The dollhouse, p.25
The Dollhouse, page 25
Bud wiggled his arm—or tried to — but it was completely stuck. “What are you doing now, you crazy bastard?”
Angel sucked in a breath, wondering how Alfred would react, but he just laughed and continued taping Bud’s body—chest around the back of the chair, other arm straight at his side, ankles to the feet of the chair.
Alfred stepped back to inspect his work. “That should do. All right.” He clapped his hands and looked at Angel. “Today’s game is going to be extra exciting! You are going to find a store—I’m not going to tell you the name of the store—at the corner of East First and South Beach. Once you find the store, you will purchase chocolate ice cream, a package of diapers, and a rotisserie chicken.”
What a weird combination of items, Angel thought. Then she realized it must be a grocery store, not a convenience store, because of the chicken. Which meant it would be a larger store and it would be harder to find the items quickly. Damn it!
“Wait, I don’t know where East First and South Beach is! Please, please, give me one hint?” Angel practically screamed, terror bearing down and threatening to paralyze her.
“I’ll make you a deal. I’ll give you a hint, but if I do, it will cost you five minutes. One hint, but you return in 25 minutes.” Alfred cackled, delighted with himself.
Olivia gasped. Bud’s eyes grew huge. Angel wanted to throw up.
“Just 25 minutes to find a place with no name and no map and no watch? You’re crazy!” Angel shouted, hopelessness and dread overriding any sense of caution. She fought to control herself. This might be her last chance. She would do it, or die trying. Still, she couldn’t help adding, “Games have to be fair!”
And what if the DVD wasn’t still under the flowerpot?
“Life isn’t fair, Doll. What do you say? 30 minutes, or one hint?”
Angel looked at Olivia, who refused to meet her eyes. She looked at Bud, who was still as stone, probably in the Cave like Olivia had taught him. Grace was of no use. “Hint. I’ll take the Goddamn hint.”
“Excellent!” He was happy about this new spin on his game. “You will turn right in the alley.”
Angel begged her insides to stay inside.
“But wait, there’s more!” Alfred said this in a clownish voice and looked at them as if he expected some sort of reaction. When no one responded, he rolled his eyes and continued.
“I haven’t told you about the game yet!” Alfred grinned and moved around the table so he was on the side with the weights. He lifted one weight off the hook and immediately the circular saw dropped a few inches. “How cool is that?” He flipped a switch and suddenly the saw came to life, a horrible buzzing sound, so loud it made Angel’s head hurt. The saw moved a little, but the chain and bar were working to keep it mostly facing in the same direction—the direction that would, at a certain point, cut Bud’s arm off.
No one spoke. Bud refused to look at the saw, his gaze locked on some spot on the wall near the stairs. Angel could feel Olivia tremble.
Alfred flipped off the power and the buzzing stopped. “First Doll, here please. You are going to be our Vanna White.” When no one acknowledged his joke, he made a face. “Honestly, you people have no sense of humor.”
Olivia put Grace down on the couch, gave Angel a small desperate look, and moved to the end of the table.
“Stand here,” Alfred pointed to the side of the table where the cable with the weights was. “I’m going to set a five-minute timer, and each time the timer goes off, you will remove a weight. There are just enough weights to keep the saw from reaching Bud’s arm if Angel completes her tasks.” He grinned and looked at Angel, lifted the single weight he had removed, and set it on the kitchenette counter. “Boy Doll might have had five more minutes...”
Angel sucked in a deep breath. She’d made the right choice.
Alfred took Olivia by the shoulders and rotated her, gently, so that she was facing Bud directly. Alfred ordered Olivia to keep her gaze on Bud.
“All right. Questions before we get started?” Alfred asked, looking happily between each of them, except Grace, who was—for once—silent and still on the sofa, her thumb in her mouth, Mister Bobo in a death hold in the crook of her arm. Somehow even she understood this was big, bad business.
“Money. I need money.” Angel whispered.
