Mercy
"Alright," I said, gathering my courage. "Let's try this one more time."
"At least we've already searched the front of the house." Akizuki pushed the doors to the dollhouse open and waved me inside. I brushed lightly against him as I passed, grateful for his living presence.
We passed through the first few rooms; nothing had altered, and nothing jumped out at us. Akizuki had already finished with the dollmaker's workshop, so we passed it and the altar room by, turning left as the hallway branched.
"Stairs," I said as the passage ended. "Let's do the first floor before we go up."
"Sounds good to me. Back around the corner, then." The floors in this area of the house seemed less solid than the ones where we came in; we retraced our steps carefully.
The next room in the house was large, two stories tall, and virtually empty. A broken grandfather clock, hands eternally stopped at 9 o'clock, stood against one wall, and a tumbled down staircase wrapped the other three, its railings broken and sagging and its treads splintered and bowed. Akizuki eyed it suspiciously. "Well, we won't be going up that way."
"I don't think that staircase would hold a rabbit," I agreed. "There must be-"
A long, wailing scream pierced the hall, raising every hair on my body and making me jump a foot in the air. I looked up just in time to see a flutter of red cloth falling towards us from the second floor, and then Akizuki grabbed my shoulders and hauled me backward out of range of...
Thump.
"Oh my..." I breathed softly, staring at the thing on the floor at my feet.
It was a woman, or had been seconds ago. Her body was broken from the fall, her arms and legs twisted at odd angles beneath her and her head tipped back, spilling dark hair in a puddle around her head and aiming her glassy, empty stare directly at me. I was hyperventilating.
"Don't-" Akizuki started, and then cut off abruptly as the mangled body in front of us twitched.
I screamed this time, backing up as the thing raised itself up on all four crumpled limbs and scuttled toward us, shrieking, eyes still empty and a maniacal smile on her face. I was so panicked I almost dropped the camera. Her teeth closed on my pants before my fumbling fingers found the shutter release and her shattered frame bubbled up and evaporated in bursts of light.
"Holy-" Akizuki panted behind me, his fingers like shackles around my shoulders. "Mercedes, are you alright?"
My eyes were still locked on the spot where the woman had lain. My throat was like the Sahara and my voice may as well have never existed.
"Mercy? Mercy, are you ok?"
He came around to stand in front of me, shifting his grip to keep hold of my shoulders. His body broke my view of the floor. He freed one hand and used it to push the camera gently down, away from my neck, and tilt my chin up. His face was tight with concern. "Are you alright? Did she touch you?"
I swallowed and shook my head as my knees gave out. He eased me down to the floor and ran his hands over my arms until I stopped gulping and shaking, which couldn't have taken more than twenty seconds but felt like half an hour. I groped for my voice a few times and came up empty, but eventually I managed to find at least a shadow of it. "Sorry. I'll only need another second, I swear."
"Don't apologize, please. I'd be in shock right now if you weren't doing it for me; it's your turn for that, too, you know. Some things we have to trade off on. Take all the time you need."
I spent another minute on the floor, taking deep breaths while Akizuki's warm hands rubbed life back into my back and arms. When my heartbeat was no longer ringing in my ears I pushed myself off the dusty floorboards and he helped me stand. "Alright," I said. "Let's keep moving. I need to get my sister home."
"You're sure you're ready? Do you want me to take the camera for a while?"
"Oh, no you don't. It's my turn still, no one's going to accuse me of shirking." He smiled but raised an eyebrow, his expression asking again. "Truly," I assured him, "it's fine. I'm fine. That-" I motioned to the stairway, at a loss for adjectives, "just caught me off guard and I overreacted."
"I'm not sure that's possible," he demurred. "And even if it is, a moment or two being shaken does not qualify. Tell me if you change your mind about the camera. I don't hold our spontaneous invention as a contract inviolable, and you still look a little pale."
"Thanks."
The next room, down a long dingy hallway and through a door on the left, opened up into a completely different space.
