Frozen Charlotte (7 page)

I gave a muffled shriek and jerked awake in my bed, my heart hammering in my chest. The ‘Fair Charlotte’ song was still playing and, at first, I thought it was just inside my head, a horrid shard of the nightmare still lodged in my brain. But then I realized that I really was hearing the song, that it was the tinkling tune of the music box and it was coming from Rebecca’s room, which meant that someone had opened the lid and was in there, right now, in the middle of the night.

It was such a soft sound that if I hadn’t been in the room right next door I never would have heard it. But it came to me clearly through the wall and I knew it meant that someone had opened the music-box lid. I glanced at my phone and saw that it was after midnight.

Feeling cold all over, I swung my legs over the side of the bed and stood up. Snatching up the torch I’d found in the bedside drawer, I tiptoed out to the corridor but didn’t turn the torch on. If someone was out there, I didn’t want to warn them I was coming.

As soon as I stepped out on to the landing, the tune became clearer, and I saw at once that Rebecca’s door was slightly ajar. It had definitely been closed
when I’d come to bed. There was no light shining through the crack, just pitch-black and that hateful little tune spilling out of the darkness. Part of me wanted to run back to my room, jump under the covers and hide there until daylight. But I had to find out what was going on, for Jay’s sake.

I crept softly over to the door, the torch shaking in my hand. Silently, I counted to three and then quickly shoved the door open and slapped my hand against the wall, but although I ran my fingers frantically all around I couldn’t find a light switch so I snapped on the torch and jerked it this way and that around the room.

First the bed swung into view in the beam from my torch, then the doll cabinet up against the wall and then, finally, the dressing table with the music box sitting open on it, the little figures of Charlotte and Charlie twirling round and round in their endless dance. It was awful not being able to see the entire room at once. Shadows moved around the beam of light shining from the torch as I swept it around the room once, twice, three times. There was no trace of anyone there. The room seemed to be empty.

I walked over to the dressing table, reached out
and closed the music-box lid with a snap. The tune cut off at once.

And that was when I heard the scratching.

It was coming from the doll cabinet behind me. A frantic
scratch, scratch, scratch,
as if hundreds of tiny fingers were scrabbling and scraping over glass.

I whirled on the spot and jerked my torch towards the doll cabinet.

When the light hit them, I almost dropped the torch in shock.

The dolls were all still and silent on their shelves but they weren’t lying down, like they’d been before, now every single one of them was standing up and facing out, their tiny hands resting against the glass, their painted eyes all staring directly at me. Even the ones missing a leg or an arm or a head were pressed up against the door, facing out of the cabinet.

At that moment a small hand crept into mine, cold fingers wrapping around my own, just like that night at the café. I gasped, my heart racing in my chest, and snatched my hand away, while instinctively striking out with the hand holding the torch. It made contact with the small shape beside me in the dark, and there was a grunt and a thump.

I shone the torch in front of me and saw a little girl with long dark hair, sprawled on the floor. For a second I thought it was Rebecca, but then I saw that the huge, frightened eyes belonged to Lilias. One hand was pressed to her cheek where I’d hit her but, before I could say anything, she scrambled back to her feet, gripped my hand and practically dragged me from the room and down the corridor to her own bedroom. Her bedside lamp was on, creating a soft, warm glow.

“I’m so sorry, Lilias,” I said, squeezing her shaking hand. “I didn’t mean to hit you. Are you OK?”

Lilias snatched her hand from mine and glared at me. I could see that her cheek was red where I’d hit her, but I hadn’t broken the skin. She was trembling from head to foot. And at the top of her nightdress I could clearly see the terrible, ugly scar running across her collarbone where she had tried to cut it out.

“How can you be so stupid?” she said, still glaring. “You shouldn’t ever go in Rebecca’s room. If you let the dolls out, they’ll do bad things.”

“I wasn’t going to let them out,” I said. “I heard the music box and wanted to see if someone was in the room.”

“Rebecca was there,” Lilias said. “In the corner – didn’t you see her? She wants to show you the dolls. You saw them move, didn’t you? You heard them scratching at the glass?”

