So, my stated intention this year is to write more. There are stories I started, characters I created that need to be worked on or they won’t shut up. So here’s the first in my New Year’s Resolution to create, cross-posted both here in the old Sunday Page slot and as the first new story the Eclectic Chair has seen in nearly six months. All feedback welcome.
Other Skies
Mister Mason Plays With Dolls
by James Douglas Ashelford
The harsh rasp of footsteps on the gravel drive drifted in through the open window as Jeff Mason tried to get to asleep. It had been a long day in the conference rooms of the Dorchester Manse and he wanted to sleep. Buzzed as he was from too many coffees between meetings, it just wasn’t happening. He always slept with the window open, always, an unfortunate little habit in a travelling businessman. Back home the sounds outside his window didn’t bother him, every nocturnal rustle and clatter assimilated into his sleep rhythms but on the road…
The footsteps grew closer, louder, more urgent, more rapid. In a little corner of his mind he registered an odd note in the ordered march of crunches, out of kilter with the pace of the others. A half-amused grunt issued from his throat. Probably Piers, he thought, being dragged back legless by those two cronies of his from Human Resources.
Trying to block out the sounds of that damned fool Piers’ drunken stumbling, Mason turned over and dragged the quilt up over his shoulders. As his head came down on the pillow, however, he felt something hard press into his cheek as he crushed it down against the mattress.
He only had a second to register the sensation before a scream jerked him awake.
He was upright and wide awake before he knew he was moving.
Bloody kids, he thought as he threw on his dressing gown, marching unsteadily to the window. Wrenching the window open he fixed his gaze on the three people down on the drive: an anonymous looking man in a dark suit, barely visible in the gloom; a young man with shocking blond hair who leant heavily upon a crutch and a young woman lying prostrate on the ground.
‘Shut the hell up!’ he yelled out at the little group. Bloody kids, getting drunk and waking everyone up. His anger sated for the moment he moved back to his bed. With an exaggerated sigh he fell down but sleep didn’t come. That lump under the pillow nudged gently against his head, a bothersome distraction from rest.
Swearing quietly to himself (he was nothing if not considerate to his neighbours) he dug his hand under the pillow, snatching it back when he felt something sharp dig into the flesh of his finger. Okay, that had to go, whatever it was. Sucking his bleeding finger he used his other hand to throw the pillow aside revealing a small, somewhat rough-looking rag doll. The doll had a card tied to its stubby leg. Attached to the card with sticky tape was a long sewing needle. The label read: “Wet paint. Do not touch. HT.”
Nonsense, Mason though, turning the doll over gently in his hands. As he was examining it a detail struck him: the hair was real, not nylon like the dolls his daughters played with.
Go on.
What was it? In this day and age what child played with a rag doll? And what kind of doll came with a pin?
Go on.
He found he couldn’t take his eyes off the doll and his fingers played with the needle stuck to the card. He knew full well what the doll was now, he knew what it was for, the word coming unbidden to his mind:
Voodoo.
He laughed, a harsh bark breaking the silence of the darkened room. A voodoo doll, God knew why it was in his bed. Probably belonged to one of the hotel cleaners. The doll’s obviously real hair was blond and its figure, though crude, clearly female.
The hotel manager, perhaps? An unpopular supervisor? An ex-lover?
Go on. Do it. It’s a silly little doll, go on. Take the pin, you know you want to.
He pulled the pin from the card and brought it up to the doll. He ran the point down the doll’s featureless face, scoring the material as he tried to decide where to stab it.
The heart. Come on, you’ve seen the movies, go for the heart.
Yes, the heart.
Tap. Tap tap tap.
Startled, Mason dropped the pin and snapped around to face the window, the source of the sudden intrusion. He hid the doll behind him like a guilty secret. From outside the window an owl, unable to enter through the small gap he’d left open, regarded him with sharp, predatory focus. It locked eyes with him, tap-tap-tapping its tiny hooked beak against the glass.
From outside, beyond those accusing predator’s eyes, Mason could hear someone running up the drive. Heavy footfalls, determined, unstoppable.
Turning his eyes from the owl he returned his focus to the little doll.
Go on.
Jeffrey Mason wasn’t a man given to panic but he couldn’t deny the quickening of his pulse when he realised he’d dropped the pin. Casually dropping the doll down on his bed…
from outside, a choked gasp, the sound of sobbing
… he dived to his knees and, heedless of the risk of another pricked finger, began thumping his palms against the carpet in search of the pin.
