by Lois Ruby
Boy, Emily Smythe was sure conceited, and what a drama queen. But should I follow her advice? Not yet. I need to know more.
If you’re stupid enough to keep reading, you might find some things Mariah told me about this oddball house interesting. Warning Number Two — pay no attention to what Mariah thought because she’s a loony bird.
Mariah! The girl who brought the disgusting kidney pie. This is curious. Mariah stood right there on my porch and told me that Emily was — what’s the word she used? — loopy. But here Emily’s telling me that Mariah is a loony bird. Which one’s lying, or are they both crazy? I quickly scan the next few lines and skip over to the next page.
APRIL 22 — Mama says I’m spoiled rotten, like sour milk or rancid butter, but Daddy knows me better. He calls me Cupcake and says I’m not spoiled, I just like nice things. My Shetland pony is way more adorable than Sadie’s mangy old Bonita. I saw her horse in a picture before I burned up all of Sadie’s albums. Low-class horse if I ever saw one.
I sure wish she hadn’t burned Sadie’s albums. Wish I could have seen her pictures to understand her better. I guess I’m the Secret Eyes of the Future, which makes me feel a little itchy, as if I have no business reading Emily’s private words. But I can’t resist.
MAY 3 — I’m way too old and too sophisticated to play with that dollhouse Mama insists we keep in the front parlor. Her bridge ladies get a buzz out of how it’s an exact replica of the house we live in. Just about every dummy — that’s a bridge term for the person who sits out after the cards are dealt and the hand is bidden, but they’re all dummies, if you ask me — gets down on the floor and oohs and ahhs about the itty-bitty furniture and the eensy-teensy dishes and the utzie-cutsie dolls. They don’t know that those dolls are pure evil.
Yes! Emily knew it. Wonder what the dolls did that convinced her. I skip ahead a few more pages. More about Mariah.
Mariah and I had a funeral yesterday. Buried five of those creepy dolls out in the field. Mariah’s grandmother said some nice words that they didn’t deserve, after all the awful things they did, but Grandmother Truva is sort of a minister, so she has to say nice words.
Odd. I had the impression from Mariah that her grandmother had passed away. I try to reconstruct our conversation, but it’s muddled in my memory. Something about “before she left this world a few years ago.” Yes, now I’m sure of it, because I told her I was sorry for her loss. Hmm.
Then we stuffed all five dolls in the ground in their very own graves and covered them with mud and rocks and weeds and dead fish and glops of algae from the pond, and coffee grounds and wads of honey-soaked paper towels, and that was the end of the dolls. “Hallelujah.” That’s what her grandma said at the end of the service, and Mariah and I shouted it right back at her. Hallelujah, baby!
But I’ll bet they didn’t stay buried. Yep. Three pages later, Emily writes:
I cannot believe it. All the graves are dug up and empty, but I know where those dolls are. This morning I kneeled in front of the dollhouse, shivering and quivering, and verified my theory. The dollhouse was full of those creepy dolls, the ones we buried and lots more. They’re multiplying like rabbits! I shook the house, and they all toppled over and scattered. Except one. It stopped me cold to find a new one that looked just like me! And she was lying in the bed of the bedroom just like mine, under a patchwork quilt just like the one I brought from our last house, the NORMAL house we used to live in before Mama and Daddy had the insane idea to simplify our lives by moving out here to Nowhere, USA. I’m sure that that patchwork quilt wasn’t in the house before, so who put it there? Only one suspect: that grouchy old woman, Amelia What’s-Her-Face, who lives in the cottage out back.
Aunt Amelia? Was she involved in the evil things these dolls did during Emily’s time here? I wish I could talk to her about it, but of course, she’s gone now.
It’s just the kind of thing the old bat would do, digging up the graves. Hilarious to think of her plowing through all those coffee grounds and mud and honey! But just as I was having a good laugh, the doll with the gorgeous blond hair to her waist, opened her expressive blue eyes (like mine!) and I swear, she stared right at me as if she knew me and hated my guts.
