Cold. Stiff. The light peculiar. An orange glow pulsed and strobed.
Where was she?
Lucinda gained her knees with a groan. Her jaw and her left eye pulsed with pain.
A bedroom.
She was in a bedroom.
Sally’s bedroom.
She looked out a window. The setting sun’s orange light glowed on the bedroom walls.
Lucinda looked at the stick figure drawings on the bulletin board.
A chill rippled through her. How had Lucinda not known about Sally’s drawings? She felt a stab of petty girlhood resentment. How could Sally have kept these drawings secret; she and Sally were best friends. They told each other their secrets and kept them.
Lucinda tucked the drawings in her coat pocket. She did not know what they meant, but they disturbed her. The tracks in the snow and someone having been in this house upset her too. She considered telling Kirk but decided to sit on the development, for now. The house appeared undisturbed, and the snowed-in tire and boot tracks were useless as evidence.
She picked up the doll and squeezed it.
No sound came.
She squeezed it again.
Nothing.
What had she heard it say? Help me? I’m hurt?
She squeezed its belly. Its face.
Silence.
She’d heard it. She’d swear. She had heard it cry out. Her old Beverly doll had not been able to do that.
She dug her fingers into the doll. Pierced its cloth with her fingernails and ripped the doll open. Pulled out its stuffing.
Nothing. Empty. No voice box.
Her jaw throbbed. Her eyelid spasmed. Her vision wouldn’t focus. It was as if she were seeing through the film of a dusty window. With the room growing dark, she dropped the doll to the floor and fled from the house; she could not get out of there soon enough.