Richard Matheson’s 1969 tale “Prey” made its biggest cultural impact when it became the climactic segment of the 1975 TV movie Trilogy of Terror—Karen Black’s desperate struggle against the Zuni fetish doll, “He Who Kills,” is a highlight of television history. In “Quarry,” Joe R. Lansdale—the Texan “Mojo storyteller” behind Freezer Burn, Bad Chili, and some twenty other novels and collections—posits that there are more Zuni dolls out there, just as ready to kill. . . .
There had been better days in his life, and as Jeff drove home from the court house, the convertible top down, the wind blowing through his hair, he tried to put all that had gone before out of his mind and think about the book he was writing. He was at least two months behind on the deadline, and it seemed to him that if he doubled up, by working weekends, which he did not normally do, he might be able to make it.
Now that Brenda had left he should have plenty of time, fewer interruptions.
Brenda. It always came back to Brenda. It had been hard to concentrate on much else the last few months, and though he thought he should be angry and glad to be rid of her, all he felt was empty and sad and lonely. She always said, in spite of his financial success, that he was a loser who didn’t know a thing about being a man. He could write books, but he wasn’t like the men she knew, like her father and brother. Football players, hunters.
He sat in the dark in front of a word processor and made up stories.
“Not a manly profession, Jeff,” she told him.
Considering she was always glad to spend his money and was now expecting more from the divorce, he was a little uncertain about her belief system, but still, it hurt to be considered a wimp.
Try as he might to put Brenda out of his mind, thoughts about the book wouldn’t come. He needed to finish it, turn it in, get his other half of the advance and keep his publishing schedule, but it was more than a little hard to concentrate.
On the way home he stopped by the antique and curiosity shop. He had ordered a few things for the house from antique buyers who promised him some nice surprises. It had been exciting to him at the time, the idea of hiring someone to find him some new and interesting pieces for their new home, but now it was his new home, and if Brenda’s lawyers handled things correctly, it might be her new home.
The shop was on the outskirts of the little community of Falling Rock, not real far from his home. The building was nestled in the mountains as securely as a tick in a fat man’s armpit. It was backed up against a rock face and the front of it stuck out close to the highway. There were all manner of odds and ends out front, and these items were more junk than antiques, but inside the shop, which was as huge as a warehouse, there was old furniture, paintings, weird art objects. The place was called OLD STUFF AND ODD STUFF, and it was operated by a gay couple.
They were anything but stereotypical. Jason was about forty and was a body builder and had a macho swagger. His mate, Kevin, taught Mixed Martial Arts Combat Fighting, and had won a number of championships. They had bought the place from a cranky old man and his crankier old wife about a year ago. Jeff had always liked antiques and odd art objects, and had frequented the shop for years. The success of his books worldwide had given him the money to buy all manner of things. Colorful rugs from Morocco, tables and chairs hand made in the Appalachians, primitive art paintings from the Southern states and the Midwest.
As he pulled into the gravel drive out front of OLD STUFF AND ODD STUFF, he thought maybe he ought to cancel his order. He could use the money. Six months ago, he was a millionaire, and though he might still be considered one as of this moment, a lot of his money had already gone to lawyers, and soon more would be heading there, like a cue ball for a pool table pocket, ready to drop out of sight.
But the problem was he had asked Jason and Kevin to hand pick him a few items, and he had already paid half down. He knew Jason and Kevin well enough to know that they had gone to considerable trouble to find the items for him, had spent the last month looking high and low for just the right objects.
He decided the thing to do was to bite the bullet.
Inside Jason greeted him with a handshake and a pat on the shoulder, and for a moment Jeff felt better. He always enjoyed Jason and Kevin’s company. Jason, as usual, looked as if he had just stepped off the cover of a magazine, and Kevin, as usual, was in sweats with tennis shoes.
They talked briefly, and he sat and had a cup of coffee with them. After they had gone through the coffee, the pair walked him around the place, showed him a few primitive art pieces, three of them paintings, one a “sculpture” they referred to as “found” art. It was made with odds and ends, an old transistor radio, a little statuette of Elvis, a cell phone, and some lightbulbs, all of this encased inside a wooden box. It was unique and interesting. The phone’s insides had been replaced with a battery, and when you punched the call button, it played Elvis singing “Don’t Be Cruel” and the lights lit up and the statuette of Elvis bobbed from one side to the other.
