Doll Face

by Tim Curran

  Their glowing eyes seemed to watch her, peering deep inside her.

  Even the angled ceiling above now was formed of hanging mannequin things. Faces like demonic baboons sneered and grinned overhead, dangling limbs swaying back and forth in some unheard charnel rhythm, sharp fingers like darning needles brushing the top of her head and tracing the back of her neck with splintered nails.

  No matter which way she turned, their awful cadaverous visages pressed in closer and closer, their luminous eyes making bodies move and limbs reach as shadows crawled and crept. She could hear them whispering and giggling with scratching, mocking voices. She could feel an unnatural heat coming from them and smell the dark fetor of their breath.

  The wise thing would have been a full retreat, but there was no going back now. Behind her, the walls had pushed in and sealed the passage with doll parts and the walls around her were pressing in ever closer. She stumbled along faster and faster, falling, getting up, falling again, faces moving in closer and fingers like tree roots tangling in her long hair. Hinged mouths called her name and begged her to join them.

  As she fell yet again, she looked up to see the swollen belly of a doll woman. It was cutaway like that of an anatomical model to reveal a doll fetus within, suspended upside down in the amniotic sac. It was a plastic stillborn thing…yet it was sucking its thumb with slurping sounds for a lack of anything better to suckle. When it turned its shriveled, eyeless face on Soo-Lee, she crawled away on all fours, making a pained moaning sound in her throat.

  It’s a lie, she told herself.

  It’s an illusion that has been created to unhinge your mind, to amplify your fear and thereby enhance the power of the puppet master. You know that. You’ve known it all along, yet you keep cooperating. You keep reacting instead of acting. It was a stupid dumbfuck bonehead play to come down this passage and you knew it, yet you did.

  Yet, you did.

  This stopped her. Jesus, she was crawling around on her hands and knees like an animal, like some mole scrabbling about underground. She stood up. She stood up tall. She had to think herself out of this mess before it got any worse…if it could conceivably do so. The way behind her was sealed up. Or at least, it seemed to be. What if it wasn’t at all? What then?

  Soo-Lee turned on her heel and moved back the way she had come.

  The doll things that were the walls of her tight little world began to get agitated right away. They shook and trembled. Fingers grasped, limbs kicked, mouths began to make a low sighing sound.

  Still she pushed forward.

  Either she broke the black magic spell of this place or was broken.

  There could be no other way.

  She kept moving, walking faster now, and as she did, really pouring on the steam, the passage began to open. She blinked her eyes several times to be sure of it, but, yes, it was opening.

  It can’t possibly be this easy.

  But maybe it was. She almost believed this until she saw the black hulking shape stepping from the shadows at the far end. That it was one of the doll people she did not doubt any more than she doubted that it was coming for her. She was breaking the rules of the puppet master’s little game and she was going to be punished now, broken upon the wheel of Stokes, as it were.

  She began stepping backward, her resolve dispersing inside her.

  No, no, no! she warned herself. Don’t back down! Don’t give in to the fear! Don’t you see? The illusion was dissolving, the house of cards was ready to fall so this…this…thing was sent to reinforce the nightmare and you’re yielding to it! Do not yield! It’s only as powerful as you make it!

  As if the form could easily read her thoughts, it began to growl with a low throaty sound.

  Soo-Lee trembled.

  It wanted her to tremble, it needed her to tremble, because the more she trembled the more deadly it became. Her fear was the hot air that inflated it. Without that, it was nothing but a shriveling rubber sack…but even knowing this did not help because she was completely terrified. She could only see a hulking dark shadow moving steadily in her direction, but the terror it inspired was very real as the growling continued. As it came on, the glowing eyes of the doll faces winked out one by one. It was bringing darkness with it, a shifting wall of blackness.

  She could not bear it.

  She literally could not bear it.

  As the lights were extinguished, the doll people lining the walls stopped moving. It was as if this thing was drawing the life from them as it came on. She could not see its face, only the dying lights winking off teeth that looked long and gnarled.

  32

  The clocks were going off.

  Ramona came awake in a panic there in the darkness of the clock shop. She jumped and shook. Every damn clock in the place was ringing—grandfather clocks and cuckoo clocks, anniversary clocks and alarm clocks. BING, BING, BING! BONG! BONG! BONG! The shop was echoing with a constant ringing and gonging and shrilling. The effect was not just startling, but shocking.

  It meant something, she knew that much.

  In fact, clasping her hands over her ears, and calming somewhat, she knew it could only possibly mean one thing: the Controller wanted her awake. It—for she had trouble thinking of this significant other as a human being—did not want her resting. It did not want her getting sleep. It wanted her worn out and on edge because the games would work so much better that way if she were physically and mentally exhausted.

  But there was more to it than that.

  She was bound and determined to track this nightmare to its source, which was somewhere to the east and that could not be allowed. The Controller had tossed Frankendoll at her and then rained mannequin parts down on her. It would stop at nothing to scare her, confuse her, hurt her, and possibly even kill her.

  And these were things Ramona very much needed to keep in mind.

  The intelligence behind all this was not only twisted but sly and cunning and extremely dangerous.

