Among Prey Read online

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  Among Prey © 2013 by Alan Ryker

  All Rights Reserved.

  A DarkFuse Release

  www.darkfuse.com

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Always for Christina

  Thanks to the entire DarkFuse staff for their work on this book, especially Dave Thomas and Shane Staley.

  The Doll Lady

  Amber sat on a stool behind the front desk of LYLAS Dolls, flipping through the newspaper. The place was dead, as it usually was early Wednesday afternoons, when most of her customers were in school. She was torn between hoping for customers, who would bring with them commissions and tips, and the heart-fluttering hope a stretch with no customers always brought that no one would ever step through the door again. The longer it took, the more anxious she became. It felt the same as when she’d had a long hitting streak in softball, a building of tension until she almost wished she’d just strike out already. She imagined it must be what soldiers felt like surviving tour after tour.

  Helping brats build custom dolls wasn’t exactly her dream job.

  The newspaper didn’t help her anxiety. Another girl had gone missing. This one taken from the park. She had long suspected that at least some of her anxiety came from a heightened sense of empathy, and she could easily imagine herself in the child’s place. She could imagine playing along the tree line, the sun shining down on her, and then the sky going dark, and looking up to see only a silhouette against the bright sky, as if a tree had broken loose from its friends and loomed over her.

  So Amber’s heart slammed against the inside of her chest when the door to LYLAS Dolls actually went dark. She looked up from her paper, not knowing what to expect. Not expecting anything. Because one moment she’d been sitting with warm sunlight spilling across the room, and the next it was as if night had fallen. In a single second, the fluorescent lights that had been invisible in comparison with the natural sunlight became the sole source of illumination. Dense storm clouds couldn’t roll across the sky instantaneously. The sun didn’t just burn out.

  It took another moment for Amber to understand what she was looking at when she glanced at the door. At first, it appeared that someone had rolled a wall of cloth down the strip-mall sidewalk and stopped directly outside the door of LYLAS Dolls. The lower half of the panel appeared to be denim, the upper half flannel. Her eyes continued up, and at the top of the doorway she saw a lumpy mass that her mind worked to make sense of.

  Then she understood it was a face, brow pressed to the glass, with an enormous pair of hands cupped around eyes that glittered like dark water at the bottom of a well. Flannel surrounded the face, making the image more confusing. After another moment, she realized this person was leaning down to peer into the door, with his shoulders and arms bunched around his head. He could likely have stretched, and, perhaps standing on his toes, peered over the transom.

  All those moments—in which one strange realization followed another—had added up to a significant chunk of time, and Amber didn’t understand why the giant continued to block the doorway. The figure stood so still that if it hadn’t been for the eyes watching her intently, she would have thought it was perhaps an enormous mannequin. Maybe the display for some slasher-movie opening at the theater at the end of the strip. But then a repetitive sound bored its way into her consciousness. It had both the tonal and rhythmic qualities of a car alarm, but it repeated a word over and over, getting louder and louder. “Bobby! Bobby! Bobby Milton! Don’t you want some ice cream?”

  The arms dropped, letting in light around the bulbous head, and one hand went down to the handle and pressed, and Bobby Milton stepped into LYLAS Dolls for the first time.

  Amber should have said, “Welcome to LYLAS Dolls. Are you ready to find a doll who’ll love you like a sister?” She would have spoken directly to the little girl, because while the parents handed over the debit card, the children spent the money. This was their “experience,” and they should be the focus. This also happened to be the best way to wring every drop from a sale. Who’s more likely to think that the already-expensive doll would need an extra denim jacket, a real leather purse, and a haircut and style? Not the parent.

  Amber was accustomed to dealing with girls from about ages three to thirteen. For a customer in the upper range, she would take on a conspiratorial air, displaying an understanding of how stupid parents are. She’d lean in to show the girl sample pictures, being sure not to let Mom or Dad see, because what do parents know? Only how to ruin things. Only how to embarrass daughters.

  For a young customer, Amber would come from around the desk and squat down so the little girl wouldn’t be forced to crane her neck up. Amber would hold a serious conversation regarding doll needs with an equal. A three-year-old equal.

  But she had no protocols for dealing with someone who entered the store with the awkward but practiced motion of both ducking to avoid the top of the door frame and leaning to avoid popping his balloon head on the sharp elbow of the pneumatic hinge. It took her another moment just to find, “Hello.” And then another moment followed. From her long struggle with anxiety, Amber knew you only felt every second of life during the worst times. Each moment stood separate from every other. Reality slowed, allowing a glimpse of the space between the frames. It would make a nice moment even better, but nice moments flew by. Ones like this stretched on forever.

  Then a woman squeezed in around the giant. She wore a simple white blouse tucked into high-waisted mom jeans. “Hello,” she said in the nasal voice Amber recognized as the car alarm from several disjointed moments earlier. “This is Robert Milton. He prefers ‘Bobby.’ I’m his nurse, Carol. We were headed for the ice-cream parlor down the way, but your store seems to have grabbed Bobby’s attention.”

