by M. C. Atwood
Paul puts his arms out like a crossing guard. Quietly he says, “Don’t move.”
The dog steps closer. Growling, hackles hackling. Fuck-a-doodle-doo. Death by Dalmatian was not how I pictured my end. Not cool, doggy, not cool. When you walk into the Streets of Yore section, you know, on the days when the things in it aren’t alive, there are fake storefronts with old-timey shops and places. One of the first places you see is a fire station where this dog must have come from. And behind that, of course, shops full of dolls. I can hear little feet pitter-pattering.
But the dog. The dog is angry and panting and not pattering or laughing. Or small. Or sane. There’s a break in the music and behind the door in back of us I can hear the squeak of metal and know that the knight is walking across the other room. Squeak, stomp. Squeak, stomp. Growl. Hackles. A knight with an axe or a rabid dog?
Choices can be a bitch.
The dog crouches down like he’s going to lunge and Paul spreads his arms out wider like that will stop a rabid dog from eating us, and then all five of us grab onto each other and I squeeze my eyes shut, just waiting for the doggy chomp.
Instead, a loud doggy yelp happens.
When I open my eyes, the dog has dolls all over him. He gets one in his mouth and shakes it, then starts running down the hallway past the storefronts. Gretch and I look at each other. Her gorgeous eyes are wide, and her pupils are way dilated. At least we won’t be eaten? By a dog anyway.
Ashley says, “We need to put something in front of the door.”
I look around for something and then Paul points to the storefronts to the right of us and a little behind the ramp we’re standing on. The rooms used to have dolls and now just have blown out windows. My eyes land on a dresser.
“The dresser,” I say and I jump over the white railing of the ramp. Paul jumps, too, and we crunch-step on broken glass and enter the room.
Another thump.
Violet says, “Um, can you hurry, guys?” Which for Violet is, like, Move mothereffers! So we move.
We each take an end of a dresser and drag it up the ramp, Gretchen, Violet, and Ashley joining in on the pushing. After what seems like hours, we make it to the door to the other room and push it in front of the pocket door.
My lungs hurt. Note: no more weed for me. Jesus, I think, I swear I’ll be good. Mostly.
But then we hear an axe chop. We hear it get stuck in the dresser and I cringe all over. I can see the dresser moving a little like the knight on the other end is trying to wiggle out the axe. But then the dresser sits still.
Thank you, Jesus. I’ll work on that good thing, yo.
I take a deep breath and turn around to the room in front of us. The music starts up again and all of us jump. Freaky ass circus music attacks our ears. We’re still on the ramp. Every once in a while, the sound of feet pattering above us and around us pokes through the music, but there aren’t any dolls anywhere I can see. The floor is cobblestone and there are trees on either side of the street. And I swear I can see a crow clocking us with its beady little crow eyes from one of the branches. Storefront after storefront and houses line each side of the fake street. When I look up at the fake houses and the fake windows, I see doll faces looking out, then ducking back inside. No mad doggy at least. So. There’s that.
I catch eyes with Paul and he shakes his head. Even Ashley has nothing to say. Every one of us is pale as shit.
Gretch’s mouth is a straight line. Finally, she says, “Well. I guess we have to go forward.” The freaky music stops again.
She looks around, “Ashley, you’ve been here before, right? Or Violet?”
Violet nods and so does Ashley, though she is looking up at the windows and watching a doll stare at her, its face stuck in a creeptastic smile.
“Jesus,” she murmurs. I don’t think the girl is praying.
Violet says, “Yeah. This is just a street of old-timey things. You know?”
Paul says, “Does everything come alive here?”
I shrug. “Dude didn’t say, but it sure looks like it.” Then I swallow and ask a question that has been bothering me. “Was that, like, the devil?” I think of all the times I didn’t pay attention in Sunday school or the times I made fun of church shit.
Dear Jesus, I think. So sorry, dude. Are we cool?
Gretch furrows her brow. “I thought you don’t believe in the devil.”
