‘WHERE IS SHE?’
The wind dropped, but Caddie didn’t. Sparks of blue flashed behind my eyes and she slammed against the wall. I felt rage uncoiling like a snake in my gut. It told me to hurt her. Told me to shut her up, stop her laughing.
My eye gave a twitch and her arms bent back until they were by her head. She was pinned against the plaster like an insect. Her mouth was still fixed in a grin, but her eyes told another story.
Another buzz at the base of my skull and I saw the muscles in her throat go tight. The smile vanished almost at once as she hung there, fighting against her slowly collapsing windpipe.
‘This was always just a game to you, wasn’t it?’ I said. ‘What was that rule you made again? Not to use my abilities, wasn’t it?’ I felt my lips draw back into a smile. ‘Oops.’
‘O-OK,’ she managed to wheeze. ‘I’ll tell you.’
I ignored her. The power bounced around excitedly inside me. It was loving every minute of this.
And so was I.
‘I’ll t-tell you where she is.’
Her face had lost its chalky whiteness and was turning purple before my eyes. I squeezed tighter. Could I make her head pop, I wondered? It would be fun to find out.
‘She’s…up…upstairs.’
I felt my lips move; heard my voice speak. ‘Who is?’
Caddie’s head tilted quizzically to one side. She looked at me with something close to fear in her eyes. The look jolted me, and I suddenly remembered my reason for being there.
‘M-Mum,’ I whispered. The word staggered out of the fog at the back of my mind. At once the blue flashes stopped. Caddie gave a yelp as she dropped to the floor.
I’d forgotten her. I’d been so fixed on hurting Caddie I’d forgotten about Mum. My dad was right – I was just like him. I did have a darkness inside me, and I had almost let it consume me completely.
‘Kyle, look out!’ Ameena cried. She was on her knees, using the windowsill to pull herself up. Her eyes were on the door at my back.
I spun round, fists raised, no idea what I’d be faced with. A hunched figure just a little taller than myself limped in through the doorway.
‘Billy,’ I said, sighing with relief. I took a step closer to help support him. ‘Come on, I think they’re upstai—’
It started as a pin-prick, just to the left of my belly button. I barely felt the rest of the kitchen knife’s blade slide into my stomach – until the top of the wooden handle pressed against me.
‘Surprise,’ Billy grinned, and I saw the devil was back in his eyes.
I felt a tug at my trousers. In shock I turned. Caddie looked up at me, her dark eyes nothing more than narrow slits in her face.
‘Billy’s my friend,’ she snarled. ‘Not yours.’
As if to prove this, Billy gave his hand a sharp twist to the right. The blade in my belly turned, opening my wound up wide. Pain exploded through my body, rampaging up and bursting from my mouth as a scream.
‘B-but…what she did…’ I babbled. ‘What she did to you.’
‘I deserved it,’ Billy replied. ‘All of it. I was a bad boy for forgetting her. A very bad boy. Bad boys must be punished.’
There was no use trying to reason with him. Either Billy was brainwashed or he was mad. Whichever, it wasn’t good news for me.
I caught him by the shoulders and pushed, trying to get him away. He staggered backwards on his twisted ankle, but managed to catch hold of me. Together we stumbled out through the front door and into the garden.
He missed the step and landed badly on his injured foot. As we fell he threw out his hands to protect himself, letting go of the knife. Somehow I managed to twist my body so I crunched down on to my shoulder, avoiding landing on the handle that stuck out of me.
Static hissed in my ears like a badly tuned radio. I could feel my heart beating in my stomach, pumping blood from my wound. All around me the painted faces of my classmates watched on, unblinking.
Billy was under a metre away, lying half on the path and half on the grass, gripping his leg just above the ankle. I could hear him swearing. I’d heard his bone give a crack when he’d fallen off the step. I hoped it was broken. And I hoped it hurt. Badly.
My fingers crawled down my body like spiders. I gave a whimper as my hands found the handle of the kitchen knife. The pain was immense. It burned like lava through my insides.
The edges of the world were becoming soft and indistinct. I rolled on to my back. Wispy grey dragons circled far overhead. I watched them for a while, until they merged with other clouds and took on different shapes.
