“Okay, well listen,” Jessica said, and they all turned their eyes to her again. Creepy. Like I’m really a grown-up or something, she thought uneasily. She took a deep breath. “I’ve dealt with … things like this before.”
“Really?” Alanna was suddenly skeptical; Ron watched her warily. Lisa opened one eye, then pressed her face back into Ron’s shirt.
“I’m not with them,” Jessica said hurriedly. “I’m locked in here with you because I got caught trying to find out more about them.”
“Did you know about us?” Ron asked.
“Not much, but I’m glad that I found you—everybody’s been looking for you. The people who took you, they’re trying to hurt a friend of mine—they already have hurt her—and I came here to stop them, to save her from them. Now that I know you’re here, I’m going to save you from them, too.”
“You’re locked in here, just like us,” Alanna said, this time like she believed it. Jessica suppressed a smile, momentarily amused.
“I have friends out there, and they’re going to help, we’re going to get you out of this.” Alanna still looked suspicious, but Lisa was peeking at her from behind her hair, loosening her grip on Ron’s shirt for the first time. “I promise you, everything is going to be all right,” Jessica said with a surge of confidence. She looked at the children with calm determination, surprised to realize she had meant every word.
* * *
“John! Charlie!” Carlton burst in to John’s apartment, the door hitting the wall as it swung open.
Marla jumped, sitting up straight on the couch. “Carlton, what’s going on?”
He didn’t respond, scanning the room. Marla was alone; she had the TV on at a low volume. The door to John’s room was closed, and he went to it. “No one’s here,” Marla said with a hint of disapproval, but Carlton rushed to look inside anyway. “John’s not here; neither is Charlie,” Marla called.
“Well, I ran into one of them,” Carlton said grimly. “One of the Charlies, that is. The bad one. Where is John? Where’s everyone?”
“John and Charlie went somewhere; they seemed to be in a hurry and they wouldn’t say where they were going.”
“Jessica?”
“I haven’t seen her. She’s probably at home.”
“I was just at her apartment, she’s not there.” Carlton stared at Marla, palpable dread rising between them. “Charlie—the other Charlie, I didn’t even hear her come in; she didn’t knock or anything. It was like she knew Jessica wouldn’t be there.”
“Wait, shut up,” Marla said suddenly, pointing to the TV.
“Marla, this is serious!” Carlton said with alarm.
“Look at this; they’ve been playing this commercial all day.” Then the cartoonish face of a little girl, painted like a clown, filled the screen.
“Come dressed as a clown and eat for free!” said a booming voice, then the camera cut to the front of a restaurant.
“That—that’s her!” Carlton shouted. “I mean the sign, the girl on the sign, the clown girl thing!” Marla leaned forward, squinting at the screen. Carlton stopped, thoughtful for a moment. “She was taller, and a little attractive. It was really confusing; so many emotions.”
“They’ve been playing these all day. New restaurant, animatronic characters …”
“It’s like the girl on the sign was all grown-up, and wanted to feed me pizza …” He trailed off.
“Carlton!” Marla yelled, snapping him back to the present.
“You know where it is? The new place?” he asked.
“Yes,” Marla announced. She flipped off the TV and stood. “Let’s go.” Carlton looked her grimly up and down, then took the other earpiece out of his pocket.
“Put this in your ear,” he said. “It’s all we have; trust me.”
“Okay.” Marla snatched the earpiece out of his hand on her way out the door. “I guess you’ll fill me in on the way?” Carlton didn’t answer as he hurried after her, slamming the door behind them.
As they drove through the ghost town, Charlie could feel John’s eyes on her. She had not spoken since they got in the car, and she was beginning to dread the moment she would have to speak again. John made a sharp turn, jostling the car, and she jerked forward in her seat, pressing into the seat belt.
“Sorry,” John said sheepishly. Charlie eased back again.
“It’s fine,” she said with a small smile. “I know this might be a strange time to ask, but, where is my car?”
