19. Dollie—present day
Dollie—present day
I listen as the silence around me fills with the screams of victims.
My screams.
Ambrose screams so loud that his voice breaks.
A laugh echoes, too, rumbling deep from the round belly of a monster dressed in polka dots.
I’m sitting in his basement on that cold wooden dresser.
His big, flappy shoes bring him closer, and I focus on the too-round toes of his shoes as he drags Ambrose down the stairs without his clothes. He tosses him into the water and gets in behind him.
There’s blood on my stepbrother’s legs, but I don’t see any grazes on that part of his body, and he doesn’t have a condition like mine that would cause him to bleed from that area.
“Wash yourself, boy. I can’t touch you again.” Chuckles forces a false laugh, and Ambrose cries.
One single tear falls to his trembling lips before they move, telling me, “Turn around.”
“Ambrose,” I whisper in response to someone gently calling my name.
I open my eyes and push myself up in a fluster, finding that I’m no longer on the hard foyer floor and, somehow, on the chaise in the reading room, surrounded by the mess.
Spinning around to look for the clown or Shane, my face lands in someone’s hands as they kneel before me. My hair, brushed from my face in an unusual way, falls into my eyes at the sound of my name again.
“Dollie, are you okay?”
I stay silent, and my eyes flick to the ceiling before focusing on the person who called me.
Annabelle.
What is she doing here?
Blinking in her image, so different from how I remember the girl who was once my friend. The person I confided in through the mourning of my parents, and who sat with me while I spiraled and never made it to Ambrose’s trial.
“How did I get in here?”
“I didn’t see. You were here when I got here. What happened? Why have you been crying?” She swipes at the mascara stain below my eyes before setting her hands in her lap. “What the fuck happened in this room?”
She’s asking too many questions, and I have one of my own, “Where are they?”
“Who are we talking about?”
I don’t answer.
Jittery movements push my legs over the edge of the chair, but I’m not ready to stand yet.
My eyes catch on the mess behind Annabelle, torturing me with all the broken trinkets and destroyed memories again.
“Shane?” I call out, with a voice just as jittery as my movements.
There’s no answer.
“Does Shane drive a Mercedes?”
“Yeah. Is it wrecked?”
“No, why would it be? What happened? Did he make this fucking mess?” Annabelle points over her shoulder with a manicured fingernail. Then, with a gentle hand, she thumbs the bruise on my neck. “Did he do this, too?”
I’d swear she’d be frowning if she could. The Botox prevents it.
A creak drags my eyes back to the second floor.
“He’s not up there, honey. It’s just creaky, like always. Old things are. I’m telling you, these knees are starting to act the same way.” She stands, and they prove her point with a click. “Your loser boyfriend almost ran me off the road. He’s probably halfway home to Mommy by now.”
Annabelle never really clicked with Shane. She saw him a few times in our teens and told me she wasn’t feeling him and didn’t believe I was, either.
“Are you here to see me?”
“Yeah. I only just heard you were back. And who else would I be here to see?”
It’s almost like she is waiting for an answer, but my mind isn’t on her question as my eyes dart around the room.
“Dollie, what the fuck happened?”
Annabelle is the only person other than Ambrose ever to call me Dollie, and it’s only because she picked up the nickname from him in childhood.
She’d been one of the two friends who tried to interact with us after we returned home.
I sigh, my attention snapping back to her. “I should call Shane to see if he’s okay.” I leave my perch, heading for my phone, still in my coat pocket at the door.
Even though my mind is numb to the crunching beneath my feet, every step brings a tear to my eye. By the time I reach my coat, dozens are dripping off my chin, and it isn’t because of the blood seeping through my socks.
Her hand wraps around my wrist. “Don’t you dare. I mean, if he did this and that…” She points to my neck, “Then he isn’t worth your time. Don’t be calling him to check if he’s okay. Is he calling you to see how you are? No, he did all this and ran away. Call the police.”
“He hasn’t called,” I confirm as I eye my lock screen.
He left me here with a clown—with Ambrose, who wants me dead—and didn’t even care enough to check on me.
Unless…I freeze. Unless there was no clown.
No Ambrose.
The realization hits. And it hits hard.
It could have been just another vandal.
A vandal, I saw as someone else to bring myself a little comfort.
But why would the idea of him—my brother—still do that for me? The death threat lingers in my mind, asking that same question.
I wish I had a reason for thinking that way about Ambrose. A flutter of warmth spreads inside me as I think of him again, and I see it as a weakness.
