by Lois Ruby
Brian hands a bunch of flattened cartons up to me, and I slide them across the bare plank floor. The attic seems to be totally empty, but then one of the cartons sails across the floor and thuds into something with a peaked roof jutting up in the shadow. A dollhouse.
“Come up here, Brian.” He scuttles up behind me, and we crawl over and push the little house across the floor toward the porthole for a better look.
I ask, “Does this look familiar to you?”
“Kind of.”
“Look here. Two windows with pale green lace curtains on each side of the front door. Four steps up, then a flat landing, then six more steps to the blue door. It’s just like our house, even down to the goat-shaped knocker on the blue door.”
“Same furniture inside, too. Cool.”
Now I see the three green velvet couches circling the beveled glass-top table in the front parlor. Somebody built this dollhouse as an exact copy of the big house. Probably Mr. Thornewood built it for Sadie, the Tasmanian she-devil Mariah told me about.
The little house looks so lonely and abandoned. I wonder why Emily, or any of the other tenants, didn’t take it with them when they moved.
Brian asks, “Where are the people?”
Good question. There’s a mess on the floor, and the sink’s full of those teeny dishes and pots and pans. It looks like everybody took off in a hurry. My eyes roam around the two stories of the house. “At least they didn’t forget to take the baby, see? The crib’s empty.”
Brian chuckles. “Old-time toilet with the thing you pull instead of flush!”
“Not like our bathrooms, thank goodness. This dollhouse was probably built way back in the last century, and no one bothered to remodel it.”
“Bathtub has claws, see?” Brian reaches in and pulls out the old-fashioned oval tub, then shoves it back in the dollhouse with a gasp.
“What? WHAT?” I yell.
He points to the bathtub. A tiny doll is floating facedown in a small puddle of water. Brian whispers, “They didn’t take the baby.”
“Let’s get out of here.” We both slide across the floor and scamper down the ladder super quick, then glide down the smooth banister to the ground floor, landing on a Persian rug that covers the hardwood. Chester’s waiting for us. “Outside, both of you,” I command. “It was stifling up there; we need fresh air.” Brian tears out the front door, Chester right behind him, and I walk slowly, wondering if Sadie loved her dollhouse. I’m also wondering what kind of a kid would drown a baby in the bathtub. Crazy Emily?
Outside, I look up at dark thunderclouds rolling in. “We won’t have much time out here before the rain starts. So enjoy it while it lasts.”
The yard seems to be acres wide, but not much deeper than the house, and most of it is overgrown with weeds and tall grass. The only thing that saves it from being flat, ugly land are the twin mountains, the Spanish Peaks, dotting the horizon off in the distance. I’ll bet they look really pretty dusted with snow. Something to look forward to, since we seem to be trapped here forever.
We pass a small fishing hole on the north side where no fish could survive in the mustard-yellow algae, and I think about fishing with Dad at Horsetooth Reservoir. Don’t go there, I remind myself. You’re here, now … where lots of weeping willow branches sag from the trees and brush the ground. The air is usually hot and still in late August, but those storm clouds are rolling in. There’s a grassy clearing between two trees where someone seems to have chopped off the low-hanging branches. It looks strange in the middle of all that growth of weeds and grass and weeping willows. Chester sniffs the ground and whimpers. Maybe there’s a juicy bone buried under there that he hasn’t got the heart to go for right now, which is shocking, because Chester’s a great digger. So Brian and I move in closer to see what’s stopped him. Chills ripple up and down my spine.
It’s a graveyard, a miniature cemetery with five tiny wooden markers close together in a horseshoe shape, and one larger one set way apart, as if someone didn’t want that body buried with the rest.
WHATEVER’S BURIED HERE HAS TO BE REALLY small, maybe goldfish or pet mice or hamsters, because the whole horseshoe space is only about two feet for the five graves. Someone scribbled messy names on those wooden sticks with a Sharpie, like they were in a huge hurry to get these dead things underground. Same as the doll people who were in a hurry to get out of the house in the attic. What’s everybody’s rush?
A huge question hits me: Who-what-where-when-why? Oops, that’s five questions, the biggie being, What’s buried here?
