Doll Face

by Tim Curran

  Ramona just sat there.

  She had no voice to speak with. It was all bullshit. Not that she didn’t believe it was true, but the very idea behind it was mad bullshit. Did old Mother Crow really think she could suck people into this netherworld and they would be content to live in the graveyard of Stokes and accept what she offered and make homage to her, their bright and shining fairy queen who guaranteed a happy ending each and every time? Fucking madness. That’s what it was. Ramona was more intent than ever to get up to that factory and sort this out.

  “I’m not about to accept this,” she said, “and neither would anyone else in their right mind. Mother Crow or whatever she now is has to be stopped. This insanity has gone far enough. Who the hell did she think she was? Who gave her the right to own those people?”

  That darkness passed over Mrs. McGuiness’s face, but this time it stayed like shadows creeping in at twilight. It darkened the wrinkles and ruts of her face, casting gray pools under her eyes, which were no longer that striking perfect blue, but yellow and runny like the yolks of poached eggs.

  The monster was nearly out.

  “She did everything for them! While they slept, she toiled! While they prospered, she bled! They were her wheat and she treated them lovingly and with great care, scything the weeds that grew up around them! There was no sacrifice too great for Mother Crow! And she only asked for loyalty and…and obedience! And these were hers by birthright! By who she was and what she was and the name she carried and the family she was born into!”

  Mrs. McGuiness was standing now and her sallow lips had pulled away from long graying teeth in a sour grin.

  “They worked their shifts! Eight to four and four to midnight and midnight to eight, oh yes! But she worked them all until there was no separation from her and the factory and the town itself! All in one and she wanted them to understand that nothing is free! That everyone must sacrifice and everyone must suffer for the good of all and in the end, we are all owned! Do you hear me, you silly little twat? In the end, we are all owned!”

  Ramona was on her feet now, too.

  She let Mrs. McGuiness rant because there was no talking a zealot out of their beliefs. Mother Crow, while she lived, sounded like the dark lord of all micro-managers and control freaks. She probably drove people away with her obsession and misguided attention to small, meaningless details. They called it bossitis, Ramona knew. That was when a boss felt he or she had to work more hours than their employees to prove that they were sacrificing so much more and working so much harder. But as their employees soon learned, the more said boss worked, the less he or she got done and it was all just an excuse to hide their rampant OCD, which demanded that they oversee every meaningless detail that could have easily been taken care of by their employees. She had worked for a man like that once. Like most bosses of that stripe, he was suspicious and paranoid by nature, believing that his employees were trying to fuck him but there was really no need since he was fucking himself so damn hard.

  “I’m leaving now,” Ramona told her.

  “YOOOUUU ARE NOT GOING ANYWHERE!”

  As Ramona stood there, Mrs. McGuiness got louder and louder, her voice scraping and screeching like a reed instrument being played with a sawtoothed file: “A WHORE like YOU cannot understand the responsibility of Mother Crow and what she did and what she must do to maintain this town! YOU do not know the suffering and torment and anguish of birthing this town whole again! YOU cannot see nor feel that the blood of Stokes is her blood! That it is her child that she brooded and nurtured and will never EVER let go of! YOU are nothing but a synthetic little whore like your entire generation! VIPERS! WHORES! COCK-WHORE! WITCH-WHORE! SLUT-WHORE! USER AND TAKER AND ABUSER! YOU DO NOT SEE THE PURITY OF MOTHER CROW’S VISION! YOU CANNOT SHARE IN THE BEAUTY OF WHAT SHE HAS MADE! LIKE ALL THE REST! VERMIN! YOU ARE—”

  “Shut up!” Ramona shouted at her. “YOU…JUST…SHUT THE FUCK…UP!”

