Candle in the Attic Window(87)

“Close it!” They both shoved at the slab, knocking it back into place, sweating and panting, both. Yaya rubbed at her back, but her other hand still gripped the doll. She walked right out of the mausoleum and Marianne walked after her.

A woman stood there, with long, dark hair, pale skin, almond eyes. Marianne did not recognize her. She scratched at the head of a black dog with long fingernails. Her dress was too large, the flesh on her arms too loose. She looked as if she had been beautiful once. Her eyes were as yellow as the dog’s.

“Traitor,” she hissed at Yaya. “You always treated the Padilla family better than your own flesh and blood, Mama. Why are you helping that spoiled, fat, coddled child? Her worthless father should never have left Carmelita here. I begged him to take her, but he refused. He gave his new family everything and left us with nothing. Don’t you want your granddaughter to have what she should have?”

Clouds hid the moon as the wind began to whip against Marianne’s cheeks. The first drop of warm rain hissed down from the sky, hot as blood.

Yaya stepped forwards, blocking Marianne’s path. “Not this way. It is not right, you devil girl.” Yaya took a small knife out of her pocket.

The madwoman yelled and jumped at her mother, grabbing at the knife. The doll went tumbling. Metal fell onto the ground.

There was a hiss. Cockroaches, lizards and moths began to come out of cracks between the tombstones, pouring over the wall like a dark wave, even as the rain began to drench them.

Marianne ran for the knife, feeling around the slick earth for the blade. It pricked her hand as she grabbed for it through a pile of legs and wings, and biting, scratching mouths.

The two women struggled in front of her, swallowed up by the insect horde.

Marianne plucked the damp doll off the wet dirt and cut the ribbon that bound it around the waist. Dark locks of hair fell into the puddles and Marianne screamed. The insects blotted out the light.




Marianne scratched at her leg and blinked awake. The room was full of sunlight. It lit the mosquito net like a cathedral. She jumped out of bed.

She found her parents in the kitchen with her grandparents.

“Where’s Yaya?” She asked.

“We haven’t seen her, today, Marianne. Why?”

Marianne began to run down the street, past the church, towards the cemetery, remembering the way in the daylight.

Mourners had come to visit, bringing flowers, tidying their loved ones’ graves. They looked up at the tall, Canadian-born girl who raced into the cemetery towards the Padilla mausoleum.

She pulled at the door, but it was locked, shut tight with a padlock. She searched through the cemetery and nearly tripped on the body of the old woman, slumped between two concrete graves.

Clutched to Yaya’s chest was a black rag doll, a ribbon hanging off of it. A few scattered hairs were caught in the folds of the rags. Marianne tucked the doll in her waistband, beneath the loose top of her shirt.

Her parents found her there, sobbing beside the body. Someone ran to find the doctor and the police, but she knew there was nothing anyone could do.

“I want to go home, Mom, Dad.” She cried. “I don’t care about the beaches. Can we go home, please? We don’t have to stay for all nine days, do we?”

Her father looked pale. “No, let’s go home. It’s enough.”

Back at the house, her sorrow and guilt abated. Marianne re-tied the ribbon around the doll’s waist, looped a hair between it, and smiled. All fixed again. She spat a frog out of her mouth and packed it in her suitcase, just in case.






T. S. Bazelli is a writer from Vancouver, Canada. By day, she writes software manuals and by night, she writes speculative fiction.





Vodka Attack!





By Meddy Ligner





Early 1942, Somewhere on the Eastern Front





As he emerged abruptly from the enveloping fog, the building he was searching for finally appeared in front of him. It seemed to be an old factory with grey walls, half-destroyed and turned into a field hospital for the occasion. In the distance, he heard the cannon thunder. The cold and snow froze his bones, as he increased his pace to get away from them.

Once inside, Captain Piotr Simonov received a shock. Before him was a chaos of torn flesh, bloodstained linens, bits of torn skin. Chloroform and the sharp odour of medications mixed with sweat and grime, while moans and atrocious complaints resonated in the immense room. On camp beds, hundreds of eyes, wherein death danced, observed him. Somehow, the visitor slipped past the deformed bodies and finally collared a nurse who was wandering around the vicinity.

– Tell me, Comrade! Where can I find Dr. Yuri Iliev?

– At the end. In the operating theatre.

Simonov headed in the direction indicated and and finally arrived in front of an old office equipped as an operating room. On the heavy metal door hung a red sign, where was written, “Do not enter. Operation in progress.” It was necessary that he be patient a little longer before reuniting with his old friend Yuri.

While waiting, the officer leaned against the decrepit wall. There, an unfortunate who was missing one eye handed him a copy of the evening edition of The Red Star: the journal of the frontoviki – the soldiers on the Front who defended the Motherland against the Fascist hordes.