The Collector

by KR Alexander

  “Yeah. It’ll be fun. But I’ll warn you—we still don’t have any internet. So we just have board games and stuff like that.”

  “That’s okay. We’ll get to know each other better.”

  Anna came up behind us and gave me a hug. Then she hugged Vanessa.

  “Vanessa said she’ll come over this weekend,” I said.

  “Yay!” Anna said. Then she paused. “But aren’t you worried she’ll get bored?”

  “I’m sure we’ll find something to do,” Vanessa said. “If nothing else, we can always tell ghost stories.” She winked.

  Karen Little never showed up. Either at school or at home.

  Rumors began circulating. Even though I didn’t have any real friends beyond Vanessa, I still heard the talk in the hallways: Some kids thought she’d run away. Others thought she’d been abducted. I tried to ignore those. I didn’t want to think about something so terrible happening. Not in a town like this.

  About the only good thing was that Anna had stopped having nightmares.

  Although she needed to stop playing tricks on me.

  I swore I heard her come into my room at night and giggle. When I turned on the lights, though, she had already run out and pretended to be asleep. I confronted her about it a few times, but she was as good a liar as she was bad at keeping secrets: She flat-out refused to admit that she’d come into my room at all. She even went so far as to start crying when I refused to believe her. And then she played a very mean trick.

  I woke up to my alarm like usual.

  From bad dreams. As usual.

  I didn’t open my eyes when I reached to turn the alarm off. My hand smacked into something small and hard.

  I blinked open my eyes and nearly screamed.

  It was the doll Vanessa had given Anna.

  It sat there on my bedside table, right next to my alarm. Its face was pointed directly at me. For some reason, that creepy smile made my skin crawl.

  I couldn’t remember its smile being that wide before.

  I shook my head and knocked the doll on its face.

  Anna was playing tricks, probably for attention. Which just meant I needed to ignore her. And I needed to stop letting my imagination get away from me. Otherwise, soon, I’d be just as bad as Grandma Jeannie.

  That was the other thing—Grandma Jeannie had gotten worse. Much worse. Now that Karen Little had been reported missing, Grandma doubled down on her strange rules and muttering. It made Mom upset, but no matter what she tried, she couldn’t get Grandma to calm down. Grandma Jeannie came into our rooms to make sure our windows were closed. She watched us from the back porch whenever Anna and I went outside. She checked our closets. She never told us what she was looking for, but I knew: She was making sure we weren’t hiding a doll anywhere.

  Which just made me angrier that Anna would risk getting us both in a lot of trouble—and potentially getting me banned from ever seeing my new best friend again—by leaving the doll on my nightstand.

  When I got up, I grabbed the doll and stuffed it inside a pillowcase, then stormed into Anna’s room. She was still in bed.

  “Why would you do this?” I asked. I tried to keep my voice down, but it was impossible to keep the anger from my words.

  “What?” she asked innocently, looking at the pillowcase with confusion.

  I tossed it on her bed. She reached out for it.

  “This. Why would you put this in my room?” I lowered my voice even more. “You know how much trouble we’d be in if Grandma saw it! Vanessa is coming over tomorrow night—do you want to get us all in trouble?”

  Rather than throwing a fit like she usually did when she got caught, tears welled up in Anna’s eyes. She looked from the doll in her trembling hand to me.

  “I didn’t do it,” she whimpered. “I just woke up!”

  “Don’t lie to me,” I said. “I know you did it. How else did it get in my room? You’ve been coming in every night to try to scare me. Now I’ve had it. If you do it again, I’m telling Mom. And then you’ll be grounded for sure.”

  Tears rolled down her face. It took a lot of control not to give in and go over to wipe them away—mad as I was, I hated seeing her cry. Then again, she probably knew that. She was probably trying to use that against me. Just the thought of it made me angrier.

  “Stay out of my room, Anna,” I said firmly.

  “I haven’t been in your room,” she whispered, but I was already out the door.

