by Riley Moreno
Don’t look back, she urged herself. Never look behind you.
Whether or not there really was anything following her, it was all over the second she laid eyes on it. For as long as Dawn could avoid acknowledging that she had been found, she was still hidden.
Unfortunately, she didn’t know how much longer she could keep this up. The longer she pressed forward, the harder her breathing came from her lungs--and the more intensely she could feel the cold against her back. It was like there was something looming just over her shoulder, weighing her down. It was becoming harder and harder to convince her feet to move forward. Her knees shook from the effort it took to take just one more step. And she didn’t know this city as well enough as she had hoped.
All it took was one wrong turn--and she took it without knowing it was wrong. All of a sudden Dawn was staring at a brick wall that seemed to stretch up endlessly over her. There was no way for her to jump it, nothing around that would help her climb over it safely. And the cold was still there, at her back, breathing shivers down her neck.
Clink, clink.
The sound was right behind her. Dawn clenched her hands into fists against the brick and cement. Her breathing quickened. Don’t turn around, she urged herself for a second time. Don’t, don’t.
But she could see shadows creeping up on her peripherals, long, slender claws of pure blackness scratching and scrabbling against the brick. They were reaching her, greedy and grasping. Dawn felt one of the shadowy hands brush her arm, and it immediately went numb with cold.
Panicked, she tried to jerk herself away. Her legs twisted beneath her and she was falling. The arms were all coming for her at once, ready to tear at her until there was nothing left.
Dawn heard a giggle and then a sigh, right at her ear, though she could sense nothing behind her.
“How disappointing,” the doll’s voice said. “I thought you would last much longer.”
“No,” Dawn whimpered, writhing as she hit the pavement, thrusting her good arm (still holding her suitcase) in front of her as if it were a shield. “No, please!”
A light ripped through the darkness, searing the groping arms away. Dawn lifted a hand to shield her eyes, blinded, and she was sure she could hear screeching as the dark tendrils burned away and dissolved into the cracks in the cement beneath her. She wasn’t sure how long she was sitting there, a deer in the headlights, before she realized that she actually was in the harsh glare of a pair of headlights. There was a smooth rumble of an engine beneath the persistent honking of a car horn.
“Get in!” the driver shouted, leaning over to throw open the passenger door.
Reacting too quickly to give any thought to her options, Dawn scrambled into the car and slammed the door shut behind her, her suitcase jammed between her knees.
“Hold on,” her savior said as she and threw the car recklessly into reverse. Dawn stared at her with eyes like saucers.
At first, all Dawn could see was the flashing lights that flew by outside the car windows, behind the cool mist that had formed on the glass. And she saw dark, grotesque shapes with angry, swollen faces pressing in on them from all sides. She was half-aware that she had begun to cry and swear in her blind terror, but the driver was focused only on the road ahead of her.
“We’ll be fine,” she said at one point, her voice solemn. Somehow, Dawn believed it.
It was a long drive. At least, her discomfort made it feel like a long drive. At some point she was sure she fell asleep, though she couldn’t remember ever closing her eyes. When the car finally stopped, the clock had jumped to 3 A.M. It was the witching hour, though she felt like an idiot (even considering all that had happened to her that night) for making the observation.
“We’re here,” said the driver. Her voice was abnormally cheerful, given the situation.
Suddenly nervous again, Dawn snapped her hand up to turn on the car’s inner lights. The driver was suddenly revealed to her as more than just a vaguely feminine, dark shape outlined by the streetlights outside. She was beautiful. Her hair was the color of freshly-squeezed orange juice, and her eyes were round and lovely. She was curvy, but in a pleasing sort of way--and above all, she exuded a sort of friendliness that chased away Dawn’s easiness all at once.
“Where are we?” Dawn asked. Her question came out in a stammer from her nerves and lack of sleep. “And who are you?”
“My name’s Sally. And we’re at my house, of course!” Sally smiled and swung open her car door. “You must be tired. Let’s get your room set up.”