"Another room that's almost liveable. And not just liveable but adorable. Someone really loved the little girls that lived here." And it had been little girls; everything, from the half-sized kimonos on stands to the miniature dressing tables with covered mirrors to the intricately detailed chests of drawers was paired, and it was all beautiful. Butterflies were everywhere: on decorative folding screens against the walls, the spines of books in their shelves, even on the toys and the drawers. "This was their room, wasn't it? The dollmaker's twins."
"I imagine it was." He ran the beam of his flashlight along the bookcase. "Most of these are too faded to read, and the ones that aren't don't look useful. I believe the girls would have been too young to be entrusted with very detailed information, either."
"You're probably right. We should keep going." Millie and I had shared a room our entire childhood. What would that room have been like if she'd died at 8 or 9? This beautiful little room was a tragedy. I trailed fingertips over another clock that had stopped striking 9 and said a little prayer of gratitude for my sisters and for all the family members who'd kept us well and safe through the household's adventures.
We left through a door across the room from the one we'd entered by, emerging into yet another dingy corridor, this one with holes visible in the board floors. "Right or left?"
"Right to left, front to back, right?"
I cocked an eyebrow at him over my shoulder. "If you say so." He laughed.
The hallway turned back towards the front of the house before it ended in two doors. The front to back rule put us in a room with an ancient projector and a double handful of even more ancient books, none of which had any bearing on our current situation. The room beyond was equally useless, just another set of stairs.
"That's the third staircase. How many do you need in a house this size?"
"Main stairs, back stairs, servant's stairs... that should cover it. In a house this size."
"I can't really tell if you're joking. If you are you have the best poker face ever, and if not, we should talk architecture. My brother-in-law is- wow. Check this out." The second door off the hallway from the twin's room opened on a doll room, like the one at the last house only much larger and more elaborate. The tiered shelves were lined with exquisite dolls, all female, that practically glittered against the dark red fabric draping their stands. I took a step forward, trying to take in the details without letting down my guard-
The camera was in my hands and flashing before I realized that the human shaped shadows at the back of the room weren't moving. "Wow. I think this place is getting to me." Not that the two dolls standing at the end of the room weren't creepy enough to justify a little caution. The one who still had her head was roughly four feet tall and had long dark hair obscuring her face. The other was dressed in an identical navy kimono but was missing not only head but both her arms. The effect, while no where close to the worst thing I'd seen, was nevertheless disconcerting.
"Better safe than sorry is our operating protocol, I believe. And you certainly don't want to take chances with person sized dolls in a house known to have contained at least one possessed one."
"True. Do you think these are backups or something?"
"I don't know." He examined them, lifting one silken kimono sleeve. "They appear to be the appropriate size. Assuming, of course, that that one had a head."
"It probably had arms at some point, too; I wonder what happened to them. Not enough to hope we find them, though," I added to the universe at large. Not that it would be listening.
We searched the doll room, cautiously, and found nothing of use. Akizuki was right. The dolls were beautiful, but I was never going to own another one. Ever.
"One last side of the hallway and then we can go upstairs and then we can get out of this house." No closer to getting out of the village, though. At least the family would be missing us soon. It had been about 36 hours since Rajan fell from the cliff; we were already half a day overdue back from climbing. I was feeling every minute of running, hiding, and seesawing adrenaline in that last day and a half, too, and the full day of climbing that had come before it. I still didn't dare close my eyes in the eternal midnight that surrounded us; the crazy girl's laughter was there every time my tired brain started to wander. Millie was probably right, it was good to have someone to watch my back, even if I'd chafed a little under the delays.
That wasn't there last time.
There was another doll, standing in the corner of the hallway. But I'd looked down there, when we'd decided to go the other way first, and... Damn. She was moving.
"Stay back," I warned Akizuki as the figure advanced. She was slow; I had to resist the urge to click the shutter button madly. "Close is better, right?"
"More effective, yes. Be careful."
She was still two yards away when I couldn't take it any more. Not close, but should be close enough...
