one. The neighborhood surrounding the theater was not commercial but industrial, having shifted some twenty years ago when downtown retail businesses moved to a newer area of the city. Not the greatest part of town even in the daytime, at night it would be downright spooky to anyone living above the poverty line.
He stared up at the broken marquee and peeling, weathered facade. They'd purchased the building but had not yet started on any of the renovations. Not that there were going to be that many. Art theater patrons liked a dingy, slightly seedy low-tech ambience. It differentiated them from other moviegoers, imparted a feeling of exclusivity to the viewing experience, made them think they were intellectual because they were willing to endure hardship for their love of art.
Still, the building was not up to code and its deteriorated condition was a little too run-down even for the art crowd.
Stormy walked up to the front doors, unlocked and opened them. He was supposed to drop his keys off at the real-estate office, but he wanted to see his baby one final time before putting it up for adoption.
He walked into the lobby and immediately the hair on the back of his neck prickled. It was a physical sensation, a biologic response, not something originating in his mind. Some instinctive animal part of his nature sensed danger here, and though he would ordinarily put such a reaction down to stress or psychological factors and immediately dismiss it, this time he was not quite so ready to ignore his response.
He thought of what Ken had said about Tom Utchaca and his father, about what was happening on the reservation.
Once again, the idea of a living doll jogged his memory, but he couldn't quite recollect what in his past would provide a correlation.
Maybe there was a doll somewhere in the theater.
His goose bumps doubled, tripled, and he was tempted to walk out the way he'd come, drive straight to the real-estate office, and drop off the keys. Even with the front door open, the lobby was dark, its edges shadowed, and both the stairway to the balcony and the open door to the theater proper were pitch-black.
He moved over to the ticket booth, flipped the series of light switches for the building. Soft yellow bulbs flickered on but did little to dissipate the gloom.
The idea that there was akachina doll--a living kachi nadoll--somewhere in the theater was stupid, but the image was undeniably powerful. In his mind, he could see one of the strange figures skulking under the projector in the booth, crawling under the seats in the theater, lurking behind the screen in the storage area.
He'd never been one to let fear get the best of him, though. If he even suspected he was scared of something, he'd meet it head-on, fight it and tame it. He'd had a fear of flying. Now he had a pilot's license. He'd had a fear of the ocean. He'd taken a cruise to Alaska. This was smaller, more specific, but that didn't make it any less acceptable, and he wasn't going to let doubt and fear and superstition run him out of his own building in the middle of the day.
He walked forward, through the double doors on the left side of the concession stand. Before him, rows of red seats sloped slightly downward. He saw no sign of movement in the aisles or on the abbreviated stage below the ripped screen, but he was still chilled, and he stood there for a moment, waiting, watching.
Nothing.
The interior of the theater was quiet, the only sound came from outside, and the silence made him feel a little better. He heard no claws on cement floor, no soft rustling, none of the sounds a doll would make if it was looking for him, coming after him.
If it was looking for him? Coming after him?
Where had he come up with that?
He didn't know.
But he knew the sounds.
He'd heard them before.
The silence was no longer quite so reassuring. He backtracked into the lobby. There was no reason for him to be here. He should lock up, turn in the keys, sign the papers, and get his butt back to Santa Fe before the afternoon rain started.
But he didn't want to feel like he was running away.
He stood for a moment, staring at the dust-covered popcorn machine, then turned and walked upstairs to the balcony.
By rights, this should have been scarier. It was darker, smaller, more claustrophobic, but the tension he'd felt downstairs faded up here, and as he looked down at the screen he felt nothing. It was an old run-down building, that's all. There was nothing unusual here, nothing out of the ordinary.
Why did he think he knew the sounds a doll would make if it was alive and coming after him?
Why did he think he'd heard them before?
He didn't want to even consider that.
He walked slowly back downstairs, intending to lock up and leave. He was past the curve of the stairwell, looking down at his feet, when movement caught his eye. He glanced up from the steps.
And saw the door to the men's rest room closing.
Ten minutes ago, he would've freaked and run out.
But his fear seemed to have fled, and all Stormy thought now was that he'd left the front door open, and some homeless guy had wandered in. He was going to have to find some way to get him out.
Great, he thought.
He hurried down the remaining steps, pushed the restroom door open, and said loudly, 'All right--'
And stopped.
There was no one there.
Like the rest of the building, the bathrooms had fallen into a state of serious disrepair, and there were no stalls, no urinals, only a sink and one toilet amid the rubble and pipe fixtures.
The toilet had been used recently. Splashes of water dripped down from the lip, had wet the surrounding floor. Stormy stepped closer. The toilet had not been flushed, but what lay in the bowl water did not look like human waste. It looked like a fruit salad, and there was something about the incongruity of the fruit salad's appearance and its placement that set his already jangled nerves on edge.
He glanced over at the sink, saw a long-stemmed red rose embedded in a chunk of cheddar cheese that protruded from the drain.
This was too weird. This was too fucking creepy. He had no idea what was happening here or what it meant, all he knew was that he did not want to be a part of it.
He no longer owned any portion of this building, and at this point he didn't care if they razed it and replaced it with a nuclear power plant. He just wanted to get the hell out.
He stared at the rose.
Living dolls were spooky enough, but they were at least understandable. They were within the range of acknowledged supernatural phenomena, like ghosts and witches and demons. But this was something else entirely.
This was . . .
He didn't know what this was.
All he knew was that it scared the shit out of him.
He ran through the deserted lobby and, with trembling fingers, locked the theater doors. He hurried back to his car.
Maybe this was an isolated occurrence. Maybe this was entirely unconnected to what was going on up at the reservation.
Maybe.
But he didn't think so.
He drove to the real-estate office, turned in his keys, signed the papers, and got the hell out of Albuquerque as quickly as he could.
But the fear followed him all the way to Santa Fe.
And it did not abate that night or the following day.
Mark Dry River.
