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THE RISING SUN flushed the horizon with shades of deep lilac. Atwood caught glimpses through gaps between the pines and conifers shouldering the road. He had chosen to drive through the night on backroads.
He was a man on the edges of the everyday. A man comfortable with sleeping through the day and working through to dawn easily. At the end of the night, he was happy to eat a big breakfast, turn in with the curtains drawn and stare at the moving shapes on hotel room TV screens until he fell asleep. Atwood’s downtime was filled with nothing memorable. The world washed over him and he felt he was content to be swept along. If he’d ever been asked he would say he was at peace with the world, with who he was. But nobody ever asked him. His job was to be unseen. To never leave the corner of your eye. He had no children, and he had no partner. He believed in love but never sought it out. Love did the same for him. And that was okay.
That morning he had dropped his razor as he shaved, nicking himself. Dark blood had run into his stubble, dripped into the sink. His fingers were numb. He held them under hot water, watched the blood wash away. He couldn’t feel the heat. Picking up the razor with his other hand he finished shaving, concentrating on the process, wanting no more nicks, ignoring the numbness.
Atwood had been a child lost in school. Capable at most things, never great at one. He lacked an idea about what he could do or be with an education. Was never ensnared by a subject, never found simple joy in learning about it. The one good idea he took with him from school came from a careers advisor. If in doubt, join up. So he did. And he immediately felt saved. His realisation was as profound as it was simple. In this world I fight for my people. I fight for the weak, for those that cannot, when I am told to. It met all his needs. Doing the right thing was made easy. His choices were removed by orders. All his decisions were the right ones.
He served well and when he left was discharged honourably. Atwood slid into private security and life as a courier with a minimum of fuss or deliberation, finding the job through the old soldier network. Managers, recognising his talent for barely making an impression and an ability to handle himself without hesitation, trusted him with shadow work for sensitive clients. Important things delivered by hand under a cloak of the quotidian. On grey days now, between jobs, a whisper told him he should have stayed in. As long as he could.
He dreamed of his days as a soldier rarely, but when he did, it was the same dream. A memory of a single night replayed. A single action. Atwood walked into the burning shell of a house in a newly secured lodgement. He grabbed first one then another squadmate by their webbing, then dragged them out of the house, saving them both. The family that owned it were locked in a room while his squad occupied the building. A young couple, two infants, twins. Facts remembered. No feeling about it. This was not a heroic action. It was what was expected of him. What he expected of himself. What he did feel in his dream was a paralysing undercurrent of fear. Fear of a thing done wrong. Regardless of orders. Regardless of training. The images were different each time he dreamed. Could be different as he moved in and out of the house. As it burned down the mother and father hammered on the door, their screams of panic escalating. He left them where they were, assuming as he exited that they would be dead before he could help. All of them. He never chose differently. On the rare occasions he took a solitary drink he wondered how they had died in the room. He wondered if he should have done it differently.
He found that he cared less and less about what he was delivering. He had his orders, and he carried them out. A creature of habit that flew, drove or walked. Always delivering on time. But the aimlessness that pervaded his days and nights as a child crept in at the edges of his mind, leaching colour from his world.
His delivery that morning was a locked metal case. Too big to have with him in the car it rested beneath a tarp in the boot. A po faced mechanic at a rundown garage tucked away beneath a railway arch had handed him the keys. Showed him the case. They stared at it. It was dull with scratches, dented. A fat padlock sealed it shut. Atwood couldn’t stop staring at it. He wanted to touch it. He really wanted to open it. He found himself blinking rapidly, his vision blurring. Or maybe the case was vibrating.
He slowed for a sharp turn and saw the accident as he headed downhill into a shadowed valley. Flames from the wreck lit the road. Atwood activated his hazard lights, dropped the car out of gear and coasted carefully toward the crash. As he approached, the headlights filled the moving shadows cast by the fire. He flicked on full beam and felt his entire torso clench, his right foot almost slamming on the brake pedal.
There were bodies on the road. What seemed like hundreds of them. Small naked bodies. Flesh exposed to the night and the road and the fire. Children scattered carelessly. Violently.
He checked the road behind him then to either side, nothing. He crawled forward, foot ready on the accelerator. At what he felt was a safe distance he stopped and silenced the car. Atwood reflexively checked his watch. He wasn’t jeopardising his timetable. He popped open the door, staying behind the door as he stood up and appraised the situation.
