One-Eyed Doll Read online

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  This book is dedicated to the memory of Rod Serling,

  creator of The Twilight Zone TV series.

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT NOTICE

  DEDICATION

  PROLOGUE

  1. MALIK AND TIANA

  2. TIANA GOES MISSING

  3. THE BOX

  4. CRUMMY OLD DOLL

  5. VOICES IN THE DARK

  6. THE BOYS MAKE A PLAN

  7. MALIK TAKES A TUMBLE

  8. TWINS

  9. MALIK IN THE NURSING HOME

  10. THE GRAY-HAIRED LADY AT THE WINDOW

  11. THE FIGHT

  12. MALIK’S LONG WALK

  13. THE GIRL BY THE RIVER

  EPILOGUE

  TEASER

  COPYRIGHT

  COME CLOSER …

  SHE WON'T …

  BITE.

  ONE DAY YOU MIGHT FIND A BOX, JUST LIKE THE CHILDREN IN THIS STORY. MAYBE YOU AND YOUR FRIENDS WILL DIG IT UP. THERE MIGHT BE A LOCK ON IT.

  AND YOU’LL WONDER … “WHAT’S INSIDE?”

  MAYBE IT’S SOMETHING GREAT. TREASURE, RICHES, FORTUNE.

  COME ON, WHY WAIT?

  WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?

  1

  MALIK AND TIANA

  The Rice children, Malik and Tiana, often played Treasure Hunt together—especially during the oven-hot days of summer. They had never discovered any actual treasure, but that didn’t stop them from trying. Some days they found golf balls, weird rocks, old bottles. Mostly the hunt was just an excuse to wander under the cool umbrella of the dark woods. It was, they agreed, a good way to kill the blistering, hot days.

  Besides, you never know. As Malik said, “We’re not gonna find treasure, Tiana, if we never go looking for it.”

  Malik was ten years old. He was “the responsible one.” The serious one. Good teeth, clean hands. The boy who could be trusted to look after his little sister, wild Tiana, and keep her from harm.

  Malik didn’t mind. Not much, anyway. He might even tell you that he loved his sister’s wild black curls, her thin muscular arms, the way she seemed to float across rooms in yellow dresses. On some days, of course, Malik would frown and darken his gaze. It was hard to always be the responsible one. Like a weight he carried on his shoulders, day after day.

  “No, Tiana, get off that ledge.”

  “Put that down, Tiana. That’s glass.”

  “Not now, Tiana, Daddy’s sleeping. Leave him be.”

  Their father, Mr. Charles Rice, worked nights at the factory. Malik never figured out what exactly his Daddy did there, except that he returned home bone-tired and ready for bed. Right about the time most folks were getting up! Because of that simple fact—“Papa needs his sleep”—there was much tiptoeing around the house. Mama always said things like, “Shush, children,” and “Quiet now, Papa’s sleeping.” School days, it wasn’t too bad. Off on the bus they’d go, CLACKETY-CLACK, and away they went. But in the summer when Malik and Tiana were footloose and free, the house felt like a musty old library. Hush now, children, don’t say a word. Malik figured it was best to get outdoors and greet the day.

  Most mornings, Mama went off to her job (Mama worked in the kitchen at the “old age” home). Everybody in the Rice family had a job, she said, even Malik and Tiana.

  Malik’s job was looking after his free-spirited sister. Tiana’s job? Nobody had quite figured that out. She smiled and laughed, twinkled and danced. Maybe that was her role after all, just to shine like the sun. Tiana was a happy soul, so maybe making folks happy was her task in life. She lit up rooms like a 100-watt bulb. She laughed and the world laughed with her.

  One bad day, Tiana wandered over to the old place. That was the name of it, exactly that: the old place. Ask anybody in the neighborhood, they’d all know the spot you were talking about. The old, abandoned house at the edge of the woods. It was a falling-down, battered old place that had been empty for years. A real eyesore, everybody called it. One shudder swung loose on a nail—bang, bang, bang—and slammed against the house like a warning in the wind. Haunted, maybe. Nobody remembered folks ever living there, or if they did recall it, they didn’t say so. Except to repeat, “Now, you kids, stay away from that old place.”

