Dollhouse (25 page)

Philly pointed to the pram—in the way a toddler who couldn’t speak yet would. I guessed she wanted to be babied. I carried her into the pram and pushed the pram about the room. Her eyes fluttered shut.  She was asleep within the next minute.

I eyed the pram—its bigness and breadth. It was huge,
surely large enough to hide me
.

Parking the pram next to the library, I ducked behind it, pretending to be looking for a book. Crouching, I tugged at the elastic of my bloomers, and let the locket slip into my hand. I opened a book and half-closed the locket around it.

The metal was dark, tarnished. Carved into the surface was a miniature carrousel horse—one that exactly matched Jessamine’s blue horse.

Gently, I opened the tiny latch.

A gold border framed a sepia photo of a man and child—the man around seventy and the child not more than ten. An inscription opposite said,
Tobias James Fiveash,
1916
.

So this was Tobias.

The child stared out blankly from the photo. I knew the eyes and the gaze. They were Jessamine’s eyes—could she be a great-great-grandmother or relative of Jessamine’s?

I was sure of it. Jessamine was related to these people. And related to Henry from the Fiveash house.

I snapped the locket shut and returned it to my bloomers. Popping up with a book, I stepped over to my chair.

My heart pumped fast. I had to find out what the connection was, and why the girls had been abducted. Jessamine herself hadn’t been stolen from her family—the Fiveashs’
were
her family. Missouri had said Jessamine wasn’t
The First One
. Because Jessamine had already been here.

Another hour passed before Jessamine retired for a nap.

Missouri woke and complained of pains in her chest. Aisha ran to get her tea.

Fear gripped me—if Missouri got worse, there was nothing—completely nothing—any of us could do to help her.

“Missouri...  stay strong,” I begged her.

Sophronia came to sit beside me. She stroked Missouri’s arm while Aisha held a cup of steaming tea to Missouri’s lips. Missouri drank it all and fell back into sleep.

We settled back in our chairs.

Clown moved towards us. We were not supposed to be talking with each other without Jessamine in the room. Rising, I made my way over to my desk, seating myself. Clown dragged itself back to its position.

I understood I was playing a game—with players making their moves and either succeeding or being defeated. Only I didn’t understand the rules, nor what I was fighting against.

Aisha closed her eyes—falling into sleep.

I doodled on the page, raising my eyes to Sophronia. She nodded, coming to sit beside me. Slowly, I pulled the locket onto my lap. I held tight to it, lest she snatch it away.

Sophronia gazed at me in surprise.

She wrote,
how
?

I shook my head. I wasn’t about to tell her that.

What now
? I wrote.

Sophronia:
Did you look inside
?

Me: Yes
.

Sophronia:
What did you see
?

Me: A man, a girl. I think the girl is an ancestor of Jessamine’s
.

Sophronia:
See it again
.

Me:
I see sadness. Both look sad
.

Sophronia stole a look at me, her forehead tensing—as though there was something I was meant to understand, but couldn’t grasp. She wrote,
See Jessamine. Really see her. Close your eyes and see her. Then you will know.

Missouri had said there was something about Jessamine that was different and that she didn’t want Sophronia or Philomena to know. But whatever it was, Sophronia already knew.

A cry came from the pram. Philomena stretched. “Mummy,” she called. “Mummmeeeeee …”

Sophronia stepped over to her.  Philomena sat, half-awake—disoriented.

I wondered if she’d been dreaming of home—her real home.

Aisha woke with a start.

I ripped the paper into confetti and tipped it into the trash. Sophronia turned back to me—her eyes imploring. The can overflowed with paper. I carried it out to the bathroom and tossed the contents down the toilet. The river underneath carried the papers away. It was how we got rid of all the paper trash here. The river carried all the secret scribblings of the dolls far, far underground.

I sat on the toilet seat, trying to think, trying to hold onto Sophronia’s words. But they slipped from me, as though they had no meaning.