“That I like,” Jeff said. “Best thing yet.”
“No,” Kevin said, and his eyes seemed to light up, “I don’t think so. We have a very fine and different piece for you.”
Kevin took Jeff by the elbow and guided him to a shelf at the back of the place, and on the shelf, in a black box, about twelve inches high and six inches wide, perched on a little platform inside the box, was a very strange thing indeed.
It was a kind of doll, dark as a rainy night with a shock of black hair that looked like dyed straw; it stood up from the doll’s head as if it had been charged with electricity. Its body was skeletal and its mouth was open, revealing some jagged, but sharp looking teeth. It had a little spear in its hand. Its hands were large for the rest of its body, the knuckles each the size of a shelled pecan. Its long fingers were tipped with sharp fingernails. There was a small coil of black rope hanging from a hook on one side of its leather belt, and on the other side was a miniature dagger the length of a sewing machine needle and the width of a fingernail file. The doll was sexless, smooth all over. It stood on a little platform about two inches high. As he got closer, Jeff saw that there was a chain around the doll’s neck, and on the little chain a placard that read: HE WHO KILLS.
“My god,” Jeff said, “it’s wonderfully ugly.”
“Isn’t it?” Kevin said. “There’s a little scroll inside the stand.”
Kevin slid a sliding door aside on the platform beneath He Who Kill’s feet, and took out the scroll. It was bound with a black ribbon. He gently removed the ribbon and opened the scroll. He read what was written on it: “This is a Zuni fetish doll, He Who Kills. He is deadly and ever persistent. The chain holds his warrior spirit at bay. Remove at your own peril, for he is a strong and mighty hunter.”
“Isn’t that just the thing?” Jason said. “This is very rare. There are only a few, and this is the only one we’ve ever seen. We’ve heard of them, and they have a story around them, about a curse and all, but considering the kind of fiction you write, we thought that wouldn’t be a worry for you.”
Kevin rolled up the scroll and bound it with the ribbon and replaced it in the compartment inside the platform. Jeff grinned. This was just the sort of thing he would love to have on the mantle. A nice conversation piece. He’d have to do some research on it.
“Guys, I like it all,” Jeff said.
“Good,” Jason said, “we can deliver it day after tomorrow.”
“Let me pay up, and take the doll with me,” Jeff said. “You can deliver the rest.”
“I told you he’d like it,” Jason said. Then to Jeff: “Isn’t that doll just the bomb?”
“The atomic bomb,” Jeff said.
At home Jeff got the good scissors out of the kitchen drawer and sat at the kitchen table and cut loose the wrapping Jason and Kevin had put around the box. He dropped the scissors on the table and took the doll out of the box and turned it over and looked at its back. It was polished there as smoothly as it was polished all over. It seemed to be made of some kind of light wood, or perhaps bone. He wasn’t sure exactly. He tapped it with his knuckles. It sounded hollow . . . No. There might be something inside. He got the feeling that when he tapped, something shifted in there. He had heard a sound, like the beating of a moth’s wings.
He laughed. The soul. The mighty hunter’s soul shifted. That was the sound.
His dog, Fluffy, the poodle—his wife’s name for their pet—trotted over, reared up on Jeff’s knee, looked at the doll and growled at it.
“Don’t worry, Fluffy. I won’t let him get you. Besides, he’s got his chain on.”
Jeff touched the tip of the little spear, jerked his finger back. It was razor sharp. His finger was bleeding. He stuck it in his mouth and sucked. Damn, he thought. That thing is dangerous.
Jeff sat the doll on the table, pushed back his chair and studied it carefully. Its features were very fine, and the eyes, he couldn’t figure what they were made from. They didn’t look like beads, or jewels, clam shell maybe. White clam shell with small black dots painted in the center.
“I should turn you loose on my wife,” he said.
He stood the doll upright on the table, went into his study, turned on his computer, typed in ZUNI FETISH DOLL, HE WHO KILLS. As he typed, Sofia, his tabby, climbed up in his lap. He stroked the cat’s head with one hand while she watched him work the mouse with the other. Maybe she thought it was a real mouse, and dad had trapped it, holding it down for her to eat.
He smiled and looked at what he had brought up on the screen.
