The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Volume 19

JOEL KNIGHT Calico Black, Calico Blue

IT gave him A bit of a fright when he saw it. Having had a particularly objectionable day at the office, and navigated his way up three flights of stairs due to the inactivity of the lift, it was, in all honesty, the last thing he had expected to see. It was rested against his front door at a slight angle due to the pile of the doormat: a child's doll; not one of those modern things that cry and need their nappies changing, but a china doll, the kind he always thought of as being quintessential Victoriana. It was wearing a blue calico dress and tiny shoes with tinier buckles. Above painted rosy cheeks its eyes were black and dull. He picked the thing up and held it. There was something strange about the hair: it was very fine, and more akin to the strands of a cobweb than any imitation of a child's head of hair. He brought the doll into the flat and left it on the table in the hall whilst he found pen and paper. With its legs dangling over the edge of the tabletop it did actually look remarkably realistic. He wondered to whom it belonged; obviously to a resident of the flats, or to a younger relative or visitor, as whoever had left it would had to have gained access to the building using the security code. He wrote a very brief message — CHILD'S DOLL FOUND. PLEASE CONTACT DAVID HARNECK. FLAT 12 — leaving his telephone number underneath. On his way to work the following morning, he pinned the note to the board in the entrance hall: the doll itself he had moved to the spare room.

It was a woman's voice. There was a trace of an accent that he could not place.

"You have found my doll?"

The telephone had been ringing as he entered the flat, and he stood in the hallway, slightly out of breath.

"Yes. It was outside my front door," he replied.

"Thank you so much. I have been very worried."

"That's quite alright." He began attempting to manoeuvre himself out of his jacket, whilst balancing the handset between his shoulder and cheek. He was making rather a hash of it.

"I hope she has not caused you any trouble?"

"No, no trouble at all," he replied.

"I will come up for her. I live at number nine."

With no further word he heard a faint click, and then the line was dead. He replaced the handset, and disentangled himself from the jacket, consciously leaving his shoes on. He had barely got to the kitchen to fetch himself a glass of water when the doorbell rang, once, then twice. He moved quickly into the hallway — stubbing the front of his shoe in a bump in the carpet in the process — and opened the front door. There was a woman in the hallway. She was standing a few feet back from the actual doorway at a distance that betrayed possible reticence, apprehension or over-politeness. She showed no sign of exertion, in spite of the fact that, given the amount of time elapsed since the telephone call and the doorbell sounding, she would had to have moved very quickly indeed. Her hands were neatly folded in front of her: her hair very long and dark: her skin pale, and imbued with a slight translucent quality. She was wearing an evening dress that was more than a little ill fitting. She was regarding him with very large eyes. Then she spoke:

"Mr David Harneck?"

"Yes," he replied.

"I believe you have found something of mine," she said.

That accent again: that which he had heard on the phone. He stood looking at her for a few moments, feeling a little out of sorts.

"You've come for the doll?" he said.

"For the doll, yes," she replied.

There was something slightly haughty about her manner, and yet, there was more to it than that. Regal, may have been a more adequate, if potentially over-generous description.

"Do you want to come in for a minute?" he said, instinctively.

"Thank you, no," came the response.

There was something so final about the statement that he knew there was nothing to be done by way of dissuasion.

"I have your doll here," he said. "It's in the spare room, I won't be a moment."

He left her in the doorway and went to retrieve the doll. It was, of course, exactly as he had left it — on top of the bookcase, but faced down, to afford less opportunity for it falling. When he returned to the front door with the doll in one hand he observed that she had moved hardly a muscle. Her eyes glinted when she saw the doll, and in the light from the hallway it seemed her eyes had changed colour, although of this he could not be sure. Her expression — hitherto one of utter earnestness — brightened: the ghost of a smile played across her lips.

"You are really most kind," she said. "She is such a silly thing, quite — but what is the word — strong-willed, is, I think you say."

She took the doll from him and held it, as would a child. It was an odd gesture, and one that did not exactly become a woman in her early thirties, as he presumed her to be. He chose to make light of her utterance about the doll possessing a strong will.

