Doll Face (5 page)

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.

9

It took Chazz a good twenty minutes to calm down, to get his heart to stop racing and his skin to stop crawling and that god-awful clamminess out of his bones. But even so, he wasn’t in the best of shape. He was still shaking, his eyes still darting about madly, and his teeth given to strange bouts of chattering. He felt feverish and sick in his belly and he was certain he was going crazy.

After the mannequin woman, he had run and run and run.

He had eaten up some serious yardage out on the gridiron in his time, but he had never, ever run like this. But never before had he run out of complete irrational fear either. He had known fear once or twice in his life, but it was usually mild and fleeting. The time he thought he had knocked up Megan Mundy in high school was a good example.

This was different.

This was Grade-A USDA prime fucking terror.

This was animal terror.

This was the sort of thing rabbits knew when owls swooped overhead or gazelles felt out on the savannah as lions stalked them. Yes, animal terror. The fear of the hunted, the terror of prey.

Don’t-don’t-don’t think about it,
he told himself in the vast emptiness of his skull.
Worry about explanations and stuff later. For now…for now…just-just worry about getting out of here.

Jesus, his thoughts were stuttering. Was that even possible?

He didn’t know. He didn’t seem to know anything anymore. He was crouched in the shadows in the backyard of a looming dark house. Every house on the block was looming and dark. None of them had any lights on. There had to be people in them, though. And cars in garages. Yet, he had not seen a single one since they arrived.

And that was weird.

No cars, no people…what did that mean?

He waited there, chewing at his nails until they bled.

He knew he had to come up with some sort of plan but, God, he was afraid to move. He wished Ramona was here. She would know what to do. She always seemed to know what to do.

But you left her out there.

No, he didn’t leave her. It wasn’t like that. He’d just run and he thought maybe she was running with him. The fear had gotten the best of him. He knew part of that was true and part of it was a dirty lie, but it went down easier that way because cowardice was something he despised in other people and could not tolerate in himself. That’s why it was better not to think about it, to shove it aside where he didn’t have to look at it or think about it or consider the kind of person he truly was now that his black roots were showing.

The thing was to think about how to get out of this.

He breathed in and out deeply until he calmed. He often used breathing exercises before a big game when his nerves were a little on edge. Coach had taught him that. God, he wished Coach were here now. Like Ramona, he would know what to do.

“Just stop being a pussy,” he whispered there in the darkness.

Yeah, that was the thing. On the good side, he hadn’t really run anyone down, just some kind of dummy that looked like a man but wasn’t really a man, maybe a robot or some kind of big windup toy. The idea of that made him want to giggle, but he was afraid to giggle. He had the most awful feeling that once he started he would not be able to stop.

Regardless, it hadn’t been a man he had hit…just a thing.

And there were more than one of them in this damn town so he had to be careful. The way he saw it, there were really only a couple things he could do. He either backtracked—if such a thing was even possible by this point—and found the others or he tried to find the van. Other than that, he could knock on some doors and try to find some help.

Or keys. If I can find some keys and a car, I’ll fucking steal it.

Either way, he wasn’t going to accomplish anything sitting here shaking in his shoes.

Carefully, he stood up.

He took inventory of himself head to toe. He was a big guy. He was fast. He was strong. He felt his own power and it calmed him, gave him strength, brought some of that old arrogance back. If anybody could get this done, it was him, because he had the tools.

Letting out a breath, he moved through the shadows of the yard.

Everything was so unbelievably silent out there. There was not so much as the sound of a truck in the distance or a dog barking. It just wasn’t fucking natural. The moon had come up now, big and bright, frosting rooftops and lawns. But for all the light it brought, it also increased the shadows.

He walked around to the front of the house, still staying in the shadows of a big old oak in the side yard. He was tense and expectant. He looked down the street. He saw the direction he had come from. He either retraced his steps or he started doing some knocking.

And why did the very idea of that terrify him?

But he knew. If he made noise, he could be heard and he was afraid of being heard. If there were more of those things out there, they’d know exactly where he was.

Just as he edged nearer to the sidewalk, he retreated back under the tree.

