Child’s Play 3

by Matthew J. Costello

  “What’s this game called?”

  Chucky smiled. “It’s called swap the soul, Tyler. And you’re going to love it.” He patted the boy’s chest.

  He looked at him. What is this kid—six, seven years old? Chucky wondered. How many years until he hits puberty? That was something to think about.

  Chucky blinked his eyes. I’m such a cute doll, he thought, irresistible.

  “Whatever you say, Charles.”

  He patted Tyler’s chest. Yes, whatever I say. Such a cooperative boy. He patted the boy’s chest one more time, and then let his hand rest on his chest.

  He closed his eyes. But he kept the smile.

  Don’t want to alarm the little brat. Gotta keep that smile. Chucky took a breath.

  Remembering: With every hour, this doll’s body becomes more my body.

  And he remembered fighting Andy, getting so close. And then—damn—there was always something to interrupt us.

  He said the words, slowly, letting their power fill the hallways.

  “Ade due, Damballa.”

  Another breath. “Ade due, Damballa . . . give me the power I beg of you. Give me . . .”

  The large window to the left rattled. The wind, pressing against it responding. It felt so wonderful to feel its power—a living thing, responding to my words, the power of mighty Damballa.

  The sunlight vanished. Masked by dark clouds that had suddenly appeared. Great billowy, metal gray clouds that swallowed the sun, blotting out the blue sky. They sunk rapidly low, lower, to the earth.

  The wind whistled through the cracks around the window.

  Mighty Damballa.

  Very mighty.

  Chucky thought of the one time he saw Mighty Damballa. Once was enough. Enough to last a lifetime.

  The old black man, the gris-gris shaman didn’t seem to have the goods.

  Oh, he had lizard feet and weird powders that flashed when he threw them into fires and books and candles and a toothless grin that was just about the most demented thing Charles Lee Ray had ever seen.

  But so far, his mumbo-jumbo bullshit hadn’t done too much for old Charles Ray.

  Though there had been a few things. He felt less fear walking into people’s homes, their apartments, as though he were truly impermeable, protected by the spirit world.

  Charles Lee Ray felt something.

  But then the old shaman got scared. He acted scared, as if I were going to take his precious religion and maybe do something real bad with it.

  Damn right, I was. And cutting the heads off chickens and sacrificing neighborhood cats wasn’t going to get me where I wanted to go.

  Damballa would want more.

  If there was a Damballa.

  The old man didn’t know anything about the sacrifice. He didn’t have to. By that time, Charles Lee Ray had the ceremony down.

  I’m just going to change the offering.

  He remembered smiling at that. That’s all.

  And ask for one thing. To see for a second—this Damballa. To know whether he—she, it—was real. Or am I wasting my time with this gris-gris.

  The old shaman didn’t have to know. That was a line he obviously didn’t want to cross.

  Charles Ray remembered.

  He had caught the woman in the apartment building, after chasing her through the storage room under the exposed pipes. She had screamed, but there’d been no one to hear.

  He had hurried. He remembered that he’d hurried. No telling who might come along, he had thought. Someone might stumble along, discover me, and screw the whole thing up.

  He had tied the woman up, gagged her. She’d been pretty. But that had not been a concern. That hadn’t been a focal point.

  He’d used the old holy man’s knife. Just the added touch. Thinking: I’ll return it later.

  The woman had been gagged. She had barely made a sound. But she sure had tried to scream when she saw my knife, glistening even here, even in the gloom of the basement. She’d kicked at the ropes holding her fast. So frantic.

  Charles Lee Ray couldn’t believe how exciting it was.

  How wonderful, how . . .

  The boy moved under his doll hand. Impatient for the game to begin.

  His reminiscing was interrupted.

  The wind howled, animal-like, right outside. The window rattled. The light vanished so thoroughly that it grew hard to see in the hall. The clouds were that dark.

  The boy moved, still smiling, still oblivious of what was going on here.

  Isn’t innocence grand?

  “Ade due. Damballa . . . grant me the power, Kenyu, Damballa. nictu . . . Grant . . .”

  The wind whistled shrilly.

