The Doll-Master and Other Tales of Terror

  No! Not a thing had gone wrong.

  “But is the house all right? Is the house as Mrs. McClelland left it?”

  This was an odd question. All I could stammer was, “I think—it is. Everything is all right.”

  “She called me today. From Syracuse.”

  “Called you? Mrs. McClelland?”—this was confusing to me, I wasn’t sure that I had heard correctly. “What—what did she say?”

  “Gladys called to ask about the house, and you. I don’t think she cares to talk about her husband, whatever it is that’s wrong with him. She’s a very private person and I can understand that—I’m exactly the same way. ‘Minor surgery’—could be anything.” My mother spoke casually yet with an air of pride. “It’s like we’re old friends, Gladys McClelland and me—over this emergency. I mean, the way she called upon you to help her out. She said you are a ‘very thoughtful’—‘very trustworthy’—girl. I guess she doesn’t remember, but we’ve met once or twice, in town. I didn’t try to remind her because it might have embarrassed her not to remember me.”

  This report of my mother’s was astonishing to me. Mrs. McClelland and my mother, talking on the phone!—talking, at least in part, about me.

  It was disconcerting to imagine Mrs. McClelland befriending my mother, for the “friendship” would be very one-sided. I dreaded the prospect of hearing my mother innocently boasting of her friendship with a woman who lived on Drumlin Avenue, and the relatives listening resentfully, and mocking my mother behind her back.

  Who does she think she is! Making herself ridiculous.

  My mother volunteered to accompany me to the McClellands’ house, next time I went. Quickly I said no for Mrs. McClelland had expressly told me not to bring anyone with me.

  “I don’t think that Mrs. McClelland would mind, if you brought me,” my mother said, hurt; and I said, “But I promised. I can’t break my promise.”

  The second evening at the house I was determined to do everything Mrs. McClelland had requested. Mail, newspaper. Fresh cat food, water and litter box. Houseplants.

  This time the lonely Siamese cat appeared in the kitchen doorway staring at me with icy blue eyes.

  I spoke to Sasha in a gentle, cajoling voice as Mrs. McClelland had, but Sasha made no response as if I were invisible. Unless I was imagining it, the cat seemed to have lost weight already; I had never seen so sinewy-thin an animal, with such stark, staring eyes.

  When I tried to approach her, submissively on my heels, Sasha crouched against the floor as if about to bolt, her chocolate-tipped tail switching violently. A low, strangulated growl issued from her throat. She hissed, and then she mewed plaintively. She could neither come forward to be petted, nor could she run away to hide.

  Futile to plead with a cat, yet I heard myself pleading.

  “Sasha! I’m your friend. You can trust me.”

  But Sasha would not trust me. With the cunning of the feral animal who has been only partly domesticated, she kept her distance.

  It was nearing dark. And then it was dark. Again I wanted badly to flee to the comfort of my home.

  I felt foolish lowering blinds in certain of the downstairs rooms—then, a little later, raising them again. (Or was I supposed to keep the blinds lowered overnight, and raise them the following night? I couldn’t recall.) I’d switched on lights in all the rooms, too many lights?—while I tried to do math homework sitting on Mrs. McClelland’s leather couch, that wasn’t very comfortable, as the floor lamp behind my head cast shadows that made it difficult to read.

  Yet, since Mrs. McClelland had gestured toward the leather sofa for me to use while doing homework, I felt obliged to sit there; I might have sat in another chair in the living room, or at the kitchen table beneath a brighter light, but somehow could not force myself.

  Also, I could not seem to read coherently. I was distracted by my surroundings. The house that was so beautifully furnished seemed hostile and cold to me, like the interior of an expensive store; the living room was so large, it seemed to me that the farther walls dissolved in shadow. Cars passing on Drumlin Avenue cast the glare of their headlights against the walls and ceiling, though the house was set back a considerable distance from the street. From time to time somewhere in the house the lonely Siamese cat erupted in a high-pitched, piteous yowl, a cry of utter desolation and misery that chilled my blood, as if I had been torturing her, and was to blame for her suffering.

