Miss Polly had a Dolly (Emma Frost #2) (23 page)

The dolls
everywhere creeped me out.
I was sitting in Asta
Kristensen's living room and felt like the entire room was staring at me.
Hundreds of sets of eyes looking at me without blinking. It was about to freak
me out. Especially since the woman insisted on talking to the dolls constantly
like they were alive, like they were her children.

I sipped the coffee and wondered if I would even
be able to get a decent interview out of her for the book. Was she even sane
enough?

I smiled when she offered me a home baked
cookie. I took one and ate it while Asta offered all of her dolls one as well.
I had to try really hard to hold back my laughter. It was so comical and weird.
I bit my lip. Apparently the doll constantly on Asta's lap wanted one and it
was held against her mouth while Asta made eating sounds with her mouth, then
ended up eating it for the doll.

"Was that good, Little Miss Jasmine?"
she asked. The doll nodded. "Want one more?" It nodded again.
"Now not too many or you'll get a tummy ache, Little Miss Jasmine. And we
can't have that, now can we?"

The doll shook its head. I recognized it from
the pictures in the papers. It was the same doll that had been found after the
girl disappeared. The one without hair. The one that looked like a baby. I felt
a little uncomfortable, kind of like I had crashed a private party. The woman
hardly spoke to me or even look at me. I grabbed another cookie from the plate.

"No. No more for you, Little Miss Jasmine.
You had your share," she said to the doll.

I cleared my throat trying to get her attention.
I succeeded. She finally looked at me. "So tell me, Miss Emma Frost. What
can I do for you?"

"Well, as I said when I knocked on the
door, I'm a writer and I'm writing a book about the children that have gone
missing over the years from the island. And I was wonde—"

"Just one second," she interrupted me
and turned to face the two dolls behind her. "Now stop fighting, Anna and
Lotte. Don't make me come back there. Mommy's busy talking to the nice lady
now. So you have to be quiet, okay?"

The dolls stared at her with their empty eyes.
"Good," Asta said and raised her finger at them. "Now
behave."

She turned to look at me again. "Sorry
about that. Where were we?"

"I was just saying that I am trying to
write my book and I would love to feature the mothers of the children in it as
well. And I was wondering if you would like to be a part of it. I would have to
do a longer interview with you about the life you had before with your daughter
in the house and details about the day she disappeared and of course what
happened in the days afterwards, the police investigation, the search and all
that happened and then about how you are doing today. What your life is like
and how often you think about your daughter, if you believe she could still be
alive and so on." I sipped my coffee noticing how Asta was suddenly
staring at me.

"But Nina drowned," she said.
"Why would I think she was still alive when she drowned in the
ocean?"

I swallowed hard and bit my tongue. I had said
too much. After all, nothing was concluded yet, it was all just theories based
on what Officer Morten and I had figured out. It was way too early to say
anything to the families yet. Way too early.

Me and my big mouth.

I shook my head trying to save it. "No. No.
Of course not. But the thing is the body was never found, so maybe you were
still wondering if she could be alive. I could imagine that….as a mom myself I
would be wondering….until you had closure, you know."

She looked confused. "I'm not
sure—?" She looked down at the doll in her hand. "What did you
say, Little Miss Jasmine? You're getting tired. Yes, mommy's tired, too. Having
guests is exhausting, isn't it?"

"I…I didn't mean to…" I stopped
myself. This wasn't going well. I got up from the couch. I was about to say
something when a distant scream interrupted me. It wasn't just an ordinary
scream, like children playing.

It was a scream for help.

Josephine had
heard voices coming
from upstairs. For the first time
since she had been locked inside the cage she heard voices other than the old
woman's and she had started screaming.

Josephine didn't have much strength left after
being starved for so long, but hearing the voices and footsteps so close caused
her heart rate to go up and the adrenalin to rush through her body, renewing
her strength, giving her the power to scream at the top of her lungs once again
while hammering her fists into the bars of her cage.

Django immediately rose to his feet and started
barking at her and together they were making a lot of noise.

"Heeeeeeeelp!" she screamed. "I'm
down here. I'm in a cage. Please help me. Please HELP!"

Josephine felt so tired she put her face on the
bars while catching her breath. She looked at the door leading upstairs with
anticipation, with the last small bit of hope she could gather. Oh how many
times she had fantasied about being rescued, about someone other than the old
lady coming through that door. And how many times she had been so deeply
disappointed. Hope was all she had and she was about to run out of that, too

There it was again. She heard the muffled voices
again. This time she could hear what they said. They had to be close to the
door now.

"What was that?" someone asked.

"I didn't hear anything," the old
woman said.

"It sounded like someone screaming."

"Probably just the neighbor's kids
playing."

"No, someone was crying for help. It
sounded like it came from inside this house," the strange voice said.

Josephine was breathing heavily trying hard to
gather enough strength to scream again. She looked at Django who had stopped
barking and was now watching her while snapping his teeth at her. Josephine
clung on to the small glimpse of that precious hope that she had actually
managed to draw a stranger's attention and let her know she was down there.

