by Lois Ruby
Brian goes into the dining room, where I hear the key turn and the glass door of the hutch creak open. Don’t let the dolls out! I whisper. They’ve stayed locked in there for days already. Looks like we’ve finally figured out how to trap them — or are they just waiting for the right opportunity to spring free?
He comes back into the parlor with the smallest of the dolls, Baby Daisy.
“What are you doing with her?” I demand.
“Using her for the queen.”
“No!” I snatch her out of Brian’s hand. Her face is different from what I remembered. It used to be round and smooth, with rosy cheeks. Now there are cracks all around her eyes, the same way old people have wrinkles. The porcelain curls on her head are also cracked, and the sweet, innocent look in her baby eyes is replaced by an intense stare, with the eyes cast sideways as if she’s scared she’ll get caught.
Are the other dolls doing this to her? Are we, somehow?
“Won’t work anyway. She’s too big for the chessboard,” Brian grumbles. “Gimme, I’ll put her back.”
“No, she’s mine.” Crazy as it seems, I’m thinking that if I take good care of her, she’ll feel better. Her face will relax. She won’t look haunted anymore.
Last year in school we did that thing where everybody got a five-pound sack of flour to take care of for a week. We drew faces on the sack, named our babies (mine was Kammie), and stayed with them twenty-four hours a day. Before I could eat a bite, I had to mash a banana for her and mix a bottle of milk formula. I kept her safe even while I was sleeping, careful not to roll over on her. That would smash the poor kid, and also send five pounds of flour snowing all over my room.
It was amazing how attached we all got to our flour sacks, but how easy it was to turn them into chocolate-chip cookies at the end of the week.
I’m going to do the same with Baby Daisy. Not the chocolate-chip-cookies part. I’m going to keep her with me no matter where I am or what I’m doing. I have a stretchy purple friendship bracelet that Evvie and Melissa gave me as a going-away present. “Our friendship stretches all the way to Cinder Creek and back,” they promised, though they haven’t even called me once.
I tuck the doll tightly under the bracelet on my wrist, palm side up. Baby Daisy and I are joined now.
I creep down the stairs in my socks, shoes in hand. There’s not a peep from Mom’s bedroom. Chester’s snoring in his bed in the laundry room, and Brian’s been zoned out for hours. Earlier, I oiled the hinges on the back door so I could slip out without any screechy sounds that might tip off Mom. I tie my shoelaces good and tight on the back porch, make sure Baby Daisy is secure under my bracelet, take a deep breath, and start out on my odyssey.
Good, there’s a bright moon lighting up the path past Mr. Caliberti’s cottage. His shade’s open, and he’s sitting in a huge easy chair reading a thick book. Terpsichore’s on the windowsill, throwing me a dirty look as I slink past the cottage and hurry up the hill.
The higher I get, the more trees there are along the side of the road. One that’s stubborn about giving up its fall leaves hides the moon, and I’m suddenly plunged into darkness. I’ve heard that if you lose one of your five senses, the others kick in, and now, since I can’t see where I’m going, I hear every eerie sound — a branch bending in the wind, some kind of animal, maybe a rabbit or a roadrunner, slooshing through the bushes, a car way off down the road, insect song in the trees. I never noticed how noisy the silent night is.
Near the empty house, I stop and try to size up the situation. Half of me wants to run all the way back home, crawl into bed, and pull the covers up over my head. That’s the smart half. The dumb half says, Go for it, girl, and so I do. I try the door; locked, of course. Did I expect this to be easy-peasy? I can’t push up any of the windows, either. Maybe I’ll have better luck around the back.
It’s even darker back here, and I use the little pinpoint light of my ultraviolet pen to find my way from window to window. No way in. Some concrete steps trail down to the cellar. They’re covered with decaying leaves and dead bugs that crunch on the way down. I spot a window open about a quarter inch that I can just get my fingers under to push up! The loud scraping sound sends some kind of animal streaking through the night, white stripe down its back. Skunk.
I climb in through the window and jump way down onto a cement floor, my knees throbbing from the impact and my heart pounding with fear. What if there’s someone in here, maybe a homeless man who’s squatting in this abandoned house, ready to spring at me like a coiled snake? What if this is the winter home of a family of wild coyotes? I dart around, pointing my penlight in every corner, and sharpen my ears to strange sounds. It’s deadly silent. I creep from one end of the cellar to the other, guided by the puny glow of my penlight.