Five of the wooden grave markers look like those tongue depressors you gag on when doctors look down your throat. One says Dotty Woman, with C.B. nestled between Betsy Anne and Baby Daisy. I’m startled to see a marker for Miss Amelia. It can’t be a coincidence.
“Aunt Amelia?” Brian asks, wide-eyed.
“Hardly. She’s buried in Denver, and besides, even if they shrink-wrapped her, she wouldn’t fit in this grave.” Who are these creatures, Betsy Anne and C.B. and all? They don’t sound like names for goldfish or hamsters.
Brian manages a breathless, “Wow.”
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
The sixth grave has a larger marker about a foot high and rounded on top like a more traditional gravestone. It says LADY R.I.P. Lady sounds like a good name for a dog, but why is this grave separated from the others?
Now Chester begins rooting around in the little cemetery.
“Don’t, pup,” I command, pulling him away by his collar, but he goes right back to the Miss Amelia marker and frantically pulls at the grass and dirt with one front paw after the other, like he’s pedaling a bike, until his claws click against something. He tosses out dirt and clamps his teeth around a small doll, only about five inches tall. Chester drops her at my feet. Miss Amelia. Matted hair sticks out of her head in black clumps, and she has hard, dark eyes too big for her delicate face. And no eyelids.
So, they’re dolls, Baby Daisy and the rest? Like the one under the glass-top table, only bigger? Brian’s holding Miss Amelia upside down by one black high-laced shoe. Her thick black wool dress hangs over her hair, but old-fashioned muslin pantaloons modestly cover her. I grab her away from Brian and turn her right side up. Her face is cracked and dotted with black flecks and pinholes. Her lips twist in a zigzag, as if the doll maker molded a grotesque mouth when the clay was soft.
“She’s weird,” Brian murmurs as Chester sniffs at the doll.
“I think she was made to be a witch doll.” She gives me the shivers, or is it that the temperature has dropped ten degrees in an instant? “Let’s rebury this ugly thing quick, before the storm.” A streak of lightning signals the urgency, and I drop the doll back in the hole.
Brian squats to the ground and gently lifts her out of her grave. He’s such a softy, that brother of mine. “I’m gonna see if she’ll fit in one of my baseball-card boxes. Then bury her.”
Seems silly to me, but there’s no time to argue as the rain makes small plinking dimples in the dirt pile and soon turns into a thunderous torrent that floods the small grave. We dash to the house, kicking our wet shoes off onto the floor of the mudroom. We’re soaked to the skin, but Miss Amelia is bone-dry, locked in Brian’s hand — which is dripping wet.
Well! That Miss Amelia is a mysterious little doll-person. That’s three dolls we’ve found today, and not one of them seems very playful.
“Gimme the doll, Brian.”
He flings his hand behind his back, out of my reach. “You’ll toss her in the garbage.”
“I will not!” I reply, but it wouldn’t be a bad idea. Let her roll around in coffee grounds and bacon grease. “I’m going up to the attic to put her in the dollhouse, which is probably where she came from in the first place.”
“Think she’s hungry? I’d be.”
“You’re always hungry. Anyway, you’re real. She’s not. Face it: Dolls don’t eat or drink.” Or die and get buried.
Brian looks m
e squarely in the eye. “She is real, Shelby. Maybe I heard her say something.”
“Ridiculous!” I huff as I head for the attic. Emily heard things….
I seat Miss Amelia on the bottom step in the front hall of the dollhouse. She topples over onto the floor, her stiff legs letting out a quiet squeal, like they need oiling. Or is it her voice? So I limber up her legs with a few hearty bends and seat her again on the step, more securely this time. Immediately she falls over again and lands facedown on the fringed Persian rug at the bottom of the staircase. Curious. Twice? It’s almost like she’s trying to show me something. Patting the floor under her, I feel a bump, maybe a dead bug under there. I peel back the carpeting and — surprise! — there’s a small O-ring nailed to the wood, and it’s just big enough for me to jam my pinkie into it and give it a pull. A tiny trapdoor pops straight up, revealing a secret compartment under the floor! It’s dark inside; I can’t see anything, so I reach in and feel around and just miss getting my fingers snapped into a mousetrap. I toss the mousetrap aside (no mouse in it; I’d die on the spot if there were) and probe around in that little hole again until my fingers find a small rectangular thing, which turns out to be a tiny speckled book no larger than a Jolly Rancher candy. Inside are a few blank pages, yellowed with age.
