Dollhouse (12 page)

Ethan rubbernecked, facing Lacey and me. “What was that about a gold mine? Is that what you girls came here looking for?”

I gave a short nod. “Just a dumb hunch.”

Ethan’s mouth dropped. “More like dumb luck. I think the tunnel itself is natural.” He pointed at the craggy ceiling and walls. “It looks like the volcanic tubes sometimes created by flowing lava. There’s some in Hawaii I think. And Kiama on the South Coast here.”

I didn’t know whether to be relieved or terrified that the tunnel was caused by a volcano. I’d been to Hawaii on vacation with my mother when I was eleven, but either volcanic tubes hadn’t interested us or we hadn’t come across any.

Gingerly, we continued along the rock wall. Drafts eddied down from cracks in the soaring rock ceiling above. The walls ahead seemed to have dark spaces cut into them.

There was nothing to do but keep going now. Stepping forward, I ducked my head around the first space. My breath caught in my chest.

Inside the cavernous room stood an enormous kitchen. The wooden benches and chairs came up to my chest in height—a setting made for a giant. An antique bear and doll were seated on two of the ten chairs—the dolls much bigger than us.

An oversized kettle sat in the center of the table. For a moment, I was glad the dolls' backs were turned to us. But that was crazy—the dolls couldn't
see
us anyway.

Lacey placed her fingers on my shoulders, as though for support. “This can’t be real,” she whispered in a breaking voice.

A coldness writhed and twisted in my stomach. Something was very wrong here.

Ethan stepped inside, snatching up a heavy meat cleaver that hung from underneath a cupboard. He turned and gestured for us to keep moving.

A room on the other side seemed to be for storage. It held suitcases, drawers—and racks of dresses that were both enormous and girl-sized. Lace-up boots were arranged on the floor. I crept inside. Beside a set of cupboards and drawers, an empty space held nothing but two headless dummies—one adorned in a jet-black dress and the other a dusty antique wedding dress.

Shrugging our backpacks off, we placed them in the storage area.

Adjacent to the storage room, two shallow spaces had been cut into the wall, metal barred doors stretching across them. The metal doors looked like the ones I’d seen crypts guarded behind in old churches.

Ethan pushed open a door on the opposite side of the corridor. Fetid air seeped out—the airless, urine-soaked bathroom smell that caught your breath in subways. The room was tiled, with taps and a shower. He closed it quickly.

We rounded the next bend in the corridor—almost missing a natural crevice in the wall. The crevice was barely large enough for a human to squeeze through.

Lacey stiffened as she stared through it, flinging herself back against the wall. She opened her mouth either to scream or to tell us something, but was unable to do either.

Ethan and I peered inside. Ten huge beds were lined up in two rows, the ends facing each other. A giant Raggedy Ann doll occupied the bed nearest to us, and a wooden clown doll had been laid in the opposite bed—both of them had to be over eight feet in length. Smaller dolls with bright red cheeks occupied the beds further in, but the room was so dark I couldn’t see more.  Apart from the beds, no pains had been taken to make this room look like a bedroom—the wall and floor had been left as natural rock—the room smelling of moisture and damp moss.

I reached to squeeze Lacey’s shoulder as we crept past down the corridor. She grabbed my arm and came with us. The sight of the creepy dolls would be even worse for her than it was for us.

The end of the tunnel branched into two uneven corridors—the left tunnel tapering into darkness. We headed to the right.

A massive chamber opened out—with black and white linoleum on the floor.  Another carousel stood pride of place in the center of the room, except this one had horses. Wall-to-floor shelving held harlequin dolls, wooden puzzles, games, hoops, wooden yo-yos, monkeys riding unicycles and dollhouses complete with tiny figurines. A library of fusty old books sat against one wall—school desks lined up in front of it. The desks were large—they would dwarf a child.

A chandelier hung from the ceiling, but the lights weren’t on.

We backtracked and headed down the smaller tunnel. This one had been left in its natural state. It wound on in darkness, grower tighter and lower, water dripping as though the ceiling itself were bleeding.

I halted. “Can we go back?”

Ethan nodded. “I want to get out of this too.”