"She often wanders off then, does she?"

"Oh, yes," the woman replied. "She is full of mischief. I sometimes think she is not happy in our family."

To that, he had no response. The woman was obviously a little eccentric, and had carried too many traits — often endearing in a child — into her adult life that were best left behind or outgrown.

"You are most kind," she repeated. "Will you allow me to repay you for your kindness in some way?"

"I can assure you that's not necessary. It was nothing, really.'

"Then, perhaps," she said, "you would come to have a drink with me. I live at number nine. Not this evening, I'm afraid. I am busy this evening, for I have other guests, but shall we say tomorrow?"

He hesitated for a moment, and then something made him acquiesce.

"That would be very pleasant."

He held out his hand. She looked at it, and then turned. She still had the doll in her hand, dangling — though not limply — by her side.

"Come at eight-thirty," she said.

He watched her go, his hand still extended, feeling really rather foolish.

"What is your name?" he said.

But then there was nothing but an empty corridor.

The truth is that, throughout the afternoon of the following day, he seriously considered forgetting the whole thing. It would have appeared terribly impolite not to turn up having agreed to, but there had been something about the woman he had found a little disquieting. All that business with the doll had struck him as more than a bit peculiar: he could have quite done without it. And as for the evening dress, he assumed simply that she had been host to a soiree (she herself admitted that she was entertaining that evening.) But as he sat watching television a few hours after his encounter with her, it had occurred to him that number nine must have been one of the two flats — the other being number eight, by his reckoning — overlooked by his kitchen window. (The architecture of the apartment block was such that his flat formed an L-shape around one side of a central courtyard that only the ground floor flats had access to.) He had looked out of the kitchen window and observed that both flats — eight and nine — were in complete darkness. He thought no more about it at the time, but found it very difficult to get to sleep that night. Thoughts of the woman's skin, and its curious pellucid quality troubled him. He also thought a great deal about what would possess a woman to don an evening dress only to sit around in a darkened flat: and what manner of activity might become such a situation.

Upon leaving work he had all but made up his mind to stay in for the evening. That day was a Tuesday, and he was due to drive up to Manchester the following morning to attend a two-day conference. But something happened on the way home that made him change his mind. It was really rather strange. As he was driving down the Uxbridge Road just past the Shepherd's Bush roundabout he happened to pass an accident, or the aftermath of an accident, to be more precise. A car had mounted the pavement and ploughed straight into a lamppost. The bonnet was shaped like a concertina and steam was rising from the engine. There was a crowd of people gathered around the car, and an ambulance was approaching — its sirens flashing — from the opposite direction in which he himself was travelling. He made to pull over, and as he did so, the crowd around the car parted and he caught a glimpse of something — for he was now moving slow enough to do so — that gave him a bit of a start. It was a pair of bare feet, very pale, sticking out from the underside of the car. The soles of the feet were directly facing him as he looked, and the whole tableau reminded him of the early Renaissance painting with the battle, the fallen soldier and the skewed perspective. The crowd was milling around gesticulating, and a slightly plump ambulance man was approaching wearing a livid yellow visibility jacket.

He drove on, but found himself quite unable to forget what he had seen. It was not the first accident of its kind that he had been partial witness to: it was simply those feet. Why had the feet been bare? he kept asking himself. And to whom did they belong?

He was still thinking about it when he got home: and indeed, it was only after he had changed out of his work clothes and put on something more casual — having showered and shaved also — that he was able to occupy himself with any other thought. It was at that point that he found himself halfway out of the door, with a bottle of wine (purchased three days earlier, and unopened in the interim) in one hand and his front door key in the other.

He must have passed by the entrance to number nine countless times throughout his residence at the flats, but as he was now a visitor, it somehow afforded him a new perspective. There was no doormat, he observed, and the letterbox appeared to be slightly smaller than usual.

