His Cemetery Doll (7 page)

"Would you like me to make us a lunch?" she asked.

"I would," he said. The brief tension brought up by her lie and by the uninvited medallion faded quickly then, as Shyla returned to the bright girl he knew. "And Shyla, of course I won't keep you from going back to feed the horses. But you keep better track of the time in the future, you hear?"

She nodded. He suspected she knew he'd caught the lie, but they both decided to let it slide.

This time,
he thought. Putting his hand on her shoulder, he turned her toward the house, to break for lunch. As they walked, he glanced back over his shoulder to consider the new addition to his angel statue.

In truth, it didn't sit well with him on Maya, either.

A
terrible sound erupted from the graveyard, shaking Conall from his sleep. At first he imagined he'd dreamed it, but then a second sound echoed it: the loud squeal of twisting metal.

He shot up from his bed and darted to his window. He couldn't see anything from there, so he quickly slid into a pair of trousers and retrieved his shotgun again. As he stepped into the hall, ready to investigate, he found Shyla already standing there, wide awake as well.

"What is it?" she asked, standing in the doorway to her bedroom, looking terrified. Her wide, parti-colored eyes almost glowed with fright, and her pale skin appeared even paler, nearly a match to her white nightgown.

"It's probably nothing," he said. "An animal, maybe a raccoon got stuck in the bars of a gate or found his way into one of the mausoleums. I'll get it."

"Are you sure you'll be okay?" she asked. "I...I don't think it's safe."

Because of the woman you keep imagining down there?

He shook his head of the idea. Shyla wasn't alone imagining her now, after all.

"You can wait downstairs, if you like," he said. "I'll start a fire to keep you warm. I'll be back right away, once I'm done."

"Can't I go with you?"

"If it's an animal, it might be hurt, and if it is, it might lash out," he said. "I don't want you bit by a mad dog."

"But what about you?"

"I'll be fine. Now, if you don't want to go back to bed, then wait for me downstairs. But do
not
leave the house, you hear?"

"But Dad—"

"You
hear
me, Shyla?" he repeated harshly.

She dropped her gaze. "Yes, Dad," she said in a meek tone.

She followed him downstairs, and he built up a fire for her as he'd promised. His mind had already wandered down by Maya's ring, and although they hadn't heard any other noises—yet—he had an eerie sense he would
not
be confronting anything so simple as a raccoon tonight.

Shyla sat on the sofa, pulling a quilt around herself and watching him with wide, worried eyes. He reassured her once more he would be quite all right. Then, shotgun in hand, he headed out the back door.

The usual gray haze of a cold night hung over the graveyard path, but nothing as heavy or obtrusive as before, when the doll had come to him. It thickened like smoke as he came closer to the graves, but something struck him as different. The haze appeared...almost
sickly.
Not velvet fog or silvery mists, but more like the drifting ash left behind after a terribly destructive fire.

Or...a
bombing.

Conall grimaced at the creeping dread along the back of his neck. He recalled the images of the Blitz along the Clyde: the burnt-out warehouses and shipyards, the stale smog lingering between stacks of rubble, and the photographs of survivors. His graveyard
smelled
like Clydesbank must have on those mornings, like charcoal and dust, like thick clouds of vaporized rock and plaster and wood assaulting the eyes and lungs.

Another wild crash sounded from below. He could make out a shape, thrashing about in Maya's circle.

As he came close, Conall stopped in his tracks, stunned by the scene before him.

Maya...had been destroyed.

The ugly tree root he'd finally dug up during the day had been replaced by others, and they'd broken up the ground around the statue's foundation, toppling her off-kilter. Vines, blackened and covered in terrible thorns, appeared to have climbed their way up the statue's wings and arms, wrenching them from the main form. Her body, where it smoothed into hips and became the rough white rock of the base, had cracked in two.

Her torso and head lay on the ground at the foot of the two mausoleums which stood behind her. The wrenching metal had been the gates of those tombs, twisted violently from their hinges. The statue's serene face stared up into the sky, heedless of the pain and destruction now evoked by the shattered remains of her form.