“Oh, right, yes, thanks for the reminder!” Alfred pulled a $20 bill out of his pocket and laid it on the table so Angel had to approach him to pluck it up. “Repeat the list?”
“Chocolate ice cream, rotisserie chicken, diapers,” Angel whispered.
“And where are you getting them?” His voice had risen to that terrible sing-song pitch. He was glowing with happiness! Asshole!
Angel took a deep breath and slid the $20 into the waistband of her skirt. “South Beach and East First.”
“Good girl. I left a coat for you by the door. People would wonder about a girl out in this weather without one.” Alfred said. “I’m going to start the timer when I hear the back door close. Make good choices. Now go!”
Angel hustled up the stairs but his voice stopped her at the top. “Girl Doll, don’t let the ice cream melt.”
CHAPTER NINETY-THREE
December 16, 2006
One thing was going right. The DVD was still there, exactly where she’d left it under the flower pot. It had been a few weeks since she’d hidden it, and Angel had no idea what weather might have done. It could be completely trashed. She wasn’t going to think about that now. She could only control what she could control—
Oh my God! Alfred said he would start the timer when she closed the back door, but she’d stopped to pull on the black puffy jacket and then uncovered the DVD—and she’d forgotten to sing!
Would a whole song have passed since she closed the door? She was going to have to be a song short anyway—her song list was for 30 minutes, not 25. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus...
She’d start with the first song—No Souvenirs—and end one song early with Let Me Go. That should be 23 minutes. Maybe a second late. Please God no not a second late.
Angel’s feet pounded dead leaves as she raced through the yard, into the alley, made a right, at the same time struggling to put the coat on while still moving as fast as she could toward the street. At the end of the alley, she shoved the DVD into one pocket, felt around the waistband of her skirt and found the money, slipped it into the pocket as well. She took a guess and ran to the corner—the street sign said East Third. Okay! Okay! She had to get to East First. Her gut told her to keep going straight. She’d know in a block whether she’d chosen correctly—she had! East Second. One more block. At the sign for East First she had to make another guess. Left? Or right? A glance to the right showed her lots of houses, and what looked like a hospital. To the left were more commercial buildings... an auto repair shop and an ice cream parlor. Left. Left!
She dashed left, starting on Brave & Crazy, a long song thank goodness, singing under her breath as she ran faster than she’d ever run in her life, looking at street signs, desperate for Beach. There were very few houses here, and she swore because if she could find a house and swap the DVD first, that would be the best because she’d know at least she would have achieved the mission and if she was late it might be worth it no it wouldn’t, never would it be worth it, but better than losing everything.
A large delivery truck with the word Albertson’s passed her, with pictures of all sorts of food on the sides, coming from the right. Was Albertson’s the local grocery store? Trust your gut, Angel, trust your gut. She took off to the right, noticed there were fewer houses, a restaurant, a dry cleaner, a pharmacy. Good, good. Made the right choice...
Beach! BEACH! She nearly screamed the word out loud but instead forced herself to keep singing. She skipped You Used to Love to Dance. It was slow and long and she wasn’t 100% confident of her timing so far.
Instead, she began The Angels.
Fuck! Fuck! She wasn’t going to make it! Three more songs! She was halfway through her time.
There it was! She was at the corner of East First and South Beach, and the store was on the other side of a busy road. Damn it! She would have to cross illegally, no time to wait for a light, it was wide here, with more traffic.
One car honked and she ignored it, sprinting across the four-lane street, then dashed through the parking lot, in between automatic doors, and nearly collided with a boy putting carts away. She pulled a red basket from the pile at the door and looked up to get bearings.
You Can Sleep While I Drive...
Produce and the deli were to her right and she moved that way, bumping past people, not bothering to say “sorry” for fear of losing her place in the song. The rotisserie chickens were in a hot case and she grabbed one, caught her breath as it nearly slipped out of her hand, and slid it safely into the red basket.
