Paper Dolls

Down the empty corridor, only the wind sounded. Every natural breath was spent. As a living ghost, I wandered.

I unlaced my boots and let them fall to the ground, then unrolled my stockings. I wanted to feel the floor beneath my feet—but I couldn’t feel it at all. My body and mind were numb, merging with the cold stone of the floor and walls.

I found my way into the bed chamber. Four dolls lay in their beds, with waxen faces and still limbs. Four dolls who will never again open their eyes. I climbed into my own bed and pulled the covers over. My arms folded across my chest automatically.

No sleep came. Something restless banged inside my head like a drum. Something that wouldn’t allow let me to remain here like this. Something that refused me peace.

My wetsuit was still crammed into the bottom of the backpack, just as it had been when I packed it in there. I barely remembered myself as I was back then—so desperate for resolution and answers, so desperate to help Ethan.

A blast echoed from the other side of the carousel.
Ethan must have found something to make explosives with
.

Then… nothing. The nothing stretched out infinitely. No more sounds came.

I struggled into the rubber suit and zipped the back up. My fingers faltered when I touched Lacey’s bag. She had an extra beanie and a balaclava and I needed both of those. I stretched the balaclava over my face, then two beanies over my head.

I pulled two pairs of socks on each foot, then runners. I took leather gloves from the drawers and wriggled my fingers into them.

I shrugged a thick jacket on and jeans over the wetsuit. I could never have fit jeans over all that before—but I was now bone thin.

Placing the headband torch over my forehead and shoving the big torch down my jacket front, I was as ready as I was ever going to get.

The Dark Way was empty and still as I made my way down it. The shadow hung back as I found the tunnel in the wall.

My feet slipped on the scattered diamonds as I struggled to climb up to the opening. I clambered over the hessian bags, dirt and dust thickening in my nostrils. Below was a narrow, downwards descent. I was going to have to climb backwards. Ice-laden air breathed over me as I began the climb. My foot skidded. I slid on my back a few feet. It
hurt
. I breathed short erratic breaths.
What was I doing in here?
This was crazy.

I slowed my breathing, gathered myself.

Lifting the large torch from my jacket, I shone it directly down the tunnel. The tunnel descended at almost a ninety degree angle. I’d have to inch down, and pray I didn’t fall. There was almost certainly no way of getting back up to the top again. And there was no telling how far it went straight down—it could go for miles like this.

And if I succeeded in getting down there, underground rivers might cross and flood the tunnel at any point.

As I pulled the torch away, something moved below me.

A large animal? I knew it wasn’t. With nausea rising in my heart and stomach I shone the torch downwards again. Something climbed, fast, with jerky movements that belonged to no animal.

Much bulkier than a human.

I backed up—straightening each leg against the rock as I pushed myself up. My legs burned. The thing crawled towards me. I trained the torch directly on the thing—the thing that was surely about to devour me from the legs upwards.

Dead eyes glared at me above a wide smiling grin. It moved a large lace-up boot near its head at an impossible angle, and pushed itself forward.

Struggling upwards, I bumped my head—hard. The thing pushed at me—pushed me up—at a crazy speed.

Both of us tumbled from the opening.

It crawled forward grotesquely. I scrambled to get to my feet, my layers of clothing impeding me. Whipping my torch out, I shone it downwards. The thing was slickly wet, covered in black mold and rotting clothing.

It collapsed on top of the diamonds.

The next second, I knew what it was. I should have known the thing would be in the dollhouse somewhere. Every child knew that a Raggedy Ann doll came in a pigeon pair—with a Raggedy Andy doll. The hair had been eaten away and the clothes were stained and dark—but it was unmistakable.

I could guess how he got there. Jessamine had put him there for protection. Judging by the condition of him—that time was many decades ago. I doubted he was much protection, anymore.

There was nothing to do except... go back in there.

If anything else was in the tunnel—it was all over. If I’d been further in when the Andy doll rushed at me, I’d have been crushed to death against the rock.

I lifted myself back into the tunnel.

Wind blew around me, biting into the skin around my eyes. I welcomed it—despite the pain—the odor of slime and dank was overpowering. My arms and back scraped and slid along rock. I made the backwards descent down into the almost vertical section, my heart pounding.

My legs burned as I struggled to keep myself from falling—positioning them hard against the rock. There was nothing to grip onto—just small, slippery ledges.

