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I could see through the open door to the walk-in closet, which obviously did not harbor an intruder I took a closer look anyway The penlight revealed an attic access in the closet ceiling Even if a fold-down ladder was fitted to the back of that trap door, no one could have been spider-quick enough to climb into the attic and pull the ladder after himself in the two or three seconds that I had taken to burst in from the hallway

Two draped s flanked the bed Both proved to be locked froone out that way, butto the hall

Keeping the bedroom door in view, I tried to open aIt was painted shut These were French ith thick mullions, so I couldn’t just break a pane and climb out

My back was to the bathrooh the hollows ofby the toilet any longer but risen, red and dripping, eyes as bright and flat as silver coins I expected to hear the wound bubbling in her throat as she tried to speak

When I turned, tingling with dread, she was not behind me, but the hot breath of relief that erupted froripped by this fantastic expectation

I was still gripped by it: I expected to hear her thrash to her feet in the bathroouish over her death had been supplanted by fear for er a person to , death itself, a monster, a fist-in-the-face reminder that we all perish and rot and turn to dust I’m ashaed to co putnurse, hated her forme hate myself

Sohts: the ht of the mind

My hands were clammy The butt of the pistol was slick with cold perspiration

I stopped chasing ghosts and reluctantly returned to the upstairs hallway A doll aiting for ela’s hobby-roos splayed, facing h the open door from the only room that I hadn’t yet explored, the one opposite the hall bath Its ar across both its hands

This was not good

I know not good when I see it, and this was fully, totally, radically not good

In the movies, a development like the appearance of this doll was inevitably followed by the drauy with a bad attitude A really big guy wearing a cool hockeyan even cooler chain saw or a co enough to decapitate a T-Rex

I glanced into the hobby room, which was still half illuminated by the worktable lamp No intruder lurked there

Move To the hall bathroom It was still deserted I needed to use the facilities Not a convenient time Move

Now to the doll, which was dressed in black sneakers, black jeans, and a black T-shirt The object in its hands was a navy-blue cap with tords embroidered in ruby-red thread above the bill: Mystery Train

For a ht it was a cap like mine Then I saw that it was my ohich I’d left downstairs on the kitchen table

Between glances at the head of the stairs and at the open door to the only roo trouble from one source or the other, I plucked the cap froht light and circumstances, any doll can have an eerie or evil aspect This was different, because not a single feature in this bisque face struck me as malevolent, yet the skin on the back of

What spooked eness about the doll but an uncanny familiarity: It had my face It had been modeled after ela had cared for h to sculpt ly in one of her creations and keep it upon her shelves of favorites Yet unexpectedly coe of oneself wakes priht touch this fetish and instantly find nant spirit, previously immobilized in the doll, came forth to establish itself in ht to crack virgins’ skulls and eat the hearts of babies in my name

In ordinary times--if such tiination Bobby Halloway calls it, with so circus of your mind" This is no doubt a quality I inherited froh to know that little could be known, inquisitive enough never to stop learning, and perceptive enough to understand that all things and all events contain infinite possibilities When I was a child, they read to me the verses of A A Milne and Beatrix Potter but also, certain that I was precocious, Donald Justice and Wallace Stevens Thereafter, es from lines of verse: fro in the blood In extraordinary tiinative forcircus of ers wait to kill their trainers and all the clowns hide butcher knives and evil hearts under their baggy clothes

Move

One ht down the stairs

Superstitiously avoiding contact with the doppelg&au wide of it, I went to the open door of the roouest bedroo lare fro fixture, I saw no intruder The bed had side rails and a footboard behind which the spread was tucked, so the space under it was revealed

Instead of a closet, there were a long walnut bureau with banks of drawers and a massive armoire with a pair of side-by-side drawers below and two tall doors above The space behind the arrown man with or without a chain saw

Another doll awaitedin the center of the bed, arms outstretched like the arms of the Christopher Snow doll behind htness, I couldn’t tell what it held in its pink hands

I switched off the ceiling light One nightstand lauest roounfire to anyone who appeared in the hall

The aran to swing open, I wouldn’t even need the laser sighting to chop holes in them with a few 9-millimeter rounds

I bumped into the bed and turned froh to check out the doll In each upturned hand was an eye Not a hand-painted eye Not a glass-button eye taken from the doll un but time moved in the hall

I was as still as ashes in an urn, but life continued within erwith panic in its squirrel cage of ribs

Onceof eyes that filled those small china hands--bloodshot brown eyes,and startled in their lidless nakedness I knew that one of the last things ever seen through the to a stop in response to an upturned thu