by Anya Allyn
Lacey nodded, her blue eyes wide.
Ben exhaled forcibly. “Vindicated. Finally.”
“I’m sorry..,” she whispered. “I let everyone believe you were crazy.”
“Don’t be,” Ben told her. “You were the one they abducted. I got off easy.”
Aisha and I exchanged a small smile. Ben and Lacey had just had their first real conversation.
Molly peered into the bed chamber, casting the glow of her flashlight over the dolls lying in the beds. “Jessamine’s not here.”
“You mean—whoever Jessamine is—you expected her to be in there?” Raif gasped. “Man, I’ve never seen anything so damned creepy. If I had to sleep in there, I’d eat my own face and stuff myself under the bed the first night.” Realization edged into Raif’s expression. He stared around at us. “Oh no. Jeez. That’s where you girls slept?”
Ben’s face paled. “Hell....”
“Let’s keep going,” I said in a determined tone.
We continued on to the ballroom. The books had all been returned to their places on the bookshelves. Our pictures had been replaced in the desks.
“Jessamine,” said Molly carefully. “If you’re here, please show yourself.”
Nothing moved in the gloom—no shadow, no flutter of light.
Ben and Raif exchanged half-frozen glances, but to their credit, they didn’t speak.
Walking on, we headed toward the Dark Way.
“Okay.” Ben stopped dead. “I don’t know if it’s a good idea to head down there.”
“Yeah.” Raif nodded. “That looks like a good place for something evil to jump out and eat us alive.”
Sophronia leveled her gaze at him. “We lived here with a being capable of doing that. You did have the choice of not coming here with us. And you can wait outside right now if you wish.”
Raif returned her stare, breathing heavily between his teeth. “No, can’t let you girls go in there alone.”
Ben straightened. “I’m right with you.” But his voice sounded less certain than his words.
Molly kept Frances close by her side as she walked in. “Good. We’re safer together, rather than splitting up.”
The rest of us walked on either side of Molly and Frances, keeping Frances in the middle of us as best we could.
There were still papers strewn along the floor from the maelstrom of fury Jessamine had unleashed. As I opened the door to the secret passage, I could almost hear a rush of whispered voices—voices from times past.
Icy fingers knotted my spine as our flashlights found Jessamine’s skeleton. I’d seen rescuers take her remains away in the other world. But this was my world, the world in which the dollhouse was never discovered by outsiders. A world in which Jessamine’s skeleton still lay on the cold stone floor, the pieces of the shattered saint statue all around her.
Molly bent her head. “So this is where Jessamine died. All alone.”
I remembered Henry’s words, about how Jessamine had died—chased by some relative of the Baldcotts. There hadn’t been time to pay a moment of respect before—and I hadn’t had any sympathy for her. But I saw her more clearly now, manipulated by the adults who should have been looking after her.
“Wait.” Raif swallowed hard, his eyes deep in shadows. “This is Jessamine? This is her?”
“Yes.” Molly gently pulled Frances against her side, stroking her head.
Ben jumped and shouted out as his flashlight illuminated the blackened and decaying remains of the Raggedy Andy doll. The doll was still in the grisly crawling position that it had been when it was crawling toward me, trying to rise to its feet.
He blew out a rush of air, calming himself. “Okay, just a doll. A dead, slimy doll. What else would there be in this place?”
Aisha raised her lamp, training it around the gaping hole in the wall. She moved closer, peering into it. The howling wind that had spilled from it last time I had seen it had died away. Now, just a haunting, distant sound prowled the tunnel.
“God.” Aisha turned back to me. “This must be it—the place you escaped through?”
I nodded.
“Where does it go?” Ben stepped over to look inside.
“It goes all the way through the mountain,” I told him.
I felt her, the presence of the shadow. She was moving through the twisting, writhing tunnel toward us. “We need to go!”
Molly eyed me in alarm.
Below, in the hollow eye sockets of the skeleton lying on the floor, two dark eyes opened.
The boys stood frozen, staring at Jessamine’s skeleton.