  The individual pieces were beginning to form a picture. The frames sped up, turned into a movie. Following the standard operating procedure to talk to the client rather than the purse holder, Amber said, “Hello, Bobby, I’m Amber. It’s very nice to meet you. Are you just looking today?” Then she smiled and winked at Carol, who seemed relieved at the friendly response.

  Bobby flicked his eyes to Amber, then turned toward a wall of doll heads. He walked over and leaned down to more closely examine them.

  “I’m sorry,” Carol said. “He’s harmless and generally very well-behaved, but sometimes he’ll get an idea in his head and a team of Clydesdales couldn’t change his course.”

  “My goodness, I imagine so. He’s a big fella.” That was a severe understatement. Amber had seen taller men before. She guessed Bobby was 6’9” or 6’10”, and there were a couple of poor guys in town who drew stares at nearly 7’ and would have only looked normal on a basketball court. But they were all thin. She’d never seen a tall man so large. He had to weigh almost four hundred pounds. And while he had a doughy quality to him, he was proportionate. His shoulders were nearly too wide to fit through the door, and his chest looked almost as deep as he was wide. His jeans and flannel shirt must have been custom made, having proportions similar to that of a gigantic toddler rather than a fat man. Even his big, barely-laced yellow work boots contributed to an oddly childlike demeanor.

  Amber wanted to ask what was wrong with him, but couldn’t, of course. Luckily, Carol seemed to understand that her role as nurse for someone like Bobby included settling other people’s fears.

  “He might want a doll. Like I said, if he sets his mind on it, it’l
l be impossible to get him out of here without one. He functions at the same level as a young child except he doesn’t speak. I know he looks scary, but Bobby is really very sweet. Would you be comfortable helping us?”

  Amber smiled. She felt a bit guilty for being so taken aback by the poor man. She imagined he picked up on other people’s discomfort, and it made him uncomfortable in turn. She decided she would be as welcoming to him as any other LYLAS Dolls customer. “Absolutely. I’d be more than happy to help you.” She had a thought, though, because Carol obviously hadn’t planned for them to stop and make a doll. “You know, these dolls are really, ummm…” She looked around even though she knew she was the only employee in the store before saying, “…overpriced.”

  Carol smiled. “Bobby’s parents give him whatever he wants. If he’s happy, they’re happy.”

  “Great! Give me one second and we’ll get started.”

  Carol nodded, then went to join Bobby at the wall of doll parts. The woman looked like a doll herself beside the massive man.

  Amber stepped quickly into the back and grabbed her purse. She pulled a prescription bottle out of the side pocket, twisted the top off and tapped out two Xanax. She had Klonopin, too, but needed a fast-acting benzo. She popped the pills into her mouth, then pulled a bottled water from her bag, unscrewed the lid and gulped the pills down. The ninety-proof schnapps burned good, and she took another pull. Peppermint schnapps on the breath smelled like mouthwash.

  She gave herself a moment. On an empty stomach, the alcohol started to work almost immediately. A burst of warmth exploded in slow motion from the base of her skull, and began wrapping around her brain. In a few minutes, the benzos would kick in and she’d be good for the next hour.

  Amber headed back out into the LYLAS Dolls showroom and workshop.

  * * *

  Amber expected Bobby to need more help than he did. She tried to offer suggestions, as she usually did, but Bobby moved methodically along the room, choosing doll parts in such a confident manner that it seemed like the doll was already there in his head, and the only choice he needed to make was if the part in question was the closest match to the ideal. Amber was accustomed to, “Is this nose cuter, or this nose?”

  Well, the rich girls didn’t agonize over every detail, but that’s because they knew they’d be back next week if they wanted. But Bobby’s certainty wasn’t a lack of care. He rolled every head back and forth between his massive hands, held every doll part with fingers as thick as the arms and legs. He knew what he was looking for, and added the parts to the little cart Carol pushed along behind him.

  He decided on the sturdy doll type that represented younger, grade-school-aged girls. She had light brown hair, round eyes and a slightly upturned nose. The clothing for that doll type matched the age group, thank God. Amber swore she’d quit if they started carrying slutty clothing for the little girl bodies the way some other brands of dolls did, round baby bellies hanging out between sequined tube tops and micro miniskirts. Bobby chose a pair of blue jeans, a white T-shirt and white sneakers with Velcro, not laces. For accessories, he chose a pink backpack and a “Best Friend” half-heart necklace. He chose the “-st -end” half, which no one ever chose unless they were making a pair of dolls, usually with their best friend. Amber thought she could always tell which girl in the pair was the submissive well before that point in the process, and she was almost always correct about who would get stuck with the right side of the heart.

  Carol had been truthful about Bobby’s demeanor. He was very gentle. He seemed to understand that the world was not made to his scale, that he needed to tread carefully, and he did his best. The pills had Amber feeling loose, and instead of being intimidated by Bobby’s size, she found the care he displayed when handling the small items cute, in the same way she’d find a video of a bear playing with a puppy cute.

  When the time came to put his doll together, Amber struggled not to laugh as Bobby tried to sit down at the pink picnic table with attached benches. Before he could burst the bench with his knees, she said, “Hold on. I think this might work better.”

