Ante Mortem (17 page)

“
Sarah—”

“
Go upstairs and look if you don’t believe me!” Sarah yelled, slamming a clenched fist against her thigh.

Momma gaped at her, as if shocked by the vehemence of her outburst. Sarah wiped at the tears spilling down her cheeks and fixed her mother with a pleading look. “Please, just go look.”

Laurie shrieked and slammed her fists against the tray. Momma turned and pulled the baby from the highchair, shushing the child with a series of half-hearted coos. She turned back to Sarah and scowled. “Alright,” she said, settling the baby on her hip. “Show me the doll.”

Sarah sighed with relief and led the way up the stairs. Momma would see she was not lying once she saw Mr. Roar’s tattered mane and the chewed bits of Barbie doll. She bounded up the last few steps and opened the door to her room.

“
Over there,” Sarah said, pointing to the rocker.

Momma brushed past her and strode across the room. She stopped in front of the rocking chair and looked down at the doll, a confused frown creasing her haggard face. She turned to Sarah and crooked a finger at her. “Come here.”

Sarah hesitated. Even with Momma at her side, she didn’t want to go in there.

“
Now
, Sarah.”

Sarah gulped and took a tentative step into the room.

Momma’s patience must have reached its limit for she stalked across the room, grabbed Sarah by the upper arm and marched her to the rocker. With a small shove, Momma released her and pointed to the doll. “What am I supposed to be looking at, exactly?”

Sarah looked at the doll and blanched. Its mouth was closed, the plastic fragments and bits of fluff nowhere to be found. She flipped the pink material covering the doll’s hand.

The hairbrush was gone.

“
Well?”

Tears welled in Sarah’s eyes. “I... it was just here,” she said, dropping to her hands and knees. She tilted her head and peered beneath the rocker, her hand sweeping the floor under the seat.

Nothing there.

Standing up, she plucked the toy from the chair and shook it, half-expecting the evidence to fall from the folds of the satin dress. Setting the doll back in the chair, Sarah looked up at her mother, her expression pleading for the woman to understand.

Momma sighed and swung Laurie around to her other hip. “Sarah, you’ve got a wonderful imagination—and that’s a good thing to have—but you’re really taking it too far this time. Honestly, girl. A doll that eats toys?” Momma shook her head.

“
It’s not my imagination!”

“
Look, sweetheart, I’ve really got to get those boxes unpacked,” Momma said, turning to leave. She paused at the threshold and fixed Sarah with a stern look. “No more games.”

Sarah did not trust herself to answer, so she said nothing. She looked at the floor, tears of frustration coursing down her face.

“
I’ll call you when lunch is ready, okay?”

Sarah cast a sullen glance in her mother’s direction and nodded.

Momma turned and exited the room, her footsteps growing fainter as she made her way down the staircase. Sarah sniffled and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “I’m not making it up,” she grumbled, crossing her arms over her chest. She turned her head and glared at the doll.

“
I hate you,” Sarah spat, her eyes narrowing with revulsion. “I wish I’d never found that stupid box. I....”

Her words drifted off as an idea began to form in her mind. The box still sat in the attic. She could put the doll back inside, lock it up tight and tuck it away behind the stack of newspapers, just like she’d found it. Surely the latches would hold the doll in place until Daddy got around to discarding all the stuff up there.

She would just have to make sure the box made it to Daddy’s junk pile.

Yeah.

A grin found its way onto Sarah’s face. She looked at the doll and, for once, didn’t feel quite so afraid. She scooped up the pants and shirt she had dropped earlier and quickly changed into them. If she hurried, she could…

“
Sarah?”

Momma’s voice startled her. She flinched and turned towards the door. “What?”

“
Come here.”

Sarah groaned and trudged across the room. She peeked around the doorframe to find Momma standing in the hallway, a stack of boxes balanced in her hands.

“
What is it, Momma?”

Momma set the boxes on the floor and turned to Sarah. “I need to put the blankets up,” she said, opening the door to the linen closet. “Laurie’s downstairs in her swing. Keep an eye on her ‘til I’m done, okay?”

Sarah twiddled her fingers. Now that she had a plan, she was anxious to get started, but she couldn’t very well sneak into the attic with Momma standing within easy view of the staircase. “Okay,” she sighed.

“
Thanks, hon.”

Sarah headed down the stairs and into the living room. The baby swing sat in the corner of the room,
Rock-a-bye Baby
chiming from the mobile mounted to the top of the frame. Laurie appeared to be dozing. Her eyes fluttered open as Sarah passed and then drifted closed again.

“
Aw, she don’t even need watchin’,” Sarah muttered. She moved a box of Momma’s romance books from the couch and flopped onto the cushions. Tucking a throw pillow behind her head, she leaned back and waited. The minutes crept by. Sarah’s eyes began to droop.

I hope she hurries.

Sarah had not realized how tired she really was until she sat down. She sat up a little straighter, stifling a yawn with the back of her hand and trying to blink the creeping lassitude from her eyes. Sarah did not like taking naps, and she certainly didn’t want to fall asleep before taking care of that doll.