I shrug again and say, “I mean, that dude was pretty evil-looking, right?”
Paul mutters something like, “Hell is empty and all the devils are here.” I can’t disagree.
Violet pipes up, “But he said everything in here has choices, right? I mean, maybe something is going to help us?”
Gretch exhales. “Violet, give it up. We’re screwed.”
Paul nods and gives puppy dog eyes to Violet; universal dude for Sorry. “I think Gretchen might be right,” he says. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I don’t trust anything that whatever-it-was guy said.”
Ashley starts down the ramp, her heels clicking, then turns around. “Listen, you guys can jerk off about the theology of all this, but I want out. And we aren’t even close to being done with this place. Plus, we don’t know where that dog went. Or when that knight will fucking break through the door . . .” Girl’s eyes are bright and shiny like quarters. Or eyes with tears in them. “We don’t know when and why things start attacking . . . This whole fucking House is alive, do you understand?” She turns on her heel and takes a step and a doll runs past her, almost knocking her over. She pauses, tilts her head, huffs out, but then keeps going.
We look at each other. And then follow.
What else are we going to do?
ASHLEY
Fuck this place. It can go straight to hell. I don’t deserve something like this. My dad’s going to be a senator. A SENATOR. The rest of these losers . . . whatever. But my family made this state. Someone is going to pay. Someone is going to PAY, goddamn it!
I walk down the ramp with some purpose, finally—to Get The Fuck Out Of Here—but then step on the cobblestone and my heel gets caught between stones.
For some reason, this is what makes me lose it.
I stop and scream, my arms by my sides. I take off my shoe and fling it down the hall. Then I take the other one off and fling it, too. The music has stopped and in the silence, the shoes hit farther down the hall and echo loud. There’s a pause, then a hundred little voices start laughing. I look up at one of the fake house windows. Three dolls look down at me from a railing, their stupid doll faces and flat eyes just . . . staring. Where the laugh comes from, beats the fuck out of me. Which somehow makes their awful faces and the disembodied laugh that much worse.
I feel a hand on my arm. It’s Violet. Her hand is soft.
She says, in that quiet voice of hers, “Let’s just keep moving.”
I sniffle and wipe my eyes, then smooth out my skirt and nod. Everyone gathers around me.
Dylan says, “I think we need to stick together.”
I disagree. I think I need to get out of here this goddamn minute no matter what. But I don’t say that out loud.
We walk a couple of feet and between two storefronts there’s a glass case with three puppet-like figures. There’s a sign: the magician’s corner.
It whirs into motion.
The one in the middle is a wizard-y thing and stands behind a table, a hat in one hand. With jerky mechanical movements, he lifts up the hat to reveal a rabbit, then down, then up to reveal a ball, then down, up to reveal dice and down, and on and on. The two other guys have instruments and they play them, but no sound comes out. The hat comes up and reveals a severed head, eyes bloody. The wizard looks at us and laughs and the hat comes down.
“This place isn’t very nice,” Violet says as we move away fast, like a herd of dumbasses. Her voice echoes down the hall. Somehow the sil
ence is worse than the crazy music.
I snort and say, “Duh,” but my heart isn’t in it and I just swallow and move on with everyone else.
We pass a barbershop on one side, the red and blue pole thingy twirling as we pass by. On the other side is a sheriff’s office, a hand stuck in liquid in a jar on a writing desk, the fingers wiggling. Gross. Next is a woodcarving place, inside are puppets in various stages of finish. When we pass by, the parts click together and bop up and down. The puppets are missing hands and feet, parts of faces. I shiver. My bare feet slap against the cold cobblestone. But damn they feel better.
“Goodness, it seems you are lost at sea, doesn’t it?”
The voice is creaky and old-fashioned, like a school-marm and an opera-singer combined. I look up. There’s a wooden woman sticking out of the top of the woodcarving storefront. And she’s looking down at us with an expression that looks almost nice.
Violet looks up, eyes all hopeful. “Can you help us, ma’am?”
