The Doll-Master and Other Tales of Terror Read online

  “There’d always be somebody who liked you, Vi’let,” Emile said in a voice so lowered and soft, Violet felt faint.

  After supper, Rita Mae smoothed out a local newspaper onto the table, and some of the Clovises peered at a two-page spread of missing pets. These dated back to autumn of the previous year, before Violet and her mother had moved into the Valley Garden Apartments. “So sad,” Rita Mae said, biting at a thumbnail, “—it says here there are nineteen pets missing as of this last Monday.”

  Pictures of cats, pictures of dogs, pictures of lone-looking ­rabbits—these were melancholy creatures who’d seemed to know, when their pictures were being taken, that they would wind up as they had—missing pets in a weekly newspaper.

  “If a little kid is missing, you can blame the parents. At least the mother. But if a pet is missing, that’s different—it doesn’t seem like the same thing.”

  Rita Mae spoke thoughtfully. Violet was staring at the pictures trying to select which cat, which dog, which rabbit she would choose to save, if she had the opportunity.

  Fluffy. Ivor. Big Mitts. Snowball. Scottie. Fiji. Mr. Ruff. Otto.

  “I feel sorry for those families, who are still looking for their pets. Or their children.”

  “I don’t! They have to be realistic.”

  “That’s a harsh thing to say. Are you realistic?”

  “Yes. I try to be. I try not to believe in the Easter bunny!”

  “And if an older child disappears, someone who should know better, you can just blame her, or him.”

  How do you think your mother would feel, Violet?—if you ‘disappeared’?”

  “She wouldn’t feel a thing. She’d rejoice.”

  Did Violet believe this? She wasn’t sure.

  That night, Mr. Clovis drove Violet home late. It was almost 10 p.m. Rita Mae almost didn’t come with them, then changed her mind at the last minute. As they drove, Rita Mae squeezed Violet’s hand. Was she feeling sorry for Violet, for what Violet had said about her mother? The word rejoice was just a—a word . . . Violet wasn’t sure she’d meant it, at the time of uttering it.

  At the Garden Apartments, Violet sat in the car and could hardly move. Her legs felt like lead. For she could see that the first-floor windows of her apartment were darkened which meant that her mother was “working late” that night.

  “Oh Mr. Clovis—I wish I could live with you.”

  Rita Mae said, “I wish you could too, Violet. Why don’t you ask your mother?”

  Quickly Mr. Clovis said, in his most tender voice, “I don’t think that’s a wise idea, Rita Mae. You’ll just get your dear friend in trouble if you put her up to such a thing. Violet’s mother loves her, just as I love you and your brothers and sisters. You can’t just steal away a girl from her own mother.”

  “I wish I could!” Rita Mae said.

  Violet wiped at her eyes. She was deeply moved.

  This was certain: in all of Violet Prentiss’s life no one had ever talked like this about her.

  * * *

  “The way you’re behaving lately around here, somebody’s going to take you.”

  Violet’s mother spoke in her shrill warning voice. It was breakfast time and Violet wasn’t hungry at all for soggy sugary cereal. She was trying not to lift her eyes to her mother’s eyes, that were boring at her like slits. In her denim jacket pocket was a borrowed Midnight Kiss lipstick from Rita Mae, and wrapped in a clean tissue were silver ear clamps and the kind of “piercing” you could clamp onto your nose or eyebrow.

  “Mom, you’re really confused. The way you hate me, nobody’d want me.”

  Her mother laughed, startled. She was in the midst of lighting a cigarette—(though hadn’t Violet’s mother stopped smoking, since before they’d moved to this new town?—wasn’t that one of the points of moving, that Violet’s mother could reinvent herself and begin again?)—and paused now to look at Violet, with a hurt expression as if Violet had slapped her.

  “Honey, nooo. I don’t hate you. That’s not—that’s not right.”

  “Isn’t it!”

  “Of course not. Just because I have to discipline you sometimes, for your own good . . . It’s like those math problems you bring home, Violet. There are rules for triangles, that can’t be changed. An ‘isos-celis’ triangle . . .”

  “‘Isosceles.’”

  “. . . is different from an ‘equatorial’ triangle . . .”