What was the second thing? Ice cream! Yes! Angel half-walked, half-ran, staring up at the signs at the end of each aisle—cereal, bread, canned goods, international foods, pet supplies—paper goods. Diapers! Angel turned into that aisle and nearly screamed in frustration because a giant pallet took up the width of the aisle. A woman with a crying baby in a carrier sat in the opening, blocking the only way to squeeze through. Damn it!
Angel zigged out of the aisle and ran through the back of the store, toward the frozen cases. Breakfast foods. Vegetables. Pizzas. Cakes and pies. Ice cream! Where the hell was the plain chocolate ice cream? Finally, she found a carton, on the bottom row. She ran toward the front of the store this time, dodging people clustered at the checkout lines—oh what hell was this!—and was able to slip easily into the diaper aisle, grab a pack of diapers with a smiling fat toddler on the front, and finally, finally, headed toward the quick checkout line. Two people in front of her. Please, please, no price checks or other disasters...
Checkout went quickly and Angel threw the change into the bag with the receipt.
Now the real race would begin.
Out the door, instead of returning down East First, Angel dashed across the street against the light and continued straight three blocks. She made a left onto East Third, a residential area. At least she’d be headed in the right direction and maybe buy some time.
Her head swung left and right as she sang Testify, no longer whispering, singing loud enough to keep her focused. Just one more song after this. One. More. Song. Please God I have to find that envelope!
What if she got to the street by the blue house and had still not found an envelope? Maybe she could just throw the DVD into a mailbox? What would happen to it? Would the post office people even watch it? Probably not. No, she had to be sure someone would see it.
Half through the second block, starting Let Me Go. Olivia would say that was prophetic. Olivia liked that word. Angel didn’t like it, because it was just short of 4 minutes long. No, no, no, no.
What had Alfred said—about why he didn’t send Bud or Olivia—because they would go find help. He didn’t think Angel could save them. But what would Angel or Bud do differently? Would they abandon the others? Risk someone getting killed? She didn’t think so, she really didn’t. They might seem braver to him—and themselves—but she knew she was the only one who could.
“Blue envelope!” She shrieked the words out loud and felt a swoosh of relief—the mailbox was on a post at the curb, with a flower box under it, not attached to the house, and the envelope was visible in the open mailbox mouth, with the little flag tipped up to show it was outgoing. Angel’s feet skidded to a halt on a patch of slippery rotting leaves. She dropped the grocery bag on the curb, pulled the envelope out, tugged at the interior sleeve with the correct DVD, swapped it with Alfred’s, and shoved the sleeve back into the blue envelope. A car drove by but didn’t slow or stop. Keep moving, keep moving. Just a girl checking the mail. Nothing to see here.
Jesus God she was not going to make it!
Angel pressed the loosened sticky edges of the blue mailer shut as best she could, started running, realized she’d left the grocery bag and dashed back, then ran like a pack of wild dogs were chasing her, one more block, right into the alley, flung the real Movies by Mail DVD into the mouth of an open garbage can, can’t breath, stop singing, doesn’t matter, did everything I could, please God, please God, please God, please God, please God please please please.
Up the stairs, into the house, down the stairs, screaming, “I’m here! I’m here! I’m here you bastard I’m here!”
The vibrating circular saw was a hair’s breadth from Bud’s bare arm.
“Shut it off!” Angel screamed, slamming the bag with diapers, chicken, and ice cream onto the table.
And Alfred laughed, and laughed, and laughed.
CHAPTER NINETY-FOUR
December 17, 2006
“Sunshine Evanston OD’d.” Peter typed quickly and hit send. He was too angry to write more, and it didn’t matter. Nick wouldn’t know she’d died otherwise. The Evanston twins weren’t even one of his cases. Like Peter, the case had always bothered Nick because of the way the town treated her. There was zero evidence Shine did anything other than make a poor decision to go away for a weekend, but she might as well have been Jack the Ripper. Both Peter and Nick were convinced the townspeople got some perverse joy from torturing her, like it made them feel better about themselves, in some twisted way. It was human nature. Shine understood. She’d once confessed to Peter that she used to watch Cops sometimes, or Springer, to make her life seem okay in comparison. It had probably been quite some time since she felt that way.