Dawn followed her, stuck in a daze. When she made her way out of the car, she nearly stumbled. Her legs were like putty beneath her. Part of her wanted to run again--to get as far away as possible from this woman and the apartment she was climbing up the stairs to--but the tiredness in her legs discouraged her. That and imagining dark, cold arms clawing at her for a second time was enough to make her never want to be alone again.
She didn’t know if she could trust Sally, but she didn’t have any other options. When she made her way through the front door and put her suitcase down, Dawn decided she’d stay--at least until the sun came back up.
CHAPTER FIVE
When the sun rose, Dawn wasn’t given the opportunity to leave. Her night-long stay turned suddenly into a week-long affair. Every night was worse than the last. Sally had assured Dawn that nothing evil would be able to get in or out of the house because of the wards she had in place, and Dawn was inclined to believe her because she seemed to know what she was talking about, but that didn’t stop her from being nervous.
She heard whispers outside her windows when she tried to go to sleep, and tapping at the glass, encouraging her to open the curtains and the shuttered blinds. The doll knew she was here, but as long as Dawn remained inside and out of sight, the game had to go on. The second she opened a window she would be inviting defeat. Sally had warned her about as much.
It seemed simple, but the sleepless nights were beginning to take their toll on her. Her composure was breaking. She began to spend her waking hours daydreaming about fresh air and blue skies and the bright, warm sun up in the sky. She wondered where her father was. If he was hurt, if he was starving--if he was even alive. Sally was nice to her, and busied herself to make sure all of her needs were met...but she was wasting away. She could feel it, and she saw it every day when she pulled her clothes on over her head.
Dawn knew she wouldn’t be able to live like this. The only problem was Sally. She all but guarded the front door, and swooped in to hover like a parent whenever Dawn left her new (temporary) room. Whenever Dawn asked when anything would change, Sally would always give her the same hollow reassurances. And that was about all that she offered. Whenever Dawn asked her about whom she was or how she knew to find her, Sally always deflected. Dawn gave up asking.
Still she could tell that Sally was unravelling too--if much slower. She would catch the woman rubbing her temples when she thought Dawn couldn’t see, or leaning too heavily against the kitchen counter as if she was having trouble supporting her own weight.
Dawn wondered if she wasn’t the only one who was being tormented whenever she tried to close her eyes and sleep at night. Was the doll so angry that it was taking out its aggression on the one keeping her safe?
Neither of them were going to be able to stick it out like this. It didn’t matter how much Dawn liked Sally; she couldn’t bring herself to trust the woman completely. She was a stranger, after all, and Dawn couldn’t talk to her. She couldn’t’ talk to her, and she couldn’t stay. Still, Dawn knew better than to try and camp out at the park again. In fact, she needed more than just another safe house.
I need to end this game, Dawn reminded herself. I need to win.
That was the only way she was going to get her life back. Until the doll was gone, there wouldn’t be any change. She was always going to be tormented, and she was always going to be alone, and she was always going to be running and hiding. That wasn’t a life, and sh
e wasn’t ready to spend the rest of her days living like a fugitive.
So one night, Dawn let history repeat itself. Just as she had done with the social worker, she waited until she felt Sally had slipped in her nightly watch and crept to the front door with her suitcase shoved carefully under her arm.
She had to wrestle the lock open with a paperclip and a tutorial she was able to pull up on the Internet, but when the knob made a satisfying click, Dawn let out a breath of relief.
A light flipped on behind her in the hallway.
“Don’t open that door!” Sally screamed. Her eyes were tired, but her face had lit up into a bright array of panic.
It was too late. Dawn swung the door open and darted forward. Her feet twisted, skidding on a soft, gritty white substance that was lined just outside of it, and crashed onto the cement walkway. Her suitcase would have gone flying if she hadn’t wrapped herself around it to cushion the blow.
Everything happened very quickly after this.