  “‘Equilateral,’ Mom! Jeez.”

  “Well. The point is, sometimes a parent has to discipline, for a child’s own good. It does not mean that I hate you, for heaven’s sake!”

  “Hey, it’s OK to hate me, Mom. ’Cause I sure do hate you.”

  Violet laughed to show that she wasn’t serious. Violet’s mother stared at her not knowing what to think.

  “Violet, that isn’t funny. Why are you saying such things?”

  “I’m not ‘saying such things.’ I’m just—saying—the thing that I said. Not ‘such things.’”

  Violet wiped at her eyes, and shrank away when her mother tried to touch her. Especially, Violet did not want her mother to brush her lips against her forehead and smear lipstick on her skin. She did not want that.

  After school Violet was walking fast in the rain on Ajax Boulevard, where she hadn’t meant to walk. Was there a bus that stopped here? Somebody had told her yes. But there hadn’t been a bus for forty minutes.

  For three days she’d been avoiding Rita Mae at school. Some reason, she didn’t know why . . .

  But now there came the familiar mud-splattered SUV slow along the boulevard, amid heavy truck traffic. Stubbornly Violet was staring at the wet-glittering pavement, and would not look up when the call came—“Vi’let! Hey! C’mon get in, we’ll take you home.”

  There was some reason Violet wasn’t going to climb into that SUV one more time. She’d made a vow in a dream (maybe). But she’d made a vow.

  But she was feeling lonely, and weak. And somehow it happened, she ran to the curb, and Rita Mae was laughing and helping her up into the cab.

  “Vi’let, you’re damn wet. We better get you home to dry off.”

  It was Big Momma’s feeding day. Violet might have known this, but had forgotten. At the Clovis household everyone seemed excited, restless. Emile was smiling and winking at her—“Hi, Vi’let! How’s it going?”

  Just the second time Mr. Clovis led Violet along the corridor to the secret back room but it felt like she’d been there many more times.

  Again the jungly smell, and humid air. Violet was weak-kneed, Mr. Clovis slid his warm strong arm around her waist to help her walk.

  How often did the reticulated python feed? Big Momma was a beautiful slick-skinned snake with glittery diamond-patterns on her body that seemed to ooze along the floor, slow, but alert in every muscled inch. Twenty feet was so long, you could hardly see the tail-end of the snake if you were staring at the big hard-looking head. The thick-lashed eyes were particularly alert and alive and hungry. Violet wondered—was there nothing in that brain except, in a tiny molecule, an upside-down image of herself, as in a tiny mirror? Did Big Momma recognize her from the other time?

  She didn’t want to think that Big Momma was hardly more than a gigantic alimentary track inside that beautiful skin. She didn’t want to think that nothing more came of it, than Big Momma opening her jaws to a width of, how many feet?—three? The strong bones unhinging, and again hinging, as the squirming prey was swallowed inch by inch.

  “Time for mousies. Bunnies. Lots mousies, and lots of ­bunnies.”—Emile was joking awkwardly.

  “That isn’t funny, Emile. You’re not funny one bit.”

  “Mousies and bunnies are best. I hate having to use that ax to ‘dismember.’”

  “Emile, shut up.” Mr. Clovis spoke the sharpest Violet had ever heard the “resident patriarch�
� speak.

  “The point is, Big Momma won’t eat anything that isn’t alive. What d’you think, Big Momma is some kind of disgusting scavenger?”

  “Big Momma isn’t that choosy.”

  “Big Momma is.”

  Mr. Clovis gave Violet one of his special-blend drinks which he’d prepared in a blender in the kitchen. Pomegranate juice, apricot juice, dollops of yogurt, blended to a froth. Maybe he’d put something else in the mixture, a grainy white powder, to “tranquilize” Violet’s jumpy nerves. She hoped so!

  Big Momma’s enclosure was very cleverly designed, Violet saw. She’d been too nervous to notice the first time but there was an inner enclosure, which was the larger space, where the giant snake was at the present time; and there was an outer enclosure, much smaller, separated from the larger by a sliding glass partition operated by a lever. In this way you could venture inside the outer area, to leave fresh food and water for Big Momma while Big Momma remained locked in the inner enclosure. Then, the inner partition would be opened by a lever, and Big Momma could crawl out for her meal.