Something flies past my face close enough that I feel the windy flutter of its wings. How could a bird have gotten in here? I point the light toward the flying object, watch it close its broad wings over its startled night eyes. It’s a bat! My heart stops for a few seconds until I can barely catch a breath. The bat flies out the open window, and I breathe again.
And then I see something else piled in a corner, arms and legs tangled together: broken dolls. Some with matted hair, some with missing limbs. One has no eyes, just empty black holes. Three heads without bodies have found their resting place in the stuffing that’s hanging out of one doll whose seams are ripped open. One’s head has a chunk missing, as if a wolf’s taken a big bite, but, come on, wolves don’t eat porcelain. Someone, a person, did terrible things to these dolls.
Sadie? Or was it Emily? Are these the dolls she wrote about in the attic cradle that isn’t there anymore?
I’m sick to my stomach looking at them, dry heaves spazzing my body until I’m doubled over. Could Mariah have been looking for these dolls the other night? But why? And why didn’t she take them with her? Maybe they made her as sick and bone-chilled as I feel, and that’s why she left them.
Or maybe she never found them.
Is one of them Lady?
I point my penlight around, looking for something to give these mangled dolls some peace, some kindness. There’s an old tarp, stiff with turpentine or something else that stings my nose. I smooth the canvas out and lay it over the mound of shattered dolls. It’s not a proper funeral like in the doll graveyard that Emily wrote about, but it’s a respectful burial just the same.
As I back away from the dolls, the penlight casts a thin beam in their direction. One leg suddenly shoots out from under the tarp! My heart rat-a-tats like a jackhammer.
The pile’s just resettling, I tell myself. There’s nothing alive under there. But even still, I hustle out the open window as fast as possible and dash blindly through the dark, all the way home.
Where Mom is waiting at the back door.
“WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?” MOM bellows.
Breathing heavily from running down the hill, I manage a spacey, “Woke up … needed some exercise.”
“That won’t do, Shelby.” Mom’s arms are folded over her waist in the You are so cooked position.
I collapse onto a kitchen chair and stretch my fuzzy mind for some explanation that she can live with. When my heart finally returns to a thump-thump that doesn’t feel like it’s going to explode like a bomb, I tell her, “I was curious to see what those America’s Most Amazing people are looking for.”
“At midnight? Alone?”
“Well, Mom, the ghosts only come out after midnight, right? I mean, haven’t you read any scary stories in your life?” Oops, I’m starting to sound snarky.
“Sarcasm will not be tolerated in this situation, Shelby Constance.” She sounds just like Aunt Amelia! She’s still standing over me; seems like she’s nine feet tall.
I ask, “How did you know?”
“Mr. Caliberti phoned me, bless his heart. Apparently Terpsichore saw you steal by his cottage and alerted him. He was worried.” Mom scoots a chair close and sits down, throwing an a
rm around my shoulder. Tears mist her eyes. “I was, too. Anything’s possible out here in the wild. I’m so relieved that you’re safe and sound.”
“I’m sorry, Mom.” Now I’ve got tears in my eyes, too, and my heart is quietly thumping, remembering that I could have run into real danger out there.
“We’ll talk tomorrow,” Mom says, and it sounds like a threat. “For now, take off your jacket and I’ll make you a hot cocoa to warm your bones.”
I can’t take off my jacket! First, the penlight might fall out of the pocket, and worse, she’ll see Baby Daisy on my wrist. I’m just not ready to explain that yet. “I’m still kind of cold,” I tell her, faking a shiver, though I’m sweating around the collar. I pull my arm below the table to feel for the doll snapped under my bracelet.
She’s gone! I tap up and down under the sleeve, and there’s no little lump of porcelain. Must have dropped her along the way. I saw an Internet story about a divorced mother who kidnapped her son away from the father that had custody, and all at once a totally ridiculous idea pops into my head: The unnamed dolls piled in the corner kidnapped Baby Daisy, reclaimed her as one of their own.
I let her down. I’ve got to get back there to rescue her.
“Now,” Mom says evenly, “what is the ultraviolet light for really?”
“The cryptology project!”
“Shel-bee,” she says in that singsong warning way.
