Con pounded a fist on the table, making the silverware clink. "Bloody hell, man! Where do you get off saying such a thing?"
"I've told you before," Frederick replied. "You love the girl to death, clearly, but you let her behave as she will! You can't tell me you have any real objection to sending her to the Little Sisters of Margaret, and yet you cling to keeping her, worried over whether she would want to go! She's a child, Conall, and she should do what her father tells her, not the other way around."
"What do you know of how I run my house?" Con barked. "She's a good girl. She keeps to her chores without complaint, she behaves herself better than most of the brats in this village, and she's never harmed a fly so far as I've known. If she wants to remain here instead of be shipped off to some convent she's never been to, where she'll be alone with none of her family or friends, what business is it of yours?"
"Con," Fred said. "I care deeply for you and for your daughter. I am advising you to do what is best for her. And...please. Besides Alderman Trask's girl, Shyla has no friends."
Conall glowered.
"She's spent most of her life playing idly in a graveyard," Fred continued unabated. "And it's made her peculiar. If I ask her to join us at services on Sunday, it's because I hope to help her out of her shell and into the community. If I am adamant she should go to the convent, it is because I very much believe it would be best for both her and you. And if you will forgive me for saying so, my friend...since your injury, you've gone out of your way to keep as distant and anti-social as possible. You're a hermit. You can choose to be an angry recluse if you like, but you can't do it and be a good father to a growing young girl."
Conall, with a little growl under his breath, ate a petulant bite of his sandwich to avoid answering. He chewed in silence while Fred continued to sip his tea.
"Conall," Fred finally said. "Something is clearly bothering you more deeply than this business with Shyla. I hope you'll forgive me for misunderstanding your feelings on my speaking to her, but let us put it aside for a moment. When you came to me the other day, you appeared quite distraught. Then, all of a sudden, you simply closed up and left. Today I can see there is something gnawing at you, and you have bags under your eyes. Have you been sleeping regularly?"
"Been sleeping fine," Conall answered.
"Then what is it?"
Con took another determined bite, taking time to chew it, feeling for all the world like a wolf hovering over his kill, protecting it from another predator. Once he'd essentially stalled as long as reasonable—he swallowed, had a swig of beer, and sat back again.
"I didn't much care for the insinuations you made the other morning," he said to Fred. "Moreover, I don't appreciate you telling my daughter what I mentioned in confessional."
"I told you, Con, I said no such—"
"Shyla got it in her head somehow. Now she believes a demon has set upon us to take me away from her. I've never even heard her use the word 'demon' before, and here she picks it up but a few days after you list it among your concerns for the visions I confided to you. I'm inclined to believe, then, it came up."
The father frowned. He made no further argument. "Go on," he said.
"I...I find it very hard to swallow, Father. How can anything so ridiculous as demons and mad spirits be your advice to me? You can't really think it, can you?"
"Conall..."
Fred paused, gazing about them, as though looking for the right word. He sighed.
"If you are asking me if I believe in the supernatural...ten years ago, I would have told you quite blatantly, no. Not in the manifestations of ghost or ghoul...not even in the form of demonic possession. Even the church hasn't validated any cases of exorcism for years. I believed in the Holy Spirit, implicitly. The Transfiguration, tongues of fire...all miracles of the Holy Bible. But spirits haunting graveyards and creaking old estates? My expectations of the hereafter are too resolute to admit such frivolity.
"However," he continued. "My time in the war changed me. I told you, my assignments brought me into close scrutiny of...unfathomable experimentations, pursued by the most ambitious minds in the Führer's employ. We witnessed the results of experiments in psychic ability, evidence of talents such as telekinesis and manipulation of fire. Most, we deemed failures, but some...some contained actual, feasible results, things which might have led to incredible discoveries. They searched for evidence of life after death, of resurrection, and of immortality. Spiritualism—things such as séance and channeling—were explored at length. Their goal, perhaps unsurprisingly, to unlock the secrets of death entirely. Then of course, the fall of the Führer and the victory of the Allies put all such experiments and studies to an effective end. I tell you, though...in time, their information will be considered again. Quite possibly, the animations of paranormal creations—spirits or phantoms—can and will be achieved."