  She pulled one of the chairs the parents sat in to the end of the bench, then helped unload his items onto the table. The intensity of his concentration was exaggerated by the manner in which he had to sit to reach his work surface, leaning far forward, his wide back rounding into a flannel hill.

  He had scars on his scalp that Amber hadn’t seen when she’d been looking up at him. Most people wouldn’t have noticed the scars anyway, as they were old and well-hidden by thick, brown hair. But Amber’s years of working with the human scalp had left her very aware of its intricacies. Her only big mistake had been cutting off a man’s mole, a big one high up on the back of his neck, barely hidden by his hairline. He’d been surprisingly understanding about it, considering how much he bled.

  “I was expecting to be back home before now,” Carol said. “Would you be comfortable with me using the restroom? I’ll be quick.”

  Amber was careful not to look at Bobby, to visibly appraise him, but she felt his enormous presence. Still, she said, “No problem, right back there.”

  Bobby continued to work as if Carol had never been there and never left. Before he clothed his doll, he drew a red heart on the white T-shirt, and with fabric paint drew a white heart on each of the back pockets of the blue jeans. He drew purple hearts all over the pink backpack. The scene maintained that sort of gentle-bear aura until he took the brown marker and began to daub at the clothing and backpack almost at random. These splotches weren’t the same cute and delicately-crafted children’s-clothing graphics he’d drawn earlier—there was something disturbing about them.

  Carol returned just then, and caught Amber’s eyes with a questioning expression. Carol sat in the seat beside Bobby, but didn’t try to intervene until he began to apply brown marker to the doll itself.

  She grabbed the marker, slipped it from his hand, and said, “Bobby, that’s not…” but trailed off as he slowly turned his head to look at her. Only his short neck moved. The rest of his body remained motionless. And yet the tension of potential movement was there, as he turned his head to look at first her face, then the thin, veined hand holding the brown fabric marker in the air between them. Slowly, he reached out and took the marker with two fingers. He didn’t touch her hand. He didn’t move anything more than his right arm. He didn’t make a sound. And yet Amber had never been more frightened for someone than she was for Carol at that moment.

  But Bobby only put the marker to the doll and continued his work.

  When he had finished, and sat staring at the doll, Amber asked, “Do you think she needs a haircut? We could take her over to the LYLAS Salon?”

  Bobby brushed a thick index finger through the doll’s hair, then nodded.

  “Is that okay—” Amber almost slipped and said “Mom,” but said, “—Carol?”

  The nurse said, “Sure,” but gave a slight smirk as if to let Amber know that she knew they were getting taken. Amber wanted to explain that offering all the extras was just store policy. She didn’t want to explain that she did get a decent cut of every up-sell. And being a trained cosmetologist, the hair was where she really made bank. Many of the little girls would only let her cut their dolls’ hair, because the other LYLAS Dolls employees butchered them so badly. Amber had mothers actually ask if the store had a human-sized chair so they could get a haircut, too.

  Amber led the strange pair over to a back corner with a mirror and miniature cutting chair on a pedestal. She reached for the doll, then remembered how Bobby had reacted when Carol had tried to take his marker. She grabbed a haircut book, and said, “If you would just put your friend right there in that chair, you can choose a haircut for her from this book.”

  Bobby hesitated, and for the first time since entering the store, he let those deep-set eyes settle on Amber. Though he had a baby face, the savage brow overshadowing those eyes made Amber wonder if he had some form of pituitary-based gigantism.
He gently placed the doll in the chair, adjusting her so she stayed upright, then removed his hands slowly, ready to catch her if she fell. He took the proffered book and slowly flipped the pages until he found a picture of a girl with heavy, shoulder-length hair.

  Amber stretched her mouth into a smile and said, “Great choice! That really suits her. This won’t take long at all.”

  Cutting while numbed on pills and booze was dangerous enough, but increasing the likelihood that Amber would lose a finger was her inability to take her eyes off Bobby. He pulled his chair near, cupped his chin in his huge hands, and watched every snip of the shears. Lost and unconscious in his observation, he didn’t seem to notice her watching him. His small mouth pursed while his eyes tracked every move Amber’s hands made. She saw that not only was he clean-shaven, but he didn’t seem to have any hair at all. She couldn’t see any stubble. His sideburns seemed to stop naturally just below the top of his ears. He had no hair on his knuckles or the wrists and forearms that had escaped his flannel cuffs. Along with the way his eyebrows moved up and down like a big Saint Bernard as he intently watched his doll—his seeming lack of sexual maturity made the giant more adorable than dangerous. With a beard, he’d have been a nightmare creature, a barbarian or troll. Instead, he was a little boy grown huge. His intense concentration throughout the process enhanced the misperception.

  Amber regained her concentration and cleaned up the cut, flipping the hair back and forth to make sure it fell naturally.

  “There we go.” She removed the little cape and brushed away clippings from the little neck and shoulders with a little brush. “Now, her hair won’t grow, but if she’d like a new style later, it is replaceable.”

  “Wow, how do they do that?” Carol asked.