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Jack picked up the flashlight and shone it into
the hole in the stairs"Anything? Nothing? Talk!"
"Something, but it's not a ceramic bottle," he
saidLooks like a candy box,
only bigger
"Maybe you better not," Wireman said
But it was too late for thatJack reached in all
the way up to his elbow, and for one moment I was
981
sure his face would lengthen in a scream as
something battened on his arm and yanked him down
to the shoulderThen he straightened againIn
his hand he held a heart-shaped tin boxHe held
it out to usOn the top, barely visible beneath
speckles of rust, was a pink-cheeked angelBelow
that, in old-fashioned script, these painted words:
ELIZABETH
HER rolex gmt master THINGS
Jack looked at us questioninglyIt wasn't Perse - I was positive
of that nowI felt both disappointed and relieved
"You found it; go on and open it
"It's the drawings," Wireman saidWhat Jack lifted
out of the rusty old heart-shaped box was Libbit's
dolly, and seeing Noveen was like coming home
Ouuuu, her black eyes and scarlet smiling mouth
seemed to be sayingOuuu, I been in there all
that time, you nasty man
iv
982
When I saw her come out of that box like a
disinterred corpse out of a crypt, I felt a
terrible, helpless horror come stealing through me,
beginning at the heart and radiating outward,
threatening to first loosen all my muscles and
then unknit them latest dior bag completely
"Edgar?" Wireman asked sharply"All right?"
I did my best to get hold of myselfMostly it was
the thing's toothless smileLike the jockey's cap,
that smile was redAnd as with the jockey's cap,
I felt that if I looked at it too long, it would
drive me madThat smile seemed to insist that
everything which had happened in my new life was a
dream I was having in some hospital ICU while
machines kept my twisted body alive a little while
longerand maybe that was good, for the best,
because it meant nothing had happened to Ilse
"Edgar?" When Jack stepped toward me, the doll in
his hand bobbed in its own grotesque parody of
concern"You're not going to faint, are cheap fake louis vuitton bags you?"
"No," I said And when he tried
to pass it to me: "I don't want to take it
983
He did as I asked, and I understood at once why
I'd had that feeling of instant recognition, that
sense of coming homeNot because of Reba or her
more recent companion - although all three were
ragdolls, there was that similarityNo, it was
because I had seen her before, in several of
Elizabeth's drawingsAt first I'd assumed she was
Nan MeldaThat was wrong, but -
"Nan Melda gave this to her," I said
"Sure," Wireman agreed"And it must have been her
favorite, because it was the only one she ever
drewThe question is, why did she leave it behind
when the family left Heron's Roost? Why did she
lock tiffany's jewelry it away?"
"Sometimes dolls fall out of favor," I saidI was
looking at that red and smiling mouthStill red
after all these yearsRed like the place memories
went to hide when you were wounded and couldn't
think straight"Sometimes dolls get scary
"Her pictures talked to you, Edgar," Wireman said
He waggled the doll, then handed it to Jack"What
about her? Will the doll tell you what we want to
know?"
984
"Noveen," I saidAnd I wish I
could say yes, but only Elizabeth's pencils and
pictures speak to me
"How do you know?"
A good questionHow did I know?
"I just doI bet she could have talked to you,
WiremanWhen you still had
that little twinkle
"Too late now," Wireman cartier santos 100 chronograph said |