It was a photograph of a doll like the one he had. He skimmed the reading material. Apparently, only three of the dolls were known to exist. They had a kind of cult story about them, sort of like the Hope Diamond. Whoever owned the dolls met with a bad end. This was the reason they were popular, the story that went with them. Owning a doll that supposedly had a curse attached to it was the cool thing to have, or so it seemed.
He studied the photograph of the doll on the screen. It was very much like his doll. No. It was exactly like his doll. The photograph had been taken in the nineteen thirties by an anthropologist. The doll was called a Zuni doll, but there seemed to be some question as to if it meant the Zuni Indians. There was also some question as to where the chains and the little placards around their necks, written in English, had come from?
No one seemed to have any answers.
Jeff was about to switch to another site, try and find more information. He figured that the dolls had been made in modern times as curios, and a legend had built up around them for sales purposes. He doubted they were Zuni or that they were ever found in a cave. But, it would make a great story. Maybe a novel. Sounded more interesting than the one he was working on at the moment, and—
There was a crashing noise, and then Fluffy yelped in the kitchen.
When Jeff entered the kitchen he discovered the doll was missing from the table. He was immediately mad. Fluffy. That damn dog had grabbed the doll. She was bad about that sort of thing, climbing up in the chair to eat out of plates, get hold of anything she could grab, just to make sure she got attention, good or bad. The crash he had heard had most likely been his expensive doll, and worse, it was probable Fluffy had already begun to chew on his rare property.
Jeff noted that the sliding glass door to the garden was cracked open. He had opened it when he first came in with the doll, then left it open for the cat to come inside. He pushed the glass door wider and looked out at the garden inside the high walls that surrounded it.
There wasn’t much moonlight tonight, and what light there was appeared gauzy, as if cheese cloth had been thrown over the quarter moon. Jeff went out into the garden and looked at the tall plants that made the place look like a little patch of tropical forest. Shadows draped between the plants like plaited ropes of black satin.
He and his wife had planted these, and it occurred to him that what she had said about never loving him was probably not true. She had loved him. She had loved him when they had made the garden. Now she didn’t and she was saying she never had. The plants gave him comfort that once they truly had loved one another, made him feel less like an idiot.
The doll. Fluffy. His mind came back to the problem at hand. He was about to venture out into the garden, to see if Fluffy had gone out there, when he heard a noise in the house, a dragging noise.
Jeff stepped back inside and shut the door.
“Fluffy,” he called.
He went around the table, and as he did, something shiny caught his eye. He looked down. It was the necklace with the placard for He Who Kills. Jeff bent down and picked it up and examined it. He was certain now that what had happened was the doll, perhaps when Fluffy bumped the table, had tipped over and fallen to the floor, losing its necklace. It had fallen on Fluffy, hence, the yelp. And then Fluffy, vengeful and dog like, had grabbed it and carried it off and was probably in the living room, behind the couch, chewing its head off.
Jeff called the dog again, but nothing.
He went into the living room, pulled up sharp. There was a dark red swipe of blood beginning just as he stepped into the living room. Jeff studied the swipe, saw that it wiped across the wooden floor and disappeared behind the couch.
He took a deep breath, and careful not to step in the blood, went behind the couch and let out an involuntary cry.
Fluffy was there.
He was lying in a puddle of blood . . . and there was the doll’s little spear sticking out of the side of his neck. It had penetrated an artery and Fluffy had bled out in seconds. Jeff bent over the dog, took hold of the little spear and pulled it free.
And then there was a crackle and the lights went out.
Moving through the dark, accustomed enough to his home to make his way about, but not so accustomed to avoid bumping his knee on the edge of the couch, Jeff managed to cross the living room, stumble down the hall, to the closet. There was a fuse box in the closet, and he had some spare fuses inside, and he needed light. His stomach felt queasy. His heart was beating fast. He still had the little spear in his hand.
There was a bit of moonlight coming in through the back sliding door, across the kitchen and down the connecting hall. It fell into the hall where he stood, near the closet, making a little pool of glow. It wasn’t much, but it made him feel better, being able to see something.
The closet door was open. His cat, Sofia, was standing outside of the closet, making a strange sound. The hair on her back stood up like quills.
He stepped into the closet and felt around for the flashlight he kept on a shelf, found it, and turned it on. The fuse box was open, and there were old shoe boxes stacked all the way up to it.
What the hell?
He thought again of the little spear. He looked at it with his flashlight. The blood on its tip was already drying, growing dark. He put the spear on top of the fuse box and took a deep breath. He looked at the shoe boxes again.
