As soon as I started looking for teaching work, everyone started dropping hints about how much of a difference I could make overseas. Apparently, English classes are much sought-after in certain places. Maybe they just wanted to get rid of me!
The more rejection I received from prospective employers, the more "globe-trotting hero" seemed to call to me. Plus, let's face it, the English language isn't exactly the most complex one out there. Plenty of native speakers aren't even that familiar with it and you can get pretty far on disinterested grunts alone.
It was a local grocery store bag boy, of all people, who finally helped me make the decision. He had met someone from overseas and was planning to go back there in the Summer. Something about hearing the virtues of the place from a totally unbiased and unknown third party did more for me than the urging of my friends in the field.
Poland.
That's what I ended up settling on after a healthy amount of fear-based procrastination. This was a big step - a HUGE step - but I figured I could always come back, tail between my legs, if it was too difficult or I found myself seized by pangs of xenophobia.
There was a small, rural town by the name of Krasnystaw that seemed in need without being TOO needy, if you know what I mean. From the information I had seen, it looked like a place one could travel to without worry of waking up in a tub full of ice, sans Kidney.
Also, the name Krasnystaw made me think "Crazy-Straw".
I'm not going to say how much of an influence that had on my decision, so you can feel free to judge for yourself.
The plane ride was just as agonizingly dull as you'd expect. In a perfect world, that trip, that eternal, soul-crushing journey, would have been the only horror story I would have come away with.
The school I had contacted was remarkably difficult to find. The translation app on my phone took the abuse like a real champ, though, and after a few awkward and stilted conversations I was on the right track.
I had been told that the students I'd be working with already knew very basic English, which was good. Anything else would have been a deal-breaker since I only knew enough of the local language to ask for items and locations such as the bathroom or train station.
"It is good morning!" called the small, elderly woman on the steps of the school.
The look of the place was a real shock. I had been expecting some old-world structure cobbled together in the dark ages, but here stood a large, reasonably modern place of learning. Everything was immaculate, everything was perfect. If not for the subtle differences in architectural flavor, I could have easily been standing in front of a school from back home.
"Good morning!" I replied, waving to the woman as I climbed the stairs.
"English? Yes?" she took my hands in hers and looked into my eyes expectantly.
"Yes, English."
"Doskonaly! Doskonaly!"
I had no idea what she said, but she seemed happy and that was good. She lead me into the school, clutching my hand in hers the entire way. Her bony fingers and sharp nails made the experience quite unpleasant, but I already had the notion of being in the charge of "Grandmother" and felt it would be inappropriate to do anything by continue.
She lead me across the shining, freshly waxed checkerboard floor, past innumerable doorways through which I viewed hundreds of children in the process of starting their day.
Our walk ended at a plain wooden door. She shoved it open with her free hand, and dragged me through with the other. It appeared to be a teacher's lounge, with the usual sofa, coffee table, a small and outdated television, and so on.
A round little man about the same age as the woman was sitting on an old wooden chair. He puffed away on a pipe and did little to acknowledge us as we entered.
After a few moments, he looked up from his newspaper with a snort.
"Spójrz, jak mlody! Straszne!!" He clucked his tongue, shook his head, and I got the gist.
"Please," the old woman gestured to me in a grand flourish, "English!"
"You speak English?" I asked the portly little man.
"Enough, yes. More than her."
"Ah! Good, I thought I'd only have the students to talk to."
The round little man stood, shooed the woman out of the room like a stray cat, then offered me a seat. As I passed him, I noticed the shock of stark white hair atop his head, and the contrasting pitch black mustache on his face which gradually broomed out at either end. Dying his mustache and leaving the hair seemed an odd choice, but he seemed an odd man.
"I am Bernard. Here, sit."
I told him my name, we made our greetings, and he set about telling me how the school was run and what was or wasn't to be done. I had received general instruction on such matters, but Bernard provided many unwritten details.
He also liked to show off his expansive knowledge of English profanities. I got the sense that we now had our own "secret language" in which he could voice his strong opinions and foulest thoughts without fear of reprisal from other members of the staff.
"That woman," he eventually came back around to the lady who had shown me in, "Crazy like a bat, she is. Insane, clinically. She says I show her my bare ass, but I tell you it is not true. Mind you, if I had done it, this thing was well deserved of course."
