Dollhouse (8 page)

Lacey bent her head against the sharp wind. “Are you kidding? The dogs will hear us.”

“What if we come in at night?” he said. “The dogs will be asleep... hopefully?’

“We’re going to creep around a creepy old house at night? One that has a creepy man in it?” Lacey’s eyes widened.

My body numbed. I had imagined tracking Henry would involve following him about the forests in the daytime. I hadn’t imagined doing anything in the dark.

“How could we find anything the experts didn’t in there?” I asked.

“If Henry’s hiding something, I was hoping he’d get sloppy now that the search parties are long gone.” Ethan pulled a long
who-knows
face.

He began pulling things out of his tent. “Let’s get prepared. Let’s see... torches, extra batteries—and food in case we get stuck and can’t get out.”

I didn’t even want to think about getting trapped in there. I didn’t know how we were going to get in, let alone get out again.

I picked out food and a large bottle of water, and set it down beside my smaller backpack. I folded my wetsuit and balaclava into the bottom of the bag—if there was some kind of wet crawlspace under his house—I wanted to be ready. I didn’t tell the others I’d packed those. Australians didn’t seem to have crawlspaces under their houses—or even basements and attics. But the house we were about to search was old, and built by the American Fiveash family.

Lacey and I shared a dinner of pasta with Ethan. Afterwards, I had Lacey play the recording of Henry Fiveash from the other day. Ethan listened with a fixed expression.

By the sacred radiance of the sun

The mysteries of Hecate and the night

By all the operation of the orbs

From whom we do exist and cease to be

Swallowed its children and all destiny

“It’s Shakespeare,” mused Ethan.

“Thought so.” Lacey nodded.

“How do you know for sure?” I asked Ethan.

Ethan leant back on his elbow. “Granddad used to be in the amateur theatre company. I helped with sets sometimes—and a few times they even put me in plays.”

“So, Henry’s a Shakespeare buff,” I said.

Ethan screwed his face slightly. “I wouldn’t say he’s a buff. I’m sure those words aren’t totally correct. It’s King Lear. King Lear was disowning his daughter, Cordelia, so there should have been something about that. I think maybe the last line is wrong.”

“King Lear is on our study list for third term,” I said. “Seeing as you’re so familiar with it, you can help Lacey and I analyze it.”

“Well you might have to bring your books up here. ‘Cos this is where I’ll be.” Ethan left for his tent.

Night fell with a hammer, pounding life and color from every tree and patch of sky. I hated the nights here. No television, computers and electric lights to chase the darkness away.

The solar light faded, and there was nothing to do but move off to our tent—we had hours to wait anyway until we could be sure Henry was asleep, and we might as well try to get some sleep.

* * * *

The house seemed even larger than before, with the night shadowing the perimeters, merging the house with the limitless black.

We skirted the house like thieves, approaching from the opposite side to the dogs’ yard. 

Ethan went straight for the back door of the house. It opened. Lacey stared around at me.

The door opened into a dank kitchen. Cans of food littered the bench. I closed the door behind us.

We checked the cupboards—just more cans and foods. Henry kept his kitchen well stocked. I inspected a cupboard full of brooms and dusters. Wafts of cleaning fluids caught at the back of my throat. I shut it quickly.

We edged around the corridor to a large reception area, leading into what could be a ballroom.  An enormous chandelier hung from a long chain in the center of the room. A long wisp of smoke curled upwards from the dark fireplace. Paintings of men and women in the stiff clothing of the 1800s hung crookedly on a wall that led up a wide, red-carpeted staircase.

First, we had to find where Henry Fiveash slept. Ethan gave Lacey that task—she was the smallest and lightest of us, and likely to make the least noise. She turned back to us—her face white and taut—before she disappeared into the rooms behind the ballroom.

She emerged a short time later. “He sleeps in a little room near the bathrooms.”

Ethan nodded and gestured towards the staircase.

We crept slowly up the stairs.

Lacey peeked behind the paintings, straightening them as she did so. Ethan sighed audibly and hung the paintings crooked again.

