Teaser....Monday?

mood: mellow yellow
pandora/ipod: "the presentation of the rose" from der rosenkavalier by richard strauss

Here's the teased excerpt from BANISH on today's YARebels vlog! I've actually used part of this as a teaser before, but I thought it would be fun to post the whole excerpt I read. Enjoy!

For the first time Bridget noticed where they were: a store on a quiet side street off the busy Marina shopping district. It was one of the newer buildings, constructed after the Loma Prieta earthquake destroyed huge parts of the neighborhood. There were three stories of apartments stacked above the main floor, all with the traditional paneled bay windows that marked even the new additions to San Francisco architecture and there was some sort of shop below, its façade of floor to ceiling windows painted with garish bubble gum pink Victorian lettering.

Bridget had banished the demons in the twins' bedroom. She'd liberated old Mrs. Long. But she'd never faced--

"Mrs. Pickleman's Tiny Princess Doll Shoppe?" she said. "Please tell me it’s an apartment upstairs."

Monsignor Renault tightened his grip on her shoulder as if he thought she might make a break for it. "No, this is it."

"A friggin' doll shop?" Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit. There was nothing creepier in the whole wide world than dolls. Even as a kid Bridget couldn't handle the porcelain-faced little freaks her Grandma sent her. She'd stuff them into the bottom of her toy chest where the moonlight couldn't reflect off their beady glass eyes while she slept: eyes that seemed to follow her around the room, just waiting for her to turn her back before they leapt off the shelf to throttle her with their wee cold hands.

Monsignor gave Bridget a nudge towards the door and she stumbled forward. Why couldn't she have said "No" and meant it?

He pushed the open glass door, tripping an old-fashioned bell that hung overhead. Its high-pitched tinkling was like a death knell in Bridget's ears.

She froze just inside the doorway. Facing her was a glass display case populated by old, withered dolls. They were bald, sort of, hair painted on their freaky little wooden skulls. They wore varieties of period clothes--some kind of Old West-y, some more turn-of-the-Century--all with a similar look on their faces: painted eyes staring straight ahead, lips puckered and slightly flared like they were cooing. Most of them were chipped, the flesh colored paint flaking off their faces and they sat at odd angles, leaning on each other for support like some infant Leper colony.

Right in the middle of the case sat the largest doll, a Little House on the Prairie thing whose wooden face looked like it had been mauled by a dog. As she stared at it, she could have sworn she saw the doll's eyes blink.

In a panic, Bridget spun around for the door, but found herself staring at a wall of dolls. To her left, to her right, all four walls were lined with similar glass cases, packed to the brim with round-faced dolls staring her down. Plastic, porcelain, swaddled like infants, dressed like fairy queens and Disney princesses. Caucasian, Black, Hispanic, Asian--a real United Nations of horror.

Bridget shivered. Of course this place was infested with demons. Of course it was. This was Hell.