Their movements were soothing. Relaxing. They swam in the sky like lullabies, miles away yet close enough to touch. I watched them dancing to the hissing in my head, and felt the fire in my belly die down. The clouds left a faint, silvery trail behind them as they twirled and weaved across the heavens.
My eyes followed them. Their patterns were beautiful. I felt as if I could watch them for ever. Like I had all the time in the world.
But I knew I didn’t.
My fingers tightened around the knife’s wooden handle. I said goodbye to the dragons. And then I pulled.
The hole was wide and the knife slid out easily. Easily, but far from painlessly. It dragged my top half up with it. I screamed, bursting the bubbles of spit that had formed on my lips.
The knife hit the path with a dull clatter. A spurt of blood spat from my belly, turning my red jumper a darker shade of crimson. Somewhere inside the house Ameena screamed. Far overhead an icy wind swept all the lullabies away.
I closed my eyes and tried to imagine a bandage across the stab wound. Every time I got close to visualising it, though, another wave of pain crashed down on me, washing the image away. The sparks buzzed inside me, but they were all moving in different directions, confused and disorientated.
I held a hand over the hole, pressing it as tightly as I could bear. With my other arm I tried to manoeuvre myself into a position from where I could stand up.
Billy’s head turned sharply as he saw what I was doing. He tried to twist, arms outstretched, reaching for me. I managed to fire out a kick. It caught him under the chin and snapped his head further back. He gave a short cry, followed by a soft groan. There was no need to kick him again. He was out cold.
I shuffled on to my knees, head hanging down, one hand resting on the path for support. I wasted ten seconds getting my breath back, then lifted my head and got ready to move.
One of the dolls was right by my face. Its glassy gaze stared past me, to where the gate flapped in the breeze. As I watched, the doll slowly turned its head in my direction. Its expressionless porcelain face pulled into an impossibly wide grin.
‘Peek-a-boo,’ it chimed. ‘I see you.’
Chapter Seventeen
DOLL’S HOUSE
Iwas bent at the waist as I half ran, half tripped back into the house. My left hand was still clutching the wound in my belly. With the right I caught the edge of the door and closed it with a slam.
And not a second too soon. Every doll in the garden had started to move as I’d pulled myself to my feet. I could already hear them sniggering and giggling as they hurled themselves against the door. I could already see them on the window ledge, their faces stretched into wicked smiles. They were battering their heads against the glass; kicking at the panes with their tiny plastic shoes. It would’ve seemed funny if it wasn’t so damned terrifying.
‘Kyle!’ Ameena flew at me and caught me under the arm. I leaned into her, relieved no longer to have to stand on my own. She pulled gently at my hand, then quickly pressed it back against me as the blood began to seep out. ‘Jesus,’ she fretted, and I noticed for the first time that her face was criss-crossed with deep scratches. ‘You need a hospital.’
‘So…so do you.’
‘It’s nothing,’ she shrugged. ‘But you…you’re in bad shape.’
The door began to shake in its frame and we lumbered further away from it. The letterb
ox opened with a faint creak, and a spindly stuffed arm reached in. It grasped at the air for a few seconds, before slowly retracting.
‘You know,’ Ameena muttered, ‘that was almost cute.’
‘Your face,’ I wheezed. ‘Caddie?’
‘She tried to follow you out to the garden, but I caught her,’ Ameena explained. ‘Little witch went crazy. Lashed out.’ She traced the contours of one of the deeper slashes. ‘Her fingernails are sharper than they look.’
‘Where is she?’ I asked, looking towards the stairs. ‘Did she get away?’
‘Come on,’ smiled Ameena. She nodded over to the corner of the room, where a Caddie-sized bundle lay slumped on the floor. ‘Psychotic demon-child or not, one good knee to the head and she drops like anyone else.’
‘Way to go,’ I congratulated. ‘You beat up a five-year-old.’
Ameena chewed her lip. ‘Wow. Actually it does sound pretty bad when you put it like that…’
The room was growing darker as more and more dolls piled up by the windows. They were clambering over one another, trying to reach the glass. Trying to break through.