  But those clocks, those goddamn clocks…

  Ramona sat there, knowing she had to do something as the clanging noise seemed to fill her skull and hurt her ears and even make her molars ache, if such a thing were realistically possible. It would drive her right out of her head and no doubt that was the point.

  Without really thinking or planning, she got to her feet quickly, more agitated and pissed off than anything. “IT WON’T WORK!” she shouted above the racket. “IT WON’T WORK! DO YOU HEAR ME, YOU DIRTY SONOFABITCH? IT WON’T FUCKING WORK! I’M COMING FOR YOU AND YOU CAN’T FUCKING STOP ME!”

  She was expecting her defiance to bring hell down on her perhaps in the form of a rampaging doll army…but that didn’t happen. What did happen was so subtle she nearly missed it. There was a change around her in the very air of the clock shop as if the atmospheric pressure either increased radically or decreased. The hairs stood up on the back of her neck and her ears popped as if she were on a plane gaining altitude.

  Then…the clocks stopped.

  Each and every one of them ceased their ringing and gonging. The silence that replaced the cacophony was practically loud.

  Ramona stood there, waiting, breathing, feeling arrogant now and almost daring the Controller to try something else because she was learning things and she was ready to fight.

  But there was nothing.

  Not right away.

  Don’t sit here and wait for it, she told herself. Don’t give it time to manufacture fresh horrors. These things must take energy so don’t give it the opportunity it badly needs, do not play into its hands.

  Wishing she had a flashlight because the store was so unbearably dark, she moved around the counter, stepping carefully into the back room, which was as black as a buried coffin. There had to be a door here. A back way. She stood there, trying to be unpredictable. That was very important and she knew it. She had to keep the Controller guessing so she turned on her heel and went back out into the shop to the front door.

  She peered out into the dark
streets.

  They were empty, completely untenanted, and in their emptiness was their threat. She didn’t see any of those doll faces out here. There were still sticky smears on the glass from their sucking mouths and Ramona could not pretend that the very idea of that didn’t disturb her greatly.

  She pushed open the door.

  Still holding on to it, she took two steps out and let her instinct make the decision for her. It told her to go out the back way. She turned on her heel again and went back inside. She dug out her cigarettes and lit one up. The flame of her Bic turned the shadows into living, sentient entities around her that slid along the walls and crouched in the corners and crept over the faces of clocks, so damn many clocks.

  She stood there by the display case and smoked.

  She could almost feel the Controller reaching out for her, trying to figure out just what the hell she was doing. But being that she didn’t know herself, second-guessing her would not be easy. Not easy at all. Her instinct and woman’s intuition were supercharged and she knew it. They practically made her skin tingle and her blood feel like it had become hot steam.

  She was trying to feel for the Controller herself.

  There would be something in the air when it decided to strike, when it sent a new horror to torment her with. It, again, would be subtle, but it would be there and she had to be ready to sense it. That was the key.

  But there was nothing.

  She took a few last drags from her cigarette and tossed it. It struck the face of a clock in a shower of sparks, the glowing remains of it smoldering on the hardwood floor. Let this goddamn place burn down, she thought. She stepped into the back room again and flicked her Bic. It was pretty much as she expected the back room of a clock shop would be and that was no surprise. Everything in Stokes was as you thought it would be. In the flickering light of her Bic, she saw grandfather clocks with their guts hanging out, dissected cuckoo clocks, and workbenches strewn with the anatomy of timepieces: pendulums and cam wheels and main springs, gears and cogs and pulleys.

  Lot of the same stuff the doll people seemed to be made of, she thought, not missing the significance.

  There was another door beyond the benches and shelves of parts.

  The lighter burned her fingers so she had to let the flame go out. Carefully again, she moved among the clocks and workbenches, banging her hip on a table. She reached out in the darkness for the door…and it wasn’t there.

  Shit.

  She could feel something in the air again. It had shifted. Something was about to happen and she felt a shiver spread across the back of her arms. It felt like her guts had pulled up into her chest as if they were seeking the protection of her rib cage. Her mouth went dry. Her eyes wide. She fumbled and nearly dropped the lighter. She flicked it.

  Jesus.

  There were several doll people standing around her in a loose circle. They appeared to be women. They were entirely naked like undressed mannequins, made of some smooth white material, their breasts mere buds lacking nipples. They were bald, tiny hairline cracks running over their gleaming craniums, their eyes black holes. Their mouths were moving, opening and closing as if they needed to say something.

  One of them made a sort of cooing sound and reached its white fingers out for her. Ramona slapped the hand away and it broke free from the wrist and clattered to the floor. All of their mouths instantly went wide, expanding into black chasms, and they screamed with a high strident wailing.

  “NO!” Ramona shrieked at them as they all came at her, reaching for her.

  There was no quarter. As their cold hands seized her, she went wild like a fighting cat, clawing and kicking as they scratched at her, pulling out locks of her hair, pressing in, screaming in her face. She battered down two of them, punched the head off a third and when another grabbed her from behind, she let out a rebel yell of sorts and pivoted, snatching the doll woman’s arms and flinging her with everything she had. The doll woman shattered against the wall. She was in the dark with them, trying to get free, bumping into workbenches and shelves, and fighting the women with everything she had.