We headed into the chamber with the chandelier. Lacey sat herself on a brocaded daybed, hands tucked under her feet, her face immobile. I knew if my mom was here, she’d say Lacey’s showing signs of shock and trauma.

“There’s no one here.” I sat on the edge of the carousel.

“I can’t figure any of this out.” Ethan crossed his arms. “It’s like this was made for giant children. Crazy.”

 “Maybe the old guy—Tobias—went crazy. From missing his family,” I said.

“Who’s Tobias?”

I told Ethan the story—the little that I knew about Tobias Fiveash and his circus family.

“Well, I reckon you might be onto something,” Ethan mused. “He went nuts. The only thing it doesn’t explain is why Henry’s kept it a secret all these years and why he still comes down here.”

“And why he keeps a generator running just to keep the lights on,” I said wryly.

“Yeah. Lights must be on here constantly. There's moss in some places, and that wouldn't grow in complete dark.” He ran his hands over his head, in that way I’d often seen men do. “I was scared out of my head at what I might see down here. There were things I thought I might see... that I didn’t want to see. But I never expected this.”

“Yes. Me too.” I nodded.

“We should take another look around, and if nothing tosses up, I vote we head back to the Wheel of Death. I'll use this meat cleaver to hack at the door if I can't find anything else,” he said.

“I second that vote.” I craved a shower, even just to wash all the slimy cave moisture off my skin. I craved my own bed, home. We needed to leave and let the police sort all of this out.

I wandered over to one of the large wooden desks that were positioned near the library of books. The desk was beautifully made and sturdy. So different to what we had at school now. We had desks that were just table-tops, cut in triangular shapes that tessellated.

The desk’s lid creaked as I lifted it. The cavity was filled with pencil drawings. Carefully, I carried them out and onto the desk top. The drawings were childish—those massive balloon bodies and stick legs and arms that young children seemed to uniformly draw. On one of the pages, a more mature hand had drawn birds and butterflies, and the child had tried to copy—the child’s smudgy, lopsided creatures rising up the page.

I replaced the drawings, and then opened the desk beside me, expecting to find more of the same.  But the drawings in this desk were exquisitely drawn—scenes of forests and dolls and horses. One of the pictures—a drawing of a young girl riding a horse—seemed to have been deliberately ripped.

“Either Henry has multiple personalities or the drawings aren’t all by the same person.” I traced a finger over the heavy lines of the pictures.

Ethan came to look.

“If this is all him, it’s creepy he draws pictures of little girls,” he remarked.

We checked the other desks. One of the other desks was empty, but the rest had more drawings—all seemingly drawn by different hands. I stared up at Ethan.

Bending, he studied the ripped pieces of drawings in the second desk. He scooped up the bits and assembled them on a desk top. The picture depicted a tiny red-cheeked girl riding a horse through sunlit clouds. Every muscle and sinew of the horse was expertly drawn, the horse’s mane rippling. You could almost see the muscles working under the horse’s flank and sense the horse reveling in its freedom. The child had her head back—her hair ribbon flying loose—far away in the wind. A name was penciled-in on the ribbon—Philomena.

Why would you toss away such an incredible drawing and keep the childish ones?

There was a mess of red paint in one corner—perhaps that was why.

Ethan slammed a hand down on the desk. “That’s Aisha’s horse!”

I stared back at the picture. The drawing certainly was like one of Aisha’s—but Ethan was surely imagining that this horse was Aisha’s treasured StarFire.

 I rubbed a finger over the waxy red stuff in the corner of the page. A faintly-penciled ‘A.D’ revealed itself. The blood in my veins slowed and froze.

It couldn’t be. It couldn’t—

“Oh hell,” I gasped. “And that’s red face paint! Like on the dolls in the beds. What if one of the dolls sleeping in those beds... is not a doll?”

Ethan looked straight through me, gulping. He turned and raced to the corridor.

“Lacey!” I gestured wildly to her to come with me. “Come with us! We’re going to check the beds!”

Lacey held her hands over her head. “Oh God, Oh God. I can’t go back there! “Her voice rose to a shriek. “Don’t make me go there!”

I backed away. “It’s okay, Lace. I’m sorry. Stay here. Stay safe!”

