Celine stopped crying when the left side of her head began to throb from the aching effects of a migraine. It had even gotten difficult for her to shed tears. Her eyes were swollen, and blinking was painful. Her eyes needed a break before they could produce more tears. Besides, the exercise in itself was pretty exhausting.

Crying was such a useless find to do. It was a wasteful activity that gave nothing beneficial in return — only headaches, puffed-up eyes, and unsolved problems. Now that she’d finished crying, did the girls reappear? Of course not.

Celine had just cried for nothing because she didn't even feel better. She still felt like a miserable, shitty failure. So, there was an irritating itch in her chest to find a way out — to find something that could help her find the girls. She wanted to stop feeling like a pathetic fool who'd lost to the world's sufferings. Sitting on the bare floor and lamenting something that had already happened wasn't helping matters.

She wanted to know where the hell the girls had gone. There had to be something, right? Someone must have forgotten something in the house. There was no way they could have remembered to pack everything unless they had been packing their belongings way before now, which she knew was not the case. She had to check again.

So she got up from the floor and walked around the small living room for starters. First, she checked the windows. She slid her fingers through the iron rods as the dust from the masts smeared the tip of her fingers. She grazed her hands through the holes beneath the rod and the tiny spaces she could see with hopes that she’d find anything at all — even if it were a piece of paper. But she didn't find anything.

She looked at the ceiling carefully and scanned the joists. She moved in the direction of her eye movements as she turned her head this way and that. There was nothing. As she shifted her focus and looked downward, the left part of her head throbbed harder as though the headache had moved along with her head. After sparing a few seconds to adjust to the sharpness of her migraine, she looked at the floor carefully but didn't find anything worthy of her attention.

Celine moved to the dining room and began to check its windows too. The room had two windows. She opened the shutters of the first one and skimmed through the lines of the windowpane. It was a futile search, so she moved on to the next window quickly and repeated the same procedure.

As she skimmed her fingers through the open space beneath the window’s shutters, she felt something in her hand. This discovery made her heart beat so loudly that she became unsure which sensation was real — the feeling of something rough on her hands or her heart's thumping. There was only one way to find out.

So she looked down and saw that what she'd felt in her hand was real. There was a small piece of paper. As she picked it up and flipped it over, she saw a drawn-out illustration of a key, but it was only the lower part of the object she could see on the paper. It was as though the paper had been torn because the better part of it was missing.

Either way, Celine's curiosity was piqued. So she stared and wondered what correlation existed between the drawing of a key and a window. Who must have done it and...why?

She only needed to ask those two questions because the answer came to her immediately.

The girls.

It had to have been the girls. Her eyes widened as the theories came to her mind like a layering of bricks on a tower. The fact that it made sense as she thought more about it became fascinating to her.

Perhaps, the girls had heard her knock on the door that night. Maybe they'd hoped she would return and find the right key, and by drawing this image on the piece of paper, they had wanted her to find the right key. They had prayed day and night that she would come by again and save them. They'd hoped that, somehow, she would get to know what the correct key looked like if she looked at the drawing by the window.

It had been difficult, and it felt tiring to weep, but as she tightened her hold on the piece of paper, there was that all-too-familiar clogging in her chest — a tight ball of acerbic pain and regret. She began to wish she had come sooner to rescue the girls. Celine wanted to slump to the ground and cry again, but she clutched the hem of her shirt and clenched her teeth, holding back the tears by all means.

Tears are pointless.  They are vain, and they don't help!  She reminded herself of these things over and over again till she was able to stand right and feel somewhat okay again.

Celine continued to search around the house for more clues, like the torn piece of paper she had just seen, and she did so with more vigor. The object she found motivated her even though it was no longer of use. She ransacked the kitchen, the upper cabinets, cupboards, windows, and the zinc. There was nothing in sight. She wiped off the beads of sweat that trickled down her temple as she descended to the ground slowly (after searching the upper cabinet).

She moved to the rooms and entered the first one she saw once she stepped out of the kitchen. The entire room was so empty and clean that it seemed as though no one had ever lived in there. It didn't bear the ambience of a person who once resided in the space. The same thing went for the toilet as well.

She walked into the next room to search it even though the exhaustion she was feeling from crying too much and exerting herself was beginning to weigh on her and crush her.

Celine looked through this particular room in a rush. She opened the wardrobes and bathroom doors in a hurry, not caring enough to close up each thing she’d opened once she looked into it and found nothing substantial. In one of the wardrobes she'd yanked open, she thought she'd seen something amid the pile of deflated helium balloons, but she’d dismissed it and went on to the next thing to search.

Once she was done rummaging through the room, she was ready to step out and move to the next one. But she remembered what she thought she had seen in the wardrobe and decided to turn back and check again.

This was when she saw a naked Black Barbie Doll in a clearer view. The head of the toy was slanting through the edge of the wardrobe's end. Again, she was surprised by the discovery but thankful she had hearkened to her instincts. Quickly, she stretched and stood on her toes, reaching with all her might to touch the doll hanging above her.

This was when Celine felt thankful for her height because, within a short time, she was able to grab hold of the object. Then she pulled it out of the cabinet.

She examined the doll and turned it around slowly to find clues — stains or scribblings with a sharp object. Although she had checked thoroughly, it was hard for her to be sure that there was nothing on the toy's surface because it was a black barbie doll. Celine felt it was an intentional act on David's part to buy a black doll so that even if it contained the darkest of secrets, it would be difficult to find.

