Decision Point (ARC)

by Bryan Thomas Schmidt

  pick: scrub the toilets or stocking?”

  “Stock,” I said automatically, hefting the box. I’d already had

  to bleach the dressing rooms once tonight. I didn’t want to have

  to do the same to the bathroom.

  “Thought so. Let’s get ahead on the new stock then and save

  the morning crew the hassle.”

  Working the back has its benefits—you have to lift the heavy

  crap and scrub off the ick, but you also get first crack at the

  donations. Our store’s got a bunch of dads in receiving, so the

  toy section’s usually pretty sparse.

  I was pretty startled to find that the box weighing me down

  was filled with delicate dolls—not Barbie or American Girl but

  real, old-fashioned dolls with brittle curls, frilly dresses, and thin

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  porcelain skin. Some of the dresses were still dusted with

  cobwebs.

  Jackie saw me assessing the stash. “I used to collect dolls like

  that when I was a kid,” she said. “Kept ‘em for when I had a little

  girl.” She patted her sloping gut. “Joke’s on me, huh?”

  I kept quiet. Another reason I didn’t want to fess up to my

  visit to the clinic was Jackie’s fertility struggles. She was done

  now but Carmen’d warned me off talking babies my first week

  on the job. Twenty years of trying and four miscarriages had left

  Jackie bitter.

  “If I had any sense I’d buy them myself,” Jackie continued,

  oblivious to my discomfort. “Dolls that old, you know one’s

  gotta be Antique Roadshow quality.” Patting me on the shoulder,

  she headed for the back.

  The front door dinged as I set down the box and a regular

  customer—this goth redhead that goes to my school, name of

  Wendy—wandered in. Normally she’s got her buddy Eddie with

  her, but I couldn’t see his faded-out dye-job anywhere.

  Carmen shot Wendy a wave, and Wendy idly wagged her

  fingers back; she seemed distracted, looking around the place

  like she’d never seen it before. Wendy does that a lot around

  town, striding past dangerous stuff like it’s not there, or crouched

  on a bench muttering to herself, pausing like she’s talking to

  someone else. People used to call her Wacky Wendy, but she’s

  gotten stranger lately, conspicuous to the point where she makes

  most of our class uncomfortable. No one jokes around her much

  anymore, you never know when she might snap and haul a

  handgun to gym or something.

  Whatever. I had more important stuff to do than wonder

  about that weirdo. I unpacked the dolls, examining each one

  before setting it on the toy shelf, turning the idea of antiques over

  in my head. Most of the dolls were old but not in pristine, Ebay-

  ish condition—some had cracks and others were waterstained or

  moth-eaten.

  Ten minutes to closing, I was down to the last doll in the box.

  This one was different, I could sense it the second I laid eyes on

  her. Tentatively, I reached into the box, and it was like sticking

  my arm in an icebox, cold eddying around my fingers in waves.

  The doll was more than gorgeous. She was exquisite.

  Coppery red curls, springy and firm, clustered around a

  heart-shaped face. Her features weren’t the typical button nose

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  and bee-stung mouth most of the others sported—less child-like,

  more adult, with sharp, precisely shaped features—and her eyes

  were completely unlike the sleepy blue and green marbles set in

  the other doll faces. These were almond-shaped and pale brown,

  amber-hued, flecked with gold. Even her clothing was different.

  It was an older linin piece that reminded me of the Avonlea

  books cluttering my bookcase.

  I flipped the doll over, looking for the price tag, and sighed.

  The others topped out at twenty bucks but my doll had been

  priced at a hundred-fifty, easily half my paycheck, and an

  obscene amount for furniture from our store, much less a toy

  aisle baby doll.

  Still, I knew I had to have her. Owning her wasn’t a choice;

  it was need, stark and raving, clawing at my insides. The thought

  of putting her down was a painful pressure behind my eyes, a

  pounding in my pulse, as if I was meant for this dainty, precise

  thing or like she, inexplicably, had chosen me.

  Across the store, Wendy turned my way, and for the first time

  in months, I paused to really look at her. She’s always been

  scrawny but now Wendy was much too thin, her skin so pale I

  could make out the tracing of blue veins along her temples

  against her faded black dye and grown out roots. Scabs laddered

  across the ink that curled and curved across her collarbone and

  wrists.

  She looked sick but that didn’t change the queasy, taut

  feeling I got in my gut when I realized that I had her full,

  undivided attention. Wendy’s eyes seemed to glow, like she was

  looking inside me. Instinctively, I cupped a hand across my belly.

  When she blinked, the glow was gone.

  Uneasily, I tucked the doll beneath my arm, backing toward

  the break room. Carmen and Jackie, eager to go home, were both

  too busy counting down the register to realize that Wendy hadn’t

  left or that I wasn’t in the back closing up.