I moved inside the dark crevice.  Cold and damp surrounded me. I forced my legs to keep going, move. I stepped past the large doll and clown figure. Four smaller dolls rested out in their oversized beds.
Human-sized dolls
—with pallid faces and deep red cheeks that looked like bruises in this light. Their arms were crisscrossed over their chests. All wore thin, yellowed night gowns and ribbons in their hair.

My heart clenched and thudded.

They were real. Not dolls. Not playthings.

The crazily high beds had made them seem doll-like before.

I stared about in horror at the occupants of the beds. The smallest of them couldn’t be more than five years old.

Someone—Henry—was keeping these children down here. Revulsion coursed through my body. We had to get them all out of here...  that’s if any of them were still alive.

 Ethan bent to touch a dark ponytail bound up in a reddish ribbon. A high ruffled collar hid her face from this angle. Delicately, he moved her chin so that he could see her face in full.

Aisha.

Thinner. Hollowed cheeks. But Aisha.

Ethan seemed to throw off the covers and scoop her up in a one motion. Her head flopped onto his shoulder like a soft doll. He ran with her from the room.

My feet made wooden steps out of the room. Dim light from the corridor streaked across the Raggedy Ann doll’s face. The light shifted slightly, making the doll’s face seem like it turned a little. Of course—it hadn’t.

Did the doll’s hand just twitch?

You’re in shock, I told myself. Like Lacey. Just get out of here—breathe.

I fled—following Ethan to the carousel.

Ethan laid Aisha carefully in one of the chariots. He turned back to me with wild eyes. “It won’t turn, this stinking thing won’t turn!”

I wanted to ask if she was breathing. But I couldn’t. Maybe Ethan was fooling himself and wanted to pretend she was okay. Stepping forward, I bent down to Aisha. A vein in her neck pulsed when I touched it.

She’s alive.

I could scarcely believe she was there before me. Solid, whole.

“Go get Lacey. We need to get out. Now!”

I rushed away back down the corridor.

The chamber we’d left Lacey in was empty. No Lacey on the daybed. No Lacey anywhere.

Overhead, something moved across the ceiling. Heart pounding, I slowly raised my eyes. Shadows—shadows that shouldn't be there—slithered. Shadows that pierced you, clung to you—as though to merely look at them was to take them inside you—like a reflection on a still, dark lake.

I forced my eyes shut. You had to shut out things that weren't real. Trauma caused you to see and hear things, right? Finding Aisha alive— that was as shocking as finding her remains. My mind was spewing out bile.

The shadows were gone as I opened my eyes. But traces of the shadows remained, both cloying and poisoning inside me.

I took frantic steps to the kitchen and bathroom. They too, were empty. Lacey had vanished. Elbows over my head, I knew there was one more place to look—that deathly dark tunnel we’d entered earlier.

I turned to see a girl of about my age shrink into the wall opposite, her face so pale it was ashen.

 “Are you here to hurt me?” She trembled in her thin knee-length night gown.

“No,” I said fervently. “No. We’re here to help.”

The girl nodded, bending her flaxen head. She recoiled as I went to touch her shoulder.

“It’s all right. Just come with me.” I attempted to smile, but I was sure it looked more of a grimace.

She hesitated—then walked with me to the carousel.

Ethan brushed Aisha’s hair back from her face.

“I can’t find Lacey,” I told him.

He stared at the girl.

“She’s coming with us,” I said.

He merely nodded. “I still can’t get this thing cranking. Maybe if we all get on a ride, it will kick-start it. Like before.”

The girl shook her head numbly. “Kicking it won’t help. And I’m quite sure you cannot start it.”

He eyed the girl with interest. “Do you know how I
can
get it going?”

 The girl stared at Ethan as though he’d said something stupid. “You’re asking completely the wrong question.”

Ethan forced a lungful of air through his teeth. “Well, tell me what the right question is!”

I glared at Ethan.

We tried sitting on the rides—me on the dragon again and Ethan on the gargoyle.

“Sit on the unicorn,” Ethan ordered the girl.

She shook her head. “It won’t help, I’m afraid.”

Ethan jumped to his feet. “There has to be a lever or switch, or something. He felt around the wall.