  Andy put down his gun. First, he had felt the cold wind chilling his nearly bald head, he looked up. Dark rainclouds were rolling in fast.

  He opened his mouth.

  No, Andy thought. I’m being silly. It’s just a storm, just a thunderhead rolling down the valley.

  But still the thought, the memory was there. Of clouds that seemed to ooze out of the sky, blotting out all light and color. Of wind that whipped in every direction at once.

  The gun felt cold and heavy in his hands. Useless.

  Darker, the clouds congealed into an inky blackness.

  Andy felt himself shaking. Oh, god, he thought. I’m scared. All these years, and I’m scared.

  Still scared . . . after so many years.

  Chucky felt the surge of power. The wonderful presence of Damballa. Here, with him now. Ready to make the miracle happen.

  To get me out of this damn little doll’s body.

  As if I hadn’t been patient.

  He saw the boy looking out the window at the clouds. He probably finds them scary. Think that’s scary, kid? I can show you scary.

  Maybe you would like to hear what happened to me.

  When I first saw him. When I first saw Damballa.

  First and only time. And believe me, once is enough.

  “Levee mercier du bois challoint, secoisse—”

  Chucky closed his eyes.

  And—even now—he could see him.

  The girl had kicked at the ropes, a heart-warming sight. All tied up and no place to go. And Charles Lee Ray had taken his time bringing the knife up to her. Because the gris-gris books said that fear was the key, the wild-eyed look of terror.

  That was the grease that made the engine run.

  Besides, it was fun.

  He’d brought the knife to her neck. He’d muttered the words, the entreaty, the call to Damballa for a personal consultation.

  And deep down, Charles Lee Ray hadn’t believed that anything would happen. He’d been about to chuck the whole routine as so much bullshit. So much Caribbean hoo-hah.

  He’d touched the girl’s neck with the knife. It was like drawing with a fine-point red pen. He’d traced a line from ear to ear, as prescribed, letting the old vital juices flow. And then down, to cover her body with the powerful symbols.

  The building had shaken.

  It had seemed, then, to Charles Ray that the whole building vibrated. He’d stood up and dropped the knife. It’s an earthquake. An earthquake in Chicago, he’d thought.

  He didn’t know they had earthquakes in Chicago.

  The lights—150 watt bulbs running along the ceiling—had started to fade, slowly, as if they’d been attached to a romantic dimmer. Time for a cozy tête-à-tête.

  The blood had started to spread onto the floor. Touching Charles Lee Ray’s feet.

  Then a cloud, a black cloud, had formed in the basement. Looks like rain. Earthquakes and now an indoor thunderstorm. Now ain’t that something?

  Then . . .

  There had been something in the cloud. It had had a shape. But it had been difficult to make out that shape. Because an armlike thing had came out with three curved fingers. And then another, and another, until the room had been filled with them. And the smell . . .

  Charles Lee Ray remembered opening his mouth, gulping at
the air. He would have to be crazy to use his nostrils.

  A body. Gray, like the clouds, wet, covered with some slick, oily liquid. It lives in some pool, a pool of the damned at the end of the universe.

  Damballa. The soul catcher. The eater of spirits.

  A head had emerged. A soup bowl of eyes with an opening. A mouth filled with green gray tongues, licking at the fetid air of the basement, savoring it.

  At that point, Charles Lee Ray remembered falling down. Onto the red pool. He hadn’t even noticed what he’d fallen into.

  “Okay,” he had said. “I’m okay. I can deal with this.”

  After all, I called it, didn’t I? I summoned the thing. And now it’s here.

  And then a fistfull of the eyes had fixed Charles Lee Ray and had spoken to him directly. Briefly, but directly.

  Without sound, without words. Telling him that this day starts a new beginning. From this day forward, Charles Lee Ray has a master, someone to serve. His life has a goal, a purpose.

  And that is wonderful.

  To drive home the point, Damballa had let Charles feel the beauty, the magnificence of being on Mighty Damballa’s good side.

  Then—quickly, a lightning bolt from the black cloud—he’d let him feel its opposite.