Idiot. I snap at her—I can’t help it. “You’re talking to wood, you idiot. Try not to be pathetic.”
Violet shrinks back but the woman tsks at me. “You should really mind your manners, you know.”
A hysterical laugh bursts out of me. “Manners? Everything here is trying to kill us!” I can’t help the octave of my voice. It goes higher than I could have imagined.
The wooden woman smiles and says cheerily, “Yes. Though not all of us have such ignoble intentions, this ship is full to the gunwales of angry spirits, my dears.”
Great. Maybe we’ll be sea-metaphored to death . . .
Before I say anything back, a doll jumps down from the tree and lands on her neck. The wooden woman tries to smile. “A crew united can be stronger than the tide, you know. All you must do is—”
The doll wraps itself around her face, cutting the nice woman’s words off.
Crew united, my ass.
But still I move closer to everyone. I can smell Gretchen’s lavender scent right near me. And then the calliope music starts again. It’s coming from a huge area at the end of the hall filled with brass instruments and drums. A band that is playing by itself.
Of course it is.
We move away from the lady toward the music. Because where else are we supposed to go?
Though we see dolls’ faces peering at us in the storefronts and through branches—and I swear at least one crow—they don’t attack. We pass a statuary, an apothecary with medieval looking medical equipment, a lamp place, glassware . . . a cart with peanuts and popcorn.
Dylan runs up to it. “Suh-weet! Starved, yo,” he says over the music. He grabs a handful of popcorn and shoves it in his mouth.
No, no, no, I think. Dumbass.
“How could you be hungry at a time like this?” Gretchen snaps, suddenly all mom-like. “And how do you know it’s not poisoned, Dylan?” She strides over to him and knocks the popcorn out of his hand.
His cheeks are full, like a chipmunk’s.
“Spit it out.” Gretchen points at the floor.
Instead, Dylan swallows and smiles. “Last time I was here it wasn’t even real.”
And then the room feels like it gets 60 degrees cooler. Because Gretchen’s face is so dark I’m positive a storm has just rolled in. Lightning is about to strike. The girl is hot when she’s mad. But man, I’m so glad it’s not me she’s mad at. I mean, I could handle her, sure, but Dylan? How he has survived this long is beyond me.
“You said you’ve never been here,” Gretchen hisses, her voice low and dangerous. She glances around. Our eyes meet for a second and I look away. I guess the lovers aren’t as solid as they look. A delicious jolt passes through me, but I tamp it down. Not possible. Still, lightning has struck twice today . . . and we are in some demon House with, you know, SENTIENT DOLLS. So, stranger things have clearly happened. Are happening.
Dylan is stalling, but before he can say anything, there’s a whinny and a huge cracking sound and wood explodes out from a storefront down the hall. A horse comes out of nowhere and runs by us, neighing. We turn as it passes us, the wind blowing my hair back. But the horse has nowhere to go so it runs by us again and disappears around the corner. Six or seven dolls come out of nowhere and run after it.
A horse.
The calliope music stops again and a whirring mechanical sound like The Sleeper reaches us.
Down by the exploded stable is a fortuneteller chick in a glass box with some symbol on the side. I can see from here that she has blonde hair. She turns her face to us and she is super pretty and kind-looking.
“Come get your fortune. Madame Josefina will tell you your fate.”
Her voice is sweet and melodic, especially in the silence of the place. No calliope music. No tiny footsteps. For a minute, I have a little bit of hope.
Violet says in a whisper, “I hope it’s good.”
For once, I don’t snap at her.
ViOlet
I have had some seriously surreal moments in my life:
In the 4th grade, after I’d won the regional spelling bee for my age group, an adult judge took me aside when no one was looking and said, “You think you’re pretty f---ing smart, don’t you?” The joke was on her, though. I never think I’m smart.
In 8th grade I walked in on my parents having sex.
That one thing I will never tell anyone about ever that is still happening.
Paul flirted with me.
