Doll Face

by Tim Curran

  Then, as if on cue, he was looking into the mouth of hell.

  He had reached the hub because it was necessary that he reach the hub. Only it wasn’t exactly as he had imagined it. It was a kiln, a blazing blast furnace that ejected glowing tongues of flame. The smoke made his eyes water and the heat singed his eyebrows.

  There was the choice.

  Go back to the thing that followed him or step into the flames.

  That was his choice. So without further ado, he did what he had to do.

  47

  Her heart seeming to throb in her throat, Ramona mounted the stairs to search for Soo-Lee. She clicked on her trusty Ray-O-Vac and used it to peel back the shadows like layers of blankets on a bed. She studied each one, watching, listening, and feeling for threat. It was close and she knew it, but it wasn’t ready to show itself yet. When the time came, she knew, it would spring out of the darkness at her and sink its claws into her throat.

  You’ve pissed off Mother Crow now and she’ll have something special waiting for you up here.

  As she climbed, she began to notice a certain mildewed smell in the air, which was out of place in Stokes. Odors like that were for other towns and the teeming animals that called them home, but not Stokes. Stokes always had a summer scent to it—lilacs and hydrangeas, hibiscus and marigolds. At least in the deluded mind of the spook that could not forget and could never let go.

  That’s why Ramona noticed it and it gave her pause there on the stairs.

  This was the smell of a deserted house, an unused and unoccupied dwelling where the dust formed thick on the windows and desiccated flies piled up on the sills, where the carpets went green with damp rot and black patterns of mold grew over the walls. Such a thing could not be in Stokes, at least Mother Crow’s fanciful image of it.

  But it was here and it was growing stronger as if the house were some great gourd that was rotting around her. And maybe it was at that.

  The flashlight revealed water-stained wallpaper that was discolored with yellow rings of seepage. It showed her loose ceiling tiles and a dusty floor. She could smell the pungent odors of mice and rat droppings, hear busy creatures gnawing inside the walls. She had to step over the mummified corpse of a little bird with one outstretched wing. Spiders hung almost boldly in massive webs in the corners.

  Interesting.

  In Ramona’s mind, she could almost hear Mother Crow’s abrasive voice: I showed you beauty and perfection, but a city whore like you couldn’t understand that. So I give you this instead. I give you the filth and abandonment that you know best. I leave you to writhe in your own dirt. This is your element, pig.

  The air was growing cold as Ramona reached the top of the steps. She could see her breath now.

  “Soo-Lee?” she called out. “If you’re up here, call out! If you don’t, I’m leaving!”

  She felt a little thrill at that because she knew she was fucking with Mother Crow’s carefully laid plans. This whole thing was setup for her benefit. She had to go up here. She had to see what was waiting for her. Mother Crow would accept nothing less.

  She thought she heard a thumping from down the hallway. There was a door there. She approached it, staring at its cobwebbed surface, which was grimy from generations of dirty hands. She knew she was not going to like what the room would show her, but if she turned back now, she would not have been surprised if the stairs were simply gone.

  “All right,” she said, fear shivering just beneath her words. “I’ll play your game. Then later, you can play mine.”

  The door was locked when she gripped the knob. She expected some electrical charge to sweep through her at touching it, but there was nothing. Just an old doorknob on an old door in an old house. Was Mother Crow trying to second-guess her now? She had the urge to step back and think this through because this was mind against mind now and she could not afford to make any mistakes.

  Bullshit. That’s exactly what she expects you to do.

  Ramona took a few obligatory steps back, trying to appear unsure and filled with anxiety, which wasn’t too hard because that’s exactly how she felt. Then she stepped forward and the door was not locked. She threw it open and smelled a warm, meaty reek that reminded her of thawing pork. She panned around with the flashlight, taking in a large bedroom that lacked everything save a metal bed frame tucked in the corner.

  “Soo-Lee?” she said.

  Something cracked open in the air at that moment and she heard it, though probably only in her mind. She saw an image of an egg cracking open and some furry thing pulling itself out. It was symbolism of some sort and she recognized it as such.

  The light picked out a slumped form against the far wall.

  “Shit,” she muttered, her breath catching in her throat.

