Dawn of Shadow

K A N E decided he would finally look into what was going on with Dawn when a group of tenants in his apartment building had begun complaining to him. Then he was finally sure that it wasn’t just him. He wasn’t going crazy. Something was wrong with her, and somethin needed to be done.

Dawn moved in the apartment across the hall from him. Kane was the Landlord, a friendly old man, Hospital Worker on the Graveyard Shift until he retired. He lived by himself in a little one-bedroom at the fourth floor of his apartment building. It was always a mess. The green futon in the corner was covered in clothes; since he didn’t have any heating in his room and only two, thin sheets, he covered them in his dirty laundry to conserve what little warmth was available. His Computer was covered in dust, since he’d selected cable over internet this month.

Things bothered him, sure, but Dawn had begun to grate on his nerves even before the Hudsons complained. Late in the evening, when he had to sleep and couldn’t, she would creep into his mind. He saw her quite often at all hours and wondered why she didn’t go to School. He made a mental note to let her parents know of this, until after a few weeks he realized he had never met her parents. Nobody ever saw parents, or anyone coming out of that apartment, save little Dawn herself. The apartment had been rented out by a man as far as Kane remembered, but he never saw him again after the rent was finalized. His old age was beginning to take its toll on his memory, and at peak function his memory had been only slightly better than a fish’s at its best. Nobody had ever seen the inside of the apartment after Dawn moved in, either – there was a short hallway that curved around into the living room, and whenever she left or entered the light was not on, so nobody could see what was happening in there. Of course, everyone had the idea something was happening, and that it was something they did not want to be involved in.

“Little Miss, can I help you?” Kane said, the first time he saw her.

She was sitting down, staring at him. Kind of an odd thing to do what with her being at most thirteen and it being at least ten in the night and all.

She had short, shiny black hair, very clean-cut, like a doll’s hair. Pale blue eyes, like empty pools; a very simple, white dress. Poor kid, Kane thought. Must be too poor to afford her own clothes. Must be one of her mother’s old dresses, he thought, and hoped he wasn’t visibly frowning. It made her look like she was going out to a Ball, or maybe a Prom if she were a little older. It sparkled under the fluorescent lights and Kane thought she had just come home. Social event with her parents, maybe? Whoever was paying the rent in her apartment filled out checks under the name ‘Queen’ and so he assumed that was her surname.

“What are you doing out so late, Little Miss Queen?” He asked.

“Oh, keeping a graveyard shift like you do, Mister Kane!” She answered immediately. She did not take her big, rounded blue eyes away from his face and she smiled with teeth that were white, straight, and perfectly all the same size. No canines. She had spoken as if she had memorized a specific set of key phrases, and could only repeat those.

Part of her face was hidden in shadow as she sat on the staircase. He could make out her eyes, and her face, but they were still cloaked in shadow enough to make it seem as if she were hiding. Or lurking.

The light was enough that he could make out her nose, lips, – and perfectly parted black hair. With her legs sticking out between the bars of the railing, it looked as if she were trapped in a sort of prison modified from a staircase. She wore very simple footwear – maybe some kind of slippers. Weird thing, though, were the soles. They were at least as thick as a ruler – no, thicker. Must have added at least an inch and a half to her height when she stood.

Her right hand curled around one of the bars supporting the railing, while her face sat between two of them and her left hand dangled out, gently caressing the side of a step. She kicked her legs slowly as if she were sitting on a bridge over a small creek or sitting on a swing.

She smiled at him, big and very unnecessarily cheerful, like he’d offered her an early Christmas Present.

“Well, ain’t that cute?” He said flatly. “Do your parents know you’re doing this?”

She rubbed hair out of her forehead. “If they did, they wouldn’t mind.”

She spoke lowly and slowly. Like her words were carefully rehearsed, practiced over and over and over again. Like a Teacher who’s lost faith in education giving her final lesson. Kane, at this point, was suspecting that she must have had some sort of a disability.

“Where are you from, Kane?” She asked, pressing her forehead against one of the bars. He saw it was rounded, giving her an infantile look.

“It’s Mister Kane, please.” He said. If you were stern with children, they backed down. He’d had four boys living across the hall before whatever delightful family had now moved in, and he wasn’t about to start playing second-fiddle to a child ‘till he’d had his own. Which he was smart enough never to do.

She reacted with surprise, as if he’d slipped on a banana peel or something like that. She didn’t laugh, just raised her eyebrows high and smiled big. The shadows of the stair railing cast lines over her pale, baby face. “My confidence got the best of me,” she said. “I’m sorry, then. Mister Kane, where are you from?”

He did not answer.

“Please?”

She tilted her head, dropped her shoulders, relaxed her limbs like a resting spider.

“Well, I’ve…I’ve lived right here in Syracuse my whole life. Lived here, in this building, for a solid thirty-two years. It’s a funny story, actually…”

“Family?” She cut him off, looking down and fiddling with her fingers.

“How’s that?” He asked, still hoping for an opportunity to wring up memories of growing up in New York.

“Brothers? Uncles? Aunts?” She asked, looking back at him with her cyan eyes. “Who else carries the name of Kane?” She smirked at him, putting her hands on her knees.

“Well, that’s, um…my brother lives in California. Moved on out there to become a Movie Star, or a Screenwriter, or some such hogwash. We all tried to warn him, tried to tell him not to, but you know how it is. Stray dogs can’t be tamed.” He forced a laugh and adjusted his glasses and then went back to a face as expressive as a Gargoyle’s when he realized he was speaking to a preteen girl.

“Parents?” She asked.

“Gone. Long, long gone, missy.” He said. “Dad went real peaceful, in the night. I was a little older than you. My mom’s been dead only ‘bout fifteen years now. Maybe sixteen. The big C.”

“Wife?”

He heard her, but he somehow didn’t believe what he’d heard.