Stunned, Dawn saw a flash. A cloud of darkness was swirling up over her, circling like a predator about to swoop in and snatch up its prey. She saw teeth and hungry eyes—and the doll’s face gleaming out at her with its mocking smile—but all of it reeled backward when Sally threw herself between them. There was something metal gleaming in her hand.
“Back, evil thing,” Sally barked. The exhaustion was evident in her voice.
The doll laughed. “You think that antiquated scrap of a spell is powerful enough to save the both of you? I may not be able to touch the one who wields it, but you only have one, and there are always ways to go around.”
Darkness closed in. Sally vanished behind a wall of swirling agony, and Dawn was vaguely aware of screaming. As quickly as the doll had come upon her, however, it had dropped her again.
“You can’t have her,” Sally spat.
And then she was the one being engulfed. The black thing surrounded her like a swarm of angry, shadowy wasps, and then Sally was gone, dragged down into the earth with no explanation of what had become of her or where she had been taken.
“Fine,” were the last words Dawn heard, growled guttural and evil. “I’ll start with you.”
Several long moments passed before Dawn realized that Sally’s last act had been to place a metal pendant around her neck. It was what she must have had in her hand—and what had forced the doll to switch targets. Sally had sacrificed herself so Dawn could live.
CHAPTER 6
Dawn couldn’t say when she got the idea to come to the library, or when she actually arrived there. Images of Sally falling under the doll’s wrath haunted her. Her body had been on autopilot ever since the woman was eaten, dragged down through the cracks in the cement to fill the evil thing’s purpose.
It just seemed that she was suddenly there, shoving wads of gum into her mouth with shaking hands as she curled up in a study room on the second floor and swaddled herself beneath layers of sweaters. Even that much couldn’t stop her from shivering.
Surrounded by quiet, looking out at the people milling absently through bookshelves, Dawn couldn’t put away her feeling of uneasiness. Everyone looked so peaceful, but all she knew was that this wasn’t a solution. This place wasn’t protected like Sally’s house had been.
I never should have left, she told herself. It was her fault that Sally was dead now. It was her fault that any of this had happened in the first place—because she never listened. She always insisted on challenging things. She could have left with her father before the doll found them. She could have stayed inside the circle of salt that Sally had used to ward off the creature hunting her. It was all the same.
She had to get out of here. There was no telling how long the doll would leave the library untouched, and she didn’t want to involve all of these other people. She was out of places to hide.
That was just it, then. The time to hide was over. She had to confront this thing head on. But how? She couldn’t do it alone. Knitting her brows together, Dawn pulled out her cellphone and flipped through the contacts.
One name stood out. Roger.
He was the only friend she’d made since moving to this place. The only one she’d bothered to keep in touch with. He didn’t mind that she could be cynical, and that their time together might only span the length of a few months. He was a stick-thin and weak-willed boy barely older than her, and she felt bad bringing him into it at all, but she had a feeling he wouldn’t be able to say no.
And from where she stood, Dawn couldn’t risk anyone saying no right now. She could only hope that neither of them would regret this partnership.
All it took was a single text. In a lot of trouble. At the library. Need your help please come. Bring salt.
Roger didn’t live far. Lost in her thoughts, the half hour it took for him to slide into the seat across from her passed by in the span of what felt to be several minutes. Dawn blinked at him as if she’d never seen him before, and he returned the look with blatant incredulity.
“Right,” she said, taking in a deep breath and rubbing her eyes. “I’ll get to the point. Did you bring the salt?”
“Uh, yeah.” Roger gestured toward his backpack. “My mom doesn’t know I took it from the kitchen. What’s it for?”
“I don’t know,” Dawn admitted. “I just know it’s an important tool. We’ll need it to take down what’s chasing me.”
Roger looked like he was about to say something, but she cut him off with a raised hand. She took another deep breath and before she could lose her courage, came out with it. Everything that had happened to her in the past week, she laid out on the table.