  At first, she could not say that it was Soo-Lee up against the dirty brick wall. She saw a naked female form, long-legged, a sweep of lustrous black hair hanging over her face. The hair, if nothing else, triggered recognition because she had known very few women outside of fashion magazines that had such beautiful hair. Soo-Lee was dead, of course. She looked deflated, bony and wraith-like as if the skeleton inside her had become more pronounced in death. Her pale skin was speckled with blood. It was even clotted in her hair. And that wasn’t too surprising because it looked as if a bomb had gone off inside her, tearing her open from crotch to belly in a dark gash. She sat in a pool of blood. It was splashed up the wall behind her. It even dripped from the ceiling.

  Ramona turned away, trying to keep her stomach down.

  In a flash that made her head fill with sharp blades of pain, she knew what had happened and she saw it in all its grisly detail. She had to lean up against the doorjamb so she did not pitch straight over.

  It came out of her, she thought numbly. What she carried, the seed that was planted in her and blossomed, it came out of her…no, it chewed its way out of her and she was awake through it all. At least, until the shock and trauma and agony made her pass out.

  Ramona leaned there, what was in the room reaching out to her, striking her in waves of formless black evil. She could barely catch her breath.

  (THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS TO CITY SLUTS)

  In her head, it echoed and echoed. The pain was unbearable, each word like a razor dragged across her gray matter, slitting her open and making her bleed. “Please,” she heard herself say.

  (THEY COME TO STOKES, OUR PERFECT TOWN, AND SPREAD THEIR DISEASE WITH THEIR FILTHY CONTAMINATED DIRTY PARTS)

  Ramona was down on her knees now. It felt like each word landed with physical force, with impact. Her head felt like it was a bag being worked by a fighter. Boom-boom, bang-bang. She was fighting to stay conscious, but Mother Crow was winning. And who was she to stand up against something that could cheat death and re-create an entire town from smoking black ash and gutted ruin?

  (THE DIRTY CHINK, TWO-DOLLAR GOOK WHORE, ASKING FOR IT)

  “No, no, no, no,” Ramona moaned. “Oh please, please, no more…”

  (BEGGING FOR IT, JUST BEGGING FOR IT, AND SHE GOT IT)

  “Shut up!”

  (SHE SCREAMED WHEN HE IMPALED HER, WHEN HE RUPTURED THE FOREIGN CUNT AND MADE HER BLEED LIKE HER KIND ALWAYS BLEED IN THE END! SHE SQUEALED AND CRIED OUT AND HE KEPT RAMMING, SPLITTING HER OPEN AND MAKING THE HOT RED FOULNESS WITHIN HER RUN BETWEEN HER LEGS!!!)

  Ramona felt anger rising in her and it canceled out the fear and made the pain subside. And she knew it was her only true weapon, the only weapon anyone had in the conformist, meat-grinder, police state of Stokes: free will. Mother Crow could not abide it. She did not like men who thought they were her better and she did not like loose-tongued women who thought they were her equal. People needed to know their place and she had no civility with those that didn’t. Questionable morals or independent thinking were enough to get you ejected from the prison camp of Stokes in the old days and now such things were enough to condemn you. And the judge, jury, and executioner were one in the same: a bitter, frustrated, sour-sou
led, acid-tongued old spinster that no man had ever touched. So since she did not have a man to run and belittle and control with an iron fist, she forced her affections on the town and ran the people like cattle.

  “FUCK YOU!” Ramona screamed at her. “FUCK YOU, YOU VICIOUS, FRIGID OLD TWAT! FUCK YOU AND FUCK STOKES!”

  The house shook and Ramona thought it would come down around her such was the pure wrath of Mother Crow. Nothing hurt worse than the truth. Nothing could possibly cut deeper. And no wound bled as much or refused to be cauterized. There was thunder in the streets and the stench of roasted flesh and burning hair. It cycled through the house in a hot, gagging stink.

  When it was gone, Ramona stood there with the light on Soo-Lee while Mother Crow’s hate and rage made the town tremble outside the walls of the house. Soo-Lee was like an old pipe that had burst and gushed blood in an ensanguined flood. A dear person with a dear, understanding heart and her death was made ugly and brutal by the old hag.

