Night of the Living Dolls

by Joel A. Sutherland

  I did not know what I would take but when I saw there dolls I knew that was what I would take. I grabbed each doll off the girls beds and ran to the music room.

  I should have left and gone home but something about the dolls made me want to play with them right away. I pretended that Hatties doll was actualy Hattie, and that the other dolls were actualy the other girls too and we were all frends.

  Reading that broke my heart into tiny pieces and I had to take a deep breath before going any further.

  They were a weerd mix of dolls but I didnt care. It was so nice and made me so happy but only for a short time, becuz I heard a loud crash and I grabbed the dolls and ran out of the room. I was scared that Miss Ashton had found me.

  I hid the dolls in the hedge between my house and the school and that is when I first smelled the smoke.

  All of the sky was brite and orange but it wasn’t the sunrise. The school was on fire. Daddy rushed out of our house and yelled at me to get home to safety. And that is when I rememberd the candel. I must have nocked it over when I ran out of the music room.

  The fire was all my fault.

  Grandma did it. She started the fire.

  Accidents happen. But never in a million years would I have guessed that Grandma could have done something like that — not so much the fire, but hiding the fact that she had been responsible. Innocent people had died because of her and she’d never told anyone the truth.

  I hated to admit it, but I understood why Miss Ashton and the girls were upset with her still.

  The room suddenly felt a little colder than usual, causing me to shiver and rub my arms. The house spun around me and I needed to sit down to steady myself.

  “I can’t believe it,” Lucy said.

  “Me neither,” I whispered. I felt like the world had flipped upside down. “C’mon, let’s go back to bed.” I couldn’t think of anything else to do.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  I have no idea how she did it, but Lucy fell asleep nearly as soon as her head hit the pillow.

  My mind was racing far too quickly for me to settle. I couldn’t turn off my thoughts. I pictured Grandma playing with the other girls’ dolls all alone. I saw her knock her candle over and start the fire. I stood next to her as she watched the flames consume the school and everyone who hadn’t managed to escape. I heard her dad yell at her to get home to safety. I felt the guilt that must have weighed so heavily on her for the rest of her years, and I was amazed she was able to keep such a monumentally large secret to herself.

  I also replayed the events of my own bizarre night over and over in my head. I saw Sadie Sees come to life. I heard the pitter-patter of tiny feet running across the attic. And I felt the fear of … well, of everything I’d experienced earlier. It had been the scariest night of my life. I finally drifted off to sleep sometime not too long before sunrise, but I was far too disturbed and bothered to get any decent, unbroken rest. My mind jolted me out of sleep every fifteen minutes or so.

  At some point my parents poked their heads into the bedroom. I pretended to be sound asleep because I was so groggy I didn’t think I’d be able to form words. They must have decided not to wake us, because the next thing I heard was the sound of the car pulling out of the driveway.

  Then my mind turned back to Grandma’s trunk. Was it possible Grandma knew the true nature of what it held? Is that why she got so angry with me all those years ago? I decided to see if Grandma had written about it. Reading one of her journals had provided some answers once already, even if I wasn’t happy with what I’d discovered, so there was a chance it might help again.

  Lucy still hadn’t woken up so I slipped soundlessly out of bed and made my way back to the attic.

  As soon as I entered the room, a feeling of unease crawled over my skin like ants. I grabbed the flashlight and turned it on, then crossed to the bookcase, trying to avoid looking at the open trunk in the corner. I scanned the dates on the journal spines.

  I pulled out the journal from the year I’d first opened the trunk. Grandma no longer began each entry with “Dear diary,” as she had when she was a child, but I did find what I was looking for.

  Had a close call yesterday. Zelda opened the trunk. I yelled at her — mostly out of fear but a little out of anger too. Anger not directed at my granddaughter, of course, but at what she had almost unwittingly released.

