”
“I will, Mama,” says my avatar without me prompting her.
The woman returns to her work at the counter, likely preparing food.
I wanna get the hell out of here.
Dad enters via the back door, pulls his hat off, and wipes a rag around his forehead to clear it of sweat. I slip out of the kitchen and hide in the archway, eavesdropping as Sally Ann’s parents get into an argument of whispers. Argument is perhaps too strong a word for it. More like she’s pleading with him and he’s blowing her off. Mom doesn’t trust some of the workers near the girls, the way that one man looks at them makes her skin crawl. Dad dismisses her, saying she’s ‘overly delicate’ and shouldn’t be so suspicious. While he pours himself a cup of water, she continues asking him to at least get rid of that one man who I didn’t like, but he says he can’t spare the labor.
After he walks back outside, Mom paces, kneading her hands at her apron and muttering to herself. It almost sounds like she’s going to do something about him herself, but she chickens out, afraid of angering her husband. I don’t get the sense she’s worried he’d be violent with her, more she doesn’t want to be at odds with him.
I scowl, but the mood doesn’t translate to Sally Ann’s face.
For the next like, hour it feels, I race from room to room hunting for the doll. Sally Ann, the girl whose memory I’m experiencing, grows increasingly desperate to find her favorite doll. Hmm. We have that in common at least. A secondary parlor with a giant radio as big as a dishwasher has no doll. I can picture the whole family sitting around listening to it, parents in the chairs, kids on the floor. Argh. No nostalgia. Find that doll!
Having no luck on the ground floor, I head up to the second story and check bedrooms, another big bathroom, sitting rooms, and a study. Rebecca’s nowhere to be found there either, so I go back to the stairw
ell.
A boy of about eleven who bears a striking resemblance to Sam sits at the top, shirtless, in a pair of tan shorts. His hair is lighter brown than Sam’s, but other than that, they have a striking resemblance. Having been around Sam his whole life, I can clearly see the difference, but this kid hasn’t been a child in a long time. It’s easy to see how Rebecca mistook the two boys.
He bounces a ball and catches it, over and over again, like a video game NPC in a loop animation. Eldridge looks bored. Wait. How did I know his name? Oh, right. I’m his sister. Or at least inside his sister’s head.
“Hey Sally Ann,” he mutters as I go by.
“Hey,” I reply. “Have you seen my doll?”
“Nope. Mama’s gonna be cross with you if you lost it again.”
“I didn’t lose it. Someone took it!” snaps Sally Ann.
Eldridge stops bouncing the ball and frowns at me. “Did you bring it out in the field?”
“No. She doesn’t like to go outside. She’s too delicate. I don’t want her to break.”
He stretches tall, peering around as if to make sure no one can overhear us. “Maybe one o’ them workers took it. I heared Pa having words with Mama about it. He spent all that money on it for yer birthday, an’ couldn’t pay the men on time.”
“They wouldn’t!” says Sally Ann, shaking her—my—head rapidly. “They simply wouldn’t hurt her!”
Eldridge hugs me, patting my back and trying to calm me down before I burst into tears. “It’s all right, Sally Ann. She’ll turn up.”
Sniffling, I nod, and my avatar plods past him into the third floor hallway. Like a video game cutscene ending, I find myself once again in control of her and able to move rather than simply watching.
The third floor has three bedrooms, another bathroom, and a space full of bookshelves with a small fireplace. A door at the end of the hall leads out to a balcony overlooking the field. It really is quite beautiful and peaceful scenery, which makes the eerie mood of imminent danger all the more unsettling.
I rush from room to room, digging through cabinets and toy chests. Despite the size of the house, it looks like Sally Ann shares a room with her sisters, and Eldridge has the one across the hall. Of course, all the rooms are pretty large. They could fit three beds in here, but the girls have a single queen.
Sophia would love the three of us sharing a bed like that. Sierra, not so much.
Still. No doll. Dammit. Where the hell are you?
“Sally Ann?” calls the woman from downstairs. “Come on down here. It’s time for dinner.”
Oh, please tell me I’m not running out of time or something? Did I screw up or am I stuck watching this movie ’til the end? I stand up from inside the giant toy chest and gasp at the window. It’s gone dark outside. Like minutes ago when I climbed in here, it felt like late afternoon.
You know, I should probably stop calling anything that happens in here ‘weird.’
Sighing, I climb over the wall of the chest and make my way downstairs.
The parents sit at one end of the table, the kids arranged close. Nine men, the fence workers plus three others I don’t recognize, join us for dinner. The one who gave me the evil eye sits at the last seat, as far from the kids as possible, drilling holes in his plate with his eyes.
I hop in the chair beside the woman, trying to send as much of a message as I can by appearing frightened of that guy. This dream thing isn’t letting me talk at the moment, but I can stare pleadingly up at her and cower from the end of the table.
She pats me on the head and encourages me to have dinner. Ham, mashed potatoes, and some green leafy stuff I don’t recognize. For a while, I’m a passenger along for the ride as the family eats. Few words are exchanged, though the father does assure the men that they will be paid soon. He says something about selling land or livestock to generate money, but the details sail over the head of six-year-old Sally Ann, so the memory of it is more blurry warbling rather than speech.
