Doll Face by Tim Curran

there.”
    He waved his arm to get Creep’s attention across the street and the glass instantly steamed like a mirror in a bathhouse.
    Got that covered, too, do you?
    “That door is still there,” he said.
    Soo-Lee nodded quickly again. If he said it, it must be true. She had been brought down to the level of simple child-like reasoning now. The fear owned her. She belonged to it.
    Lex figured the logical and rational thing to do was to walk right at the window where he knew the door had been and, hopefully, still was. Maybe his reasoning was shit, but it was time for the acid test.
    Then behind him, the sound of a spoon dropping.
    The sound of a stool creaking.
    I don’t want to see, I don’t want to fucking see this.
    Soo-Lee was stiff as a post. Her hand was chilled as if she had been handling an ice pack.
    His mouth dry as soot, Lex turned very slowly and looked upon what the diner wanted him to see. He nearly screamed. Soo-Lee certainly would have if her voice wasn’t gone and there was sufficient air in her lungs to propel it.
    The voodoo doll people were alive and moving.
    They weren’t doing anything menacing. No horror show creeping or any of that. They were simply going through the motions of being diners, imitating what they might have done in life. They were bringing sandwiches and spoons of soup and cups of coffee to their mouths in some kind of mockery of eating and drinking, something they were incapable of with their lips being stitched shut. One of them was even reading a newspaper and two others were face-to-face in an animated, yet silent, conversation. Cups rattled and forks were set down. Coffee was poured and chicken fried steak cut into. It was like some bizarre parody of the living condition. They were mimes and nothing more. It might have been darkly comic if it weren’t for how they looked and the very nature of this place.
    Silently, Lex and Soo-Lee watched them.
    It seemed there was very little else they could do.
    “I think we can go through that door whether it’s there or not,” Lex said. “C’mon, let’s try. It’s crazy, but if we believe it’s there, it just might be.”
    Soo-Lee was just beyond herself. It was obvious she didn’t know what to think about anything, but it was also obvious that she had absolute faith in him. He could see that much and it gave him a sort of strength.
    They turned together and reached out for the plate glass window, believing and yet not believing at all.
    Behind them…things went quiet.
    Shit.
    They turned and the voodoo doll diners had stopped what they were doing. The playacting was over, apparently. They were all completely frozen in place. Coffee cups were held in midair, same for spoons and forks. A guy in one of the booths held an uneaten hamburger to his mouth. When it fell from his fingers, he didn’t seem to notice.
    Lex didn’t like it.
    Something was about to happen.
    Something bad.
    And then, as if the diner knew he was expecting it, the voodoo doll people all slowly swiveled their heads until they were all staring out at Lex and Soo-Lee with those shiny button eyes. It was very unnerving.
    “Fuck this,” Lex said.
    He turned his back on them and went over to the plate glass windows. Reaching out with his hand, he pressed his fingertips to the window and saw them stop at the glass. Yet, even though he saw them stop, he felt the door that he could not see give an inch or two.
    There was a rustling and he saw that all the diners were on their feet now.
    In a group, they were coming.
    He chanced one more look behind him and, yes, they were indeed coming…except they were all on fire. Not just on fire, but melting like wax dummies as they blazed. Eyes steamed and bubbled, oozing from sockets. Noses and lips slid from faces. Faces became skulls glistening with dripping flesh wax. They all stood there as their skin superheated and dripped off in clots, revealing the bones beneath, hair flaming up like burning wigs.
    The stink was