  I heard them. Later that night, even though the trunk was sealed. Their voices were tiny and muffled, so I had to hold my breath and lean in close, but I heard them. I wish I hadn’t. Their voices brought back memories I’ve worked too hard to repress.

  And what they said was … well, it was ghastly. They spoke about waking up. They spoke about something called the Wisp. They spoke about Zelda, and how she looked so much like I did at that age. They spoke about killing her as soon as they could. But then Mary told the others that killing someone might get the Wisp’s attention, but doing something a little more unusual might work even better — appeal to the Wisp’s sense of justice. “An eye for an eye,” Mary said. They want to turn Zelda into a doll, sew up her mouth and her nose and her eyes and let her slowly drift away into a doll-like slumber.

  I still don’t know why the dolls can’t get out of the trunk on their own. I suspect it has something to do with the chalcedony stones in the lid. Whatever it is, I’m thankful for it.

  Zelda was upset when I yelled at her. And no wonder. I felt terrible. I went out and bought her a bright, shiny new doll and I gave it to her this morning. It seemed to help improve her mood. It made me feel a little better, but only a little.

  Thank goodness those dolls are trapped in that trunk. I can’t bear to think what they might do if they ever escaped.

  They wanted to turn me into a doll.

  It all clicked.

  After Lucy had opened the trunk, when Miss Ashton had said to wait until there was only one, she’d been referring to me and my sister. And when Hattie had wanted to do it now, she’d wanted to kill one of us — maybe both of us. But Miss Ashton stopped her.

  Because she wanted to wait until one of us was alone. And she didn’t want to kill us — at least, not quickly. She wanted to use needle and thread to turn me into some sort of sick human doll.

  I was suddenly overcome by the uncontrollable desire to rejoin my sister immediately and to not let her out of my sight for the rest of our time in Summerside. I raced down the stairs two or three at a time and barged into our room.

  Lucy was gone.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “Lucy!” I yelled at the top of my lungs. “Lucy!”

  I searched the other bedroom and the bathroom. She wasn’t there. I tore down the stairs to the main floor shouting her name. No response. Then I found the kitchen door open and I knew my fears were correct. Miss Ashton and the girls had waited until the perfect time to take my sister.

  The sun beat down as I sprinted across the empty backyard. I lunged through the hedge without slowing down, using my shoulder as a battering ram and crashing through to the other side.

  Despite my frantic sense of urgency, what I found on the other side made me stop dead.

  It was the school — Summerside College, standing where it once had, before my grandmother had accidentally burned it down.

  The school looked exactly as it had in the newspaper picture. Tall, dark, made of stone and as intimidating as any building I’d ever seen.

  I felt like I was dreaming. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

  Maybe, I realized, the dream I’d had the night I’d first opened the trunk back when I was nine years old hadn’t been a dream after all.

  As much as I wanted to knock down the doors and run into the school, I approached the building slowly. I didn’t want Miss Ashton and the girls to know I was coming. If Lucy was in there, I didn’t want to put her in danger.

  The bell tower loomed above me and the composition of the windows on either side of the front door seemed to form a large face that stared out at the world, d
aring me to enter.

  I noticed something odd as I walked: an optical illusion or a trick of the light. The building appeared to take on a translucent glow.

  I stopped. The building looked solid. I took a few steps. Its surface became see-through again.

  It’s a ghost school, I thought. It made no sense, but then again nothing made sense anymore. Spirits were real. Dolls walked and talked. Burned-down schools rose from the ashes. The world as I knew it had flipped. I felt like I was suddenly inhabiting a parallel dimension.

  Would I be able to enter the school? Or would I fall through the floor as soon as I set foot on it? I had no idea, but there was only one way to find out.

  I needed to find my sister. There was no time to waste. My parents weren’t home, and I doubted the police would believe me if I told them the ghosts of a headmistress and six girls had possessed seven dolls and were hiding out in their school, which had burned down more than sixty years ago.

  I was on my own. And I’d already decided I couldn’t just hide and hope for the best. So that left one option. I had to go in and see whether or not I fell through the floor. And then, regardless, I had to find Lucy.

