His Cemetery Doll (20 page)

His voice stirred
something
in the darkness, though. There came a rustle, a murmur of voices and whispers. He couldn't make out words...but he suspected—bizarrely—they might be saying
come in.

"Of course," he muttered, and he steeled himself to brave the darkness.

Once he slipped under the eaves of the thorny canopy, Conall made out shapes in the sanctuary. Mostly old pews, fallen into disrepair, sections of roof beams and windowpanes collapsed to the ground and never recovered. More dusty old pages out of hymnals and bibles scattered about the place. Bat droppings littered the floor. Perhaps they explained the sounds.

When he came near the head of the church, however, a hot, velvet grip squeezed tight around his heart, choking his air. A ring of figures stood ahead of him: seven of them at least. They
all
hung in a frozen dance, a sculpture of women in various graceful poses. Each one identical to his cemetery doll.

Well, no. Not
completely
identical. As Conall crept closer, he deemed none could be Asya. Each stood a little bit taller or shorter. They lacked the natural gracefulness of her trained ballerina's poise, but appeared more like true mannequins hastily fitted into close facsimile of dancer's movements. Scrutiny showed him eyes painted onto their masks, and each expression appeared a rictus of gleeful pain. None were shattered, as she had been; each one flawless, terrifyingly lifelike.

Conall screamed, nearly firing off the shotgun when the first one rattled and turned her face to him. No other part of her body moved—which served to make the motion even more disturbing, because she had to turn her head completely around on her neck to see him.

"Gravekeeper," said a voice from somewhere wholly outside the creature. The lips on the mask never moved, the painted eyes still flat and motionless. The voice though...Conall recognized the older, frail tone of a grandmother. The doll
appeared
perfectly youthful, however.

"Have you come to pray with us?" the creature asked.

Then another moved, and a third. They each began in stiff, clattering struggle against their frozen positions, trying to behold him for themselves. Some managed to move their torso and arms, some even twisted their hips; others broke with the strain. A porcelain limb cracked and fell from the body of one. Another lost little flakes of ceramic dust; another, its entire head.

"Gravekeeper," they all greeted him. Like women at a Sunday picnic, they couldn't sound more pleased to see him. Conall backed away, repulsed.

"It's been years, dear boy," croaked one.

"How is it you never came back to us?" scolded another, younger voice.

"We expected you so much
sooner.
"

"What
are
you?" he demanded, hoisting the bayonet in their direction. They hadn't ceased their rattling: some of them appeared to be tugging at their rigor even now, trying not merely to see him...but to
meet
him.

"Don't you recognize us, lad?"

"We are the Little Sisters!"

"And after we took such good care of you..."

Con swallowed back the bile rising in his throat. They continued to come, moving in slow, jerking movements. They weren't at
all
like Asya, not really: the stiff, ugly struggle of their movements made even her most discordant moments ones full of grace. These creatures were the true broken dolls. Pity warred with fear in his gut as he held the gun steady on the one in the lead.

"He did this to you?" he choked. "Father Frederick?"

"Yes..." hissed one. Despite his efforts, Con imagined the old prioress who had once watched over this place.

"He wanted more," cooed another. "The necromancer...needed more to test his technique..."

"To create his menagerie..."

"This is madness," Conall barked. His hands shook. "All of this...it's all
madness!"

"Do you think so, Conall?" one of the creatures asked. Its head tilted to the side...then swung loose, hanging from the ceramic neck-joint at a grotesque angle.

Con closed his eyes and shook his head.

"Asya... Asya drowned. She showed it to me. The night she came to my graveyard, she drowned."

"Ah, yes..." hissed the dolls.

"She
did
attempt to die, didn't she?" one asked, as though recalling something of which it couldn't be sure.

"She
did,
" a third replied. "But it would not matter...he stole her
heart,
to be certain he would always have her."

"What?" Conall snapped. His ass came up against one of the old pews, making him jump.