“Go!” I shouted.
Ben and Raif jolted. We turned and fled.
Gathering in the ballroom, we hung close together—holding our feeble sources of light out.
Vibrations and whispers rushed through the air, like an evil bird swooping on us. The shadow was all around us, large and rising.
Something unseen forced the shadow back. The blackness slipped away, its terrifying sounds bouncing and echoing from the walls.
No one spoke for a few moments—nothing except for shuddering breaths and gasps.
Near-silence gripped the dollhouse again. There was not even the tick of the grandfather clock—the clock lay smashed and upended in the library.
“We need to leave. Now.” Raif’s voice fell away.
“We can’t do that,” said Aisha.
“Why?” His voice cracked. “The girl you want is dead. Long dead, by the look of her.”
“Let’s go and sit.” Molly indicated toward the chairs and desks—what were left of them.
We pulled the pieces of furniture together, and seated ourselves.
Ben lifted the lid of the desk he was sitting at. He frowned in horror as he pulled out Frances’ drawings—pictures of Jessamine with dark pits for eyes, pictures of a shadow hanging over a sick Molly. “You girls need to start talking—tell us why we’re here and what that thing was and why that skeleton back in the tunnel was alive.”
Beside him, Raif gripped his head in his hand, looking shaken.
“We will,” Sophronia assured him.
“It was her.” Lacey’s blue eyes were wide and childlike above her torchlight.
Frances nodded. “She helped us.”
“Do you want to explain that to me?” Ben asked Lacey.
Lacey toyed with tendrils of long hair that were still caked in blood. “Jessamine. She made that thing—the shadow—go away.”
He tensed. “Shadow? You mean that thing I saw pour out of you before?”
She tried to untangle her hair, nervously pulling at it—but the blood had dried. “Yes. But I have just a small part of it inside me. But the shadow... the real shadow is as tall as it wants to be.”
“But it’s okay now,” I said. “The shadow knows she’s going to protect us.”
Raif’s head jerked as he stared from place to place around the room, as though demons would jump out at any moment. “So, what we have here... is a ghost battling a shadow.” The muscles in his face strained as he tried to compose himself.
“Raif,” said Aisha quietly. “These are the things we knew, when we were down here in the dollhouse. Things that you think can’t possibly exist... are real.”
Everyone fell silent. There was nothing but the haunting noises of the dollhouse in the air. Now I knew why Jessamine hadn’t been in the bed chamber. She must have started sleeping within the bones of her skeleton after the dolls all left the dollhouse—it must be some comfort to her to join with the only solid part left of the body she used to have.
Lacey closed her eyes. “Jessamine’s disturbed that we’re here. She doesn’t want us in the dollhouse.” Her eyelids drifted open again. “I could sense her all around us. I was between life and death just a short time ago—I can sense the dead.” A wry smile pressed into her mouth. “My psych would have had fun with that one.”
Ben shot her a look of sympathy. “I went around to your house to see you once, back when the wo
rld was normal. Your mother wouldn’t let me in. Said you were having a session with a doctor.”
She nodded. “I went to pieces after Cassie and Ethan went into the dollhouse. All the secrets I was forced to hide. My mother made me see Doctor Verena for months.”
I tensed at hearing that name. “Doctor Verena Symes....” I said, the syllables dropping from my tongue like poison barbs.
Lacey knitted her fair eyebrows together. “Yeah. I found out later, from the me of the other world, that she was from the castle. The other Lacey told me everything.” Her mouth formed an O and as she breathed out slowly. “The other Lacey was the only person who ever understood me. For a while... I had someone on my side. Someone who couldn’t judge my sins.”
“What did Doctor Verena say to you?” I asked her.