“I’m afraid your doppelganger has your car.” He eyed her nervously, and she forced a crooked smile and nodded.
“What would that police report look like, I wonder?” she said lightly, and John grinned.
John slowed to a stop, his expression fading. “This is it,” he said quietly. Charlie opened her door and got out. They were at the bottom of a hill; John had stopped beside a narrow archway with a small, metal star at its crest. At the top of the hill was a small house.
“Okay, let’s get this over with,” Charlie said. She looked around nervously, half expecting someone to come running at them. “Let’s go.”
As they climbed the hill, John looked several times like he wanted to say something, but did not. When they reached the front porch, Charlie put a hand on his arm.
“So, she’s still in there?” she asked. “Jen, I mean.”
He nodded. “Yeah. At least, I think so. Are you sure you want to do this?”
“I have to.”
“I’ll go in first,” he offered. “I can … cover her up, if you want me to.” He looked at her, distressed. Charlie hesitated.
“No,” she said finally, and grasped the knob firmly. The door wasn’t locked, and Charlie scanned the room apprehensively as she entered. The place was in disarray, everything blended into everything else, and at first nothing stood out. Then they saw her.
There was a woman in the corner, by the hallway; she was huddled against the wall, curled over herself, and her dark hair hung thickly over her face. Charlie heard a sharp intake of breath, then realized it was her own. She held a hand out stiffly behind her, unable to say in words what she needed, but John saw, and took her hand, stepping close behind her.
“That’s really her?”
“Yeah,” he whispered. “Did you want to get closer?” John asked uncertainly.
Charlie shook her head. “No. It’s not her anymore,” she whispered, turning away, closing it off in her mind. She took a deep breath. “Where did you find … me?” She gestured to herself, to make sure John knew which Charlie she meant.
“That way.”
John led her to the hallway, keeping wide of Jen’s slumped body; Charlie forced herself not to look directly at her, allowing herself to see only a dark, hunched shape in the corner of her eye as she passed. At the end of the hall was the open door to a storage room, filled with trunks and cardboard boxes. The window was open, and it was not until she breathed fresh air that Charlie noticed the damp, moldy smell that had taken over the rest of the house.
“This one,” John said. He was standing beside a large green trunk, its lid standing open.
“In here?” Charlie said bleakly, stepping over several boxes to get to him. She peered inside: there was a small pillow, and nothing else. “I was just in there?” she asked, somehow disappointed.
“Yeah. I mean, Jen must have had a reason. She must have known about the imposter. Maybe she put you there just before we arrived.”
Charlie reached out and closed the trunk. “I want to look around.”
“What are we looking for?” John asked, and she shrugged, opening another trunk.
“Anything,” she said. “If there’s anything useful, this is where it will be. We need to know what we’re up against.”
They searched in silence for a while. None of the boxes were labeled, and Charlie opened them haphazardly, sifting quickly through the ones containing paperwork, and setting aside the others unexamined. Those contained random assortments of household item
s—dishes and silverware, knickknacks Charlie recognized from childhood, even some of her old toys. She scanned a box of Jen’s tax documents carefully, then replaced them, finding nothing that seemed to stand out. She reached for another box, then saw John giving her a funny look.
“What?” she asked. He smiled, and there was a hint of something sad beyond it.
“You read really fast,” was all he said.
“Didn’t anyone ever teach you how to speed-read?” she said briefly, then turned her attention elsewhere. Charlie abandoned the stack of boxes she had been going through and went to the far corner of the room. She shoved a precarious pile of neatly folded sheets and towels aside, and sat down cross-legged on the carpet. From here, she could not even see John, though she could hear him, shuffling through paper and muttering to himself under his breath. She swept her eyes up and down the stacks, one after another, then she saw it: Henry, written in her aunt’s careful script. Charlie moved three overcoats and another box, and then it was in her hands.
