His Cemetery Doll (13 page)

"Con," Fred said. "I care deeply for you and for your daughter. I am advising you to do what is
best
for her. And...please. Besides Alderman Trask's girl, Shyla
has
no friends."

Conall glowered.

"She's spent most of her life playing idly in a graveyard," Fred continued unabated. "And it's made her
peculiar.
If I ask her to join us at services on Sunday, it's because I hope to help her out of her shell and into the community. If I am adamant she should go to the convent, it is because I very much believe it would be best for both her and you. And if you will forgive me for saying so, my friend...since your injury, you've gone out of your way to keep as distant and anti-social as possible. You're a hermit.
You
can choose to be an angry recluse if you like, but you can't do it
and
be a good father to a growing young girl."

Conall, with a little growl under his breath, ate a petulant bite of his sandwich to avoid answering. He chewed in silence while Fred continued to sip his tea.

"Conall," Fred finally said. "Something is clearly bothering you more deeply than this business with Shyla. I hope you'll forgive me for misunderstanding your feelings on my speaking to her, but let us put it aside for a moment. When you came to me the other day, you appeared quite distraught. Then, all of a sudden, you simply closed up and left. Today I can see there is something gnawing at you, and you have bags under your eyes. Have you been sleeping regularly?"

"Been sleeping fine," Conall answered.

"Then what is it?"

Con took another determined bite, taking time to chew it, feeling for all the world like a wolf hovering over his kill, protecting it from another predator. Once he'd essentially stalled as long as reasonable—he swallowed, had a swig of beer, and sat back again.

"I didn't much care for the insinuations you made the other morning," he said to Fred. "Moreover, I don't appreciate you telling my daughter what I mentioned
in confessional."

"I told you, Con, I said no such—"

"Shyla got it in her head
somehow.
Now she believes a demon has set upon us to take me away from her. I've never even
heard
her use the word 'demon' before, and here she picks it up but a few days after you list it among your concerns for the visions I confided to you. I'm inclined to believe, then, it came up."

The father frowned. He made no further argument. "Go on," he said.

"I...I find it very hard to swallow, Father. How can anything so ridiculous as demons and mad spirits be your advice to me? You can't really think it, can you?"

"Conall..."

Fred paused, gazing about them, as though looking for the right word. He sighed.

"If you are asking me if I believe in the supernatural...ten years ago, I would have told you quite blatantly, no. Not in the manifestations of ghost or ghoul...not even in the form of demonic possession. Even the church hasn't validated any cases of exorcism for years. I believed in the Holy Spirit, implicitly. The Transfiguration, tongues of fire...all miracles of the Holy Bible. But spirits haunting graveyards and creaking old estates? My expectations of the hereafter are too resolute to admit such frivolity.

"However," he continued. "My time in the war changed me. I told you, my assignments brought me into close scrutiny of...
unfathomable
experimentations, pursued by the most ambitious minds in the Führer's employ. We witnessed the results of experiments in psychic ability, evidence of talents such as telekinesis and manipulation of fire. Most, we deemed failures, but some...
some
contained actual, feasible results, things which might have led to incredible discoveries. They searched for evidence of life after death, of resurrection, and of immortality. Spiritualism—things such as séance and channeling—were explored at length. Their goal, perhaps unsurprisingly, to unlock the secrets of death entirely. Then of course, the fall of the Führer and the victory of the Allies put all such experiments and studies to an effective end. I tell you, though...in time, their information
will
be considered again. Quite possibly, the animations of paranormal creations—spirits or phantoms—can and will be achieved."

"How can you accept such madness?" Conall scoffed.

"As I said," he replied. "I read—at length—the findings of these studies. Even since I have returned from the war, I've been carefully analyzing them. Accounts of spiritual interactions, spirits manifesting, and even of normal people driven mad by poltergeists and creatures from folklore. I confess I find myself...fascinated by it."

"And you? Have
you
had any such spiritual interactions of your own?"

"My service to the church, if you think about it, is the ultimate in spiritual interaction."

