67. Dollie—age sixteen
Dollie—age sixteen
I back away on the sofa in the music room, my favorite spot offering as little comfort as Duggan, who sits at my side.
The cushions dent under my weight and Shane’s as he moves with me.
Stretched-out fingers invade what I see as my personal bubble of space, and a coating of sweat sits on my brow because of it.
Unable to take it anymore, I twist my head away. “Come on, Shane, enough.”
Looking back his way, his fingers don’t stop waving in my face. His body looms closer than ever, his shadow pressing me down as I lean away.
“Enough.” I push at his chest with gentle fingers, and he bats my hand away with much harsher force, before returning to pester my face.
“I’m a scary clown.” He laughs.
How can he think that’s funny?
“Enough,” I say, my voice louder. “You know how I feel about them. This isn’t a joke to me.”
I’d made the mistake of telling him what happened to my mother’s face in the dining room.
“I’m only teasing you.” He yanks me into a hug I don’t want. I’m plastered to his chest when he adds, “I just want a bit of attention from you. It’s been different tonight. We’ve spent more time with your parents than usual, and we don’t talk as much then.”
“That’s on you. You’re the quiet one.”
“I’m shy, and honestly, it’s not just that. You seem a bit wrapped up in your brother.”
“Yeah. I haven’t seen him in three years. I’ve missed him.”
“Maybe I don’t get it because I’m an only child.”
“Maybe.” I straighten, now that he’s out of my face.
“I guess that’s why you love him unconditionally.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, he’s a gnarly looking bastard, isn’t he?” Shane laughs.
“Is that a joke?” I ask, totally missing the humor. “I don’t find it funny.”
Balled fists have my nails pressing into my palms.
“It’s not a joke. The scars are just a bit in your face.”
“They don’t make him ugly, and I don’t appreciate you saying anything that implies that.”
A car horn honks outside.
Shane sighs. “That’s probably my dad. I am sorry. I won’t comment on him again, and no more clown talk from now on, either, okay.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.” He kisses my forehead and stands. Pulling me up, my palms sticky against his, he quickly breaks our hold and swipes his hands down his pants, wiping the hand I touched with my left hand—the scarred one—slightly longer, and I can’t help but notice.
The car honks again. “Your dad is getting impatient.”
“Yeah.”
I follow Shane to the foyer, where he quickly steps into a battered pair of sneakers before opening the front doors to blinding car lights.
Something comes from his mouth as I stare out into the night, but it’s silent to me.
A brightly painted figure, standing in front of the car, has all my attention.
Stains cover his polka dot shirt and striped pants.
Blood on the fingertips of his gloves that wave to me.
The stark white paint on his face cracking on his weathered skin.
Black eyes become lost to the night as Shane snaps his fingers in front of my face.
“Lancie, I said I’ll text you tomorrow.”
“Right. Okay.” I force a smile.
He leans in and places a kiss on my cheek that I don’t reciprocate.
“Night.”
“Night,” I reply, granting his dad a wave.
He doesn’t notice, he’s too busy watching the dials on the car dashboard, probably eyeing the time.
It’s getting late—at least eleven by now.
Shane stepping out of my line of vision reveals nothing but lit-up darkness—the painted figure, nowhere to be seen.
The car reverses down the gravel, Shane’s dad driving that way he always does, which sets my nerves on edge.
I step outside, lingering on my porch, accompanied by a chill that makes it to my soul.
The car lights fade away, leaving me standing in the darkness.
A cruel chuckle comes from somewhere, and goosebumps line my arms.
“Who’s there?” I whisper, too quietly for anyone to hear, and it blends in with the wind.
There’s no answer. Still no sign of the clown.
Spinning around, I freeze in the doorway to two familiar small girls. Katie and Amy look at me with a mix of pity and amusement.
“He’s gonna get you. The mean clown is gonna get you.”
“Yeah, like last time, and you’ll be back in that basement. Or you’ll die here, like we did.”
“No,” I answer them both, stepping back.
A phantom touch graces my shoulder, and I spin around, twisting too fast so that I fall down the porch steps.
Trees blow, creating ominous shadows that stalk toward me.
Forcing myself onto my feet, I stumble back to the house. Katie and Amy no longer block the doorway as I rush inside and turn the key.
That vicious laugh sounds again, rumbling through the house. I creep into the reading room on slow feet.
A shadow that’s shaped like my father rushes out of view, moving into the kitchen.
My chest aches with each breath as I follow it, moving deeper into the back of the house. My throat dries.
What if it isn’t him?
“Dad?”
No one responds.
Everyone was upstairs a minute ago, had been for a while, maybe asleep already.
The dining room is dark and empty of people, no traces of the dinner I’d shared with my family earlier. The kitchen is pretty much the same, lit only by a light that hangs over the stove.
“I’m in the house. Do you know where I am?” the voice morphs from Dad’s, and I recognize it from a time in my childhood I wish I could forget.
Silently, I pull a small but sharp kitchen knife from its holder and move to the living room.
Flicking the switch without the dimmer option, I illuminate the room. The old sofa dents, fully occupied by shadows. Heads without faces turn to me, and I fall back into the door.
“What’s real, Dollancie? Are we real, Dollancie?” so many voices ask at once.
Dad would say no.
Mom would smile and say that my imagination has always been crazy.
That word… that exact word.
Have they truly never seen them, all the ghosts in this place? All the children that I’m looking at right now who didn’t make it out alive. Have they never heard the ghost stories?
Maybe it’s me who’s haunted.
The first of many shadows, leading all the others, takes the first step toward me, and I bolt from the room. Knowing my blade won’t work on shadows, I yank open the refrigerator as fast as I can, clutching a single sprig of sage that my parents humor me by buying weekly.