‘You know there’re a thousand evil-looking dolls hammering on your windows, right?’
‘I’d noticed,’ I breathed. ‘Think it’s only about six hundred.’
‘Oh.’ Ameena considered this. ‘That’s not so bad then.’ She followed my gaze as I glanced across to the telephone. For once it had been put back on the charger. ‘Line’s dead,’ she told me. ‘I already checked.’
I turned in the direction of the stairs. The movement hurt. A lot.
‘Let me take a look at that,’ Ameena frowned, her eyes falling to where blood was seeping through my fingers.
‘It’s fine,’ I lied. ‘It wasn’t a big knife. It was just—’
Pit-pat-pit-pat. Something small and fast-moving zipped across the living-room floor. I barely spotted it in the corner of my eye before it vanished beneath the coffee table.
‘Did you see that?’ I whispered.
Ameena nodded. ‘I saw something.’
We watched the table for a few long moments. Nothing moved. Whatever had gone under there was staying where it was.
‘Go upstairs,’ I whispered. ‘Make sure my mum and Lilly are there.’
‘What? Are you crazy? You don’t know what’s under there, and look at you, you’re—’
‘Ameena, please,’ I implored, turning to her. ‘I need to know my mum’s OK. I need you to keep her safe. Her and Lilly. You’re the only one I can trust to do it.’ I forced my face into something close to a smile. ‘You’re the trusty sidekick, remember?’
She thought about arguing. I knew she wanted to, but something on my face must’ve told her she couldn’t possibly win.
‘Be careful,’ she told me, as she made for the stairs. ‘I’ll shout if she’s there.’
I turned back to the coffee table. Outside, the dolls of my schoolmates giggled like hyenas as they continued to hurl themselves against the windows and door.
Blood dripped through my fingers and on to the carpet as I inched forward. The pain locked my teeth together and tightened my free hand into a fist. I needed medical help, and I needed it fast. But right now there was no possible way of getting it.
The electric blue sparks were still buzzing around inside me, but they were still erratic and confused, like bats lost in the daytime. I couldn’t harness them, but then I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to.
The sense of power had been overwhelming. I’d felt drunk on it, like nothing in the world mattered but me and my abilities. My mum was in danger, and I’d forgotten.
No, worse – I hadn’t even cared.
‘They’re here.’ Ameena’s voice was muffled by the ceiling above me, but I heard her loud and clear. ‘They’re tied up, but they’re OK.’
‘Untie them and stay with them,’ I said, as loudly as I could manage. ‘Keep them safe.’
‘Ten-four.’
At least Mum was in good hands now. Even if anything happened to me, I knew I could count on Ameena to protect her.
I shuffled forward until I was less than a metre from the table. I lowered myself to my knees, being as careful as I could not to jolt my body and make my wound even worse. Cautious as I was, the pain flared like fire, and I had to catch hold of the tabletop to avoid falling on to my face.
The room was almost silent as I bent forward. Even the relentless hammering of the dolls outside seemed to ease off, as if they had stopped trying to get in and were all now just watching me.
As the floor beneath the table came into view I saw…nothing. Nothing but empty carpet. I bent further, pushing through the pain, until I could see the underside of the tabletop itself. There was nothing hiding there, either. Whatever had been under the table had come back out.
So where was it now?
Down there on my knees I suddenly felt very vulnerable. Using the table, I pushed myself back up into a standing position, ignoring the dizziness and nausea the sudden movement brought on.
Pit-pat-pit-pat. It came again, somewhere off to my left. I turned, but saw nothing. Pit-pat-pit-pat. Where had it come from this time? Somewhere close by, but…
Pit-pat-pit-pat. The scampering was very close now. Outside the dolls had begun hammering on the windows with even more force. They sniggered and chattered, their porcelain heads wobbling excitedly on their soft shoulders.
Another laugh – high and scratchy, like a witch’s cackle – made itself heard above the rattling of the windowpane. This laugh was louder. This laugh was here, inside the room.
Directly above me.
I craned my neck and looked up. I barely had time to recognise the single eye of Raggy Maggie before she landed on my face.
