Chapter 31
I slip the fortune into my pocket and tiptoe out of Eric’s office. Carlos and whatever else was here are gone. Standing in the darkness surrounded by antique dolls and a fortune-telling machine will not make me feel any better about it.
When I get back to my room, I lock the door behind me, slam my window shut, and collapse into bed. The air is cool, and I inhale the scent of my sheets, fresh with a hint of lavender, a stark contrast to the staleness of Eric’s office.
I stack two pillows underneath me and inspect the sailboats on the wallpaper to find my center, feeling my chest open and my breathing slow. But as I stare at them further, it seems as though they’re surrounding me, like witnesses, watching me drown and refusing to help.
I press a pillow to my face, trying to block it all out. Minutes turn into hours.
I have to get out of here.
I have to get off this island.
I have no idea what’s happening, but this isn’t normal.
Murdered grandmas. Crunches outside the window. Death threats nailed to the front door. Dead dogs. Creepy fortune tellers who look inside your soul. None of it is normal.
For ten years, I’ve kept everything in its place.
The color-coded spreadsheets at work. The perfectly arranged bookshelves in my one-bedroom apartment.
Saturdays at the community center. Sunday mornings walking to the farmers’ market with a coffee in hand and the city humming around me.
Now, after a few days here in this old house on this strange island, that world has evaporated, and my foundation is being torn from under me.
Sleep won’t come.
I’m back in Eric’s office. Searching for something I can’t name.
I riffle through his desk, the shelves, the floor, but there’s nothing.
Dust and decay saturate the air, and I sense perspiration beading on my neck.
I turn to leave, but the gold antique doorknob won’t budge.
As I attempt to shake it loose, my palms sweaty against the knob, I hear a rustle behind me.
I turn to see Grandma, the fortune teller, has come to life inside her box.
She wears a smug smile, like Vivek, and she looks at me with the same black, hollow eyes as the decrepit horses on the merry-go-round.
Her mouth drops open, unhinging like a snake.
“You shouldn’t have come here,” she says. But it’s not a woman’s voice. It’s Russ Neuman’s voice, embroidered with a smoker’s rasp and extended vowels.
I backpedal and bump into the bookshelves. Eric’s dolls spill onto the ground. I kneel to pick them up, but I can’t.
They’re alive. Wriggling around on the floor. Chipped eyes devouring me. Painted lips, bloodred.
Arms reaching toward me.
That’s when I hear it. An eerie tapping sound.
The other dolls.
They’ve come to life.
They creep down from the shelves on all fours and leap on top of me, grabbing my hair and dragging me to the ground.
I can smell them, ripe with the stench of rot.
I rip them out of my hair; I slap them off my arms, but there are dozens, no, hundreds of them.
They keep coming. Slithering up my neck.
Crawling up my legs. My chest. My face. Prying my mouth open with porcelain fingers.
I scream.
But it’s muffled by a tiny, cold hand sliding down my throat.