Doll House

XVII. Dream of Screaming

 This hadn't been the plan. The boy was never meant to escape, the old man wasn't really supposed to be here and the girl, well, the girl wasn't supposed to go feral, but she had. She'd slipped through their fingers, in as much as the nightmares had fingers, and in order to catch her, alliances had to be made.

The old man would have to keep the boy safe, even at the cost of his own life.

So it was that the roads narrowed and altered, the trees stooped and the branches thickened until the travelers, lost inside the forest, lost the sun altogether.

"Where could she be?" asked Tara.

"Anywhere," the old man answered. "She could be anywhere. And yet, I get a feeling she isn't. That she's inside these woods somewhere. She couldn't have gotten too far and surely, if she'd made it into town, we would've heard."

Not necessarily true, as the townspeople rarely – if ever – talked to the old man. They almost never came up to check on him and whenever they saw him out and about, they kept their interactions limited to a brief 'hello' or a nod.

But it was a comforting thought, one that allowed them to go forward and keep looking for them. And for now, that was all that mattered.

"She could be hurt somewhere," the doll protested, remembering that early morning light and Vicky's head resting on the grass. The girl wasn't hurt, because if the things out here had wanted to hurt her, they could've done so then. For hours, they'd walked inside these woods and no harm had come to them, not even a scrape on the girl's leg. No, if they had wanted to hurt Vicky, they would've done so long ago, she told herself.

The bear was the only one who carried the journey in complete silence. He knew better than to put his hope into vague, comforting lies or to trust in the nightmares hid inside these woods. Perhaps he'd seen too many bad dreams to keep believing things would end well. The chances that would happen were slim, at best, to non-existent.

Inside a forest haunted by evil what chances did they have, when that was the very point of a nightmare? To let you know that you cannot win. And that you will not make it out all in one piece.

Truth was, all aspects of their near future looked grim and he was the only one awake enough to truly see them.

"She's not. Victoria!" the Overall Man shouted again and this time, Victoria heard him. And so did the boy.

And they ran towards the noise, at the same time, but the girl stopped, after only a few steps. It would be no fun to run them down, to tear them apart. She'd enjoyed the carnage inside the house, but something had been missing. Miss Francine had lasted for quite a bit, granted, she'd had time to understand what was happening to her and that there was no coming back from where she was going. She felt the pain and terror of dying as she went and that had been good.

But with the children, she hadn't been able to afford such finesse. She'd been forced to go in for the kill directly, for fear they might escape her reckoning. Most of them had died instantly, a snapped neck, their hearts torn out, and while gruesome, it hadn't really been scary. Not what was promised at all. Some had waited in their darkened corners for a while, hoping that the monster would not see them.

They forgot the monster had once been a little girl who, for nine years had had nothing better to do all day then sit and stare at each one of their faces. She knew all the children inside the orphanage and she knew them well. One by one, she'd found them, scattered around the house or trying to escape. Surprisingly few had actually tried to get out of the house, but it made sense in a way. The house in the forest was all they'd ever known and the thought that help might not be in here, but out there, was simply unthinkable.