I can understand that. I sort of despise this conceited, obnoxious brat myself. Who was worse, Sadie or Emily? I keep reading.
I couldn’t help myself. I grabbed that doll, ripped her head off, and threw her across the parlor. Her body scooted way under the green couch, and her head bounced under there after her. It felt so, so, so healthy. That’s when I had another of my superlatively awesome ideas. Can’t wait to tell Mariah about it. I’m going to rip off an arm or a leg or a head of a different doll every day, especially the bigger ones, the ones piled in the cradle up in the attic.
I search the dark space. There’s no cradle up here, no big dolls. My eyes race over Emily’s next horrifying words:
I’ll dump each torn-off part on crabby old Amelia’s cottage porch, or maybe I can sneak into the place when she’s having her daily constitutional walk and toss the parts on her bed, one each day. Oh, yeah, that will feel delicious, and it’ll send the old witch into fits!
“Angry, angry girl,” I hear in a raspy voice, different from the ones I’m getting used to. This is the voice of the me-doll that Emily totally destroyed; I’m convinced of it, and she’s letting me know that the dolls aren’t through with me yet. That somehow I’m going to pay for the abuse Sadie and Emily heaped upon her and her companions.
Unless I can find a way to stop them. But I haven’t got a clue how to do that. Well, maybe one clue. It probably has something to do with finding Lady. But that’s as far as I get. Ugh.
My eyes are tired and dry from reading with this penlight. When I turn it off, I’m plunged into darkness like in a cave. One summer, the four of us, when there were four of us, went to Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico. It’s dimly lit for tourists, but for about two minutes they turn out every single light, and it’s so deeply dark that you can’t see your hand in front of your eyes.
Up here my ears have to be my eyes. I hear every creak of the floorboards, the scurrying of some sort of animal across the floor, probably a mouse, and an owl outside. You hear owls but don’t ever see them. Maybe now I’ll catch sight of one in a tree right outside. So I peer out the little window, and just then the light in the house on the hill winks out. Outside, it’s totally dark, too, because the moon’s hidden behind some trees. But after a few seconds I see the skeleton of a cottonwood that didn’t survive the summer drought, and I keep watching for big, round, glowing owl eyes and will probably faint dead away if I actually see them.
Something’s moving out there! A figure darts past our house, crouches under our downstairs windows, then stands again to hurtle down the driveway. I can’t make out who it is — someone kind of tall, but slim. Large kid? Small woman? Definitely female because of the knot of wild hair on top of her head.
Mariah! I’m chilled to the bone to think that she was in the greedy coal baron’s house on the hill. The haunted house, where she had no business being, and is now sneaking away from. Why? And why would she tell me that her grandmother died years ago when she was obviously still alive a few months ago when Emily wrote in the diary?
Tomorrow I’m trouncing right up to the Keystone Duplexes a half mile up the road, and I’ll traipse back and forth all day until I find her house, because I have a few million questions to ask Mariah-not-Maria O’Donnell.
THE VACUUM CLEANER IS WAILING INSIDE WHEN I lean on Mariah’s doorbell to make it heard. All the way to her house I practiced what I wanted to say, and what I shouldn’t say. I’m sure not going to tell her that I found Sadie and Emily’s diary. I’m going to start out slow and noodle my way into the real reason I’m on her doorstep.
But when I hear the vacuum turn off, and she’s standing at the open door in a granny nightgown that brushes the floor, I blurt out the very thing I never meant to say. There I go, thinking with my tongue agai
n.
“Why were you sneaking around my house last night?”
Mariah takes a moment to let the surprise roll off, and then spits out a lie. “I wasn’t. I was here all night babysitting.”
“I saw you! You were up in the house the America’s Most Amazing people are taping. I watched the light go off, and then saw you slinking down the hill, past our house. I know it was you!”
She spins around and turns the vacuum on again, leaving me shouting into the noise, so I bend around her and turn it back off.
“We need to talk.”
“You need to. I don’t.”
“Tell me about Sadie.”
Her eyes widen, and she stares me in the face when she says, “She died.”
“When did she pass away?” It sounds so much gentler than died.