Someone, or something small had stacked them to get at the fuse box, which, now, as he flashed the light on the box, he saw had been wrecked. Someone . . . or something . . . had savagely ripped at the guts of the box and torn them out. But what had been used, and who . . . or what had done such a thing?
He had an idea, but it wasn’t an idea he could completely wrap his mind around. It just did not make sense.
And if it was the doll—there, he had said it—how would it know to do such a thing?
Instinct?
Experience?
Oh, hell, he thought. Don’t be silly. There’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for all this, it’s—
Jeff heard something, like a roach caught up in a match box. He turned the light around and around on the floor of the closet. Nothing. And then he saw the little black rope. It was dangling from the closet shelf, being slowly drawn up.
Swallowing, Jeff turned the light onto the shelf.
And there was the doll, just pulling up the last of its rope. The rope was clutched in one oversized hand, and the scissors that had been on the table were clutched in the other.
The doll leaped at him.
Swatting at the doll with the flashlight, he knocked it to the side, against the closet wall. It was such a hard strike, that after he hit the doll, his flashlight traveled into the edge of the closet doorway and came apart in an explosion of glass and batteries.
Jeff leaped backwards out of the closet and slammed the door.
Suddenly there was a savage yell inside the closet, and then the tip of the scissors poked through the wooden door and missed his knee by less than an inch. Jeff staggered back. In the faint moonlight he could see the tip of the scissors being driven through the door again and again, in a paced rhythm of strikes.
My God, the little beast was a psycho.
And then the stabbing stopped. Jeff stepped back, thinking. Okay. Okay. He’s in the closet. It will take him awhile to work his way through the door, even as relentless as he seems to be.
The doorknob began to shake.
My God, he thought. It has leaped up and grabbed the knob, and he’s hanging there, trying to open the door.
Don’t just stand here, meathead, he told himself. Do something.
Jeff grabbed a chair from the kitchen and stuck the back of it against the knob. There, that would hold him.
He rushed into his study, opened up his desk drawer and got the .38 revolver out of it. He wasn’t a great shot, but he had been known to hit targets with some regularity at the range. He also had another flashlight in the drawer, a smaller heavier one. He clicked it on.
The doorknob continued to shake furiously, and then he heard the chair jar loose and fall to the floor. He rushed out of the study, into the hallway. The closet door was cracked open. Plenty wide for it to get out.
Was it out?
Or was it still waiting inside?
Something ran between his legs and Jeff jumped. He twisted, the flashlight in one hand, the gun in the other, saw something darting across the floor. He fired off a shot. There was a screech that he knew was his cat. He had missed her, but the bullet had slammed into the wall next to her. She had darted into the living room; he could see her shape just as she turned the corner.
Idiot, he told himself. Calm down. You’re going to shoot the cat, or yourself.
Save the five left in the gun for the doll.
The doll!
Was he dreaming? This was crazy. A doll come to life, chasing him through his own house, killing his dog?
Ridiculous.
He was about to pinch himself when there came a ferocious yell, and then a screech from the cat, the sound of something tumbling, something falling, breaking, the terrible yells of the doll, a kind of high pitched, “Eeeyah! Eeeyah! Eeeyah!”
Jeff made himself move toward the living room. Each step was an ordeal, but he made it. The screeching and the high pitched Eeeyah continued the entire time. When he looked into the darkness of the room, he saw what at first appeared to be two tumbling shadows, but the shadows stopped rolling, and what he saw was Sofia, lying on the carpet, not moving. The doll was standing over the cat with the scissors upraised. It bent forward and examined its quarry, made a satisfied sound.
The doll turned its head and looked at Jeff.
Jeff raised the revolver. The doll came skittering across the carpet at a wild run, the scissors raised high in its hand.
“Eeeyah! Eeeyah! Eeeyah!”
Jeff fired the gun and the sound of it in the living room was foreign and wrong to his ears, but he couldn’t stop shooting. Each shot missed. He heard glass break. A thud as a bullet imbedded in the couch, and then the doll was right on him. He fired, and this time he hit it. The bullet knocked the thing winding and he saw something dark fly up from it. It lay facedown on the floor next to his dead cat.