I pictured a vandal turned hero as my fucking stepbrother because I wanted it to be him. I wanted the hero I always had when I needed one most.
But he isn’t that person.
He’s a monster, who will hurt me if given the chance. And I need to remember that.
God, I really am broken.
“Shit,” I mumble to myself, running my hands down my face. “I can’t call the police.”
“Why not? Don’t let that bastard get away with shit like this. You’re physically hurt, Dollie, and that entire fucking room is smashed up. What started this? How did you get him to stop?”
Annabelle’s fingers snap in front of my eyes, pulling my attention from the second floor when I don’t give her an answer.
“Someone else was in this house. And I thought—no, at the time, I was sure it was—” I stop, no longer sure of anything.
“You can tell me. No judgment, ever.”
“I thought it was someone, it couldn’t have been, but whoever it was stopped Shane from hurting me.”
Who would have thought a bump on the head would have cleared my thoughts enough to realize that whoever, whatever, was in this house wasn’t my jailed stepbrother.
“Well, that’s a good thing. Shame he isn’t still here so we could thank him.”
“God… this house is driving me to insanity.” I crouch down, my haunches taking my weight.
Annabelle’s hand lands on my shoulder. “Do you wanna go into town for a bit? Getting out of the house and getting some coffee might be good for you.”
Shame has me stuttering. “I don’t have money for coffee.”
“You don’t need money. I’ll buy you a coffee. Or one of those fancy teas you occasionally post on your socials. You know, those pink ones with balls in. And I can even have my dad come by and scope this place out.”
Her dad, a local detective, will probably think I’m crazy, just like the cop last night probably did, like Shane and half of this town do.
The door arch accepts my weight as I stand with trembling legs. Unable to pull my eyes away from the second floor, Annabelle’s eyes follow mine. No doubt, the gargoyles she’s hated since childhood still creep her out.
She shivers. “You know what, screw it. We can’t leave this place like this anyway. Do you want me to check it out? We can get a takeout delivery and clean this place when I’m done.”
“You can’t go up there.” I clutch her arm.
“I understand you not wanting to go up there, but I’ll be fine, really.”
“Someone was in the house, Annabelle.” My hold on her wrist tightens so hard that she stares down at my grip.
Letting go of her, I continue, “Maybe I thought I saw someone I didn’t because I’m not sleeping well in this house, and I’m seeing clowns fucking everywhere. But there was someone here, and he still could be.”
Her frown questions my sanity, and the gentle tone that follows tells me she also thinks I’ve lost it.
“Annabelle, I’m serious. This person saved me. They hit Shane for hurting—” I cut myself off, stumbling over the fact that Shane had done so much to hurt me in the last hour.
The weight of the last hour lands heavily on my shoulders, and they slump.
“Look, Dollie, this house has been broken into so many times. It’s huge.
There could have been someone here hiding and planning on playing a cruel prank.
They may have even been dressed as a clown for whatever fucked-up reason.
But when they saw you and your situation, that changed because they didn’t want to see you get hurt. ”
“What if he’s still here? I have to stay here alone tonight, and between my parents and whoever is here, I can’t—I can’t be here alone.”
“Your parents?”
“I feel like they’re haunting me.”
Annabelle sighs. “Well, I think being haunted by their death is understandable. It was pretty brutal.”
“I try not to think about them.”
“That’s understandable, too.” She offers a sad smile. “Look, you do not have to stay here alone. I can stay with you tonight. I’m in no rush to go home. My roommate has a guest. I mean, this woman is seventy-four, and her guest, he’s eighty-two, and they still do stuff.”
An uncomfortable twist hangs on my lips.
“Yeah, that kind of stuff. I can scope out the house because even death by intruder sounds better than listening to them go at it for half of the night.”
Grappling at her hand, Annabelle’s fingers tighten around my scarred skin, and she squeezes. I can’t help but notice that she doesn’t cringe over my scars.
“Please, don’t go up there.”
“It’s fine. Seriously, I’m not afraid of someone who saved you from your abusive boyfriend.
Your boyfriend, on the other hand…” Annabelle begins her march to the stairs with me still attached to her.
“I’m glad that rat bastard left before I got here.
I fucking hate men. No, I hate overgrown toddlers. ”
“He was so different tonight. Like, we’ve had arguments before, and they’ve been bad, but there was never physical violence.”
“He is vile. Isn’t that stuff in there your mom’s? Why would he break that when it’s all you have left?”