by Alex Bell
As fast as my throbbing back would allow, I hurried down after her. I knew she was dead the moment I stepped off the bottom stair. Although she was lying on her front, her head was twisted round so far that she was practically staring up at me.
I shivered but felt no regret. None whatsoever. She was a warped, evil woman who had deserved to die. It seemed to me, in those few seconds, that her death had solved all my problems and I smiled at the thought.
But then I looked up and saw Cassie, returned from her day’s outing. She still wore her coat and had a basket of milk bottles clutched in her hand. And she was staring at me with an accusing, appalled expression on her pretty face.
Chapter Thirty-One
Isle of Skye – February 1910
“You!” Cassie said, staring at me like I was the devil himself. “You killed Miss Grayson!”
“She tripped,” I said. “Cassie, listen, it wasn’t me. It was the Frozen Charlotte dolls.” Even as I heard myself say the words, I realized how crazy they sounded. Cassie didn’t even reply – she simply dropped the basket, the milk bottles smashing where they fell, then turned and ran.
I briefly considered grabbing a Frozen Charlotte and going after Cassie to prove to her that the dolls were alive. But when I looked round, I couldn’t see any of them nearby.
From above, I heard a Frozen Charlotte giggle.
“That’s torn it!”
“Ripped it!”
“Spilled it!”
“No use crying over spilled milk!”
“Hee! Hee! Spilled milk turns sour!”
I looked up and saw several Frozen Charlottes lined up at the top of the stairs in a perfect row.
Cassie started yelling as she ran through the school.
“Murder!” she shrieked. “Help! Help!”
I had no choice but to turn away from the dolls and hurry after her, my back throbbing as I went down the corridor.
“Cassie!” I called. “Please! Come back here and listen to me!”
A moment later I heard her thundering up the servants’ staircase. I was right behind her, using the banister to drag myself up the stairs. As I went I saw Dolores standing there in the gloom, staring at her duster like she didn’t know what to do with it.
I reached the first floor in time to see Cassie look over her shoulder and give a squeak of alarm at the sight of me before dashing into the nearest bedroom, which happened to be mine. Her stupidity seemed to know no bounds. She could just as easily have carried on running down the corridor, taken the main staircase back down to the ground floor and then gone out through the front door. Instead, she had trapped herself in a room from which there could be no escape.
It seemed she had some notion of screaming for help from the window because, as I entered the room, out of breath from the race upstairs, I saw her go straight over and throw it open.
“Henry!” she shrieked. “Help! Help! She’s gone mad!”
“Oh, for God’s sake, would you shut up?” I snapped, clutching my side where a stitch had developed. “Henry isn’t here. He’s gone into town.”
Cassie immediately started to cry. I glared at her. “Listen to me,” I said. “You’ve got to understand. I did not kill Miss Grayson.” I took a step towards her. “It’s the dolls. They’re possessed. Something happened back at my old home that—”
“Just wait until Henry hears about this!” Cassie spat.
I felt myself go suddenly very still. There had been so much in my life that was truly terrible. Henry was the one chance at happiness that I had left. By God, it was a sobering thought.
“I’m going to tell him!” Cassie threw the words at me, her eyes red from crying. “I’ll tell him what you did! And then he’ll see you for what you really are. A freak, glooming around the place with your air of tragedy!”
I closed my eyes and Henry’s words echoed round and round inside my head:
The honest truth is that I have loved you from the moment I laid eyes on you…
I know I must have a foolish grin on my face and I don’t care…
You have made me the happiest chap in the world…
“No.” I opened my eyes. “I can’t let you take it all from me. Not when I’m so close to being free.”
“Let’s play the murder game!”
The whispering of the dolls seemed to fill the entire room:
“Every night when I get home…”
“The monkey’s on the table…”
“Take a stick and knock it off…”
“Pop! Goes the weasel!”
“Ha ha ha!”
“That weasel got popped!”
“Henry is mine,” I said, taking another step forwards. Cassie shrank away from me but there was nowhere to go and she ended up with her back pressed up against the windowsill. “He’s mine. I won’t let you ruin it.”
Cassie stared at me and I saw real, naked fear in her green eyes. “I … I didn’t mean it,” she stammered. “I won’t tell anyone what I saw. I promise.”
I shook my head. It was too late for that. We both knew that she was lying. The moment someone arrived here, she would tell them everything.
“It’s the only way,” the dolls whispered.
“It’s now or never.”
“Winning the game is the only thing that matters.”
Everything seemed to shrink down to this one moment, in this room, with this choice.
It is not I who has the dark soul, madam…
The dolls were whispering and whispering, urging me on.
“Remember what fun it was before!” they said. “Remember how marvellous!”
And the dark truth was that it had been marvellous, in a grim and horrible way: the satisfaction of warm blood flowing out over my hands; the joy of the blade scraping over bone; the triumph on seeing that look of pure terror on Redwing’s face. I saw it again now, mirrored on Cassie’s.
“Please,” the girl whispered. “Oh, please don’t.”
But her words couldn’t move me and her fear lit a tiny flame of pleasure, deep in my soul.
“Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall,” sang the Frozen Charlottes.
“Humpty Dumpty had a great fall…”
Cassie tried to lunge past me but I grabbed her by the shoulders, dragged her back to the window and forced her, face down, over the sill, so that her upper body hung out and she was faced with the sight of a great drop to the flagstones below.
She let out a dreadful scream – a sound loud enough to wake the dead. Her arms waved around but there was nothing there for her to hold on to.
“Please!” she yelled. “Oh, God, I’ll do anything! Anything you want!”
“It’s too late,” I said, lifting her legs up to tip her over the ledge.
Her feet disappeared and she screamed all the way down before there was the sound of a thump and a crunch, and then nothing. Nothing but silence.
I peered over the edge. Cassie lay sprawled on the flagstones, a growing pool of dark blood spreading out from her head.
“And all the king’s horses and all the king’s men,” the Frozen Charlottes sang, “couldn’t put Humpty together again.”
I heard the rattle of wheels on cobbles and looked up at the front gates. I’d acted just in time. Henry had returned and brought the police with him.
Hurriedly I stepped back from the window before they could see me. I could hear the girls calling me and banging on the door of their dormitory but I couldn’t let them out just yet. I had only minutes to change into a new dress and pull a brush through my hair. Then I wiped the blood from my face and used powder to cover over the cut before going to let out the girls.
“What’s happened?” Olivia cried. “We heard screaming.”
I did my best to look astonished. “Did you? I was down in the kitchen and didn’t hear a thing.”
From below there came shouts and exclamations. Henry and the police must have come inside and discovered Miss Grayson. Soon enough, they would discover that there
was a second body round the back of the school as well.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Isle of Skye – February 1910
The girls were removed from the school the next day to be sent off to different industrial schools on the mainland. All except Martha, whose aunt had decided that she would care for the girl herself. When I told the police that I had heard Miss Grayson and Cassie arguing, they seemed ready enough to believe that Cassie may have pushed the schoolmistress down the stairs and then killed herself in a fit of remorse. There was no proof, however, and since both parties were dead they decided to rule both deaths as accidents. The Dunvegan School for Girls was to be closed, they said. Hannah and Mrs String had been told not to return. Henry and I would have to find positions elsewhere but, of course, we had never had any intention of staying.
“It’s for the best, Mim,” Henry said later that afternoon, once the police had gone. “We just need to start over.”
That night, all alone in the school, I didn’t sleep. I kept thinking I could hear the girls running up and down the stairs. The Frozen Charlottes, which I had collected after the police left, giggled and whispered together in their basket. And I lay there in the dark replaying what had happened, what I had done, over and over again in my mind. The doubt began to creep in. And the guilt. The horror of it.
“I’m a monster,” I whispered.
“Monstrous,” the dolls whispered back. “What fun it is to be monstrous…”
Finally, towards dawn, I made a decision and got out of bed. I sat down at the desk and wrote a letter to Henry. In it, I detailed every last thing I’d done. I told the truth about what had happened to Edward Redwing, as well as the events of yesterday. I held nothing back. My dark soul was laid bare. He deserved to know the truth. He was good and pure and decent, and all the things I wasn’t.
When I was done, I put the letter into a sealed envelope and wrote Henry’s name on the front. Then I told the Frozen Charlottes we were going to play a game and I took them down to the basement, along with the tub of plaster from the supply cupboard.
The dolls tittered and fussed as I plastered them into the wall.
“What are you doing, Mother?”
“Is this a new game?”
“Yes,” I said. “It’s the new game I mentioned earlier, remember? Just you wait until you find out what it is. You’ll love it.”
The dolls seemed content with this and giggled to themselves as I imprisoned them in the walls of the school.
“You have to stay here and wait for me to come back,” I said. “Then I’ll explain the rules.”
“Why can’t you tell us now, Mother?” one of the dolls cried petulantly as I smoothed another layer of plaster over its hateful little face.
“Because,” I whispered, “it’s going to be a surprise.”
“Oh, we love surprises!”
“Yes,” I replied. “I thought you might.”
I had to believe it was the dolls’ influence that had made me do the things I had done. Such wickedness surely could not have come from me.
The sun had risen by the time I was finally finished.
“Wait for me here,” I said. “I’ll be back to explain the game later.”
The only answer was silence.
“Hello?” I tried again.
But there was nothing. Perhaps they couldn’t hear me beneath their thick coat of plaster. Or perhaps they could hear me but couldn’t make themselves heard back. Satisfied with my handiwork, I turned and walked from the room. Then, before I could lose my nerve, I collected the letter, put on my cloak and went down to Henry’s cottage. He looked like he hadn’t slept, either.
“Let’s go for a walk,” I said.
He fetched his coat, and Murphy came hopping out, all excited. We walked along the clifftop. Henry took my hand in his and I revelled in the touch of his warm fingers. I tried to commit the feeling to memory so that it might comfort me in the lonely days to come.
Finally we reached Neist Point and stopped to look at the view. It was now or never.