There’s no time to close the door as shadows appear there, even as the refrigerator shines light on them.
Fast feet take me to the stove, but no flame arises as I struggle with the clicker. Turning to the shadows, I give up and run, tossing the useless sprig their way.
I race around the breakfast table and straight out the door, stumbling over a small stack of study books in the reading room from where Mom had been tutoring me earlier. I land on the floor with a thud, cutting my hand on the blade.
A small wince leaves me, but there’s no time to dwell on the injury.
Shoving the blade out in the direction of the shadows, I hope with everything in me that they’ll retreat to the useless threat.
Fingers drag me back. I expect burned hands to be on my shoulders, but my eyes meet with dirty gloves, and I scream.
It comes out silently, all sound trapped inside with the air in my lungs.
The shadows approach at great speed. They’ll step on me any second. Before that happens, they break into dust, and it rains down around me. Each speckle becomes a spider that crawls over my body. I kick and thrash, the blade still in my hand and nicking at other parts of my body.
The harsh touch on my shoulders fades away, and I spin to see no clown, no ghost children, nothing out of the ordinary in this upcycled room. I blink, eyes back on my body, and the big brown spiders fade away to nothing.
Finally, a weak breath slips out of my mouth.
“Ambrose!” I call out, but he doesn’t hear me from upstairs.
I force myself up onto my feet, checking every corner on my way to the stairs.
A pain in my hand alerts me to the gash that’s bleeding out—other minor cuts twinge with pain along my arms. None of my injuries are bad enough for stitches, and the one on my hand—the worst one—isn’t deep, but it stings whenever my fingers move.
Slow and steady, I move up the stairs. Trembling legs working so hard not to give way and send me tumbling back down.
I open my mouth to call my parents, but quickly seal my lips. There’s only one person I want to see right now, and my parents won’t allow it.
Ambrose.
I follow the new carpet along the hall, Mom’s hysterical crying distracting me as it seeps under her bedroom door. Her behavior doesn’t make sense. She’s been so happy all night.
Pressing my head to the door, I take in the fractured sentences she tosses at Dad. “I am. I am glad he’s home, but I can’t shake the feeling he knows. He knows what we did.”
A shushing sound follows—Dad.
“Don’t do that. Don’t tell me to shut up.”
“I have to, Gen. We take this to the grave. Dollancie can’t find out, and Ambrose, even if he’s heard something, he heard it from a psychopath. There’s no proof.”
There is so much hate in Dad’s tone that I can’t pull my ear away from things he doesn’t want me to find out.
“A psychopath whom we handed over our children to.”
My mouth drops open.
There’s no way. No damn way they did that to us.
My heart stops, and I step back, stumbling over the thick new carpet and into the handrail.
The ground floor looks so far away, the threat of falling looming as my body bends over the rail. The clown that stands at the bottom, smiling and waving at me, looks so small. He shouldn’t be scary. But my heart races uncomfortably in my chest.
“Did you hear something?” Mom asks, her voice louder than before. A sniffle follows. “Kids?”
Clasping my hands over trembling lips, I stay quiet as she calls out.
I stay still, eyes still on the small clown, drifting comically slow to the stairs.
“It’s probably nothing, Gen. Maybe the wind.”
My focus slips from the clown to the wooden door and my parents on the other side—the people who raised and love me.
I’m Dad’s princess.
There is no way they were involved. They couldn’t be. All those appeals. All the books that earned them money to find us—none of it ever worked.
Oh, my god. I stop breathing again, this time, for long and painful seconds, the air stalling in my lungs. The pain I feel inside escapes through my eyes, each tear swiftly racing to my hands. I shake my head, sinking to the ground.
My blood stains the carpet.
This can’t be happening.
A quick glance behind me, and the clown smiles, gnarly teeth on a hideous face, standing at the bottom of the stairs.
With stiff movements, I crawl back to the door, away from him and his vicious expression. I clutch the blade tighter.
“I will hurt you if you come up here,” I whisper.
I place my ear to the wood again.
A trembling hand claws at the carpet, bleeding all over it. I can’t worry about the argument it’ll cause right now. I need something soft and comforting.
“I wish we could go back in time. Make it all right.”
“But we can’t, Gen.”
“They are old enough now. We can come clean, and that bastard can finally get what he deserves.” The voice sounds something like Mom, and yet it’s morphing into something else.
The clown on the stairs is two steps closer. My eyes shift his way, my ear still on the door.
“Prison isn’t easy.” A masculine voice comes from behind the wood.
What happened to Dad?
Why doesn’t he sound like Dad?
The clown moves over the midway point.
“I know, but this guilt is killing me. Seeing Ambrose, everything has come back.”
The clown continues his way up, his smile growing, his body growing.
“We thought they’d be safe. I thought he was a good man. He had a great reputation.”
“What good man makes offers like he did? We fucked up. And I can’t live like this anymore.”
The clown stands at the top of the stairs, towering above the gargoyle to his side. The image before me looks like something from a horror movie as I sit in his shadow.
A bloody glove points to the door. “Listen,” he hisses through bloody teeth.
I nod, agreeing with the monster.
“We sent our kids to live in that hellhole just to have money to decorate this place. We ruined their lives.”
My uninjured hand wraps around the doorknob, suffocating cherubs to match the feeling inside me.
Tears fall down my cheeks as I climb to my feet.
The door swings open, with me in the center, ready to confront my parents, but their familiar faces aren’t the ones I see on the bed beneath frilly sheets and half a dozen pillows.
Red lips tilt down as two heads angle my way.
Clowns. I see clowns.
Then everything goes black.