Chapter 20: S#4. Doll of Sorrow (3)
by fnovelpia
The lock on the box was broken.
The doll I had locked inside was gone.
Only the torn box tape remained, like the shed skin of a snake.
I was flabbergasted. How did it escape?
Nancy came downstairs.
Standing beside me, she stared blankly at the empty box.
“I should have listened to Summer… I was so stupid…”
Her voice was choked with regret.
But I understood Nancy.
Who would easily believe that a doll could come to life?
It sounds completely insane.
To me, who knows the brain-washing effects of horror movies and that we are in one, it’s not insane at all.
Then, someone called out to us from inside the house.
“Hey! Come here!!”
It was Officer Bob’s voice.
Nancy and I went inside.
Bob was standing in front of the kitchen table.
On the table, the doll was sitting, covered in blood, a gruesome sight.
It held a meat tenderizer in its hand, with flesh and blood clumped on the head of the hammer.
Though it sat still, we knew it could lunge at us any moment.
Of course, I didn’t plan to wait until the doll moved.
The best defense is offense – I quickly grabbed two kitchen knives.
I threw them at the cursed doll.
One blade stuck in the doll’s neck, and the other in its stomach.
The doll didn’t show any pain and fell backward like a regular doll.
The meat tenderizer dropped to the floor with a thud!
The man killed at dawn… beaten in the face with a blunt object, his face mashed like a potato.
It must have been the doll’s doing.
The murder weapon, obviously, was that meat tenderizer.
Bob saw the doll.
The blood-soaked doll hit by the thrown knives didn’t move at all, just like a normal doll.
“It’s hard to see this as self-defense. Even if it had a weapon, throwing kitchen knives at a child!”
“Um, officer, that’s a doll.”
“……Hmm. I know.”
He hadn’t known.
Bob pointed at the bloodied meat tenderizer.
“And this weapon?”
“That’s… a meat tenderizer I used last night for cooking turkey.”
“Turkey? You mash turkey with a hammer?”
My awkward excuse made Bob look suspicious.
But that was only for a moment.
“Hmm, sounds tasty though. Turkey cutlets.”
Bob seemed to relish the thought.
Truly… pitiful intelligence.
I took the doll and went to the backyard.
I had to destroy it before more casualties occurred.
There was no time to worry about a ‘curse’.
I stomped on the doll’s head until it burst.
I also pulled off its limbs to ensure it couldn’t move.
Just in case it was a vampire doll, I even drove a stake through its heart.
In one corner of the backyard, there were three dug-up spots.
They were graves where Dr. Johnson’s skin, muscles, and bones were buried.
I buried Chucky right beside them, in harmony.
“Phew…”
It was over.
I had stabbed it, burst its head, pulled off its limbs, drove a stake through its heart, and buried it in the ground.
Even a killer who revives relentlessly in horror movies would die after this.
Even a phoenix would die.
Just as I prayed for the soul of the doll, destined for hell.
I saw someone beyond the fence.
It was Reiko Ishikawa.
She still had a mysterious aura about her.
She was in color, while the rest of the scenery looked black and white.
As I approached, Reiko smiled and waved.
“Hello, Mr. Summer.”
“Nice to see you, Ms. Ishikawa. I’d like to hear the rest of the crystal ball reading from yesterday, if that’s okay?”
“Of course.”
Reiko looked at the shovel in my hand with her pretty, crescent-moon-shaped eyes.
“But, Mr. Summer. What did you just bury?”
“…I buried a doll.”
I explained everything about the cursed doll.
Reiko listened quietly.
“I’d like to see that doll with my own eyes.”
“It’s already buried in the ground.”
I pointed at the new grave in the backyard with the tip of my shovel.
“…Huh.”
But the grave had been dug up.
I had flattened the ground with a shovel, but now it looked like it had been bombed, the dirt overturned.
I hurried over.
The doll, supposed to be stuck in a deep pit, was gone without a trace.
I was stunned.
“Summer, could that be the doll?”
Reiko said, looking up.
The dirty doll was perched on the roof.
It was Chucky, covered in dirt, its head burst and a stake in its chest.