"How can you accept such madness?" Conall scoffed.
"As I said," he replied. "I read—at length—the findings of these studies. Even since I have returned from the war, I've been carefully analyzing them. Accounts of spiritual interactions, spirits manifesting, and even of normal people driven mad by poltergeists and creatures from folklore. I confess I find myself...fascinated by it."
"And you? Have you had any such spiritual interactions of your own?"
"My service to the church, if you think about it, is the ultimate in spiritual interaction."
Frederick sipped his tea. "As to the more relevant part of your question, though...yes. I do believe I have witnessed an encounter from the beyond."
"Oh?"
"Yes."
The priest fixed his eyes on Conall's, steady and somber. "Your strange woman, Conall. I believe I have seen her too."
Conall nearly choked. "What? Why didn't you tell me this before? You've seen her too? Where?"
"At the church," Fred replied. "She...drifts about there too, when the fog is low and very thick. I believe I've heard her...beckoning to me. Some of the patrons, I suspect..."
He gave a quiet exhalation, before saying, "Some of the patrons may have...also seen her. Maybe even...imagined a very realistic, very adulterous, intimacy with her."
Leaden disgust pooled in Conall's guts. "...why would you think so?"
"I suspect she is a spirit of temptation. She has approached me, rarely, in the Church gardens, and her intentions are hard to mistake."
Conall pondered it.
"So you believe this...ghost, let's say...is out to sink her claws into unsuspecting human men?"
"Exactly so," Fred replied. "And this is also why I believe it of the utmost importance for you to inform me if she has, in fact, pursued any manner of seduction with you. If she has...put her mark on you, in some way."
Without even thinking about it, Conall shook his head. "No. She's put no marks on me. Comes to the graveyard and watches, no more."
"Does she speak to you?"
"Can't speak at all, so far as I can tell."
"What is it you're playing with in your pocket?"
Conall hadn't even realized he'd begun toying with the length of ribbon his doll left behind for him. He ran the slick length of it through two fingers, thinking of her skin warming under his as his hands slid up and down her pristine flesh.
After some moments, he drew the ribbon out to show to the Father.
"I...doubted it all," he said. "Believed I imagined her. Until she left me this."
Father Frederick took it from him—a brief flutter of possessive anger rose in Conall's chest, but he tamped it down—and for a second, he almost believed the Father's eyes flashed with rage.
"What do you make of it?" he asked.
"It is the same creature," Frederick replied. "She is haunting us both."
Chapter Fifteen
"Dad?"
Conall rolled over in bed with a grunt. "Shyla, go back to bed."
"Dad, it's time to wake up."
"Shy," he warned, sitting up and rubbing at his eyes. "I won
't ask you again, go to—"
No one there.
Conall blinked. "Bloody hell...not again..."
He sat up, brushing long hair out of his eyes. The night air made him shiver, even under his thick quilt. When he peered around his dark room, however, the doll's mist hadn't appeared. A glance at his window showed a clear night. He could see all the way down to—
His stomach dropped. He could see all the way down to Maya's ring, and Shyla stood there, barefoot and in her white nightgown, alone.
"Damnit," he muttered, lunging up from the bed and grabbing his denims. "What is she doing down there?"
Hurrying for the stairs, he stumbled, and his knee slipped, sending him to the floor. He swore loudly, slamming a fist against the wood and pushing himself up.
"Dad! Dad, what's going on?"
Shyla appeared beside him, kneeling to help him up. As he found a sitting position, he stared at her.
"Shyla? I..."
He glanced downstairs. "I...were you...in your room this whole time?"
His daughter cocked her head to the side.
"Of course. I heard you yell, and it woke me up."