  The temperature dropped a few degrees as I walked up the steps to the front door, and the hair on my arms and the back of my neck stood on end. The air felt heavy and I heard a low hum. It was as if the school was alive with electricity. I felt a little nauseous. I took a deep breath, but that only made things worse; there was a hint of something gaseous in the air, like rotten eggs mixed in with the smell of charcoal, and inhaling that pungent mix was awful. I tried to take quicker, shallower breaths but it didn’t help much.

  I gripped and turned the door handle — it was ice cold — and pushed the door. It swung open easily.

  I had the feeling that the school was an active participant in this mess, leading me on. It felt like a trap. Despite this concerning thought, I stepped inside.

  My foot touched the floor. I didn’t fall through.

  So far, so good.

  Both the gassy smell and the burning smell faded away and were replaced by a musty smell, like the place needed to be aired out. That struck me as weird because only a short while ago this whole lot was an open, airy field.

  The school’s interior was nothing like any school I’d ever seen. The foyer was very small. Across from the entrance was a staircase, and a hallway ran on either side of it. To the left was the library and to the right was a bathroom and a lounge. Everything was made of dark wood, the furniture was all antique, and old-fashioned decorations covered every surface. Large portraits in ornate gold frames filled the walls. Each painting was of a stern-looking woman staring out at me. The nameplate on the portrait closest to the staircase identified the subject as Miss Ashton. Compared to the others, she actually didn’t look as mean and intimidating.

  As I examined the painting, a chilling sound from above caught my attention — half shuffle, half scrape, like a body being dragged across the floor. And then I heard Miss Ashton’s singsong voice flutter down to me.

  “Come out, come out, wherever you are!”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Although I’d impressed myself with my bravery up to that point, I nearly lost my nerve and ran out of the school with my tail tucked between my legs. But then I remembered why I’d come. My sister needed me.

  As long as it’s not her body being dragged across the floor upstairs … I thought morbidly. As long as I’m not too late.

  I shook my head — I couldn’t think like that. I reached for an old candlestick off a side table and was a bit surprised that my hand didn’t pass straight through it. I shook the candle free and it clattered to the floor.

  I felt better holding it, even if it wasn’t much of a weapon. There was a second candlestick that matched the first on the side table, so I picked it up too and turned it upside down, freeing the candle. Two was better than one, I figured. It couldn’t hurt, and Lucy would need something to defend herself if — when — I found her.

  I looked up the stairs. The staircase wound up to the third floor.

  The body-dragging sound picked up again, followed by Miss Ashton’s melodic voice.

  “I’ve got something for you,” she sang.

  It felt like a trap. But even if it was, that didn’t matter. I had to stop Miss Ashton. And although I didn’t want to destroy the doll Grandma had given me, I had a feeling that was exactly what I’d need to do. After all, Sadie Sees wasn’t the only thing of hers I had. I had my memories of her, and no one — not Miss Ashton or the other dolls or anyone else — could ever take those from me. Grandma loved me, and I didn’t need Sadie Sees to remind me of that.

  Without wasting another moment, I climbed up the stairs with one of the candlesticks raised and ready to strike. The dragging sound was louder when I reached the second floor, but it was still coming from above. I carried on to the third floor.

  A long hall stretched out to the left and the right, interrupted by a dozen doors that led, I guessed, to classrooms. But which room was Miss Ashton hidden in? More importantly, where was Lucy?

  “I have a feeling you’re going to love this,” came Miss Ashton’s voice from behind a door at the end of the hall.

  I ran to the door and threw it open.

  Lit candles ringed the room, the flickering flames reflecting brightly on brass musical instruments and casting dancing shadows on the walls. The flames, though, were cool blue — not yellow — making the room appear to be lit by moonlight instead of candlelight. Sadie Sees, still possessed by Miss Ashton, stood in the centre of the room, smiling and laughing like a maniac. She waved her tiny plastic arms in the air above her head, and the instruments — as if they too were possessed — began to play a soft, haunting melody all on their own.