"I'm sure it was just the neighbors,"
the old woman said. "Those kids are always playing around in the
yard."

"Well maybe you're right. It did sound like
it was far away."

No. No. Don't give up. I'm
down here, don't go. Please don't leave
, Josephine
thought. She took in a deep breath and tried hard to open her mouth and scream
again. But only a small shriek left her mouth. It made Django bark again.

"Do you have a dog?" the strange voice
said in the distance. It seemed so far away now. Like in a completely other
universe, Josephine thought as she closed her eyes and slowly started dozing
off.

No. No. You have to stay
awake, Josephine. Don't drift away or the lady will be gone and never come
back. Not now.

"No. That has to be the neighbors
also," the old woman said.

The voices seemed so far away now. It was like
they didn't matter anymore to Josephine. It was like nothing mattered anymore.

"Ah, okay. I see. Neighbors have lots of
screaming children and a noisy dog. Must be very annoying."

"I live with it," the old woman said.

Come on, Josephine. You can do
it. Just open your mouth and do it. Just scream. Let out any sound to let her
know you're down here. It's not that hard. Just open your mouth and scream.
Scream for crying out loud.

Josephine felt her dry and cracked lips part and
she took in a breath. As pictures of her mother and father and the wide sandy
beach flickered before her eyes, she finally let out a sound. A small and still
help me, please help me, left her lips. In her mind it sounded like she was
screaming, but to the surrounding world it sounded like nothing more than her
last dying breath.

It was all very
strange,
I thought and looked at Asta standing in
front of me. The screams, the dog barking. I couldn't put my finger on it, but
something didn't seem right. It wasn't just all the dolls and the talking to
them as if they were real. It was everything about this woman.

Maybe I was just being paranoid. Seeing my dad's
girlfriend change her attitude like that had maybe made me slightly suspicious.

Yes, that was it.

"I better leave now," I said.

"Do come again another time," Asta
chirped. "Little Miss Jasmine really likes you."

I looked at Asta then turned to walk towards the
front door when suddenly I spotted a bowl of dog food on the kitchen floor. And
one for water right next to it. I turned on my heel to look at Asta.

"No dog, huh?"

"I can explain…it's for…my dolls."

"Yeah, right," I said and stormed past
her. It was about time I followed my instincts. There was something really
wrong here. I thought of Victor's strange behavior in the middle of the night,
I thought about the bowties that all the dolls were wearing. I couldn't put the
pieces together just yet, but I knew somehow that I was close.

I approached the door that I thought I heard the
screaming coming from. A dog was definitely barking behind it now. I tried to
open it, but it was locked.

"Open it please," I said.

Asta shook her head. "You have no right. I
want you out of my house right now. This is not ri—"

I didn't wait for her to finish the sentence.
Instead I backed up, lifted my leg and kicked down the door. The old door
splintered completely. Asta yelled at me but I didn't care. I walked down the
stairs. I stopped as I reached the bottom. The stench made me sick to my
stomach. A dog was looking at me. Behind it I saw something that made my heart
stop. A little girl in a cage. I couldn't recognize her at first since she had
lost a lot of weight, but as soon as I approached her I had no doubt in my mind
that it was the Countess that had gone missing.

"What the hell is going on here?" I
yelled.

The dog growled at me, but I picked up a stick
and swung it to scare it off. That helped. The dog backed up. I ran to the girl
in the cage. Her eyes were closed and she didn't look well. I grabbed her wrist
through the bars and felt for her pulse. To my relief I found it, but it was so
weak I could hardly believe she was still alive.

"This girl needs to get to a hospital right
now," I yelled.

"I'm sorry, but I can't do that," Asta
said. She had followed me down the stairs.

"Are you insane? She'll die."

"That was kind of the point to it
all," Asta said.

I looked at her perplexed. "Why? Why would
you want to kill a young girl?"

As I asked the question I received the answer on
my own. My eyes fell on a big doll in the corner of the basement. As big as a
human kid. I gasped and went closer to it to better see it. I had seen that
girl before, I thought. Could it be? I studied it closely and touched it's
face. The eyes were different, replaced with plastic eyes, but the rest… I
backed up and felt my stomach turn. Could it be? Was this really?

"This…this doll. This look a lot like a
real child. A child I have seen on a picture. A child that went missing in
2005," I said and looked at Asta for an explanation. I don't know what I
wanted from her, what I expected, but somehow I really wanted her to say that I
wasn't right, that this…this doll wasn't Helle's daughter.

Asta smiled and nodded. "Isn't she a
beauty?"

I fought hard to control my breath and not hyperventilate.
"So that's what you were planning on doing to Josephine?"

Asta smiled. "In this way they'll stay with
me forever. They won't walk into the ocean and drown."

I suddenly realized how insane this woman really
was and wondered if I would be able to make it out of there alive.

That was when a third party joined the
festivities. As if things weren't strange enough already, someone came walking
down the stairs wearing a big grin on his face.

It was Patrick.