  Charles Lee Ray had curled up, howling, cursing, slipping in the red pool of his sacrifice. He’d felt the arms move beside him, doing something. But Charles Ray had closed his eyes, alone now and terrified.

  Point made, Damballa had disappeared.

  The cloud had disappeared, the earthquake ended. The row of naked light bulbs had flickered back to full brightness.

  And when Charles Ray had looked up he was still kneeling in the red pool.

  But there was no body.

  The body of the girl, the sacrifice was gone.

  Damballa had taken his cut—and then split. Charles Lee Ray had stood up, with the smell, the taste of the creature still filling his senses.

  And he would never lose it completely.

  Like now.

  Though Damballa won’t appear—though this isn’t a call to Damballa, just your basic switching of bodies—Chucky could feel his presence, his approval.

  Tyler’s face didn’t look so happy anymore.

  “What do those words mean?” the boy said.

  “Secoisse entienne mais pois de . . .”

  I have to hurry, Chucky thought. The boy tried to sit up, but Chucky kept pressing him down with his hand, pressing, and . . .

  Then Chucky heard footsteps moving down the hall.

  12

  “Oh, shit!”

  Tyler looked up at the doll. “Charles, stop swearing. It’s not nice to swear.”

  But Tyler saw the doll aiming a plastic ear down the hallway. Tyler heard the footsteps. Oh, I’m in trouble now, thought Tyler. Opening Barclay’s package, playing with a doll, and . . .

  Chucky took his hand off Tyler’s chest. Tyler quickly sat up and saw Colonel Cochrane walking toward him, followed by one of the senior cadets. Oh, no, thought Tyler. Cochrane was real strict, a real military guy.

  “Now we’re in for it,” he said to Chucky. But when he looked at the doll, its face was expressionless. It was just a doll. “Hey, what’s wrong? Your batteries give out? What’s . . .”

  Tyler heard Cochrane talking.

  He doesn’t see me yet, Tyler thought. That’s good, except that there’s no place to run to.

  “We’ll need three twenty-two-caliber semis, Curtis. Mark them for the red and blue teams, and . . .”

  Tyler stood up. Chucky just lay there. Just a doll now.

  Cochrane stopped.

  “Tyler? What are you doing here? This is off limits to your grade. Whatever are you doing here? And—what’s this?”

  Tyler watched Cochrane walk forward and pick up Chucky by his orange hair.

  The doll didn’t say “hidey-ho” or “wanna play” or anything.

  “What is this?” Cochrane held the doll out as though it smelled bad, as though it was some stinky laundry, a dead fish.

  Tyler smiled. “We were playing, sir. We were playing swap the soul.”

  Cochrane shook his head. It looked like he had never heard of the game either. “Swap the soul, hmmm? And you’re playing with a doll?”

  “We were playing. I . . .”

  Cochrane turned to the senior cadet. “Go on, Curtis. I’ll catch up with you later.” Curtis left and then the colonel turned back to Tyler.

  He dangled the doll in front of Tyler. Tyler looked away, out the window. Funny, the clouds were gone. The storm never came. He even saw bits of blue in the sky.

  Cochrane shook his head. “We don’t play with dolls, now do we, Tyler? Dolls are for girls.”

  The colonel waved Chucky back and forth.

  The doll is smiling, Tyler saw. He’s still smiling. Tyler stood up. “But Charles—Chucky—is my new best friend.”

  Cochrane frowned, and then shook his head. “Tyler . . . you know better than to talk back to a superior officer.”

  Tyler looked down at the torn wrapping paper, the box with the hole through the cellophane window. I liked the doll, Tyler thought. It wasn’t mine, but it was a friend, someone I could play with, someone I could talk to.

  His eyes trailed up to Cochrane’s hand swinging the doll. “You know better, Tyler.”

  Tyler nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  Cochrane smiled. Then he pointed at the paper and the Good Guy box. “Now clean that stuff up.” He hoisted Chucky higher. “And I’ll take care of this.”

  What is he going to do to it? Tyler thought. And what will I tell Barclay?

  But he knew the answer to that one.

  Nothing. I will tell Barclay nothing. He would get mad, and then I’d really have no friends.