Something, instinct maybe, made him go back. He didn’t like the idea of being out on the sidewalk or in the street where he could be seen. It was better to sneak through backyards. That made him feel more relaxed. He liked the idea of camouflage.

He vaulted hedges and fences, dropping into yards, hiding in pockets of shadow until he felt it was safe to move again. The farther he went, the more confident he became.

He slipped over another fence, scanning the yard between the house and the garage that flanked the alley. It looked all right. In fact, it—

Shit.

He heard a sound and everything inside him was instantly reduced to a cool, slopping jelly. He crouched just inside the fence, his hand gripping one of the posts and listened.

Tap-tap, tap-tap, tap-tap.

What the hell was that?

It was coming from the alley and Chazz was far beyond the point where he could believe that it was anything perfectly ordinary or perfectly harmless. He waited there, his entire body trembling.

Tap-tap, tap-tap, tap-tap.

He could see a moonlit stretch of alley from where he was. A shape came hobbling into view and his heart dropped south of his stomach. It was another one of those mannequin things. Oh yes, there was no doubt about it. It moved with an uneasy, hobbling gait and that was because it only had one real leg, the other being a peg-leg like a pirate in an old movie.

It kept coming.

Tap-tap, tap-tap, tap-tap.

Then it paused as if it had heard something.

It looked like a woman, an old woman with a bent back. He could see her clearly in the glow of the moon. She was dressed in ragged clothes like a bag lady, a sack slung over one shoulder. She had a wild shock of white hair that was long and stringy, but patchy on the skull itself. Her scalp seemed to shine. And her face…he couldn’t see it too well, but it was grotesque and hanging like a grinning gunnysack.

Tap-tap, tap-tap, tap-tap.

She went on her way and Chazz did not relax until he heard her tapping peg-leg fade into the distance. Even then, he was shaking and sweating.

He crept through the yard, moving even more carefully now, frightened of every shadow and bunched dark shape. They could have been all around him for all he knew. One of them could have been reaching out for him. No…no, he couldn’t let himself think things like that. It just wasn’t acceptable. He was on the verge of hysteria and he knew it. He was thinking like an animal again. He wanted to run, to flee, to find a new hiding place.

What he really needed was the van or another car.

And a weapon. Not a gun or a knife but something like a good Louisville Slugger. Something he could shatter those things with if they got too close. That had to be his priority.

He sidled along a house, studying its dark windows, praying that nothing would move behind them. He was going to chance it and run across the street. It was the only way. He had to put some distance between himself and Lady Peg-leg.

A sound.

Oh God, no.

It was getting louder and coming closer and he was locked down with fear, frozen with it. He couldn’t even get his body to respond. His brain was filled with white noise and he wanted to scream his head off.

Tap-tap, tap-tap, tap-tap.

She was coming again. She had paused in the alley, sensing that he was near and now she was coming back to find him. She would not stop until she did and Chazz knew this deep in the black beating drum of his heart.

He made his body move.

She was slow, he was fast. He had to keep that in mind.

He moved out toward the sidewalk, then, with a burst of manic speed, he crossed the street into the shadows of the houses across the way. He stood by a porch, panting not so much out of exertion but of numbing fear. He waited and,
Jesus,
that tapping was coming again.

Tap-tap, tap-tap, tap-tap.

She was not in the alley anymore. No, no, no. She had found the yard he had hid in and she was coming up the flagstone walk that led to the front porch. He saw her hobbling shape begin to emerge from the shadows. Raw panic breaking loose inside him, he made ready to run.

Then he saw an open window.

It was there toward the back of the house like it was waiting for him and something inside him was almost sure that it was. But he would not acknowledge that. He
could
not acknowledge that. He needed a place to hide. Lady Peg-leg wasn’t fast, but she was relentless and she would keep coming and coming until she ran him to death.

Chazz wasn’t going to let that happen.

He snuck over to the window and with an easy flex of muscles he slipped through into a darkened room. Murky shapes were all around him. He listened and waited, but nothing moved.

Quietly as possible, he slid the window down until it was only open an inch or two.