Lot of the same stuff the doll people seemed to be made of, she thought, not missing the significance.
There was another door beyond the benches and shelves of parts.
The lighter burned her fingers so she had to let the flame go out. Carefully again, she moved among the clocks and workbenches, banging her hip on a table. She reached out in the darkness for the door… and it wasn’t there.
Shit.
She could feel something in the air again. It had shifted. Something was about to happen and she felt a shiver spread across the back of her arms. It felt like her guts had pulled up into her chest as if they were seeking the protection of her rib cage. Her mouth went dry. Her eyes wide. She fumbled and nearly dropped the lighter. She flicked it.
Jesus.
There were several doll people standing around her in a loose circle. They appeared to be women. They were entirely naked like undressed mannequins, made of some smooth white material, their breasts mere buds lacking nipples. They were bald, tiny hairline cracks running over their gleaming craniums, their eyes black holes. Their mouths were moving, opening and closing as if they needed to say something.
One of them made a sort of cooing sound and reached its white fingers out for her. Ramona slapped the hand away and it broke free from the wrist and clattered to the floor. All of their mouths instantly went wide, expanding into black chasms, and they screamed with a high strident wailing.
“NO!” Ramona shrieked at them as they all came at her, reaching for her.
There was no quarter. As their cold hands seized her, she went wild like a fighting cat, clawing and kicking as they scratched at her, pulling out locks of her hair, pressing in, screaming in her face. She battered down two of them, punched the head off a third and when another grabbed her from behind, she let out a rebel yell of sorts and pivoted, snatching the doll woman’s arms and flinging her with everything she had. The doll woman shattered against the wall. She was in the dark with them, trying to get free, bumping into workbenches and shelves, and fighting the women with everything she had.
Then the wailing stopped.
She dug the Bic from her pocket and flicked it. The shadows jumped away, the orange flame reflected on the walls. The doll women were gone. Ramona turned this way and that, seeking them out, her mind teetering on the edge of madness. It felt like an open bleeding wound.
Then behind her: breathing.
And a giggling.
Then something hit her and she was driven to her knees, bright purple dots blazing in her head. She felt herself hit the floor. She felt herself going out cold and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
No more than a few minutes had passed when she opened her eyes.
In her mind, a voice was saying, What? What? What?
Confusion. Anxiety. Shock. She tried to concentrate, to bring herself out of the fog… but it was slow. She’d taken a good hit to the back of the head. She knew that much. And she knew she was in terrible danger… but the blow to her head combined with exhaustion made her loopy, her body thick and numb. She opened her eyes and they shut almost immediately. There had been a dream, it seemed, a dream she was still dreaming… something on her chest, a weight, a movement, a suction.
It was no dream.
There was something on her chest and she could feel a cold little mouth suckling her left breast greedily.
With a cry she sat up, knocking whatever it was clear with a sweep of her hand. She heard something clatter to the floor. Whatever it was, it was crawling toward her now. It made a slobbering, gurgling sort of noise that made waves of nausea roll through her belly.
The Bic.
It was still clenched in her left hand. She flicked it and the room grew bright. She saw the thing scuttling over the floor to her. It looked like some swollen infant, hairless, its flesh bleached white. It had no eyes, not so much as a nose, just a grinning black aperture for a mouth that was wet and shining. It moved with spasmodic jerking motions like some jack-in-the-box from hell as it got closer and closer. Its breathing—because, yes, it was certainly breathing—was clogged and phlegmatic.
Ramona was on her feet by then, the lighter trembling in her hand.
She backed away and hit the wall. No, not the wall, the door. She could feel the knob digging into her back. As that twitching, hungry little horror was almost on her, she fumbled the door open and the moonlight flooded in.
That’s when the thing leaped.
Like a jumping spider, it came right off the floor in a rolling white blur and she kicked out at it with everything she had, catching it dead-on. It broke apart into pieces that continued to squirm and rattle.
But by then she was out the door, running and trying to button her shirt back up, not sure if she was even sane anymore.
33
There in the darkness of the sedan that drove slowly toward an unknown destination, Creep retreated further and further into the void of his own mind. How long he crouched there on the backseat, shaking and delirious, he did not know. Only that suddenly, as if a light had gone on in his brain, awareness returned and he heard a voice in his mind say, Just what the fuck do you think you’re doing? You waiting for Mommy to come and chase away the boogeyman?
He sat up straight.
He was not the bravest or calmest of people in the best of times and right then his nerves were jangling like wind chimes. He was afraid to act. He was afraid not to act. Regardless, the unpleasant reality of his situation remained: he was in a big black car that was driving itself down dark streets, moving leisurely like it was part of a funeral procession.
He figured that probably wasn’t too far off the mark.
Everything was still in black-and-white inside the car. It was madness, but there was no getting around it. He could see color outside the car—a red STOP sign, a yellow curb, a purple flowering lilac bush fronting the street—but inside it was all grays and whites and blacks.
You going to sit here and do nothing, you pussy?
God only knew how far away from the others he was now. He had to bring this to a halt one way or another. He had to get out of this fucking car right now. Which was a great idea, but how was he supposed to do that? He was terrified and almost afraid to move, afraid to try anything in case whoever was controlling this decided to make it worse for him.
But you have to do something.
God yes, he knew that… but what?
He was staring at the steering wheel, watching how it rotated itself smoothly to the left or the right when the car needed to take a corner. The turn signal lever was even pulled down and then pushed back up. It was insane. He was insane. None of this could be happening, yet it was. He was seeing it.
He waited there helplessly for a few more moments and then became aware of a hot, spoiled smell in the car.
He was almost certain some dead thing would materialize on the seat next to him as the smell was so strong. He waited for it to dissipate as if maybe the car had just driven past some rotting animal on the road, but it did not dissipate—it grew stronger, hot and sickening.
A drop of liquid fell on his face.
With a start, he brushed it away… his fingers were wet with something black. Blood? Dear God, was it blood? But he knew it was. In old black-and-white movies, blood always looked black and he remembered finding that very disturbing as a child. Black stuff leaking from people. Not red, but… black. As this crossed his cluttered, seesawing mind, another drop landed on the tip of his nose and another struck his scalp. It felt hot, very hot.