Possess

“S-s-sorry.”
    “Hmm.” Monsignor waited until the salt was poured and Father Santos had returned the bowl to the counter before he turned to Bridget. “Now we are ready.”
    Bridget took a deep breath. Showtime.
    But something was off. With the painful exception of
a hundred soulless faces staring every direction, the shop
felt . . . normal. The air wasn’t charged with malevolence, not cold, not sharp. There was no telltale sense of dizziness, no room pitching back and forth like the deck of a ship. No popping in her ears as the air condensed around her. At the Fergusons’, at Mrs. Long’s, Bridget had felt like someone was watching her, not from behind, but from everywhere at once, as if the house itself had grown a million pairs of eyes. Now here she was in the creepiest place on earth, surrounded literally by a million pairs of eyes, and what did she feel?
    Nothing.
    “Are you sure there’s something here?” she asked, peeling off her bomber jacket. Far from being cold, the shop was pleasantly warm.
    “Yes,” Monsignor said patiently.
    Bridget ran her fingers across the wall of the shop. No voices, no grunts, no howls, no screams. “I just don’t hear anything.”
    Monsignor removed his stole from Father Santos’s bag. “Rule Number Four.”
    “Do not let your guard down,” Bridget said diligently.
    “Precisely.” Monsignor kissed the embroidered cross before draping the purple stole over his neck. “Watch.” He took his crucifix out of the bag and placed it on the counter.
    The mood changed in an instant. Pressure built in Bridget’s ears. She tensed her jaw, and her ears popped. The new energy continued to build, centered on the cross. The atmosphere turned bad, foul, and Bridget caught a whiff of that familiar tangy metallic scent.
    Out of the corner of her eye, Bridget saw a doll’s head spin.
    “Dammit,” she said under her breath.
    “Focus.”
    Another movement from her left sent her heart racing. This time she thought she saw a whole shelf of dolls tilt their heads toward her. They were staring at her now, a wall of dead glass eyes. She was pretty sure they hadn’t been a second ago.
    “Did you see that?” she whispered.
    “See what?” Father Santos asked. Seriously, did he need glasses?
    “Do not engage,” Monsignor said calmly, invoking Rule Number Three.
    Don’t engage the creepy dolls possessed by Satan who are now all staring at you. Just pretend they aren’t there.
    Bridget closed her eyes. Please don’t let a Chucky doll lunge at me with a freaking butcher’s knife. Please, please, please.
    What happened next was almost worse.
    “We have heard about you ,” squeaked a chorus of high-pitched voices.
    Bridget’s eyes flew open, and her heart leaped to her throat. Every doll in the shop was staring right at her.
    “We know who you are. We know who you are. We know who you are,” the dolls sang. Like, all of them. Like, the entire freaking shop full of dolls in singsong unison.
    “Christ on a cross.” Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Don’t panic.
    “Bridget?” Father Santos sounded worried. “What is it?”
    “You don’t hear that?” she asked. So not good.
    “What?” Monsignor asked. “What do you hear, Bridget?”
    “A Watcher is here. What fun! What fun!”
    A Watcher? Where had she heard that before?
    “We defeated you. We defeated you,” the dolls taunted. “The Master is strong.”
    Bridget spun around. The whole shop was alive, hundreds of dolls jittering and squirming behind their glass cases. She was so terrified, her brain was starting to shut down. She had to force herself to concentrate on what the dolls were saying. “Defeated me before?”
    A childlike giggling rippled through the room. “Defeated the Watchers.” The dolls laughed. “Defeated the traitors.”
    “Traitors?” Bridget asked. “What traitors?”
    Monsignor’s voice sounded small. “Bridget, are you all right? What is happening?”
    “What are they saying?” Father Santos added.
    The giggling crescendoed, then abruptly cut off. “ TRAITOR! TRAITOR! TRAITOR! ” the dolls shrieked from the silence. “ ONE OF US! ONE OF US! YOU ARE ONE OF US! ”
    Bridget clamped her hands over her ears. One of them? How could she be one of them, something evil and twisted, something that wasn’t even a part of her world? “I’m not! I’m not one of you.”
    “LIAR! LIAR! THE TRAITOR LIES!”
    Bridget felt like she was drowning under the voices. They swelled in volume