This led her to wonder if the Black Barbie Doll had been bought for a different and sinister purpose instead of an instrument of play for the girls. Either way, she was determined to check it through and through for the sake of having a clear conscience. It would really suck if she later discovered that there lay a clue hidden in the toy long after she had left the place. There was also the fear of never knowing which was worse.

So she detached the doll’s head from its body and checked the inside of its head. It was clear. Then she examined the rest of its body and discovered an opened slit on one side of the doll's waist. Her heart began to beat fast at the discovery. This was no accident. There definitely was a reason.

She dug her thumb into the opened part and tore it apart after applying force. The body split into two. Behold, resting on the doll's feet, was a crumpled piece of paper. Celine wanted to scream, ‘I knew it!’ when she saw it but feared someone would hear her. It was just one of those things. Paranoia was such a loud emotion.

Still, Celine was excited, and it showed in the way her hands fidgeted as she struggled to open the crumpled piece of paper. For a moment, she wondered if this piece of paper was the better half of the one she'd seen in the dining room's window, thus, giving her a better view of the key. When she finally straightened the squeezed piece of paper, she found words in its lines instead of an illustration.

Mr. David read us a poem today, and he said he'd like to take us to the middle of nowhere one day. I wonder where that place is, and I hope he really takes us there one day.

Celine’s squinted her eyes as she read the words over and over. In the middle of nowhere. What was that about? She pondered as she tucked the piece of paper into the pocket of her trousers. Why did the owner keep the paper inside a toy of all places? Was it because it was the safest place to keep it? Was there something dark and hideous about the words or, more importantly, the black doll?

She didn't need to ponder further as the possibilities became revealed to her. The fact that David had gotten one of his girls a black barbie doll was strange. He could have gotten the fair-skinned barbie doll or a dark one, like the ebony, caramel brown, velvety skin tones, but this doll's darkness was similar to that of the midnight's shade which was quite rare to find. He wouldn't have gone through all that stress to get such a doll for nothing, right?

Or maybe, he'd bought it with pure intentions. Perhaps, it was the girl who had other plans and had requested for this type of doll.

Keeping this piece of paper inside a doll was an intentional effort on the owner's part. It was a secret she'd intended to guard jealously. There was no way the girl must have forgotten it by herself since this doll was precious to her. Perhaps, someone else had helped her pack her belongings and had done so in a hurry.

Celine knew it was David who must have done so. It just had to be him. He was in haste to leave the house and carry his girls with him before she could find him. Wherever the kids were right now was definitely a place he'd prepared long before all of this had happened. It was an undeniable fact. Celine knew David that much. He was calculative.

Either way, she was thankful that she'd found the doll and the piece of paper inside it. Now, she knew she had to leave immediately and carry out her investigations on where this ‘middle of nowhere’ was so she could rescue the girls for good.

Celine even wished she'd just searched the house earlier instead of crying. She was afraid she'd wasted valuable time by doing so. She had learned her lesson.

So she picked up the doll, shoved it into her pocket, and ran out of the house as though someone was pursuing her.

***
Two days later

David was making scrambled eggs for the girls in the kitchen and enjoying the feel of the new place he was in when Kemi walked up to him. He hadn't seen her immediately until she tapped his elbow.  As soon as he noticed the moody countenance on her face, he lowered the heat on the gas cooker, removed his gloves, and leaned back against the counter. He gave her his full attention.

“What’s the problem?”

“My doll... I can't find my doll,” the chubby girl was scratching her knuckles frantically. David wanted to calm her down so she wouldn't cause an injury to her skin, but the problem at hand seized his attention.

David's eyebrows darted from one end to the other as he frantically tried to remember if he had left out any of the toys that he had bought for his girls. But it was hard to remember anything in detail since he'd been blinded by anxiety that afternoon and had wanted to escape as soon as possible.

Still, he closed his eyes and tried hard to jiggle his memory. Despite how much of a hurry he had been in to pack every item, a part of him was conscious and had taken note of the things he'd put into the boxes. He’d packed the girls’ lego togs, doll brushes, combs, doll houses, princess doll clothes, and Barbie dolls.

Barbie doll?

David knew that Kemi had about five barbie dolls, and he remembered putting four barbie dolls into the box.

This meant that he had forgotten to pack one. The last toy must have slipped out of his hand in the process.

“Oh, your Barbie Doll,” he spoke after processing his thoughts. Kemi nodded as she continued scratching her hands.

“Okay, don't worry,” He placed his hand on her arm and rubbed his thumb on the area she'd been scratching. He felt her relax under his touch. “l will get it for you.”

“Joshua,” David spoke to his guard over the intercom a few minutes later.  “I need you to go back to the house on the mainland and check Kemi’s room for her Black Barbie Doll.  Be careful on your way.”

“Yes, sir.”

Beyond David's care for Kemi's emotional well-being (as he couldn't stand seeing his pseudo-sister sad), he feared for himself and the possibilities of danger that the missing toy was capable of causing. It was a vague cause for concern because, really though, what was it about an ordinary barbie doll that could be so incriminating?

Still, paranoia was a loud emotion, one that was impossible to silence. It made the most suffocating noises because it was well aware of its power. Voices heard in the mind could not be easily shushed out, and paranoia capitalized on that fundamental truth repeatedly. David was just one among its many other victims. Besides, it was one of the crosses he had to carry for choosing the path he was treading on.

So he worried about the days to come.