In Nightmares We're Alone (6 page)

* * * * *

At lunch detention it’s just me and Martin and Mr. Rolfe. Mr. Rolfe is the scary teacher. He hates kids. It makes sense for him to be the teacher in charge of detention but I wonder if they asked him to do it or if he volunteered. I think he just likes to scare us.

A couple times Martin tries to whisper something to me and Mr. Rolfe shouts, “No talking.”

Maybe he doesn’t shout it exactly, but it’s a lot more stern than it needs to be.

Once in a while I try to look back at Martin or even just to stretch my neck and Mr. Rolfe says, “Face forward.”

I think Mr. Rolfe was in the military and he got bossed around a lot and teaching little kids is his revenge for all the abuse he took. I watched a movie about army guys with Sissy once and they all get bossed around a lot and told to face forward and not to talk. Mr. Rolfe never calls us maggots but otherwise it’s mostly the same thing.

For about a minute during lunch break Mr. Rolfe leaves the classroom for one reason or another and as soon as he leaves Martin starts talking to me.

“That was pretty hardcore today,” he says. “Dropping the f-bomb in class. That was awesome.”

“I didn’t,” I say.

“Yeah, you did. Maybe you didn’t notice. You were pretty mad.”

“Hm.” I’m pretty sure he heard something that wasn’t there. Mrs. Harris never mentioned it. Then again she called me a little bitch when we were alone in the janitor’s closet so maybe that’s that
collateral
thing Sissy was talking about.

“You think that doll will be back tonight?” he asks. “After you smashed its head off like that?”

“I don’t know. Why are you here anyway?”

“Some kid called me slow and I kicked him in the nuts. He had to go to the hospital.”

“Oh.”

“You don’t believe me?”

“I believe you.”

“Good, ‘cause it’s true.” He looks back at the door to see if Mr. Rolfe is coming. “Hey, can I see the doll? I could go to your house after school. I’ve seen evil stuff before, so I might be able to, like, I don’t know… help or something.”

“I don’t know. My mom’s so mad lately. She would never let me bring somebody over.”

“I could come by at night. After she’s asleep.”

“What about
your
mom?”

“She never pays attention to me. Ever since she met her new boyfriend they just want to be together all the time. I pretty much come and go whenever I want.”

The door to the classroom opens and Mr. Rolfe comes back in saying, “No talking. No talking. Face forward. This is detention, not a date.”

I go back to staring at the chalkboard in Mr. Rolfe’s classroom. I spend the rest of the lunch hour stirring in my seat. I don’t know how much I like Martin, but he’s the only one who actually believes me. And if there’s something he can do to help… I do need help.

When the five-minute warning bell finally sounds at the end of recess, Mr. Rolfe says, “All right. Go to class.”

Martin holds the door open for me and stares at me until we’re both all the way out in the hall.

“Just for a few minutes after school,” I say quietly. “And if my mom’s car is in the driveway you just keep walking.”

* * * * *

Martin and I pick the door open with a butter knife because Mommy hid the key somewhere new before she went to work and I can’t be bothered to look for it. I don’t know how soon she’ll be home but it’s usually not more than half an hour.

In the doll room, we look at Beth sitting up there on her shelf and I tell Martin, “That one is the witch doll.”

“On the top?”

“Yeah. Don’t you think its eyes are weird?”

“Yeah… creepy.”

The voice comes in my head again.

Hello, Macie.

“Did you hear that?” I ask frantically. “Did you hear it say hello?”

“Yeah, that was weird. What the hell was that?”

Make Martin go. He’s not good for you.

I turn and look at Martin. Both our eyes are wide. “She told me to tell you to leave.”

“I heard her.” He turns to the doll. “Hey, this isn’t your house. I’m not going anywhere unless Macie wants me to.”

The room seems to shake and I hear laughter, the soft laugh of an old woman.

Make him go. Or else.

“Martin,” I say. “Maybe you should…”

“Listen, doll,” says Martin. “I will fuck you up! You might scare this girl, but not me. I’m not afraid of witches or toys and if you think I’ll give it two seconds’ thought before smashing your face open, think again.”

The laughter stops and the room feels colder and I know something is wrong. I hear footsteps on the hardwood floor in the living room, coming this way. Not Mommy. Not Sissy. Something smaller.