The rhythmic click of the swing seemed to keep time with the lullaby’s tinkling refrain. Sarah leaned against the pillow and yawned again. Her eyes drifted shut even as she warned herself not to fall asleep, too tired to protest when Momma lifted her from the couch and carried her up to her room.

Sarah could not breathe. She struggled against the pressing mass on her chest, her lungs burning with the need for oxygen. The weight shifted, allowing her to suck in a couple of wheezing breaths before settling painfully against her sternum. Her eyes cracked open, widening at the sight of Amanda Stilton’s bruised and bitten face.

“
I wish you hadn’t opened the box,” Amanda said, her voice tinged with regret.

Sarah arched her back, trying to shift the girl’s knee from her chest. Amanda clamped her hands around Sarah’s upper arms and pushed herself up, dropping her other knee into Sarah’s stomach. “I didn’t wanna hurt anybody,” the girl said, her blackened mouth twisting into a macabre frown. “I wanted to stay asleep. But then you woke me up and—.”

Sarah tried rolling over, hoping to dislodge the girl, but Amanda’s grip held fast. Gasping for air, Sarah’s eyes rolled in her head.

“—
and I’m so very hungry,” Amanda said, leaning forward.

Sarah’s eyes bulged as Amanda’s teeth locked onto her throat, tearing through skin and cartilage with the ferocity of a starving jackal. Pain rippled through her body as the girl jerked her head to the side and ripped a chunk of flesh free. Sarah’s arms flailed—more out of instinct than any conscious effort on her part—and landed a blow to Amanda’s ribs. The girl toppled from her perch and rolled onto the bed. Sarah wheezed through lungs filling fast with blood and tilted her head towards her attacker.

The wooden doll stared back at her, a bloody hunk of meat clenched between its jaws.

Sarah’s vision narrowed as the doll began to chew. In a bemused haze, she watched the stilted limbs bend and flex. The doll’s little hand clamped onto the comforter and pulled, awkwardly hauling itself across the bed, its eyes blazing yellow.

The cupid’s-bow mouth clacked open, and Sarah’s world went dark.

The grating creak of metal on metal pulled Sarah from an endless sleep. Her eyes snapped open, perceived nothing but an impenetrable blackness, and drifted closed again. She hoped the noise would stop soon. She wanted to rest, to return to the peaceful, dreamless nothing of eternal slumber. The alternative was pain.

Pain, and a feral hunger that burned from the inside out.

Another metallic screech pierced the inky confines of Sarah’s mind, followed by a muted pop. Brilliant, white light punched through the darkness, stinging her eyes behind the slumber-laden lids. In the pit of her stomach, the hunger—so long-repressed by the cold comfort of sleep—stirred to life, burning through her limbs like battery acid.

“
Wow, what a cool doll!”

Sarah’s eyes cracked open, her half-lidded gaze staring into the freckled face of a chubby red-haired girl. The girl reached into the velvet lined box, propped Sarah up and shined a flashlight in her face. “I think I’ll call you Casey,” she said, running a stubby finger down Sarah’s cracked cheek. “Do ya like that name?”

Sarah’s vision blurred and then snapped into focus, the glassy blue eyes burning yellow with hunger. Her mouth sprang open, the ache in her stomach blossoming into a relentless desire to consume. Only one thing could quell her appetite and stop the searing pain…

Flesh.

…
And the red-haired girl seemed to have plenty of it.

* * * *

Fetching Narissa

David Chrisom

Narissa had no idea that her campus was a hunting ground.

Even if she had been warned, she would have called the students’ rumors of “hauntings” mere fantasy. She did not believe in ghosts. Quite the contrary, the halls of Boston’s Mass College of Art were infested by cunning creatures so ordinary in daily appearance that one might have passed one by and never given it a second look.

Certainly, the odds are great that you yourself have looked a Fetch in its face at one time or another. You would remember the honeyed smell of almonds that pervades its breath.

Narissa simply had no idea. Her head was lost in the clouds before she ever learned of such abhorrent creatures as the Fetch.

She was a success in her first year, passing with honors in every class. During her second semester, on the last Monday in January, Narissa decided to skip art history class. This led to missing her English class the same afternoon and ditching an anatomy class every art major was expected to take.

The girl rose each morning that week, dressed in drab clothes to keep the cold off her skin, slipped her backpack through her arms and walked from her cramped sublet to the subway. Instead of riding the T to her stop on Huntington Avenue, which dropped her off at the front steps of the school, she calmly exited the train at the Copley shops station.

By the time the train moved on to Huntington, Narissa stood at a counter in the food court. She ordered a low-fat cranberry-nut muffin and a hot chocolate. She ate her breakfast, wandering past the colossal window displays for Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior.
How exciting it must be on the photo shoots with the exotic models in Morocco and Aruba
, she imagined.

Narissa longed to be anyplace but dreary Boston on a frigid day.

After she finished the muffin and chocolate, she strolled through Borders bookstore. She would live in a bookstore if it were legal; she experienced an innate tranquility when she surrounded herself with stacks of books. The anticipation of reading a new novel was sometimes better than the actual story that leapt off the page.