He kneaded his temples.
"I... saw you in the graveyard. I mean...I imagined I saw you..."
"Are you all right?"
"Yes," he said. He leaned forward and rubbed at his knee. It hurt, but a bad bruise would be the worst of it.
Shyla sat next to him, scrutinizing him. Even in the unlit hallway, her mismatched eyes were shining and kittenish as she searched his face.
"You saw me in the graveyard?" she asked. He shook his head.
"Obviously a dream," he muttered. His head ached. "This business has all gotten out of hand, Shy. We can't keep living with this."
"You mean," she asked, "with a ghost?"
"Ghosts don't exist," he snapped before he could help it.
"Then...it's a curse, isn't it?"
Silence stretched out. Conall closed his eyes and put his head in his hands.
"Dad?" Shyla finally said. "I want to go down there."
"What? No. We're not going to play into this, Shyla."
"But she's here for a reason. Whatever she is...she's trying to tell us something. We have to communicate with her somehow, or she'll keep haunting us forever! Unless..."
She idly drew little circles on the floor with one finger. "Unless...you want to leave the cemetery."
He hadn't even considered it. At least, he hadn't considered leaving it himself. He had been debating, again, whether or not he ought to take Fred up on the offer to see Shyla off to the Sisters of Saint Margaret, to keep her out of harm's way.
Shyla would never agree. It wasn't a solution he could really present to her, even if it did make the best solution in his mind.
Why so eager to have Shyla away, and yet not consider sparing yourself?
Thoughts of the doll's beckoning motions, her lithe movements, and the silk of her touch invaded his mind. He wanted to push them away, but he couldn't find the heart to. He couldn't say when it had happened, but somehow his broken doll had found her way close to him, enough to feel like a part of him now. She meant something to him.
She'd gotten under his skin.
She'd gotten into his heart.
If Fred's right, she's done the same to others as well. Which means whatever she is, she's a predator, and to her I'm simply prey.
But his heart didn't want to accept Fred's words.
This left him, however, undeniably searching for a way to keep his daughter as far away from the doll as possible, while at the same time ensuring he himself stayed close.
Stayed...at her desire.
"Dad."
Shyla had been nudging him. "Please. Let me go down there? Let me see...if she'll come to me?"
A pang of emotion he couldn't name—anxiety? Covetousness? Fear?—had him shaking his head before she could finish. Shyla remained staunch.
"If she's calling to us, she must need us!"
"Shyla...it's not safe."
"Not safe for either of us?" she demanded. "Or not safe for me? You haven't been afraid to enter the graveyard even after she started appearing, and I don't believe you really disappeared the other day because you fell asleep on the riverbank!"
She tugged his arm. "If you can try and talk to her, Dad, please let me try!"
Talking isn't exactly what I'm doing with her, his mind retorted, but he'd say nothing of the sort to his daughter, of course.
"Come with me," she begged. "Let's go down there together."
"And if she doesn't come?" he asked.
"Then we'll come back, and I won't ask you again."
He doubted he'd win her over in any other way. He mulled over it a minute more and nodded.
"All right. Go put on shoes and something warmer. We'll go down together but to Maya's ring and back. We're not going wandering through the whole cemetery at this time of night."
She nodded emphatically, then hopped up to do as he said.
Conall descended the stairs, going to the back door and peering out. He couldn't see as much of the graveyard from here as he could from his bedroom window, but he could see no mist had appeared. The landscape lay clear and beautiful in the moonlight, and he saw no evidence at all of movement, natural or paranormal, outside his door.
After several moments, he turned to call to Shyla.
Gray ribbons and the familiar porcelain mask met him. The broken doll had appeared, noiselessly as a cloud, in his very own kitchen, not three feet away from him. Silver fog boiled up below her, already half-obscuring the floor.
Conall jumped, swearing loudly.
"Dad?" came Shyla's voice from upstairs. "What is it?"