“She’s with me now,” Martin is shouting. “And you better stop doing anything to make her uncomfortable or you’re gonna be sorry. Very sorry.”

The shadow appears in the doorway and moves into the frame. It’s Buster. Only… it’s not Buster.

His eyes. The doll’s eyes. The hetero-whatever-it’s-called.

“Buster…?” I whisper.

He bares his teeth. A low growl starts to form, getting louder.

“What have you got to say to that, doll? Huh? That’s what I thought!”

“Martin.”

Martin turns to look at me and follows my eyes to Buster. He’s approaching us slowly, backing us into the corner near the doll with his teeth bared more and more, seeming to get larger.

“Good dog,” I say. “Good boy, Buster.”

“What’s his problem?” asks Martin, the tough guy act disappearing. “What’s wrong with him?”

“His eyes,” I say. “It’s the doll.”

Martin looks back and forth from the doll to Buster. He doesn’t believe me.

“Apologize,” I say.

“What?”

“Apologize to the doll.”

He gives me a weird look and then looks at the doll. “S-sorry.”

“Come on, Martin!”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. I didn’t know.”

Buster moves, still growling. He goes to the right and clears space for us, like he’s leading us back out the door, out of the house.

“What’s he doing?” asks Martin.

“I don’t know. Come on.”

I take Martin’s hand and we move toward the doorway. Buster stays close, but never lunges. He gives us room to get past him and then pushes forward to back us out of the room.

As soon as we’re in the hall, Martin reaches up and slams the door shut. As he does, Buster leaps at him, hitting the other side of the door. He takes to barking, snapping, and clawing on the other side as Martin tries to push it shut.

“Help me!” says Martin.

I push on the door with him and it finally clicks closed with Buster on the other side. We can still hear him barking and clawing at the other end.

“Dog is crazy, man,” says Martin.

I say nothing.

Buster seems to give up. The clawing slows and then stops and I hear him lie down.

I start to reach up slowly for the knob and Martin gives me a look like I’m out of my mind. I hesitate and put my hand back at my side. I’ll let him out after Martin’s gone.

* * * * *

“What are we going to do?” I ask Martin a few minutes later when we’re in my room. I sit at my bed and Martin sits down next to me and puts his hand on my leg.

“I don’t know. Pretty crazy.”

“It doesn’t like you. Maybe I need to figure out how to kill it myself and you can’t come back.”

“That’s stupid. I’ll help you. It can’t hurt me.”

“What do you mean? Buster might have torn your neck open if he got through the door.”

“Maybe next time you let the dog out before I come over and then lock him out. Then we can get the doll easy. Nothing to protect it.”

“I don’t think so. It might know. Buster might attack me if I even tried. And even if it worked, I think all the other dolls would help her. I don’t know what she can do. She’s powerful.”

“Maybe we could… Hm… I’ve seen in movies there’s some kind of alcohol that you put in a bottle and then you light a cloth on fire and put it in. If you throw it, it just blows up. If I could make one of those, you just have to open the door and I can throw it at her.”

“Won’t that burn my whole house down?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. But, like, how bad do you wanna kill the doll?”

“No. We’d get in too much trouble. I just want to find a way to get it into the fireplace.”

Martin bites his fingernail as he thinks. He looks pretty absent-minded. I’m starting to think there wasn’t much use in bringing him here.

“We don’t have time to do anything now,” I tell him. “Just think about it tonight. Maybe at school tomorrow we can talk about it.”

“Okay. Cool. I think we make a really good team.”

I’m not sure he adds anything to my ‘team’ but it was still nice to have someone here who didn’t think I was crazy, so I nod my head and say, “Yeah. I mean yes. Thanks for helping me. But my mom is going to be home any minute so I think you should probably go.”

“Oh. Oh, all right.” He goes to his backpack lying in the middle of my floor. He pulls some clothes out of it and turns to me and asks, “Can I change out of my school clothes first? I don’t want to walk home looking like a douche.”

“All right, but hurry. The bathroom is across from the doll room.”

“Oh,” he says, and his eyes shift. “Like, just… right next to it?”

“Yeah, the doors are right across from each other.”

“Can I just, like… change here? I’m kind of afraid of the doll and the dog.” I guess I give him a weird look because he suddenly looks nervous and says, “You can just face the other way if you don’t wanna see.”