“Excuse me?” He asked, his voice cracking as it hadn’t done since he was thirty.

“Girlfriend? Lovers?” She asked, and then seemed to take notice of his discomfort. She wrinkled her forehead and continued to stare at him as if his wounded expression were unusual somehow.

“Bit of a nosy little girl, ain’t ya?” He all but knew she was disabled somehow, no. That new Autism thing, or whatever that was. The twenty-buck word smartass doctors used for smartass kids. No Social Skills. He was clenching his teeth. Biting his tongue. Trying not to be too nasty to a retarded little girl.

“I’m naturally curious,” she said.

“No girl should be that curious,” He scoffed.

“Why?” She smirked, actually displaying something like a primitive grasp of correct human social structure.

“Cause…” He stumbled. Was he sweating? He wiped his forehead with his forearm. 

“Cause it’s just personal, that’s all!”

“Is it, Kane? You ought to know better than I.”

Kane shifted an eyebrow.

“Whole lotta Whackos in New York,” He mumbled, and he turned around, walking away. 

“I have half a mind to tell your parents about this!” He said without looking around as he left to buy groceries.

He made sure to pick up his pace, though. The Hallway was, as was typical this time of night, quiet beyond description. Every footstep echoed, each one bouncing off the walls more loudly than the last.

All the walls the same dead, sterile white as the little girl’s dress.

More than once, he turned around to see if anyone was following him. One thing he’d learned about New York: Keep your eye on the weirdoes. They’re the ones who’ll mug you when they get the chance.

Still, funny he should be so afraid of a girl. He was bigger than she was, and the usual hoodlums were wearing – well, hoods. Not dresses or gowns.

“Funny,” he said to himself, repeating his thoughts.

T H E next time he saw her was the next day. Six-fifty in the morning, as it happened. He was just returning home from work.

Dawn was speaking to somebody else – the Hudsons. They lived underneath him and during mid-day, when he was trying to sleep, he often heard their violent arguments and at least once heard them throwing things. Just goes to show: even without marriage, relationships can still turn to lead in enough time.

She was standing outside their door, her arms behind her back. He noticed she was fiddling with her fingers there, twirling them and rubbing them almost like she were suppressing a seizure. It made him think of the hand-rubbing motions that flies make when landed. She was speaking to them and Kane noticed she wore no shoes. Her toes didn’t move against the hardwood floor, but they were held in some sort of clenched position as if she were clutching at the ground. Her toenails must’ve been very pale, or maybe painted white – he couldn’t see them from here.

Here, as it were, refers to behind the corner of the hallway to the door. He was simply peeking so slightly over the edge, wondering if any of them had heard him enter.

He could hear nothing, but he saw that she was talking to Missus Hudson.

Missus Hudson looked troubled. This wasn’t new – she’d been one of those nervous, terrified people since she moved in. He saw her shaking like a Chihuahua most of the time, and after he’d made her jump three feet in the air just by catching her unexpectedly in the halls he’d made an important note of not sneaking up on her unawares.

Right now she looked down at Dawn and Kane wondered what in God’s name was actually wrong with this woman. She was visibly frightened of a stick-thin, barely aware little creature that stood a full head shorter than she. And this little girl wasn’t even threatening; she simply stood there, fiddling hands behind her back and speaking softly, calmly.

It ended when Missus Hudson went inside. He heard something that might have been “be right back” and so he stayed there. He leaned back, behind the corner, and wondered if Dawn heard the floorboards creak.

He did not lean past the corner when he heard the door open, but instead only listened. Tried to make out the words.

He got the last three, which were: “keep the cup.”

He breathed slowly, deeply. Tried that therapeutic breathing his doctor had recommended. The deep breaths where he expanded his stomach, not his chest. It relaxed and distracted him so much, in fact, he’d forgotten to round the corner and look at Dawn. He’d walk over and act surprised, as if he had just gotten in. Let her know he wasn’t spying on her.

When he went around the corner into the Hallway, she was standing in front of the Hudson’s door with a steaming cup of Hot Cocoa. She was staring at him, however. Not looking straight down the hallway, but turned a little. As if she’d been watching that corner, waiting for him.

He jumped a little, clutched his chest. “Jesus Christ, you scared me!” He said.

She said nothing. She put the rim of the Cocoa to her mouth and tipped the cup, spilling a bit on the floor. He didn’t notice that she hadn’t actually drank any.

“You like the Hudsons?” He tried to change the subject.

She laughed. “They’re amicable,” she said. She used the back of her wrist to wipe liquid off of her lips and face and both her arm and head bent in what looked like very painful contortions. She smacked her lips a bit and blinked.

“What do you know about the Hudsons?” She asked.

He shrugged. Wondered why she wanted to know.

“Nothing, really. Married couple, been here three years.”

“Friends?”

“Well,” Kane said. “I do like them. I don’t mean that I don’t like them, if that’s what you’re asking. But I don’t really know if we’re – ”

“No – no. I meant – I meant, do they have any friends?”

Silence. Kane adjusted his glasses.

She opened her mouth and her lips twitched and she closed them again. Her eyes went up and to the left and then she tilted her head in that direction as if her eyes controlled her movements.

“That you know of?” she asked again. She sounded as if something were caught in her throat.

“No,” he said after thinking a little bit. “No, not that I know of.”

She smiled. “Good,” she said, looking down at the drink in her hand as if it were some new toy. “So it’s just them, alone there?”

“Do you wanna be a census taker when you grow up?”

She nodded.

“Of a sort, yes.”

She walked past him, up the stairs and to her apartment. He sat on the foot of the steps for a little while, sighing and thinking. He wished he could see stars through a hallway window but alas all there was were busy streets and a few people – teenagers, mostly.

He heard a sound like footsteps near Dawn’s door, as if she were preparing to leave again. The sounds were too small and scuffling to be anything other than a small child, so he got up and went upstairs to his room. He didn’t want to be on the stairs if she had to walk down them. He did not want to be near her at all.