He took a deep breath and dropped his hand to his side, clutching the empty revolver as if trying to strangle it. He pooled the flashlight beam around the shape on the floor. The thing raised its hand, the one with the scissors in it, and jammed them into the wood flooring, pulled itself forward a pace. It lifted its head, and looked at him. The eyes glowed in the flashlight beam like flaming match heads.
It put one knee under itself and started to stand.
Jeff could see that one of its large hands was missing a finger. That’s what his bullet had hit.
And that wasn’t good enough.
Jeff threw the empty, revolver and then the flashlight. Neither hit its mark. He made a run for it, back down the hall, through the linking hall, across the kitchen and out the sliding back door and into the garden. He could hear the thing running behind him, still in the house, but coming fast. The sound of its feet running was like a soft drum roll. It came on yelling that horrible war cry: “Eeeyah! Eeeyah! Eeeyah!”
The garden was thick with plants and they rose up high, staked out professionally on posts. They gave the garden a jungle atmosphere, gathering in shadows, laying them deep within the greenery.
He darted into their midst, peeked around a twisty bit of plant growth, saw the thing coming through the open doorway, into the moonlight. It paused, lifted its head and sniffed the air. It turned to the side, made a few steps. As it crossed in front of the glass doorway, he could see its reflection in the glass. The reflection was huge, and wavery. It whipped and twisted like something being cooked alive on a griddle.
My god, Jeff thought. The glass is reflecting its soul. The soul of the hunter, He Who Kills.
Easing behind the foliage, resting on his knees, Jeff tried to get his breathing under control. Certainly He Who Kills would have heightened senses. He kept breathing like he was, the thing would hear him.
When he had taken a couple of deep breaths, he started to move again.
All of the long wide rows were crisscrossed with little narrow rows so he could move the wheelbarrow and gardening equipment about. He used one of the small crisscrossing rows to enter one of the wider rows, moved down it until he reached the wall that surrounded the garden. It was about twelve feet high, and it occurred to him if he could get over the wall, maybe the doll could not. But there was no time to consider that seriously. He would have to bide his time and think that one over, find a way to manage his way over twelve feet of substantial rock wall. But right now, he had to hide. He skulked through the rows as silently as he could manage. He could hear the doll moving through the garden, carelessly pushing foliage aside, yelling its war cry, and then . . . Everything went silent.
Jeff squatted in the middle of a row, breathed through his nose, long, deep breaths, and listened. Nothing. Not even a cricket. Then, he thought he heard the snapping of a plant. No. Maybe not. There was a gentle wind blowing. It could move things around. It could fool him, way his nerves were on edge.
The snapping again.
He wasn’t sure what he was hearing. He looked down the row, saw that it was the one that ended at the water faucet and hose. The thick, coiled yellow hose with its squeeze handle and nozzle shone dully in the moonlight. It looked like some kind of metal-headed, yellow anaconda. It lay next to the compost pile. The compost pile was up against the wall, and it was made of neatly arranged railroad ties with a tarpaulin thrown over it, weighted at the edges with bricks. If he could run and put a foot on the ties, he might be able to make a jump, grab the top of the wall with his hands and pull himself over.
It was iffy. But he couldn’t stay here. The thing would find him eventually. There were only so many places to hide.
He decided to make a break for it.
Jeff was about to run for the compost pile, leap for the wall, when a shadow fell across the row. The shadow came from the connecting row, and it was undoubtedly the shadow of He Who Kills. It looked like the shadow of something gigantic, but it was definitely the little warrior. The shadow writhed and vibrated as if powered by electricity. The thing was standing in the connecting row, and all it had to do to find him was step forward slightly and turn its head his way.
Jeff held his breath. The shadow gradually moved away, growing smaller, going in the other direction.
Stooping, easing down the row, Jeff came to the connecting row and paused. He got down on his hands and knees and slowly peeked around the edge of the thick vegetation.
Nothing there.
He crossed the openness where the rows connected, made it to the other side, and then there was a flash as a limb on one of the plants snapped toward him at about knee height. And then he felt terrible pain in his kneecap.
He Who Kills had rigged a snare. The miniature knife the doll carried had been attached to a limb with a cut of the rope, bent back and let go.
Involuntary cries leaped from Jeff’s mouth as he grabbed at the limb, jerked the needle-like knife out of his knee. He Who Kills sprang from the enclosure of the greenery brandishing the scissors, yelling, “Eeeyah! Eeeyah!”