  I ought to ignore the clenching in my gut, the fluttering of my

  heart—what could weirdo Wendy do anyway? Nothing. I should

  rush up to the front with the doll and ask if Jackie could put her

  on hold for me, or keep her in the office or something until I

  could figure a way to afford her. I should put her down. I should

  go talk to Carmen, rent a Redbox-

  Wendy started toward me.

  All the shoulds vanished immediately.

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  Panicking, I bolted, the doll still gripped tight in my arms.

  Behind me I heard shouting—Carmen and Jackie realizing

  that something was wrong as the fire door burst open, and I

  darted into the alley—Wendy yelling incoherently, and the blare

  of an alarm that both seemed loud and muffled at the same time.

  There was a bus closing its doors at the bus stop on the

  corner. I raced up and pounded once. The driver glared but

  popped the door to let me board before pulling away.

  Behind me, the yells faded as I fed the very last of my cash

  into the till and then, exhausted, drifted further into the bus with

  the doll tight in my grip. The bus was empty for a Thursday—a

  homeless dude drooled in his sleep on the back seat, a couple

  Asian tweens midbus whispered together, and a prim old Indian

  lady avidly read 50 Shades behind the driver.

  I sat between the old lady and the kids as the bus pulled away

  from San Jose toward the highway.

  I didn’t even know where we were going, only that I’d

  forgotten to pick up my check at the start of my shift and that if

  I went back I was risking getting arrested for shoplifting the doll.<
br />
  I couldn’t go home—even if Wendy didn’t know exactly where

  I lived, she’d be able to find out easily enough. We weren’t

  allowed our cells on the floor, so my phone was in my locker at

  work. I couldn’t call Carmen for a ride.

  Hell.

  But I had the doll. There was that at least.

  “Thank you for saving me,” said the girl in the seat beside

  me. I hadn’t heard her board the bus or settle down, she was just

  there, subtle as smoke, and when her hand cupped my elbow, her

  fingers were cold and thin, pale, tipped with blue.

  She had the most beautiful amber eyes. Her name was Joyce.

  I don’t know how I knew that, but I did.

  “No problem,” I whispered, closing my eyes as Joyce leaned

  over and whispered quickly to me, enveloped in her sickly sweet

  scent, cradled in a swiftly rising fog.

  *

  It’d been a huge mistake to let the girl realize she was

  watching, Wendy knew, but she was off her game tonight, had

  been for weeks. She knew the two employees vaguely, they went

  to school with her; she’d had Carla or Corrie, or whatever her

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  name was, last year in Art, and the other girl, Lucy or Lana or

  Lorrie, in English.

  C-whatever was yelling now, but Wendy had tuned her out,

  trying to follow the dimming scent of the dead, squinting through

  the grey and wasted Never after the bus as it pulled away.

  Wendy knew that she didn’t need to rush off and catch up

  with the ghost clinging to the girl. She just needed to get an idea

  where they were going and stalk them from there. The bus line

  would be able to give her the next few stops, but ever since their

  spat, Eddie’d been avoiding her, so he was out for a ride up to

  the City, especially to chase down a ghost.

  Not for the first time that day, Wendy wished she hadn’t lied

  to Piotr for so long about her reaping. He’d have busted ass to

  chase the bus and jump aboard; would have dragged the Walker

  out by its stinking, rotting cloak and held the bastard down while

  Wendy called the Light and sent it back to whatever god would

  accept a Walker’s cannibal soul.

  Ignoring the girl still hysterically yelling at her, Wendy

  tucked her hands in her pockets and walked back to her father’s

  car. In theory, she could drive the sedan up to the City, but lately

  she’d been lifting his ride too often as it was, and she wasn’t sure

  she felt confident enough to handle San Francisco’s twisting,

  cluttered streets on her own without wrecking the sedan.

  Then again, that Walker had seemed pretty damn intent on

  following L-girl closely. She moved, it moved. It was the

  damndest thing. In all the time she’d been reaping, Wendy’d

  never seen the like. Living human body heat burned the dead, so

  souls avoided the living and humans never had a clue that the

  dead were nearby. It was a win-win situation all around as far as

  she was concerned. Fewer people to observe her doing her thing,

  for one.

  The thing that ate at her was the way the girl had seemed

  protective of the Walker, like it wasn’t just trying to tick itself

  into a nibble off her soul … like she could see it. But that was

  ridiculous. The living—the regular, normal living, at least—

  couldn’t see the dead.

  Wasn’t it?

  “Mom would know what to do,” Wendy muttered to herself

  as she slid behind the steering wheel. What she wouldn’t give to

  be able to talk to her mom just once more. Advice. Any advice

  would do.

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  Without her mother, Wendy felt like she was barely treading

  water, constantly threatened by the tidal pull of her “job” and the

  rest of her ridiculous, confusing life. She’d never wanted this

  burden she’d inadvertently inherited from her mom, and now she

  was left to sink or swim all alone.