The first of the creatures stepped down from the altar. Its joints gave a terrible grinding sound as it stumbled at him.

"Her
heart,
" it hissed.

"He has it...had
all
our hearts, in the beginning. He must keep his creations alive, mustn't he?"

"But ours all turned to sand!" pouted one petulant tone.

"Why?" Conall asked. "Why did yours...turn to sand? Why didn't hers?"

"He stored us in crates and jars...plain old worthless vessels," the voice of the prioress said.

"We wasted away until only sand and clay remained."

"But
her
heart lies in a
special
place," one of the others sneered.

"
She
is protected," one whined.

"
She
is his
favorite."

This last, said with ugly, icy venom. Conall shuddered: the inhuman
hatred
in these poor creations...these could not be the good Sisters he had known.

"Tell me how to help you," he said. "How do I break you free from his curse?"

Rasping voices turned to wicked snickers: the sound of old, shed snakeskin in a dried-out nest. The dolls reached out for him, long, ivory limbs grasping as they staggered into the aisle. No answer this time. They all began to mutter and mumble over one another, until he couldn't make out any single voice at all. They all called to
him,
though. Soon his name became the single word on their lips, and at the corners of their frozen, painted mouths, blood begin to drip.

Conall fired the shotgun at the one in the lead, bellowing in crazed disbelief even as he did. The fragile thing flew backward, tumbling into two others like a child's wooden toy flung against the wall. Porcelain limbs scattered.

The others continued coming, nonplussed by the fate of their three companions. Still they called out his name, reaching for him, and Conall fired again, pausing only to reload before continuing suit. Each deafening crack of the gun sent bright, alabaster pieces of the ghostly beings exploding backward, throwing jointed arms and necks and bits of porcelain mask into the stale air. It came to him no harder than shooting clay discs—and it deepened the sickened sensation in his stomach even more.

Even as he shattered others, those still capable of moving came on. It took far too long for him to dispatch half a dozen dolls—to Conall it seemed he must have fired enough to reduce a battalion of them to ceramic dust, before he looked and beheld all of the creatures crumpled to the floor.

No more assailed him...but the remains had not stopped trying.

"Conall," he heard, rising from one of the half-masks lazily spinning on the floor. "We had better be seeing you in church this Sunday..."

"Silly man," came an echo from one without a head. "We'll make a believer of you yet."

"
Stop!
" he shouted into the rafters and the knot of black branches above. "Christ Almighty, make them stop! Let them be! Have you not taken
enough?"

Over a few precious long moments, the whispering died down. The last of the shuddering ceramic pieces calmed themselves, and everything in the sanctuary fell still once more. Conall drew in a long, heavy breath. Then he jumped as a rush of sound bombarded him from above, and he tripped, falling back onto his ass. Aiming the shogun up, he prepared to fire.

Bats. An agitated swarm of them spiraled down from above and then took wing to find escape into deeper, darker corners or out into the gray, dimming day.

"Bloody shite," he growled, thrusting his fingers through his hair and trying to steady himself. After long moments he managed to regain his feet, using the aid of one of the pews. His ears still rang from the explosions of the gun, and the muzzle flares had ruined any adjustment his eyes had made to the darkness of the church interior. He put his head in his hand, scrubbing at his mouth.

Where from here?

The shattered remnants of the dolls practically glowed, even in the lightless cave their sanctuary had become. He didn't want to see them, but he couldn't pull his eyes away. More than anything, he wanted to be
out
of this church.

But Shyla is somewhere farther in.

They'd said the necromancer had to take the heart first. Asya hadn't
truly
drowned, because Fred had—somehow—stolen her heart. Literally? Plucked it right from her chest? Or had these freakish golems meant something else by it?

After long moments, Con mustered his strength again and checked his gun. Reloading, he prepped himself to move onward, and made his way to the doors past the altar, into the sacristy. He side-stepped the remains of the dolls with extra care. He didn't for a moment trust their stillness now.