  As she tried to pass, Mrs. McGuiness, who didn’t exist now and probably never had, gripped her by the arm and in that instant it felt like something exploded inside of Ramona. Her head was filled with glaring light and fireworks and hot steam. This was not Mrs. McGuinness just as she had suspected all along, it was Mother Crow, a projection of Mother Crow, who still brooded up in the ruined factory like a tick on a blood-filled artery, like a rat in a bone pile. This was her. And Mother Crow knew that she knew and the understanding that flashed between them was not mutually advantageous, but mutually destructive because they both saw the power and wrath of one another and shrank in fear and rose up in anger. Ramona felt like an expanding bag of hot blood that might burst at any moment. The realization that she was being touched by the parasitic horror that engineered this nightmare was almost enough to make her scream.

  In fact, it did make her scream.

  And as she screamed, she yanked her arm free, very aware of the fact that where Mother Crow/Mrs. McGuiness had gripped her was now cold and numb and that pretty much said all that needed saying about the leech herself.

  As Mother Crow’s anger spiked, the house began to tremble and the wind, which had been nonexistent, began to whip outside, moaning at the windows as if it was in pain. For a moment or two, it almost seemed like the house was wavering slightly in and out of reality, shifting between solid and something far less substantial than a gas. The spell of Mother Crow was either weakening or she was tiring of putting forth the massive mental/psychic energy of making Stokes real.

  “YOU’LL GO NOWHERE!” she shrieked at Ramona. “NO ONE LEAVES UNTIL THE MOTHER ALLOWS! NOT NOW AND NOT BEFORE, YOU CUNTING LITTLE WHORE! YOU FILTHY DIRTY LEG-SPREADING COCK-EATING LITTLE TRAMP! YOU HAVE NO SAY HERE! YOU HAVE NO—”

  And it was at that moment, as Mother Crow made another grab for her, her eyes wild and her sneering mouth flecked with white saliva, that Ramona swung the flashlight at her face with pure rage. The Ray-O-Vac’s stainless steel shell, heavy with the added dead weight of D-cell batteries, split Mother Crow’s Mrs. McGuiness mask like dry pine. Ramona felt it sheer through the mask and then imbed itself into something soft and pliable just beneath.

  “EEEEEYAAAWWWW!” cried Mother Crow, her mask cracked open to reveal something gray and grinning beneath that looked like the fissured face of a mummy. “DIRTY DIRTY DIRTY BITCH! TREACHEROUS LIKE ALL THE OTHERS! JUST LIKE YOUR LITTLE FRIEND UPSTAIRS! THE ONE WHOSE WOMB BLEEDS FOR THE DARK SINS SHE HAS WROUGHT AND MADE COVENANT WITH! THE GOOK! THE CHINK! THE SLOPE! RICE-PICKING ZIPPERHEAD DOG-EATING RICE NIGGER CHINATWAT!”

  The phobic racial slurs blew out of her mouth like vomit, empowered by a black cesspool of a mind that was probably rank and rotting when she was still truly alive. She was nothing but a sack of poison, intolerance, hatred, and fear. Fear because that’s really what this was all about: that’s what had kept her mind, her spirit, her essence on this side of the grave. Fear of change. Fear of anything that was different. Fear that she had lost her omnipotent sway over the good folks of Stokes and that she could no longer squeeze them in her arthritic fists until the blood ran from them. Fear of the loss of control. And, ultimately, the fear of being alone, of having to look the demented, vindictive hag she indeed was right in the face.

  Ramona, shouting herself now, battered Mother Crow until the hag’s head split open, half of it sliding down a few inches and giving her the look of some fairground monster reflected in a shattered mirror. Things broke inside her face as Ramona kept hitting her, but she did not go down despite the snapping and cracking of her anatomy or the black viscous-looking blood that ran from beneath the remains of the Mrs. McGuiness mask.

  “GO THEN!” she said in a mocking voice. “GO SEE YOUR LITTLE TWO-DOLLAR GOOK WHORE FRIEND WHOSE LEGS ARE HINGED TO SPREAD AND SEE WHAT SHE HAS PUT FORTH!”

  Then the mask fell completely away and Ramona saw the sardonic face of Mother Crow revealed. It looked like grinning wicker, the eyes like juicy red meat, the teeth long and sharp…and then she was gone. There was nothing to mark her
passing but a wisp of smoke and shards of the Mrs. McGuiness mask on the floor. And overhead, Ramona heard something bump along the floor.