No use hiding the truth anymore. It’s too much responsibility keeping it all away from Mom. “I found a notebook that’s written in invisible ink. It belonged to Sadie Thornewood.”
“Is that the woman who originally built this house?” Mom’s dunking a tea bag into her cup, more a nervous gesture, I think, than a real effort to produce strong tea.
“Her daughter. This’ll really break your heart, Mom. Sadie died when she was my age.”
“Oh, dear God. What happened to her?”
I hear Mariah’s words in my head, but not loud, like the dolls’ voices, and I repeat what she said: “Depends who you ask.”
Chester’s awake now, and routing around for scraps on the floor. Then Brian stumbles into the kitchen, bumping into walls, all sleepy-eyed and groggy. “Whazzup?”
“Shelby and I were just having a late-night chat. Go back to bed, sweetie.”
“ ’Zat hot chocolate? I want some, too.”
The phone rings, sounding twice as loud as it does in the daytime, and Mom throws us a frantic look. “Who’d call this late? Your father?” See? He’s still the first thing on her mind. She jumps up to catch the phone on the second bounce.
“Oh, thank you, Mr. Caliberti. Yes, she’s fine, just a little impulsive.” Mom could have said lots worse. “Well, certainly, if you’d like. None of us can sleep anyway.” Covering the mouthpiece, she whispers, “He’s on his way over.”
We hear Terpsichore mewling at the kitchen door before Mr. Caliberti can knock. Chester wants to lunge at the cat, but Mom holds him back by the collar, and Terpsichore does her best to pretend Chester isn’t alive. What a snob, that cat. She’d have been a perfect pet for Lady Thornewood.
Mr. Caliberti’s in his red flannel nightshirt that nearly covers his leather bedroom slippers. He hangs his cane on the key hooks by the door and waddles to a chair. Mom slides a cup of cocoa toward him, another to Brian, and just about faints when Terpsichore leaps onto the counter.
“No, kitty girl,” Mr. Caliberti scolds. “Only at our house, you know better.” So the cat leaps from the counter onto Mr. Caliberti’s lap and sniffs at the cocoa. He pulls the cup away just as she thrusts her pink, raspy tongue toward it.
While he’s here, I might as well ask, “Mr. Caliberti, do you know Truva?”
“Truva O’Donnell? Certainly. Why, she must be a desiccated fossil by now. Old as I am.”
Mom looks puzzled, but doesn’t say anything.
“How do you know her?” My pulse races — I think I’m onto something important here.
“We were children together, before the Ice Age. Not so long ago, truth to tell.” His eyes seem to be looking inward to a time far past. “She and my dear Amelia were the best of friends. Truva was around the house all the time.”
“Did Sadie like her?”
Stirring his cocoa into dancing circles, Mr. Caliberti says, “Sadie liked no one except her parrot. The name escapes me.” And then, I swear, he blushes! “And me. She fancied me. Well, I was a strapping young man then, why shouldn’t she?” Terpsichore meows, either in agreement or in doubt, hard to tell which. “However, Truva had no use for Sadie, either. They were antagonists, as in the most serious theatrical performances.”
Something’s tugging at me — my conversation with Mariah about what happened to Sadie. “Mr. Caliberti, I told Mom that Sadie died real young. Could you tell us anything else about that?”
“She had severe, feverish headaches. Her eyes looked sunken in their sockets and white-ringed. She was white-ringed around her dry lips, as well. Very sick, the child was. I remember her lying on a chaise lounge in the parlor with a cool cloth pressed to her forehead. One day her frock had ridden up over her knees, and when I came into the room she quickly straightened it over her limbs. We said limbs in those days, not legs. Oh, she was sweet on me, yes, yes! But those headaches did her in.”
“Were they migraines? A brain tumor?” Mom asks.
“Might well have been,” he answers vaguely. “She wasted away shockingly quickly, in just a matter of weeks. After she passed, her mother keened and wailed for days.”
“That would be Lady Thornewood?” I ask.
“Yes, herself. She had no use for Sadie until the poor girl went on to the next world, and then she nearly enshrined her daughter. Guilt, no doubt. Some say young Truva had a role in Sadie’s death,” says Mr. Caliberti somberly.
