The door opened with a loud creaking sound and then a bump as it hit the wall. As I stood there staring into the room I wasn’t prepared for what I saw. It was a room just like the doll room, lined with shelves and a singular window on in the back of the room. But this one was filled with something else. They looked like dolls in nature, but were very different from what normal dolls look like. I recognized them right away. They were the same type of dolls as what the native peoples had. They were carved from wood, small in nature, some bigger than others, yet all roughly the same size. They were simple yet beautiful, being made with scraps of hand woven cloth and pieces of leather, and painted with bright colors.
As I stood staring at them I heard a voice excitedly say from behind me. “Those are Kachina dolls!”
I whipped around to see Deb standing there. In the dark she looked different, almost pale in the moonlight. “They’re what?” I asked.
“They’re Kachina dolls, my people made these ones long ago by the look of it.” She passed by me and entered into the room to get a closer look at them. “They were made in likeness of the spirits they embody. They can embody anything from an element to a cosmic being, an ancestor or the spirit of just about anything. You see my people believed that everything held a spirit, and they used these dolls to educate the children of the tribes of their heritage.”
“Wait, if they embody spirits does that mean….” Before I could finish my statement one of the dolls fell from its shelf.
Great, just great I thought. I survived the demon dolls in the other room and as far as I knew those didn’t embody actual spirits, or did they? Either way I didn’t want to find out if these did. I looked at the doll on the floor. Deb looked at the doll on the floor. We looked at each other, then at back at the doll. Then, almost as if I had jinxed the situation by just thinking about it, the doll began to roll back and forth, and then it stood upright and stayed still as a rock. Nothing in the room moved for half a second, then suddenly, all at once and the dolls began to one by one fall from their shelves, hitting the floor. We hopped over them as they did the exact same thing as the first doll had, and Deb moved closer to me. We both stood there gazing at the fallen dolls as they rolled, then sat up, then stayed still.
“What are they doing?” I whispered to Deb, afraid that if I spoke to loud they would attack us.
“I have no idea, but they don’t seem very happy.” She whisper spoke.
“Well what do we do? Do we put them back on the shelves and turn them to the wall like the other dolls?” I asked.
“I don’t think that will work, these aren’t like those dolls, those dolls are…….they’re just different.” She replied.
Right then as Deb finished speaking the dolls all began to wobble, waddle, and walk towards us slowly. We backed up and before I could figure out what to do next, Deb grabbed my hand and jerked me from the room, slamming and locking the door behind us as she grabbed the set of keys from my hand. She then ran down the hall, dragging me behind her as we went, and when we finally reached the bottom step of the grand staircase, we heard a loud banging from above and behind us. The dolls were trying to escape, and something told me they would be successful. We then ran from the hotel, locking those doors behind us as well, and out into the street.
Deb paused for a moment trying to figure out where the best place to go was. In the distance we saw a bright light coming from the post office. We saw it right about the same time and with and understanding look between us we ran for it. We stumbled up the stairs as we went, out of breath more from fear than anything, and tried to open the door. It was locked. We started banging on the door calling out to see if someone would open the door. The door then swung open, and I could see that it was Jasper on the other side.
“Hurry up and come in before they get you.” He whispered loudly. I didn’t think twice before skirting past him and into the brightly lit room.
Once inside I could see we weren’t the only ones there. There were dozens of people, all ranging from young to old, men and women alike. I recognized the librarian as one of the group. As soon as we were inside the door slammed shut behind us and in the not so far distance a crack of thunder pealed, the first of many to come on that night. I turned to look at Jasper who had walked from the door over to the window. Looking out, he stared for many minutes.
“What in the hell is going on?” I asked, now becoming even more fretful.
Jasper didn’t even turn from looking out the window and replied, “It’s the anniversary of the night the natives attacked the town. It happened on this night long ago.”
“What does that mean?” I asked as Deb stayed dead silent behind me.
“It means that she,” He said pointing a finger at Deb, “came to call on the spirits of her dead ancestors to attack us yet again. It happens every year like clockwork.”
I looked back at Deb, who was now looking at the floor trying not to make eye contact with any of us in the room. “You did what?” I questioned her. “I thought you said you come to pay homage to the dead in remembrance of the ones who were lost? Is that not true?”
“Yes it is!” She quickly responded. “I just…..also call on the spirits to rise from the dead to walk the earth once again.”
I was flabbergasted, the phone entity had tried to warn me of her and I didn’t listen. Why didn’t I listen? Now what lay in store for us all tonight? I assumed that the other people in the room were the other townspeople that I had yet to meet. Now we all were trapped in this dingy, small building with no weapons to speak of and an army of the dead and evil dolls coming for us. Just my luck, why had I taken this job again?
“If I had known how kind you were I would have never called upon them.” Deb added.
“Was that what you were doing this morning? Did you lie about that too and what do you mean, if you had known how kind I was? Why does that make a difference and what about all the other people here? Don’t they matter too?” I replied growing angry.
Deb fell silent and looked once again to the floor.
“It doesn’t matter now, what’s done is done; we need to prepare for their coming.” Jasper stated seriously.
