Page 9 of Cracked Doll

A moment later, faint but unmistakable, I hear it — the shop's landline, ringing, shrill and insistent, echoing up through the floors of this too-quiet house.

I look back down at him through the veil. Phone pressed to his ear. And on his mouth, just visible even at this distance, the ghost of a smile — small, certain, patient. Like a man who already knows I won't answer, and finds that, too, entertaining.

I yank the curtains shut so hard the rod rattles in its bracket, and stand there in the dark with my back pressed to the wall, my heart slamming so loud I can hear nothing else.

Downstairs, the telephone keeps ringing. Once. Twice. A third time.

I don't move to answer it.

Who is he? What does he want?

The phone rings on into the empty house, and no one, tonight, is going to tell me.

Chapter 3

I stay pressed against the wall until the ringing stops.

Even then, I don't move. I count the silence in my head, certain it will start again any second, certain this is only the space between one ring and the next rather than the end of it. An hour, maybe more, passes like that — me, still, back to the plaster, curtains drawn, listening to a house that refuses to give me anything but quiet.

Eventually I make myself peer through the gap in the curtain. The street below is empty. No coat. No camera. No stillness where a man ought to be moving.

It's probably nothing, I tell myself, though I don't believe it even as I think it. A prank. Kids from the town, bored, cruel the way this town is always cruel to me.

I need something to quiet my own mind before it spirals somewhere I can't follow it back from, so I reach for the book on my nightstand — Rebecca, its spine soft and cracked from handling, my grandmother's initials pressed faintly into the cover — and I read until the words blur and my eyes go heavy despite everything, because apparently even terror has a bedtime.

As always, before sleep takes me, I leave the window cracked, just an inch, just enough to let the smell of rain in — that's a ritual older than the fear itself, something my mother apparently used to do, or so I've been told — though I still draw the curtains fully shut, even as they flare gently inward on each gust, ghostlike, pale fabric breathing in the dark.

I fall asleep somewhere in the middle of a sentence.

At first light, I go straight to the window, easing the curtain back a careful inch, bracing myself before I let myself look.

No one. Just wet cobbles, grey sky, a gull complaining somewhere over the rooftops.

I let out a breath I feel like I've been holding all night.

The morning unfolds the way mornings always do here — mechanical, dutiful. I make breakfast I barely taste. I bathe in the dark, the way I always do. I dress — plain, practical, my hands too unsteady this morning for all the little buttons the good dresses require — and go down to find my father exactly where I expect him: stretched along the sofa, one arm flung over his eyes, a half-empty bottle balanced on his thigh like it belongs there.

I don't wake him. There's no version of this morning improved by trying.

I'm halfway through wiping down the kitchen counter when the landline starts ringing, down through the floor, from the shop below.

I freeze mid-motion, cloth still in hand.

It's a customer, I tell myself. It's Amara. It's Mrs. Aldridge asking about an order. I make myself walk down the narrow stair anyway, one hand trailing the wall, my heart already picking up its pace before I've even reached the bottom step.

The shop is dim, morning light barely making it past the treated glass. The telephone sits on its little shelf behind the counter, ringing and ringing, and I simply stand there and stare at it the way you'd stare at something that might be venomous.

It stops.

I don't know whether to be relieved or more afraid. I stand there another few seconds, willing myself to breathe normally, and then —

It starts again.

I jump so hard I nearly knock a display box off the counter. My hand hovers over the receiver for a long moment before I finally, foolishly, lift it and press it to my ear.

Silence, first. A held breath on the other end, patient, unhurried.

"Hello?" My voice comes out smaller than I mean it to.