Later on, after multiple attempts at exiting the conversation, I took a self-guided tour of the building. The children who noticed me hanging around at the door would all begin whispering to each other as if they'd spotted an alien invader. It always took the disapproving words of their teacher to end the gawking.
This is how I met Adrianna. She was a round-faced younger woman… still a bit older than me, but as close to my age as I had found. She wore her sandy brown hair up in a cluster of wild curls and had a pair of granny glasses that somehow worked for her. The matronly outfit she had on… not so much.
If the children noticed me, I didn't notice them. I watched Adrianna at the front of the class as she said God-knows-what to the kids and shot me an occasional glance and nervous smile.
She drew an envelope from her desk and showed it to the class. After a moment of very familiar "Oooh"s and "Ahhh"s from the kids, she started to open it. I guess the language of childish wonder is universal.
The teacher herself moved with the excitement of a child as she drew a small puppet out of the envelope and placed it on her finger.
She, along with the children, called out "Glupie Dudley!" in unison.
The whole thing was odd, and I couldn't help feeling like I was intruding on some sort of important ritual I didn't understand. Still, I knew I wanted to meet the woman, and if that meant hanging around like a perv until the bell rang… well, so be it.
Adrianna took out an old, beaten fedora and shook it around. Then, she drew a slip of paper out of it with her hand. The one with the silly-looking finger puppet in the dunce cap and yarn scarf.
"Adam!" She called out after reading the paper.
The entire class burst out laughing. It wasn't normal laughter… it was mean, obnoxious… chilling.
The only child who wasn't laughing sat toward the front of the class, near Adrianna. He seemed pale, sickly, and he just stared at the floor. She approached him and patted him on the head… whispered something to him I could understand even if I could hear it.
The boy, Adam, I guess, spoke a single word back to Adrianna. She turned to the rest of the class, stomped her foot hard, and let out this incredible, ear-splitting yell that silenced them all. I could scarcely believe such a commanding, sharp cry had come out of those strawberry lips. Honestly, it turned me on that much more.
The bell rang soon after, and the hallway was flooded with scrambling, snot-nosed little ones. I ducked into Adrianna's classroom… you know, for shelter!
Adam was still sitting at his desk. He was the only one left. Adrianna touched him on the shoulder, and he looked up. He got to his feet slowly, lifted what looked to be a heavy-ass backpack, and quietly walked out of the room with that crazy dunce puppet. Not once did he look in my direction.
"The English man." Adrianna studied me with a smile on her face and a flicker of skepticism in her eyes.
I didn't really consider myself an "Englishman"…
"Yes, the English man!"
"Is good. Welcome."
"So you speak English, too?"
"No."
She shook her head, the frame of curls dancing around her face. I knew what she meant. She didn't *really* speak English, like I didn't *really* speak Polish.
"So, if I said you were a seven who's probably a nine after work…" I smiled.
She shook her head again, slower this time and with a knitted brow. She had no idea what I was talking about. I smiled wider.
"Nice to meet you." I added.
A glimmer of understanding…
"Nice to meet you, my name is Adrianna!"
She reached out to shake my hand, as I'm sure she had done with a partner in some "Basic English" class in her childhood. I took her hand carefully and completed the scripted exchange.
Eager to show her how awesome I was, I suddenly shifted the topic of the conversation. I gestured over my shoulder, to the door.
"Adam?" I asked, looking concerned.
"Ah," She nodded, then let out a heavy sigh, "Different."
I gave her an empathetic look and nodded as well. She smiled sweetly, clearly seeing that I was a good man after all.
That was the bright spot my trip needed. For the rest of the day, I felt invincible. What I'd seen so far wasn't all that different from anywhere else I'd been.
As I left her room, I noticed that the halls were empty again. That is, except for Adam who was still making a slow shuffle to the main doors.
"Adam!" I called after him cheerily.
The boy turned around, holding up his hand with the dunce puppet now in place on his pointer finger.
I gave the boy a thumbs-up. Something I figured he would understand as a sign of approval… that I believed in him, or whatever. It seems silly now, but at the time I thought it was the right thing to do.
Adam smiled at me and raised his free hand in a similar thumbs-up motion. Then he slowly waved "bye" with the puppet-hand and turned away again.
Weeks passed without incident. I started teaching a couple days later, and my students behaved like saints. This was mostly because they thought all Americans carried guns, and I did little to dispel the myth. I talked to Adrianna whenever possible, and I avoided Bernard at all costs.