She stared at the lettering for a long moment. The ink had faded over the years. Charlie traced it with her index finger, her pulse fluttering in her throat like her heart was trying to get out. Daddy. She opened the box, and saw it—on top was an old, green plaid flannel shirt, worn down as thin and soft as cotton. She picked it up as if it were something delicate, and pressed it to her face, inhaling through the fiber. It only smelled like dust and time, but the touch of the fabric on her face brought tears to her eyes. She breathed in and out slowly, trying to force them back, and finally regained her composure, though part of her howled out the unfairness of it, that she could not even take a moment to cling to his slight presence, and mourn. Self-consciously, Charlie put the shirt over her shoulders, letting it drape over her back as she leaned once more over the box. The rest of the box was stacked with smaller boxes, and she opened the first one to find a framed picture of herself with Sammy, infants in those few, precious years before everything was ripped apart. Under the picture was an envelope, addressed in her father’s handwriting, to “Jenny.” Charlie smiled and shook her head. I can’t imagine anyone calling Aunt Jen, “Jenny.” She opened the letter.
My Dearest Jenny,
I had an entire list of instructions written out for you; schedules and timetables, keys and procedures. You have indulged me so much, and it’s only now, at the end, that I see how it has helped me get through these dark times, but also how ultimately empty it has been. I had everything so carefully planned; I’ve worked so tirelessly. I’ve warped and twisted my surroundings to the point where I can never be sure if I’ve completely settled back into reality, and even if I did manage to turn off everything planted in the walls to deceive myself, I think my mind would deceive me still. I don’t need clinical testing of the long-term effects of these devices to know that I’ve undoubtedly done permanent damage to myself. I will always see what I want to see, but worse than that, there is the splinter, more like the stake, always deep into my heart reminding me more and more every day that what I see is a lie. Through your patience and your indulgence of me, you’ve tried to keep me happy, but it’s also somehow brought me back from this world I’ve made for myself. I think maybe it would have been better for you to have not indulged me; then I could have excluded you from my bubble, convinced myself that you were crazy like everyone else. But instead, your unceasing love caused me to listen to you, to let you in, and the consequence of that was seeing the truth in your eyes, and letting that in as well.
I have my Charlie here with me. You will never have to indulge me in her again. Rather than taking joy in her, I have cried over her, so many countless tears. I have poured agony into her, until she serves as another reminder not of what I once had, but of the unbearable pain of what was taken from me. She has come to reflect my pain back to me; whereas I, for a time, took great comfort in her eyes, I now only see loss, endless, debilitating loss. Her eyes will never fill me again. In fact, they have emptied me.
Keep all the closets shut. Let them be tombs for my denial and my grievance. My only lasting instruction for you concerns the fourth closet. It is not enough to keep it shut, you must keep that one sealed and buried. My grief was already beginning to waken me to reality when I began what was to be her final stage. When I rose, slightly, from the depth of my despair, I saw that I had no choice but to cease my work, for I was only feeding my own delusion. My old faithful partner, who I can only hope now is in a grave of his own, took what I had begun, and made something of his own—something dreadful. He crafted my beloved work into something of his own, and endowed it with who knows what kinds of evil. I was able to stop him, and to seal away what he made, and you, Jenny, must ensure that the seal remains.
I would instruct you to demolish the house if I could trust that it could be done effectively. Keep it, and make sure the world forgets it. Then, someday, after many decades have passed and no one remembers, fill it with every kind of flammable thing and burn it to the ground, standing close guard to put a bullet into anything that emerges from the rubble, no matter what, or who, it looks like.
I’m going to be with my daughter.
Love always & to the end,
Henry
“Charlie?” John was standing behind her. Wordlessly, she held the pages out to him. He took them, and she moved aside the box the letter had been in and stared down at the next one. It was sealed with packing tape, but the sticky side was old and dry, the edges curling up from the cardboard. John shuffled the pages, still reading. Charlie shivered, despite the warm air, and she put her arms through the sleeves of her father’s shirt and rolled them up to her elbows.