  Mr. Clovis was doing that now—sliding open the outer glass door. It was a totally safe place—so long as the inner glass remained shut. Even if the reticulated python was desperate with hunger, she could probably not have broken the thick plate glass, scummy from its saliva and the oily ooze of its great coils.

  For such a great beast, Big Momma was a captive.

  Mr. Clovis said, in a tender voice, “Rita Mae was right about you, dear Vi’let. You are special. We will not soon forget you.”

  She felt a thrill of pride. But her eyelids were heavy, it was like sprawling on the sofa with the TV on but muted. Just. So. Hard. To. Stay. Awake.

  “It’s your turn to feed Big Momma, Vi’let. Would you like that?”

  “I—I don’t know.”

  “Big Momma is very grateful when she’s fed. You haven’t seen that yet but it is a sight to behold.”

  Violet was feeling sleepy. Buzzing in her ears. Wanting to shut her eyes, and lay her head down. What was in Mr. Clovis’s fizzy drink? It was creamy-smooth and sweet, delicious. But it left a chalky taste in her mouth.

  Rita Mae wasn’t there. Violet missed Rita Mae! She’d heard Mr. Clovis and the others say sharply to Rita Mae—Stay away then. We don’t need you.

  “Vi’let, this will be your only chance, to feed Big Momma. If you refuse, I’ll have to take you home—that’s that.”

  Weakly Violet protested. Anything but that lonely apartment!

  “No! I—I can feed Big Momma.”

  There was a hot, humid atmosphere here, like the inside of a gut. Just a few feet away on the far side of the splotched plate glass Big Momma lay tense and quivering and not so languid-seeming as she’d been at the first visit. Violet stumbled a little as Mr. Clovis led her into the outer enclosure, and eased her down onto the floor where she could shut her eyes. Lightly he pressed his lips onto the nape of her neck where the little hairs stirred.

  “Say hello to Big Momma.”

  “H-Hello . . .”

  So close by, only inches away on the other side of the glass, Big Momma was waiting. Big Momma’s eyes were sharp now, staring right at Violet as if she recognized her after all. Violet’s eyelids were very heavy. Her vision was dimming slowly, like encroaching dusk. She felt peaceful and not anxious and had forgotten—whatever it was, in the first-floor apartment overlooking the parking lot.

  “Good, sweetheart! Just sleep. It’s nice and warm here, you can sleep here all night.” Mr. Clovis left Violet, so silently she scarcely knew he had stepped out of the enclosure.

  Violet was lying on the floor, on her side. One of her arms was extended, limp. Her fingers moved just slightly, as if she was grasping for something—what? She had no idea.

  She could feel, without knowing how to name or identify it, something like a vibratory hum, through the plate glass against which she was pressed. This might have been Big Momma breathing, or quivering, or tensing up her coils . . .

  This was so comforting, Violet’s eyes filled with tears. But before the tears could spill over she’d curled into a snug little ball hugging herself, her knees to her chest. Within seconds in a swoon of the sweetest surrender she was asleep.

  Mystery, Inc.

  I am very excited! For at last, after several false starts, I have chosen the perfect setting for my bibliomystery.

  It is Mystery, Inc., a beautiful old bookstore in Seabrook, New Hampshire, a town of fewer than two thousand year-round residents overlooking the Atlantic Ocean south of New Castle.

  For those of you who have never visited this legendary bookstore, one of the gems of New England, it is located in the historic High Street district of Seabrook, above the harbor, in a block of elegantly renovated brownstones originally built in 1888. Here are the offices of an architect, an attorney-at-law, a dental surgeon; here are shops and boutiques—leather goods, handcrafted silver jewelry, the Tartan Shop, Ralph Lauren, Esquire Bootery. At 19 High Street a weathered old sign in black and gilt creaks in the wind above the sidewalk:

  MYSTERY, INC. BOOKSELLERS

  New & Antiquarian Books, Maps, Globes, Art

  Since 1912

  The front door, a dark-lacquered red, is not flush with the sidewalk but several steps above it; there is a broad stone stoop, and a black wrought iron railing. So that, as you stand on the sidewalk gazing at the display window, you must gaze upward.

