Doll Face

32

The clocks were going off.

Ramona came awake in a panic there in the darkness of the clock shop. She jumped and shook. Every damn clock in the place was ringing—grandfather clocks and cuckoo clocks, anniversary clocks and alarm clocks. BING, BING, BING! BONG! BONG! BONG! The shop was echoing with a constant ringing and gonging and shrilling. The effect was not just startling, but shocking.

It meant something, she knew that much.

In fact, clasping her hands over her ears, and calming somewhat, she knew it could only possibly mean one thing: the Controller wanted her awake. It—for she had trouble thinking of this significant other as a human being—did not want her resting. It did not want her getting sleep. It wanted her worn out and on edge because the games would work so much better that way if she were physically and mentally exhausted.

But there was more to it than that.

She was bound and determined to track this nightmare to its source, which was somewhere to the east and that could not be allowed. The Controller had tossed Frankendoll at her and then rained mannequin parts down on her. It would stop at nothing to scare her, confuse her, hurt her, and possibly even kill her.

And these were things Ramona very much needed to keep in mind.

The intelligence behind all this was not only twisted but sly and cunning and extremely dangerous.

But those clocks, those goddamn clocks…

Ramona sat there, knowing she had to do something as the clanging noise seemed to fill her skull and hurt her ears and even make her molars ache, if such a thing were realistically possible. It would drive her right out of her head and no doubt that was the point.

Without really thinking or planning, she got to her feet quickly, more agitated and pissed off than anything. “IT WON’T WORK!” she shouted above the racket. “IT WON’T WORK! DO YOU HEAR ME, YOU DIRTY SONOFABITCH? IT WON’T FUCKING WORK! I’M COMING FOR YOU AND YOU CAN’T FUCKING STOP ME!”

She was expecting her defiance to bring hell down on her perhaps in the form of a rampaging doll army… but that didn’t happen. What did happen was so subtle she nearly missed it. There was a change around her in the very air of the clock shop as if the atmospheric pressure either increased radically or decreased. The hairs stood up on the back of her neck and her ears popped as if she were on a plane gaining altitude.

Then… the clocks stopped.

Each and every one of them ceased their ringing and gonging. The silence that replaced the cacophony was practically loud.

Ramona stood there, waiting, breathing, feeling arrogant now and almost daring the Controller to try something else because she was learning things and she was ready to fight.

But there was nothing.

Not right away.

Don’t sit here and wait for it, she told herself. Don’t give it time to manufacture fresh horrors. These things must take energy so don’t give it the opportunity it badly needs, do not play into its hands.

Wishing she had a flashlight because the store was so unbearably dark, she moved around the counter, stepping carefully into the back room, which was as black as a buried coffin. There had to be a door here. A back way. She stood there, trying to be unpredictable. That was very important and she knew it. She had to keep the Controller guessing so she turned on her heel and went back out into the shop to the front door.

She peered out into the dark streets.

They were empty, completely untenanted, and in their emptiness was their threat. She didn’t see any of those doll faces out here. There were still sticky smears on the glass from their sucking mouths and Ramona could not pretend that the very idea of that didn’t disturb her greatly.

She pushed open the door.

Still holding on to it, she took two steps out and let her instinct make the decision for her. It told her to go out the back way. She turned on her heel again and went back inside. She dug out her cigarettes and lit one up. The flame of her Bic turned the shadows into living, sentient entities around her that slid along the walls and crouched in the corners and crept over the faces of clocks, so damn many clocks.

She stood there by the display case and smoked.

She could almost feel the Controller reaching out for her, trying to figure out just what the hell she was doing. But being that she didn’t know herself, second-guessing her would not be easy. Not easy at all. Her instinct and woman’s intuition were supercharged and she knew it. They practically made her skin tingle and her blood feel like it had become hot steam.

She was trying to feel for the Controller herself.

There would be something in the air when it decided to strike, when it sent a new horror to torment her with. It, again, would be subtle, but it would be there and she had to be ready to sense it. That was the key.

But there was nothing.