The doll cackled as she lashed out at me. I caught her with my free hand and tried to yank her off, but her dirty, tattered legs were latched on to my throat. She lurched at my eye, her mouth open. I saw a flash of pin-like teeth, and barely managed to pull back before they snapped shut.
My fingers wrapped around one of Raggy Maggie’s legs. It felt solid and strong as I heaved against it. The doll screeched and wriggled, but I managed to tear the leg from my neck.
With a flick of my wrist I sent her spinning across the room. She bounced off the wall with a crack. When she hit the carpet she only had part of her head left.
It didn’t stop her.
The half-face she had left twisted into a furious scowl. She kept her one-eyed stare on me as she scurried along the floor, staying close to the wall.
I watched her, swaying slightly, the high-speed pumping of my heart spilling more blood out of my stomach.
‘You’re a bad boy,’ Raggy Maggie grimaced. I could see Caddie from where I was standing. Even though the girl still appeared unconscious, her lips moved in time with her doll’s. ‘You’re a very bad boy, and you know what happens to bad boys, don’t you?’
I realised too late where she was heading. I stumbled forward, but even without the hole in my belly I wouldn’t have been fast enough to stop her.
‘Bad boys get punished,’ she screeched. And with that, she leapt up, caught the door handle, and pulled it open. A tumbling sea of red pushed in, tiny arms outstretched, faces stretched into a cruel mockery of a grin.
Backing away, I found the coffee table. I clumsily clambered on to it, as dozens of demented dolls flooded my living room. They pushed past and fell over each other as they rushed to get at me, their beady eyes glazed with wicked delight.
The top of the table was taller than the dolls were, but it didn’t take long for one to climb up. I recognised it as Mark Simpson, one of Billy’s cohorts. The satisfaction I felt when I toe-punted him across the room almost made the whole experience seem worthwhile.
Another doll made it up, then another. I kicked them both away, but others rushed to take their place. No matter how hard I booted them, they immediately rejoined the throng, falling over themselves to reach me.
Four dolls made
it on to the table at the same time. I lashed out, sweeping my leg around in an arc, and managed to send them all flying. The move took its toll on me, though, and I had to fight to keep my footing on the table.
I couldn’t keep this up for long. Any second now they were going to knock me off. I could almost feel them swarming over me, their tiny hands and feet gouging me, tearing at me.
I wanted to shout for help, but what if the dolls didn’t know about Mum upstairs? What if my shouts gave her away? I couldn’t risk it, so I kept my mouth shut.
Tiny arms wrapped round my leg before I knew what was happening. I turned, but the doll clung on and moved with me. I looked down into the painted face of Mr Jones, my geography teacher. I saw his mouth snap open, heard him hiss, and felt his jagged teeth sink into my calf.
Even as I stumbled, the table was wobbling. Some of the dolls were under it, pushing up, lifting it off the floor. My arm flailed wildly as I fought to stay balanced, but it was no use. The floor became the ceiling as I flipped over and landed in the middle of a frenzy of snapping jaws.
I kicked out, but for every doll I hit I missed fifty more. They were all over me, tiny hands and feet digging into every part of my body. Teeth chomping through my clothes, searching for my flesh.
They pinned my arms, exposing the wound in my stomach. They caught hold of my thrashing legs. I kicked out with even more fury, sending half a dozen of them hurtling away, but twenty, sixty, a hundred more hands caught my ankles and forced them to the floor.
They caught my ears and they pulled my hair, stopping me moving my head. Only my eyes were mine to control, but I shut them, too terrified to look at the disturbingly familiar faces of the dolls.
A clutch of tiny hands tilted my head backwards, as I had done to Ameena’s when I thought she was dead. I doubted I was in for the kiss of life, though. The dolls, I was sure, had something far nastier in mind.
I heard a giggle by my shoulder, felt a sharp pressure against my throat and braced myself for the end.
‘Stop it.’ The voice floated over from somewhere near the couch. The sting of the teeth against my throat eased off at once, but the other dolls continued to hold me down.
Raggy Maggie Page 12