  Cochrane turned and started walking out.

  Tyler watched his pal, his Good Guy, dangling from behind. Tyler saw his cheeks, his eyes.

  Chucky blinked. Once, and then again. He smiled—it wasn’t a nice smile. And Chucky whispered.

  “I’ll be back.”

  And Chucky waved at him.

  Tyler waved back and said, quietly, believing the doll . . . somehow believing the doll.

  “See you later, Charles.”

  Colonel Cochrane disappeared with the doll.

  Andy tried to twirl his gun like the other cadets, but it was no go.

  You don’t jump into this stuff and just pick it up, he thought. Everyone was following Shelton’s barked orders so smoothly, turning left, turning right, swinging their .22s smoothly one way and the other. Everyone looks real sharp, he thought. Everyone but me.

  “Left, hut!” Shelton barked.

  Andy was a beat behind the rest of the cadets.

  “Right, hut—present arms.”

  It was gun-swinging time, and Andy tried to flick his gun to the right, smoothly, the way everyone else did.

  It nearly slipped away.

  Andy saw De Silva, down the line, moving as though she could lead the squad.

  “Left, hut!”

  When Andy looked forward, he saw Shelton, watching him, a disgusted look on his face. Andy flipped his gun back left. And this time it went flying out of his hands and landed on the muddy grass.

  He started to crouch down to get it. He heard snickers, and Whitehurst whispered, “Nice move, Barclay.”

  “I’m trying, damn it.”

  But then Shelton was there, in his face, screaming, “Company, halt!”

  Andy tried to look ahead, putting on his best what-me-worry expression with a glazed look of unconcern.

  Er, why did this bus stop, sir?

  Shelton bent down and picked up Andy’s rifle, all muddy now.

  He looked at the gun and then up at Andy. “It’s not a baton, Barclay. You look like a goddamn majorette out there.”

  The other cadets rewarded Shelton’s wit with some giggles.

  But Shelton didn’t smile. Shelton shook his head, looking at the muddy gun, an
d then he flung it at Andy.

  Andy barely got his hands up to stop the weapon before it smashed into his midsection.

  Now Shelton laughed. “What’s the matter, Barclay? You act as if you’re afraid of it.” Shelton came closer. “You’re not afraid of your weapon, are you, Barclay? A soldier’s rifle is his best—” He pushed the rifle at Andy “—friend.” Shelton nodded. He took a breath. “Remember that.”

  Andy nodded.

  And then, past Shelton, he saw an officer. Colonel Cochrane, walking out of the armory, moving around the back. He was dragging something behind him.

  Andy’s mouth fell open.

  “What is it, Barclay? Cat got your tongue?”

  Dragging something red and blue.

  Andy shook his head.

  “What, Barclay?”

  Thinking. No, it can’t be! That’s crazy.

  But Andy saw the red sneakers, the cute Good Guy sneakers. And the blue overalls. And the man was holding the doll by the hair, by the brilliant red hair that made Andy sick.

  It can’t be, he thought. Why would he have a Good Guy doll? And what is he doing with it? It can’t be.

  Shelton backed away, shaking his head.

  “Company—right, hut!” Shelton yelled.

  The cadets started moving, marching away from the armory.

  Andy looked over his shoulder, watching the man disappear, taking the doll behind the building.

  “Snap out of it!” Whitehurst said.

  Andy kept glancing over his shoulder.

  He remembered the clouds from before, the sudden thunderhead.

  It’s clear now, he thought, nice and clear.

  Cochrane was gone, behind the building. The doll was gone.

  Andy looked ahead. It can’t be, he thought.

  It’s over.

  I ended it . . . years ago.

  He felt the sun now, and there was no wind. And he almost believed that he was right.

  13

  Well, if it isn’t Patton himself!

  Yeah, thought Fast Al, looking at the pretend officer walking toward the garbage cans. What we got here is a regular three star Boy Scout leader.

  Al jiggled a can of garbage into the back of his garbage truck. The dumpster was full, and there were cans around it, all of them full. The slop from the kitchen smelled disgusting.