He rang the bell, and from very far away — almost at a distance that should have belied the size of the flat itself — he heard the sound of an electronic buzzer. He had for some reason almost expected the sound of a chime that would have befitted the stateliest of country residences — an entirely fanciful notion — and he could not help thinking that the sound the buzzer made was remarkably squalid.

After a few moments, the door opened, and the woman stood in the doorway. She was wearing a black silk shirt and very tight trousers that were almost riding breeches. Her eyelids looked very sleepy, and he noticed with some distaste that she had already been drinking. Her hair was tangled, and the colour was high in her cheeks.

"Mr David Harneck," she said.

The hallway behind her was completely dark, although he noticed that the wall to her immediate right had quite a considerable crack in it.

"David, please," he said.

"So good. I am glad you could come. Please."

She stood back and to one side a little. He entered the flat and was immediately struck with how very warm it was. He took a few steps forward and she closed the door behind him. He could smell her perfume: it was a strange smell, not entirely unpleasant, though altogether unfamiliar.

"Won't you come into the kitchen?"

He followed her into a room to the left. An overhead light was turned on: the bulb itself appeared to be of inordinately low wattage, given the circumstances.

"You've brought wine. How nice," she said. "Let me get you a glass."

"That would be nice. Thank you."

He looked around. The kitchen appeared filled with relatively modern looking fixtures and appliances. He could not help noticing, however, that there was a fairly substantial looking crack along the far wall. It occupied almost three-quarters of the length, and he thought, suddenly, of structural faults in the building, perhaps even lying dormant in his own property. Then she was there with a glass of wine in an outstretched hand.

"Thank you very much. But, well, I don't even know your name."

"My name is Kaaiija," she said.

He made an attempt to repeat the name, and she shook her head, smiling.

"Kay, ay, ay, eye, eye, jay, ay: Kaaiija," she repeated.

"That's an unusual name," he said.

"It is Estonian."

She raised the glass of wine to her lips. She was drinking red, although the bottle he had brought was white.

"Are you from Estonia?" he asked, he would have admitted, a little gormlessly. History had proven that he was fairly inept at small talk such as this.

"I am from a place called Valetada. It is an island. It is a very traditional place."

She placed particular emphasis on the word traditional, and he wondered if she was referring to some obscure idiom that was lost in translation.

"You have a hint of an accent," he said.

"So do you."

"I can assure you mine is only West London, through and through. Nothing more glamorous than that, I'm afraid."

There was something a little flirtatious in her body language. It was difficult to ascertain whether it was accountable to the drink or some other reason.

"Where is the island you are from?" he asked, somewhat awkwardly.

"You can see it on the map. It is to the west, in the Baltic Sea. Our family home is in the middle of the island."

"I expect it's quite different from the mainland?"

"It is," she said, "as it always has been. We have strong customs and traditional ways, surrounded as we are by water."

"I will profess, I am a little ignorant as to the culture and geography of Estonia," he said.

This was not a lie, but it would have been more truthful for him to have stated that he could not, in fact, distinguish his Latvias from his Lithuanias: the whole Baltic region (with the ignorance particular to many Western Europeans) he associated with cold and dark winters: a hinterland consisting of grey satellite states each one interchangeable from the next, neither Scandinavian nor Eastern European.

"Linguistically and culturally we are, I suppose, closer to the Finns, although — " she added, "-there are differences."

"I suppose things are very different since the fall of the Soviet Union?"

"Yes, though we gained independence long before that."

She raised the wine glass to her lips and took a very delicate sip, not taking her eyes off him for one moment.

"How long have you been over here?"

"It is sometimes difficult for me to remember," she said.

Her expression changed, and for one moment she looked as if plagued by some distant memory, or some occurrence from long ago in her past. Then she looked at him so directly and so intensely that he began to feel quite uncomfortable.

"Shall we go into the living room, David? Shall we?"

"Yes, by all means. I would be interested in seeing the rest of your flat."

Her eyes did not leave him for a second.

"Seeing as we are neighbours," he added.

"Come then. I will show you."