“When she was eleven,” Mariah says, watching my face for reaction.
My hand claps to my mouth. I knew she’d been sick, but sick enough to die? “How? What happened to her?” I mumble the words through my fingers.
After winding the cord on the vacuum, Mariah sinks to the bottom step in the hall, the nightgown stretched across her knees. “Depends who you ask.”
“I’m asking you.”
“Couple of theories. One, she had a kink in her brain, a tumor or something. Gave her lots of headaches. Maybe it exploded in there.” She points to her own head.
I remember Sadie saying in the diary that the headaches were getting worse, that she was spending more and more time in a darkened room. “And the other theory?” I urge Mariah.
“The governess.”
“You mean Dotty?”
“She had this thing about dandelions, smashing dried flowers into powder to sprinkle over food.”
“Dandelions aren’t poisonous, if that’s what you’re getting at,” I remind Mariah.
“Some flowers are.”
“Don’t tell me you think the governess poisoned Sadie with ground-up posie petals?”
Mariah shrugs. “Everybody knew about her weird ways. You gotta ask, how would a kid be alive one day, dead the next, when that governess never let Sadie take a breath without her?”
That’s a think-worthy question. And here’s another one: “How come you told me your grandma passed away years ago? I know she was alive just before we moved into the house.”
“I didn’t say she died.”
“You most certainly did!”
“Anyway, she’s my great-grandmother.” Mariah squinches her eyebrows together in deep thought. Probably cooking up a new lie to pile on top of her other ones. “I’ll bet I said she left this world a long time ago, right?”
“You did; that’s exactly what you said.”
“It’s the truth. Since you’re here, you might as well come have a glass of lemonade.”
I follow her into the kitchen, where an old woman’s sitting in one of those tilt-back lounge chairs, clutching its upholstered arms. Her feet are propped up, bare, with perfectly pedicured red toenails, which is a big contrast to her froth of wispy gray hair sticking out every which way. She doesn’t look up or say hello, just keeps rocking her body back and forth.
Mariah taps her on the shoulder, and the old woman’s eyes light up for a second, then go dim again. “Grandmother Truva, this is Shelby, from the Thornewood house.”
She nods in slow motion. She looks alive all right, but just barely. Her face has no expression, and she seems to be chewing gently on her tongue.
There’s just enough in the lemonade pitcher for a small glass for each of us. Mariah offers Grandmother Truva a sip, then motions for me to follow her back to the hallway steps.
“Was I lying? She has that Alzheimer’s thing. She really did leave this world about four years ago. Just her shell’s left.”
I’m heartsick at the thought of the woman being so dead, yet breathing.
“Every so often she surfaces, like someone’s flicked her ON-OFF switch, and she remembers her days as a preacher and says some pretty words from the Bible, but then a minute later she’s gone.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry.”
Mariah shrugs again, which seems to be her favorite thing to do. “Could be worse,” she says, gulping the last of her lemonade.
Then there’s nothing more to say about it, and it’s embarrassing sitting there on the steps in silence, so I ask, “What else can you tell me about Sadie, about when she died?”
“It was almost eighty years ago. What difference does it make now, and why should you care?”
Her question is blunt and bruising, and I feel snappish. “Then tell me about Emily.”
Mariah raises one eyebrow, so I push on.
“Emily and the doll graveyard.”
“I already told you. The girl is loopy, locked up.”
“Yes, but —” Do I dare mention this? She’ll wonder how I know. “But there was a funeral.”
“Was there?” Another shrug.
“There must have been. You don’t just bury a bunch of dolls without some sort of important words. Just guessing, here.”
She’s looking away from me, her face as expressionless as Grandmother Truva’s.
“Maybe I’m loopy like Emily,” I begin carefully. And a loony bird like Mariah, which I don’t add. “It seems to me that those dolls are having a real hard time staying dead and buried.”
Mariah bursts out in a loud laugh. Too loud to be natural. She’s hiding something really big, I’m sure of it now. Some deep, dark secret about Sadie, or Emily, and who knows what else.
