Chapter 6 VI. DOLL
VI. DOLL
I held the phone handle tight between my fingers, afraid he would take it from me. But he left. I couldn’t see him anymore. All that was left were drops of blood leading toward the hallway.
Who is he? What does he want from me?
“Chiara?” I could hear Rocco’s voice through the phone, but my mind was still on the man from before. My heart was racing, still searching for him, for those ice-blue eyes that looked too much like Rio’s.
For a second, I almost gave in.
“Chiara?” Rocco said again.
“Yeah,” I whispered. “I... someone is in the house.”
“Lock yourself in,” he said. “I can be there in ten minutes.”
“O-okay.” I nodded, placing the phone back on the wall.
The footsteps were gone, but the silence felt so wrong. I looked around, my pulse pounding, thinking only about reaching the bedroom and locking myself in until Rocco came. I ran toward the hallway. The blood drops led that way, so I turned around, and when I did, I crashed into a firm chest.
He was tall. Strong. Compared to him, I really was what he had called me. Just a helpless doll.
I gasped, looking up. His hand wrapped around my throat, pinning me against the wall.
“I will be back, Doll,” he said as he leaned in, breathing me in. “And next time, I won’t be this gentle.”
His grip tightened, cutting off my air. My fingers clawed at his wrist as I struggled to breathe. Then he turned my face, pushed me away, and walked off, leaving me gasping for air.
“Cazzo,” I shouted, my voice shaking.
He just laughed, turned back, and bowed to me like all of this was some sick performance. Completely unbothered.
A tear slipped down my cheek. Like this year couldn’t get any worse. Now I had a stalker who knew where I lived. I wished I could call the police and tell them everything, but the Circle had corrupted it all. I couldn’t trust anyone.
I went back to the kitchen, grabbed a cloth, and started wiping the blood off the floor. Tears dripped down, falling onto the tiles, mixing with the stains.
Mom used to tell me that God gives us only as much as we can take. But I’m afraid I can’t take any more. Maybe I’m not strong enough. Maybe it’s time to end it myself.
I held the knife in my hand, staring at my wrists. It wasn’t the first time I had thought about it.
I always wondered how people would feel if I were gone. Would they move on, forget me the same way they do now? Or would they cry, wishing they could turn back time, hurting because they lost me? Would I even be missed?
I’ve always thought I wasn’t enough. And then Rio came along, and for a short time, he made everything beautiful. When he died, that beauty died with him. My life turned into hell.
If God thinks I can take it all, why did He send me another man to make this hell worse? I’m not strong enough.
The door burst open, and Rocco stormed in. His eyes swept the room, then locked on me sitting on the floor. He looked at my face first, then at the knife. Slowly, he took it from my hands.
“The man is gone,” I said quietly.
“Did you recognize him?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Do you think it was someone from the Circle?”
He shook his head. “They’re hiding.”
“He said he will be back,” I whispered. “I can’t stay here.”
“Come back with me,” Rocco said. “Things are different now.”
“Very,” I mumbled sarcastically.
“The boat leaves tomorrow at midnight. We’re going to Rome next,” he said. “You know how it works.”
“I can’t leave Carlo,” I said, my throat tight. “And Sophie...”
“Sometimes you have to leave the people you love so you can love yourself.” He reached into his coat and pulled out a deck of tarot cards. “Choice is yours.”
It was Dahlia’s deck.
He stood, glancing around the room as if searching for something. When he found nothing, his voice softened. “How about a deal?”
I looked up at him, still kneeling on the floor.
“Two months ago, a freak approached me wanting to buy the House of Clowns. He paid in cash, said he wouldn’t be the owner, that he worked for someone else.
” He leaned on the counter, his black coat creased and tired.
“Ever since the Family cut the funds...” he sighed, rubbing his neck, “I needed the money. But there were rumors that whoever bought the House of Clowns is someone else inside. The man who brought me the cash is the new circus director, Oscar, I believe it’s his name. ”
“And you want me to find out who bought it?” I stood, my eyes locked on him.
“You’re a dream walker, Chiara. You can enter his dreams. Find out.”
I shook my head, my jaw tight. “Not a fucking chance. I barely made it out last time. Rio had to die just so I could get out.”
“Then use the tarot,” he said with a grin. “You know things. We both know you do.”
“What are you talking about?” I snapped.
“You...” He glanced around the room, his voice lowering. “Let’s just say you see people who aren’t here anymore.”
“Are you trying to say that the man I saw isn’t real?” My heart kicked against my ribs. I was afraid of men, yes, but I was terrified of ghosts. Especially if he was one.
“I see no one,” he said. “Do you?”
“But the blood...” I looked at my hands, then down at the floor.