The morning air was chill and he could see the ghost of his breath. He felt his nipples harden and goose pimples pucker his skin. He reached into the car, retrieved his jacket from the hanger by the door and slipped it on. If his watch was right, his deadline was in a little less than four hours. The idea of calling emergency services did not thrill him. Both police and ambulance would attend and he did not want to expose himself to questions. That would burn time and he didn’t want to field any curiosity about his identity. An unconscious algebra of risk assessment began in the back of his mind as he crossed the distance to the crash. He had decisions to make.
Two vehicles had met at speed, neither left unscathed. A multi axle articulated truck lay on its side, cab buried in the ditch that divided the road from dark fields of wheat. The body of the truck stretched away, exposed like the belly of a whale. Buried in the space between the cab and its trailer was a family estate being consumed by flames. Roiling smoke shrouded the car. The stark smell of burning plastic, of oil and fuel brought memories of conflict back. He noted that the majority of the paint was blistered or gone entirely and understood that this had happened a while ago. Atwood breathed in, felt the stench fill his lungs. He felt puzzled by the scene. He looked out over the dark fields. He knew how difficult it was to get a car to burn this fiercely. It needed some sort of catalyst. And fuel to keep it burning this hot. The puzzle made him want to leave. To get in his car, drive past the wreck and let it recede in the back mirror and his mind. It felt like a tableau. If he moved, he would break it. Yet he waited. Moving would start a new tableau. One he might like even less than this.
All the doors of the destroyed car were open. He thought he saw a small slumped shape in the back seat. It broke his trance.
Moving closer he ducked, shielding his face. Nothing in the back seat. Where was the driver of the car? Backing away from the pyre he turned his attention to the truck. Trying the door was out of the question.
‘Hello in the cab. Driver. You there? You conscious?’
No answer.
Atwood moved to his left, keeping an eye on the burning car. A quick glance at the cab. The windscreen was shattered on the driver’s side. Inward it looked like.
He was almost done with his algebra. Dead or unconscious, there was no scenario where he could help the driver. He would make an anonymous call to emergency services from a burner phone he had stashed in the car. Not yet though. When he was far away. Decision made Atwood braced himself. He turned to the bodies, circled round the car, giving it a wide berth.
They were everywhere. The shifting glare from the fire made it difficult to see, but they covered the road, spilling into the ditches. Small, so small. Lying on their backs, on their fronts and sides. Arms and legs akimbo. Still as the waiting morning. So many of them.
He suddenly took a knee, disconcerted by the feeling of faintness that forced him down. A veil drew over his sight. He felt the flutter of his muscles, his breathing. It felt so very wrong. He knew this feeling. The feeling of walking into a situation, armed and ready and knowing it had been primed by forces that wanted you to lie down and die screaming. He breathed deep, mastered himself, stood. It made no sense here.
Too still. There was no movement. Silent. No screaming. Could everybody beyond the flames be a dead child?
Atwood disliked his body’s reticence to step beyond the fire and into the shadows on the road. He forced himself on, to the nearest form on the asphalt, anger at his own fear rising. His eyes adjusted as he moved, showing him.
Dolls. Everywhere.
He felt dread release him, a tight hand unclenching. There was no one here to save. He could drive past the wreck and over the dolls. Continue on his mission to deliver whatever was in the case. The case. He turned to his car. Dolls were close to it. Had he driven over them and not seen them? Had he walked past them? He felt the hand tighten. Turning back he wondered at the number of them. Kneeling he picked up the doll by him, holding it by a foot.
Atwood thought it would be clean assuming that the dolls had spilled from the truck in the crash. But this doll was filthy. He supposed it could have got dirty in the spill. But this much? This wasn’t just dirty. It was old. Used. The legs were a washed out pink, like dead coral. Abraded and scarred. Had someone stubbed out cigarettes on it? It was missing fingers. They looked as though they had been bitten off. The eyes had lids, but they were closed. He tried to peel one back. Stuck. Broken.
Atwood stared at the face. An odd mix of cherubic and clumsy realism. Hard use had degraded it. Its hair was a tangle of grey nylon strings that seemed to writhe in the uncertain light. He took a deep breath and felt sympathy shiver through him. A feeling he didn’t recognise, didn’t appreciate. It felt invasive, a response he wouldn’t normally have.
He shook it off and looked down the valley. He could see no vehicles coming toward him. The sun was still below the horizon, but the lilacs of the false dawn were lighter. All he could hear was the hiss and bubble of the burning car. Decision made, he was leaving. He didn’t care where the drivers were. Yet he felt curiosity pushing him further down the shadowed road, a gentle hand between his shoulder blades. Insistent.
