Doll Face (29 page)

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 like 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.

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.