  The flashlight in her hand, terror opening her up like knives, she went to the stairs and started up.

  To what waited there in the darkness.

  It was then she heard the siren ring.

  45

  Lex heard it, too, as Creep did inside the factory. It registered with all ears in Stokes. Some woke and others trembled. Lex did neither. He was on the twisting road that led up to the factory on the hill and nothing could stop him now. He knew where he had to go even if he had no idea what it was he was supposed to do.

  I’m coming for you, he thought. That’s all you have to know. Whether you summoned me or it’s my own idea, it doesn’t matter. I’m coming for you.

  As he climbed the tree-lined road and the hulking shape of the factory grew larger, he told himself that whatever he did it would be for Soo-Lee, who was kind and special and good and much better than he had ever deserved. Whatever came now, whatever he had to sacrifice and how much of his own blood that he had to spill, he was doing it for her because he owed her that much.

  Up ahead, at the turn of the road, he saw a figure standing there.

  His first impulse was to call out to it, but a tremor of anxiety in him canceled that out. He knew it wasn’t a person. There was nothing really alive in Stokes.

  He began walking faster.

  The shape beckoned to him, then moved off into the shadows. He decided he was going to catch it and tear it apart with his own hands. Nothing less would satisfy him. He was walking even faster now, catching momentary glimpses of the figure as it moved in and out of patches of moonlight with that peculiar seesawing motion indicative of the doll people.

  He came up to the next turn of the road and saw a pool of something wet on the road. He knew it was not accidental. Like the song said, it never rained in Southern California and it sure as hell never rained in Stokes…unless whoever or whatever that waited in the factory for him wished it to.

  He kneeled down by the pool.

  He knew it was blood before he touched it. He dipped his index finger into it and it was very warm, almost hot. More like fluid that leaked from a transmission than something that leaked from a living body.

  Standing up, he resumed the chase.

  The figure was at the next bend waving to him.

  So you’re bleeding, he thought. I suppose that means something but I don’t have time for puzzles right now.

  He kept coming upon more and more puddles of blood. If the thing he was following was human, it would have dropped by now. There would have been no blood left in it. Apparently, this thing could bleed endlessly; the reservoir never ran dry. Another splotch of blood followed by another, then a spreading pool that was slowly draining into the ditch at the side of the road.

  Lex was now a big-game hunter following a blood spoor.

  The puddles were getting bigger and bigger and now he saw that in-between them were footprints. Small, almost delicate-looking footprints that he thought were female.

  Soo-Lee, he thought. That’s what the puppet master wants you to think, but you know it’s bullshit. It’s all part of the game.

  Now the factory was before him, across a field of shorn grasses. It was a big, industrial-looking place, flat-roofed, squared off, perfectly geometrical like a series of blocks piled atop one another. Though the moon shone down from above, it did not touch the structure. It remained perfectly dark as if it had been snipped from black construction paper. The figure waited for him, beckoning—and bleeding, no doubt—in the freezing penumbra thrown by the place.

  Lex stopped.

  In fact, it didn’t seem so much that he had stopped but was stopped. It felt like he had run smack into an invisible wall of force. That was purely subjective, of course, but he stopped dead, his feet feeling like they had grown deep roots into the soil. He stared at the shape of the factory as Hansel and Gretel must have stared at the candy cane cottage of the big bad witch. Then he actually did feel waves of force coming out at him, pushing him back, making his knees tremble with his own weight. The force was sheer hate and he thought for a moment he could see bright red eyes looking out at him from one of the upper windows.

  Yes, this was it.

  If he had doubted it before, well, there was no doubting now. The epicenter of the Stokes nightmare was right here and he could almost feel its lines of force radiating out like the silken threads from a spider’s lair. There was real power here, black and ugly killing power. It was like standing before a transformer. The air was energetic.

  Lex knew he could weaken and walk away or he could fight. Only the latter would weaken the puppet master. The former would make it that much stronger.

  He took a step forward, then another.