  That was the warning heard up and down the block.

  STAY AWAY FROM THAT OLD PLACE.

  “Why?” the children sometimes asked.

  And the answer was always the same, “Nothing good can come of it, that’s all. Just stay away. Understand?”

  Malik and Tiana nodded their heads.

  They understood.

  At least, one of them did.

  The other one wasn’t as good at listening.

  2

  TIANA GOES MISSING

  On this particular afternoon, Malik and Tiana were joined by their neighbor, Soda Pop.

  Soda Pop was not his real name, of course. It says Arthur on his birth certificate. But somewhere along the line, everybody stopped calling him Arthur and started calling the orange-haired boy “Soda Pop,” on account of his love for fizzy, sugary drinks that turned good teeth bad.

  “Whatchu guys up to?” Soda Pop asked.

  “Treasure huntin’,” Malik drawled. “You can come if you want.”

  Soda Pop scratched his round belly, thinking it over. He said, “Got nothing else to do.” And he followed along.

  Tiana skipped to the lead. The boys talked about baseball teams and how the All-Star Game didn’t mean nothing anymore. “My dad says it ain’t what it used to be,” Soda Pop said.

  Malik mused, “I can’t think of anything that is.”

  “Take a look what I got,” Soda Pop said. He pulled out a thick stack of baseball cards from his back pocket. The two boys paused there on the ragged sidewalk, dandelions popping up from the cracks, flipping through the cards and commenting on each one.

  After a while, Malik lifted his head. He looked up the street. He looked down the street. “Where’d she go to now?” he wondered aloud.

  Soda Pop shrugged, unworried. “Off somewhere’s, I suppose.”

  Malik peered down the road and there it stood in the distance, like a beaten fighter after fifteen rounds in the ring. The old place. A shivery feeling squeezed Malik’s heart like a sponge. “Come on,” he said, hurrying in the direction of the old place.

  “Hold up,” Soda Pop said. He had dropped his cards to the curb.

  “Not waiting,” Malik said. “Catch up if you want.” Off he went, walking fast, half running, in the direction of the old place. He called as he went, “Tiana? Hey, Tee? You holler if you hear me! Tiana, I’m not fooling around.”

  There was no sign of his sister.

  Malik walked the length of the block and now stood staring at the old place.

  The dusty yard was overgrown with tall grass and untrimmed bushes. The door was locked shut, with slats of wood nailed across it. All the windows were boarded up. There was no easy way inside. Malik figured it was unlikely that Tiana had gotten herself in there. But his heart still had that squeezed-out feeling.

  “Tiana!” he hollered. “You best not be inside that house.”

  Malik’s nerves jumped like live wires on the street. An inner voice told him, This is no place for a little girl. Find your sister right now.

  Pasty-faced Soda Pop pulled up, bent over and wheezing, short of breath. “Anybody”—pause, gasp—“ever told you”—pause, pant—“you walk too
fast?”

  “Let’s check around back,” Malik replied, all business.

  “I ain’t going back there,” Soda Pop said. “Not for a bag of gummy worms, I wouldn’t. You know what folks say. A widow lady went crazy in there, before we was born. They took her away, loony as a jaybird. Place is haunted. Nope, I’m not going back there.”

  “Suit yourself,” Malik shrugged.

  And he went off, careful not to pass too near the old place, still looking for his lost sister.

  3

  THE BOX

  He found Tiana squatting in the dirt about fifty feet behind the house. The edges of her dress were dirty and soiled.

  “Tee!” he called out. “You shouldn’t be back here.”

  “I found something.”

  “Nevermind that, let’s go,” Malik said.

  “For real,” Tiana said. “Come see for yourself.”

  The girl held a short, thick stick. When Malik stepped forward, he could see that she had scraped a gash about four inches deep into the earth. And sure enough, something was buried down there.

  Malik got on his knees for closer study. “It looks like a piece of wood or—”

  “It’s a box,” Tiana said.

  Malik turned to look at her. “How would you know?”

