Chapter 21
Not an hour later Kelly called frantic. “We’re at the hospital, Coralina broke her arm.” She was breathless, and a man’s low rumbling voice was barely audible for a moment. “Doctor is here, gotta go.” She hung up almost as soon as she called. Mark’s hair was on end. His scalp was prickling, as if his hair was turning gray that very second.
Coralina was stage two, bone snap.
Mark was stage three, blood cry.
Fuck.
Not five minutes later he was in his truck rattling down the road toward the hospital. As he stopped at a red light, he could feel panic brewing in his chest. His heart was pounding in his ears. He glanced to the left, and saw an old lady driving a red car. She pointed at him, miming something frantically. He turned the hand crank on his window, and it screeched down slowly. “What?”
“Your nose is bleeding!” She said, with a horrified look on her face.
He grabbed his nose with his right hand, the one with the broken finger sticking out cockeyed from his face. Blood was already soaking his shirt. He had a terrible sinking feeling that he should not be driving to the hospital, but he be driving to find that witch. Save his family, from the haunting, or curse, or whatever it was. Would she be able to help? The light turned green and he pounded the gas with his foot, terrified that he wouldn’t be able to stop this curse.
They waited in the ER for two hours before finally they set Coralina’s arm. Mark could tell it was broken as soon as he saw it. Her right arm hung at such a crooked angle. This is a curse. She broke it right in the middle, right where her bicep would sit. Mark’s head was pounding behind his eyes so hard he couldn’t think. His girl was whimpering from the pain, and sweating. A large nurse gave her an injection and she went quiet, and goofy. My little girl is cursed. He was grateful for her sedation. They called it a clean break. Coralina said she wasn’t totally sure how it happened, something about tripping. Kelly wept nearly as hard as the little patient. But Mark, he felt like the whole experience was outside himself. His one thought was pounding in his skull. We’ve been cursed.
They drove home, and it was already late, they stopped at Burger King on the way home. Mark spent the last of his paycheck to buy four cold one-dollar hamburgers. It was well past bedtime, and Kelly was falling asleep, and both girls were already snoring by the time he got home.
Kelly climbed up to bed, and Mark tucked in Coralina in her own bed, and Beth in hers. All three of his favorite women were sleeping. He rummaged through the house, grabbing some crackers and a beer. His mind was spinning a web of tangled thoughts so thick that he’d never be able to rest. Coralina broke her arm. He sat down and looked at the books again. He drank one beer, then two beers. They didn’t say anything else, there was nothing else useful here. No secrets left, scrawled in a margin anywhere.
How many people had that’s dollhouse killed? He wondered. He searched for the name Kevin and murder into Google, and he found an article not six months old. Kevin killed his dog, his wife and himself. It didn’t mention his broken toe, so he didn’t know if it was the same Kevin. Why would this man, who apparently had no daughter, own a dollhouse though? He googled Kevin’s name now that he knew the last name, and found his Facebook page. He flipped through the man’s pictures. Most of them were just him and his wife smiling. In one picture, the couple were laying on their couch together, him underneath, her on top. The picture was posted not even a month before the murdering spree. She was laying on top of him, and they were holding hands. She had her tongue stuck out and he was in the middle of the happiest looking laugh Mark had ever seen. What could have ruined this happy couple?
But as he stared at the picture he noticed a mirror over the couch had a familiar shape. Carefully he zoomed in, and he could make out the tiny shingled roof in the reflection. He turned and looked at the dollhouse in his living room, and then looked back at the picture. It was the exact same little diamond pattern. In fact, as he stared, he realized one of the diamonds had a chip. He hopped up and walked carefully around the dollhouse. It didn’t take long to find the exact spot in the roofline that was in the man’s picture. That same tiny chip.
Fuck.
He flipped back through the library books, but he couldn’t find the girl’s name anywhere.
But he didn’t need to. He searched again for Kevin, and at the end of one of the articles there was a link, “is slaughtering families a new problem in the valley?” He clicked the link, and there was another article about a young girl, a teenager who had killed her brother and both her parents. And then herself. Her name was Emily. It said she had a broken leg.
He flipped back through the library books and found her note about her broken leg, right next to Kevin’s note about his broken toe. It had to be her.
The air in the room felt thick, and he was helplessly choking on it, as his chest tightened. Quickly he chugged another beer. Mark’s panic could possibly be stalled by booze. He stared vacantly at the wall. There was a large empty feeling inside him. He was completely numb. He had no way to fight the supernatural. What the hell should he do next? His vacant staring was awakened by a click. The bedroom door just swung shut. He turned and saw Kelly standing at the top of the stairs. She was slowly walking down, almost in a daze. “Kelly?”
He glanced down at his phone, it was nearly 2 AM, he couldn’t believe that he been sitting here thinking about that damn dollhouse this long. When he glanced back up, she was at the bottom of the stairs. “Kelly?” Mark stood to grab her, but she didn’t turn her head, stepping out the front door.
He had this sudden thought that if he followed her he would know how they were getting on the roof. Quickly he slipped on his sandals, and stepped out the door after her.
His heart dropped to his stomach and he suddenly retched. He looked back up, at his wife, scaling the building like a demon, her elbows turned the wrong direction, climbing with a frantic pace. Then she slowly stood on the shingles, and turned and placed her toes at the edge of the roof. She was grinning a wide, terrible smile. She lifted her arms, and took a deep breath.
Kelly scaled the outside of the building.
It scared the fuck out of him.