“I… I thought I heard something,” I said. “But why would Rebecca want to show me the dolls?”

“Why don’t you ask her?” Lilias said fiercely. “You’re the one who brought her here.”

“But I can’t see her. Not properly. Lilias, are you really saying you can see Rebecca? That you’ve actually spoken to her?”

I remembered what Lilias had said that night at the dinner table:
She likes me because we’re the same age…

It was true – Rebecca had been seven years old when she died, the same age Lilias was now. They even looked kind of similar.

“She’s here,” Lilias whispered. “And she’s really, really angry.”

“Why?” I asked. “What’s she angry about?”

But Lilias just shook her head and refused to say anything more about Rebecca. “Next time you hear the dolls moving around in the night,” she said, “just close your eyes and pretend you can’t hear them.
That’s what I do. It’s no use telling anyone because no one will believe you. No one ever believes you, especially not Dad. He’ll just get angry and call you a liar.”

I tried asking her about Rebecca a couple more times, but Lilias just pursed her lips and shook her head so, in the end, I decided to give up and go to bed.

I said goodnight and was almost at the door when Lilias said, “You didn’t bring any needles with you, did you?”

“Needles? No. Why?”

“I was just going to tell you to hide them,” Lilias said. “To hide anything that’s sharp. That’s what the Frozen Charlottes will look for if they get out of the cabinet.”

“Needles? But why?”

“To poke out your eyes while you’re asleep. That’s what they do. That’s what they did to that blindfolded girl in the school photo. That’s why the grown-ups had the dolls plastered into the walls. But then Rebecca found them and let them all out.”

When I went down to breakfast the next morning, Uncle James was already working in his studio, but Piper and Cameron were at the dining room table with cereal bowls and glasses of juice.

I pulled out a chair and sat down just as Lilias walked into the room. I was horrified to see that an ugly purple bruise had formed around her cheek on the spot where I’d accidentally hit her last night. Her eyes met mine, but she didn’t say anything as she walked over and sat down with us.

“I’m catching the bus into town this afternoon, Lilias,” Cameron said, as he scooped up a spoonful of cornflakes. “I thought maybe you’d like to come with me and we could go to the sweet shop. What do you—?” He glanced at Lilias and stopped mid-sentence – he’d clearly noticed her bruised cheek. The spoon froze in his hand and he went rigid all over. “What happened to your face?” he asked in a voice that was suddenly hoarse.

I opened my mouth to confess, but before I could utter a single word, Lilias said, “I just fell. That’s all.”

What happened next took place so fast that I almost couldn’t take it in. Cameron’s chair screeched across the floor as he leaped to his feet, dragged Piper
from her chair and slammed her hard up against the wall.

“What did you do?” he asked in a voice that was horribly quiet.

“Nothing,” she gasped. “I haven’t done anything.”

“It was me!” I said, already out of my chair. “For God’s sake, it was me!” I clamped my hand around Cameron’s arm and tried to pull him away from Piper, but his grip was like a vice and I could feel all the muscle and sinew straining in his forearm. He turned to look at me, his eyes icy-cold.

“Cameron, you’re hurting me,” Piper whimpered.

Without moving his gaze from mine, Cameron finally let her go and she quickly stepped away from him, rubbing at both her arms.

“You?” Cameron snapped. “What do you mean it was you?”

“It was a mistake,” I said. “Last night. I went to—”

“She went to the bathroom,” Lilias said. “And I made her jump in the corridor. She hit me with her torch. It was an accident.”

“An accident?” Cameron had gone pale and seemed to be looking through me rather than at me.

“Yes,” I said. “It was just an accident. I’m sorry.”

Cameron’s eyes focused on me suddenly. He took a sharp step back. “Be more careful in future,” he snapped. “We’ve had enough accidents in this house.”

And with that he turned and stormed off, slamming the door hard behind him.

“He’s mad,” I said, still shaken by what I’d just seen. “What’s wrong with him?”