He followed her out of the kitchen into the darkened hallway.

"Will you turn the light out, as you leave?"

"Yes, of course."

He was unsure of her motives in this: was she, in her own way, attempting to create some type of atmosphere, or was it to save on electricity, pure and simple? In order to turn the light off, for some reason, he moved his wine glass into his other hand. His finger flicked the switch, and he noticed that it was slightly tacky, in the way these things get, from cooking vapours and so forth.

The hallway seemed very long. The layout of her flat was notably different from his own, and as he followed, he passed two other rooms, the doors of which were shut.

"Here is the living room," she said.

They were entering a room at the far end of the corridor, from which a pale yellow light emerged. The ceiling seemed very low in comparison to the kitchen, and there were many items of furniture carefully positioned so that, although the room was filled with chairs and tables (and not two but three settees) the impression was still one of balance and proportion.

"Very nice. It's lovely what you've done with the space here," he said.

"It is the living room. The living room is for entertaining."

At this moment, remembering the events of the previous evening — how she had said she had guests — and emboldened, perhaps, by his own nervousness and the first taste of the wine, he ventured a question.

"I remember you saying you had guests last night. Do you entertain often?"

She looked at him as if he had accused her of some small slander.

"Guests? I had no guests last night."

He could offer no rejoinder. He was aware that he had gone a little red.

"Sorry. It's just that —»

The room was very quiet: quiet enough for it to occur to him why it is a custom to have background music playing in such social situations. He could hear the faint ticking of a clock, and then, from somewhere in the flat, in one of the unexplored rooms a sudden thud as if something had fallen.

"— I thought I heard you say yesterday that you were expecting guests?" he finished.

She sat down in an armchair upholstered in purple velvet, and crossed her legs in a very languorous fashion.

"David," she said.

Her legs, he noticed, were really rather short, given her height.

"There were no guests."

He realized that now he was standing inside it, the room was a great deal smaller than he had previously thought. He moved over to the nearest item of furniture — a recliner — and sat down. Whilst placing his wine glass on the floor he couldn't help noticing that the carpet was absolutely covered in hairs: hairs from some domestic animal, one would have thought, though they reminded him — too much — of the doll's hair: the doll he had found outside his flat the previous evening.

"Do you have a pet, Kaaiija? A cat, perhaps?" he asked.

It was a potentially hazardous inquiry: one that called into question his host's domestic pride, yet a question that needed asking, he felt.

"A pet? Why do you ask?"

"I have seen a cat in the building," he lied, thinking about the noise he had heard. "I've often wondered to whom it belonged."

"I have no pets. It would seem unnecessarily cruel to keep an animal living in a flat in the city."

"I quite agree."

He raised the wine glass to his lips and took a sip. There was a very large crack in the ceiling, he noticed. It forked at one end, and the plaster had flaked around it.

"What do you do, David — for a living?" she said.

"I work in market research. Nothing very exciting."

"You are typical English man. You always put yourself down."

She was watching him over the top of her glass, not so much sitting in, as draped across the armchair. Her movements were (perhaps calculably) lithe, and he began to feel that the whole situation was a little absurd. To be frank, he was beginning to feel like the protagonist in some tawdry second-rate erotic vignette. A table light positioned to her right held much of her face in shadow. He could see, from where he was sitting, that she was wearing an amount of make-up that gave her complexion a distinctly greasy quality.

"In what area of market research do you work?" she said.

"Are you familiar with qualitative and quantitative studies?"

She shook her head.

"I work closely with groups of consumers: potential consumers. I find out what makes people buy a certain brand of soap powder, say, or toothpaste."

"Interesting," she said, very slowly. There was absolutely no way of telling from the tone of her voice whether it was a remark that had been intended as facetious.

"And how do you find this information?" she said.

"Well, people fill in surveys. They answer questions, and the results are communicated back to the client. A lot of emphasis is placed on creating brand loyalty."

Her expression betrayed no information whatsoever.

"It's not very interesting," he added. It was a somewhat adolescent thing to say, and as soon as he had said it, he regretted doing so.

