Doll Face

17

When he got the door closed, Lex went down to his knees on the floor, trying to tell himself he had not seen any of it. He tried to make himself believe that none of it was any more real than what Soo-Lee and he had seen in the diner. But he didn’t believe it. He found he couldn’t believe it because Danielle had been murdered and that was no fantasy. He’d seen it. It was real.

Or was it?

That was one of the questions that kept dogging him. Had the idea been planted in their heads? Had it been shown to them with three-dimensional authenticity so that their overcharged imaginations and fears would do the rest?

He kneeled there, just breathing, listening to Creep and Soo-Lee doing the same. Neither of them had really spoken since Danielle was murdered and he had the feeling they never would, not until he did. Not until he oiled their jaws for them and got them working again.

There was a terrible taste in his mouth, rusty and coppery but with an acidic sort of bite to it like tart fruit. He’d never tasted anything like it before and he was almost certain it was the taste of fear, a combination of chemicals the body secreted during times of incredible stress. A sort of adrenaline/hormonal/pheromonal/endorphin-laced cocktail and this was its by-product, a sickening flavor.

He was going to remark on it to the others, but he didn’t dare.

He just didn’t dare.

His scalp was greasy with sweat that ran from his hairline and stung his eyes. It felt almost cool against his hot face. He was exhausted. They were all exhausted… but the idea of anything like sleep was absurd. You didn’t take a nap in the cave of a man-eating tiger and where they were was no doubt much more dangerous.

“I think we’re safe for now,” he finally said.

In the dimness of the house, Creep just nodded his head. “Danielle’s dead. She’s… dead, man.”

“There was nothing we could do,” Soo-Lee said.

Creep laughed sarcastically. “Well, there’s one thing we could have done and that was not coming here in the first place.”

“And how could we have avoided that?”

“Chazz shouldn’t have brought us here.”

Lex sighed. “Creep… it isn’t Chazz’s fault.”

“He took that fucking shortcut.”

“Which nine times out of ten would have been just fine. It had nothing to do with him. This… all this is completely out of his control. I don’t know who’s behind this, but whoever they are, they have a way of rigging things, making things happen. We were brought here for a purpose.”

“To be killed?”

Lex just shook his head. “I don’t know. There’s no way any of us can know until we stop running and start thinking.” He studied their faces in the shadows. “This entire place is some kind of imitation. It’s not a real town. It’s either a projection of one or some kind of… of physical hallucination we’re all sharing.”

“Feels pretty real to me,” Creep said.

“It is real. But it’s only real because someone or something is reinforcing that. When they stop, it’ll stop.”

“And how can you know that?”

“I can’t. It’s pure gut feeling and for now that’ll have to be enough. Unless, of course, you have a better explanation.”

Creep didn’t. He just sat there silently, brooding and scared. “So you think this place is a sort of time loop or alternate reality, something along those lines?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

“I noticed it from the first,” Soo-Lee said. “Everything looked so… artificial. I remember thinking it was like a movie set, some director’s idea of what a small town should look like, you know? Everything was too perfect, too planned, too… seamless, if that makes any sense.”

It did, Lex figured. “It’s very sterile, isn’t it? Like the memory of a small town seen through rose-colored glasses. Not the real town, but a synthetic, glossy, nostalgic too-good-to-be-true sort of town in a Normal Rockwell kind of way.”

“Yes, like a set,” Soo-Lee said.

“Exactly. I thought the same thing when we went into that diner—it was exactly what I thought a diner should be from images programmed into my mind from old movies and TV shows, Rockwell paintings and postcards. Everything was perfect just like the town itself.” He thought that over and felt it was the key somehow. “I mean, hell, there’s not any cars to crowd the streets. There’s not even cracks in the sidewalks or weeds in yards. Nothing that would upset the perfect balance.”

“And what does that mean?” Creep asked.

“It means,” Soo-Lee said, “that as weird as it sounds, it’s like we’re trapped in somebody’s dream or memory of a town. Not the real Stokes, but the way somebody wanted it to be or imagined it to be in their own self-deluded little way.”

“Okay, now I’m more scared than ever,” Creep said.

Lex told him how when they were in the diner, when they refused to accept the reality of it as offered, it changed. It became a darker and dirtier place, an ugly place complete with corpses and rats and flies. “It’s like our disbelief pissed somebody off. Oh, you don’t like this? I can make it worse.”

“That’s when the door disappeared,” Soo-Lee said.

“Yes, exactly. This puppet master we’re talking about changed the look of the diner, but it couldn’t stop us from escaping. The door disappeared, but it was still there. We walked through it, even though its image was gone. So there are limits to the power of this other.”

Creep was getting it now. He sat up. His eyes looked almost brighter in the darkness. “That means if we found where we came in, we might be able to get out. We might not see the road but it’s probably there.”

“Maybe.”

Soo-Lee nodded. “But finding it will be the problem. This town is a maze and I think we’ve all noticed that. I don’t think we’ll be allowed to find it. This other will confuse us and get us lost. And it’ll throw more doll people at us. Anything to stop us from getting away.”

“But if we could get there.”

“Even if we got there, we might not know we were there,” she said.

Creep slumped down again.

“Everything we’ve done since hitting that thing with the van to arriving here has been carefully planned, I think,” Lex told them. “We’re right where it wants us to be. We’ve been carefully herded. It threw certain things at us that would make us run and offered us shelter—this house—when it knew we couldn’t run anymore. What we need to start thinking seriously about is acting rather than reacting. We have to start taking some charge of our destiny or this other will run us ragged and then destroy us with those doll things.”

He wasn’t really sure how much on target he or Soo-Lee were with their thinking, but it felt right. Judging by what they had experienced and seen thus far, it seemed to fit. It was like a game, like they were being manipulated by the imagination and whims of a cruel child.

“So when do we started acting?” Creep asked

“When they throw something else at us,” Soo-Lee said. “We can leave this house right now. We can run in circles, but in the end we’ll only be reacting again. What we need to do is wait for what is thrown at us next and overcome it. That would be the first step, I think.”

Lex loved that woman. Her instincts and intuition were right on target every time.

Creep said, “When do you think it’ll start again?”

“Any minute now,” Soo-Lee said. “I can almost feel it beginning.”