“You devil!” Jeff said, and kicked at the doll. It dodged. The scissors were plunged into Jeff’s foot. Jeff screamed. The scissors came down again, and again, ripping into Jeff’s legs as he tried to dart past the little monster.
He finally managed to dodge around him. Limping, he made for the compost pile. He Who Kills attacked the back of his legs, driving the scissors in deep. Jeff yelled and wobbled toward the compost pile, managed to reach the water hose. He snapped it up, swung it around and hit the doll with the nozzle. It knocked the doll back about ten feet. Jeff lifted the hose and squeezed the lever on the nozzle. Water blew out in a hard, fast stream. He used it on the doll in the manner a firefighter might use a fire hose on rioters.
The water kept knocking the doll down, and the doll kept getting up.
Jeff turned, tossed the hose over the top of the wall, pulled back, and the hand lever attached to the nozzle hung at the summit.
He leaped onto the compost pile, jerked the hose taut, and began to climb, his feet against the wall, his hands moving up the hose like a pirate climbing the rigging of a sailing ship.
When he reached the top, he stretched out on the wall and looked down.
He Who Kills was clamoring up the hose with the scissors in his teeth. Jeff grabbed the nozzle, pulled it loose, flipped it back into the garden, sending the little monster sprawling.
He dropped to the other side of the wall, and in considerable pain, limped toward the garage. He looked back. The hose nozzle was flying up in the moonlight, hanging on this top of the wall. He Who Kills was stealing his method, and he was coming after him.
He saw the shape of the doll on the top of the wall just as he reached the garage door.
Locked.
He didn’t have the garage door opener to work it. It was inside the car which was inside the garage.
Jeff stumbled around the side to a low hung window, used his elbow to drive into one of the panes and break it. He knocked loose glass aside, reached through the missing pane, got hold of the lock and flipped it. He pushed the window up and squeezed through.
He felt a sudden moment of panic. He had trapped himself in the garage, and he wasn’t even sure he had his keys.
He felt for them as he moved toward the car. He had them. He managed them from his pocket and hit the device that unlocked the car doors. He got inside and looked through the windshield and saw the shape of He Who Kills climbing through the window. He hit the door lock switch. He looked around for the garage door opener.
And then it hit him, and he felt his stomach roll. He had taken it inside. He was going to refresh the batteries. It was lying on the kitchen counter. Getting out of the car, going back into the house didn’t seem like such a good idea.
Not with that thing out there.
He took only a moment to consider, stuck the key in the ignition. He Who Kills appeared, rising up over the hood of the car. Then it was standing on the hood.
Jeff jammed the car in reverse, hit the gas and sent He Who Kills flying.
The car struck the door and knocked it off its hinges, sent it hurtling across the drive and out into the connecting street. He had always loved the fact that his house was isolated, on a street he had built, where there were no neighbors. But right then he wished he had someone, anyone he could turn to for help.
But there was only himself to depend on. He was on his own.
He backed the car over the door, out into the street, jammed it into drive. Just before he punched the gas, he looked in his side mirror. He Who Kills was running rapidly toward the car.
He stomped the gas. The convertible leaped with a growl. He turned on the lights.
He checked the mirror again.
It was coming, bathed in the red glow from the car’s rear lights. Running ridiculously fast behind him. Closing.
It seemed impossible that it could be running that fast.
He let out a laugh. Impossible. Of course, it was impossible. Everything that had happened from the time he bought the doll was impossible.
Except, it was happening.
He gunned the engine harder, checked the rearview mirror. No doll.
He let out a sigh of relief, took the road past the dark community of Falling Rock, down toward the city. The car wound around one curve after another, the mountainous terrain little more than bumps and valleys of darkness.
And what about the doll? It was out there, running around. What did he do about that? Who would believe him? People would think him crazy, and he could hardly blame them.
But I’m not crazy. I’m fine. I’m all right.
His legs began to ache where He Who Kills had attacked him. He was losing blood. He felt a little dizzy.
He rounded a curve. Now he could see more than dark bumps and valleys, he could see city lights, way off in the distance, down in the lowlands, like someone had turned on a wadded up handful of Christmas lights.
There was a hard metallic sound.
Jeff checked his rearview mirror. He felt the blood drain out of his face and his stomach turn sick. He Who Kills was on the back of the car. He was stabbing the scissors into the convertible’s trunk with one hand, burying its claws into the trunk with the other. It was using this hand over hand method to crawl toward the back window of the car.