The camera did nothing. The flash washed over the advancing girl with less impact than a stiff breeze. Not again! But she didn't feel strong like the other one had. I took two quick steps back and looked over my shoulder for Akizuki. "It's not- move!"
A second figure was advancing from the other end of the hall, heading for him.
He responded instantly, ducking into the little nook by the twin's door. I ran that way, too, aiming the camera at the second figure and praying. I just needed a little time. If we could get some distance I might be able to hide us again, it might have been long enough. If we could at least get out of the hall...
I hit the shutter button and the girl in front of me screamed and stumbled back, fading into the wall.
"That one w-"
Intense pain shot through my left leg and my vision distorted, colors changing erratically and lines dissolving into wavy mush. My skin was frozen, my insides on fire, something was moving under my skin-
And then reality firmed up again and I woozily watched Akizuki grabbing the ghost girl by the shoulders and hurling her repeatedly at the wall.
At the third hit she melted through his fingers, joining her double somewhere... I knew they weren't gone. Children's voices echoed down the hall, repeating something over and over in Japanese, the echoes improbable for the space and obscuring all sense of direction. Wordlessly Akizuki and I formed up, back to back in the hallway, our eyes scanning every surface from ceiling to floor.
"I've always wanted to punch one of these things," he panted.
"You can do it again, if the camera doesn't work. Let me try it first, though."
"My two o'clock!"
She was faster this time, oozing out of the wall and giggling. I tried the camera: nothing.
Akizuki was there on the heels of the flash, with a mean looking left hook that was perfectly aimed. While he was punching a second girl appeared to his left, but she faded back as I tried to take the picture.
"She's hiding," I gasped, pivoting on my right leg to get back to our guard position. My left leg was still burning. "I need one clear shot."
"It'll come. Hold on."
Something grabbed at my weak leg and I kicked, lashing out as the world went discordant again. I heard Akizuki curse and something thud and I was on the floor, snapping a picture the second my vision cleared- a photo with a little girl, maybe 8, in a midnight blue kimono, rising out of a warped board floor and reaching for me.
The child screamed and exploded in a fountain of light, and so did the one sprawled at Akizuki's feet. We both held perfectly still for a moment, panting, not quite ready to believe that it was really over. But nothing more slid out of the walls and after a few seconds of silence Akizuki came over and extended a hand to help me to my feet.
"Thank you," I said, taking it and pushing myself off the floor. "Are you o- ow!" My abused leg folded and I tumbled gracelessly back to the ground. "Oooh." I hissed and straightened my leg, wiggling my toes to make sure I still could.
"Anything broken?" Akizuki asked, squatting down beside me.
"No, just a little sore. It'll be alright in a minute." I leaned back against the wall. "You ok?"
He nodded and stood again, fishing a water bottle from his pack and taking a drink.
"That wasn't the twins, was it? It was the girl and the doll, the replacement twin." He handed me the bottle and I took a drink, bent my knee experimentally.
"That was freaky is what that was," he said as I handed back the bottle.
"Oh, yes. Nice trick, though, with the fisticuffs. Not sure I would have thought of that."
He shrugged. "It seemed logical. If it wasn't a ghost, it was the doll, and if it was the doll, it would be subject to physical interaction. Didn't expect it to be able to do that with the wall, though. That was a nasty surprise."
"Tell me about it. Um, give me a hand up?"
He did, and I took it slower this time, easing my way up against the wall. I made it vertical that way, and took a few experimental steps. Akizuki kept a hand on my elbow, just in case my leg refused to hold, but I managed.
"You ok?" he asked.
"I'll be fine. Just have to walk it off." I stretched it a little, gauging the ache. It hurt, but it would function. "Thanks for saving my life, by the way. I appreciate it."
He smiled. "Anytime. Ready to get out of here?"
"Oh, yes! Let's go, before anything else shows up. Ooops, I can't believe I just said that out loud." I slapped a hand across my mouth, too late.
He grinned. "You've jinxed us for sure. Come on."