This is big news! Shocking. I wonder if Mariah knows. All she talked about was Dotty Woman as a suspect. I can’t resist asking, “You mean Truva killed her?” Oops, another tongue-before-brain thought.
“There is no proof Sadie Thornewood was poisoned one way or another,” Mr. Caliberti says, “but the rumor has lingered for years, like the odor of sharp cheese. I, for one, have never believed it.”
Strange — he never mentions Dotty Woman as a suspect.
“What makes you ask about Truva O’Donnell, child?”
“I met her.”
Mr. Caliberti’s head snaps back, and Terpsichore falls off his lap. “She’s still among us?”
“Just barely. She has Alzheimer’s.”
“I see.” He scrapes his palm across his nighttime gray bristles on one cheek, then the other. “She used to make a special meat pie of some sort, I recall.”
“Beefsteak and kidney?” I supply.
“The very one. I can still taste it.”
“It was that delicious?” Mom asks doubtfully.
“That dreadful,” Mr. Caliberti replies. We all laugh, except Chester, of course, who loved the pie Mariah brought us.
So, I’m thinking … if people have been hinting for three generations that Grandmother Truva was responsible for Sadie’s death, it must be horrible for Mariah’s family. Maybe it’s all Grandmother Truva can think about, locked inside her own brain the way she is.
But maybe she did do it. Anyone can pick pretty, deadly flowers.
What if Emily told Mariah about Sadie’s notebook, and she has reason to suspect that it’s hidden in that house up the hill where all the dolls were tossed to molder? And what if Mariah thinks there might be a clue about Sadie’s illness or death that would clear Grandmother Truva of the accusations? Maybe that’s why she’s been sleuthing around the abandoned house, trying to find that notebook before the America’s Most Amazing vultures find it.
She doesn’t know I have it! And she doesn’t know that there’s not a single clue about Sadie’s death — only that her writing abruptly stops cold.
Mom and Brian and Mr. Caliberti are deep in some conversation that I’m paying no attent
ion to, when I suddenly hear him say, “One day soon, Miss Shelby, will you take me to visit Truva? Perhaps I’ll awaken some memories in her.”
And help me solve the mystery. “Yes. I’d be happy to!”
I CAN’T SLEEP BECAUSE MY MIND’S JUMPING LIKE kernels in a lidded pan. Pop. Poppity-pop. So many ideas bouncing around in there. And Brian’s wide awake, too, so we might as well read more of what Emily had to say. We curl up on my bed, backs against the wall with Chester between us, and run the penlight over the next few sentences in the diary:
MAY 16 — Why would anybody in his right mind want to be a child psychologist? Mama took me to see Dr. Byington, whose office is full of toys that are way too babyish for me, and if you pick up a single one, he watches you like a hawk. I know that Mama betrayed me and clued him in about the doll dilemma at our house, because out of the blue he asked me if I like dolls. I used to, I told him, when I was maybe four, but I’ve outgrown them and I’m much more interested in getting a smartphone now and a bunch of apps, which Daddy’s promised me next week. (Mama disapproves, but I always win.) Dr. B doesn’t want to talk about cell phones. He wants to talk about dolls. I thought I was supposed to talk, not him! So he picks up this floppy doll that’s the size of a Paddington Bear I used to have, and he pushes her toward me, but I yank my hands away, and the doll clunks to the floor. Ha! So funny! I can’t stop laughing. And then I don’t say one single, solitary word for the rest of the hour. Borrrrring.
“Does she sound crazy to you?” I ask Brian.
“I dunno. Maybe just like a spoiled brat.”
I skim over a few entries that don’t say much, looking for something about Sadie. Emily writes about her next visits with the psychologist, and how she turns her back and pouts and refuses to talk and even hears him doze off and snore. Finally we come to something meatier:
Dr. B asked me if I know what hallucinations are. Sure I do. They’re seeing and hearing things that aren’t there. So he asked me if that ever happens to me. I do NOT have hallucinations. I shouted it at him. They’re not hallucinations if they’re really happening, Dr. Dunderhead! I see those dolls shuffled from one place to another. THEY DON’T STAY BURIED!!!!! I hear them telling me they hate me. I even hear them scream when I tear their arms and legs off. It’s really happening, Dr. B, and if you don’t believe me, you oughta get some other kind of job, maybe a chimney sweeper or pool cleaner.