Doll House

by John Hunt

  It had been chaos at her house. Police officers rushing about, paramedics and firefighters clanking a stretcher against and then into the door frame with bags hanging from their shoulders rushing to help her and help the police officer doing CPR on her dad. Harry was covered in blood and she couldn’t feel his chest rise under her hand like she could with Brutus. Under the lights, his skin was pale and waxy. She felt unbearable guilt.

  It was her the Jackal had been after. If it wasn’t for her, Harry wouldn’t have been stabbed and bleeding out on the floor of his home. Her stomach cramped, watching the paramedics work on her dad and she didn’t know if she was going to be sick or pass out. His limbs flopped lifeless and the compressions given by a burly firefighter looked violent enough to crack a rib. Harry didn’t respond to any of it. She thought she would lose him and that terrified her. He was her anchor. The first person she thought of when she wanted to talk or when she needed help. He was the man who taught her to walk and ride a bike. The person who had always been there for her. Her father. They lifted him and put him on the stretcher while continuing compressions. They were using a hand pump to squeeze air into his lungs as they rushed him out of there. That was the last she had seen of him.

  She swung her legs back onto the bed and pulled the covers up under her chin, exhaustion and tears burning her eyes. Learning that Brutus was fine had quelled her anger for the moment and now she was just tired. The TV on a metal arm muttered nonsense from the wall. The talking head spoke about her but she didn’t pay the person attention. Her mind sprinted and she couldn’t slow it down to listen to the inconsequential like what the idiot on TV reported on her life. Her brain wouldn’t give her a break and she was inundated with images of her nightmare of a night. She kept seeing the thrusting arm of the Jackal plunging the blade into her father, in and out and the amazed look in her dad’s eye as though he couldn’t believe it could end like this, standing in his boxer shorts and a white shirt, fighting for his life in the middle of the night to the sounds of Ava Maria. A sob hitched her chest and she expelled the air. A tear spilled from her eye. She thought of her fight with the Jackal in her closet. And his voice. That so familiar voice. She couldn’t stop thinking about it.

  “Hey, bitch. How you doing?”

  Olivia’s head snapped to the door and there was Lucy in a wheelchair with her head bandaged up.

  “Lucy! Oh my god, what happened?”

  “They didn’t tell you?”

  “No. They’re treating me like a mushroom. Keeping me in the dark and feeding me shit.”

  Lucy laughed and then grimaced, “It fucking hurts to laugh.”

  “I’m not much for laughing right now.”

  Lucy’s smile faded and she said, “Yeah. Me either. The Jackal scooped me right out of my driveway. They say he tasered me. Whatever he did, it fucking hurt. He grabbed me before he went after you I heard. Ballsy bastard, that’s for sure. We drove, we stopped, he left and then there were flashing lights everywhere and sirens. I started rocking the van and kept doing that until a cop flashed a light through the windshield and saw me. And now, here I am.”

  “Shouldn’t you be in bed?”

  “Probably. I can’t sleep though. I got a headache from hell. There’s a ringing in my ears that won’t go away but hey, at least I’m alive right? Thanks to you again, I hear.”

  Olivia burst into tears. Lucy wheeled closer.

  “Hey, hey, he’s dead now. No more creepy fuckers waiting for us. Not anymore. You took care of that.”

  Olivia wiped the tears from her eyes and said, “My dad. They won’t tell me about my dad.”

  Lucy’s face hardened, “Oh they won’t will they? I’ll find out for you. Was he hurt bad?”

  Remembering him on the floor, soaked in blood, skin as pale as paper, Olivia nodded as more tears choked her voice.

  “Are you sure you want to know? Right now?”

  Olivia nodded and said, “I have to.”

  “Hey! What are you doing in here?”

  Olivia and Lucy turned to the voice. The nurse who passed earlier glared at Lucy with his arms crossed.

  Lucy said, “Visiting a friend. What’s it to you?”

  “What’s it to me? To me? I’m the one trying to keep you alive! You have one hell of a concussion and you need to rest. You need to be monitored. What you don’t need is to be wheeling about the corridors at night. Are you crazy? I about died when I saw your empty bed!”

  “Alright, alright. Keep your panties on.”

  “You know I’m a dude, right?”

  “I’m not judging. And I didn’t want to assume your gender.” She waved a hand like queen ordering a servant and said, “Wheel me back to my royal bed, oh grumpy protector.”

  The nurse pushed Lucy out of the room and the door closed behind them. She wiped the wetness from her cheeks and blew her nose with the Kleenex on the nightstand. Olivia glanced at the TV. Her eyes burned and her body ached. When would they tell her about Harry? She just wanted to know although in her heart, maybe she already did. So tired. She closed her eyes to rest them, just for a second.

  . . .

  “Hey.”

  She twitched and in a glance saw Davis standing in the doorway. His sad eyes gave her all the answer she needed about her father. Now, faced with it, she didn’t want to hear it. She didn’t want to see his sad mouth open and utter the words that would destroy her world. To know instead of wondering was sometimes worse. To know erased hope. He took a step into the room and before he could speak she said, “It was Carl, wasn’t it. The Jackal was Dale’s dad, Carl right?”