Seeing it took my breath away.
I pulled Chucky down from the roof.
It looks like the usual methods wouldn’t get rid of it.
I needed the help of a medium.
“…Ms. Ishikawa. How should we deal with a cursed doll?”
Reiko’s answer was brief.
“Burn it.”
I got into Reiko Ishikawa’s car.
The car sped down a secluded road.
It was the road next to the forest where I first met Nancy.
We were on our way to perform a cremation for Chucky.
The trunk was loaded with gasoline, and I held tightly onto Chucky.
It was like a bouncy ball that could spring away at any moment.
I couldn’t let my guard down.
Nancy offered to help, but I stopped her.
I didn’t want her involved in dangerous matters.
“Ms. Ishikawa. You said we’re going to the forest. Exactly where are we going?”
“For this kind of thing, a place filled with yin energy is best. There’s such a place in the forest. Just trust me.”
The sky darkened.
Ominous clouds rolled in, blocking the sunlight.
The branches jutting out from the forest cast shadows like bones.
It was eerie.
“But Ms. Ishikawa. There’s something that bothers me.”
“What is it?”
Chucky’s actions were physically impossible.
Starting with its escape from the box.
The lock was torn off, but the box itself was intact.
If Chucky had exerted tremendous strength from inside the box, not only did the box not get crushed, it didn’t even have a scratch…
Maybe someone from the outside broke the lock and took Chucky out.
It’s equally strange how it managed to escape from the ground without limbs and climb onto the roof.
Was it using teleportation?
“It is strange. What do you think, Mr. Summer?”
“There might be another cursed doll. Not Chucky, but a different one.”
I turned to look at Reiko, who was driving.
“What if that other doll is you, Ms. Ishikawa?”
“Me? What do you mean?”
“That you’re the doll.”
The idea that a person is actually a doll is a kind of ‘cliché twist’.
Monstrous humans and humane monsters.
It’s a variation on that old irony.
“Ms. Ishikawa is a neighbor, but you never showed yourself. We even thought the house next door was empty.”
“……”
“Maybe Ms. Ishikawa is a doll, and you’re taking me to a secluded place to kill me, because I’m a nuisance.”
It reminds me of a horror movie with a similar twist.
The ending was truly horrific.
“Of course, I’m joking. You couldn’t possibly be a doll. Though you are as beautiful as one.”
“……”
“Ms. Ishikawa?”
“……”
Reiko Ishikawa was silent for a while.
A chilly wind blew in.
The forest scenery rushing by the window felt sinister.
Reiko brushed her hair behind her ear and spoke.
“It seems you’ve discovered my true identity.”
It was a shocking confession, but not serious.
Reiko was smiling playfully.
“Hehe. Of course, I’m joking~.”
“Right…?”
“You don’t seriously think I’m a doll, do you, Mr. Summer?”
Of course not.
It’s too far-fetched to think Reiko was a doll.
Besides, if Reiko were a dangerous entity, the narrator would have tipped me off when we first met.
…Probably.
“But it is strange,”
Reiko said, looking at Chucky in my arms.
“Looking at it now, I don’t feel any cursed energy from Chucky at all.”
“Really?”
“It just seems like a normal doll. Maybe the curse has been lifted.”
A normal doll?
In the moment of confusion caused by Reiko’s statement, a narration echoed in my head.
-The curse on the doll was none other than ‘jealousy’.
Jealousy?
-A jealousy so twisted, it was horrifying.
This jealousy, transformed into a curse, brought the doll to life.
To reclaim its past happiness, the doll planned a slaughter.
It was then.
Bang-!
A loud gunshot was heard.
Reiko’s slender shoulder shook. She had been shot.
The bullet went through her collarbone.
The gunshot came from the back seat.
But I had no time to react.
The gunfire sounded once again.
This time the bullet hit my thigh.
I was so shocked that I couldn’t even feel the pain.
It felt like being on a rollercoaster while drunk.
Reiko frantically turned the wheel.
Screeeeeeech─────────
The car spun wildly and crashed into a tree.
0 Comments