  I was mad—really mad—but it didn’t stop her words from sinking in. I knew she was lying. She had to be.

  There was no other way the doll could have gotten into my room.

  Vanessa was in an unusually cheerful mood at school. Even though everyone else seemed on edge or upset, she was smiling when I sat down next to her at lunch.

  “Aunt Tilda made us more cookies!” she said, opening her lunch bag and pulling out at least a dozen chocolate chip treats.

  I was still upset over the morning, also because Mom gave Anna and me a speech on the way to school along the lines of “be on your best behavior tonight.” I knew what she meant—don’t do anything that would upset Grandma. The trouble was, I didn’t know what would or wouldn’t upset Grandma anymore—except any mention of Karen Little. Besides, if anyone needed that talk, it was Anna. She was the one risking everything by leaving her stupid doll out.

  The sight of the cookies made my anger fade just a little bit.

  “What’s wrong?” Vanessa asked. Even though we’d only known each other a short time, she was already really good at telling my mood. Or maybe I was just really bad at hiding things.

  I almost told her about my mom and about Anna, but I didn’t want to say anything that might make her not want to come over.

  “Nothing,” I said. “I didn’t sleep much.”

  She looked at me for a while, then passed me the cookies.

  “Well, I don’t think we’ll be sleeping much tomorrow either, so you better eat a lot of sugar now.”

  I tried to smile and took a cookie.

  “Why? What did you want to do?”

  “We’re going to tell ghost stories,” she said. “I have a lot of good ones.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Ghost stories are for little kids.”

  “They are not!” she said with an exaggerated pout. “You’re just saying that because you know you’ll be scared.”

  They couldn’t be any scarier than what Grandma Jeannie had been telling us lately.

  “Why are you in such a good mood?” I asked. And then, because that sounded rude, I added, “Or is it just the cookies?”

  She laughed and bit down on another cookie—I wondered if she’d packed anything else for lunch.

  “I’m just excited to have a sleepover,” she said. “I haven’t had a friend like you since I moved here.”

  What I saw in that flicker of her eyes wasn’t excitement. It was sadness. And fear.

  That’s when I wondered … was Vanessa lying to me, too, like Anna was? And if so, what was she keeping secret?

  Grandma Jeannie didn’t join us at dinner when Vanessa came over Saturday night.

  I felt bad she wasn’t doing well, but I was also sort of relieved, which made me feel even worse. It meant I didn’t have to worry about her saying anything strange to Vanessa, or demanding to search her bag for a doll before she came into the house.

  Mom made homemade pizzas—she made the dough from scratch and everything—and let us put whatever toppings we wanted on our halves. I just put extra cheese on mine. Vanessa loaded hers with veggies. And Anna made a big smiley face out of pepperoni on hers. We listened to music in the kitchen while the pizzas cooked, and Mom asked Vanessa about her experiences living here.

  Vanessa answered everything smoothly, like she was talking to a friend and not an adult. She even shared things that I hadn’t gotten to ask her yet, like what her parents did (lawyers) and why she was allowed to take care of her aunt all by herself (her parents were too busy). Eventually, t
hough, Vanessa turned the conversation around like she always did, and started asking Mom her own questions.

  “What was it like when you lived here?” Vanessa asked.

  Mom laughed and ate a piece of raw green pepper—even though I loved vegetables, I thought it was a little gross.

  “Almost the same as it is now,” she replied. “I think Hank at the general store hasn’t aged a day.”

  “I think that’s because he’s always been older than dirt,” Vanessa replied.

  I raised an eyebrow. I thought that was a phrase only adults said.

  Mom just laughed again. It was cut short when Anna asked a very strange question.

  “Were any kids taken when you were a little girl, Momma?”

  We all went silent. The only sound in the kitchen was the radio, and even that seemed quiet.

  “Why would you ask that, honey?” Mom said. I couldn’t tell if she was shocked or angry about Anna’s question. She didn’t seem to want to answer either way.

