Doll Face

5

“Oh, for godsake,” Ramona sighed.

She stepped forward and crouched down. She mumbled something under her breath about the poor guy being hurt and how she couldn’t believe everyone was acting like this. But despite her common sense, concern, and daring, they all sensed the hesitation in her words and the hesitation in her movements when she reached out to touch the body. It was like she was sticking her fingers under a shelf where an especially large spider had just crawled.

She grasped the wrist and pulled her hand away.

“See?” Lex said. “Maybe it’s an artificial limb or something.”

“Get it over with already,” Chazz snapped, getting frustrated and more than a little pissed-off—two of his most common moods—but not daring to come any closer.

Ramona felt like a kid on a dare.

The others were waiting for her to touch the body again as if it was some dead thing they’d found stuffed in a sewer pipe. Sucking in a breath between clenched teeth, she touched the wrist again. Lex was right: it wasn’t skin. It was more like rubber or vinyl, oddly smooth and soft to the touch. She had an insane idea that she could have kneaded it in her fingers, pressed it into any shape she wanted.

She felt around, feeling ill in the pit of her belly, trying to find a pulse.

The skin of the wrist, if skin it was, had felt cold before but now it was feeling warm, practically hot with life. Then she found something else. Something that made her yank her hand away.

There was a clear seam between the hand and wrist.

It wasn’t a cut or an injury, it was a seam as if the hand and arm were some kind of prosthetics, artificial parts joined together. She turned to tell the others about it, but something happened that sealed her lips shut.

A siren.

She heard a siren.

But it wasn’t from any ambulance or police car. No, this was loud and cutting, a constant droning that rose and fell like a World War II-era air raid siren. It was a shocking, unnerving sort of sound as it reverberated through the streets, echoing across the dark little town, bouncing off rooftops and down narrow alleyways.

Danielle began to sob and nobody was accusing her of being a drama queen or a wimp; everyone was as scared as she was. They were rooted to the spot. Hands went up to ears as the droning grew louder and louder, but nobody bolted or ran because there was nowhere to bolt or run to.

Ramona herself was shaking.

The siren had a very primeval sound to it like the roaring of some prehistoric beast. Her mind vainly searched for an explanation, but there simply wasn’t one. It wasn’t a shift whistle or a fire siren. It was bigger than that, louder than that, more menacing than that.

“What the fuck?” Chazz cried out, but they could barely even hear him.

Then it cut out and the only indication that it had even been was the constant ringing in their ears like they’d just sat through a set with Metallica.

All of them were looking up toward the sky, the rooftops, maybe expecting something big, something really big to come ghosting down like a mother ship and abduct them in a beam of light.

Ramona heard a clicking.

Click-click, clicka-clicka-click.

It was coming from the man Chazz had run down. There was a weird clicking sound coming from him, coming from inside him. He started to tremble, then shake, thumping and thrashing on the pavement. He reminded her of one of the dummies from that old Herbie Hancock “Rockit” video… it was like his brain was going haywire. His legs were kicking, his hands slapping, his body twisting, his face hammering against the pavement.

She pulled away from him, her guts white with fear.

Then he started to rise.

Still making that weird clicking noise, he got to his knees. His head was bent over to his right shoulder, his hair hanging off to the side as if his scalp had been nearly peeled free. His spine was horribly twisted, his hips nearly sideways, one arm obviously broken as was one leg.

He stood up.

He was still facing away from them, balancing himself on his good leg, the other horribly crippled, broken in several places, the foot jutting out at an unnatural angle. As he stood, Ramona heard those clicking sounds. And as freakish as they were, they were nothing in comparison to the series of creaking and cracking noises as he pulled himself up uneasily.

Lex said, “Listen, mister, you better stay down. The ambulance is coming and—”

That’s when the guy turned his head and looked at them.

He was still facing away from them… but his head swiveled completely around on his neck until it was facing backward. His face was a contorted thing of some white putty-like material, not a face at all but a mask. He had no eyes, only empty sockets where they might be placed.

Danielle screamed and she wasn’t the only one.

Creep, Lex, and Soo-Lee almost went over in a heap as they tried to backpedal away and got tangled in each other’s legs. Danielle folded up and went to her knees. Chazz slowly backed away.

Ramona fought to her feet. The flashlight shook in her hand, creating a strobing image of the broken man as he looked back at them. With more groaning and minute snapping, he turned completely to face them, bringing his head around.

It had to be a mask.

It was just some guy wearing a mask, she thought, but it rang hollow. He turned his fucking head completely around. He started in her direction, dragging himself forward, his head bouncing on his broken neck. His face was no mask because masks could not grin and he was grinning at her with a lewd, puppet-like smile, making a grating sound in his throat as he tried to speak.

He held out one hand to her, the smashed one, and it looked like a bloodless, crushed starfish.

In all the commotion, no one heard the door of the van slam shut.