He went upstairs and closed his door, but not before noticing Dawn had left her drink untouched besides her door.

He picked up the cup and brought it inside and made a note of giving back to the Hudsons the next time he saw them.

L I F E went on for a few weeks, and Kane almost forgot about Dawn. If he never saw her again and stopped receiving the checks under the name ‘Queen’ he’d probably have forgotten her entirely and put the room back up for rent. Odd how low their electricity and water bill was. Must be a low-income family, he figured. No wonder the poor girl has issues.

He saw her again, for the first time, as he was coming home. She was standing in the hallway by her door, looking out through one of the skylights. Her skin was white as snow as if she coated it in some kind of makeup or paint. He remembered how kids started wearing white face-paint and dying their hair, maybe thirty years ago or so. Were her parents paying that little attention to her? Or was she all the more rebellious because they were over-protective? Either scenario was likely.

It was sunset, now. Stars were beginning to peek through from the dark blue, the faintest color of golden-red fading from the sun. Soon the city lights would be at full force and the stars would be gone.

Dawn simply stood staring up at the sky, the shaft of light shining directly on her. He thought it strange before figuring she had positioned herself just under that light so that she might stare upwards.

“Gonna wish upon a star?” He asked. He was trying to get her to entertain some whimsy. Maybe talk about the Disney movies with the singing cricket. He was willing her to be more like a normal child. More for himself than for her.

“Useless.” She said, not taking her smooth-skinned, white face away from the skylight. She smiled and her eyes didn’t change, so it looked as if the smile were forced.

“Beg pardon?”

“It would be useless.” She said. “Stars are dead. All of them. They exhausted their souls long before the first man was born, and it’s just taken them millenia for their light to reach us. It wouldn’t matter if anyone ever wished upon a star. There’s no star to hear it, anyway.”

She turned to him and, after years of having to shell out five hundred dollars annually to get rid of cockroaches, suddenly understood how they felt when they were scurrying across counters from plate-to-plate, begging whatever God roaches had that they would not be mangled into oblivion.

“I don’t believe that.” He said.

“It doesn’t matter if you don’t believe it. It’s true. Ignoring something won’t send it away. But of course, telling you or anyone else that doesn’t stop you from ignoring it. It never does.”

She kept the smile on. He wished, so badly, that it were still the good old days when you could smack a kid in the mouth and get away with it. That’d bring her out of it, he knew it. That’d send her home, crying. She’d stop this whole charade and finally leave him alone. Not that it would have gone over perfectly well in the good old days, either, but it would have gone over, and that was all that mattered.

“Don’t you think you should be a-headin’ to bed now, Dawn? It’s a weeknight, don’t you have school tomorrow?”

She giggled and it was sounded like someone had poured gasoline in a C.D. player. A scratched-up recording of a laugh played on a sixty-year-old phonograph.

“No.”

There should’ve been more following that explanation. Just based on decades and decades of more-or-less successful interaction with other humans, Kane knew such a statement usually preceded some kind of explanation, in this case probably about home-schooling. It had to be about home-schooling. That was it. That would explain it. Crazy parents keeping their kid crazy. Crazy parents teaching their kid some debased, aberrant version of religion and science and ethics and using it to make her……whatever the hell Dawn was.

“Well don’t you have to go to School?” He asked. He hoped it would lead her on.

“No. I already learned everything I need to know.”

He didn’t know how to respond, so he just asked her what she did now that she knew everything she’d ever need to know. His heart sped up when his tone of condescension missed its mark and she simply went on, undaunted.

“I do what I need to survive.”

Definitely a financially struggling family.

“And that is?” He wouldn’t have normally asked.

“I make things. Dolls, toys, things that make children happy for no good reason.”

“And why is that? You sell them, or…”

She laughed at him again and this time he felt like she was the insect. He backed away, slowly, towards his room, as she continued to lean besides the wall, under the window. If she moved towards him, he might just snap and scream at her to back off. If she came any closer than that, he didn’t wanna think about what he’d do. What she’d do.

“I make things because I must, Kane. I do what I need to in order to get on. It’s just the way things are.”

“What do your parents do?” He asked.

She slid her lips over her straight, uniform teeth.

“What they have to.”

“Yes, well, I have to get to bed. Church tomorrow and I don’t wanna miss –”

She laughed, long and high and loud. It was like he’d told the most depraved and diabolical joke ever conceived and used it on Rosemary’s Baby.

“Church?” She said. “Why would you ever want to go to Church?” She said.

He grumbled. He knew there were people nowadays who didn’t go to Church. He knew there were people who didn’t believe in God. But he didn’t think they could get to them so young.

“What is the world coming to…” he said, under his breath.

“It’s coming to terms with itself, I think.” She said.

“I don’t think any world where people don’t believe in God is coming to anything but an end.” He said. He said it as if he were giving her an order. Stern. Unyielding. If he were a parent, he’d have made a strict one.

“And why is that, Mister Kane?”

“Goodbye, Miss Dawn. I can’t wait until I finally meet your parents. I have all sorts of questions to ask them. If they ever feel like shirking their bills, by all means, tell them to do so. It’d give me a reason to kick you out and never have to deal with – whatever’s happing here – ever again.”

He turned around, for his door. But it seemed she would not let him go.

“Mister Kane? There’s just one minor thing I must correct you on. I do this for your benefit, you understand.”

He turned back to her, not trying to hide the loathing in his eyes.  

“There is no god. At least – not as you would understand the concept. Anything like the concept you name ‘god’ is as imaginary as any fairy or demon.”

“And who told you that, dare I ask?”