People could be absolutely inhuman.
CHAPTER NINETY-FIVE
December 18, 2006
Sheila Hunt didn’t want to lose this gig. It didn’t pay much, but she wasn’t qualified for anything that paid more. And it was so damn easy, really. Her job was to scan in the returned movie rentals, passing the bar code under the machine until she heard the sound confirming it had registered and the contents matched the Mylar envelope labeled with the DVD’s details. Then she shuffled it on down the line to the next person, who oversaw the little Mylar envelopes as they were rewrapped in shipping material and sent on to the ship-out team.
Every once in a while some idiot would send back their kid’s favorite Disney flick, or a junior dance recital video, or evidence of a raunchy bachelor party. The policy was, unless there was some sort of name on the DVD, the mis-returned product would go directly into the round file. But some of the clerks would take them home just for shits and giggles. You never knew what you were gonna see on one of those videos. It didn’t happen often, but that was what was happening right now at Sheila’s station. Instead of hearing the little bell she expected, a loud, angry beep erupted from the machine. Already annoyed, Sheila pulled out the Mylar envelope and tipped out the shiny disk. Only it wasn’t shiny. And it sure as hell wasn’t Night at the Museum. It had no label on it. Handwritten on the label was one word, in big, childish lettering: “Help.” The way the word was scrawled made Sheila absolutely believe this wasn’t some sort of stupid joke.
She took the DVD to the testing machine and within seconds was yelling for her supervisor and looking for the nearest trash can so she could lose her lunch.
Holy fuck.
CHAPTER NINETY-SIX
Our Family Photo Album
Photograph: An attractive blonde woman in an armchair in front of a crackling fire, beaming, with a swaddled baby is cradled in her arms. Her husband, dark-haired and handsome in a thick wool cardigan and pleated gray trousers, stands behind the chair, a hand on the woman’s shoulder. He is smiling broadly. A small girl leans into the side of the chair, her expression pouty. She is tugging her mother’s hand to bring it to herself. Red nail polish Xs out each of the faces, except the baby.
Undated.
CHAPTER NINETY-SEVEN
December 18, 2006
Holy shit! Angel swallowed hard when she saw the set for the first photo shoot with Grace. It was a recreation of the picture Olivia had talked about, with the mom and dad and baby, and the little girl! Alfred was busy handing out clothes—to everyone but Angel.
Was he going to kill them? If so, why wasn’t Angel involved?
Strangely, when Alfred showed them the inspiration photo, he didn’t seem as over-the-top as he usually did. He pointed to the image of a family— mother, father, new baby, and sister—and said, with what sounded like sorrow, “Today we are erasing the devil and replacing her with an angel. That’s it. That’s all. Easy peasy, as the kids say.”
Once she understood no one would hurt today, Angel was a tiny bit resentful that Grace’s first photoshoot was both pain- and trauma-free. You’re becoming a jerk, Angel Evanston.
For this scene, Alfred had hung a backdrop that looked like the living room of a fancy home. There was a fireplace and a mantel. Alfred arranged Olivia in an armchair in front of the fire. She was dressed in one of the old-timey dresses. Bud stood behind her, in an outfit that made Angel giggle. Her fourteen-year-old brother looked like a fifty-year-old man in trousers and one of those button front sweaters rich old guys seemed to like.
Angel wasn’t part of the shoot. Angel’s job seemed to be to help Grace get dressed.
The clothes Alfred assigned them were always specific, but the dress he wanted Grace to wear was especially strange. It was basically a white pillowcase with long sleeves. There was no detail at all. No trim, or fancy sewing, or even colorful hemming. Just white fabric that covered Grace from her neck to her toes, and the tips of her fingers. Alfred handed Angel a matching hat type thing that hid Grace’s beautiful blonde hair. So weird.