She took a few last drags from her cigarette and tossed it. It struck the face of a clock in a shower of sparks, the glowing remains of it smoldering on the hardwood floor. Let this goddamn place burn down, she thought. She stepped into the back room again and flicked her Bic. It was pretty much as she expected the back room of a clock shop would be and that was no surprise. Everything in Stokes was as you thought it would be. In the flickering light of her Bic, she saw grandfather clocks with their guts hanging out, dissected cuckoo clocks, and workbenches strewn with the anatomy of timepieces: pendulums and cam wheels and main springs, gears and cogs and pulleys.

Lot of the same stuff the doll people seemed to be made of, she thought, not missing the significance.

There was another door beyond the benches and shelves of parts.

The lighter burned her fingers so she had to let the flame go out. Carefully again, she moved among the clocks and workbenches, banging her hip on a table. She reached out in the darkness for the door… and it wasn’t there.

Shit.

She could feel something in the air again. It had shifted. Something was about to happen and she felt a shiver spread across the back of her arms. It felt like her guts had pulled up into her chest as if they were seeking the protection of her rib cage. Her mouth went dry. Her eyes wide. She fumbled and nearly dropped the lighter. She flicked it.

Jesus.

There were several doll people standing around her in a loose circle. They appeared to be women. They were entirely naked like undressed mannequins, made of some smooth white material, their breasts mere buds lacking nipples. They were bald, tiny hairline cracks running over their gleaming craniums, their eyes black holes. Their mouths were moving, opening and closing as if they needed to say something.

One of them made a sort of cooing sound and reached its white fingers out for her. Ramona slapped the hand away and it broke free from the wrist and clattered to the floor. All of their mouths instantly went wide, expanding into black chasms, and they screamed with a high strident wailing.

“NO!” Ramona shrieked at them as they all came at her, reaching for her.

There was no quarter. As their cold hands seized her, she went wild like a fighting cat, clawing and kicking as they scratched at her, pulling out locks of her hair, pressing in, screaming in her face. She battered down two of them, punched the head off a third and when another grabbed her from behind, she let out a rebel yell of sorts and pivoted, snatching the doll woman’s arms and flinging her with everything she had. The doll woman shattered against the wall. She was in the dark with them, trying to get free, bumping into workbenches and shelves, and fighting the women with everything she had.

Then the wailing stopped.

She dug the Bic from her pocket and flicked it. The shadows jumped away, the orange flame reflected on the walls. The doll women were gone. Ramona turned this way and that, seeking them out, her mind teetering on the edge of madness. It felt like an open bleeding wound.

Then behind her: breathing.

And a giggling.

Then something hit her and she was driven to her knees, bright purple dots blazing in her head. She felt herself hit the floor. She felt herself going out cold and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

No more than a few minutes had passed when she opened her eyes.

In her mind, a voice was saying, What? What? What?

Confusion. Anxiety. Shock. She tried to concentrate, to bring herself out of the fog… but it was slow. She’d taken a good hit to the back of the head. She knew that much. And she knew she was in terrible danger… but the blow to her head combined with exhaustion made her loopy, her body thick and numb. She opened her eyes and they shut almost immediately. There had been a dream, it seemed, a dream she was still dreaming… something on her chest, a weight, a movement, a suction.

It was no dream.

There was something on her chest and she could feel a cold little mouth suckling her left breast greedily.

With a cry she sat up, knocking whatever it was clear with a sweep of her hand. She heard something clatter to the floor. Whatever it was, it was crawling toward her now. It made a slobbering, gurgling sort of noise that made waves of nausea roll through her belly.

The Bic.

It was still clenched in her left hand. She flicked it and the room grew bright. She saw the thing scuttling over the floor to her. It looked like some swollen infant, hairless, its flesh bleached white. It had no eyes, not so much as a nose, just a grinning black aperture for a mouth that was wet and shining. It moved with spasmodic jerking motions like some jack-in-the-box from hell as it got closer and closer. Its breathing—because, yes, it was certainly breathing—was clogged and phlegmatic.

Ramona was on her feet by then, the lighter trembling in her hand.

She backed away and hit the wall. No, not the wall, the door. She could feel the knob digging into her back. As that twitching, hungry little horror was almost on her, she fumbled the door open and the moonlight flooded in.

That’s when the thing leaped.

Like a jumping spider, it came right off the floor in a rolling white blur and she kicked out at it with everything she had, catching it dead-on. It broke apart into pieces that continued to squirm and rattle.

But by then she was out the door, running and trying to button her shirt back up, not sure if she was even sane anymore.