When she was done, and the silence fell over them like a thick blanket, Dawn was afraid to look at Roger’s face. When she did, she found him too stunned to look scared, or angry, or concerned about her mental health.
“I guess we better kill this thing,” he said.
Dawn smiled, and then laughed. The first laugh she felt like she’d had in years.
“I don’t think we can kill it,” she admitted, “I think you’d have to know some real powerful stuff to get away with that. But we can get rid of it. I brought it here, so I can make sure it gets back where I pulled it from. We just need to brush up on our exorcism.”
“Good thing we’re in a library, then.” Roger stood, and made for the section labeled clearly for The Unexplained.
CHAPTER 7
Dawn “Are you sure this is going to work?”
When Dawn turned around to look at Roger, she found his face pale. That fear she was looking for earlier had finally kicked in.
They’d stayed at the library, reading and forming a plan, until the building was closing. Dawn had thought it would be a challenge to find the doll so they could put their plan to the test…but when the library doors locked behind them, they found it waiting. Or, more specifically, a trail. Black claws scratched out a trail of arrows down the street in front of them.
They’d followed the trail all the way to the doll--and, supposedly, to where her father was being held. Before, she’d been able to sense a sort of lingering doubt building inside of Roger. Not that she’d been able to blame him; he’d been more tolerant of her worried fantasies than anyone else could be. Instead of flat out telling her she was crazy, he had at least given her a chance. He had humored her, and now he had seen things for himself.
He was sucked in and he wouldn’t leave her now. Not even if he wanted to. His conscience wouldn’t let him--she could tell. Part of her felt bad for dragging such a nice, considerate person into this potentially very dangerous situation with her, but she had nobody else to turn to. She didn’t have the time to think too hard about it.
“I don’t know anything,” she admitted, her voice small. There was a knot in her throat she couldn’t seem to swallow. “But I have to do this for my family, and for the rest of the city. This thing is bad enough in a doll’s body. What do you think will happen if it takes me off guard and had free reign?”
Rog
er ran a hand over his face. “I’ll go with you, then. I know you were set on doing it alone, but I can’t just--”
“You have to wait here,” Dawn said, forcing herself to sound as stern as possible. To not feel so small compared to him--and compared to everything. “Someone should stay outside, to make sure it doesn’t get out in case it wins...and besides, it’s after me, not you. If this does go awry, you can run. It’ll still be after me no matter what I do.”
Roger didn’t put up much of an argument after that. She couldn’t hold it against him, even if that did hurt in its own right. Fear did that kind of thing to people, and besides, no matter how long they’d been friends online, they’d only just met hours previously.
Dawn wasn’t thinking when she pulled the medallion Sally had given her. Palming it into her hand, she rushed in for a quick hug, dropped it into his pocket, and slipped away from him before he had a chance to react. Dawn didn’t look back when she opened the warehouse doors just big enough to slip through.
The darkness was not natural. It was thick and pulsed and squeezed against her body as she waded forward. Dawn felt submerged, like she was pushing forward through mud that reached up to her shoulders. It was the first sense that she really had that the doll was something bigger than her. The altercation in the park that Sally had saved her from had been a good indication, but everything had happened so quickly at the time that she hadn’t really stopped to think about it.
Now, she was alone in the dark and the quiet, unable to see or hear anything. She looked over her shoulder and the sliver of light from the doorway back outside was too distant to be possible. It was as if she had walked into a void, and had been swallowed by it. Dawn didn’t need to be told that there was no turning back; she had made her choice, and now she had to move forward.
Each step felt heavier than the last, which made the journey forward increasingly more perilous. It wasn’t until her knees were shaking so badly her legs threatened to give out underneath her that Dawn realized she couldn’t even hear the sound of her footsteps against the cement beneath her. It was as if this place was devoid of all things that should exist in the physical realm. She hadn’t even run into anything that could have been stored in the warehouse. The black expanse simply existed onward without any hint it would end.