She looked aside, as if thinking. But it didn’t look like thinking. Something was going on behind her eyes, but it didn’t look like thinking. Not as he understood the concept, to use her infuriatingly pretentious wording. He didn’t wanna know what went on behind those eyes, and tried to make himself feel sorry for her, so he wouldn’t be so full of fury. He realized he was clenching his doorknob, his knuckles white and his palms sweating.

“There are…” She looked back at him and he suddenly wished she’d go back to her substitute for contemplation.  

“Things,” she suddenly finished. Her eyes flicked away and then back. “There are things that might be compared to Gods, if only Gods were real. But you wouldn’t understand. Nobody does. I’m not even sure if anybody wants to. Though I do try to figure it out, Mister Kane. I promise you that.”

“What am I to you?” he asked her, wiping his brow. “Why do you have to keep prodding at me, insulting me, skulking around here like a damned dog when I let your parents live here and fill your head with whatever sick nonsense they’re brainwashing you with?”

“What are you to me?” She asked without expression. “I believe that may be the most interesting thing you’ve asked of me, Mister Kane. I applaud you for the effort. Such a question must have been quite the cerebral strain on you.”

“So answer it, if you’re so damn bright. What am I to you?”

“A doll.” She said.

She turned around and opened the door to her apartment, which was still dark as a medieval monastery.

He went over and looked in through the peep-hole of her door, but saw only blackness.

He went back to his room and locked and bolted his door, and tried to read the newspaper until he finally became exhausted from the effort and passed out.

In his sleep he dreamt he heard tiny footsteps going through the hallways. He heard tiny knocks and was afraid to answer. It was one of those dreams when you could sense something terrible and unimaginable coming, and you knew you could only put it off for so long. When Kane finally looked through the peep-hole of his door he saw nobody staring at him. Only dolls. More than he could count. They filled his field of vision. Like an infestation. Like a Plague.

They were all staring at him.

He awoke and went to the little glass hole in his door and saw nothing. No Dawn. No people. Nothing.

He went back to sleep and did not dream. 

A  few days went by. When he left for to go shopping one Friday he saw her outside, walking down the street, still wearing that thin dress in the cold winds. He thought he’d bring it up if she began a conversation with him, but she said nothing to him. Good.

When he returned, she was not there, but somebody he’d never seen before was.

She looked like a normal woman, off the street somewhere. Wearing a business suit of all things, her dark red hair tied in a bun and a flaring red tie the only object of true color on her person. She had weary eyes behind glasses, as he did, thick blue-black bags and her skin pasty. Maybe forty or so.

“Ma’am?” He asked, and her head whipped towards him so quickly and with such a strange expression that he actually jumped back. If not for the railing there, by the staircase, he would’ve fallen to the second floor.

“Yes?” She asked, after a long silence. Her skin glistened with sweat and it looked almost like she’d been gnawing her lower lip, as it glistened a harsher pink than the rest of them. He noticed the smell and looked to her underarms, where wet patches had been forming.

“Um, may I ask…”

She looked like she was in great pain. As if she were being forced to smile with a cattle-prod being jabbed into her back.

“May I…may I ask why……why you’re here?”

“I’m here to visit this little girl’s family!” She said, speaking so fast it was hard to understand. It sounded almost like she wanted to scream.

“You a friend of theirs?” Kane asked. He didn’t know how he looked, as he felt that it didn’t matter to this woman if he weren’t giving the socially appropriate facial expressions.

She continued to stare at him with a look as if she were begging him for help. Her forehead was wrinkled and her eyes were wide, bright under the fluorescent lights and with the same look that must be in a deer’s eyes before the car shatters its skeleton and spills its intestines all over the pavement. She was sweating and he could see her chest expanding and contracting rapidly, though her swift asthmatic breaths were only just audible.

“Uh, ma’am, are you…”

Dawn emerged. She was wearing the same dress as the first time he’d seen her. She stood with her hands behind her back, the archetypal ‘good-girl’ pose Shirley Temple struck in so many childhood films his parents had dragged him to. He had half a mind to ask if she were hiding something behind her back. A stolen toy, or something.

But she didn’t look it. Her face was still wide-eyed, all smiles and (presumably) thoughts of animal crackers in soup.

“Miss Hess, right this way! There’s just so much I want to show you, and so little time!”

She had flicked her hand towards her room and it looked discolored. Blue or black or grey-green, some color like that. Had she been painting something?

Miss Hess, as her name apparently was, shot one last look at Kane, another one of those glances. He could hear her breathing this time. Rapid, gasping, like she was suffocating or having her lungs tightened.

“Uh, Miss……Hess, was it? Are you alright? You seem like you’re having trouble with something, there…”

“Miss Hess has a heart condition,” Dawn said for her. “And she needs to lay down, right away. She’ll be meeting my parents very shortly. Coffee, Cake, lots of fun! You’re welcome to join us, if you want to.”

He turned her down immediately and walked swiftly back to his own apartment, where he slammed the door shut, pulled over one of his kitchen chairs and began brewing coffee for tonight. He sat besides his door and looked out the peephole every four minutes or so, waiting for Miss Hess or Dawn to come out.

Neither of them did.

By the time he finally fell asleep it was ten in the morning of the next day. He passed out for twelve hours on his futon and did not get up from bed for four hours after that. He had watched whatever was least offensive on television, though he absorbed none of it. He let the light from the television set fill his room with blue and pretended he wasn’t listening for tapping at his door. What was that old poem? ‘Suddenly, I heard a tapping; as of someone, gently rapping; rapping at my Chamber Door. ‘Till the wind, I muttered – that it is, and nothing more.’

Poe? Frost? Silverstein? Didn’t matter now. He had tried not thinking about her. Either of them. He had tried to convince himself it had been a dream. There hadn’t been a panicked woman there. There hadn’t been a woman at all.

He was convinced only for a little while. In the mud between the sands of consciousness and the ocean of dreams he did not think of Dawn at all. She had never entered his life. She had never even left his nightmares. It was all a fantasy, something vanished now; lost to where dreams are born and die.