* * * *

Jessamine played a game of Old Maid with Philomena. Her movements were fluid and graceful as always. I tried not to stare too hard—people always sensed when you did that. Except for children—they were happily unselfconscious.

Aisha and Sophronia played their own game of cards. Sophronia looked up from her hand of cards—her dark eyes cautioning me. Missouri cried out, and Aisha and Sophronia went to her, holding her hand and sitting by her on the floor. Missouri’s face was grayish, gaunt.

I needed to concentrate—for Missouri’s sake. For everyone’s sake.

Drawing my legs up, I balanced my book on my knees. I glanced over at Jessamine in short intervals from behind the book cover.

What connection was I supposed to work out? I’d hoped for more from Sophronia—much more—after I’d shown her the locket. She’d told me nothing of use.

Jessamine shuffled the deck of cards, her slender fingers moving up and down. I watched—almost mesmerized.

For a second, my eyes blurred. Jessamine’s fingers seemed to stay still at the same time as they moved. No, they stayed still
in between
moving.

Really see her
, Sophronia had said.

I rubbed my palm across my forehead. When you stared at something too long, your eyes went funny. You saw things that weren’t there. Or sometimes you saw things you hadn’t perceived before—as in a hidden picture puzzle.

Her hands reminded me of something. My physics teacher had slowed down a movie once—and amazed the class with the black void in between every frame. The frames ran so fast that your brain perceived the movie as fluid movement. At twenty four frames per second, your brain filled in the blanks. In the old movies before film had sound, you could clearly see the flicker.

That was Jessamine, right now
. Still in between frames of movement.

My chest tightened.

Her hands were touching the cards and yet not touching the cards. The
still
Jessamine turned and stared at me—while the
moving
Jessamine continued to play cards.

I dropped my eyelids down.

Whatever had just happened—Jessamine was aware of it.
Aware of me.

Sophronia sent an entire pack of cards spiraling high through the air, as though she'd been shuffling the deck and her hand had slipped.

In my mind, clearly, I could see the faded photograph of Tobias and the somber little girl. The eyes of the girl were not
like
Jessamine’s—they held the exact same expression.

They
were
Jessamine’s.

The photograph was nearly a hundred years old.

Jessamine was nearly a hundred years old.

* * * *

I sat to a dinner of creamed corn—so watered down it tasted of merely flavored water. The can of corn was the fifth last in the pantry—but I could barely focus on that fact.

 My body was numb, just a shell. But my mind was wild. My mind was a pulsing, raging animal, battering itself against its cage.

From the corner of my eye, I sensed the negative image inside Jessamine turn to study me. I tried to control my breathing, look normal.

Now I knew why Jessamine only ever seemed to push food around—and put a spoonful of food to her mouth—and then talk instead of eating. All that food going to waste—
on someone who didn’t need to stay alive
.

With a start, I thought back to those drawings Philomena had sketched of a girl with black hollows for eyes and an indistinct body. Philomena had been trying to draw what she saw—someone who was half there and half not.

An icy chill sped along my spine. Missouri, Sophronia and Philomena had been sleeping in a room with a century-old ghost for years—and in full knowledge of the fact.

But how did Jessamine die? What was the bad thing she’d spoken of?
The serpent
?
Were the marks on her neck the strikes of the serpent
? If the serpent had taken Jessamine’s life, then she could have also taken Lacey’s. I closed my eyes against the thought of Lacey suffering that fate.

Jessamine barely spoke to us during breakfast. She had none of her usual senseless news and chatter. Afterwards, in the ballroom, she had no activities lined up for us either. I averted my eyes from her at every step.

We were commanded to undertake quiet activities while Jessamine left for the bed chamber. Raggedy Ann watched us this time. At least, she stood guard for the first hour—but toppled to the floor after that.

Sophronia stared fixedly at the supine Raggedy doll.

Philomena hummed to herself, cutting out paper dolls on the carousel until she grew bored. Then Sophronia showed her how to fashion origami dolls with fancy pleated dresses.