  Ramona would make that evil bitch pay for it.

  There were no two ways about that.

  It was at that moment that she heard something under the bed frame. A sort of scratching sound like the claws of a rat. But it was no rat. She put the light over there and saw glittering black eyes like those of a Raggedy Ann doll staring out at her.

  “So there you are,” she said in a beaten voice.

  It shifted under there, a darkly evil pygmy-like form that the light could not adequately reveal and maybe that was a good thing. Illumination gleamed off its shoe-button eyes and teeth. Its claws ticked against the floor. Ramona stepped closer to the bed frame, not wanting to see it…but something in her almost demanding that she look upon it like some freak in a sideshow jar. The terror building in her was almost enough to make her faint dead away.

  “Show yourself,” she said, her voice sounding determined yet almost weak.

  The thing rustled there in the shadows. It made a wet sucking sort of sound. “Eeee, eeee, eeee,” it said with a shrill little voice that went right up her spine. It sounded like a stepped-upon mouse.

  She kicked the bed and it scampered away, faster than her light seemed to be able to track it. It ran across Soo-Lee’s corpse and splashed through her blood, its nails ticking along like those of a cat that could not retract its claws. The light caught sight of its toothsome grin and a shiny, bulb-like, embryonic sort of head with trailing hair on one side that looked like seaweed.

  It thinks you’re playing with it, Ramona thought.

  The very idea was twisted and horrible, yet she was almost certain of it. Maybe Mother Crow had thought it all into being, the rape and the pregnancy and the birth, but now that it was alive, it really was alive and had a child’s sense of play.

  It was grotesque to the extreme.

  Ramona tried to follow it with her light and it scuttled across the floor, to the left, then the right, then she lost it and felt it slide between her ankles with a hideous weight. Oh, Christ. Something told her that such a horror needed to be destroyed, that letting it survive was almost a sin…but she didn’t know if she was up to it. The idea of getting close to it made a hot, liquid madness run in her mind.

  She heard a squeaking noise.

  She swung the light around.

  It was jumping up and down on the bedsprings, flying five or six feet in the air and then coming back down to repeat it again. It was malformed, lumpy, and squirming like a fetal rat. It leaped off the bed and waited there like it wanted her to try it, too. Ramona was simultaneously filled with horror and pity. She put the light right in its face and it squealed like it had been scalded. It did not like the light as she supposed things like it never did. Its face was wrinkled and deeply seamed, its eyes rolling blank gray balls. When it squealed, its jaws yawned wide and she saw it had two teeth. Each long, sharp, and tusk-like. One on the bottom jaw and one on the upper. Both were stained pink from what it had chewed through to be born. She likened them to the egg teeth of baby birds.

  It hid from the light, turning its back to her and she saw protuberant, knobby bones straining against membranous flesh. It was shivering. As she stepped closer to it, gripping the Ray-O-Vac like a club now, it skidded across the floor, making that same eeeee, eeeee, eeeeeeee sort of sound that was tinny and strident.

  Ramona went after it and it leaped through the air straight at her face.

  She dodged it, but just barely. Even so, its flesh brushed against her cheek and it felt cold and slimy like a dead carp. It struck the wall, but did not fall. It hung there, claws embedded in the plaster. It was breathing very heavily now. As she stepped closer to it, it squeaked and trembled like it was frightened and a glop of pink jelly dropped from its hindquarters as if it had shit itself out of fear.

  This was too much.

  She was going to leave. Maybe that was wrong and maybe it was even unethical somehow, but she couldn’t take any more of this. Her revulsion for the thing was simply too great and if it touched her again, she was going to really lose it.

  It craned its head around and looked at her, flashing her a grin of juicy pink gums, its two spike-like incisors looking lethal, the sort of things made for tearing out jugulars. Its doll eyes watched her, shining and reflective, filled with a naïve idiocy that made her heart ache even as goose bumps broke out over the backs of her arms. She couldn’t get past the idea that it was really not a living thing at all, but some horrible prop or loathsome toy.