The blood was gone. But I cleaned it. I know I did. The cloth was right there.
He lifted his brows. “Just saying.” Then, raising his hands in surrender, he added, “You belong in the House of Clowns.”
I sighed. “And what do I get in return?”
“Location,” he said. He cleared his throat. “Where Rio is buried.”
A tear slipped down my cheek. “That’s just cruel, Rocco.”
“So we have a deal?” He extended his hand toward me, waiting.
I exhaled, staring at him. “I’ll think about it.”
“Fair,” he said, turning toward the door. “Remember, the boat leaves tomorrow at midnight.”
I nodded, watching him disappear through the doorway.
The tarot deck he had given me was still in my hands. When the door slammed shut, I turned, opened the box, and revealed the cards inside. Black with golden edges, they gleamed under the faint light.
I closed my eyes, shuffled the deck, and pulled a single card.
The Moon.
Of course it was.
Maybe all of this was an illusion. The Moon meant just that: madness, confusion, deception. Maybe I really had gone mad.
Even though I wanted to know where Rio was buried, even though all I had wished for this past year was to say a proper goodbye, I wasn’t ready to go back. Not yet. Not to do what Rocco asked.
Because if I got stuck inside someone’s dream again, I knew I wouldn’t come back. I would be trapped there forever, in an endless nightmare.
A sharp noise cracked behind me, and I gasped. When I turned, my breath caught.
On the window in front of me, painted in blood, was a smiling face.
I stumbled back, clutching the tarot deck to my chest, then ran through the kitchen and up the stairs. I slammed the door shut and locked it this time.
He has to be real. He has to be.
When I turned toward the bed, a red rose lay across the sheets, and beside it, a Joker card, and on it with thick red letters, it read, HA HA.
My pulse roared in my ears. I spun in circles, checking every corner, every shadow, my breathing sharp and fast. Then I dropped onto the bed and pulled the blanket over me, curling up like a child afraid of the monsters waiting under the bed.
“This isn’t real,” I whispered again and again. “This can’t be real.”
A year earlier
Rocco was impatient. He locked himself in the office for hours, refusing to come out. All he wanted was to know who else he could silence from the Circle, and how he could reach the Family.
For years, people around La Maddalena went missing. No bodies were ever found. The police left the cases open until they went cold. Among those people was my mother, Arianne Serra.
People always talked. They whispered about figures in red and black hoods, faces hidden behind animal masks, walking through the woods near La Maddalena.
About the abandoned house that led all the way to the cliffs.
They blamed the Oleander flowers, saying their scent made people see things. But it wasn’t the flowers’ fault.
It was the evil that had taken root in La Maddalena long before any of us were born.
Rocco knew it well. Whoever died in La Maddalena never moved on. Their souls stayed behind, trapped between worlds, haunting the island until the day it would finally burn to the ground.
He used to tell me stories about every one of them, his hands resting on that old ledger filled with names of those who belonged to the cult. They were spread across Europe and the United States.
Everywhere.
The Family, that’s what they called the main group of six who left La Maddalena after World War II and moved to America.
The ones who stayed behind formed the Circle.
They built their houses around the main street of the little town, surrounding themselves like a fortress.
Those who were useful to both the Circle and the Family were placed in the government of Italy’s capital.
Rome. The smartest and most dangerous of them all were called the Crows.
They were everywhere, watching, whispering, brainwashing the weak.
They promised wealth, beauty, and fame, anything you could ever desire, in exchange for your soul.
And when the time came, they collected their debt.
The only reason Rocco wanted to stop them was because he didn’t want them to destroy the only thing he loved more than himself—the House of Clowns. But he sold his soul to them anyway. Maybe that’s why I’m broken now. Maybe I’m paying for his sins.
They held sacrifices in the basement beneath the House of Clowns. They hosted parties above while the crowd outside cheered for the circus. It lasted one week every year, a week when the whole town gathered to celebrate. No one noticed when people went missing.
They hunted them through the woods. When they caught them, they slaughtered them. Offered their blood as a sacrifice.
They believed the blood of others would cleanse their sins. That death, done in devotion, was holy.
But nothing holy ever smelled so much like iron.
They believed the world survived through “Equal Exchange.” Every birth must be balanced with a death. Every creation with destruction. They saw themselves as caretakers of that balance, keeping the universe from collapsing into chaos.
To them, sacrifice wasn’t murder; it was duty.
And when disasters, wars, or plagues struck, they claimed it was because the Balance had been neglected.
They were a plague themselves, poisoning La Maddalena while believing they had brought paradise to lost souls.
And I was just like Alice, wandering through their Wonderland, trying to save what was left of it.
But I couldn’t even save myself.
I couldn’t even save what was left of me.