All the time the owl tap-tap-tapping its hooked beak insistently against the window as if trying to get his attention.
His blood pounded in his ears, his hands banged against the carpet, the owl tapped on the glass and all the time his panic rose and his breath came more and more raggedly. By the moment someone knocked on his door he was on the verge of hyperventilating, halfway across the room from where he had started his manic search.
When the first knock came he looked up at the door but made no move to rise, quickly returning to his frantic thumping of the carpet. The second and third knocks passed without him even acknowledging them.
Find it. Find the pin, damn you, find the pin. Quickly, quickly.
The knocking became more insistent, more violent, shaking the door in its frame and breaking through the levels of obsession gripping Mason’s mind. In a towering rage he leapt to his feet and bolted towards the door, wrenching it open with the full intention of giving whoever it was disturbing him a damn good piece of his mind.
‘Good evening,’ said the man on the other side of the door. ‘I am looking for a doll.’
All Mason’s bluster, his choice words, his righteous indignation at being interrupted, died on his lips as he looked at the newcomer: he wore a charcoal grey suit that hung on his body in a way that was subtly wrong. The angles of his body were just slightly too sharp, seemingly somehow inorganic. His face was lined, cracked like mud dried on a hot day and the same colour. He wore a hat but seemed to be bald beneath it as no hair peeked out beneath the brim.
He was also possibly the tallest and widest man Mason had ever met. Despite this the man spoke with exaggerated politeness if rather bluntly. The man turned his head (and no other part of his body, not his shoulders nor torso, it seemed) to regard Mason’s bed.
‘That doll,’ the man concluded. ‘You will kindly bring it and follow me.’
* * * * *
Mason followed the man down the gravel drive, clutching the rag doll to his breast like a child clutching its teddy bear as they wander the midnight corridors of their home after a bad dream. His earlier panic had subsided and he was beginning to question his actions.
‘Why don’t you just take it?’ he asked the man, thrusting the doll at him.
‘No,’ the man said simply before elaborating: ‘I might damage it.’ His even, unwavering voice betrayed no emotion but Mason saw in the man’s dark eyes a fear that struck him as nothing short of pure terror.
So now he carried the doll down the drive in the polite giant’s wake, making for the two figures sat in the middle of the path.
One was the young man with the blond hair, his crutch lying abandoned in the gravel as he tended to the woman lying in his arms. She’d obviously been attacked: a vicious cut ran the length of her face, spilling blood down her neck and into her long, blonde hair. Several of her fingers were obviously broken and every inch of exposed skin carried a bruise. She breathed raggedly, staring straight at Mason and the toy he carried.
As they approached, the young man’s head snapped around, fixing Mason with a look like he had every reason to leapt forward and tear the businessman apart with his bear hands.
‘The doll…’ the young woman gasped from split and bloodied lips as Mason and his escort drew near. ‘Give me… the doll.’
Stepping forwards, Mason passed the doll with great reluctance, like he was giving up something special. The woman’s face split into a pained smile as she clutched the doll’s body in one broken and battered hand and its hair in the other. With one jerking motion and a cry of pain at the exertion she tore the hair from the doll and collapsed.
‘Ambulance,’ the younger man said, cradling the unconscious woman in his arms as he kept his hawk-like gaze…
sharp, focussed, predatory
… fixed on Mason. ‘Now.’
Mason ran back to the hotel.
* * * * *
The next morning the business conference ended and Mason sleepwalked through the final round of meetings. In spite of his inattention and his preoccupation with his encounter of the night before, he was surprised to be taken aside by their client and offered a job.
‘I have a gift for spotting the right sort of mind, Mister Mason,’ the client explained in his soothing, cultured European accent. ‘You most definitely have the right sort of mind for my operation: open, susceptible to new concepts. I’d greatly like you to come and work for me, I think we can do great things with you.’
And that was how Jeffrey Mason came to work for Haargen Turan.
WRITER’S BOXThis story is the work of James Ashelford and may not be reproduced, archived, reposted or otherwise used without his express permission.
The original draft of this story was prepared for a
Write Anything Fiction Friday prompt (“During his third night out of town, a travelling businessman finds a voodoo doll in his hotel room”). I rediscovered it recently and I’m working on new stories for the characters. All feedback gratefully accepted.
Cross-posted to
The Eclectic Chair.