Speaking of Bernard, he struck me exactly three times. The first time, I smelled smoke around a supply closet and found him inside puffing away on something that was clearly not a pipe. I laughed at the sight, and received a quick swat in response.
"What are you? Secret Police? Get fucked." He took a long drag and slammed the door.
The second time, I was sitting under a large, dead oak tree in the schoolyard, eating lunch. Bernard stormed up to me, looked at the tree, looked at me, then to the tree again. He hauled me to my feet… a little fat old man hauled ME to my feet… and he slapped me right across the face.
The third time…
That requires some explanation.
Adrianna invited me to something called "Chmielaki". I had no idea what it was, where it was, or when it was, but I agreed to go. She rewarded me with a slightly devious smile that faded as quickly as it had appeared. I was confused, but wonderfully so.
Bernard explained that Chmielaki was a local festival celebrating the harvesting of hops. Beer. Lots of beer. There was beer everywhere, it was insane.
I tried to hook arms with Adrianna as we toured the festival, but she was remarkable at playing hard-to-get. This was two or three months into my stay, and I hadn't even seen an ankle.
There seemed to be no end to the beer stands, beer tents, kiosks, whatever you could fit into the town square. Anywhere there wasn't beer, there were toys. Wooden toys, mostly… cheap-looking compared to what I'd grown up with. There were no light-up eyes or kung-fu grips in this lot.
Adrianna drank like a bird… if that's even a phrase. What I'm saying is that she took one sip for every three or four gulps I knocked back. Maybe it was the frustration she was causing me, but in short order I was feeling pretty buzzed while she seemed in complete control.
Adrianna and I danced to music being tooted out by God-knows-who… dancers crowded around, just this swirling, blurry mess that made my eyes spin. I started out dancing with Adrianna, but after a while it was someone else. Then someone else. Then some guy. I knew I was losing control, but I'd gone past the point I could do anything about it.
When I finally gathered my wits - most of my wits, at least - I started searching the crowd for Adrianna. I pushed past people who were just as drunk as I was, gibbering at me in a language I didn't understand.
I nearly took a few spills as I made my way through the crowd. I passed by a toy kiosk and continued my search…
I stopped in my tracks and turned around.
There, on the kiosk, was row upon row of perfectly identical little finger puppets. There were at least a hundred "Glupie Dudley" figures… rumpled, poorly sewn, and all with heads turned looking directly at me.
This illicited the standard drunken response. I rubbed my eyes, shook my head a bit, and looked again.
Nothing but normal toys. Well… wooden marionettes, lumpy stuffed bears, awkward wooden race cars… as normal as you get at a backwoods Polish beer festival.
It wasn't until I left the boundaries of the party that I spotted Adrianna. She was standing at a tree line, talking to Bernard. Bernard looked as humorless and little and round as he usually did.
Adrianna, on the other hand, appeared to be crying. She had her hands clasped to her mouth, and her chest heaved.
Fearing the old hard-ass had said or done something awful to her, I quickly closed the distance between us and threw myself against Bernard. It wasn't a very well thought-out maneuver, exemplified by the fact he simply turned and let me fall to the ground.
As I got to my feet, Bernard said something and sent Adrianna away. It was at this point, when I was standing before the old man, that he slapped me for the third and final time.
"Idiot! Shit-Face!" He chided me with a fervor I'd not seen before.
"What the Hell's your problem, huh?" I got in his face. I was sick of him.
"A student is missing. One of Adrianna's student. How much disrespect from you?" Bernard regarded me with utter disgust.
I felt like I could've fallen over again. Not from the buzz I had going, but just from the realization I had been the asshole, here.
"I'm sorry," I gritted my teeth and tried to show how embarrassed I felt, "I had no way to know that. What happened? Who is it?"
"It is a boy called Adam. He is not to be left alone."
"Oh, shit. I know that kid."
Bernard didn't seem interested in who I had or hadn't met. In fact he seemed just as tired of me as I had been of him. He waved me away and started to walk off.
"Maybe I can help," I said, ever the optimist, "I was the last one to talk to him before he left school."
Barnard stopped, whirled around to face me, and stroked his mustache with a confused expression.
"This is not true." He said dismissively.
"No, really. He was last out of the building, and I called after him. Tried to get him to buck up a little. He smiled and waved."
