“Where’s your van?”
“Broken down on the highway,” Nagi said.
“Hmmmm,” she said.“Okay.I think I know where to put you.Look.Just keep this between us.Aunt Patti doesn’t like it when we put people in the Doll Room, but what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.”
“Do you require identification for check-in?”Nagi asked.
Carol Anne looked confused.
“No, I don’t think,” she said.“Come on.Back this way.”
“Your Uncle JJ said something about a church service earlier,” I said.
“Don’t you worry about that none,” she said.“Things have been different ever since Daddy passed on.Uncle JJ started wearing his makeup all the time.Aunt Patti don’t leave the kitchen.And Uncle Sawyer got religious.Death does strange things to everyone, I suppose.”
“What kind of service do they perform at midnight?”Brother Al asked.
Carol Anne shrugged.
“I couldn’t tell you,” she said.“Uncle Sawyer burns a lot of stinky incense and lights some candles.”
“I run the Parish from Hartshome back in Chicago,” Brother Al said.“We often perform midnight mass.It’s soothing, especially for those who cannot walk in the sun’s embrace.I might like to drop in on his service some time.Perhaps I could learn some things.”
Carol Anne looked at us.
“I don’t know if you’d like it,” she said.“Come on.Room’s back this way.Past the kitchen.”
She opened the door to a hallway and stared down it.On the right side of the wall, something dark was slithering back into an open doorway.Carol Anne turned around and held her arms out.
“Nothing to see,” she said.She banged on the wall.“Aunt Patti.We got company coming through.New guests.Might want to close up shop for the night.”
There was a noise, like that of someone in a high pitched voice grumbling, and then I heard a metal shudder slam shut, like a door on well-oiled tracks.
“She’s a little shy,” Carol Anne said, turning around.“Okay.Don’t stay in this hallway for too long.And mind where you step.”
We walked forward.Brother Al shifted slightly in his chair.To my right, where the open door had been, where that thing was slithering inside, I saw only a metal corrugated sheet of a door.There was movement inside—I could hear the shuffling of feet on stone.
“Goat, again,” Brother Al said.
“Come along,” Carol Anne said.
“Well,you did say Doll Room.I guess I don’t know what I was expecting,” I said.
“It’s a lot,” Carol Anne said.“I won’t come in this room by myself, truth be told.”
Porcelain dolls of little girls stood on every open surface.Their glasslike eyes stared back at us from a distance.Some had black ringlets—other big beautiful golden tresses.All of them were in a dress of one sort or another.
There was a short, sharp noise in the distance—like that of a scream terminated early—and Nagi and I looked at one another.
“What was that?”I asked.
“Probably one of the goats wandered into a snake trap,” Carol Anne said.She scooted up to the window and stared out it, angling her eyes.“Here, look with me.You like this view?”
I went over with her to the window and hunkered down.
“Tell me what I’m looking at,” I said.
“This is the back lot of the house,” she said.“From here you should see the cemetery.Daddy’s buried out there, along with some other people from the church.Normally guests stay in the East or West wings.It’s easier access.But I guess your grandfather over there needs some quiet and some space, right?”