  At last, to demonstrate to myself that I was not afraid and that I could behave as a normal teenager might in such circumstances, I switched on the television set. The screen glared with softly bright colors. Voices shouted at me out of an advertisement for detergent. Close up, the screen was too large for my eyes to focus on and when I tried to switch channels, the same advertisement, or one near-identical to it, appeared.

  It was 7:15 p.m. when the phone rang. I was terrified, for a moment I could scarcely breathe. Then, I staggered to pick up the receiver, and a woman’s voice was saying Hello? Hello? Hello?—it was Mrs. McClelland, sounding very unlike herself.

  “Yes? Hello? This is . . .”

  “Hanna! How are you? How is the house?”

  “The house is—all right. I’ve done everything you told me . . .”

  “And how is poor Sasha?”

  “Sasha has been eating. She is still a little scared of me but—I think she will be making friends with me soon . . .”

  Mrs. McClelland asked again about the house. She seemed anxious to know about the mail, and if the phone had rung while I’d been there. (This was in an era before voice mail. A phone simply rang and rang in an empty house, with no way of recording a lost call.) She asked about “my substitute” at school and seemed gratified to hear that the substitute wasn’t at all sharp-witted or much fun, and didn’t seem to be comfortable in the classroom—“We all miss you, Mrs. McClelland. Everyone is asking when you will be back.”

  “Soon! Next week, I’m sure I will be back.”

  I asked about Mr. McClelland and Mrs. McClelland said in a bright brave voice that he was doing well—though there were “complications” following surgery—“fever”—“infection.”

  I did not know what to say to this. Awkwardly I repeated that Mrs. McClelland’s students all missed her and hoped she would be back soon.

  “Thank you!”—Mrs. McClelland may have intended to add something witty and reassuring but her voice simply ended, as if a switch had been thrown.

  Soon after this painful telephone call I switched off the lights and fled home.

  8.

  “Hanna. Han-na!”

  The voice was singsong, just slightly mocking. At a little distance you would mistake it for playful.

  That was what I thought—a playful voice. A friend of mine who’d learned somehow that I was inside the McClelland house, and had come to visit me.

  It was 6:20 p.m. The evening of my third—and final—visit.

  This time, I was resolved to spend at least an hour in the house, as Mrs. McClelland had requested. This time, the lonely cat seemed to be waiting for me in the kitchen, and fled only after she saw that I was not Mrs. McClelland.

  As I cleaned out the cat’s dishes, and set out fresh food, I saw that Sasha had returned, tentatively.

  Though Sasha still distrusted me, and would have bolted if I’d made any move toward her, she began to rub her lean, sinuous silvery-blue body against the doorframe; she was mewing, not as an ordinary cat mews, but in the hoarse, throaty, interrogative way of the Siamese, that sounds almost human. It was touching to see the beautiful cat behaving in this way, desperate to show affection but not daring to come closer to me, or to allow me to approach her.

  This was very encouraging! I would have something to report to Mrs. McClelland.

  Unfortunately then, the doorbell rang. In the silent house the sound was jarringly loud.

&nbs
p; Was someone at the front door? At first I was too startled to comprehend what the sound meant.

  Immediately, Sasha panicked and fled.

  My instinct was to hide—to pretend that I wasn’t in the house—for only my parents knew that I was here, at this time.

  Thinking It must be someone who knows the McClellands. It would not be anyone who knows me.

  Not a delivery, at this time of evening. No one whom Mrs. McClelland would have expected.

  If friends of the McClellands had planned to visit, they’d have called beforehand. Houses on Drumlin Avenue were not the sort of houses you dropped in upon casually, happening to be in the neighborhood.

  Whoever was ringing the bell would reason that no one was home and give up after a few minutes, I thought.

  Except: several of the downstairs rooms were lighted, as Mrs. McClelland had instructed.

  And now I realized what a bad idea it had been, to switch on lights in the house! For whoever saw so many lighted rooms in any house would naturally suppose that someone was home.

  In the living room, which was a long room with a row of windows facing the street, the blinds were drawn so that no one could look in. That, at least, was a good thing.

  Yet, the individual at the front door rang the bell again. And again. And so I knew, this was not-natural. This was something else.