  Mystery, Inc. consists of four floors with bay windows on each floor that are dramatically illuminated when the store is open in the evening. On the first floor, books are displayed in the bay window with an (evident) eye for the attractiveness of their bindings: leather-bound editions of such nineteenth-century classics as Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone and The Woman in White, Charles Dickens’s Bleak House and The Mystery of Edwin Drood, A. Conan Doyle’s The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, as well as classic twentieth-century mystery-crime fiction by Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Cornell Woolrich, Ross Macdonald, and Patricia Highsmith and a scattering of popular American, British, and Scandinavian contemporaries. There is even a title of which I have never heard—The Case of the Unknown Woman: The Story of One of the Most Intriguing Murder Mysteries of the 19th Century, in what appears to be a decades-old binding.

  As I step inside Mystery, Inc. I feel a pang of envy. But in the next instant this is supplanted by admiration—for envy is for small-minded persons.

  The interior of Mystery, Inc. is even more beautiful than I had imagined. Walls are paneled in mahogany with built-in bookshelves floor to ceiling; the higher shelves are accessible by ladders on brass rollers, and the ladders are made of polished wood. The ceiling is comprised of squares of elegantly hammered tin; the floor is parquet, covered in small carpets. As I am a book collector myself—and a bookseller—I note how attractively books are displayed without seeming to overwhelm the customer; I see how cleverly books are positioned upright to intrigue the eye; the customer is made to feel welcome as in an old-fashioned library with leather chairs and sofas scattered casually about. Here and there against the walls are glass-fronted cabinets containing rare and first-edition books, no doubt under lock and key. I do feel a stab of envy, for of the mystery bookstores I own, in what I think of as my modest mystery-bookstore empire in New En­gland, not one is of the class of Mystery, Inc., or anywhere near.

  In addition, it is Mystery, Inc.’s online sales that present the gravest competition to a bookseller like myself, who so depends upon such sales . . .

  Shrewdly I have timed my arrival at Mystery, Inc. for a half-hour before closing time, which is 7:00 p.m. on Thursdays, and hardly likely to be crowded. (I think there are only a few other customers—at least on the first floor, within my view.) In this wintry season dusk has begun as early as 5:30 p.m. The air is wetly cold, so that the lenses of my glasses are covered with a fine film of condensat
ion; I am vigorously polishing them when a young woman salesclerk with tawny gold, shoulder-length hair approaches me to ask if I am looking for anything in particular, and I tell her that I am just browsing, thank you—“Though I would like to meet the proprietor of this beautiful store, if he’s on the premises.”

  The courteous young woman tells me that her employer, Mr. Neuhaus, is in the store, but upstairs in his office; if I am interested in some of the special collections or antiquarian holdings, she can call him . . .

  “Thank you! I am interested indeed but just for now, I think I will look around.”

  What a peculiar custom it is, the openness of a store. Mystery, Inc. might contain hundreds of thousands of dollars of precious merchandise; yet the door is unlocked, and anyone can step inside from the street into the virtually deserted store, carrying a leather attaché case in hand, and smiling pleasantly.

  It helps of course that I am obviously a gentleman. And one might guess, a book collector and book-lover.

  As the trusting young woman returns to her computer at the checkout counter, I am free to wander about the premises. Of course, I will avoid the other customers.

  I am impressed to see that the floors are connected by spiral staircases, and not ordinary utilitarian stairs; there is a small elevator at the rear which doesn’t tempt me as I suffer from mild claustrophobia. (Being locked in a dusty closet as a child by a sadistic older brother surely is the root of this phobia, which I have managed to disguise from most people who know me, including my bookstore employees who revere me, I believe, for being a frank, forthright, commonsensical sort of man free of any sort of neurotic compulsion!) The first floor of Mystery, Inc. is American books; the second floor is British and foreign-language books, and Sherlock Holmesiana (an entire rear wall); the third floor is first editions, rare editions, and leather-bound sets; the fourth floor is maps, globes, and antiquarian artworks associated with mayhem, murder, and death.