Oh! If this house is an exact copy of our big house, then there must be a secret compartment under the Persian rug at the bottom of our stairs. After Brian and Mom are asleep, I’ll explore that space. Who knows what I’ll find?
The tiny book’s in my jeans pocket, but I close the trapdoor and replace the rug, feeling a little creeped out that I’m being drawn deeper and deeper into the mystery of this house.
As I’m backing down the attic ladder, Mom grabs my arm, and I nearly leap off the ladder.
“You scared me, Mom.”
“Your father’s on the phone.” Mom thrusts the phone into my hand. I don’t want to talk to him, but now I hear him saying “Shel?”
“Hello, Dad,” I mutter flatly.
“How’s the new house?” He’s faking so much good cheer that it makes me want to cry. That’s one of the weird things about me. I cry when I’m happy, and I cry when I’m angry, but I don’t cry when I’m sad. Much.
“House is okay. Lot of old stuff.”
“Mom says the kitchen’s nice.”
He has no right to mention Mom so casually. She doesn’t belong to him anymore. And of course neither of us mentions Terri or Marcus, as if we’re all pretending that Dad doesn’t have a new family he likes better.
“School starts next week, eh?”
“What do you care?”
“I do care,” he says so quietly that I can hardly hear him. Long pause. We used to be able to talk to each other so easily. Baseball and old Shrek movies and horseback-riding stuff. We had fairy tea parties together when I was still into that girlie stuff a few years ago. When Gram died, Dad was the one who knew just how to break the news to me, but now …
“Shelby, honey, I know you’re still mad at me.”
“I’m not mad!” I holler, snuffing back the tears.
“Angry, angry girl.” Did Dad say that? Sounded more like a female voice. Terri better not be on the line!
“Tell her to hang up!” I shout.
“I’m on my cell, Shel. No one else could be listening in.”
I hear Marcus in the background asking if he can play with Dad’s ivory chess set, the one Dad taught Brian and me on.
“Go play chess, who cares? I have to go.” If I don’t hang up right now, I’ll yell things at Dad that’ll feel good now, but will make me feel awful when I play them over and over in my mind later.
Dad sighs. “Okay, honey. Put Brian on, will you?”
I don’t care if Dad’s still on the line waiting for Brian. I rush outside, letting the screen door slam. Where to? Maybe I’ll jump in that polluted pond with the yellow decayed leaves, roll around in it a few miserable hours, then slog up to my room and bury my dripping head in my pillow. Pond scum on my bed? Ugh.
But next thing I know, I’m kneeling in the muddy grass at the doll graveyard, without a clue about how I got here.
Brian is here, too. And he’s already digging.
BRIAN PULLS THE DOLL OUT OF BABY DAISY’S grave and brushes off the wet dirt. She’s a fat little thing, maybe two inches tall, with just a little swirling crown of porcelain hair on her perfectly round head. Her cheeks are apple-pink, her mouth a tiny red O, and her ears have dot-sized diamond studs. A fancy white dress falls to her feet, with white stockings folded over, lacy at the ankles. Chester licks her, then, bored, walks away in his princely strut.
“Looks like she’s ready for her christening,” I tell Brian, looking her over again — the white dress, the lacy socks. Now I notice a blue bow stuck on her ripples of hair, and tiny blue teddy bears on her lacy socks. I’d swear neither of those was there before. Didn’t she have light brown hair? Now she’s a towhead; her hair’s almost white. And a jagged crack zigzags from her left eye to her neck now.
She changes before our eyes! Or our eyes do. There’s no explaining it.
Shaken, I manage, “Let’s take her up to the dollhouse in the attic so she can be with Miss Amelia.” But Brian isn’t listening. He’s digging again in a frenzy, and up turns Miss Amelia herself.
“How did she get back here?” I ask, shocked. “I put her in the attic a few minutes ago. You reburied her?”
Brian’s face is pale, his hands shaky. “Hunh-uh. She got here on her own.”
“Impossible!”
“Then, what happened?”