A R O U N D four days went by, and still no sign of the woman. Or of Dawn. He never saw either of them flee after that. At the end of the fourth day, he could stand it no longer and decided to call the police.

Work had only become worse. Before he left he would look out through the door and hope to God, who he still fervently believed in, that she was not there. At least once he had a brief but crystal-clear vision of her standing there, staring right back at him.

He dreaded coming home. He dreaded seeing her there, up on the balcony of his floor above the stairway, kicking her legs and maybe whistling or humming a tune, her eyes bright with that look that seems to linger in every snake’s eyes, every insect’s, every manniquin’s. That unreadable, unfeeling, alien look that glitters with something not human. He hated her, despised her with every cell of his body. He would sweat and grind his teeth when she crossed his mind, as if he were thinking of a spider in her place, creeping in and out at all hours of the night, maybe even into his apartment, while he slept – while he was vulnerable.

He got home and paced so furiously he thought the creaking might elicit even more complaints from the people downstairs. When they rang his doorbell, it seemed to confirm his suspicions.

The Hudsons, both of them, were outside his door. He checked through the peep-hole and then unbolted the door, and then he looked through the door again to make sure that it was really them, really the Hudsons. Then he unlocked his door and invited them in for Coffee, which they immediately accepted. Missus Hudson, a hawky woman with terrible posture, glassy eyes and a nervous twitch, had done a double-take at Dawn’s door before entering.

“Weird little girl,” he said as she looked over there. He anticipated it but it slipped out, like a cough or a sneeze.

“Well, um, actually,” Mister Hudson said, “that’s why we’re here.”

“Really?” he said as he closed the door, hoping that little ghost was nowhere within earshot. He pulled up a chair and sat down on it backwards, a habit he developed in Grade School and which his parents loathed. He’d never been able to grow out of it, either way.

“Tell me about it,” he said. “And have some Coffee, help yourself.” He took his cup from the table and finished it off.

“Well, it’s just that…..” Missus Hudson started. “It’s just that.......” it seemed that the sentence she was trying to make kept slipping away from her like a freshly caught Salmon.

“What my wife is trying to say,” Mister Hudson said after applying milk and sugar to his Coffee, “is that we saw her doing something unusual with some strangers, outside as we were coming home. She had tried doing the same thing with us, as it happened, and it struck me as very peculiar behavior, particularly for a girl of her size.” He took a long gulp of Coffee.

“And age, presumably.” He finished, looking at Kane as if he had just dragged a rock twice his weight up a hill for days on end. His eyes, sharp, dark blue, were bloodshot and desperate. Like a starving dog.

Everyone around me seems to be dying, Kane thought to himself. And he recalled what he saw shortly after Dawn moved in. How she continued to try and play up the sweetness, like she didn’t know how little girls were supposed to act. Like a bad actress simply reciting the same lines over and over again, in a panic.

“Go on.” He said immediately.

“Well, it’s just that she – ” he hoped she held on to the rest of the sentence this time. “When she spoke to me, she wouldn’t tell me anything unless I looked into her eyes.”

He laughed a little. “If I hadn’t met her before you said that I’d probably think your were crazy.”

“But it’s her, right?” Mister Hudson said. “This little girl?”

“When you say it’s her, Hudson,” he said, “what does ‘it’ mean, exactly?” He was asking everyone in the room, including himself.

“Her affect!” Missus Hudson said. “The way she speaks, the way she moves, it’s all just wrong!” She slammed the table so hard the silverware shook and a little coffee spilled from her cup. She had raised the pitch of her voice near the end of what she said, like a little girl begging for a toy. He wished Dawn were here to take notes.

“I’m not crazy, am I?” She asked, exasperated.

There was a period of silence as Mister Hudson looked to Kane, and Kane looked at him between shooting his eyes to other locales. His shoes, his grandfather clock, his laundry hamper. Anything to divert Mister Hudson’s stare.

“So I’m thinking she must have weird parents,” Kane said, trying to keep his tenants. 

“When they moved in it was just a guy, but it seems I – I just don’t remember him that well. He moved in a long time ago, a few months or so, and then I just – forgot about him.”

“You didn’t see him that often, did you?” Mister Hudson asked.

“No,” Kane said. “No, I didn’t think – ”

“We never see anyone either.” She said. “We never see anyone go in, or out, it’s just…it’s always her. Dawn. I’m at home all day, and never once have I seen the inside of that apartment. It’s just not right, Kane!”

“Well,” Kane said, “she hasn’t done anything illegal, as far as I can tell. And though I think otherwise, whatever her parents are teaching her isn’t illegal, either.”

“Though it damn well should be!” She said. Her husband nodded, took a drink and looked to Kane.

“My sentiments exactly.”

Kane nodded.

“Yeah. Yeah, I know what you mean.” He sighed, heavily, his age having waged war on his lungs for decades and continuing without any sign of stopping.

“Well,” he said, picking his head up and scratching what little hair he had left, “what can I do about it? I mean, she pays her rent – I mean, her parents do – somebody named ‘Queen’, and the checks don’t bounce. My job is as a Landlord and I can’t well kick people out just because I don’t like their personal habits. Her parents or uncle or whoever would probably sue me for religious defamation or some bullshit like that. It’s beyond my power, and I’m sorry for that.”

Hudson sighed.

“Because I would really like to kick her out, too.”

He hoped for a laugh. He got a sympathetic smile from Missus Hudson, which he knew from experience was probably forced.

“Well, actually, there may be something to get rid of her on.” He said. “Have you seen the way she speaks to strangers? The way she tries to, well…”

“Yes.” He said. More because he didn’t want him to finish the sentence than that he wanted to answer him. “I saw a woman, outside her door, a few days ago. She said she was there to meet Dawn’s parents. She……”

“She looked like she was being forced to do it, right?” Missus Hudson said. “Like she was panicking and couldn’t get away, right?”