"But...why?" he asked the silence.

A flicker of movement caught his attention, something slipping beyond the tombs. A gray ribbon? He dashed for it, leaping over the toppled stonework and clutching the gun with both hands.

"Stop!" he shouted. He'd forgotten by now the doll was supposed to be a dream, nothing but the spooky imaginings of a man who'd struck his head. Wild anger infused him and pushed him after her, into the darkness of the woodlands beyond.

"Why did you do this?" he called out. "Why are you bothering my family? What do you
want?"

Some strides in, he found her, standing amidst the trees with her back to him. She waited with her head tilted over one shoulder, as though she'd hesitated after hearing the sound of his voice. Waited for him.

Conall joined her in the small clearing, but stopped short of coming too close to her. Tingling apprehension prickled at the back of his neck, and he clutched the gun even harder.

"Why did you destroy it?" he asked again. "You...you're driving me insane, you know that? You
can't
be real, but you've got me
thinking
about you,
believing
in you, and now...why are you trying to pull apart my graveyard?"

The doll's head canted a tiny bit, not in response, but somehow thoughtful. Then, Conall noticed the dripping black lines tracking like thick veins along her arms.

Blood.

Blood from...those thorns?

"Wait," he said when she tried to move away. She shifted to face him, and dark trails of bloody tears streaked down from underneath the ribbons around her delicate face. The cracks on the right half of it...he might have imagined it, but they appeared to have spread.

"Were you...trying to
stop
the statue from shattering?"

No answer. The creature merely gazed back at him. When she stood still, she became a perfect statue herself; no human could be so perfectly unmoving, down to the subtlest twitch. Except for her drifting hair, always caught in some ghostly wind, and the trails of the ribbons enshrouding her.

Conall opened his mouth to say something, but the words died. She wouldn't speak...or she
couldn't.
The fact remained she could answer none of his questions, and he merely made himself feel stupid by asking.

"I'm...sorry," he said finally. "I mean...if you weren't the one who broke her. I'm sorry if I rushed to judgment."

He might have imagined the slightest nod of her head, but then her gaze shot up toward the path behind him. A second later, footsteps sounded behind them and he spun, trying to put himself between the doll and whomever had discovered them.

Shyla. In her white nightgown, practically glowing again in the darkness in her pale, tender beauty. She stared, goggle-eyed, at the apparition, frozen in place.

"What are you doing here?" Conall demanded quietly. "I told you to stay in the house."

When she didn't answer, still speechless, he crossed to her and gave her a rough nudge.

"I heard more noises," she whispered. "Dad...is she...is she
Maya?
"

He glanced from his daughter to the doll. He strongly sensed all the doll's focus had now riveted to Shyla: even with her eyes hidden, she appeared oriented, completely, on the girl. Even her ribbons had begun to drift in Shyla's direction,
against
the night breeze.

"I saw the statue fell over," Shyla said. Her voice trembled ever so slightly, and like the doll, she'd gone rapt at attention. "I thought maybe a bear got into the cemetery. But then...the vines...and I didn't hear your gun go off..."

The doll drifted closer. Her bloodied hands reached out, tentatively, almost in fear... beseeching.

"What is she, Daddy?" Shyla whispered.

He searched for an answer. Then, something caught his attention: a bit of movement in the corner of his eye. The pendant of Saint Margaret dangled from Shyla's small hand. She must have recovered it from the destruction of the statue.

"Shyla, why did you pick up—"

Again the doll's gaze shifted. For the first time, her face change.
Fully
changed, becoming an actual human expression. One of...
hatred
. Her frozen lips opened in a soundless shriek, and she lunged for Shyla. Something of a ghostly, agonizing wail escaped her, and Conall threw himself in her way.

The doll strained against his arms, reaching frantically for his daughter. Her hands curled into grasping claws, swiping and snatching at the girl. Silent no longer, now sounds like weeping surrounded her, frantic sobs, terrible pain. They didn't come from her directly, but whispered on strange winds surrounding her, the same which teased her ribbons and hair. They tore at him, stripping away some emotional shield inside of him, burning him to the core with pity.

