But that's crazy, because it has no eyes.
Conrad was splayed crooked on the bed, immobilized as the absurd stick figure doll, no wider than a Scarecrow Barbie, came at him in rapid steps - click-click-click-CLICK-CLICK-CLICK! - and raised its pipe cleaner arms to attack.
It wants to put my eyes out, his mind cried, damned if it doesn't!
Conrad's bladder wrenched in pain as the thing trotted alongside the bed. He flung himself away and tangled himself in the bedding as he scrambled off the other side. His right foot hit the floor and he had the crazy, self-preserving presence of mind to yank his bare foot back up in case the thing had taken a shortcut and was now coming at him from under the bed.
What if it jumps up on to the bed? What then?
How can it jump? It's only a pile of sticks, no taller than a number two pencil. Hey, it fucking walked, didn't it? No, at the end there it had started to run.
Get the fuck out of here!
His feet hovering over the floor, Conrad glanced over his shoulder - nope, not coming over the bed - and then back to the floor. He couldn't see the doll now, but he could hear it. Click-click-click . . . pause. It was pacing, maybe coming around the other side, taking the scenic route for Chrissake, but coming just the same.
Blood humming through his veins, eyes wide and snapping left to right, Conrad planted his feet, shot off the bed, and bee-lined for the open door. Approaching the threshold he (Don't look back! No, fuck you, I have to!) glanced down just in time to see the doll marching stiffly after him, swaying left and right, and the moment stretched into a vacuum of pre-car-crash clarity that seemed to last five minutes.
He saw the doorframe floating toward him; behind him the doll high-stepping like a Nutcracker reject. He saw the arms reaching up, but not after him this time, no, instead arcing out and back down until the tiny home-made fingers dug into the wiry black hair and proceeded to yank it out in clumps, shaking its dead growth at him with that blank pad of a face somehow conveying pure, untainted hatred.
Conrad's shoulder slammed into the doorframe, pinwheeling him sideways and down. His forehead bounced off the black maple banister (another two steps of uninterrupted momentum and he might have crashed through the banister, head first down to the foyer) and he hit the hallway floor shoulder first, hipbone next, jaw last, the culminating sound like billiard balls after the sledgehammer break.
The panic and pain mixed into a blinding cocktail and he used his last bolt of strength to roll sideways. He was eye-level with the doll, the room darkening as he hovered on the edge of consciousness. His vision blurred, the doll becoming two dolls coming for his eyes until he could almost feel their tendril fingers crawling into his skin like insect bites. Pain flared behind his eyeballs, and then he could only squeeze his eyes shut and tremble.
When some time passed and he felt no stabbing and heard no more clicking sounds, he opened his eyes and blinked. There was no sign of the doll. The room was quiet. Empty. He got to his feet and circled the bed, weak through the knees and unsure of what, if anything, he had really seen.
There was a clicking in the hall. He tensed for it.
Alice came around the corner and looked up at him. She was sleepy. She had slept through the whole thing. Probably woke up when he hit the floor.
Conrad rubbed his head as he traipsed through the library and into the bathroom. As if timed with his bladder's release, his heart pounded in slow, heavy thumps that faded only when he had flushed.
He took three Advil and lay back down on the bed. His head began to pound in earnest, and he knew it needed some ice. He was still thinking about going downstairs to fetch some when he drifted back to sleep.
The next morning Conrad showered, drank four glasses of iced tea, and went to the office. After poking around on Google for forty-five minutes, he read the following excerpt from an article titled, 'Before There Was Teddy: The Evolution of Manikins, Poppets and Other Teaching Icons', originally published by ON FOOT, Ohio State University's journal of anthropology.
Not every culture approves of your average toy store doll. Some older customs prevent children from playing with manufactured dolls bearing a human likeness. The Amish, for instance, have long forbidden girls to play with human-resembling caricatures. Many dolls found in the Amish household would not have the same features as, say, Barbie or Ken. Imagine, I suppose, a thing made of cloth and other natural materials. Certainly one would not find dolls with eyes, a three dimensional nose, artificial hair, etc. Such a doll would not have much of a face at all.
The guiding principal here is similar to their disapproval of being photographed, one of biblical origin. Exodus 20:4-6. 'You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath . . .'
12
If Jo had been home she would have talked some sense into him, told him he was having nightmares, convinced him to go see someone. But she wasn't home and he didn't know when she would be back. He still felt guilty for screaming and hanging up on her, but he was also still hurt by her refusal to come home. What had she said? 'Because I don't feel like it.' Now that was cruel, wasn't it? Unless . . .
What else had she said? 'I'm not feeling so good.' Was it possible, in his quick jump to self-pity, he might have mistaken her words? What if all she really meant was, I'm too sick to fly? I feel like shit?
'So I'm the asshole.'
After completing a short walk around the block, Conrad let the dogs inside, unhooked the leashes and went for the phone. Then he remembered he was supposed to go to Wal-Mart to replace the one he'd busted all to hell.
We came to start our new lives together, he would tell her. Baby, I love you more than anything and whatever happened out there I won't take no for an answer. You need to come home soon.
Before something bad happens.
As soon as Conrad had driven the fifteen miles, exited Highway 151, and passed the last dairy farm, he was confronted by the mini-city that was Wal-Mart. The parking lot was vast, hot and full of American nameplates. He'd heard the state's residents bemoaning the retail giant's destructive effect on their small towns on National Public Radio, which, he'd noticed, regularly named the chain as a sponsor. But when Pringles were seventy-eight cents a yard and cordless phones started at $9.23, why shop anywhere else?
'Vote with your dollars, assholes,' he mumbled, yanking a cart from the fossilized greeter. 'Sorry, not you.'
After grabbing the cheapest phone on the shelf, he roamed the DVD new releases, saw nothing worth $13.88. He lost track of time and came back to himself browsing, for no real reason, an aisle of bath towels. He put two ugly green ones in his cart.
Standing in the checkout lane, Conrad fell into a glazed, tabloid-induced stupor until a frog-voiced woman exclaimed, 'How about that, childrens? It's the nice man who moved into our house.'
Conrad turned to see a gaunt woman in her thirties or fifties with gray-streaked black hair and leathery skin pulled so tight around the bulge of her pregnant belly it seemed to drag the corners of her mouth into a pouting brat's frown. She was wearing a large halter-smock and dirty jean shorts. He knew at once she was Leon's Laski's wife, and that he should be polite, but he couldn't stop staring at the tangle of grimy tykes crawling around her legs, swinging from her arms and slapping at her knobby knees.