“Honey, calm down,” Mister Hudson said, going over to her. He held her around the shoulders and tried to soothe her, as one would a frightened animal.

Kane had no idea what to do anymore.

“This sort of thing hasn’t happened to me before. I’ve had tenants who were addicts, tenants who wrote on the walls, even runaway teenagers together in big groups – I couldn’t find their parents or even who they were until the Cops finally showed up for three of ‘em and wound up taking the other two with ‘em. It’s hard to keep track of everything, especially in a building this big. I go through so many potential renters in a week or a month that I just can’t recall every single detail of everything.”

“Well, if it isn’t obvious, all of us clearly have a problem.” Mister Hudson stated the obvious, as was the standard behavior of people in a unique and unprecedented situation. “And we want you to take care of it, Kane.”  

He shook his head. He wouldn’t admit to them he was too frightened to go over there and just knock on the door.

“I’ll have something done. I promise.”

“That seems good, Kane. Tell us how everything goes, please. We’ll be anxious to know.”

Hudson got up and so did his wife and after inane and useless small talk they went to the door. It was Missus Hudson who’d have the last word.

“I hope you find some way to evict that creeping little thing,” she said.

Kane and Hudson only looked at each other and both could see the other wished that Dawn had never been allowed to move in.

“P O L I C E?” he said. “Yes, I, um…need to report what I believe is an instance of child abuse. I’m a Landlord, and there seems to be somethin’ goin’ on with the little girl who lives across from me. Well, it’s just, in the way she acts, she…”

This was the hard part. He’d hit on the only explanation for her behavior. Evil, super-strict parents who wouldn’t allow her any way out of strange dress, frighteningly adult behavior. Wouldn’t let her go to school. And so she lashed out with strange statements, ones made stranger by the advanced vocabulary her parents must’ve forced on her.

“No, no physical marks or anything,” he replied to the person on the other end, “but she wears very long, fancy dresses. I think they might be to hide markings or scratches. And the way she talks, she talks like she’s been readin’ a whole bunch of Encyclopedias, memorizing ‘em…”

There were no lights on in his apartment and he was holding the phone far away from the door, because he did not want her to hear him.

“Yeah, I thought home-schoolin’ at first, too, but there’s some other things she’s been sayin’.”

He looked over at the T.V. and unmuted it. Used it like white-noise, to drown out his speech in case anyone was listening.

“What does she say, exactly?” He asked. “Oh, where to begin! Stuff like ‘there’s no god’ and all kinds of – just stuff no little girl would say, stuff about how stars are all dead and gone, it just…yeah, I know, I know, kids are weird nowadays, but it just seems so wrong.”

He slumped back in a chair after having paced as far back and forth as the telephone cord would allow him.

“You’ll send somebody over? Good. Thanks. How’s that? It’s Apartment 403. Yes. Yes, I’ll get back to you if anything new happens. Thank you.”

He hung up and had a cup of coffee. He still couldn’t sleep. He would lie down and try and fail miserably, too jittery to stay still. Like a child trying to sleep the night before a trip to Disneyworld.

He would go to check out the hole of his door to see if anything new had come about. Anything interesting, like, say, Cops showing up to Dawn’s door.

He didn’t prop his chair up by the door, like he did last time. No, just went over to look every here and there. Mister Kane kept waiting, pacing and trying to watch the news. For short periods of time he could focus on tidbits of tragedies and sufferings of people he’d never meet, but it was all as trivial to him as it was to everyone else watching.

He had actually almost dozed off when he heard the telltale sounds of people – big people, or determined ones, judging by the sounds of their stomping footsteps – coming up to his floor.

He rushed to his door and looked through, suddenly embarrassed by how eager he was to see a child – if even a strange one – removed from his building like a pest.

As he saw the two huge, imposing cops – one old enough to look like he’d seen worse than whatever was over there, if that was possible – stand in front of the door to apartment 403, he held his breath and bit his lip.

The door opened, though he couldn’t see Dawn through the cop who’d answered the door.

No, he thought. He couldn’t see whichever one of Dawn’s parents answered the door. He cursed himself for being so damn stupid.

He saw them go in.

And then he waited.

A N D for a while he felt as if a problem had been solved. As such, he slept.

When he woke at sundown he went over, immediately, to see what had happened. To see if anyone was still in the apartment building. He thought first, however, he would go and visit the Hudsons. Asked if they’d seen anything interesting. Like, say, a man or woman hauled off in handcuffs – or, better, a little girl shuttled away to a Child Protective Services car. Yeah, that’s it, he thought. She’d be better off somewhere else. It wasn’t her fault. He wasn’t condoning the separation of a little girl from her parents, no. That’d be awful. Just awful. So he wouldn’t do it – he would, instead, hope that she had been transplanted to a better place. One where she might be taught how to properly act and behave normally, amongst other children and other little girls.

As he trotted on down to the Hudsons a terrible thought crossed his mind. It didn’t leave too much of a wound as he was preoccupied with scolding himself for being so irrational and fearful, but it lingered nonetheless.

What if he came across Dawn, before finding out what happened to her parents? He’d seen her go outside once. What if she came home from…wherever she went…and asked where her mommy and daddy were? It’d be strange to see her cold, scheming façade shattered into a million pieces. He didn’t pretend he wouldn’t feel a little joy, but he’d also feel some compassion, which, if not for this situation, would’ve seemed impossible.

All of his thoughts stopped short when he saw that the door to the Hudson apartment was open.

Wide open.

He went up to it, knocked on it lightly. Then louder.

“Hello? Mister Hudson? Miss? Anyone?”

He didn’t want to be rude, but it was his goddamn building anyways, so he just waltzed right in. He’d explain the door was open if, say, one of them walked out of the bathroom in a towel.