  I was in the hallway by this time, looking toward the front door. Though the hall was darkened, the adjacent living room was lighted with a single chandelier—I’d switched on when I had entered the house.

  By the way the bell was being made to ring-ring-ring several times in rapid and rude succession, I knew that this was no friend of the McClellands.

  “Hanna. Han-na!”—it was a male voice, singsong.

  At first, I wanted to think that the voice was playful. A voice out of my childhood past—Hanna! Come out and play.

  Quickly I calculated who this might be. Must be.

  My cousin Travis Reidl. It could be no one else.

  But how could Travis know that I was here? I had told no one except my parents.

  And then it came to me—my mother must have told one of the relatives, boasting about my helping out my teacher this week—and this person told my aunt Louise Reidl, an older half-sister from whom my mother was estranged, who lived nine miles north of Sparta in rural Beechum County. And Louise Reidl was the mother of my cousin Travis.

  It was a shock to me. It was exciting, and it was a shock. My cousin Travis Reidl whom I had not seen in possibly a year. At the McClelland house, of all inappropriate places.

  How like Travis, to show up where he wasn’t wanted. Where he did not belong. Pressing his finger insolently against the doorbell, peering through the glass panel into the foyer which must have seemed to him absurdly elegant, like a foyer in an expensive hotel—in mock-playful tones calling, “Han-na! We know you’re in there, baby-girl. C’mon! It’s cold out here.”

  As if Travis had roughly tickled me, I began to laugh. But then, I began to tremble. How awful this was! I felt a stab of sheer dismay—shame—if Mrs. McClelland should learn of this . . .

  “Han-na! Trick or treat!”

  Travis began to strike the door with its knocker as if he wanted to break it.

  “Open this fuckin door, Hanna, or we’re gonna break it down.”

  We. I could see more clearly, there was a second person with Travis standing on the front stoop. Both were wearing hoods to obscure their faces.

  My cousin Travis was my “rogue” cousin—so I thought of him, though I had never told him of course; Travis would have been flattered at first, then offended. All of the Reidls were quick to take offense if they suspected you were being condescending to them, or critical.

  It was sobering to think that Travis must now be seventeen—when we were children, that would have seemed old. As a boy he’d been a sort of artist, or cartoonist—he’d drawn crude, funny, colorful pictures in emulation of comic strips and comic books; he’d wanted to be a musician, and acquired a secondhand guitar when he was twelve, which he taught himself to play surprisingly well. (Eventually, the guitar was broken or stolen. Travis had been devastated.) Now Travis had become a high school dropout who’d been arrested (as my mother had told me) on suspicion of vandalism, break-ins, and theft, with another, older boy named Weitzel who also lived in rural Beechum County; they’d received only suspended sentences and probation, not incarceration (as my mother believed they deserved).

  My parents spoke disapprovingly of the Reidls—a large sprawling family to whom my mother was related through her half sister Louise. These were relatives who lived in the country, in old farmhouses, or in trailers, on what remained of farmland property, sold off over the decades. Rural Beechum County was surpassingly beautiful, in the steep glacial hills of the Adirondacks, but I would not have wanted to live there—everyone seemed to be poor, and being poor had hardened their hearts.

  My aunt Louise had been married and divorced at least twice—three times?—and had had at least five children who’d “given her trouble” and of whom Travis was the youngest, and had once been the most promising.

  Yet, I was Travis’s “special” cousin. I know that he thought of me in that way, as I thought of him.

  When I’d been a little girl and my mother had still been on friendly terms with her half sister Louise, she’d often brought me with her to visit my aunt who’d lived in a ramshackle old farmhouse near the Black Snake River. Though I was three years younger than Travis, my mother left me to play with him. My favorite times were when we drew pictures together with Crayolas on strips of paper. My drawings were of chickens and cats while Travis’s were likely to be Viking warriors on horseback wielding swords and decapitating their enemies. At the age of eleven Travis created his own comic book—a vampire saga with white-skinned, bloody-mouthed creatures whose dark thick-lashed eyes bore an uncanny resemblance to his own. When he was older, Travis created a remarkable series of comic books relating the bloody apocalyptic adventures of “Black Snake Avenger”—a white-skinned Samurai warrior with a magical sword who inhabited a fairy-tale American city.

