Doll Face

by Tim Curran

  It was flesh.

  It was living tissue.

  No, not living tissue but dead tissue. He could smell the odor of putrescence wafting from it. He had all he could do to keep his stomach down. The car was not metal and wood and rubber and plastic…no, it was a living thing, an organism that was dead or dying. It was decaying around him and he was trapped in it like a mouse in a rotting pumpkin.

  Creep sat there, stunned and nearly breathless by the idea. It could not be. He was hallucinating, he was tripping. He wasn’t here at all. He was in a padded room somewhere, heavily sedated and screaming his mind out.

  Panic broke inside him, sharp and cutting as a voice in the back of his head said, first it’ll rot with organic decay, then the worms will come crawling out of the seats and the flies will cluster and the vermin will swarm as it goes to mush. And you’ll be here. You’ll be here to witness it all—

  He couldn’t take any more of it.

  He just couldn’t.

  Shrieking and wild, he bashed at the windows as the ceiling dripped and great fleshy strips were torn from the moist, putrid seats as he thrashed. The stench of gassy decomposition was getting thick in the air. It was like a seeping green mist, hot and gagging and utterly repulsive. He could taste it on his tongue, feel its foul juices like dew against his face. He tried to pull himself over the seat into the front and his fingers sank into the spongy tissue they were made of, black juice gushing over the backs of his hands.

  Everything was rot and ruin and there was no escape.

  Manically, he began to tear at the upholstery, ripping it with his fingers, gouging his nails into its pulpous tissues and somewhere during the process he began to scream as his mind emptied itself.

  34

  As Soo-Lee was lost deeper in the tangles of the doll passage, Lex did everything he could not to lose his cool. He told himself it was all illusion, whether physical or psychological it was still illusion. He had to ignore his base animal instincts of fear and the need to flee blindly. He had to maintain here or he was lost, completely lost.

  But finally, as reality was completely torn asunder and reinvented around him, he lost complete control. “YOU’LL HAVE TO DO BETTER THAN THIS!” he cried. “THIS IS NOTHING BUT A CHEAPJACK PARLOR TRICK! IT’S FUCKING SECOND-RATE AND SO ARE YOU!”

  Raging made him feel better, it made him feel stronger. Oh, he was still terrified, but he was doing the only thing he could do and channeling that terror into hate and anger until his hands were balled into fists and his body was shaking and his teeth were clenched. He was in a long, narrow corridor backlit by itself whose walls were pleated with some pink shiny material that expanded and deflated as it breathed. Because it was breathing and he could hear the low, hissing respiration. He tried to block it out and pretend it was not there at all because it seemed like if he acknowledged the sound of it and the horror it inspired, the louder and louder it got.

  Like a child working a nerve. Knowing just how to annoy and disturb his or her mother and keeping at it, working it until she wanted to scream.

  “It won’t be that easy,” Lex said softly and resolutely. “I know your secret. You’re alone and you’re afraid and you’re trying to put that fear on us. Misery loving company. But it won’t work. Because you’re weak.”

  His defiance was worth something, it seemed.

  No sooner had he spoken those words than the breathing sounds quieted until he could barely hear them. The walls were not breathing now. They were trembling minutely and they still looked like they were made of soft pink skin, but they were no longer breathing.

  He almost thought for a moment that he heard a terrible and distant sound of anguished sighing.

  Then the walls started to breathe again. Breathe? No, they were gasping for breath almost painfully like the lungs of a dying man, as if the more oxygen they took in the more their physical reality would be assured.

  “You’re not real,” Lex said, kicking a section of wall.

  The amazing and nearly comical thing about it was that a blue-purple contusion appeared almost instantly. If the entire affair hadn’t been so fucking demented, he might have laughed.