Behind the sacristy, Conall found the church offices, all long-unused and thick with dust. No evidence of the Little Sisters remained anywhere in these rooms, not even a catechism left open or neglected vestments hung askew. The whole place smelled of ash and stale, hot air. Spiders had overrun some of the smaller offices to the point Conall couldn't even see past the doorjamb. He left them untouched, moving silently as he could manage, listening for the slightest sound of life.

If you've so much as breathed a word of harm toward my daughter, Fred...I'm going to blow your goddamn head clean off your shoulders.

Something of an empty threat, that. Because Conall had already decided to blow the man's head off regardless.

Presently, then, he
did
hear something. Footsteps, ahead of him—light and quick.

He recognized them.

"Asya!" he whispered, speeding up to catch her. The sound of her stayed ever ahead of him, as he found himself following her footfalls up a spiraling set of stairs and into the second-story cloister rooms. He rushed after them, forgetting himself, desperate to catch her.

Before he realized it, he followed them into a dead-end room.

Conall caught the shotgun up against his chest, ready to fire if any new creations of the father jumped out at him. Asya was nowhere to be seen. He'd been
sure
those were the same steps he'd heard in the graveyard, though, as she'd led him through the fog.

Con inspected the room. A small prayer chapel. He might be the first living human to enter it in years: white cloth draped the furniture and walls; cobwebs hung from the corners and down over the statuary; a thick layer of dust lay undisturbed on a hard wooden floor. No one had been in here.

And yet, several candles had been lit.

A shiver overtook him. Con couldn't help but glance over his shoulder, then back, thinking some being
had
to be here with him.

He noticed, then, the white marble figure at the head of the chapel. Not the Christ, and not the Virgin Mary.

Maya.

Exactly like the statue in his graveyard: the one he'd carved from the stone where Asya hid her baby.

The one he'd carved for Asya herself. Because now, he realized, she
was
Maya. He'd sculpted the statue without ever seeing her, but he'd somehow managed to create an angel identical to the long-lost Russian ballerina.

A part of me...a part of
us
...before I even realized it.

Without stopping to think on it, he stepped into the room, approaching the statue. These were the exact stones from the cemetery—the statue destroyed by Father Frederick's thorn vines. Maya's head and torso, down to her hips. Her arms were missing, and her wings lay in pieces on the altar behind her.

Con reached out to touch the smooth stone surface of the angel's breast.

Her heart.
What had Fred done...with her heart?

The man had certainly followed Asya that night. The creatures below said she'd tried to die...to drown herself. Conall didn't believe it. Asya told the story differently, and he would never believe she'd left Shyla behind. No...she’d fled the mad priest with designs to return, Con was
sure
of it. He'd
always
been sure of it. Perhaps some part of her had always lingered thereafter, keeping watch when she could not do so in person.

Yes
. His hand came up to stroke the face of the angelic statue, everything beginning to make sense.

Asya had not been free to return to the graveyard. Not until very recently, for whatever reason. She'd left something of herself behind...and he'd always known it.

He'd carved the angel Maya, because he had known it.

No, she couldn't have drowned herself. Not when her heart so desperately needed to return to her daughter. The memory Asya had tried to show him was a memory of murder.
Fred
had pushed her into the river. Fred had drowned her.

Then he'd somehow
preserved
her.

Without warning, the statue cracked. Con's fingers twitched as beneath them, a dark splinter like a lightning bolt traveled down the pristine stone face, splitting it cruelly down the middle. It continued downward, digging deeper into the stone until it reached the angel's beautiful breast.

Then, Maya simply fell apart.

Con stepped back as the last of his statue crumbled away, falling into so many tiny, unrecognizable pieces. It struck him deep in the chest, as it hadn't before. The finality of it hit him hard in the gut: a thing of beauty he'd created by his own hands, like nothing he'd ever had the call to create. Dust, now. He could never recapture Maya again.