  The six girls — still inside their old, creepy dolls — stood to the side of the room. They whipped their heads in my direction. None of them looked too happy to see me.

  I didn’t care. Let them look at me. Let them glare. It didn’t matter.

  The only thing I cared about was that Lucy was there too. She was tied to a chair in the centre of the room. She didn’t appear to have been harmed in any way. As she caught sight of me her eyes brightened hopefully, but I could tell she was holding herself back from calling out to me.

  Then I noticed that Hattie, the perfect-looking doll, held a threaded sewing needle.

  Something dawned on me. Miss Ashton hadn’t been enticing me up to the third floor in an attempt to trap me. She’d been calling that eternal spirit she’d mentioned, the one who could give them all their bodies back. The Wisp. The music Miss Ashton had somehow started up was the seance she had mentioned. And they were about to turn my sister into a doll.

  There was no time to lose. I threw one of the candlesticks at Miss Ashton. She ducked beneath it and it clanged loudly on the floor behind her. I had missed, but throwing the candlestick hadn’t been a complete waste. The instruments fell to the floor around her thanks to the distraction.

  She stood up straight and spun around. The blue fire flickered in her wide eyes. She looked ready to murder me.

  And as it turned out, she was.

  She looked at the other six dolls, then back to me.

  “Kill her,” she said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The sight of six possessed dolls racing toward me was the stuff of nightmares, so disturbing that I temporarily forgot to breathe.

  Hattie tossed her needle and thread aside and led the charge, her curly red hair bobbing with every stride and her blue eyes boring into me. Mary, the baby doll, was to Hattie’s left, crawling on her hands and knees with unnatural speed. Dorothy was to Hattie’s right, glaring at me through her old wire-framed glasses. The other three dolls ran together in a row behind Hattie. Virginia’s internal organs jostled in her belly, threatening to spill out onto the floor. Unlike the others’, Lois’s oversized eyes didn’t seem capable of looking angry, which was somehow worse. And Ruby’s wooden joints
click-clacked as she ran, sounding like a mix of exploding firecrackers and brittle bones being snapped in half.

  I wished I had something heavier to protect myself with, like a bat or a crowbar, but I swung the second candlestick at Hattie like a tennis racquet. It connected and sent her flying through the air. She hit the far wall and broke apart into six large pieces — two arms, two legs, one torso and one decapitated head — that rained down on the floor.

  The other dolls stopped dead in their tracks and looked concerned that Hattie had been so easily defeated.

  I laughed in victory. “That’s right! Come near me and I’ll smash you to bits and pieces.” But then my smile fell.

  One of Hattie’s arms began to shake, and then the fingers spread apart and dug into the floor. The arm pulled itself toward the other pieces as they also sprung back to life. Her legs stood up and hopped. Her torso rolled end over end. Her eyes opened, her mouth smiled, and her head waited patiently where it lay.

  Her arms snapped into place at each shoulder. Her legs slid into position beneath her waist. Then her headless body lurched over to her head, picked it up, and forced it into her empty neck hole.

  I had only managed to slow Hattie down.

  The other five girls swivelled their heads to face me. But they were still a little wary of the candlestick. I could see it in their eyes. I raised it as if I was about to strike and all of them flinched.

  It was now or never. I charged the girls and they ran in opposite directions, so I changed course and bolted toward Miss Ashton. I swung the candlestick at her and she ducked underneath it and joined the six girls on the other side of the room.

  Luckily, they hadn’t tied Lucy to the chair too securely and I was able to untie the rope quickly.

  “Ready to run?” I asked her.

  She nodded.

  We bolted for the door and slammed it shut behind us. I heard one or two of the dolls smash into it on the other side and fall to pieces — pieces I knew would simply reform and continue to chase us. How could we stop them? Like, permanently?