Read The Darkest Corners for Free Online Page B

across her mouth, from one pale cheek to another.
    And there, clutched in her hands, was a cracked and dirty porcelain doll, its one remaining eye fixed on me, as if watching for my reaction.
    I’d thought the day could not get any worse. But the day had just proved me wrong.
    Caddie had once been Billy’s imaginary friend. She’d turned up at my school one day with her doll, Raggy Maggie, and had immediately made my life a living Hell. But I’d eventually beaten her. To the best of my knowledge, she was one of the few fiends I’d fought who was dead. Properly dead. And yet, here she was.
    â€˜Raggy Maggie’s very cross,’ she said, derailing my train of thought. ‘You sent us back to the bad place. We told you not to send us back to the bad place, but you didn’t listen.’
    She raised the doll to her ear and bobbed its head up and down. I could see that aside from the crack it had always had, the doll’s head was in one piece. The last time I’d seen it, the head had been broken in two.
    â€˜You think we should do what , Raggy Maggie?’ Caddie asked. Her dark eyes looked me up and down. ‘Yes, that would be a fun game, wouldn’t it?’ She smiled, then kissed the doll on its dirty forehead. ‘Oh, Raggy Maggie, you are naughty.’
    â€˜You’re dead,’ I said, finally managing to find my voice. ‘You’re dead. I saw you die.’
    Caddie stamped her foot. It made a hollow thunk against the plastic bath. ‘That is a horrible thing to say,’ she said, her bottom lip turned out. She covered the doll’s ears with her hands. ‘Don’t you listen to him, Raggy Maggie. He’s horrible .’
    â€˜You can’t really be here.’ I pressed a thumb and finger against my eyes, but they were still there when I looked again. ‘You’re not here,’ I insisted. ‘You’re not real.’
    The little girl let out her little giggle. ‘Of course we’re not real, silly,’ she said. Her eyes went to the doll, and she began to swing Raggy Maggie lazily back and forth by her arms. ‘None of this is real.’
    I hesitated. She hummed a nursery rhyme softly below her breath. A draught came from nowhere and brought goosebumps to the back of my neck.
    â€˜What do you mean?’
    â€˜Well, of course it isn’t real,’ she said, her voice and face suddenly solemn. ‘Monsters, magic, people with sewing where their mouths are?’ She looked sadly at Raggy Maggie. ‘Talking dolls? How could any of that be real?’
    â€˜But... but it is real. All of it. I saw it happen.’
    She stopped swinging the doll. ‘No, silly, you dreamed it happening.’
    I blinked, and she was out of the bath, standing right in front of me in high-heeled shoes that were far too large for her feet. ‘You’re very sick, Kyle. And you’re dreaming,’ she whispered. With one hand she raised Raggy Maggie until the doll’s face was right by mine. Its painted features came alive and crawled across the porcelain. The faded red mouth opened and a voice like dry leaves croaked out.
    â€˜And it’s time to wake up.’
    The bathroom door flew open, the fragile lock snapping like a twig. Caddie and Raggy Maggie vanished like mist before my eyes, and when I turned to the door another familiar face stood there.
    â€˜Ameena?’
    â€˜The one and only.’
    â€˜You… You came back?’
    My dad leaned round the door frame. ‘We both did,’ he smirked, then he reached into the bathroom and pulled me out on to the landing. Another shock of pain travelled the length of my spine as he tossed me against the wall.
    â€˜Get away from me,’ I bellowed, shoving him with all my strength. He laughed off the push, then forced me against the wall for a second time.
    â€˜Still got some fight in you,’ he said, his face right up in mine. ‘That’s what