  The electric hate of the place made his head ache and droplets of sweat the size of corn kernels ran down his face. He wiped them away, more determined with each step that brought him closer to the diseased heart of Stokes. It was then he felt a blast of heat like demon’s breath. The air was filled with churning smoke and he could hear screams, the screams of souls burning in the inferno around him.

  He pushed forward and the smoke cleared and there was the doll person, only it was no doll person but a doll woman and that woman was Soo-Lee reaching out to him with pale white hands, a wolfish hunger seeming to emanate from her.

  He could hear her voice: It hurt me. It tore me open. It ripped out everything inside. Why did you let it? Why did you let it hurt me like that?

  Lex did not know exactly what she was talking about.

  He could hear her words in his head so she wasn’t exactly speaking, but he heard her just fine. And beneath each word there was imagery of what had happened to her in the house after they were separated. Seeing it, it felt like he was kicked in the stomach. He shouted, he cried out. Tears ran from his eyes. He shook and nearly went over. He felt physically ill.

  And then a voice from deep inside him said, “ENOUGH! ENOUGH FUCKING GAMES!”

  And that changed everything.

  It changed it very fast.

  The flawless smooth perfection of the Soo-Lee doll began to change. Flames licked up through her clothes and her long, beautiful hair ignited with a sickening stench. Her face bubbled and ran. She was like a wax image tossed into a fire and she burned. She screamed as her flesh melted and her limbs began to curl. Her features ran down her face in flowing runnels.

  This isn’t Soo-Lee, Lex told himself as resolutely as possible.

  This is not Soo-Lee.

  This is a projection, a physical hallucination that wears her face. It’s a mask and beneath it, there’s something else. Let it show itself.

  The thing continued to melt until its face split open like immense jaws and revealed the monster hiding beneath that easily stepped from the burning, melting wreckage of Soo-Lee and was only connected to her by a few strands of flesh. What he saw was a hunched-over, wizened creature that reminded him a little too much of Norman Bates’s mother in the rocking chair. An old woman in a black dress with a white ruffle at the neckline, sexless puritanical garb buttoned right up to the throat. Her face was a skull covered in corrugated gray flesh, her white hair pulled into a strict little bun atop her head. But unlike the corpse in Psycho, this thing was very much alive as it came at him in a deadly dark shape, puffing out smoke like exhaust fumes. Its teeth were long and sharp, its reaching hands like chitinous claws.

  But Lex did not run.

  And when it reached out for him to peel his face free, he reacted like a cornered animal and attacked it. He hit it in the face with three good shots that made the head bounce about on the withered twig of neck before something snapped and the head slumped to the left shoulder. That didn’t spare him the nails that opened grooves in his face or the awful feel of the thing as he took hold of it and threw it to the ground, jumping up and down on it and hearing it snap and crackle beneath him li
ke dry sticks.

  When he finally calmed down, there was nothing on the ground.

  But the door to the factory was wide open.

  If he wanted an invitation, then here it was.

  46

  In the darkness of the corridor that led to the hub of the factory, the nest, as it were, Creep could hear things moving around him. Not doll people, but what he thought were rats, hundreds of rats that skittered over the floor and climbed the walls and dangled by their claws not three feet above, dropping their foul pellets on his head. He could see their gleaming eyes, but they did not frighten him because he had the oddest feeling that they were actual living creatures who were frightened of him and in a mad exodus to reach shelter.

  Behind him, something was following him.

  He could hear the slapping of its feet as it came for him to finish what he had started.

  About twenty feet into the corridor, he realized that he had stepped off into some nighted cavern that stretched on to infinity, an endless black chasm from which he would never return.

  He had seen such a place only in his dreams and knew it would run on and on for miles and never, ever would he be any closer to its end than he was right now. But he couldn’t turn back. If he did, she would get him, so he had to keep moving and moving until he could move no more. To stop was something worse than death. To go on, madness. There was no in-between. He would go marching along until the flesh dropped from his bones because there simply was no alternative.

  He realized he should have been terrified, but he wasn’t.

  Not yet.

  Not just yet because he knew that there would be an end because the director of this little play would get bored and he would cut the scene. That’s when Creep would be afraid. That’s where the real fear lay.