I kept moving. I didn’t know how long I’d been in complete darkness. Probably less than ten minutes. My heart dilated and constricted—a caged animal in my chest. I tried to disengage my brain, stop all thought—stop everything except the relentless climb downwards.

I crawled like that forever. I felt my mind filling in, like sand filling in a child’s sandcastle moat on the shore. I tried to remember songs—anything to stop my mind from closing in. But the music jarred in my head, turned into tinny carousel tunes.

I’d been moving for at least hours—or at least days—or perhaps I’d died, and it was just my spirit roaming the tunnels.

No, none of that was true.

Ice water drizzled on the face and ran underneath me.

The tunnel sloped upwards ahead, ending in a high ledge. I had to climb feet first. Upwards.
I couldn’t do it.
And there wasn’t enough space above me for me to use my arms. I grunted with each small effort.

A sharp rock edge scraped along my side, ripping through to my skin. Bitter water ate into me.

Almost immediately, my body began to shake. The insulation I’d had between my body and the wetsuit was gone. My bones turned to ice. The cold chewed into my bones like a rabid dog.

I couldn’t last like this. I didn’t know how long I had before my body refused to move, before it shut itself down to conserve energy.

I tried to find a foothold on the upper ledge—but my body kept slipping down. My legs flailing, I tried again. And again. And again.

Exhausted, I leant my head back in the icy water. My head froze, hurt. Even if I made it—I couldn’t manage miles more of this. And in the end, was it all just to deliver myself to the serpent?

My brain slowed and mushed—my head filled with snow. Flurries of snow swirled before my eyes. Beautiful.

People die all the time, Cassie, in places not nearly as awful as this. It’s easy to die. Humans are fragile. Let it happen. The hurt will go. You’ll be free.

Shadows slipped and slithered on the rock wall. I felt the barbs pierce me. It wasn’t so gentle this time. The shadow was anxious, tired of waiting.

In the midst of the snow, a face. Ethan’s. I kissed it. But I couldn’t remember why I wanted to. Couldn’t remember Ethan. The face turned ugly—diamonds in his eyes and between his teeth.

I was disappearing, drawing down.

A dripping rose.

Prudence
.

Something—at the back of my mind—kicked me.

Go!

The voice was urgent.

Go!

I realized the voice was my own.

The shadow wrenched itself from me—leaving me breathless.

I was cold, so cold. My limbs numb.

Water gurgled around me. If it rained in the outside world now—the tunnel might fill with water. And I’d drown... drift... forever.

But if rain and wind from the outside could reach in here, perhaps there really was a way out at the end....

I made it. I was moving again.

My mind might still be somewhere back there—but I was moving. My body ached and shook. The tunnel continued on its upward incline.

The tunnel opened out—the ceiling lifting to a full foot above my head. Crying out, I twisted my body around to a crawling position. I crawled on for what seemed hours. I counted in my head—trying to stop myself from losing all track of time, from losing myself....

The shriek of wind intensified. A deeper, booming noise introduced itself. An underground river?

I edged along. My left hand slipped over the rough lip of the rock. The tunnel seemed to end here. Extending an arm out, I shone the torchlight around. A cathedral-sized cave stretched before me, pillars of transparent crystal rising from a wide, murky pool. A waterfall rushed from the soaring ceiling of rock into the pool. In my heart I knew the water stretched downwards to unimaginable depths.

There didn't seem to be anywhere to continue on. No more tunnel. But I couldn’t turn around and go back. There was no choice but to jump the eight or so feet into the water below and hope I found something, some way forward.

I might drown with that hope inside me.

I closed my eyes as my legs splashed into ice water. Icy water closed over me. Terrified, I struck out, struggling to the surface. Taking a lungful of air, I swam to the slippery, crystalline walls. My feet found purchase on an underwater rock shelf.

Desperately, I wanted to sit, lie, rest. But there was nowhere here for any of those things.

I sensed the shadow. But it didn't come to me, it didn't seek me. With a sickening in my stomach, I knew it no longer had to seek me. Because I'd come seeking it. I was here, in the bowels of the serpent. I felt it begin to digest me, disassemble my mind.

Snatches of sound echoed in the cave. I strained to hear.

I remembered being so sick once that my mother had to take me to the hospital. I was only three. My temperature rose so high, I imagined things, hallucinated. Family came to visit—but they sounded so far away, so garbled. Like a radio transmission fading in and out.

That’s what the sounds reminded me of now.

Then I heard it clearly. Girls singing. An old nursery rhyme I couldn’t place.