Bernard stormed up to me again, like he had done beneath the dead oak, and for a moment I thought he was going to slap me for a fourth time.
Instead, his words did more than his hands could.
"Idiot! The boy is deaf."
I looked toward the dark, misty tree line. Anything to avoid the icy stare of Bernard's dull, yellowy eyes.
"Must be a different Adam, then."
"Yes, I do say it is."
"I meant the Adam with the puppet." I wiggled my finger in pantomime.
I met the old man's glance once again only to see nothing had changed. It was as if he had been furiously staring into my ear the entire time I'd looked away.
"You know," I continued to fill the awkward silence, "Gloopy Doopy or whatever the fuck."
Bernard's eyes softened. He swallowed hard and took a step backward, away from me. For a brief moment I felt the unthinking need to catch him before he fell flat on his ass.
"Glupie Dudley." He corrected me in a hushed tone. It sounded the same to me.
"The finger puppet. I'm talking about the Adam with the puppet. Adrianna chose a student, Adam, and gave it to him."
Once again, I found my hand clasped in the bony prison of an elderly person's fingers. Bernard hadn't said a word before seizing and pulling me back through the crowd from where I had just emerged. My questions went unanswered, as did my complaints.
At seemingly random intervals, Bernard stopped and tapped other men on the shoulder. His fierce stare was enough to make these men follow the two of us in close step. They were oddly different from each other… a strapping old farmer, a tall and willowy man who looked like was bordering on Albino, and a pair of what must've been brothers… two similar-looking men who appeared as if they'd worked with their hands for decades. Mechanics or construction workers, maybe…
Finally, I worked my hand free of Bernard's grip and demanded to know what was going on in the best way I could muster at the time.
"The fuck?!"
I looked around and noticed we had traveled back to the schoolyard. Bernard thrust his finger toward the dead oak and almost snarled at me.
"There are things you RESPECT," he started, "There are things you FEAR. There are things which are sent AWAY that you never allow to return!"
I looked at the other men who had joined our demented adventurer party. They all met my glance with the same humorless stare I had become accustomed to.
Bernard studied the front of the school. It was quite dark now, and the only thing illuminating it was moonlight.
"Dudley was a student."
"Adam, you mean."
Bernard took a deep, angry breath and began again.
"Dudley was a student in the 1800s. Slow, sickly. Weak body and weak mind. Still, his Mother insisted he learn like all other children. She wanted him to be normal, to be accepted. She wanted to make people write him letters. All over the world, people must write her boy letters."
Bernard took a few steps toward the school. I followed, basically because I was flanked by four large guys who were doing the same.
"The children mocked him. With hatred, this was. Beat him, stripped him, made their fun of him. The staff did not care, as they felt insulted to teach a student who could learn nothing."
We continued toward the doors. Bernard pointed toward the tree once again.
"One night, the children locked him away. After all others left, they brought him to the tree and hung him by the neck."
I winced and cast only the quickest look at the dead plant that now seemed more twisted and angular than I had ever noticed.
"They knock him with rocks, hit him with sticks, all this while he is dying. For a boy of weak will and poor health, he takes long to go… but they accomplish this."
Bernard pushed open the school doors. It seemed odd to me that they should be unlocked. I knew that he was scared, because his overconfident stride, his bold and unshakable demeanor, gave an unmistakable appearance of absolute terror.
"That can't be right," I said, my voice echoing in the nearly pitch black, empty hallway, "There's no way this place is that old."
Bernard stopped, and all at once I noticed the disquieting halt of our footsteps.
"This school is newer. For a long time, there was no one willing to rebuild… That school, the old school… after the boy was killed, it burned. Every child inside. No cause could be found."
Bernard turned to the others and shouted what sounded like orders. With that, they spread out and began looking into various doors.
"Stay by my side," Bernard put his hands on my shoulders, the only contact we had that didn't leave a mark, "We will find this boy, Adam, but you must know you will see and learn terrible things."
I could only nod, still not entirely sure what I was supposed to be doing.
Suddenly, there was the sound of a large blast. The two of us turned just in time to be blinded by the dying flash of a fireball. At its core, the unmistakable black silhouette of the burly farmer.
"The Science room…" I whispered.
The brothers rushed to the farmer's side, but within mere moments they were backing away from his motionless, smoldering corpse.
"Come." Bernard was off sprinting as I lagged behind him.
