One of the men leaned in close. His breath smelled like tobacco.
“We’ll take care of you, little doll,” he said.
But I didn’t care. None of it mattered. I kept fighting, screaming, clawing to stay beside Dorian. They didn’t listen. They just dragged me away.
Ripped me from him.
“Let go of me!” I cried, kicking, twisting, but one man grunted and threw me over his shoulder like I weighed nothing.
The other opened the truck door.
I reached back for Dorian, my fingers clawing at the air.
“I have to go back,” I sobbed. “He needs me. I didn’t say goodbye, please, he’s not gone!”
But they didn’t stop.
“He’s still breathing,” I whispered. “I know he is. I know.”
The open truck door waited, and I screamed one last time. Not a word, not a name. Just grief.
(PART III. COMING JULY 22 3PM PST)
NINETEEN
DORIAN
Iwoke up in an empty house. The front door was open, creaking slightly in the breeze. Beside me, a smear of dried blood stained the floorboards. The silence was heavy, broken only by the soft rustle of wind slipping through the doorway.
I rose slowly, my limbs stiff from the fall. I looked around, trying to speak, to make a sound, but nothing left my lips. My throat felt hollow, like something had been scraped clean.
When I turned around, I saw a little girl at the top of the stairs. A music box played somewhere behind her.Für Elise, playing faintly down like the memory of something I wasn’t sure ever happened.
My legs felt like they belonged to someone else. I staggered, glancing behind me more than once, unsure if there was still a body, and am I was one of the ghosts now.
At the top of the stairs, a door stood open. The room everyone had been forbidden to enter. The same room where Ian and I used to hide.
I stepped inside.
It was empty now.
The girl stood in the center, cradling a doll in her arms. This time, the doll’s hair was a different shade of blonde, almost white, like bleached bone. She knelt on the floor, humming as she rocked it gently. Behind her was a large dollhouse looking like a replica of Gloomsbury, its tiny windows watching.
“Am I?” I asked. “Did I die?”
She looked at me with wide eyes that didn’t blink. “Almost.”
The door closed behind me without a sound.
I moved toward the dollhouse, drawn by something I couldn’t explain. As I leaned in, I saw figures inside. Small, stiff walnut men standing by miniature beds, their carved faces twisted into wooden grins. I looked closer, narrowing my eyes.
The floor inside the dollhouse was shining.
It wasn’t marble. It was a mosaic of human teeth. Polished and pale, packed tightly together.
I gasped and stepped back.
“Shh,” the girl whispered. “You’ll wake her up.”