He went to the bathroom and knocked on the door. Touched the handle, gently, and opened it slowly.

Pitch black. He turned on a light and nobody was there.

He saw their bedroom door open and went over. He noticed the rug had been freshly vacuumed. As if only moments before, they had been here cleaning. The counters were clean as well. Cleaner than when he’d allowed them the apartment. He made a mental note of asking Missus Hudson, if he ever saw her again, what kind of countertop wash she used.

The bed was unmade. The mirrors on the wall reflected nothing – only him.

He opened the blinds by the patio and saw there was only the patio out there. Some potted plants.

It was like they’d been swept up and away while they were sleeping.

He went to their fridge and poured himself a tall glass of whiskey. He sat down at one of their bar-stools, which looked brand-new, and slumped over his drink like an alcoholic at the end of the bar. He stared at the whiskey for a while, and then he downed with all at once with a sickened grimace like he’d just gargled bleach. He hadn’t had a drink in decades, as per his doctor’s orders. He thought this might be a funny story to tell him. Maybe he’d just leave it at ‘I needed to calm my nerves’ and hope he got off with one of those disapproving stares that doctors use with old folks. Maybe after this he’d just punch him square in the jaw. He’d deserve it, felt like.

He looked at their kitchen clock and saw it was getting later. The sun was already down and now it was getting cold. Nobody here to turn the heat up.

He took the glass to the sink and washed it, on the off chance they came back. He’d have to cook up some explanation about checking the heat or something, if they came back.

He took a different glass and poured himself some water, which he drank in one gulp as well. Putting it back in the sink he turned and when he did so he saw something walk straight through the hall, not noticing the open door.

It was a short, white something in an ethereal dress that simply walked, purposefully, across the hall, right in front of him. He heard the door to outside swing open and shut, swiftly, like whoever was leaving had somewhere important to get to.

He walked out, slowly, into the hallway, where he stood between the door outside and the stairs. He looked from one side to the other like he was about to cross the street and thought, dumbly, that if he had been just a few seconds quicker in what he had done, he would’ve crossed her path.

He went up to his apartment where he got his keys and got ready to open the door of Apartment 403. He didn’t know when she’d be back. He had half a mind to lock the door and leave her out there and hope she’d freeze to death in the night. He had half a mind to lock this door if it hadn’t already been locked and then realized she’d be out prowling the open hallways all day and night. He’d had half a mind to get to a bus and take it as far as it’d go and never come back.

He went over and opened the door, and he saw the inside was dark as ever.

Kane walked through the tiny hallway and into the main room, and to his surprise, he wasn’t scared of what was there. He was scared of what wasn’t there.

Which is to say, furniture. Chairs, couches, desks. No table in the dining room, small as it was. No dishes in the sink, in the drying rack. He walked over to the fridge and the sound of his soles pressing the tiles were the only thing he could hear. He opened the fridge, slowly and quietly, and saw that there was nothing in there. No light. When whoever took the apartment moved in, they hadn’t turned it on.

He closed the door and walked into the small hallway to the bathroom and the bedroom. When he opened the door to the bathroom it creaked like it was yawning in agony and he turned on the light to find there was nothing there but dust.

The toilet lid was closed. No shower curtains. There was dust in the bathtub. Nobody had used it in years, it seemed.

He left and figured he would open the bedroom and find some semblance of inhabitance there. Something recognizable. Maybe rags in the corner where somebody slept, maybe food scraps on the floor, maybe a new roach infestation beginning.

He made a point of knocking, even though he was sure nobody was there. He thought himself an idiot for a second as he put his hand on the doorknob, and then as he turned it he heard what sounded like the skittering of small animals across a hardwood floor.

“Hello?” he asked through the door. “Is someone in there? This is the Landlord, I need to…”

Squeaking. Like the sound of wheels in need of oiling. Squeaking and soft thrumming like some kind of bird or reptile. Kane shuddered and pressed himself against the door, waiting. His sweat slid down his face and down the wood of the door, and the doorknob felt slippery and seemed as if it would come away in his hand.

He gripped it with both hands and clenched his teeth and ,with all the force he could wrench from his weary and beaten soul, he thrust the door open and turned on the light.

He stood there and stared. He stood there and tried to put together what he saw.

It was a room of dolls. There was an old, ornate bookshelf-type structure with some chipped edges and cracking white paint, and on each shelf sat dolls or marionettes or mannequins of some kind.

He went up to one and picked it up. It was one of the older ones, from what he could tell, one of painted glass and actual hair in its head.

He touched its arms, gently moved them up and down, under a scrappy, old set of clothes that were probably new when he was a boy.

He placed it down and looked at another one. It was made of carved wood, whittled excellently by a skilled set of hands. There were old lines in the face, hollowed eyes and clothes like a cloth-sack placed over the torso. The hair was sparse and made of string, aged and yellowed. Apparently replacement string wasn’t on the dollmaker’s list of priorities.

He wanted to stop picking them up and just look with his eyes, as his mother had always told him to do. He thought back to how she’d scolded him for even looking at her antique dolls, and wondered how jealous she might be of what was apparently Dawn’s immense and invaluable collection.

He saw rag-dolls over in one corner, in a pile. It reminded him of a Rat-King, the name Germans used for the bodies of rats whose tails had become tangled together and caused them all to die.

He nudged it, gently, and saw that this was the case with them, too – their little fingerless hands stictched together in an eternal bond, each holding the other in a vice. The long row of dolls locked hand-in-hand had been coiled around each other, like a snake. Some had happy expressions, some had none. Some had button-eyes, some had no eyes or any features whatsoever. Others, still, had faces painted on either the head or on plastic disks, some of which were fading away with age.

Kane wondered what the world might look like through faded, painted eyes.

Three particular dolls – or rather, sets of dolls – struck him most intensely.