Lacey gave a slow, sad sigh. “I admitted to her that I knew where you all were. It was a relief to get it off my chest. I thought that things would start happening then—that she’d contact the police and that you would all be found. But she didn’t do that. She didn’t tell. She said I hated my dad and the way he punished me for everything and for not being born a son— and that I wanted other girls to suffer the way I did. She said that I was a bad seed, born of a bad man. I told her I wanted to kill myself—and she explained that sometimes people are born wrong and the only way out for them is to die. So I stopped eating altogether. I knew she was right and that I should kill myself. And I spent the next two months in and out of hospital.” She bit her lip. “I was in hospital when the big freeze came. I thought I had died, and that this was hell.”
“Lacey,” I said, “you know that Doctor Verena was trying to put bad things in your head, right? She’s twisted. She tried to do the same to me. You can’t listen to anything she says.”
“Why not?” Lacey’s voice was dead. “Maybe she’s right. Some people are just born wrong.”
Ben stared across at her, his neck and jaw tight. “You are not wrong, Lacey. Not for a minute. I was always on your side. I always will be.”
Lacey looked away, unable or unwilling to listen to any of us.
Molly pushed the hood of her jacket back, her face pale and drawn in the lamplight. “Lacey...” she said gently, “Can I ask... how did the shadow enter you? It didn’t... enter us.”
Lacey tilted her chin, eyes raised to the blackness above. “I took it. I wanted it. I felt bad and dark and I wanted to take it into me.”
A frown tugged at Molly’s forehead. “You forced it inside you?”
“Yes.”
I tensed at Lacey’s reply, leaning forward. This wasn’t something we’d ever known about the shadows before.
Molly gazed at Lacey directly. “Could the shadows of the serpents... be more vulnerable than we thought?”
Lacey’s eyes grew distant. “Once you take the shadow into you, you feel it there all the time. Like a disease.”
Ben looked on with an incredulous expression. “Shadows of the serpents?” he mouthed silently.
“Lace,” I said. “I saw the shadow in the eyes of the other Lacey. I doubted myself that I’d seen it, but I shouldn’t have.” I paused. “Is that how the other Lacey was able to leave the castle—through the shadow that was inside her?”
She nodded. “The first time she came here, I thought I was dreaming. She saved me from the people eaters. She began coming out here all the time, and we’d talk and walk together through the woods.”
I breathed deeply, unsure of how to say my next words. “Lacey... when we escaped from the dollhouse—in the other world—the other Lacey turned up with her father. All of the girls—and Ethan—were lying on stretchers and being put in helicopters. Lacey kind of communicated with the shadow. And then the serpent tried to kill us all by making the ground suck down into a deep hole. Even the Fiveash house disappeared. In that world, the house is gone.” I clasped my fingers tightly together. “Maybe having the shadow inside you hurts you, and lets the serpent use you against us.”
Lacey’s eyes stared into mine. “The other Lacey told me about the conversation she had with you and Molly. She said you didn’t understand her, not for a second.”
“What didn’t I understand?” I asked her.
Lacey’s pale eyes grew distant. “You didn’t understand that the other Lacey used the shadow inside her against the serpent. She fought it with its own shadow. She stopped it from rising up and pulling the helicopters down.”
I gasped, my breath catching hard in my chest.
“She told me that doing that—fighting against the serpent—almost turned her mind inside out,” Lacey continued.
I sat back at the desk, trying to process what Lacey had just told me. “You’re able to use the shadow inside you against the serpents....”
“Yeah,” she replied. “The other Lacey said that when you all got out of the dollhouse, that you figured out what she’d done and you hated her. She knew that the serpent was about to kill you all, and she thought that the one thing she could do right was to try to stop her.”
I sat back. All along, I’d been wrong about Lacey.
“My God,” Molly breathed. “Can you do that too—can you use the shadow like that?”
She dropped her head, letting her pale hair collect around her face. “I don’t know how.” She hesitated for a moment. “But I’ve seen someone else do the same thing... a few months ago.”
My fingernails dug into the soft flesh of my palms. “Who? Who was it?”
Lacey pushed her hair back. “It was Ethan’s grandfather.”
I gasped. “His grandfather? Please, tell us what you saw. Tell us everything.”