But I can honestly say, this House wins by a gazillion trillion. Cosine to the power of googolplex. Or something. I got an A- in calculus until I brought it up to an A. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is:
Oh. My. God.
I mean, maybe number 2 comes close to this moment, but never has any animatronic thing talked to me and never have I hoped more than anything that the animated inanimate object in front of me would tell me whether or not I would survive a House of horrors.
At least I’ll die with a beautiful boy?
We’ve all walked to the pretty blonde woman in the fortuneteller box as she starts turning over tarot cards. Her eyes are huge and, purple, and slightly upturned. She makes little noises, “mm-hmm,” “ah!” and “oh no.” Her brows furrow and every once in a while she looks up and gives us a nice smile.
I move closer to the box to see the cards. When I started doing that one thing I will never talk about to anyone ever, I actually took an online course on the tarot. I kept asking the cards if I should be doing what I was doing. They always said no, because, you know, I shouldn’t be. Anyway, I’m no expert, but I know the cards pretty well so I lean in to get a closer look.
The first card is the Devil.
Then the Tower.
Then Death.
Madame Josefina sighs and says, eyes kind and sorrowful, “Your fortune is coming.” The box makes a whirring sound and then a cha-ching and a card shoots out at the bottom.
Gretchen picks it up and reads it, her eyebrows furrowing. She looks at Madame Josefina. Then she drops the card. It lands face up.
You are all going to die in here, it reads.
The fortuneteller laughs. She cackles, actually. She cackles loud and her face turns mean and ugly in an instant. “You’re all going to die in here. You’re all going to die!” She yells and smacks a be-ringed hand against the glass box. The entire thing starts clunking back and forth like someone is trying to move it from the inside and then the calliope music starts up again. I yelp and step back and right at that moment, the horse comes running back in, covered in dolls. Dolls are pulling its ears, clinging to all four legs. It’s like a horse made of dolls now. It rears up and shakes its front legs, its eyes wide and terrified. The dolls shoot off like fireworks.
Dylan appears out of nowhere with a branch and gets close enough to the horse to start batting off dolls. “Don’t . . . be . . . mean . . . to . . . hor
ses,” he’s yelling as he bats them off and they go flying. Gretchen runs to the nearest tree and works to tear off a branch. After a second, Paul runs to a tree, too. Ashley has somehow found a shoe for smacking dolls. But a heel gets caught in one of the dolls’ hair, so Ashley swings it around and sends it flying, the shoe stuck in the doll’s head.
I need a branch. But before I go to grab one, I turn to Madame Josefina who is just laughing now, eyes wide and crazy. I point my finger at her, “You are a terrible fortuneteller. That’s not what that reading said at all. You are terrible at this!” For a minute, she gets a look of genuine hurt on her face and she says, “Nuh-uh” but I can’t answer because something jumps on my shoulders and I scream. The calliope music stops again and I can hear Gretchen, Paul, and Dylan screaming, too. And I hear a crash of wood and the far off squeak of armor.
The knight has made it through.
The thing on my shoulders won’t let go. And then a searing lightning pain shoots through my ear. I realize this thing is going to rip my ear off. There’s warm liquid running down my neck—I know that it is blood—and my ear is on fire. I am all panic as I try to reach around and grab it, when I feel a whack that knocks me forward on to my knees. It knocks the thing off, too.
The searing pain vanishes and in its place is a burning. I’m still on my knees and something flashes in the corner of my eye so I sink into myself and look up in time to see the underbelly of the horse and its legs flying over me. I feel the whoosh as the horse jumps over me—now free of dolls but clearly still panicked. It races straight to the end of the hall and runs right over the knight and through the door the knight just splintered.
I put a hand up to my ear and feel warm sticky blood and torn skin . . . and then Paul is helping me up.
The dolls have formed a line—more like a mob—near the storefronts. Gretchen and Dylan stand with branches raised like baseball bats, panting hard, facing them. Ashley stands near them with crazy eyes and a doll head dangling by its hair in one hand.