Sophronia glanced over and caught my eye. Aisha lifted her eyes to us. A silent message passed between the three of us. A message of terrible knowledge. I realized then they both already knew what I did.

I turned my head away. Inside me, a point of light died. Something like white noise rose in my mind.

Rising, I stepped away into the corridor. If ghosts were real, then I was not. And neither was the world. At least, not in the sense I'd always known. Reality was tenuous. Reality was a painting that seemed three-dimensional, but you could walk around it at will. Tossing in my mind was a show I'd seen once of a blind woman in a remote village. Her weathered, crinkled face stared about in confusion when she was given sight for the first time. All she saw were meaningless, flat shapes. Things had no purpose, no dimensions. I was that woman. At the edge of a great space of nothingness, I prepared to walk away, say goodbye to myself.

Hands touched my shoulders. Aisha and Sophronia gazed intently at me.

“Please, leave me alone.” My voice was harsh in my ears. I shrugged myself away from them and continued up the corridor.

Ethan slept in his cell, his gaunt limbs close to his chest. I stepped into the storage chamber. As I lifted my dress overhead, I had the distinct sensation my body belonged to someone else, and what used to be me was running, just running, aimlessly.

My hands tore the black dress from the manikin and dropped it over my head. The dress clamped tight on my body, seething at the touch of my flesh. My knees buckled. I found myself in the corner of the room, huddled against on the floor.

The darkness of the tunnels loomed before me. I rose and stepped inside. Trailing a hand along the wet, slimy walls, I could see nothing. Air wafted ashy and burnt around me. Fear seeped through my bones.
Why had I come here?

The answer came forcefully, battering itself inside my head:
To lose yourself.

Forcing myself on, I blundered deeper into the winding, twisting veins of the cave.

Ahead, a pillar of crystalline rock stretched from ceiling to floor.
I can see that.

A figure leant against the pillar. Henry.

“The dress suits you far better than it ever suited Audette.” He took a last puff of his cigar and let it fall to the ground. Lifting a lamp with the other hand, he peered closely at me. His face wore the faint traces of the paint of a circus clown.

I whirled around, ready to flee.

“Are you with me?”

His question echoed in the dark spaces of the cave.

I stilled myself. “Yes.”

The dress twisted on my body.

He moved close behind me, breath on my neck. “I knew you couldn't stay away. I knew you'd return. Even though you deny who you are.”

Heart beats scudded through my chest. “Who am I?”

“There are no accidents in this life. There is just denial. And you came by your own desire to the carriage.”

Slowly, I shook my head. The scent of cigar smoke thickened as he drew closer.

“You are just like me.”

“I am not like you.”

He brought something around to my face. A rosebud. Deep and red in color. My fingers laced around the stem. The rose bloomed before my face.

A single petal fell from the rose. It drifted to the floor, melting into a tiny pool that looked like blood.

“I have to go.” My words were hollow, tinny like carousel music. I stole a glance back at his face.

He grinned widely, bowing with a flourishing gesture. He set the lamp on the floor and paced away, until he disappeared into the black perimeter of the lamplight. Gasping, I reached for the lamp.

I turned and walked the other way.

I'd been prepared to go with Henry. Almost. I didn't understand myself, let alone anyone else.

As I rounded the next corridor, my light fell upon the desk. The plate of cake was gone. I travelled on through the darkness. There was no way back, even if I wanted it.

This is what you wanted, Cassandra.

Vibration gathered in the tunnels, pulsed in my ears. I ran. Tunnel after tunnel.

Transparent formations began to vein the walls, hang from the ceilings. Water streamed down and dripped from the formations. Secret things humans were never meant to see. Wetness and decay saturated my nostrils.

An arch-shaped cavity had been cut high into the crystalline rock. I moved underneath, holding the lamp high.

My scream cut the air.

Skeleton.

Dark bones.

Stained yellow dress.