“Nothing,” Piper said. Her sea-green eyes were filled with tears. “Nothing. He just gets a bit worked up sometimes, that’s all. He can’t help it.”

“Of course he can help it!” I said. “Does your dad know he can get violent like this?”

“It’s not a big deal,” Piper said, rubbing at her bruised arms. “Please just forget it.”

I thought of nothing else for the rest of that morning. At lunchtime, Uncle James joined us and it felt so strange sitting around the table with Cameron and Piper acting quite normally towards each other after what had happened earlier. When Cameron asked her to pass the salt he spoke as if they’d never had any disagreement at all, as if he hadn’t attacked her just a few hours before.

“I’m catching the bus into Dunvegan later,” Cameron announced to the table in general. “Lilias is coming
with me to go to the sweet shop. I thought perhaps Sophie might like to tag along and see the town?”

His invitation startled me, and I quickly tried to turn him down. “Oh, I don’t think that I—”

But Uncle James cut me off. “That sounds like a great idea.”

“I’ll come with you too,” Piper said brightly.

“No, I need you here,” Uncle James said. “You’re sitting for me this afternoon, remember?”

“Oh, but Dad, couldn’t I—”

“Sorry, Piper, but I really need to finish this painting. The gallery is waiting for it.”

“Good. So it’s all settled then,” Cameron said, glancing at me. “We’ll leave after lunch.”

Piper looked unhappy, and I probably looked much the same, but there didn’t seem to be any way out of it and, a short while later, I was walking to the bus stop with Cameron and Lilias. It was a twenty-minute bus journey and, throughout that time, I didn’t speak to Cameron and he didn’t say one word to me, he just slouched with his hands in his pockets, staring out of the window in silence. I couldn’t understand why he’d suggested that I come in the first place.

When we arrived at the town, Lilias headed straight for the sweet shop – it was an old-fashioned kind of place, with shelves lined with big glass jars filled with sweets of all different shapes and colours. Cameron handed Lilias a striped paper bag and I lingered awkwardly while she ran around filling it up.

Cameron took another bag and then, to my surprise, turned to me and said, “What would you like? My treat.”

“Oh, I don’t want anything,” I said, flustered. “I’ll just wait outside.”

I couldn’t understand why Cameron was being nice. It was like he’d suddenly turned into a different person.

I was even more confused when he came out of the shop a few minutes later and pressed a paper bag into my hand. “Here,” he said. “Since you wouldn’t say what you wanted, I had to guess. You strike me as a sugar mice kind of girl.”

I stared at the bag in my hand, filled with pink and white sugar mice. They were, in fact, my favourite and it irritated me that Cameron had been able to guess. Almost as if those piercing blue eyes of his really could see inside my head.

“I hate sugar mice,” I lied, stuffing the bag in my pocket.

The corner of Cameron’s mouth twisted up in a half smile and I was sure he knew I was lying. Lilias came out of the shop then and we started to walk back down the path.

“What’s your deal anyway?” I asked. “It’s like you’ve got split-personality disorder or something.”

I reasoned he could hardly attack me while we were out in public but, to my surprise, he laughed instead, a loud, breathless sort of laugh that almost burst out of him and made some nearby people turn to stare.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.

Cameron shook his head, and a few dark strands of hair fell into his eyes. “Not funny,” he said. “Just ironic.”

He didn’t elaborate and we carried on walking in silence for a few minutes before he said, “I thought perhaps you’d like to see the art gallery while we’re here. They buy most of Dad’s paintings. Some of them will be on display.”

“Sure,” I said. I had the weird feeling that all of this was leading up to something, but I didn’t know what.

When we arrived at the gallery, Lilias complained that the paintings were boring so we left her sitting on a bench in the foyer, eating her sweets. Cameron led the way to the section where his dad’s paintings were on display. Most of them were sea themed and the green and blue paint of the ocean really made you think you could smell the salt and hear the surf and feel the sand between your toes. I recognized one of the paintings of the lighthouse at Neist Point, and another of the beach outside the house, with its steep cliffs and black sand.