  The walls were still breathing deeply, but they seemed calmer now as if they refused to be rattled by him. They began to swell with each breath, inflating and becoming puffy like air-filled sacs. They pressed in closer. He wasn’t afraid of walls made of skin that breathed? Well, time to check him out on the claustrophobia scale. The walls pressed in ever closer. They would crush him, asphyxiate him with their own fleshy mass.

  Lex kicked out again and again, but though they bruised they would not retreat.

  It was then that the most extraordinary and unpleasant thing happened.

  Oval nodes appeared on the walls, hundreds and hundreds of them to either side. They expanded until they looked like the glossy chambers of bubble wrap, only an aqueous pink. As they continued to expand, each distending until he thought they would explode from internal pressure, they split open one after the other. They were not blisters of a sort, but eyes—green and blue and brown and hazel and violet, some horror-movie red and others a glimmering turquoise. He was in a chamber of flesh now being watched by thousands of eyes that were juicy and running with snot-like fluid that dripped in gouts.

  The walls continued to push in closer and with them came the eyes, countless living unblinking marbles fixed on him, staring at him, looking inside him until his skin literally began to crawl and he hugged his shaking body out of sheer horror.

  No, no, no, a simple child-like voice said in his brain. Not this, not fucking this of all things.

  He knew he couldn’t let it break him. He had a few minor-league phobias—fear of extreme heights, flying—but nothing incapacitating. But the puppet master was bound and determined to break him. It was trying claustrophobia and ommetaphobia—the fear of eyes—and scopophobia—the fear of being stared at—and the scary thing was, it was working. Lex felt like he was shivering inside his own skin.

  This was how it would break him.

  This was how it would own him.

  The eyes were even closer now, perhaps sensing an edge. They were large, swollen and glistening, crying tears of slime. They were no longer evenly spaced, but crowding now like bubbles until the walls and the ceiling above were nothing but eyes. They expanded and popped open, clustered like fish roe, forever watching. Within moments, he knew, they would touch him.

  “No,” he said under his breath. He could not allow it. The others needed him and he knew it. More so, Soo-Lee needed him and he could not let her down. But the fear had disabled him, made him feel loose and liquid inside and there was nothing left to fight with.

  Don’t let it, he told himself. Don’t let it win. Fight! Use your mind! Think! Think!

  And whether it was a conscious thing or not, he did the first thing that seemed reasonable: he jabbed his index finger into one of the eyes. The effect was not unpleasant, at least not for him. At least not initially. He buried his finger all the way in it and felt it flinch with the invasion and possibly some sort of pain. It was hot and soft inside, not much different than sliding his finger into a sexually excited woman. Soo-Lee felt much like that, it occurred to him.

  But it didn’t last.

  The delicious—and almost obscene—tactile sensation was replaced by a grim suction from inside the orb. It felt burning hot in there. The flesh of his finger was stinging as if he’d jabbed a jellyfish. As he yanked his finger back out, the eye closed like a pink puckering mouth around his knuckle and he had to yank with everything he had to get free of it. A gelatinous goo like egg albumin spurted over his hand. It made his flesh burn with a stinging sensation. But worse…he felt a sharp jabbing in his left eye as if he’d poked his own eyeball.

  Despite the pain, he jabbed another and another, feeling them burst with a spray of slime, and feeling the jabbing in his own eyes. But despite the pain, he would not relent. He took out six more eyes that way until the agony mad
e him go to his knees.

  When he opened his eyes again, trying to rub the hurt from them, the walls of eyes had retreated a few inches, which told him they did not care to be wounded. That was it then. Despite the pain, he would blind them all. Looking out through swollen, burning eyes, he prepared to do so…but something began to happen. As he watched, each individual eye sprouted tiny, wiry sets of legs that looked bristled like those of a spider. Each eye had four legs. And with the capacity to be mobile, they detached themselves from their sockets in the wall and flooded over him.

  Lex let out a cry, slapping at them and smashing them beneath his fists. He kicked and punched the walls, crushing the eye spiders under him and rolling through their numbers until he was wet with eye goo and fragmented little legs—still kicking—were stuck to him.