  At unpredictable times Travis would suddenly lose interest in what he was doing and turn on me, teasing and bullying me as his older brothers teased and bullied him. He was easily excitable, moody and quick-tempered. Only when I began to cry he relented—“Hanna, hey! Don’t cry. I don’t mean it.”

  So suddenly it would seem, my cousin Travis was begging me not to cry, and speaking tenderly to me. Once we’d been running together and I’d tripped and fallen—(in fact, Travis might’ve tripped me)—and when my skinned knee began to bleed Travis washed the wound and found a Band-Aid to put on it. He told me not to tell my mother—“She won’t let us play together if you do.” Of course, I didn’t tell my mother.

  As we got older, Travis became moodier. His older brothers were brutal with him, and his mother’s men friends treated him badly. Exactly when my mother stopped visiting my aunt, I don’t know; it seemed to have happened abruptly, but may have been gradual. As the change in Travis must have been gradual.

  Still, at the thought of Travis I felt a complex, pained ­emotion —a kind of love, but laced with apprehension.

  I did not truly believe that my cousin would hurt me. But I did not trust him not to hurt others, or not to damage property or get in trouble with the law.

  In the past several years we’d only seen each other a few times, by accident in town or at the mall. At a little distance Travis would wave at me, even blow a kiss—meaning to be funny. “Hiya there, Hanna! How’s my sweetie!”—but he was with his friends and had no time for his young girl-cousin. He was in trouble for underage drinking, and for drugs. Though his grades at Sparta High were B’s and C’s he quit school at the age of sixteen after being suspended from school for fighting in the parking lot. (Though it was known that Travis had been
defending himself against older boys, everyone involved in the fight was punished equally.)

  I’d thought that my cousin had been treated unfairly by school authorities. Adults seemed fearful of him since he’d grown tall, and did not trust him. He’d cut classes, and was a “disruptive” presence in certain of his classes—male teachers were particularly threatened by him.

  I remembered how he’d frightened me once with an elaborate fantasy about “committing a massacre”—his classmates and teachers at school, strangers at the mall, his own family.

  He would wear a mask, he said—“No one would know it was me.”

  The perfect crime was murdering his own family in their sleep, Travis said. He would kill them one by one, with a knife; he would wash the knife thoroughly; he would return the knife where it belonged. He would take all the money he could find and hide it in his special hiding-place in the old hay barn. Then, he would break a window on the first floor of the house so that glass fell inside—cops always checked for break-ins. He would tell the police that he’d run away into the woods when the killing started, and that he had not seen who the killers were. He spoke with an air of childish glee, seeing how his fantasy discomforted me.

  “Why would you want to kill your family? Your mom?”

  Travis grinned and shrugged. Why not?

  By the age of seventeen Travis had grown nearly six feet tall. He was whippet-thin. His eyebrows were heavy, coarse. His eyes were light-colored and sly. Often he blinked as if he had a twitch or a tic—you thought of fish moving erratically in dark water. Often his jaws were covered in stubble. His wavy-dark hair was parted in the center of his head, shoulder-length and straggly. He wore headbands, baseball caps, hoodies. He wore a black leather jacket, jeans and boots. His forearms were tattooed with eagles, screaming skulls. The back of each finger was tattooed with a miniature dagger. He worked at minimum-wage jobs—fast-food restaurants, loading dock at Wal-Mart. County road maintenance and snow-removal, tree-service crew. He quit these jobs, or was fired. He smoked dope. He dealt drugs. He was suspected of breaking into houses. He no longer lived at home and none of the relatives seemed to know where he lived, or with whom. The last time my mother spoke with Aunt ­Louise, who’d called her to ask bluntly why my mother seemed to be avoiding her, my aunt complained of Travis that he was “out of control” and there were times she was “scared as hell of him” and thinking of getting a court injunction so he couldn’t step foot on the property—“Except if I do, I’d be afraid how he’d react. Travis might really get violent, then.”