  Tiana shrugged and blew a wild strand of black hair from her eyes. “I just do.”

  “Soda Pop!” Malik shouted. “Best come back here right now.” He waited, listening. He called again, “Tiana maybe found treasure.”

  That got him moving.

  It took some digging, but the work went faster after Malik fetched a small hand shovel from home. Twenty minutes later, they unearthed an old wooden box about the size of a loaf of bread. There was a padlock on it.

  The three children sat wilting under the sun, staring at the box.

  “Why would anybody bury a box?” Malik asked.

  “Locked shut, too,” Soda Pop said. “Must be something valuable inside.”

  “It’s been nailed closed, too,” Malik said. “See here?” He pointed to the nail heads, two on each corner of the box.

  Tiana grew quiet, her eyes shut. When she opened them, the little girl said, “She wants us to open it.”

  Soda Pop snorted, “What are you talking about, Tiana?”

  Tiana blinked. There was a faraway look in her eyes. “Nothing,” she answered. “I didn’t mean nothing by it.”

  Malik held the box in his lap. He brushed off the last bits of dirt and clay, using his T-shirt to polish it clean. He turned the box over to study the bottom panel. Someone had carved into the wood.

  TOUEMT ELOSW ONEVAH EBOTE SIM ORPI

  “What’s this mean, you think?”

  He tried sounding out the words. “Touemt … elosw … onevah?”

  “Sounds like French or something,” Soda Pop figured.

  Malik offered the box to Soda Pop for inspection, but the boy shook his head. “Nuh-unh, no way. I ain’t touching it,” he said. “That box gives me the heebie-jeebies.”

  “The heebie-jeebies? Why for?” Malik asked.

  “Just a bad feeling I got,” Soda Pop said. “Something about it makes me feel clammy inside. Like I just ate a bowl of ice cream too fast.” He shivered.

  Malik fingered the lock. “We could bust it open, I guess.”

  “Don’t mess with it,” Soda Pop warned.

  “Why not?” Malik asked.

  “It’s not ours to bust open,” Soda Pop replied. He looked up at the broken windows of the old place, the peeled paint. “I just don’t think we should, that’s all. We should leave it right here in the hole you dug.”

  “It’s mine,” Tiana said flatly. “I found it.”

  Malik appraised his sister. “I suppose so,” he decided. “But how did you find it, Tiana? What were you doing back here in the first place?”

  “I heard her calling me, ‘Let me out! Let me out!’” Tiana answered. “She promised to be good. So I came to the rescue.”

  4

  CRUMMY OLD DOLL

  Opening the box wasn’t easy. Mr. Rice was busy snoozing at home. They grabbed tools from the garage: a lead pipe, a hammer, two screwdrivers, and a big axe. Malik suggested they retreat a distance from the house. “No sense waking Pa,” he said. “He gets grumpy without his sleep.”

  Their skinny black cat, Midnight, followed the children from a distance. Just curious, Malik guessed, the way cats are born to be.

  They reached a familiar clearing in the woods and set down the box. For a moment, the children all stood staring, as if the box was a magnet that pulled their eyeballs to it. No one spoke. “Might as well get it done,” Malik muttered. He knelt down and tried to pry it open with the screwdriver.

  “That ain’t gonna work,” Soda Pop observed.

  Annoyed, Malik offered him the box. “You wanna try?”

  Soda Pop stepped back quickly. He tripped on a root and fell on his backside. Tiana laughed, a little cruelly. Soda Pop wasn’t hurt, so Malik let her get away with that unkindness without a scolding. Besides, it was kind of funny, the way he fell on his boom, boom, boom.

  Malik grabbed the axe and felt its heft in his hands. “Better step back,” he warned. He raised the axe high and let it fall.

  THWACK, SMASH!

  The box was well-built, but no match for a sharp axe. Bits of wood splintered loose and one corner of the box split open.

  Midnight rubbed up against Malik’s legs. He hissed and spat at the box, raising his back in an arch.

  “Shhh, Midnight,” Malik hushed. He smoothed the cat’s raised fur. “What’s gotten into you?”