We rounded a corner and began searching classrooms. In an unspoken, simultaneous agreement, we had each picked a side of the hallway. I poked my head into several rooms, careful not to catch a face-full of flame. Bernard seem to be doing likewise, with just a sliver less caution than myself.
An unsettling male shriek echoed through the hall. The distance was undeterminable, and I looked to Bernard for some sign of what to do. He seemed to do the same with me. Again, without saying a word, we continued our search.
"Adam!" I finally called out, "Adam, you have to come out, now!"
He may have been deaf, sure, but that hadn't mattered the last time I saw him.
"Adam!" I called again.
I jumped at the feeling of leathery flesh moving across my lips. Bernard had placed his hand over my mouth, scaring me half to death.
"For God's sake, don't call out! The boy is not who is listening!"
We rounded another corner only to see the brothers at the far end, turning a corner of their own. Bernard shrugged at them, and they shrugged back. None of us had found anything to speak of.
Then, with a sudden groan, the entire building shuddered. My legs felt unsteady as the floor vibrated. Down the hall, Bernard and I could only watch as the ceiling above the brothers began to crumble and bend downward.
As soon as the two men looked upward, a great section of wide, flat stone smashed down upon them with the sound of breaking rock and sick, wet crunches. It looked impossible… to see two full-grown men one moment, then only a flat surface… but I had witnessed it with my own eyes.
Slowly, perversely, the section of ceiling scraped to the side, down that corner hallway the brothers had emerged from. As it moved across the floor, the span of rock left twin streaks of gruesome, bloody offal.
"Holy shit…" I mumbled, my eyes wide, "Fuck this…"
I started to take the route to the exit. Then I turned and looked at Bernard, now some feet away from me. He was standing still… resolute… his face was twisted up into a look of sheer panic mixed with a grimace that seemed to be begging me not to leave him alone.
"What do we even do? Do you know what to do?" I didn't approach him, didn't go back, but I also made no further move to leave him.
"Y-Yes…" He stammered, then slowly regained some of his composure, "Yes, I know. Of course I do, don't be a piss ant!"
Feeling cold, almost like I was already dead and had just come to the realization. I begrudgingly followed my racing heart rather than my swimming brain and rejoined the old man.
We made our way through the corridors of the building. We must have looked through a hundred doors, and I wasn't entirely sure we weren't going in circles. It wasn't until we reached the basement door that we knew where to find Adam… that bare metal door with children's drawings held to it with magnets…
"How could I have not noticed?" Bernard studied the drawings.
Each one was unique, drawn with different degrees of skill and colored with a variety of implements, but there was one common theme.
All the pictures, every last one of them, featured a little girl or little boy… self portraits of the children who had drawn them… and on each little head was a conical hat marked with a "D". A dunce cap.
Bernard flung the door open, nearly crushing me behind it. He was driven, now, more determined than ever. The inhuman nature of his drive was in fact what was now scaring me most of all.
"Down." He commanded.
The metal staircase gave off an awful clattering sound as our shoes beat against it. I knew that, even if there was no supernatural element involved, whatever was down below could at least hear us coming.
When we reached the damp, dank basement floor, Bernard began furiously throwing and moving aside boxes. They were all marked with words that must've translated to "office" or "decorations".
Finally, Bernard uncovered what he had been looking for.
There was a body laid out on the grungy, bare stone. Blood pooled around the corpse's head, and its face wore a sickening spider's web of knife wounds. I could tell by the build, tall and lanky, that it was the albino we had come in with.
More disturbing still, there was Adam. He sat, pale, completely naked, on the floor just behind the body.
The boy's arm was covered in ash that looked like some black rash spilling down from the puppet. His eyes were pools of darkness, pupils dilated, and his mouth looked as if it had been filled with soot. Great dark smears strayed from his black lips, down his chin, tapering off at his bare chest.
"Adam…" Bernard scolded, following up in Polish.
I figured he must have been telling the boy it was time to put Dudley away.
On Adam's pointer finger, just where I had last seen it, Dudley shook his head "no". In the tiny puppet's misshapen hands rested a single bloody eyeball. It was pinkish, and clearly belonged to the dead man on the floor.
In Adam's hand, just below the extended puppet, was a similarly blood-drenched pair of scissors.
There was no more response to Bernard's words. The boy just stared at us. The puppet raised the eyeball as best it could, then thrust the orb to the floor where it landed with a barely audible, yet vomit-inducing splat.