Frederick sipped his tea. "As to the more relevant part of your question, though...yes. I do believe I have witnessed an encounter from the beyond."

"Oh?"

"Yes."

The priest fixed his eyes on Conall's, steady and somber. "Your strange woman, Conall. I believe I have seen her too."

Conall nearly choked. "What? Why didn't you tell me this before? You've seen her too? Where?"

"At the church," Fred replied. "She...drifts about there too, when the fog is low and very thick. I believe I've heard her...beckoning to me. Some of the patrons, I suspect..."

He gave a quiet exhalation, before saying, "Some of the patrons may have...also seen her. Maybe even...imagined a very realistic, very adulterous, intimacy with her."

Leaden disgust pooled in Conall's guts. "...why would you think so?"

"I suspect she is a spirit of temptation. She has approached me, rarely, in the Church gardens, and her intentions are hard to mistake."

Conall pondered it.

"So you believe this...
ghost,
let's say...is out to sink her claws into unsuspecting human men?"

"Exactly so," Fred replied. "And this is also why I believe it of the utmost importance for you to inform me if she has, in fact, pursued any manner of seduction with you. If she has...put her mark on you, in some way."

Without even thinking about it, Conall shook his head. "No. She's put no marks on me. Comes to the graveyard and watches, no more."

"Does she speak to you?"

"Can't speak at all, so far as I can tell."

"What is it you're playing with in your pocket?"

Conall hadn't even realized he'd begun toying with the length of ribbon his doll left behind for him. He ran the slick length of it through two fingers, thinking of her skin warming under his as his hands slid up and down her pristine flesh.

After some moments, he drew the ribbon out to show to the Father.

"I...doubted it all," he said. "Believed I imagined her. Until she left me this."

Father Frederick took it from him—a brief flutter of possessive anger rose in Conall's chest, but he tamped it down—and for a second, he almost believed the Father's eyes flashed with rage.

"What do you make of it?" he asked.

"It is the same creature," Frederick replied. "She is haunting us both."

"D
ad?"

Conall rolled over in bed with a grunt. "Shyla, go back to bed."

"Dad, it's time to wake up."

"
Shy,"
he warned, sitting up and rubbing at his eyes. "I won't ask you again, go to—"

No one there.

Conall blinked. "Bloody hell...not again..."

He sat up, brushing long hair out of his eyes. The night air made him shiver, even under his thick quilt. When he peered around his dark room, however, the doll's mist hadn't appeared. A glance at his window showed a clear night. He could see all the way down to—

His stomach dropped. He could see all the way down to Maya's ring, and Shyla stood there, barefoot and in her white nightgown, alone.

"Damnit," he muttered, lunging up from the bed and grabbing his denims. "What is she
doing
down there?"

Hurrying for the stairs, he stumbled, and his knee slipped, sending him to the floor. He swore loudly, slamming a fist against the wood and pushing himself up.

"Dad! Dad, what's going on?"

Shyla appeared beside him, kneeling to help him up. As he found a sitting position, he stared at her.

"Shyla? I..."

He glanced downstairs. "I...were you...in your room this whole time?"

His daughter cocked her head to the side.

"Of course. I heard you yell, and it woke me up."

He kneaded his temples.

"I... saw you in the graveyard. I mean...I imagined I saw you..."

"Are you all right?"

"Yes," he said. He leaned forward and rubbed at his knee. It hurt, but a bad bruise would be the worst of it.

Shyla sat next to him, scrutinizing him. Even in the unlit hallway, her mismatched eyes were shining and kittenish as she searched his face.

"You saw me in the graveyard?" she asked. He shook his head.

"Obviously a dream," he muttered. His head ached. "This business has all gotten out of hand, Shy. We can't keep living with this."

"You mean," she asked, "with a ghost?"

"Ghosts don't exist," he snapped before he could help it.

"Then...it's a curse, isn't it?"

Silence stretched out. Conall closed his eyes and put his head in his hands.