  They crawled over his face and nested in his hair, surged down the back of his shirt and scuttled up his pant legs and the only thing he could do in his mania was to get out of there before he drowned in them. His head filled with a shrilling white noise, he began digging right into the walls, tearing out cobs and masses of pink tissue as he tried to tunnel free.

  35

  Soo-Lee crawled on her hands and knees through the passage of dolls until she realized there were no dolls and that she was actually moving up a set of stairs. The transition had been quick and she had no idea if that had been real and this was illusion or if it was the other way around. She paused there, trying to acclimate herself to what was happening.

  She saw she was halfway up the stairs. She could see the polished balustrade gleaming in what seemed soft candlelight, the sort generally reserved for romantic dinners. The spindle balusters were dark oak, shining with wax. The stair runner was a soft floral carpet. It was quite elegant.

  Where the hell did this staircase come from?

  She didn’t know and she honestly didn’t care. Being out of that awful place of dolls was enough. The carpet felt nice under her hands. She was so tired, so very tired. She lowered her head to one step, luxuriating in the feel of the nap beneath her cheek.

  Yes, this was nice.

  She needed to call out to Lex but she just didn’t seem to have the strength or the air in her lungs. Her entire body was aching, the muscles sore and tense. Her eyelids closed and she began to drift off when there was a loud banging somewhere behind her.

  She lifted her head.

  Thump, thump, thump, the noise came again.

  Below her there was a sort of foyer with dark paneled walls and a shiny parquet floor. There was an antique coat tree, several large floor vases, and a cabinet with many drawers that looked like something from the 18th century. Beyond was a massive six-paneled door. Wavering shadows slid over its face.

  Thump, thump, thump.

  Somebody was knocking at the door. Knocking? Hell, they were beating on it with their fists. They wanted in badly.

  Soo-Lee knew who it was.

  Or, better, what it was.

  It could be nothing but the hulking figure she had seen in the doll passage, that shadowy stalking figure. It was still after her and it meant to have her.

  She pressed her lips together because she did not dare make a sound, a scream rattling in her throat. The fist pounded on the door again and it felt like the entire house shook with it.

  Move!

  Sobbing but refusing to give in, she pulled herself to her feet with the aid of the stair railing. She stood there uneasily, her knees feeling weak. Already she could smell the thing that was coming for her—it stank of aged tapestries moldering in dark cabinets and heavy mildewed drapes, worm-eaten and threaded by spiders. An almost sickening, nitrous stench of antiquity that she acquainted with dusty Egyptian tombs.

  She scrambled up the stairs and was faced by a long, narrow corridor that moved in either direction. It was set with antique gas jets that threw a guttering, uneven light. As the pounding came again, she tensed, knowing she had to go and get behind one of the many doors she saw. Any of them would do. She needed to shut one and lock it tight and wait in the darkness…and pray.

  Thump! Thump! Thump!

  It was louder now, more insistent. She could hear the doorknob down there being rattled frantically. Each time the fist hit the door it was like a nail being driven into her. She could nearly feel the pain. It made her stomach tighten like a fist.

  She ran to the left, trying door after door and finding them locked one after the other. They could not be forced. She did not really believe there was anything behind them. She threw aside a heavy tapestry at the end and found herself looking at a dusty window. Maybe this was the way out. She rubbed a clean spot in the pane and peered out through the glass. She saw the moon riding high above jagged rooftops, skeletal spires, and reaching chimneys. Far below were narrow, crooked streets cutting between leaning buildings. It seemed that the window she looked out of was a hundred feet above them as if the house itself was suspended in the sky.

  There was a rending crash and she knew the door below had come off its hinges and the thing that sought her was now in the house, pushing writhing shadows before it as it came out of the dead of night bringing a smell of dry rot and subterranean vaults.

  Soo-Lee ran back down the corridor.