"Have you always worked in market research, David?" she said.

"I used to work in advertising. I worked at a small agency, but I left because there was an awful amount of back-stabbing going on."

"Back-stabbing?" she said, her eyebrows raised.

"Not literally, of course," he said. "You know: game playing. I found it all very oppressive, that's why I got out. There are things I miss, though."

At this point, she placed her wine glass on the tabletop and put both legs — slightly splayed — on the floor. Her face was completely in shadow.

"I knew you were an honest person, David. That is why you return my doll."

He took another drink. He was beginning to feel a little lightheaded, though largely from the stuffiness of the room.

"What is it that you do yourself?" he asked.

"I have — " and here she paused, "-a small private income."

He was wishing very much that she would either lean forward or sit back. Looking at her directly was akin to viewing a lunar eclipse.

"You are an honest person," she repeated.

"As I said, it was nothing, really."

"No," she said, abruptly.

She got to her feet and took a few steps towards him. He noticed that one of the buttons on her shirt had come undone. He could see her skin underneath, and it too was marked by a curious translu-cence. She stood in front of him, not moving. He was completely unsure of what was about to happen. He was unsure as to whether she was about to commence with the removal of all of her clothes, or else begin screaming at the top of her voice.

"I'm sure Marguerite would like to thank you personally for your kindness," she said, in an even monotone.

He cleared his throat gently. The room really was most unpleasantly stuffy, he thought.

"Marguerite?"

"Yes. She would like to thank you personally."

"I don't believe I know any Marguerite," he said.

"Oh, but you have already met her. It is through her, that we meet, David."

"Do you mean-?" he began, but he did not finish his sentence.

She took another step towards him. There was something almost feline about her movements.

"She's waiting," she said.

He got to his feet, the wine glass in one hand.

"Shall we, David?"

"Yes," he said.

She took the wine glass from his hand and placed it on a nearby table. Then she moved towards the doorway, and although she did not actually take his hand, he nevertheless gained the impression that he was being conspicuously led. They had not, by this point, had any form of physical contact, and she was in fact closer in proximity to him now than at any other stage throughout their encounter. Again, he caught her perfume. It was an intoxicating scent, although there was a trace of something else as well. Her hair fell past her shoulders, so very black it seemed to absorb all light. She reached the doorway — he barely a foot behind her — and then turned. He jumped a little: a small sound escaped his throat. Up close, her face had quite an unpleasant aspect. He knew it was not uncommon for women to use a cosmetic concealment to cover any unsightly blemishes on the face, but it appeared that the entirety of Kaaiija's face was slathered in such a substance. Her skin looked very grey, as if she perhaps had some birthmark, or "port wine stain" that covered the majority of her features and sat uneasily with the consistency of the cosmetic. Some of the make-up had got into her hair as well at the edge of the temple. In the yellow light her eyes appeared very dark indeed, almost black.

"You may leave this light on, David," she said.

He had no intention whatsoever of touching anything.

"She waits," she said.

He followed Kaaiija into the hallway. She moved over to the doorway to the left, and from her hip pocket removed a key. In a singularly graceful movement she inserted the key into the lock and gave it a very gentle turn. He heard the small click of the latch. Kaaiija opened the door and felt for the light switch, almost as if she had little or no idea as to its location. From where he was standing he could see nothing of the room's contents.

"I know she would wish to thank you personally," she said.

She entered, and he followed.

The room was full of dolls. There were dolls seated in chairs: dolls positioned on the windowsill: a doll on all fours frozen in the act of crawling across the carpet, its head angled towards the doorway. They were all of a similar kind to the one he had discovered by his front door, yet their clothes and the colour of their hair varied. They did not appear to have been arranged in any obvious manner or formation: in fact, he had the curious sensation that the room had been a hive of activity only moments before their arrival.

"Do you see?" she said. "My perfect, adorable little people?"

"You have so many," he said.