The two that were highest in the room were up on a shelf. They were those reborn dolls, the incredibly realistic ones usually given to expectant mothers. The skin like real skin and the eyes like real eyes, like specimens stuffed for a museum.

They were a boy and girl, both set down on a shelf next to each other. Embracing, as if lovers. The boy rested on his back and had his head turned outwards, towards the door – towards whoever would have entered this room – his dark, blue eyes both vacant and contemplative at the same time. The girl lay atop him, arms around him, her blonde, curly hair on the boy’s chest. The boy had a high, squarish head, black hair unkempt; the baby girl had freckles and chapped, dark lips.

He reached out, very slowly, like he was approaching a hostile animal, and touched the arm of the doll. Its skin felt soft and, strangest of all, warm.

But the heat was not on in this room. He knew that.

There were a pair of marionettes under them, two figures as big as a child. Their strings lay on the ground and their plywood handles set flat on the floor. They wore scraps of dark cloth, clothes that looked to be ripped from true clothes and stitched together to fit new bodies. Their mouths didn’t seem to be hinged as most marionettes he’d seen growing up – he would’ve touched them to make sure but he didn’t want to. Their eyes were big, glass and with lids. One had eyelashes that looked shiny and greasy.

The final doll that caught his attention was a porcelain one, sat in the corner against the wall.

 This doll wore what looked like a business suit, her – its – hair tied in a bun behind its head. Its surface was the same tone as porcelain, the smooth and artificial texture of Dawn’s skin. It wore glasses and behind those glasses were aged, exhausted eyes.

“Effigies,” he whispered. It sounded as if the whole world could hear him. “Effigies. Totems. Idols.”

“Graven images?”

He hadn’t said the last words. He spun around, screaming, and fell over on his side. He clutched his leg in agony and thought he may have dislodged his kneecap.

He didn’t even notice Dawn until she had begun moving forwards. Slowly and methodically.

He moved backwards on his elbows and hit the wall, pushing himself up, fumbling with his glasses and trying to get a better look at her. His attacker.

He saw her face through the lenses of his spectacles and saw her there, her eyes pale blue and yawning, yawning like great, hungry maws of some unknown abyss. He looked into her eyes and saw her pupils dilate, growing ever bigger, the blue irises becoming reflective rings under the bedroom light. He could not look away and it seemed as if he could hear something from inside her. A sound like the buzzing of a great, swollen swarm of insects; hundreds upon thousands upon millions surging in a cloud of eternal, all-devouring hunger.

With every inch of strength that remained in all his muscles, he clenched his eyes shut…and reached out to the thing in front of him with both his two hands.

He had seized upon it and with his eyes still tightly shut and his teeth digging into his tongue he took what he had in his hands and smashed it into the ground. He didn’t open his eyes but he felt what he thought was hair. Something fluttered against his palm and believed it was an eye. It felt like an ant, furiously trying to escape from his palm.

He kept slamming her head to the floor, lifting it up with great exertion and slamming it down like a box he was trying to break open. He heard her voice shrieking, shaking and becoming distorted, like a bad telephone call. What once was something like a little girl’s voice became scratchy and wavering like a malfunctioning tape recorder.

There was a sound like shattering glass. He opened his eyes as he felt something come away in his hand – her head opening up and things that weren’t warm or wet spilling against his hands. There was a sounded like rattling chains.

He stood up as best he could on his bad leg, holding his hip and leaning against the wall. He wiped sweat from his forehead and face with his forearm, his breath gurgling as he wheezed. His throat was sore. He arms were sore. He felt pain radiating up and down his back, cold chills running through him even as sweat began to seep from his body.

Beneath him was what remained of the thing he’d called Dawn. Her legs kicked, soles of cold, white feet rubbing against the floor. An arm gesticulated against the floor and the other, on her right side – the same side as her damaged face – moved only at the shoulder, fingers twitching and clawing against the hardwood floor.

The right side of its face had shattered open. A useless and unseeing eye had rolled across the floor with the sound of a marble, and through torn flesh that looked like torn paper he saw that its skull had been glass. No blood – only gears, falling out of her head, wires severed at the places where the skull had shattered open. This thing’s veins, cut off and no longer sending messages.

The eye on the left side of its face shot to each direction as if desperately seeking some way out. The pupil dilated and contracted, sometimes overwhelming the whole iris and sometimes wholly invisible. Its mouth twitched and it continued to open and close, spitting up what looked like mangled tape from out of a cassette. It sounded like what might play out of a radio that had been set on fire.

When it finally ceased to move, ‘dying’ of its injuries – if it had ever truly been what anyone might call alive – Kane sat down on the floor. He breathed heavily and deeply, and after that, after the silence and after he closed his eyes and looked no more at the abomination on the floor beside him, he wept.

That was why she spoke in such clipped, clear-cut fashion. That was why she said she made things – dolls. That was why she knew so much and yet so little. He wondered if there had been something inside her, perhaps some unspeakable counterpart to a soul, that had now fled somewhere else. Maybe there were still yet living parts inside the vessel. Organic parts, waiting to malfunction and shut down as their life-support systems ceased. Maybe if he took off its dress he would find a little girl’s heart encased in a bottle in its chest, a little girls bones in the limbs or spine.

He knew, at least, that it did not have a little girl’s mind.

When he opened his eyes, he looked away from the stagnant thing on the cold, hard floors.

And then he saw the dolls.

They had – those with blinking eyes – all opened them. Slowly, in unison, they had all turned to look at the invader. The enemy. Plastic parasites beholding a host.

It struck him then, all of it. Queen, the name on the papers – like an Ant Queen. A mother building for herself an Empire. Servants. Slaves.

There is no God, Mister Kane. She’d said. At least, not as you would understand it.

He could not get up as he saw the dolls and marionettes and graven, unnatural things begin to raise themselves.

Moving towards him.

They looked as if they would like to have a few words with the man who killed their God.