  He stopped, a stunned expression on his face.

  “I’ve been thinking about it. Thinking about a lot of things. About my dad-“her voice caught at that. She swallowed and pushed on. “I woke up in the night you know? Brutus was growling at the closet. Just sitting there in front of it growling. It bothered me then but I didn’t think about it. Brutus growled at Frank like that. But he also growled at Carl too, at both of them. It was Carl Brutus tried to warn me about. Like he knew there was a sickness in him and he could smell it and he tried to tell us but we were all blind to his evil weren’t we? And then the closet. I thought Frank spent a lot of time working on that part of the house but I never checked on him. Could have been Carl…must have been. Frank did say the wood was rotten and needed to be replaced. I guess I thought he replaced it. But it was Carl. The fuck-stick built himself a little tunnel, didn’t he? A way to get in without anyone being the wiser. I didn’t supervise him and I guess Frank didn’t either. Frank trusted him because we all trusted him. And Carl, according to Frank, did great work, enough to be left alone to do it. It must have been good work though, well concealed because I had no idea about it at all. I put my clothes in that closet and I never noticed a thing. And then, before the Jackal died. He spoke to me and he sounded familiar. I knew his voice! It wasn’t until I got here that I had the time to think about it. He said he loved me.” She growled, “What does a monster know of love?”

  She took a deep breath and continued, “It must have made his day when we asked him to help out with the house, huh? We invited him into our home! Can you believe it? Dale used to say his dad was always busy. Out on road trips, business trips and whatever but he sure had the time to drop everything and help out poor little Olivia didn’t he? Unless there never were business trips. Just something he told his wife to leave for the night or a week if he wanted. And he used that time to visit us, his girls. Jesus. What a sick fucker. I never suspected him at all. I used to see him all the time, when I dated Dale in high school. You’d think I would’ve gotten a feeling from him. Something, you know? Like the perv vibe you get from some guys when they are checking you out and staring right at you
r tits instead of your eyes. That was his gift though wasn’t it? To hide in plain sight. Hide behind his family. I feel sorry for Dale. And his mother. It seems insane that they didn’t know.”

  Olivia dropped her gaze into her lap. Her fingers clenched the sheets. She said, “I sometimes forgot he was there. In our house. Until he started clanging and banging. Probably creeping looks at me all the time. Enjoying being in the same house with me, his most beloved victim, and me not knowing at all. We don’t really know anyone do we? I mean, if he could keep something like that inside, hidden from the world, from his wife and son, then there’s no way we can ever know anyone is there?”

  Davis moved beside her bed and sat down near her feet. He had no answer for her. Besides, he knew she spoke to herself more than she did to him. When the mask was removed, the shock of it had weakened his knees. They never investigated Carl. He was just the father of the ex-boyfriend, a successful businessman and a family man. They didn’t bother to look into him. They should have, considering they had investigated everyone else.

  Davis said, “You know, we looked at Frank. We always look at the family. I even spent a minute or two on your dad. And we went to town on Dale because we had to. You just broke up with him and so of course he was a suspect. It never occurred to us to look at his father.”

  Olivia used the sheet to wipe at her eyes.

  Olivia said, “Was that box that he had? The black thing with a red light? Was that a signal jammer?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where’d he get something like that? And the Taser? Aren’t they illegal in Canada?”

  “The jammer? I looked it up. You can get it online. Pretty easy to do. And the Taser you can order from the States. They sell them there. We’ll track it down, we’ll track it all down. We still have a lot of work to do. And when you’re ready, we’d like to talk to you. About tonight. But only when you’re ready.”

  She was worried about Dale. Would he ever want to talk to her again? Every time he looked at her or heard her voice, he’d be reminded of his dad, a crazy-ass serial killer that fooled his wife and son for years and years. Could he get over that? Could anyone? And her dad…but she didn’t want to think about that, not yet.

  She looked at her hands in her lap. Her missing fingers looked ugly to her. But then, they always did.

  “Davis?”

  “Yeah?”

  “There wasn’t any surveillance or guards, were there?”

  “No.”

  “They pulled them when they thought you got the guy, right? The guy from the pool?”

  “They must have but they didn’t tell me. I didn’t know. I wouldn’t have let them. That’s why they didn’t tell me.”

  The drone of the TV and the beeps of the machines filled the silence. She wanted to close her eyes and rest. Her eyes burned in their sockets. Every time she closed her eyes she would see the Jackal stabbing her father again and again? Would she hear the whispered voice of the Jackal proclaiming his love for her? She didn’t think she would ever rest again. Davis looked into his lap and ran a hand through his hair.f

  “You were supposed to keep us safe.”

  “I know.”

  “Listen, Olivia, about your dad, Harry.”

  Her eyes sprung tears and she raised her hand, palm towards him and said, “I know, Davis. I know.”

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