"Shyla!" he said through gritted teeth, holding the creature back. "Go home, and stay there, like I told you!"

"But
Dad!"

"
Do it!
Go back up there and wait for me to come back!"

"But she's hurt!"

"I'll
take care of it!"

The doll switched her tactic and put her hands on his chest then, leaning up to him, pressing needfully against him as if begging to be released. She wanted to
tell
him something, he was sure of it! There came no words, simply weeping, simply...

Simply brokenness.

"I can't help you," he said. "You...you need to
tell
me what is wrong."

"Dad."

Shyla hadn't moved and he shot her a glower over his shoulder.

"Dad, look... look at her feet."

He did.

Icy dread washed over him when he saw it.

Hands
broke up from the soil. Not human hands—or at least, not full-
grown
human hands. Black as onyx and gnarled as twigs—
thorny
twigs—tiny fingers grasped for the woman's bare ankles.

At the same time, the doll dropped her gaze and noticed. Then she pressed herself even closer to him, so hard Conall didn't understand if she meant to cling to him or to shove them out of the way of the grisly ambush. He stumbled, and one of the skeletal things caught a gray ribbon—as he and Shyla scrambled back toward the cemetery, the doll was trapped, tiny fist after tiny fist closing around ribbons, feet, legs.

Conall turned and pulled Shyla into his arms. As he lunged into a mad sprint, racing for the ring of tombstones, one last anguished scream rose up from behind them, chilling Conall to his very core.

B
ack at the house, Conall planted Shyla on the sofa in the living room, then sped through the rooms as quickly as he could, closing the windows and locking fast the doors.

"What is she?" Shyla asked as he returned to the living room with the shotgun. She sat up on her knees, her wide parti-colored eyes like saucers. "Dad...what
is
she?"

Conall shook his head. He sat, propping the gun by his chair, and put his face in his hands.

"Is she a ghost?" Shyla asked. Her voice fell to barely a whisper.

"
No,"
he insisted. He couldn't be sure anymore, though. "I...I can't say."

I can't say what those...those
things
were, either. Those hands...dear God, did it really happen?

"Dad..."

He lifted his head. Shyla, pale, hugged herself, tears on her cheeks.

"I'm scared," she said.

"Oh, lass..."

He crossed to her, sitting down to put his arms around her. She welcomed the comfort, leaning against him, and her trembling broke his heart.

"It's going to be okay, Shyla," he told her. "She...she won't come up here."

Of course...she already did, once...

"I
told
you there was a woman," she whispered. "I told you."

"You did," he agreed. After a moment, he frowned. "Shyla...did you
see
her out there?"

"No. I...I guess I must have dreamed her. I can't remember, it just came to me one night."

He gave her a gentle squeeze of reassurance. "Are you okay? You're not hurt, are you?"

She shook her head. "Not at all."

"You've never actually seen her before? With your own two eyes?"

"No." After a moment, she pulled out of the hug to meet his gaze. "Why were her hands bloody? And her face?"

"I don't know. At first I assumed she'd knocked down our statue, but...maybe she tried to pull those thorny vines off of it."

"Oh, no! The statue!" Her eyes brimmed with tears again. "Oh, Dad, your beautiful statue...poor Maya!"

He nodded, but Maya remained the least of his worries. Her ring of tombstones—the center of his graveyard—stood breached by inexplicable wild growth, and he didn't comprehend what could be causing this abundant destruction by nature.

The doll...she'd come to him and...and had he truly made love with her? A living porcelain doll? Could it even be possible?

Her
existence
couldn't be possible. Those hands, they couldn't be possible.
None
of it could be possible.

Shyla caused a change in the doll, though. When his daughter joined them in the woods behind Maya's ring, the doll became agitated. For the first time, she'd broken her silence, and she'd
fought
to get at the girl, practically tried to claw poor Shyla's eyes out. Why?