I blush. Something about the way he says ‘if you don’t wanna see.’ Other than babies and stuff I’ve never seen a boy with his clothes off. I have to ask. “You mean I can… look if I want to?”

He doesn’t really blush like I’d expect him to. It’s more of a smile like he knew I’d ask. “I don’t know. Would you let me watch you change?”

I feel nervous all of a sudden, but it’s nice to feel nervous about something that isn’t going to kill me. It feels like this is the first moment since Beth got here that my mind is on something else.

“Okay,” I say. “Deal. But you have to go first.”

He takes off his jacket and throws it on the floor next to the backpack. He unbuttons the top two buttons of his shirt and pulls it over his head and throws it on top. He undoes his belt and pulls down his slacks and struggles to step out of them and finally he faces me. His skinny, pale frame is covered only by a pair of solid white briefs and somehow he still isn’t blushing.

I suddenly remember my panties have pictures of the Powerpuff Girls on them and I really wish I hadn’t agreed to this. Why did Martin’s have to be white? Why couldn’t he be wearing Ninja Turtle underwear or something like boys our age are supposed to?

“Underwear too?” he asks mischievously.

I think. Is it more embarrassing to show him my girly panties or my bare naked hoo-hah? I don’t know. They’re both really awkward. But if he doesn’t take his off, then I didn’t really see a boy naked, so I nod.

“Okay.”

“You have to do it too,” he says, very serious.

“I know. I will.”

“Okay,” he says.

He pulls his underwear down with both hands and then lifts them above his head in a ta-da gesture. I almost have to laugh.

His wiener is weird and kind of gross, but I try not to be rude. There are a few black hairs above it and it points up at me, bouncing with the rhythm of his body when he lifts his arms. It looks like it would be awkward to walk around with all the time and it wouldn’t fit in a pair of pants very comfortably. It kind of makes me wonder why girls wear dresses and boys wear pants and not the other way around.

The front door to the house is opened and then shut.

“Oh crap,” I say. “Put your clothes on. Quick.”

Martin pulls his underwear back up immediately and grabs for his street clothes, jumping into his jeans.

“Buster? Macie?” comes a voice from the living room. Sissy’s voice. Thank God. I might get out of this yet.

Even from here I can hear an excited Buster jumping up on the door to the doll room, clawing at it. I hear Sissy call for him and then ask him what he’s doing in there. I hear her pull open the door to the doll room and say hi to Buster and then yell my name.

“Come on! Hurry!” I say to Martin. He’s still pulling his shirt over his head. He gets his school clothes shoved into his backpack barely a second before Sissy opens the door to my room.

“Why is Buster in the—?” her eye goes to Martin. “Oh, hello.”

“Hi,” says Martin.

“Are you Macie’s boyfriend?”

Martin looks at me like I’m the only one who can answer that question.

“No. Ew,” I say, and then I feel bad. “I mean, not
ew
, but… Just a friend. He’s… We’re just friends.”

Sissy looks like she’s trying not to laugh at me. The way she always looks, but more so. She turns to Martin. “Look dude, I don’t want to be a bitch, but if you’re here when our mom gets home all three of us are going to catch major shit, so maybe if you could be gone in, like, the next thirty seconds, that’d be good?”

Martin looks upset. He looks over at me, offended. “But it’s… You still owe me… That’s so unfair.”

“What do you owe him?” asks Sissy, and when neither of us answer she says, “Oh, I get it. Did I just barge in right before the first kiss or something?”

“No!” I say.

“Tell you what. I’ll close the door for exactly ten seconds, you give him whatever you
owe him
, and then he’s gotta go. Deal?”

Sissy shuts the door and starts counting and Martin looks at me, raising his eyebrows. I just stand there shrugging, trying to whisper to him that ten seconds isn’t enough time. He looks panicked and tries to gesture for me to take my clothes off and I give him stumped body language and then Sissy gets to ten and opens the door and says, “All good?”

“Yep,” I say.

Martin looks back and forth at us with a cheated look. “I guess,” he says, picking up his backpack and sulking out of the room and down the hall to the front door. He avoids a smiling Buster all the way out.

“So? What was that about?” asks Sissy, a big smile on her face.

“Nothing. Just forget it.”