A long, spindly corridor ahead of the top landing was fixed with hexagonal light shades along its length. I wished I could turn the lights on—the dark closed in everywhere, thickening and congealing.

Ethan reached back and pulled me by the lapel of my jacket, as though he knew I was stalling.

The rooms upstairs were musty with a layer of dust over everything. You could believe they hadn’t been touched in a century. But I knew they’d been searched with a fine-toothed comb only weeks back. Some of the windows were cracked, allowing fine mist to swirl in. A few of the rooms had beds—most didn’t.

It was hard to walk into a room without making footprints on the dusty floorboards. But Lacey had brought along a cloth to try to erase the prints. Hopefully the dust would soon settle back where it was before.

The middle room on the third floor was the only room that held anything of interest. This room looked out towards the river at the front of the house. Yellowed lace dresses were lined up on a rack. Sheer curtains hung over a four poster bed. Against the wall, an intricate dollhouse stood—complete with tiny chandeliers, checkered flooring and wooden stairs. I crouched to see the delicate dolls, beautifully hand painted and dressed.

I turned and jumped as I caught my reflection in a full-length mirror. A curled, handwritten note was tucked to the mirror’s frame.
You and always you
, it said in a tall, shaky font.

“I don’t want to stay in here,” Lacey whispered.

Ethan trained his torchlight underneath the bed and behind the dollhouse. “Next room.”

We searched the rest of the rooms and the small attic. We paid the most attention to any cracks in the walls or any large object that could be hiding a door.

Ethan shook his head. “Nothing.”

We traipsed back to the ballroom. Lacey took us to the hallway outside the room where Henry slept. He snored in a low whistling rhythm. Creeping past, we entered the bathrooms. There were a series of three individual cubicles containing toilets and sinks. The old pipes were cracked and leaking. A bug climbed out of the sink’s drain in the last bathroom we looked at—then shot away under the torch beam.

“Blech. Let’s go.” Lacey held a hand over her mouth and nose.

“Yeah. Nothing to do here.” Ethan’s face was drawn.

We took small steps past Henry’s room and found the passage back to the ballroom. We didn’t dare put our torches on so close to where Henry slept.

Deep, silvery moonlit fell across us.

Gaudy plastic flowers adorned an ugly glass vase on a side table on the other side of the stair well. The wall of the stairwell was deeply creviced around a rectangular shape. I pushed at the shape. It budged slightly.

Ethan rounded my shoulder, pushing against the wood. A door swung open. Steps lead down in blackness. Stepping backwards, I eyed Ethan.

“I’ll go,” he said.

I nodded.

Lacey’s face was somber as she followed Ethan.

Wrapping my arms around myself, I told myself to
move
,
go down there
. It wasn’t fair that Lacey and Ethan had to do it by themselves.

My feet stepped stiffly one after the other on the concrete stairs.

The air was cold, damp—like standing in light rain on a winter’s night, except for the metallic, closed stench of dirt. The temperature was bone-achingly cold down here and I could barely stop my jaw from quivering.

Ethan moved quickly, studying everything. Our torch beams crisscrossed each other’s as we searched the room. Barrels were lined up loosely on one side of the basement, and a ladder and a big freezer chest on the other. I shone my torch over the ceiling. It was just a ceiling, a few rusted tools hanging from rough-cut exposed beams.

We checked the barrels next—they were empty.

Marching across the room, Ethan reached for the freezer lid. He went to open it, then flinched and drew his arm back. A weight dragged through my body. I knew what Ethan feared was in the freezer, and I knew why he didn’t want to open it.

Lacey cast a sympathetic look in Ethan’s direction. Stepping forward, she placed two hands on the lid, and lifted it. I moved closer, peering inside. Heads, legs and arms—all in pieces. All animal.

She shut it quickly.

None of us moved for a moment, and I knew why. The possibility of finding Aisha like that was too much, too grisly.

We were just kids. We shouldn’t even be here doing this. We shouldn’t be trying to find her. This was reality, with every pretense stripped away.