After dinner, my sisters help the woman gather dishes and plates. She ushers the three of us into the kitchen fast, clearly trying to keep us away from that one particular man. The workers gather around ‘Dad,’ who hands them each some bills from his pocket as a deposit on their pay.
We wash dishes, Sally Ann helping out by drying the occasional item that wouldn’t break if she dropped it. Eventually, the family winds up in that radio room. I head over and sit in Mom’s lap, watching her knit, wholly uninterested in whatever the radio is talking about.
“I can’t find my doll,” I say.
“It’s around somewhere,” whispers Mom. “Don’t say that too loud or your father will get upset. That doll cost a lot of money.”
“She’s in the house. I know it. But I wanna find her.”
“We will, sweet pea,” says the woman.
“She’s possessed my little brother.”
The woman peers quizzically at me. “What’s that dear?”
“Never mind.” I fold my arms and grumble. No one in this dream-vision-whatever is going to understand me if I say anything that doesn’t belong coming out of this kid.
Over the next frustrating hour, I get the sense that Sally Ann and her mother were quite close. She adores sitting here learning to knit, far more thrilled with spending time with her mother and yarn than Sierra getting a new PlayStation game.
Eventually, bedtime happens. Since my wants and Sally Ann’s mood line up perfectly, we explode in a mini-tantrum about the missing doll, refusing to go to bed until the doll is located. This might be my last chance to ‘beat’ this weird-ass video game before something bad happens. Going to sleep sans doll might fail whatever test Rebecca is putting me through now, so I lay it on thick, sobbing like someone ran over my dog.
“It’s just a doll,” says the father. “It’ll turn up. No need to carry on like that.”
Sniveling, I wail, “I know it’s only a doll. But you gave it to me. I love it because you got it for me even if it cost a lot.”
His annoyed expression softens, and he pats me on the head. “Go on to bed, hon. We’ll find it.”
“Where did you leave it last?” asks the mother.
“I don’t know.” I stare at her for a second before blurting, “If I knew that, I’d still have her.”
Dad laughs. “She’s got your mother’s sharp tongue.”
The woman sighs and ushers me upstairs to our bedroom. My sisters try to comfort me as we change from our day dresses to nightgowns. Geez. How can they sleep in these things? They’re ankle long and made from heavy cotton. This has to be like Kansas or Oklahoma—not the coolest climate during summer.
We pile in bed, which isn’t as uncomfortably warm as I expected. Refusing to let sleep take me, I stare at the ceiling. The parents pop in after a while, still no doll. Mom glides over to the bed and brushes her hand over my head.
“Go to sleep, sweet pea.”
“I can’t sleep without my dolly,” I whisper. “Please find her.”
The woman looks exhausted, but nods. “All right. I’ll go look right now.”
I smile. She returns a grin, forces herself up to stand, and trudges out. Sally Ann teeters on the verge of crying while I feel kinda bad for making that woman (who so clearly wants to go to sleep) set off on a treasure hunt for a doll.
Patches of moonlight gather on the ceiling over the bed. “Wow. I thought being turned into a vampire would be the most WTF thing to ever happen to me.”
“Don’t be silly,” whispers Camilla, the older sister, an old maid of nine. “You’re not a vampire.”
Celia giggles. “She’s pretending.” With that, the eight-year-old leans up and play bites me on the neck.
“Ow,” I say, deadpan.
“Stop it,” whispers Camilla. “We’ll get in trouble. Be quiet and go to sleep.”
“Okay,” says Celia, wriggling back into place between us. “Do vampires sleep?”
“Yeah, when the sun comes up,” I say.
“Stop
being silly.” Camilla leans over and pokes me in the head. “Vampires don’t exist.”
I sigh to myself. Obviously, Sally Ann wouldn’t have had this conversation. I bet she’s supposed to be sleeping now, so I’m in control again. I debate continuing the doll hunt, but various thumps and thuds in the house hint that Mom is already looking.
The bed is kinda comfortable. Guess I’ll wait here and hope she finds it.
24
Always
Time drags to an intolerable standstill. Sally Ann’s older sisters are lost to their dreams beside me. Camilla’s arm lays protectively over Celia, her hand resting on my—well, Sally Ann’s—shoulder. Celia holds my hand under the covers, but her grip is loose in sleep.
I swish my feet back and forth under the blankets, listening to the distant sounds of the girls’ mother rummaging the house. The woman’s been searching for what feels like hours. Am I supposed to get out of bed and go help? Is some other closet going to open a portal to another time or place? Well, I do know one thing for sure: lying here is not getting me anywhere.
When I try to get out of bed, I find myself about as flexible as loaf of rock. I can’t sit up or shift my weight in any way that would take me off the mattress—the body ignores me. It’s a little too close to the paralysis I felt when I first awoke as a vampire for my comfort. Grr. I guess I’m only watching the past now, aka ‘cutscene time’ in video game speak. Most likely, Sally Ann was asleep at this point when it happened in reality. Minutes crawl by like ants across syrup. No, make that unmotivated ants across syrup. Restless, I keep trying to escape the bed, but I may as well be a sentient stone—awake and aware, but unable to move except for blinking my eyes.
After an eternity of boring silence, the floorboards in the hall creak in the pace of footsteps coming closer to the bedroom. Oh, good. Mom found the doll.
The Artist of Ruin Page 22