So I backpedal to play it safe and easy. “I know it sounds insane, and I don’t really mean it.”
“Hope not,” Mariah says shortly.
“One more question.”
“You’re full of ’em.”
“About when Sadie died.”
“That again?”
How to frame this question without totally ticking her off? “Is it true that Sadie’s mother never loved her? Loved her baby sister more, and that’s why Sadie was so warped and mean?”
“How should I know?” By now Mariah’s got her knees pulled up to her chin, her arms clasped around her legs. Looks like she’s trying to curl into herself. What’s she hiding?
“Do you know anything about Sadie’s mother?”
“Nope.”
I want to say what those directors say when they’re making a movie: “Come on, work with me, people.” Instead, I say, “Nothing?”
Mariah suddenly thrusts her legs out. She’s mad. I mean, I recognize mad when I see it. And she probably figures she’d better give me a nibble of info or she’ll never get rid of me.
“Grandmother Truva said Sadie’s mother was a cold, stuck-up snob who never got used to living out here in Colorado. She came from London. London, England. Related to royalty, back a few generations. That’s what she said.”
Now we’re getting somewhere! “Don’t stop now.”
“Wanted everyone to call her by her royal name.”
“Not Mrs. Thornewood?”
Mariah blows out a puff of air. “Not good enough for her. Talk about stuck-up; she made everybody working in the house call her Lady Thornewood.”
A gasp escapes my lips. Lady! There’s so much more I want to ask, but Mariah’s got her arms crossed around her waist. I can tell that her well has dried up, and I’m not going to get another drop out of her, so I mumble something about Mom needing me at home, and I get out quickly.
Lady! This is mind-boggling information! But what does it mean? As I’m slowly walking home, kicking it all around in my mind, I realize that I still have lots more questions than answers.
Also, it suddenly dawns on me, I never found out why Mariah was sneaking around the house on the hill last night.
The question at the top of my very long list is this: Was Sadie poisoned by her governess, the one she called Dotty Woman? And if she was, was it accidental or deliberate?
Mom’s left a pile of shirts and napkins on the ironing board, as a reminder
that I still owe her some payment for the penlight. I hoped she’d forget. Well, if I prop the laptop up on the wide end of the ironing board, I can whip through a couple of shirts while I read about poisonous flowers. Brilliant idea!
Okay, there’s a purple flower called belladonna. The name’s too pretty to be poisonous, but it is, and it causes serious headaches, like Sadie’s diary talks about. That’s Suspect Number One. Foxglove is another possibility. Ooh, it’s also called witches’ gloves and bloody fingers. Very promising! Eating this innocent-looking pink flower gets you a racing pulse and serious mental confusion, such as thinking dolls are talking to you or moving around on their own steam.
Steam! I’ve scorched the cuff of Mom’s silk blouse. Just as I close the laptop so I can try to fix it, I see a few more words about foxglove: It can kill.
“TOO BAD ABOUT THE MISSING QUEEN,” BRIAN says, fiddling with the odd chess set in front of the portrait of Mrs. Thornewood. Lady Thornewood. “This would be a fun set to play with, the way the pieces snap into place. But the game’s no good without the queen.”
Brian is obsessed with chess. Ugh. He’s practicing for a tournament next month in Colorado Springs. He’ll probably be the youngest player in the whole contest. Mom’s driving us as far as Pueblo, and Dad’s picking us up and taking us the rest of the way. That’s what divorced kids do; they get passed from one snarly parent to another in parking lots. Will I ever get used to this?
I’m taking another stab at The Giver, because I have to come up with some kind of a project by Friday. I love the book, but my mind is buzzing like it’s full of bumblebees. Belladonna. Witches’ gloves, bloody fingers, flowers that kill. Someone had to pick them and feed them to Sadie. Who? Why? Or maybe it never happened that way, and she died of some awful disease. It’s all swirling around in my head, but I have to put it out of my mind for a while, because this is the night. I’ll try to stay awake until a full hour after Mom goes to bed, and then I’m breaking out of jail and trekking up the hill. In pitch-dark, without a flashlight, in case Mom’s still awake.