House of Cabal Volume One: Eden (22 page)

“Do you have Dolly? I… I lost her. I lost her
to the House.”

The blood-caked hand reached back, and for a
moment, because of the shadows, the figure looked as if it had no
arms and no head. Then the reaching hand pulled Dolly from the
darkness into the light.

Molly gasped. “You have her!”

A little primping would restore the flattened
husk dress to its original shape.

The girl glanced around (no one was
watching), and then cautiously crept up to the gate. “She’s
mine!”

The blood-caked hand held Dolly out, but not
far enough that it could be reached through the bars.

“First, the key.”

Tears pricked the little girl’s eyes.

She rushed over to the cherry tree. She was
growing fast (Mother always said so), but even stretching on her
tippy-toes, she still wasn’t tall enough. The key was too high.

She grabbed a stick from the ground and used
it to knock the key off the spike. “Take that!”

The fat, knotted trunk blocked the light from
the streetlamp, so she had to search blindly through the decaying
leaves, all the time careful not to dirty her nightgown.
Mother
can’t know I’ve been outside!
she thought, not realizing grease
had stained her chest and back when she had tried to squeeze
through the gate bars.

She groped and felt sticks, more leaves,
roots, cherry pits, a tiny slug, and there, in her cold fingers,
the key. “Yes!” With the key, she rushed back, saw the dark figures
afresh, and halted a few feet short of the gate. They were hard to
make out, but the things were dirty. They choked her with their
stench. They made her tiny.

“Hurry!” said the figure holding the
doll.

Molly looked at the key and gripped it tight.
She looked up and down the deserted street. It felt as if the night
air had just dropped twenty degrees. She started to tremble. “If
mother sees me...” She resisted the urge to wipe her dirty hands on
her gown.

The doll tilted from side to side as if
giving Molly a quizzical look.

“Just a bit farther. Your dolly needs
you.”

The bloody fingertips that animated Dolly had
stained the delicate husk dress a dark red. Water would wash away
the blood, but if not, Molly would still love the doll; true love
was unconditional.

Her vigilant mother sometimes checked in on
her in the middle of the night to whisper a prayer, “Keep my baby
safe,” and maybe to straighten the quilt. If Molly didn’t return
soon, she might be missed. In fact, her mother could already be
searching the house or charging down the street, angry with Molly
for once again being the disobedient child.

The little girl need not have worried. At
that moment, her mother slept, dreaming of the end of the
world.

The dark things stood there behind the gate,
shifting in their stinky clothes. There was no rattling chains, no
shrieking, no ghostly glow. Their eyes didn’t burn in the dark. Not
monsters, the girl decided, just people who wanted free from Jacobi
House. Who was she to keep them locked up?

With renewed determination, Molly stepped
forward with the key outstretched, ready to make a trade.