We both start scrambling through the dirt to unearth the next doll, Betsy Anne. I blow the dirt off her flowery dress. Her blond hair is pulled to one side in a braid woven around a magenta ribbon. She’s about six inches tall, way too big for the dollhouse in the attic. With such peachy skin and a dainty mouth eternally smiling, she’s the prettiest of the dolls we’ve found so far. I close my eyes for a minute, then look her over carefully to see if anything’s changed. “What do you see, Brian?”
“Just a girl in a dress, a pigtail, blue eyes.”
“That’s what I see,” I murmur. “I wonder why Baby Daisy …” What’s the word? Morphs before our eyes. And then she does it again. This is way too freaky to be normal.
We stash Baby Daisy and Betsy Anne and Miss Amelia down into the dark, damp earth, hoping the worms will find them tasty really soon. Just to be sure, I toss in their three tongue-depressor grave markers, dump dirt over all of it, tamp it down, and stomp the mass grave with my heels. Overkill, yeah, but these are unusual circumstances.
“They’re gone,” I assure Brian. “Forget about these weirdo dolls.”
He looks skeptical. “You think?”
“Let’s go up to the attic and get that baby in the bathtub. Maybe she needs to be buried with the others to put them out of our lives.” How weird is this that I’m talking about what a porcelain doll needs?
The grandfather clock in the second-floor hall bongs five times. Five o’clock already? I glance at the clock in my room. Three thirty. That’s more like it.
“Come on, Brian.” We trundle up the ladder toward the attic. Chester is trailing us and barking wildly, but he won’t go near the dollhouse. I grab Bathtub Baby, who’s still facedown in the water, and suddenly notice that there are dolls in every room, lots of them. Brian’s words echo in my mind: “Where are the people?” They weren’t there before! But here’s Betsy Anne in the front parlor, towering over the mantel above the fireplace, and Baby Daisy on all fours, like she’s about to crawl across the parlor floor. Miss Amelia is propped up at the window, as if she’s looking for someone across the yard. Looking for us?
“This cannot be!” I cry. “We just buried them!” I scoop the three of them up, tie them into the bottom of my shirt, and climb back down the attic ladder so fast that it’s clattering and wobbling. Brian is right behind me, and the dolls are clicking together in the nest of my T-shirt.
Mom’s stacking boxes at the bottom of the stairs. “Oh, how nice. You’ve been up there playing with that charming dollhouse,” she says. “Why don’t we bring it down to the sunporch?”
Brian and I share a look. Fear shadows across his face. I can only imagine that mine mirrors his. “I don’t think so,” I tell Mom. “It belongs in the attic.”
“All right.” Mom waves a beat-up cookbook and says, “I don’t want to wait another minute to get into that incredible kitchen. I’m about to make my first trial batch of lentil soup for SerenaStockPot.com. Who wants to be in on this historic moment?”
“Later, Mom,” Brian says. “We have to go outside.”
“But the ground’s soaked.” Mom sees me cradling something in the turned-up hem of my shirt. “What are you carrying, Shelby?”
“Oh, just some of the dollhouse people,” I calmly reply, but Brian has no sense.
“We buried them out back in the doll cemetery, but somehow they got up here.”
Why did he tell her that?! She doesn’t know about the doll cemetery, and now she’ll ask a million questions, and we’ll never get outside, and these dolls rolled in my shirt absolutely will not stay still.
Mom just sighs, no questions. She thinks Brian’s joking. “Sweetie, isn’t that just a tiny bit outrageous?” she says, grinning.
Ooh! If I’d said the dolls magically trounced upstairs on their own, Mom would have a fit and accuse me of lying, which she’s been doing a lot since, well, since it happened. But Brian just gets the “sweetie” treatment. It is so unfair, just because I’m the oldest.
Mom coaxes Brian. “Come on, sweetie, let’s go brew up some soup.”
He shakes his head and we hurry outside, determined to get the creepy dolls out of our lives for good. The sky’s gray again and seems to turn that way every time we go back to the little cemetery. I kneel in the patch of graveyard, still fuming at Mom and stabbing the ground with a hand shovel. The dolls tied into my shirt click together some more, almost as if they’re chattering, and then I clearly hear a harmony of voices.