He walked on slowly, just in case they had staggered this way. He took care not to step on any of the dolls. How far did they go? It seemed that the vast majority were in as poor shape as the doll still dangling from his fist. Many were missing one or more limbs. They all seemed to have their heads, though he suspected they weren’t all originals. The spill seemed to have scattered them randomly, oddly. There were clusters of dolls in piles of different sizes. Like dogs trying to keep warm. Or an orgy caught by surprise. The scene dimmed the further he moved away from the burning family car. The only light came from the taillights of the truck, the weak red of failing batteries.
He was beyond the end of it now, surrounded. Singles. Piles. Here and there, a couple that seemed to clutch one another. Children lost in the dark. He looked at the truck. The doors to the container were closed, the tailgate was up.
That made no sense. That made no sense, at all.
‘Where the fuck did all these dolls come from?’
He felt drawn out of himself then, pulled high into the air. The paling night above him, the wreck and the road and the fields below. And the dolls. Concentric circles of them, with his car at the centre.
He plummeted into his body. He almost lost his footing completely as he felt the doll move in his hand. Atwood raised it up. It was bending over at the joint of the leg he was holding. Its arms reached out to his wrist. It stopped as he brought it to eye level, turned its head to look at him. The eyelids were open now. Two eyes greyed by cataracts stared at him, shot through with pitch black flecks and broken vessels. And glossy. So very glossy. He brought the doll closer to look deeper into them, saw his reflection slightly. He heard the faint echo of desperate shouts. Saw the reflection change, the shape of a small girl appearing, rimmed in red against the night. Her eyes reflected the fire. Atwood pulled away, looked quickly to his car, wishing he was in it.
He looked back to the doll. Slowly she opened her mouth, revealing clusters of needle thin teeth. Row upon row of razor sharp shards of obsidian, each of them moving, hungry for contact. They ran down farther than the length of the doll. Teeth all the way down to darkness. She gaped wide, wider, widest.
She turned its head away, keeping eye contact. Suddenly she lunged for his arm. Atwood reflexively cast her from him.
He looked around. All the dolls were clambering to their feet. Those that had no legs leaned forward on their arms. Their eyes everywhere around him. Pale globes catching the flames behind him. Collectively they opened their maws. It broke his torpor. He ran. They charged. The sound of it reminded Atwood of a sudden hard shower of hailstones.
Those that had been behind him obstructed him now, snapping at him frenziedly. He kicked at them, batted them aside open handed. One doll, a chubby cherub with safety pins forced through cheeks and nose, found his thigh, biting deeply. He kept running. It shook its head like a terrier with a rat, flying off, taking trouser, skin and a chunk of muscle with it. Some of the other dolls broke off to pursue it.
He felt them gaining. They had closed ranks, turned into a clattering wave of plastic and hunger. The fastest overtaking the slowest, rank water flowing around rocks.
He limped past the car, the fire lower now. He stumbled and fell, landing hard. He could see two bodies under the vehicle. Badly burned and barely recognisable as people. They held onto each other. Atwood scrambled to his feet, stumbled on. He pushed the last few feet, aware of the blood flowing from his thigh, wetting his trouser leg, running over his knee and shin. Gaining the car, he wrenched the driver’s side door open and threw himself in, slamming it behind him. He hit the emergency locking mechanism on the dashboard, heard all the locks clunk shut.
Breathing heavily, he unbuckled his belt and dragged it from his waist, cinching it above the wound in his thigh. The car key was in the cup holder. Good. He started the engine, catching the dolls in the glare of the headlights.
The dolls had stopped their rushing. Moved with no hurry now and he realised they thought he was trapped. Easy meat. He could see disorder among them, infighting, teeth snapping and tearing plastic. The vast majority just regarded him. He could feel the energy of all those eyes, trying to calm him, quiet him. Soporific.
‘Fuck that.’
Atwood dropped the engine into first gear and stamped on the accelerator. The car lunged forward. A wave of dolls rose into the air before him, crashed down, bodies cracking the windscreen. He felt the wheels crushing them, saw the wave break. He shifted gears and floored the accelerator, gaining speed. It began to slide over the dolls and he had to steer away from the ditch. He couldn’t understand it. How many had there been out there in the shadows?
Then he heard the tyres pop, punctured by multiple teeth. The car immediately slowed, became hard to steer. Over the scream of the engine and what he realised were his own screams of anger and fear and frustration, he could hear the dolls attacking from underneath. They stuck in the wheel arches, fastened between wheel and axle. It ground to a halt. He released the accelerator, depressed the clutch, dropped into neutral, unwilling to let it stall. He held the steering wheel. Two and ten.