  Then the wailing stopped.

  She dug the Bic from her pocket and flicked it. The shadows jumped away, the orange flame reflected on the walls. The doll women were gone. Ramona turned this way and that, seeking them out, her mind teetering on the edge of madness. It felt like an open bleeding wound.

  Then behind her: breathing.

  And a giggling.

  Then something hit her and she was driven to her knees, bright purple dots blazing in her head. She felt herself hit the floor. She felt herself going out cold and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

  No more than a few minutes had passed when she opened her eyes.

  In her mind, a voice was saying, What? What? What?

  Confusion. Anxiety. Shock. She tried to concentrate, to bring herself out of the fog…but it was slow. She’d taken a good hit to the back of the head. She knew that much. And she knew she was in terrible danger…but the blow to her head combined with exhaustion made her loopy, her body thick and numb. She opened her eyes and they shut almost immediately. There had been a dream, it seemed, a dream she was still dreaming…something on her chest, a weight, a movement, a suction.

  It was no dream.

  There was something on her chest and she could feel a cold little mouth suckling her left breast greedily.

  With a cry she sat up, knocking whatever it was clear with a sweep of her hand. She heard something clatter to the floor. Whatever it was, it was crawling toward her now. It made a slobbering, gurgling sort of noise that made waves of nausea roll through her belly.

  The Bic.

  It was still clenched in her left hand. She flicked it and the room grew bright. She saw the thing scuttling over the floor to her. It looked like some swollen infant, hairless, its flesh bleached white. It had no eyes, not so much as a nose, just a grinning black aperture for a mouth that was wet and shining. It moved with spasmodic jerking motions like some jack-in-the-box from hell as it got closer and closer. Its breathing—because, yes, it was certainly breathing—was clogged and phlegmatic.

  Ramona was on her feet by then, the lighter trembling in her hand.

  She backed away and hit the wall. No, not the wall, the door. She could feel the knob digging into her back. As that twitching, hungry little horror was almost on her, she fumbled the door open and the moonlight flooded in.

  That’s when the thing leaped.

  Like a jumping spider, it came right off the floor in a rolling white blur and she kicked out at it with everything she had, catching it dead-on. It broke apart into pieces that continued to squirm and rattle.

  But by then she was out the door, running and trying to button her shirt back up, not sure if she was even sane anymore.

  33

  There in the darkness of the sedan that drove slowly toward an unknown destination, Creep retreated further and further into the void of his own mind. How long he crouched there on the backseat, shaking and delirious, he did not know. Only that suddenly, as if a light had gone on in his brain, awareness returned and he heard a voice in his mind say, Just what the fuck do you think you’re doing? You waiting for Mommy to come and chase away the boogeyman?

  He sat up straight.

  He was not the bravest or calmest of people in the best of times and right then his nerves were jangling like wind chimes. He was afraid to act. He was afraid not to act. Regardless, the unpleasant reality of his situation remained: he was in a big black car that was driving itself down dark streets, moving leisurely like it was part of a funeral procession.

  He figured that probably wasn’t too far off the mark.

  Everything was still in black-and-white inside the car. It was madness, but there was no getting around it. He could see color outside the car—a red STOP sign, a yellow curb, a purple flowering lilac bush fronting the street—but inside it was all grays and whites and blacks.

  You going to sit
here and do nothing, you pussy?

  God only knew how far away from the others he was now. He had to bring this to a halt one way or another. He had to get out of this fucking car right now. Which was a great idea, but how was he supposed to do that? He was terrified and almost afraid to move, afraid to try anything in case whoever was controlling this decided to make it worse for him.

  But you have to do something.

  God yes, he knew that…but what?

  He was staring at the steering wheel, watching how it rotated itself smoothly to the left or the right when the car needed to take a corner. The turn signal lever was even pulled down and then pushed back up. It was insane. He was insane. None of this could be happening, yet it was. He was seeing it.

  He waited there helplessly for a few more moments and then became aware of a hot, spoiled smell in the car.

  He was almost certain some dead thing would materialize on the seat next to him as the smell was so strong. He waited for it to dissipate as if maybe the car had just driven past some rotting animal on the road, but it did not dissipate—it grew stronger, hot and sickening.

  A drop of liquid fell on his face.

  With a start, he brushed it away…his fingers were wet with something black. Blood? Dear God, was it blood? But he knew it was. In old black-and-white movies, blood always looked black and he remembered finding that very disturbing as a child. Black stuff leaking from people. Not red, but…black. As this crossed his cluttered, seesawing mind, another drop landed on the tip of his nose and another struck his scalp. It felt hot, very hot.

  More black blood fell. It was seeping from the ceiling as if the car were horribly injured. It dropped onto his head and ran down his face like hot oil. He crawled away, pushing himself up against the opposite door. The seats were oozing blood now. As he pressed a hand against them, dark blood pooled. Then a strip of upholstery hung down from the ceiling a few inches from his face…only it was not upholstery, it was not cloth or leather or some nappy knit fabric that had torn loose.