  At the top of the stairs she paused, but only momentarily. She could not see the thing down there, but she could hear its clomping painful gait, the sound of one leg dragged behind it. Its stench blighted the house. She saw jagged shadows begin to creep up the steps.

  She ran in the other direction, trying doors until she found one that was open. It was a trap and she knew it had to be a trap, but fear pushed her through it. She closed the door as quietly as possible, locking it and stepping away from it into a room that was immense with a king-size Gothic canopy bed set near the far wall, red velour curtains tossed aside from massive carven teak posts.

  The bed was baronial and exquisite, a chamber of dreams. It was like something from an Elizabethan novel. Red and black velvet pillows were piled in abundance, the comforter and blankets a deep scarlet. Oh, to sleep in such a bed. To lie in it, to—

  Thump, thump, thump.

  He was at the door now and Soo-Lee knew there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it. She was the fly that had entered the spider’s web out of its own free will. She could not be certain in those last few moments before the door crashed in if any of this had been her own idea. She had been carefully worked and carefully herded, she had not acted but reacted and free will did not seem to be part of it.

  But there had been no other place to go, a weak and wounded voice in her mind said. There had been no choice, no real choice.

  Maybe that was true and maybe she just lacked the strength, regardless, as the lock snapped and fell to the floor and the door swung in noiselessly, she knew that such things as choice were concepts she no longer had and would never have again.

  The smell of the thing filled the room.

  Its crooked shadow snaked over the floor in her direction.

  Oh, please…dear God, no…no…

  She saw a distorted scarecrow-like figure moving in her direction, a twisted carnal grin on its lips. And as she screamed, hands like pale tarantulas reached out for her.

  36

  “Sssshhhh,” a voice that was soft and warm cooed in his ear. “There’s no need of that now.”

  What was left of Creep’s mind heard the voice but rejected it. There was no one. He was alone in the car and a manic fear in his brain assured him that he would always be alone, forever and ever. Yet, he could feel someone next to him, a form, a presence, a physical disruption of the ether around him. He was alone but not alone.

  The car was still dripping, still rotting around him. Now it had rolled to a stop right in the middle of the street as if it no longer had the strength or ability to move any farther.

  “Who…who’s there?” he heard his own voice speak before he could squelch it.

  “It’s only me,” the voice said. “Only me and I’m your fr
iend.”

  The voice sounded oddly like Ramona’s, but Ramona couldn’t be in the car with him, there was just no way. Though he was woven in a tight little cocoon of terror, Creep knew that he had to prove there was actually someone there. His eyes told him there was not, but his other senses disagreed. He reached out and gasped as he touched something, something he could not see. It hadn’t been awful, just startling, so he reached out again and touched hair, long tresses of hair that slid easily between his fingers. It wasn’t bad. He liked the feel of it. He kept running his fingers through it, noting that while the scalp was not soft it wasn’t quite firm either. It had a rubbery give to it that he did not like, yet his fingers could not stop stroking the luxurious locks.

  “You see? I’m nice to touch. I’m nice to feel,” said the velvety voice that made something in him relax and release tension.

  He ran both hands through the hair now. Oh yes, it was silky and fine, long hair that was glossy to the touch. He felt something skitter over the back of his hand. He brushed it aside, but there were others, many others. The scalp seemed infested by them. He should have been horrified, but he was not. He began picking the skittering, leggy things free, grooming the head of hair like an ape plucking nits from the pelt of another ape.

  “That feels nice,” the voice told him. “You have no idea how long they’ve been nipping at me and burrowing. Pull them all free.”

  Yes, that was exactly what he wanted to do. He could conceive of nothing else remotely as satisfying. He plucked the wriggling insects free and flicked them away into the front seat. Sometimes they bit him, but mostly they just wanted to get away. One of them, a very swollen individual, sprouted wings and flew away, momentarily brushing against his nose.

  “I’m like you,” the voice said. “I’m broken…I am not whole. But together we can be complete.”