Then, with a sweeping motion, Dudley picked the eye back up again… and slowly, methodically, once again threw it to the ground with the same result.
It was attempting to bounce the disembodied eye.
Bernard suddenly let out a scream and rushed the boy. I followed suit after a full second of disbelief, but stopped short of where Adam sat. Surely something like this couldn't be that simple.
Within moments, Bernard was on top of the child, desperately trying to work the puppet free from his finger. Adam let out a feral howl that could only come from someone who couldn't hear himself scream.
"The scissors!" Bernard shouted, unable to work the small hand free of the little cloth person, "Give me the scissors!"
I looked down at my feet. The blood-red shears had slid to the tip of my shoe. Thinking quickly, or not thinking at all, I retrieved the blades and rushed them to Bernard's hand.
As Adam thrashed, the walls around us began to shake. I looked at the ceiling… my God, it wasn't the ceiling, it was the floor… and thought about the entire building collapsing down upon us. Bernard, the boy, and me… entombed beneath the crumbled stone of a school no one in their right mind would ever go near again.
Bernard took a quick, wild swipe at Dudley, taking off the tip of its dunce cap. As the blades closed on it, an implausible spray of crimson spurted from within. The slice had been inches away from the boy's fingertip, and yet there was the blood.
Again, Bernard struck, cutting into the puppet's hand which issued a similar geyser of red.
Adam was thrashing like never before, screaming louder, it was as if the old man was cutting off his flesh, bit by bit. I had absolutely no doubt that the pain of these injuries was washing over the boy.
The building groaned again, and I thought about fleeing for the second time. Clearly, this was not something either of us could handle.
Before I could call to Bernard, to tell him we had to leave, there was a metallic rattle just above me. As immediately as I heard the sound, a large steel pipe broke free from the ceiling. Its end landed with pin-point accuracy across Bernard's skull, nearly splitting it open. It resembled a very large, very wrong mousetrap claiming its victim.
Bernard crumpled to the ground with what sounded like a sigh.
Adam continued to thrash on the floor violently. He was holding his wrist… the puppet's wrist… with his free hand. It was as if the child was barely staying conscious through the agony.
It was this moment that I gathered up everything within me… any part of me that was truly a MAN… and moved toward the child.
Bernard had rolled aside through no means of his own. I did not descend upon the boy, but instead knelt beside him. I took such care and moved so slowly that you might have taken me for a nurse about to tend to a terminal patient.
The puppet's motionless, stark little face quickly adjusted itself to look at me.
I did not look away from its small, thread eyes as I took the yarn around its neck, it's noose, between my fingers.
I slid the yarn tighter… tighter… and as I did so, Adam choked and gasped, spitting out a haze of blackness.
Tighter… tighter… tighter still… I applied the pressure until I felt Dudley's head would pop clean off. As I did this, the walls shook more violently. Whole chunks of stone fell around me, but in this chaotic spectacle they all failed to meet the intended target of my brain pan.
Tighter…
Tighter…
When I could tighten the noose no more, I held it in place. Though the boy bit at my hands and wrists… though he whimpered and gasped and seemed to fight for his very life, I did not… let… go.
All at once, the two of them, Adam and Dudley, simultaneously went limp. Adam's head smacked against the floor, while Dudley simply flopped backward and appeared to take on the listless nature of any given toy.
Only when I was sure this was final… when the room stopped shaking and things ceased dropping around me… did I let the boy's hand fall to the floor as well.
I watched the child as he continued to breathe, though it was labored. Then, I rolled Bernard over to see if he was well and truly dead.
"Ha…" Bernard chuckled weakly, "Maybe you're no idiot after all, eh?"
"It's over now," I tried to console him, though now that I had a good look I could tell he would be dead within minutes, "I destroyed it. It's gone. Over."
"All for letters… all for a sickly boy…" Bernard closed his eyes.
His voice was weak, and growing weaker. I could barely hear him.
"All this for one child. All these deaths. All these dolls."
"Dolls?" I took a deep and sudden breath, "Dolls??"
"Of course," Bernard raised his hand in the air, "Hundreds… she made hundreds of them… all for letters… and they all come back eventually."
He pressed his hand to my cheek, and before it fell away, he added a final blood-chilling note.
"Now you know… and now you will take care of them."