On the wall behind Ethan, yellow plastic was wound around a large nail. Stepping over, I unfurled a length of the plastic. Big black letters said,
Police Line Do Not Cross,
repeatedly on the tape.

 “It’s some of the police tape—that barricade stuff.”

 “They must have been down here already,” said Ethan.

“Guess it makes sense.” I dropped the piece of tape. “If the basement was so easy for me to find in the dark, how easy would it have been for teams of police in daylight?”

I shone my torchlight around the floor again. If you looked closely, you could see different imprints of shoes on the dirty floor.

Heading for the stairs, I turned back to see if Ethan and Lacey were following me. I wanted out of here—now.  In my mind, I had a vision of Henry closing the cellar doors on us, locking us in here. My heart rattled in my chest.

* * * *

Lacey stuck a torch in the tent and inspected the sleeping bags. “Snakes can get in sometimes.”

I wriggled into bed, half-expecting something to strike at my feet. But after a moment, I reclined stiffly, unable to move. The cold had driven so far into my bones I didn’t think it would ever leave me. I knew it wasn’t just the cold—it was the sawing terror of searching for the dead. Tonight we hadn’t even come close to finding Aisha, but we’d come too close to how we
might
find her.

* * * *

For the next three days, we faithfully tracked Henry Fiveash’s every movement.

We knew he went to bed at eight at night and rose exactly at six-thirty in the morning. We knew he quoted his crazy Shakespeare mix of poetry in the woods. We knew he chopped wood with gusto—more than a person could ever want—and kept his fire burning day and night.

Ethan kept intricate notes of everything Henry did, with black lines crisscrossing each other. He even wrote out the words to the Shakespeare quotes and tried to find hidden messages and meanings.

Sitting there at the campsite—watching Ethan scrawling like a madman and Lacey grower quieter each day, and watching myself losing trust in Ethan—I couldn’t help but think that
this was us now
.

Lacey and I made the long trek down the mountain, to where the phone reception worked, and called our mothers. I strained to sound normal, to sound like I was having an amazing time out canoeing and mountain biking.

Right now, I wanted desperately to go home.

Mom asked me to send her photos of the winter camp, but I made up some excuse about my mobile internet not working.

I dropped the phone back into my pocket and returned to the campsite.

The only other thing to search now was the old shed and the enclosure it sat within. But that was impossible—the enclosure was a fenced area of about half an acre—guarded by two vicious dogs. There was no way of getting in without them running us down and tearing us to pieces. Ethan said he’d get in there—after Lacey and I had left the mountains. I couldn’t talk Ethan out of it, so I gave up.

The three of us searched the woods on the other side of the enclosure—inspecting the ground for anything unusual. I realized I’d completely given up on finding any kind of gold mine. That seemed like a kids’ adventure now, like a girl scouts’ trip gone wrong.

Deep, droning strains of music carried on the breeze.

“Pipe organ,” said Lacey flatly.

I wondered if Henry had noticed us at all as we’d followed him that day. I imagined him sitting in his stuffy living room with the period furniture, smoking a pipe and laughing at us. Then mocking us with the discordant sounds of his pipe organ.

One of the dogs growled, and we beat a hasty exit. I held up an arm to brush away the branches of a tree that were draped with enormous heart-shaped leaves. Arms slid around my shoulders and waist. I turned to see Ethan pulling me close to him.

“You were one step away from wishing you were dead. That's the Giant Stinging Tree. The leaves have a potent neurotoxin, and it's a bastard getting the needles out.” He shrugged his body against mine.

Lacey glanced over, eyeing Ethan's arms on my torso, a strange look on her face. He released his lock on me.

The next night, we made the decision to leave. Neither of us was going to be able to hold off our parents forever—one of them would smell a rat pretty soon. And we weren’t finding the barest whisper of a clue. I doubted we would—even if we stayed up here for a year.

I couldn't sleep. Long after Lacey and I had crawled into our sleeping bags, the wind and the never-ceasing calls and roar of the animals bore down on me. My body ached, in the way your body did when you’d been tossing and turning too long.