The damn thing had stayed after him, maybe grabbed onto the back of the bumper, or had worked its way along beneath the car. He didn’t know how, but it had stayed after him and caught up with him, and now it was coming for him, and all he could do was watch it move toward him in the rearview mirror.
Whipping the car left and right, Jeff tried to shake the doll, but no luck. It hung tight, like a leech. It jerked the scissors free, leaped and landed on the roof of the convertible. He could hear it up there, scuttling along.
The scissors poked through the ceiling, were withdrawn, poked again. The roofing began to rip in a long strip, and then the face of He Who Kills jutted through the slit and let out with its wild cry of “Eeeyah! Eeeyah! Eeeyah!”
He Who Kills dropped through the slit, onto the front seat. It ran across the seat in a fast scuttle, striking out with the scissors, burying them in Jeff’s shoulder. Jeff groaned, swatted at the doll, knocked it back against the front passenger door, sent it rolling onto the floorboard.
The demon still had the scissors; nothing seemed able to dislodge them from its grasp. It jetted across the floorboard and stabbed at Jeff’s feet, causing him to lift them, then jam his right foot back down on the gas.
He whipped the car hard right when another blow from the scissors went deep into the side of his calf. It was too late to swerve back. He was heading right for a guard rail. He moved the wheel some, but not enough. The car hit the railing, tore it apart with a horrid screech of metal against metal, and then the machine was flying through the air. It went for some distance before hitting the side of the mountain, blowing out its tires. The drop was so terrific, so violent, that Jeff’s door was thrown up, and he was thrown from the car, sent tumbling head over heels down the side of the mountain until he smashed up against a lump of rock that knocked the wind out of him. He felt something shift in his back, and then the pain started.
The car kept going. It sailed down the mountainside, bouncing, throwing up sparks. It appeared to head deliberately for one old, dead, lightning-struck tree that jutted out from the side of the mountain like a deformed arm. The convertible slammed into it and burst into flames.
Jeff, crawling painfully around the rock he had hit, saw the flames whip up and scorch the night air. Blood ran down his face, into his left eye. He wiped it away with his sleeve. He watched the car burn. Good, he thought. I got him. I got him.
Out of the flames he saw something moving. He Who Kills. The doll started running up the hill, directly toward him. It still held the scissors. It blazed like a torch.
“No,” Jeff said aloud. “No.”
The doll was halfway to him when Jeff dislodged a rock about the size of his fist and threw it. It was a lucky shot. It hit the flaming hunter and knocked him down.
But, it wasn’t enough. Still decorated with flames, He Who Kills got up and came running up the hill again.
Jeff tried to dig another rock out of the ground, scratching and pulling so hard his fingers bled. He got it loose, looked up. The doll was almost on him . . . And then its legs burned out from beneath it. It fell, facedown. Flames licked off its smoldering corpse.
The hand holding the scissors shot out and stuck them in the ground. It pulled itself forward. It lifted its head and opened its mouth and flames licked out of it. It raised the scissors again, struck out, driving them into the dirt. It was coming for him, using the scissors to lurch toward him, inch by inch.
Jeff lifted the rock, rose to a sitting position, felt blood running down his legs, face and shoulder. “Come on,” he said. “Come on, He Who Kills. Come and get some. You and me. Come on!”
The doll struck out with the scissors again, pulled itself forward another inch as the flames that bathed it slowed and blackened and turned to smoke. It struck one more blow with the scissors, and—
—the doll ceased to move. The smoke from its scorched body twisted up and became thick and full. The smoke took on the form of a savage face; the mouth opened and the smoke face jumped toward Jeff, yelled, “Eeeyah!” Then the smoke swirled rapidly skyward.
Jeff could still see the shape of the face in the smoke, but it had begun to spread and flatten. The smoke thinned and rose high and clouded Jeff’s vision of the already murky quarter moon.
He looked back down at the doll. It had come apart. The burnt arms and legs and head had separated from the torso. Tendrils of smoke trailed off of its pieces.
“I won!” Jeff said. “I beat you, you monstrosity. If that isn’t manly, nothing is. Nothing.”
Laughing, he lay back. The last of the smoke faded away. The cloud cover faded as well. There was just the scimitar moon left, floating up there, nestled amongst the stars, bright and shiny in a clear, clean sky.