“What can I do to help?” I asked as I straightened up and squared my jaw. If there was going to be a fight I was going to be ready.
Jasper stared at me for a long minute, and then he said, “Follow me. We’re all here now.”
With that he walked to the back of the room in a few short strides, and grabbed the end of the bed that sat in the corner of the room.
“Help me move this.” He grunted as he attempted to move it on his own. I hurried over and grabbed the other end. Together we pushed it aside revealing a hidden trap door in the floor. Once the bed was fully pushed aside he commanded, “Everyone inside, hurry!”
Everyone began, one at a time, to pile inside. I was one of the last to go in, with only Deb and Jasper behind me. Once inside Jasper followed Deb down, and he closed the door shut and locked it behind him. Now we were in complete and utter darkness. I could hear Jasper feeling around in the dark for something, what I wasn’t sure. I hadn’t seen anything when I first dropped down but I wasn’t really looking though. At last he found what he was looking for. The familiar sound of a match being struck against the wood of the ladder that led down into the hole filled the air along with a bright light. He lit a lamp that stood on the far end of the wall away from me, illuminating the entire space. There were two other lamps besides that were also lit and given to the people at the beginning and middle of the group of people that had come down with us. Deb, Jasper and I took up the rear.
The group began to move almost in tandem with each other, as if this had been rehearsed time and time again. We followed the group through the dark, wet, cavern until we came to a fork in the path.
“Turn right” Jasper yelled out quietly as he could.
As the group began to turn to the right and follow that path down I looked at Jasper and asked him, “What is this place?”
“After we drove the native people from the land, we knew there would probably be retribution at some point. So we tried to create a safe place away from the main town where we could hide and hold up a defense.” He replied.
“So you picked an underground cavern as your last stand?” Then I added. “Well…..at least you wouldn’t have to bury your dead.”
Jasper looked at me a little hurt, but quickly regained his composure. “What would you suggest as a safe place……the same land they lived and breathed and worked on for hundreds of years?”
I got the point. “But surely there was some place better, I mean you all had guns and ammo. Why didn’t you just defend yourselves from the hotel?”
“That was the original plan but the hotel got overrun. We had nowhere else to go but here.” He told me.
“Did it work?” I asked him “The underground caverns I mean.”
“They served their purpose, saved the lives of many of the townspeople. We stayed here for several days after the attack before we came up for air. We stored rations and bedding down here just in case they were ever needed, so we had plenty of canned food to last us a few days and warm places to sleep.” He replied as we came to another fork in the path where it split into three different ways.
Then almost on cue as if they had prepared for this a hundred times before, the group split in three smaller groups and each entered into one of the three tunnels. The front third of the group stayed straight and went into the middle tunnel, the middle of the group went to the far left, and the back of the group went into the far right tunnel. We traveled along for what seemed like half a mile before we came to a more open cavern that had been hewn to make it a larger space. In the room towards the back was the aforementioned food crates and bedding. The cavern was so large and damp, it gave me chills.
No sooner had we entered the underground room did we hear a loud banging and crashing noise echoing throughout the halls and tunnels. It appeared that they had gotten in and were coming our way. As I stood there gazing through the dark as if I had x-ray vision and could see them long before they appeared, I heard scuffling behind me and the shucking of a shotgun. I quickly whirled around to see Jasper holding out said shotgun to me.
“I don’t know how to use a gun; I’ve never used one in my life.” I told him, whispering lower than we previously had been.
“Doesn’t matter, look I’ll show you.” He said as he turned me around to face the mouth of the tunnel. Placing his arms over me and the gun in my hands, he showed me how to load, aim, and shoot the gun. “If you think it’s too far away to hit, just wait till it comes a little closer, this gun will knock a huge hole in whatever you’re shooting at.”
“What if I don’t want to shoot anyone? What if I can’t?” I asked as I pointed the gun at the floor.
“Either you shoot, or you die, simple as that.” He stated while walking away to help the others.
I stood there for a minute just staring at the gun; I didn’t want to use it. I didn’t want to end someone’s life. I didn’t want to fight…..but I also didn’t want to die that night in some underground tomb. I made the decision only to shoot if necessary, and only if there was no other way out. I turned to look behind me at the others, all preparing for a fight to the death. They had no qualms about fighting so why did I?
Soon we could hear a chanting in the distance, they had entered the tunnels. In a panic I ran to the back wall of the room, while the others preparing for the battle, stood in a line towards the middle of the room. Deb stood with me, a strange calm to her. She didn’t have a gun; I guessed the others hadn’t given her one.
“Stay with me and I’ll keep you safe.” She told me.
“Oh please, you’re the one that caused this to happen, why do you care now?” I said with a sarcastic tone in my voice.
“I didn’t realize the kind of person you were. You are different than all the others, I can’t quite put my finger on it, but you are nonetheless.” She answered. “I’m sorry; once this is over I’ll leave and never return. This won’t ever happen again.”
I stayed silent mulling her words over in my mind. Before I could speak to ask her the most obvious question, why had she done this to seemingly me specifically, we heard screams and yelling from down the way. With every second that passed we could hear them approaching closer and closer. I clutched the gun to my chest and tried to prepare for what was to come next.
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