  “Okay,” Wendy muttered. “Okay. Risk the City? Or try to

  catch her at home or at school? What is her name?!” Wendy

  pounded the steering wheel and rested her head against the top

  curve. The shouting had stopped. The thrift store was now dim

  and quiet.

  “Lucky,” she recalled suddenly, and it felt right. It was such

  a bizarre name for a girl Wendy vaguely remembered had been

  given nothing but crap hand after crap hand her whole life. Jerk

  boyfriend who even oblivious Wendy knew cheated on her,

  orphaned in the same ice storm that took Eddie’s dad, crashed

  out with family in those teeny little studios four blocks from

  Wendy’s place.

  Lucky fell in gym and broke her nose. Lucky went to

  Homecoming in a borrowed white dress and got her period.

  Lucky took the class pet home over the weekend, and it came

  back squashed by her aunt.

  Lucky, Wendy thought, flicking on the engine and pointing

  the sedan toward the City, has never been lucky. And now she

  was in the worst scrape of her life, though she probably had no

  clue. That Walker was different from the others. Wendy didn’t

  know why or how, just that it was, and that if she didn’t fall into

  a little luck of her own, then Lucky might be joining her parents

  sooner than she ever imagined.

  *

  The bus let off near the wharf. I got off, clutching the doll to

  my chest, and drifted toward the piers—normally thrumming

  with tourists all times of day and night, but a cool fog licked my

  ankles, eddying across the water.

  Everyone else must have bailed, I reasoned, and felt more

  than heard the chuckle as my new friend walked beside me. The

  world seemed so different now that she was here—everything

  clearer and at the same time darker, harder, swathed in grey and

  glimmering with faint, distant lights, pinpricks like dying stars

  guiding my steps down alleys I’d have never dared after dark

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  before, invisible fingers tugging at my pants as I passed.

  Maybe it was because it was long past sunset, but I didn’t

  recall this part of the City being paved with cobblestones. There

  was a wall up ahead, black-spotted with mold like watching eyes,

  and on the breeze tendril-drooped blossoms like cobwebs sifted

  on the breeze, caught in the rising wind, buffeted by the

  oncoming storm.

  I shivered and tucked the doll closer into my arms, cradling

  her tight, and bent to brush a kiss against her forehead. She was

  warm in my arms, her miniscule nails sharper than I expected,

  pressing into the curve of my elbow. I gripped her tighter; if I

  dropped her, she’d crack against the cobblestones, brittle bone

  china turned to dust and dismay.

  “Keep walking,” the whisper behind me said, and I nodded.

  Joyce knew best. She’d found me, hadn’t she? She would save

  me.

  There. We were closer now, and I could see it even
through

  the rising fog—the bridge rising up, decrepit and rotting and new

  and yet not.

  I didn’t know how or why I was seeing these two places

  overlaid against one another like pictures from another time

  imposed on the world I knew, but there was gravity to the grey

  place, somber solemnity, and I was just so tired of the struggles

  of the bright world, my world.

  If given an opportunity, I’d dive into the mist and never come

  back.

  “Soon,” Joyce promised me, and I dared a glance back at her.

  Her amber eyes filled my vision, so bright, so big, but at the same

  time there seemed to be something subtly wrong with her face …

  I shook my head, breaking the hallucination. Idiot, I berated

  myself. Joyce was exquisitely shaped, sharp and pristine and

  beautiful. Her skin was smooth, poreless, and moonlight pale,

  and her hair hung in perfect corkscrew ringlets. I stank like sweat

  and dust and bleach. Joyce smelled charnel sweet, overblown

  roses and midsummer honey.

  But the skull, the rot, a whisper like a sob came from the back

  of my mind. Didn’t you see the loose flap of her tongue? I pushed

  the voice down, burying it deep. Joyce, I knew, was flawless,

  inside and out. Not like me.

  Not like me at all.

  Joyce took my hand in hers, careful of my doll— her doll I

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  knew now, fashioned with her bones and blood and hair and

  dust—and together we drifted toward the bridge.

  ***

  Wendy wasn’t even out of the parking lot when C-girl

  pounded on her passenger side window, startling the hell out of

  her. “LET ME IN!”

  Flipping the girl the bird, Wendy was about to drive off when

  the passenger door, treacherous, faulty thing, popped open. C-

  girl dove into the seat and slammed the door shut. “Drive! Follow

  that bus!”

  “That’s what I was doing!” Wendy retorted waspishly but

  accelerated anyway. If she had any sense at all, she’d kick C-girl

  out, but Wendy was tired of handling every emergency on her

  own. Without her mom or Eddie, she was kind of at a loss with

  dealing with normal people. The dead were more her forte, and

  before Piotr, she’d just send them into the Light without

  bothering to learn their names.