  Soda Pop stepped forward. “What’s inside it?”

  “Hold on a minute,” Malik said. “Gimmie that hammer, Tee.”

  Working carefully, Malik pried apart the box.

  “Is that all there is?” Soda Pop asked. “A crummy old doll?”

  And in truth, that’s all there was. Just an ordinary doll—and not a very fine one, either. The doll had curly black hair with a red ribbon in it, a dirty blue-and-white–striped dress, and one of its eyes was missing entirely. The doll’s painted face was badly cracked and worn.

  “I don’t get it.” Soda Pop scratched his head, befuddled.

  Malik pushed the doll aside. He searched through the scraps of wood. “There was nothing else in it,” he said. There was disappointment in his voice.

  Tiana picked up the doll and pressed it close to her chest. “I love it,” she said. “I love it lots.”

  “Well, fine for you, I guess,” Malik said. “At least you got a dolly out of it, but I was hoping for something more interesting.”

  “Yeah, like money,” Soda Pop complained.

  “She’s better than money,” Tiana said, examining the doll closely. “She’s just about the best thing I’ve ever seen.”

  Soda Pop snorted, “What are you talking about, Tee? That’s just a stupid old doll somebody buried in the ground. Ugliest thing I’ve ever seen, too.”

  Tiana clutched the doll tight to her chest. She glared at Soda Pop with a look of pure poison. “Don’t talk. You’re the ugly one,” she said.

  At that moment, a darkness fell over them. A gust of wind kicked up. The trees bent and swayed.

  Malik looked up, wonderingly. “We better get going. Storm’s coming.”

  But it was too late. Thunder cracked, lightning flashed. The clouds burst open and poured down buckets of rain. The three children were soaked to the bone by the time they got home.

  5

  VOICES IN THE DARK

  For the next few days, the doll, now named Selena, went everywhere with Tiana. The two were inseparable. And for some reason, it got on Malik’s nerves.

  “Can’t you put down that doll for one little minute?” he said.

  Tiana pouted. “Selena’s not hurting nobody.”

  Malik couldn’t argue with that. But still, there was something about that doll he didn’t like. Tiana lugged it around everywhere. She even
brought the doll into bed with her!

  One night, as he got ready for bed, Malik paused by Tiana’s door. She should have been asleep half an hour ago. But Malik heard talking. Two voices. Was his mother in there? Malik didn’t think so. He recognized Tiana’s little girl voice, whispering softly. The other voice was scratchy.

  “They called me ugly,” the scratchy voice said.

  “Shhh, that’s all right,” Tiana whispered.

  Malik put an ear to the door.

  “The fat one’s a mean beast,” the scratchy voice said. “I might hurt him. I will, I will. Call me ugly and you get hurt, you do.”

  “He’s named Soda Pop,” Tiana said.

  “I’ll get him, I will. You watch me, just watch. He’ll cry soon enough,” the voice threatened.

  There was silence.

  Finally, Tiana said, “I love you, Selena.”

  Malik had heard enough. He rapped on the door. “Who you talking to in there, Tee?”

  “Shhhh,” a voice whispered.

  “Tee? Answer me.”

  A light turned off. The crack under the door went black.

  “No one, just me,” Tiana called.

  Malik turned the knob. He pushed open the door. The light from the hallway leaked into the room. He saw his sister in bed, the covers tucked up to her chin. She blinked at him and smiled gently.

  Gazing around the room, Malik spied the old doll on the shelf beside a few books and toys. Its one eye was closed.

  Malik frowned. “Time for sleep, Tee. Stop your silly games.”

  Tiana stretched her arms. She yawned. “Good night, Malik.” She rolled on her side, turning her back to her brother.

  “Okay, ’night.” Malik began to pull the door shut. He paused. “You okay, Tee? Everything good?”

  She didn’t answer.

  CLICK.

  It was a faint sound, but Malik heard it loud and clear. CLICK. The sound of a doll’s eye … opening.

  Malik stole a glance at the doll. The hallway light fell across her, slicing like a sword of light through the darkness.