“Do you know what it means?” John asked quietly. Charlie looked up at him and shook her head. “Scoot over,” he said with a small smile, and she did, making room for him in the little space among the boxes. He sat down facing her, crossing his legs awkwardly. He handed the pages back to her, and she scanned them again. “What did he mean about the closets?” John said.
“I don’t know,” Charlie said drily.
“Think,” John protested. “It has to mean something.”
“I don’t know,” Charlie repeated. “You were there; they were always empty. Except the one with Ella.”
“You don’t know that,” John said softly. “There was one that was locked,” he continued, almost to himself.
“It doesn’t matter, does it?” Charlie said. “The house is gone. Unless you feel like digging through more rubble, this is all we have.” She pried the box with the peeling tape out of the larger box and handed it to him. All that was left under it was a lockbox, which opened easily when she tugged at the lid. It, too, was filled with papers: on top was a fine-pencil drawing of a familiar face.
“That’s Ella,” John said, peering over her shoulder.
“Yeah,” Charlie said. Her father had captured the doll’s delicate features in exquisite detail, not only her face but her shiny, synthetic hair, and the tiny creases in her dark, starched dress. Her eyes were open wide, and their blank stare was at odds with the rest of the picture: a perfectly lifelike representation of something lifeless.
“I didn’t realize he was such an artist,” John said, and Charlie smiled.
“He said he drew things so he could see them, that it didn’t work the other way around.” She handed John the picture; below it was another, again of Ella, this time from the side. The next showed only Ella’s face, in profile.
“He made Ella, right?” John asked, and Charlie tilted her head, considering the drawing.
Charlie sorted through the rest of the pile more quickly and shook her head, confused. “They’re all of Ella.”
John picked up the remaining cardboard box and ripped the tape off with sound like tearing cloth. It stuck to his fingers as he balled it up, and from the corner of her eye, Charlie saw him struggling to dislodge it. She paged through the drawings again.
“Look at the notes.” She handed him the first drawing they had looked at, g
rowing impatient as he peered at her father’s meticulous, but tiny handwriting. He read it out slowly.
“Height: 81 cm; Head circumference …” He looked up. “It’s just measurements.” Charlie handed him another drawing. “Looks the same to me,” John said, then flicked his eyes to the notations. “Height: 118 cm.” John tilted the page as though he might be reading it wrong.
“This one says 164.5,” Charlie said, holding up another, seemingly identical picture. “I don’t understand,” she said, setting the page in her lap. “Did he make another Ella?” She traced a finger along the line of Ella’s hair, smudging the pencil mark, then a thought struck her. “I wonder if he was trying to make it up to me,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“If he was trying to give me … a companion; a friend, because of what happened.” She met John’s eyes, unable to say what she really meant.
“You mean Sammy? Because you lost your twin, he wanted to give you a doll that would … what, grow up with you?” John said incredulously, and she nodded, relieved that he had made sense of her half-spoken words.
“Maybe,” Charlie said softly. His eyes were pinched with worry, and he looked away, studying the drawings in his hands again.
“It doesn’t really make sense, though, does it?” Charlie said. “What would I do with a five-and-a-half-foot doll on a track?” She reached for the letter again, holding it like a talisman though she did not need to read from it. “Was there a bigger version of Ella in the locked closet?”
John’s eyes searched the air without a target in the silent room for several long moments, then snapped back to attention. Charlie was quietly looking down at her own hand, slowly curling her fingers, then uncurling them. The silence dragged on, smothering, then John grabbed Charlie’s hand, startling her.
“I saw your blood.”
“What?” Charlie said, startled.
“I saw your blood that night. You bled. I don’t think Ella bleeds, do you?” The statement was absurd, but John was watching her uneasily, as if he expected a response. Seconds passed, and Charlie did not know what to say. “I thought you were dead that night,” John whispered at last.
The Fourth Closet Page 17