Doll Face

8

“Now what?” Creep said when they finally came to a stop and caught their breath. “Now what the hell do we do?”

“We just try and mellow out,” Lex told him.

“Oh, wonderful plan.”

Soo-Lee shook her head. “Just shut up. We need to get a grip here and quit panicking so we can figure things out.”

“I just want to go home,” Danielle said.

Which was about the tenth time now that she had said that. The sound of her voice was starting to go right up Creep’s spine. He had a mad desire to slap her right across the face. He would never do such a thing, at least he didn’t think so, but he wanted to real bad. And that was partially out of rage, frustration, and annoyance, but mostly because her insipid weakness reminded him so much of his own.

They had taken off in a blind run after that shit came down with the crazy man. Creep still wasn’t sure what to make of that. Had he really seen it? Yes, yes, of course he had. It had taken something real ugly to get them all running in the first place and it had been ugly all right. But where were they now? He wasn’t even sure. They had run down the street and around the corner and kept running. They were two or three streets away from the van now.

Away from Chazz. No loss there.

But also away from Ramona and Creep had a real thing for her. He hadn’t known her before tonight. He knew Chazz. Christ, he was the guy who fixed Chazz’s laptop after the idiot locked it up downloading porn. Creep did a lot of work for the boys on the team and that’s how he had hooked up with Chazz. Ramona was Chazz’s squeeze, but they barely tolerated each other and he knew for a fact that Chazz was sleeping with at least three other girls. And he was almost sure that Ramona knew it, too.

What was her thing? Did she dig abusive relationships? Maybe. Some girls were like that.

Chazz had thrown the whole thing together. Lex and Soo-Lee, he and Ramona, and Creep. They caught Green Day at the Garden. Danielle was some chick Ramona knew, so they brought her along as Creep’s blind date. It hadn’t worked so well. She gave him the cold shoulder and he thought she was an idiot. She was strictly the girly cheerleader type that you had to treat like a princess just to get a freaking hand-job on the fifth date.

Not like Ramona.

Ramona was petite with long black hair, great cheekbones and big dark eyes. Kind of olive-skinned like a Native American. And fierce. God, she was fierce and smart and in-charge. She made his blood boil.

“Let’s just wait here a bit,” Lex said. “If things are cool, we’ll go back and look for Ramona and Chazz. My guess is that they’re hiding out, though. They probably won’t come up for air until the police get here.”

“Shouldn’t they have been here by now?” Danielle said.

Score one for the dizzy blonde, Creep thought.

“Soon,” Lex said.

“Sure,” Soo-Lee agreed, although it was obvious she didn’t believe it for a minute.

“They’re not here because they don’t know where here is,” Creep said, which only got him stony silence.

He peered down the street and saw only darkness.

The glass fronts of shops reflected back cool moonlight. Shadows spilled out over the walk in murky puddles. He had no reason to believe there was any immediate danger down there, hiding and waiting to leap out at them… yet, he was certain of it. He could feel that dread certainty crawling inside his guts like looping worms.

They were in danger.

Incredible danger.

He could feel it moving around them in the darkness like the cold coils of a snake. It was circling them, pressing in ever closer, grinning with long white teeth and watching them with hungry, ebon eyes.

Just stop it. Just stop that shit.

He swallowed it down before he lost it, before he really lost it, and did something stupid like running again.

But Christ, whatever was out there—and he figured the broken man was but a finger of it—it was almost like he could feel it reaching out for him, wanting to wrap bony digits around his throat.

“I don’t like this shit,” he said. “We’re like sitting targets or something.”

Soo-Lee sighed. “Calm down. We called 911. The police and ambulance should be here soon. We should be hearing their sirens anytime now.”

Creep just rolled his eyes.

He didn’t like this shit.

Soo-Lee was easy on the eyes, exotic and Asian and all that, but she was like some extension of Lex and he didn’t like that at all. They could pretend there wasn’t something very messed-up about this situation, but they were wrong. They could try and rationalize it all they wanted, but Creep’s fucking Spidey-Sense was tingling. In fact, it felt positively electrical. His stomach was hollow and his scalp felt like it wanted to crawl right off the back of his head. He had the most disturbing feeling that they had now entered the Twilight Zone.