  It thumped its knees against the wall repeatedly. It wanted her to come after it again. It wanted her to try and catch it. Play, it was all just play…yet, she had seen its teeth and claws and they were the sort of things that could play you right to death.

  “Eeeeeee?” it squeaked.

  “No,” she said. “No play. I don’t have time”

  It snapped its teeth at her, drumming itself against the wall. It made a hissing sound like a snake. Long ribbons of drool hung from its mouth. “Eeeeeeee!” it squeaked again, but this time there was a definite note of anger and impatience in the shrilling little voice.

  Nearly mad with terror, the flashlight shaking in her hand, Ramona began backing away toward the door. The hellish little moppet watched her with gleaming eyes. It began climbing up the wall, digging in its claws, leaving gaping holes in the plaster.

  “EEEEEEE!” it shrieked at her. “EEEEEEE!”

  She wanted to toss the flashlight and cover her ears with her hands because the sound it made completely unnerved her and made a scream loosen in her throat. Sweat ran down her face and the trusty Ray-O-Vac jiggled in her hand. It was up near the ceiling now, hanging there like some mutant simian horror. It closed its mouth and puckered its swollen lips into something like a suckering kiss. Maybe she had lost her mind, but she almost sensed that it had a certain affection for her. It hung by one claw-hand now, swinging back and forth.

  I don’t have a mommy now, Ramona. I want you to be my mommy and my playmate and at night I’ll curl up next to you and I’ll never let go. And when I’m hungry, I’ll fasten my mouth to your tit and suck the blood right out of you. You can scream all you want, but once I get my teeth in, you’ll never pry me loose!

  Those words ran through her head, all inflected with that piercing elfin voice. Fuck this. She went for the door. She couldn’t take it anymore. The light splashed over Soo-Lee’s gutted corpse and this time she did scream.

  The little beast got very excited. It mimicked her scream with a perfectly awful “EEEEEEEEE!” and jumped up at the ceiling, again digging its claws in and crossing it quickly like a kid on the monkey bars. Ramona dashed for the door and it slammed shut in her face. She felt claws like the thorns of rose stems tear open her cheek and she fell back, swinging at the little monster with her light. But it was too fast, it dodged away into the darkness and she swung around in a drunken circle with the light, trying to find it. A blur swept past her face with a hot rancid wind and she cried out.

  “GET AWAY FROM ME!” she shouted.

  But
that only delighted the creature and it squealed right back at her, bounding across the floor and nearly knocking the legs out from under her. When she thought she had found it with the light, it was suddenly somewhere else, making her spin around wildly, trying to pinpoint it as a crazy sort of vertigo whirled in her head.

  Breathless, dizzy, her face wet with sweat, she saw it on the ceiling, then the walls, then she lost it completely right before its dead weight dropped onto her shoulder and she felt its hot breath against her neck. She dropped the light and reached up to grab it, seizing it in her fists. Its flesh seemed to crawl under her hands and waves of disgust swept through her.

  “NO!” she cried as it pressed its monstrous, bloated face into her own, grinning with child-like glee, its carnivore fangs darting out and nipping the end of her nose.

  Cold sweat flooded her body and she went absolutely feral with panic and rage. She peeled it from her and threw it as hard as she could, hearing it strike the wall with a meaty slap. She grabbed up the flashlight and put the beam on it. It was squatted there on the floor, making a perfectly frightful mewling sort of sound. Its head was wet with what had to be blood and she soon saw why. She had injured it. Maybe it was alive, but it was still a degenerate hybrid of human tissue and mannequin and its skin was more like a shell. Its head had cracked open like that of a baby doll upon impact with the wall, a piece of its cranium lay at its feet.

  Its gray eyes glistened as it looked at her. Its mouth opened and let out an angry roar. Bleeding and broken, it was now an animal and it would fight to survive. It launched itself at her and she knocked it aside with the flashlight. It barely hit the floor before she was kicking and stomping it with everything she had, determined to destroy it. Painfully, mewling, it skittered across the floor, damaged and cracked open, trailing bleeding springs and fleshy stuffing, clockwork gears and a smear of tissue.

  “Eeeeeeee,” it squeaked in a perfectly pitiful little voice. “Eeeeeeeee-eeee…”