“Henry, there’s something I must tell you,” I said. Forcing out the words was one of the hardest things I’d ever done. “There’s something you need to know. And, once you do, you won’t want to marry me any more. You’ll never want to see me again.” I held out the letter. “It’s all in here. Every last secret.”
Every last sin…
Henry took the letter from me and gazed down at it before opening his fingers. The letter was immediately plucked from him and went sailing over the edge of the cliff, dancing in the air for a moment before it was sucked down towards the sea and lost in the foam and froth.
“Don’t ever tell me,” he said in a quiet voice, gazing out towards the water. “I don’t want to know, Mim.” He looked at me, then wrapped his fingers round mine and said, “What’s done is done. I love you. We’re meant to be together. That’s all I need to know.”
I hesitated. I could blurt out the truth to him right here and now. I could force him to listen as I explained that I had murdered two people and that some small part of me worried that I might kill again one day.
It’s such fun to play the murder game!
I shuddered as a doll’s voice rang out in my mind, as clearly as if there was a Frozen Charlotte in my pocket. Even if the dolls had influenced me, I had enjoyed it, just the tiniest little bit. And that was the most sickening shame of all. To tell Henry the truth would have been the decent thing to do. But I also wanted to put all my suffering behind me.
“Are you sure?” I said softly.
Henry’s fingers tightened slightly round mine. “I am,” he said. “Whatever it is, let’s just bury it. We’re so close to escaping, Mim. Please don’t let anything spoil it now. Please.”
“All right,” I heard myself say. “If that’s really what you want.”
Henry’s eyes were serious. “We won’t ever talk of this again,” he said. “We’ll leave this place and never look back.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Cornwall – December 1912
Henry and I married and built a new life for ourselves far away in Cornwall. All was well.
Then, one day, I walked into Henry’s studio to clean. The moment I entered the room, something felt amiss. I couldn’t place it but there was definitely something wrong. I had the weirdest sense of being watched. Several times I glanced out of the window but there was no one staring in at me.
Finally I looked at the work in progress on the easel. At first it just seemed like a rather nice sketch of Henry, Murphy and I in the kitchen together, settled in front of the stove on a chilly winter’s evening. A happy little family. But then I looked closer and the vase of flowers I’d been carrying fell from my hands, smashing upon the floor.
Hearing the sound, Henry came in from next door. “Good grief, what a butterfingers you are, Mim!” he exclaimed, bending down to pick up the pieces.
“What’s this?” I asked, in a harsh voice.
“What?”
“This drawing.” I pointed at it.
Henry straightened up. “Oh. Just a little sketch of the three of us.”
“Don’t you mean the four of us?” I tried to keep a lid on my anger, but it was bubbling up inside me, begging to be let out. “After all that we went through on Skye, why ever would you draw such a thing?”
“Mim, I have no earthly idea what you are talking about,” Henry said patiently.
“Why the hell,” I said, “would you include a Frozen Charlotte doll?”
In the years since we had left the Isle of Skye, neither Henry nor I had once mentioned the Frozen Charlottes. The closest we’d come was on one occasion at an auction house when a box of them had come up for sale. By unspoken agreement we had left immediately, without waiting to bid on the settee we were interested in.
At the mere mention of the dolls, Henry went visibly pale. “What? I haven’t drawn one of those things! Why on earth would I?”
“Then what’s this
?”
I pointed at the drawing. It was so small that you could almost miss it but there, right in the corner, was a Frozen Charlotte on the icy window ledge, its tiny hands pressed against the glass, peering in at us. And right beside it, as if miniature fingers had drawn on the frosted glass, were two words: Hello, Mother!
The colour drained from Henry’s face as he stared at the drawing.
“I don’t … I don’t know what to say,” he said. “I don’t remember drawing that. I would never draw one of those awful things. I don’t know how it could have got there. What can it mean, Mim?”
I closed my eyes and suddenly I was back at the loch two years ago, and it was impossible to tell whether the voices ringing in my ears now were merely an echo from back then or real voices that were here with me now:
“We found you before, Mother…”
“And we’ll find you again…”
“We know where you are, always…”
“We’ll always love you…”
“We’ll always find you…”
“Always…”
“Always…”
Always.
Isle of Skye – 1910
The girls were playing with the Frozen Charlotte dolls again.
The schoolmistress had given them some scraps of fabric and ribbon from the sewing room to take out to the garden. They were to practise their embroidery skills by making little dresses and bonnets for the naked porcelain dolls. “They’ll catch their death of cold otherwise,” the teacher had said.
But there was one girl who wasn’t playing with the others. The schoolmistress sighed when she saw her, sat alone, fiddling with her blindfold. The girl complained it was uncomfortable but the physician had said it was necessary to keep her wound clean. And, besides, the sight of her ruined eyes frightened the other girls.
The schoolmistress got up and went over to her, just as she succeeded in untying the knot.
“Now, Martha,” she said, deftly tying it back up again. “Remember what the doctor said.”
The girl hung her head and said nothing. She hadn’t spoken much since the accident. Not since the physician had come and Martha had made those ridiculous accusations.