She took a step further into the room and lifted the doll from the floor. She manoeuvred its limbs so that it lay completely flat in her hands, as would a body in a coffin.

"How long have you been collecting?" he asked.

"Oh, nothing so vulgar as collecting," she replied, sounding quite put out. "As with all beautiful things, it is more a question of them finding us, do you not agree?"

She placed the doll in a sitting position on a nearby chair.

"All the world's beautiful things, all great works: we are humbled before them. We have no choice in the matter, I'm afraid," she continued.

She gave a little titter, overtly girlish.

"So it is," she said. "They found me."

He looked about himself. There was a doll by his right foot. He moved his foot cautiously and looked at Kaaiija.

"What is it that they are made of?"

"Many of these are bisque: unglazed porcelain. See, Madeleine has wooden upper arms."

She indicated towards a doll sat at a small table with a teacup in a raised hand. It was the only example, as he could see, of doll-sized furniture in the room. All other fittings — those over which the dolls were arranged — were of normal size. The doll with the teacup was completely bald. The head appeared mottled with dull grey marks.

"Its head —»

"Yes. They are pepper marks. They are impurities found at the time of the firing. Poor thing."

He noted that the room was perceptibly colder than the rest of the flat. He moved away from the doll on the floor.

"Are many of them very old?" he said.

"Nineteenth century. They were made by the great craftsmen: Bremillon, Vrassier. Look here: a Peliebvre Bebe — see her moulded tongue and teeth?"

He did not much like the one to which she was now pointing. Its head was obviously painted as to resemble flesh colour, though it had a distinct bluish quality.

"Their faces are very expressive, aren't they?" he said, meaning quite the opposite.

"They are perfect, adorable little people," she repeated.

She stood regarding them.

"You are obviously very knowledgeable on the subject."

"Not at all," she replied. "I am no expert, simply an aficionado. Many of these have been in my family for quite some years. My father — he was a very well travelled man, although his origins were simple. On Valetada our house stood with nothing but marshland for miles in every direction."

"What line of work was he in, if you don't mind me asking?"

"He was a craftsman. A kind, good man: my father."

"Did he himself make dolls?"

"Not dolls, no."

She bent down and gently drew the doll with the moulded teeth towards her.

"See here: she is a Moulandre and Rasp from Bueurze. Again, bisque. There are so many, David."

She gestured towards the dolls seated on the chairs.

"Wax over Papier-Mache. Vuissart and Kuennier: they created the most exquisite automated models."

He recognized, then, the doll that he had found by his doorstep. It was positioned on a chair next to another doll whose features were obscured by a small white bonnet. It was wearing the same shoes and the same blue dress, but there was an ugly maroon mark across its face that had not been there previously.

"Can I presume that some of these are automated?"

"Oh, no. Not at all."

"But — the doll — " he said. The room really was very cold indeed, and he felt the prickle of dampness in his armpits, "-it was on my doorstep."

"Like I said. She is full of mischief."

She looked at him for a few seconds without moving.

"Marguerite," she said.

She lifted the doll from the chair and held it towards him, as if indicating that he should take it. He looked at the mark on its face. It ran from the right eye down to the jaw.

"She says she is very grateful to you for helping her find her way home," Kaaiija said, with an expression of intense seriousness. "She is very grateful to you."

He did not know how to respond. In truth, he felt utterly ridiculous.

"Very grateful."

Kaaiija repositioned the doll on the chair. He heard the whisper of the dress fabric against the material on the armrest. She turned towards him, and for one moment her face was full of anguish, as if she were stricken by some deep and private pain.

"We are all so very lonely here, David. Our poor forgotten family."

"I'm very sorry to hear you say that."

"It is the same wherever we go."

She closed her eyes. When she reopened them the expression was gone, and replaced by something akin to hunger. Her eyelids narrowed and she took a step towards him.

"I wish, David, to thank you, as well."

Although he truly had no intention of doing so, there was something about her manner that made him move towards her.

"You are really very kind," she said.