Lacey shifted in her chair, uncomfortable at the attention focused on her. “When the big freeze came, the army moved people from their houses down to camps along the Manning River, just behind Devils Hole. The river, it goes all the way out to sea—and at first there were lots of fish there to eat. I lived with my mum and sisters in the camps for months. My father... he always seemed to have somewhere else to be. The army told everyone that the rumor about the alien creatures wasn’t real. But I knew better. I already knew about the serpent, and it wasn’t strange to me that more of them had come.”
A depression formed between her eyebrows, like she was deep in thought. “The army brought Ethan’s grandfather there—he obviously didn’t want to come, but they’d forced him to. A few nights later, I saw dozens of serpents rise up from the river. They sent forth shadows, and the shadows killed every last one of the army people. The only other person to see it happen was Mr. McAllister. He was standing by the river at the time. He’d made himself a walking frame of tree branches and rope—his legs had gone bad. A serpent reared up and sent its shadow out to Ethan’s granddad. But he stood his ground. At first, I thought he must have grown blind and didn’t see the creature or the shadow. But he turned his head to face the shadow straight on. I watched him battle it and fall to the ground. But he didn’t die. I ran to help him up and I saw his eyes. They were black. He had the shadow inside him. All of it. The shadows left him alone after that. The serpents fled, maybe all the way to the sea.”
Aisha gazed at her incredulously. “Where is he now?”
“He left soon after,” Lacey told me. “I don’t know where he went.”
A fierce thought grew in my mind. “Imagine if that was something we could all do—I mean, force the shadows inside us. We could all hurt the serpents with their own shadows....”
Lacey shivered. “You don’t want them inside you. I have only a whisper of shadow in me, and it still burns my mind.”
“How did you manage to keep it inside you and not let it go?” Molly asked.
“It’s a constant battle,” she answered. “I deserve to have that darkness in me. It’s my punishment, and I won’t let it go.”
“You don’t deserve darkness, Lace,” I told her. “But you’ve shown how strong you are in being able to keep hold of the shadow.” I looked around at everyone. “If we can find Ethan’s gran
dfather, maybe he can tell us how he did it.”
“Let’s go.” Raif stood. “I know the old guy’s house is still standing.”
“Not likely that he’s there though,” said Ben. “How could he survive there?”
“We can’t leave here yet.” Sophronia re-plaited the loose ends of her dark hair. “We’re staying until we can speak to her.”
Raif’s arm hung stiffly at his side. “And how long will that be?”
Jessamine is a great believer in patience,” Sophronia told him.
Reluctantly, Raif returned to his seat.
Jessamine was going to make us wait, and there was nothing we could do.
~.~
We ate our dinner by lamplight. We turned to look at each other as we wearied, wanting sleep. There was only one place here to lie down—a place I’d returned to only in nightmares. The bed chamber.
Silently, we made our way there. Raggedy and Clown were lying in their beds, just as they’d always done. Automatically, those of us who had lived in the dollhouse laid ourselves down on the same beds we had before.
Raif stood in the doorway. “I’ll keep watch, while you girls get some rest.”
Ben stepped over to stand beside Raif. “I’ll take first watch too. We’ve faced down hordes of Eaters. We can face down a hungry shadow.”
Frances sat on her bed, hugging her knees. “The shadow won’t hurt us, while we sleep. And Jessamine will protect us, just like she always did.”
Raif raised his eyebrows quizzically at her.
Frances turned to us. “I think it’s time you tell the boys all about the dollhouse.”
Nodding, Molly came to sit beside Frances on the bed. She combed her fingers through her long hair. “Come and sit,” she said to Raif and Ben.
Reluctantly, they left their posts by the doorway.
Molly told Raif and Ben the whole story, as far as she knew it.
Then Lacey told her part in the story. There were so many things I didn’t know about Lacey, and how she’d suffered every day knowing about the dollhouse.
Here, in the gloom of the bed chamber, the stories sounded like macabre fairytales—like something that couldn’t possibly be real. Only we knew it was real, because we had lived it.