"Dad?" Shyla finally said. "I want to go down there."

"What? No. We're not going to play into this, Shyla."

"But she's here for a reason. Whatever she is...she's trying to tell us something. We have to communicate with her somehow, or she'll keep haunting us forever! Unless..."

She idly drew little circles on the floor with one finger. "Unless...you want to leave the cemetery."

He hadn't even considered it. At least, he hadn't considered leaving it himself. He
had
been debating, again, whether or not he ought to take Fred up on the offer to see Shyla off to the Sisters of Saint Margaret, to keep her out of harm's way.

Shyla would never agree. It wasn't a solution he could really present to her, even if it did make the best solution in
his
mind.

Why so eager to have Shyla away, and yet not consider sparing yourself?

Thoughts of the doll's beckoning motions, her lithe movements, and the silk of her touch invaded his mind. He wanted to push them away, but he couldn't find the heart to. He couldn't say when it had happened, but somehow his broken doll had found her way close to him, enough to feel like a part of him now. She meant something to him.

She'd gotten under his skin.

She'd gotten into his
heart.

If Fred's right, she's done the same to others as well. Which means whatever she is, she's a predator, and to her I'm simply prey.

But his heart didn't want to accept Fred's words.

This left him, however, undeniably searching for a way to keep his daughter as far away from the doll as possible, while at the same time ensuring he himself stayed close.

Stayed...at her desire.

"Dad."

Shyla had been nudging him. "
Please.
Let me go down there? Let me see...if she'll come to me?"

A pang of emotion he couldn't name—anxiety? Covetousness? Fear?—had him shaking his head before she could finish. Shyla remained staunch.

"If she's calling to us, she
must
need us!"

"Shyla...it's not safe."

"Not safe for either of us?" she demanded. "Or not safe for
me?
You haven't been afraid to enter the graveyard even after she started appearing, and I don't believe you really disappeared the other day because you fell asleep on the riverbank!"

She tugged his arm. "If
you
can try and talk to her, Dad,
please
let me try!"

Talking isn't exactly what I'm doing with her,
his mind retorted, but he'd say nothing of the sort to his daughter, of course.

"Come with me," she begged. "Let's go down there together."

"And if she doesn't come?" he asked.

"Then we'll come back, and I won't ask you again."

He doubted he'd win her over in any other way. He mulled over it a minute more and nodded.

"All right. Go put on shoes and something warmer. We'll go down together but
to Maya's ring and back.
We're not going wandering through the whole cemetery at this time of night."

She nodded emphatically, then hopped up to do as he said.

Conall descended the stairs, going to the back door and peering out. He couldn't see as much of the graveyard from here as he could from his bedroom window, but he could see no mist had appeared. The landscape lay clear and beautiful in the moonlight, and he saw no evidence at all of movement, natural or paranormal, outside his door.

After several moments, he turned to call to Shyla.

Gray ribbons and the familiar porcelain mask met him. The broken doll had appeared, noiselessly as a cloud, in his very own kitchen, not three feet away from him. Silver fog boiled up below her, already half-obscuring the floor.

Conall jumped, swearing loudly.

"Dad?" came Shyla's voice from upstairs. "What is it?"

"Stay up there, honey," he called back. Shaking, he put his back to the door, staring at the apparition, who stared back. Then, as if her senses caught up with her a moment later than they ought to have, she turned her head with a jerky, marionette motion, up in the direction of Shyla's voice.

"No, don't—" Conall said, putting out a hand as the doll began to move toward the stairs. She paused, half-facing him, and the broken half of her mask gleamed. More tears?

Her hesitation lasted less than a second, and she returned to the stairs.

"Shyla!" he shouted. "Don't come downstairs! Stay where—"

When he followed the doll into the living room, though, his daughter had already come halfway down to meet them. She stood poised between one step and the next, staring wide-eyed down at the spectral figure hovering below.

Conall watched the doll carefully. Her whole attention riveted on Shyla, and she tilted her head first to one side, then the other. Her hands came to her chest.