learned over the years to listen to more than just the textbook facts in my head. I've learned to read people and situations.
And as crazy as this sounds, I think it's legitimate. I think it's true.'
Stormy wanted to laugh at his friend, wanted to berate him for falling for such superstitious crap, but the sincerity of Ken's belief lent it a verisimilitude that Stormy found disconcerting.
'The thing is, it's not just the dead. Seems that people on the reservation have seen dolls that are . . . animated.
Those kachinas they make for the tourists. I gather the dollmakers won't even go near the workshop anymore.
It's all closed up.'
'Tom told you all this?'
'Oh, no. You know him. I only found out about his father because I asked him. I'd heard elsewhere that some strange stuff was happening, and I wanted to check on it.'
Stormy stared down into the bottom of his empty glass. Something about all this sounded vaguely familiar, but he was not quite able to put his finger on it. Had it been in a movie? He didn't think so. The connection was more real, more personal, more immediate. The specifics of it eluded him, but he saw these strange occurrences as an extension of something that had happened before--although he did not know what that 'something'
was.
He cleared his throat. 'The 'animated' dolls. They walk? At night?'
Ken nodded. 'You got it.'
He could have guessed that. It was logical. What else would animated dolls do? But he hadn't guessed. He had known. Or remembered. He wasn't sure which. In his mind was a picture of a ragged primitive doll rocking slowly on unbending legs, making its determined way down a long dark hallway.
A long dark hallway?
He didn't want to think about this, and he was grateful that Carlene brought his beer over to the table at just that moment. He paid her and tipped her, made some small talk to try and keep her there, but The Hogan was getting crowded as other people got off work and she had to hurry over to fill their orders.
Ken was about to tell him something else about the reservation, some other supernatural event that had happened, but Stormy cut him off before he got out the first word, changing the subject, asking if Ken had had a chance to look at any of the videotapes he'd lent him last week. He had, and he'd really hated one of them, and he started going off on it, telling Stormy how much he'd disliked the movie, and Stormy pretended to be offended, pretended to defend the film, but inside he breathed a sigh of relief, thankful they'd gotten off the subject of the reservation.
But it was still there, in his mind, and he thought about it through drinks, through dinner, on the way home, and by the time he went to bed that night, crawling next to an already sleeping Roberta, he was almost positive that he himself had once owned a doll that had been alive.
Mark Kristen is dead.
Mark was sitting alone in the large corner booth of Denny's in Indio when the knowledge came to him, and it took a moment for the information to register. He was holding the cup of cold coffee in his hand, pretending to drink so the waitress wouldn't come over and ask if he wanted a refill, staring out the window at the rusted boxcars sitting unattached on the train tracks across the highway. The sky was brightening, the high desert clouds now sunrise pink against the light blue background sky.
Early morning traffic--cross-country trucks and occasional cars--was beginning to congest the formerly empty roadway outside.
Then the realization hit him.
Kristen is dead.
He nearly dropped the cup but managed through a sheer effort of will to force his trembling hands to replace it on the saucer. He had no idea how she had died or why, there were no specifics, but he knew with certainty that she was gone.
He was the only one left.
He had not seen his sister in over a decade. When he'd left home, she'd been a sixteen-year-old girl with braces, just emerging from that ugly duckling stage, the beautiful woman she would become visible in the arrangement of her features but still a year or so away. It had been harder to leave Kristen than his parents or friends or anyone else, and it was for her that he'd almost stayed. He'd tried all that summer to convince her to come with him, to convince her that she could only escape by uprooting herself and running like hell as far away from Dry River as she could, but she'd told him that she didn't want to escape, didn't need to escape, was happy where she was.
Now she was dead.
In the back of his mind, he'd known it would come to this, and he felt guilty for not making more of an effort to save her, for not going back to talk to her. Of course, he'd sent letters, but that was not the same, and his letters had always been about himself, not her, about where he was, what he was doing, where he was going.
He had not felt bad when his father died. The information had come to him, he'd registered it, then gone on with his life. It was then that he should have gone back for Kristen. He'd thought about it. He'd been living in Colorado Springs at the time, working in a frame shop, and had been on his afternoon break, sitting on the steps in back of the shop, smoking, looking up at the clouds, when the knowledge came to him that his father was gone. He knew he should feel sad, and part of him had wanted to feel sad, but too much had happened over too long a time, and all he could feel was a slight regret that the two of them had not been able to make a closer connection.
He'd finished smoking his cigarette, ground out the butt with his boot, and gone back into the shop to finish his afternoon shift.
That was when he should have returned home. That was when he should have gone back for Kristen.
He'd considered it, and that night in his apartment he'd gotten as far as dialing the number of the house. Strange how he hadn't forgotten the number after all those years. But he'd hung up after the first ring and had spent the rest of the evening staring at the phone.
He'd half hoped that Kristen would call him, but of course she couldn't. Even if she had sensed something, she didn't know his current phone number.
The next day he'd quit his job at the frame shop, collected his last paycheck, and sent a postcard to Kristen as he headed toward Utah.
Kristen.
He'd failed her. More than anything else in the world, he had wanted to protect her, save her, keep her from becoming trapped like all the rest of them, but in that he had failed utterly. He had not been there for her when she'd needed him, had been too afraid for himself to go back for her.
The smart thing now would be for him to keep moving, not look back, to grieve for Kristen on his own, in his own way, and to continue on with his life. He had not gone home in all this time; there was no reason for him to return now. Everything would be auctioned off and sold in an estate sale when he could not be located and then it would all be over.
But he could not do that. Not this time. He owed it to Kristen to tie things up, to go back.
And he had to know how she'd died.
Dawn was giving way to morning, and outside the window he could see date palms where before there had only been trees. He picked up his cup, drank the last dredges of the cold coffee. Denny's was starting to fill up. There were families of travelers in two of the booths to his right, casually clothed construction workers ordering breakfast at the counter.
Mark reached down for his backpack. Through the door walked an old woman and her teenage niece or granddaughter. The young girl was dark, with long black hair, and for some reason she reminded him of Kristen.
All of a sudden he felt like crying.
He scooted out of the booth, left a dollar in the ashtray for the coffee and a tip, and walked quickly outside.
He stood in front of the restaurant, breathing deeply.