Again, the dolls surrounded him. He looked in the rear view mirror and could see the carnage he had wrought. Limbs, torsos and heads spat from underneath the wheels. Not enough though. Not enough. He sought for options. An overnight bag in the boot. Nothing in it that could help. Spare key in the glove compartment. All he had were his hands and the idea of his fingers in their mouths made balls of his fists. Running was out of the question. His injured leg was numb below the wound now. He would have to loosen the belt soon. The dolls were restless, he could hear their clattering as they shifted position. The case occurred to him. The thought of delivering it gave him a feeling of sick amusement. Then his breath caught. He felt his concentration collapse to a point. He felt it behind him, the vibration. The dolls were still. Atwood could hear nothing. A whisper?
The doll he had thrown away was back. It clambered onto the car over the backs of the other dolls. Walked up to the windscreen with a stiff hipped gait. It sat and looked at him through the cracks in the glass. For a brief moment Atwood considered the idea that he was dead. At least unconscious. In a ditch somewhere after an accident. Maybe he had fallen asleep at the wheel and driven off the road. Maybe this was the sort of nightmare you had after an accident. He discarded the idea. He believed his eyes. Believed that what was staring at him was reality in sharp focus. He deliberately met that grey gaze, measuring it and himself against it.
The doll showed him why they were there.
He caught shards of images, of pain inflicted. He felt wanton torture, cold uninterested torture, experienced the boredom of the cigarette end and the avidity of blunt edged knives. Atwood’s body absorbed each abuse as his own, wracking him. He understood that each tooth was a betrayal, a cold stone needle pushed hard into a burning nerve ending. He was lost in a lightless world of abandonment. Then a light, the hope of an end to being forsaken. The promise of open arms, the salvation of purpose, of knowing your god was before you and could be touched. A god that would bless you and hold you in arms made to shelter the lost.
And then she was before him. Shining with the pain of countless broken hearts. A child of the most delicate porcelain, translucent skin the colour of the sky after spring rains. Her eyes told him of years in the dark, hearing the prayers of her children. The cries of the loved and abandoned. Atwood understood. She was in danger. Bartered between the avaricious, power swapped for power. She could not be caged again. Her children needed her. They had come for her. He understood that, if he opened his heart to her, released her, protected her, she would return him to that state of grace he had known before. A life with simple and unquestioning purpose.
He came to himself slowly. He had bitten his tongue, could feel the loose tip in his mouth, his own hot, coppery blood. His hands tightened on the wheel, the doll was leaning on the cracked windscreen. He understood that her name had been Daisy. It gave him a twisted sweet dolly smile.
Atwood turned his head and spat blood and the meat of his tongue. Concentrating on the pain helped him control his breathing. He could still feel the queen, her promise. His breathing slowed. He released the wheel.
Daisy backed away from the windscreen. Atwood held up his hands in appeasement, then turned off the car. He took the key and popped the door. He struggled out, a loud rattling surrounded him, they were grinding their teeth. Calling. The doll pushed back from the windscreen. Atwood was certain he could see fervour in its eyes. And urgency. He could feel the dawn and so could they.
The doll shifted its eyes to him, understanding shared. It opened its maw wide, the noise of the other’s teeth rising in volume. Atwood untied the belt on his leg and screamed as pent up pain flooded it and freshets of blood ran from the wound. He counted the seconds until he could feel life in his toes then cinched the belt again.
He limped to the back of the car, very conscious of the perimeter made by the dolls and their teeth.
He opened the boot, reached in and lifted the case, feeling suffused by reverence. He had made his decision. He placed the case on the floor before the crowd of dolls and backed away.
Daisy crept forward, reached, touched the corner of the case. Every doll prostrated itself then. Atwood closed his eyes, felt them, their congregation. Felt succour and strength in his muscles and bones. In his heart.
It happened quickly. They rose en masse and gathered up the case, a tidal wave of broken things disappearing into the forest with their god. Singing.
Atwood closed the boot, got back into the car and sat for a moment. He knew what he had to do. He released the cinched belt at his thigh once more. It didn’t give him as much pain now. He looked, and the wound seemed smaller, the bleeding had lessened. The meat of his thigh seemed pale. Bloodless. Like plastic. He felt whole again.
He checked his watch. He still had time. He would make his delivery. Not a porcelain god. But her righteous vengeance. |
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