And if he needed more evidence, then that man… that mannequin… that thing they had run down pretty much clinched it.

Danielle had pressed herself up against the plate glass windows of a coffee shop now like a spider flattening itself on a brick to suck up some heat.

Her entire body was shaking.

She isn’t goddamn helping, he thought. She isn’t helping at all.

And again, he knew it was because she was acting on the outside the way he was feeling on the inside.

“Danielle,” Soo-Lee said in a very relaxed, calming voice. “It’s going to be okay. The police will be coming soon. Then we can get out of here. Just try to take it easy.”

But she wasn’t taking it easy.

She was shaking so bad she was rattling the window.

“It’s gonna come for us. It’s gonna find us. It’s gonna kill us,” she said, her voice high and squeaking like she was eight years old again. And maybe she was at that.

Lex walked down to the corner and Creep followed him. Soo-Lee made to join them, but Danielle gripped her arm like a little girl who was afraid of the dark.

Creep looked down the street. “I think someone should go take a look for Ramona and Chazz. What if they’re hurt or something?”

Lex nodded. “I’ll flip you for it. I don’t want us both going. I want one of us to stay with the girls.”

Creep liked that. It was the kind of thing a hero said in an old movie. One of those silly Hollywood clichés. But he was okay with it. He swallowed down his fear. “You stay, Lex. I’ll go. You’re a cooler head than I am. I’ll just make them more nervous.”

Lex didn’t argue the fact; it was obvious.

“I’ll take a quick run down there and run right back.”

“Okay. Be careful.”

Creep took off. He was surprised he had the guts to do this at all. Was it Ramona? Yeah, he figured it was. He had an adolescent fantasy brewing in the back of his mind where he rescued her and she was grateful.

Very, very grateful.

He went down to the block where they’d turned the corner. God, the shadows were everywhere, so black, so reaching. They were strung like knitted yarn. He got to the last storefront, some sort of bank with gold leaf lettering in the windows. Nice and archaic. He peered around the corner.

His heart was pounding and his knees felt weak.

He could see the van down there. Moonlight glimmered off the windshield. One of the doors was open. There was nothing between but glistening wet pavement.

No sign of Chazz or Ramona.

Nothing at all moved down there.

He pulled out his Nokia and called Chazz’s cell. He got his voice mail. He texted him, but got nothing in reply. Either he didn’t have his phone with him or it was dead or he was—

Don’t get going with that shit.

They could have been behind the van, he supposed. That was possible.

No. He wasn’t going to go down there. Too risky. He’d checked on them and that’s all he’d intended on doing. Lex was probably right: they were hiding. Yet… his stomach felt light and fluttery. If it had wings, it could have flown right out of his belly.

The doll man was nowhere to be seen.

Weird. It was all so damn weird.

He peered back around the corner to make sure Lex and the others were still there, they were, then looked back toward the van… except there was no van. It was gone. The moonlight was shining off the pavement where it had been.

Creep blinked his eyes like they did in movies when they couldn’t trust what they were seeing, but the van was still gone. He was confused, disoriented. Reality seemed to be unwinding like a ball of twine. He peered back around the corner, thinking of calling out to Lex, then turned and looked again.

The van was there.

What kind of fucked-up shit is this?

He ran back down until he reached Lex. He leaned up against a building, panting. “They’re not down there. I don’t see anything but the van.”

And maybe I don’t even see that.

Lex sighed. “Well, we can’t wait for ‘em. We have to find some place to hide or a vehicle to get us out of here… unless we chance the van.”

Creep swallowed. “I don’t like that idea.”

“Then we need a car.”

“Man, have you seen a single car? A truck? A bicycle for that matter?”

“No.”

Creep was going to elaborate further on that but Soo-Lee called, “Lex!”

They ran back to her, expecting trouble. Expecting at the very least that Danielle was really losing it or having a breakdown or something. But that wasn’t it at all.

“Look,” Soo-Lee said.

At the end of the block across the street, lights had come on.