Date: Thu, 3 Oct 1996 12:41:13 MDT From: Robyn Meta Herrington Subject: SUB: CONTEST: Double Vision Another person thrusts themselves into the Halloween turmoil... Critiques to ME -- rmherrin@acs.ucalgary.ca -- and I will pass them along to the author. RobynH --------------------------------------------------------------------- ''Double Vision'' ''It was the eyes,'' she mumbled, ''something about its eyes.'' ''Yeah, yeah,'' the fat cop interrupted. ''What are you babbling about, lady?'' He chomped sloppily on a cheap, frayed cigar. The woman sat slumped over in a chair against the wall with her head down. Her hands and clothes were smeared with blood. ''The doll,'' she whispered. ''The doll told me to kill him.'' The cop scoffed and kneeled down in front of her. ''Drop the crap, uh,'' he paused and checked her name in his notebook. It said her name was Sandra Dworkin. The dead man was her husband, Albert Dworkin. ''OK, Mrs. Dworkin, I've got pieces of a dead guy scattered around your house. I've got a butcher's knife covered in blood. Hell, lady, you called us and told us you had just killed your husband. So come off the crap, lady. Why did you hack him up?'' Sandra looked up. There was remorse in her eyes, but mostly, there wasfear. ''Because I had to,'' she said. ''It said so.'' The fat cop stood up as a second police officer, a younger, leaner man, walked into the room and handed a clipboard to the older man. ''Bernie,''the second man said, ''sign this so they can take the guy away.'' Lieutenant Bernie Sisson grabbed the clipboard, pulled out a pen, signed the paper and handed it back to the second cop. ''Did they find all the pieces of him, Ron?'' Detective Ron Mauser shook his head and looked around the room. Shreds of cotton, fabric and chunks of bloody flesh littered it. Blood smears covered the walls. ''Yeah, as much as we could, Bernie. This is a real sick one. The guy must have put up a heck of a struggle while she was killing him.'' He pointed at the woman. ''Did she tell you anything?'' The lieutenant nodded. ''She's babbling something about a doll telling her to do it.'' ''What?'' ''Yeah,'' Sisson said. ''Tell me about it. I don't know what to make of it.'' He looked back at Sandra. ''A doll made you do it. Ain't that right, lady?'' Sandra stared blankly at the two cops. ''Yes. It told me I had to kill him.'' The cops look at each other and shrugged. Sisson touched the pen to the tip of his tongue, then tapped it against his notebook, and kneeled back down. ''OK, lady, tell me about this doll.'' The woman lifted her blood-stained hands and gazed awkwardly at them. She spoke without looking at the two officers. ''They were mesmerizing, alive.'' ''What were? Its eyes?'' The woman nodded slowly. ''Yes, exactly, its eyes. They were alive.'' As she spoke, two men in gray coats and facemasks gathered scattered human remains from the room. They put the pieces in a large, black bag. ''Alive?'' Sisson said. ''What do you mean, alive?'' The woman's face took on new life, but her eyes still focused through the men on some faraway, unseen spot. ''My husband bought it for me when he was in Orient. It was its eyes that called to him from the shop window. He thought she would be a perfect addition to my antique doll collection.'' Sisson wrote it down. ''So?'' ''The woman at the shop said the doll was very rare, and legend had it that it had originally been made for the daughter of a Hungarian nobleman. The girl went crazy and killed her father.'' The fat cop nodded. ''Yeah, all that inbreeding makes you a little loony, anyway.'' Sandra shrugged. ''No, no. The girl's nanny said the girl spoke to the doll and was convinced it talked back.'' ''Talked back? Are you on any medication?'' Sisson asked. ''The nobleman's wife supposedly threw the doll in the fireplace to destroy it,'' she continued, ''but it mysteriously survived and she gave it away. Legend has it that death followed the doll over several centuries.'' ''So was your husband crazy or something, buying some doll with a history like that?'' Sisson asked. ''If you ask me, lady, you've watched one too many late night movies.'' ''Albert didn't believe in that mumbo-jumbo, and either did I, until it called to me.'' Sisson chomped on his cigar and gave the woman a disbelieving grin. ''Called to you, huh? What did it say?'' Sandra gazed at the lieutenant with conviction in her eyes. ''Kill him.'' ''What?'' Sisson said. ''Kill who?'' ''My husband.'' ''You're crazy, lady. That's what you are,'' Sisson said. Tears filled Sandra's eyes and she balled her hands into fists and pounded her knees. ''I'm not crazy!'' She pointed toward a room in the back of the house. ''That doll told me to kill Albert, and I did!'' Mauser shook his head and tapped Sisson on the back. Sisson stood and faced the younger cop. ''Look,'' Mauser said. ''It's obvious she killed her husband. She admits it. It's open and closed. Let's just take her downtown and get out of here.'' Sisson nodded. ''Yeah, seems pretty clear to me, too. We'll turn her over to a shrink in the morning for an evaluation.'' ''I'm not crazy!'' Sandra yelled. ''Listen to me! The doll told me to kill Albert. I had no choice!'' The cops turned to face Sandra, who was now trembling. ''I couldn't stop myself. There was nothing I could do.'' Sisson bent down again. ''Listen, lady, we're going to take you downtown. You're going to spend the night in jail, and in the morning we're going to take you to a nice man who you can tell all about this doll and how it told you to kill your husband. OK?'' The woman violently shook her head. ''Why don't you believe me? I'm not lying!'' ''Of course you're not lying, ma'am. So, where's this doll now?'' Sandra turned her head and with fright in her eyes gazed uneasily toward the back of her house. She raised a bloody finger and pointed. ''In the study. My entire collection is in there. It's the last doll in the cabinet against the back wall. You can't miss her.'' She paused. ''You can't miss those eyes.'' Sisson stood. ''Ron, go get the doll and bring it with us. We can send it to the shrink.'' Mauser nodded and walked into the study. Glass cabinets lined all four walls of the room. A small desk sat in the middle with a modest, black leather chair. In each of the cabinets, dolls of all sizes and shapes stood, sat and laid on shelves. Some were dressed in fancy dresses, others in shabby, thread-bare clothing. Mauser walked along the cabinets until he reached the one against the back wall. The dolls in this cabinet seemed older than the rest. There were various pieces of paper, describing each doll's history, in front of them. They were all old, some of them dating back several centuries. Mauser looked over each of them until he found himself staring at the one at the end. She was a plain doll, not very fancy at all, he thought. This was one made for a nobleman? Mauser leaned close to the glass and looked at its eyes. They were a deep crimson, surprising for something like a doll. He unlatched the cabinet door, opened it and took out the doll. It was light and felt very fragile in his hands. He took a closer look. Yes, the eyes did seem different. They did seem, dare Mauser think it, alive. And then, as he stared into them, he heard the voice. ''Kill them,'' it said. ''Kill them all.'' Mauser blinked his eyes. What was that? Did the doll just speak? ''Kill them!'' it said. This time the voice was more forceful. ''Kill them all!'' Mauser felt something numb push against the back of his head, and he placed the doll back on the shelf. With a glazed look over his face, he pulled his revolver from its holster and checked it to make sure it was loaded. Then, he turned and walked out of the room with the gun held firmly in his hands. ''Kill them,'' he repeated to himself. ''Kill them all.'' =============================================================== -------+++++++-------+++++++ +++++++-------+++++++------- Robyn Herrington Operations Manager, Microforms Services University of Calgary, MacKimmie Library Ph: (403)220-6903 http://www.ucalgary.ca/~rmherrin rmherrin@acs.ucalgary.ca -------+++++++-------+++++++--------------+++++++-------+++++++-------