  “My friend Clara mentioned it at school today. She says she heard that there were a lot of disappearances here, a long time ago.”

  I watched Mom intently. She bit her lip, then quickly turned to check the pizza.

  She didn’t answer.

  “Mom?” Anna asked.

  “Yes, honey?” Mom sounded exasperated.

  Anna repeated her question.

  Mom paused. Then, finally, she admitted the truth.

  “Yes,” she said. My stomach turned to ice.

  “How many?”

  I wanted to push her for asking these questions with Vanessa in the room—this was the sort of thing to talk about in private. Thankfully, Mom felt the same way. She looked at Vanessa with concern. She probably didn’t want Vanessa telling her aunt that we were discussing missing kids at dinner. That wasn’t the sort of thing people talked about around guests.

  “A few,” Mom replied.

  “Is that why Grandma sent you to a private school?” Anna asked. “She didn’t want you to get taken?”

  “Anna!” I blurted out. Even though I wanted to find out the answer, I didn’t want to have this conversation in front of Vanessa. She must really think my family was crazy. Just wait until she met Grandma Jeannie.

  “What?” Anna asked innocently. “I want to know.”

  “It’s okay,” Mom said. She sighed and looked at Vanessa. “But I think this is something we should talk about later.”

  Finally, someone was seeing sense.

  “Don’t mind me,” Vanessa said. “I’m curious, too.”

  Despite her casual tone, something in her expression made me think she actually was bothered by what we were talking about. I couldn’t blame her. To know that Karen wasn’t the first kid to go missing was one thing. To learn there had been others—maybe many others—was much scarier, even if it was years ago.

  “No,” I said, “let’s talk about something else. We’ll leave the ghost stories for later.”

  “Ghost stories? You mean the kids died?” Anna asked.

  “Anna!” I yelled again. “Cut it out.”

  Anna pouted. Sometimes she asked way too many questions. It didn’t help that I wanted to know the answers. I knew, though, that Mom would never tell us that. She would think we were too young to deal with something horrible like that.

  Mom tried to keep the conversation light, but Anna kept finding ways to ask about missing children. Finally, Mom got flustered and asked why Anna wanted to know so badly.

  Anna said it was because of her new friend, Clara.

  Mom said maybe Clara wasn’t as good a friend as Anna thought, and she wanted to have a talk with Clara’s parents.

  Anna said Clara didn’t have parents.

  I wondered aloud if Anna was just making Clara up, since I still hadn’t met her.

  That just made Anna leave the table angrily.

  Mom told me I had been rude, but I could also tell she was relieved that Anna had stopped asking questions. Vanessa tried to steer the conversation toward some of the locals again, but I stopped listening. All I could hear was Anna stomping around in her room above us.

  The good part of this was that when dinner was over, Vanessa and I could go back to my room without me having to figure out how to get rid of Anna. When Mom asked what we were going to do, I said we’d be playing board games. We even took out an old game of Chutes and Ladders that Grandma had around. In truth, though, we were mostly just pushing the pieces around and talking. It was hard for me to concentrate on anything after that dinner.

  “So the doll worked?” Vanessa asked me out of the blue.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean,” Vanessa said, “your sister hasn’t come in here since then, right?”

  “Nope,” I said. “She hasn’t had nightmares again.”

  “Have you?”

  I’d hoped she wasn’t going to ask. I was so bad at lying.

  “Yes,” I admitted.

  “Really? What about?”

  She crossed her legs and looked at me intently. I almost expected her to pull out a notebook so she could write it all down, like she was my counselor. I hadn’t seen a counselor since the weeks following Mom and Dad’s divorce two years ago.

  I looked at the game board and considered not answering. But Vanessa was the only girl here who talked to me. I couldn’t cut her out like that.

  “The woods,” I muttered. I moved my game piece.

