And that’s when things started to happen.
19
Ramona stood there, watching the doll parts moving on the ground as if some sinister life-spark were circulating through them. Hands trembled, torsos thumped, and legs kicked. Heads opened and closed their mouths, whispering with needling, strident voices.
She started breathing in and out very quickly, nearly hyperventilating.
An ice-cold sweat ran down her spine.
The parts continued to move as if a wind were blowing through them, making them rattle and click and tremble. As she watched, one, then two and three and four torsos rose up into the air, the others following suit as if they were being worked by invisible wires from above. Dozens of them spun around in some kind of storm and then they came together with heat and motion and impact, fusing into a common whole that danced up and down before her, swaying and gyrating to some unheard melody. Then the legs stood up. Those whose feet had broken loose reattached themselves.
She let out a tiny, strangled cry.
The legs were hopping around, pale and oddly fleshy, their ball joints shining in the moonlight. She was waiting for them to walk over to her, but that didn’t happen. They jumped up into the air, spinning around the common torso and then they, too, were sucked into its mass, gluing themselves to it. The mass continued to move and sway as before, but now it floated about with countless bare kicking mannequin legs that made it look like some horrible spider composed of human parts. Hands were joined with arms that clattered on the pavement and then they, too, flew up in the air, rising as if on a hot column of gas. They circled the mass of legs and torsos and were sucked into the mass, becoming part of it, arms flexing and fingers wiggling as this new and strange accumulated horror accustomed itself to its new environment.
Then the whispering heads.
They bounced up into the air, many of them fastening themselves at odd angles atop the many bunched and stacked torsos. Other heads adhered themselves to the bellies and breasts like gruesome ornaments.
Then this new and nearly indescribable mutation settled back down to the pavement, hissing and clicking and whirring. It approached Ramona with the marching of innumerable feet.
She ran.
Beyond terror, completely irrational with fear, she ran, sprinting down the street and up the sidewalk and around a corner. Pausing there, pressed up against the face of a building, adrenaline pumping through her, she made herself wait and listen. For a few seconds there was nothing and the buzz of fear inside her mellowed slightly. Listening to her own breathing, she stared at the blank faces of little shops across the street. The moonlight was bright, impossibly bright. She saw FLORIST, ICE CREAM PARLOR, and, at the very end, SUNDRIES. Yes, all very generic as before.
When was the last time there were stores called Sundries? Even if this is some weird 3-D representation of Stokes from the 1960s, things like that had to have been something of an oddity even then. A holdover from a much earlier time.
She heard the doll-thing coming again with an echoing click-clack of what sounded like a hundred feet marching forward in hot pursuit.
She ran.
Down the street, around another corner, cutting through an alley and across a little park that she had not seen before. When she got to the other side, she found another street and ran down it, racing around yet another corner and pausing again, her lungs gasping for breath and sweat beading her face.
Click-clack, click-clack, click-clack, click-clack, CLICK-CLACK, CLICK-CLACK—
God, it was getting closer.
It wasn’t possible.
That immense gangling thing could not be getting closer, but it was. The sound of its marching feet was echoing in her head like the cacophonous ticking of some gigantic clock, getting louder and louder and louder. And it was as she realized this, that she looked across the street and saw it again: SUNDRIES. Next to it, ICE CREAM PARLOR, and next to that, FLORIST.
I couldn’t have gone in a fucking circle. I couldn’t have.
She hadn’t. She knew she hadn’t. Either this whole goddamn town was one big loop or, yet again, she was being led, pushed in a certain direction by whoever ran this place. It wanted to break her with fear. That was important somehow to the Controller. She had to be broken. It wanted to run her to death like a dog.
Click-clack, click-clack, click-clack, click-clack—
It was getting closer now like it had before when it was just a collection of malevolent doll children. Closer and closer. As before, Ramona knew there was only one possible way to break the spell. She could not run from it; she had to run at it. It was the only way, regardless of how unbearably frightening the idea was.
CLICK-CLACK, CLICK-CLACK, CLICK-CLACK, CLICK-CLACK!
Jesus, it was almost on her.
She could see its shadow coming around the corner, an impossibly massive and undulant thing with marching legs, wavering arms, and nodding heads.
Sucking in a slow breath, she went to meet it before she had time to reconsider the foolishness of what she was about to do. I won’t be run to death, I refuse. She saw it bearing down, maybe forty feet from her, its shadow already touching her and feeling cold, dreadfully cold, like the air from a freezer. She ran right at it and it chanted her name and waited for her, its many arms open wide like it wanted to hug her, crush her in its multi-limbed embrace.
No!
Ten feet from it, she turned. She just couldn’t do it. She couldn’t let that horrible thing take hold of her. It would seize her, the arms enfolding her and crushing her against itself until her insides squirted out of her mouth like red jelly.
She turned on her heel and cut between two buildings and then she was in some huge fenced lot. A dead end. It was some kind of junkyard. She saw heaps of refuse, old barrels, uneven stacks of rotting lumber, and junked cars up on blocks. They lacked windshields and doors, the hoods raised and rusted in place, the engine compartments empty save for sprouting weeds. This was the graveyard of the town. As she stepped into its vast wasteland, she saw broken bottles glinting in the light, stacks of bald tires, and the bent frames of old bicycles. She stepped around a cracked bathtub and an overturned toilet. Things scattered among the refuse and she knew they had to be rats.
With each step, a little cloud of black dust puffed up.
They smelled hot, like cinders. She blinked her eyes and everything in the junkyard was smoldering. It happened that fast. Not burning, but smoldering as if the actual fire had burned out some hours ago and what was left was the choking incinerated stink, the hot ashes, and the lingering heat. She could feel it through the soles of her shoes. The junk cars were blackened, the wood charred, the tires melted into unrecognizable shapes that still let out greasy black fingers of rubber smoke.
Ma’am, please listen to me, okay? The only Stokes on Highway 8 burned to the ground back in the 1960s, I’m told.
Ramona let out a little cry because it wasn’t some voice of memory echoing in her head, but an actual voice. It sounded like it was spoken from inside one of the cars. But she refused to go see. She did not want to see. Gagging on the scorched smell, she stumbled forward, sweating rivers now, her feet hot and sore, her skin feeling like it was sunburned. If she didn’t get out of here and fast, she was going to become disoriented by the fumes and pass out.