Kitty

What She Wanted

Beyond expectation, the Friendship Room was available. It was the last room Anjulie desired to be in, and yet something about it all made sense. The title of the room, the place she'd found out Kitty had returned, and the dolls! God, the freaky dolls . . . it was all an awful twist of fate.

By the time Danielle arrived at the Inn, the sisters had gone through nearly three pots of coffee and a bottle of wine. As disordered as Anjulie had been, Danielle was in far rougher shape, literally dirty and wet, clothing askew and bits of leaf and earth in her damp hair. Anjulie asked no questions, instead ordered Danielle to follow her upstairs, where she and Marie had laid out the bits and pieces of the long-ago game the five eighth-graders had played. Anjulie hoped her memory had retained all of that night—the resulting events had certainly seared themselves into her brain—and she must have done well, because the minute Danielle saw the low table at the foot of the bed, a candle and a bowl of wine atop it, she spun toward the sisters.

"God damnit Anjulie! We are not doing this!"

"Danielle, please! It might—"

"No! Hell-to-the-fucking-no. This is absolutely the stupidest thing I've ever seen. You said it was all a bunch of crap the night we did it, so what are we going to do now? Strip naked and dance around the table? Chant some fucking made-up French shit?"

Marie had sensed her cue and stepped into the hallway, closing the other two women inside the room. Before Danielle could say or do anything, Anjulie stopped her. "Where have you been, hm? Where were you?" When she received no response, she nodded curtly. "You went to the pond where she died, didn't you?" Danielle turned sheepishly aside. "Didn't you?"

"Yes, all right? Yes I did. And so what?"

"It's because you feel bad, too, about what we did to Emily. Whatever I might have done with the whole summoning of Kitty or whatnot, what we did to Emily was worse. That was the real horror, and you know it. You all tried to blame me. For years you blamed me. But Helen was right. Her daughter was right. We just as surely killed Emily as if we'd done it with our own hands. And now it's one of them using the other—Emily using that thing or that thing using Emily—trying to get at us. It all comes back to her. You know it."

Danielle's face had fallen. She'd begun to sniffle as she glanced about the room, at the stained glass rendition of a pelican bleeding onto smaller birds below, toward the bed upon which a gigantic old doll sat, at the shelves and furniture covered in a few hundred of the creepy old toys. "I always told her she looked like a doll, you know?" Danielle quietly noted, staring off at something Anjulie couldn't guess. "Even when we were little, I thought she was just so damn cute. I think—I think I hated her for it. But I loved her for it, too."

Exhausted, wanting to get it over with, Anjulie said nothing but sensed her old friend's capitulation. She moved toward the table and, withdrawing a lighter from her pocket, lit the pillar candle. As it began to flare, she asked Danielle to flip the nearby light switch.

"Come on," Anjulie pressed once the room was cast into near-darkness. "Let's just try this. It can't get much worse, can it?"

She and Danielle resignedly seated themselves on either side of the coffee table, their faces haunted by the flame's glow.

"All right. Here." Anjulie reached around the table to take Danielle's clammy hands in hers. Then, calling herself with a deep breath, she recited the simplistic line she recalled with perfect clarity: "Toc, toc, toc, un, deux, trois. Minou viens jouer avec moi." Without another word, Anjulie released Danielle and picked up the bowl of wine, drank of it deeply enough to warrant a scoff from her peer, and passed it across the table. "Oh, the hair!" Anjulie blurted after Danielle had taken a sip. She took down her updo and separated some of her own long tresses, tugging a bit free. Then she held a nearly invisible strand over the candle. "Put a hair in the flame."