"Stay up there, honey," he called back. Shaking, he put his back to the door, staring at the apparition, who stared back. Then, as if her senses caught up with her a moment later than they ought to have, she turned her head with a jerky, marionette motion, up in the direction of Shyla's voice.
"No, don't—" Conall said, putting out a hand as the doll began to move toward the stairs. She paused, half-facing him, and the broken half of her mask gleamed. More tears?
Her hesitation lasted less than a second, and she returned to the stairs.
"Shyla!" he shouted. "Don't come downstairs! Stay where—"
When he followed the doll into the living room, though, his daughter had already come halfway down to meet them. She stood poised between one step and the next, staring wide-eyed down at the spectral figure hovering below.
Conall watched the doll carefully. Her whole attention riveted on Shyla, and she tilted her head first to one side, then the other. Her hands came to her chest.
The gesture disturbed him deeply. He instantly remembered the way she'd fought to get to Shyla the night of the toppled statue—the way those delicate hands turned to grasping claws and the creature had wept in wretched desperation to get to the girl. Not like a human being...like a hungry, desperate animal.
"Don't come any closer to her," he warned his daughter. "I can't be sure she won't try and attack you."
"I don't believe she'll attack," Shyla whispered. Her eyes fixed on the doll. "She...she doesn't seem dangerous..."
"Remember how quickly she changed in the woods," he said, slowly approaching the doll from the side. She didn't even appear to notice him as he drew closer.
"I...I think she wants me to come to her."
Shyla took another step down, and a curious thing happened: the doll drew back and threw up a hand in defense.
"No?" Shyla asked her. "You don't want me to come down?"
The doll's head tilted again, and Conall recognized confusion.
Confusion? Or...apprehension?
"Do you have a name?" Shyla asked. She very, very slowly made another attempt to come down, and the doll moved back in equal measure.
"You don't have to be afraid of me."
Her words shook the apparition, visibly. The creature glanced aside, turning her face
away in shame. Conall sucked in a breath as the sound of weeping rose up, seeming to come from all around the doll, in so many voices.
"You came here to see my daughter?" he asked, moving closer to her as well. She glanced up—yes, more tears on her face. A cold shiver slipped through his chest, then: they were more than simple tears. Tracks of gleaming ruby blood stained her cheeks, running into the channels of the cracks on the right side.
"You wanted to see Shyla?" he asked. The doll gave another stiff jerk of her head—something he believed might be a nod.
"But...now you don't want to?"
She appeared to flicker in place then, like the flame of a candle starting to gutter out. He'd never seen her defy substantiality before: there'd been no floating through walls or anything of the sort. Now, though, she briefly disappeared, and when she reappeared, she and the heady cloud of fog crossed the living room to the hearth, and she peered over a small set of photographs he'd kept there.
Photos of Shyla. One from her eighth birthday, which Alderman Trask's wife arranged for her, and Conall attended in awkward self-consciousness. One from the school, a picture of the whole class, where Shyla stood off to the left nearest the teacher. And the third, from when Shyla first arrived—a picture taken a few short days after he'd decided he would, indeed, raise her himself. Again, Mrs. Trask could be thanked for the photo: she'd snapped the shot one evening after Conall passed out holding the newborn, sleeping in a chair at the tavern with the little one in his arms.
The doll hesitated longest over this picture. As she hovered there in silence, Shyla descended the rest of the steps to stand by Conall's side.
"What's she doing?" she asked.
"I...think she's fascinated with the pictures," he murmured back. Pictures of his daughter. Pictures of her as she grew up.
A creeping sense of unwelcome déjà vu traveled up the back of his neck like cold fingers.
"Are you all right, ma'am?" Shyla asked, venturing a step closer.
The doll shrank back as if Shyla had come at her with a raised torch. She pressed herself to the wall, hands splayed across the bricks, face hidden against one shoulder. The sweeping sound of sorrow tripped through the room around all three of them.
His Cemetery Doll Page 10