He shivered. Her body was in front of him, and he went to her as if controlled by unseen hands. She put her hands on his body and then her lips were against his, inexpressibly cold. The room was full of her perfume. Their lips touched for only the briefest of moments before they parted. But what happened then was so frightening and so utterly unlike anything that he had ever experienced that he wondered if he had not simply imagined what he saw. What happened was this: as she pulled away her face shifted somehow, and in one fleeting moment he gained the impression of that which lay underneath the make-up being completely beetle-black all over. She looked at him sharply, as if she had sensed his unease.

"So kind," she said.

He took a step away from her, and sensing some obstruction on the ground, looked down to his feet.

His shoes were covered in hair: strands of cobweb-fine hair.

"David," she said.

"Forgive me, but — it's quite late," he replied, though he had in fact lost all sense of time. He was no longer sure what day it was, or if it even mattered.

"It's quite late," he repeated.

"It is late," he heard her say.

He looked at her and saw that her black eyes were glistening greedily. Something in the room moved: a doll seated on the window-sill shifted slightly, and he caught its movement in his peripheral vision. He felt, suddenly, on the edge of something utterly inexplicable. He shifted his feet: the hair sighed lightly around them.

"The dolls' hair — " he said, "-Madeleine, Marguerite — it is very realistic."

"The hair is real. It is all my own."

"But you said they were nineteenth century?"

"It is true," she replied.

He took a further step back. The hairs had amassed around his feet: a number too great to count. The eyes of the doll in the white bonnet rolled over once, the lashes very long and dark.

"Kaaiija," he said.

And then he heard it: the same noise he had heard earlier in the living room, only now the location of its source was evident. Something was moving in the room that lay to the other side of the hallway: something that moved as if taking great pains to conceal that very fact. At once, Kaaiija's expression became utterly vacant.

"My father," she said. "He is awake."

"Your father?" he said, with some alarm. "Forgive me but I thought that you lived alone?"

"Alone?" she replied. "No, not alone."

"In that case I should go. I'm sorry, I had no idea," he gasped.

She took a step towards him.

"Will you not stay, David? My father would love to meet you. I have told him so much about you."

He noticed that the area around her lips was very grey and smeary looking. He raised his fingertips to his own lips and they came away covered in some waxy white substance that had got in under the nails.

"I'm sorry," was all he could say. The thought of meeting the woman's father was not a concept that he could entertain.

"I am sure the two of you will have much to talk about," she said.

"Forgive me, Kaaiija," he replied.

She looked at him very gravely.

"It's Kaaiija," she said.

She laid a hand on his, and it was as if there was no movement in her at all: as if she were nothing more than a brittle shop-window dummy. He tried to release his hand from her grip, but he found that he could not. She laughed: a horrid sharp sound.

"David, you look so frightened. You don't have to look as if I were about to eat you."

He went to say her name, but then he stopped. Something was moving in the hallway behind him. It was moving very slowly, but its tread was that of something enormous: a person who may have to lower his or her head by a considerable degree in order to enter a room. He realized too, that the room was now filled with movement. The dolls were awake. The doll with the teacup in its hand was standing up from the table, its petticoat caught above its wooden knees. Its head revolved on its axis with a dull creak: a painted smile upon its lips. The doll with the ugly mark on its face — his doll, Marguerite, he thought irrationally — had stretched itself to its full height and was clambering down the side of the armchair in which it had been seated. He watched with mute horror as the doll wearing the white bonnet slowly raised its head and revealed to him the face that lay beneath.

He heard the doll say his name in a voice that was shrill with childlike glee, and then Kaaiija's mouth was full of laughter: her teeth like shards of glass: her face a mask of cracked porcelain. Something loomed above him, its shadow vast, and he understood, with a sudden clarity, that there would be no remains: no, no remains. Not even his pale white feet or small moulded tongue would be spared. He heard a voice utter a word in a language long dead and silent, and then the thing that called itself Kaaiija fell upon him: her eyes black and glassy: her embrace as dark as deepest winter, and from every side: small pairs of eyes watching him, unblinking.