  I almost expected Vanessa to laugh. Instead, she made a “hmm” noise under her breath. Maybe she was just thinking about her next move. But when I looked up, she was still staring at me like she was trying to figure me out.

  “I guess that makes sense,” she said. “The woods are a scary place. Especially if your grandma is telling you ghost stories about them.”

  I shrugged. I wanted her to move so we could talk about something else. What else was there to talk about, though? It wasn’t like either of us had any gossip.

  Suddenly, my big empty room seemed even bigger and emptier than before.

  “So what happens in your bad dreams?” Vanessa asked.

  I kept expecting her to make fun of me, even though she had never, ever done so. Even my best friends in Chicago would have joked about me having nightmares, and how that was for little kids. I was old enough not to be afraid of the dark or believe the boogieman was real.

  But Vanessa was still looking at me seriously, as though nothing I could say would surprise her or make her laugh. It was weird.

  It reminded me of how my counselor had looked at me, and all the other adults when they would ask if I was okay in the wake of the divorce.

  “Well,” I said. She still hadn’t moved her game piece, so I had no choice but to talk and wait. “I’m always running from something. A monster. And then …”

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s stupid.”

  “I’m sure it’s not.”

  “I find your house.”

  “Really?” She leaned back and bit her lip like she was thinking. “That’s kind of creepy.”

  “Yeah.” I looked away. There’s no way I’d tell her what happened when I got to her dream house—she didn’t need to know about the doll that looked like her. And she definitely didn’t need to know that I’d seen her house in my dream before I’d ever visited.

  She laughed. Not like she was making fun of me, but like she was trying to make the situation less scary.

  “Well, I can understand why you wouldn’t want to come over to my house again. But,” she said, moving her game piece closer to the finish line, “you have to admit my aunt bakes some pretty good cookies.”

  “Maybe someday I’ll get to meet her.”

  I rolled the dice and moved forward, but not very far.

  Then she rolled the dice and got to the finish line.

  “Maybe,” she said. She looked at me, then back to the game she’d just easily won. “I’m really glad I met you, Josie.”

  “Me too,” I repli
ed. “School would be horrible without you.”

  She smiled sadly. “It’s more than that. It’s been really lonely here. I’m glad I finally made a friend.”

  It wasn’t the first time she’d said that, but it still made me feel good inside. Clearly, I hadn’t scared her off with my strange family.

  “It’s sad, though,” she said, almost to herself.

  “What is?” I asked.

  “I want you to stay here so we can keep being friends. But I know you don’t want to be in this town. I guess I can’t blame you.”

  “Maybe one day we can run away together,” I said. I was joking. When she looked at me, though, she was serious.

  “I can’t get out of here,” she said. Her words were choked. She shook her head and looked back to the game, even though it was over. “I just mean … until my aunt is better, I can’t leave her side.”

  “I still think it stinks that your parents aren’t taking care of her.”

  She nodded to herself.

  “It does. Sometimes I feel really alone.”

  She sounded like she was on the verge of crying. I reached out and put my hand on her arm. Her skin was always so cold.

  “Me too. But maybe now we don’t have to feel that way. You’ve got a friend now.” I tried to laugh. “Besides, it sounds like I’ll be here for a while.”

  “Yeah,” she said, her voice still sad. “I think you will be, too.”

  “You’re going to love it here,” Vanessa said.

  Her voice sounded different. Like she was talking to me from the bottom of a well. Even though she was standing right next to me in the hallway, she sounded so very far away.

  The hallway.

  The hallway in Beryl’s house.

  My skin went cold. Wait, how could I be cold in the dream? I looked behind me, hoping to find the door, but the hallway stretched out forever into darkness.

  That’s when I realized there weren’t any dolls in the hall. And Vanessa wasn’t doll-like.

  My panic started to ease up. Maybe this wasn’t a nightmare after all. Maybe it was just a normal dream. But if it was a normal dream, why was I realizing it was a dream at all?