by Anya Allyn
I shake my head wordlessly, my throat caught up and dry.
“I see it in your eyes, Cherie. You speak of lies, but you have witnessed a small part of what I am telling you. I know that you know something. And perhaps you are the only one in this world who can stop your grandfather. You are the only one close enough to him. You must not allow him to collect the item he seeks. If you cannot stop him, then you must destroy this thing. Wipe it clean from the earth!”
I tear away from her, the heels of my new shoes echoing in hollow staccato on the pavement.
13. OF PARADISE
The train rattles through the green plantations of Louisiana. The circus trailers are loaded into the back cars of the train and the animals secured in their cages. I hear the baying of the elephants. I sense the restlessness of the lions and tigers. The train rides are hard on the animals.
I lean my head back and watch gray clouds swarm and roll across the sky. A deep rumble sounds. A thunderstorm is coming. Beyond everything, I can hear the last notes of a piano recital, like the last stop in a funeral march.
I detest the long stretches between destinations. They are like death, snatching away parcels of your life. My fifteenth birthday is mere months away. The train takes me further towards adulthood, racing towards that bitter day. Grandfather barely speaks to me these days—and refuses to speak more of that conversation in his tent.
The memory of a morning at Orlando five years ago slips into my mind. The sky is the color of my dress—a powdery blue. I am ten. Heat rises from the pavement—making transparent wavering lines in the air. We are not here to work. The Ringling Brothers circus is in town and the Fiveash circus cannot compete with them. No, it is one of the rare times we are simply visitors. An ice cream is put in one of my hands and my father holds my other hand. I think I cannot get any happier. Then grandfather says he has a surprise for the family. He takes us to see the foundations of an enormous house not far from Orlando. We drive across a bridge to an island. The island is mostly just dirt and coconut plantations. A few houses have been built, but not many. Grandfather pulls up the car beside the sprawling foundations of a new house.
“This will be our home,” he says proudly. “When we are not travelling with the circus, this is where we’ll live.”
Mother, daddy and I step from the car in wonder. Miss Kitty follows, clucking in astonishment. I dash forward and almost fall into a deep, long hole.
“Hold on there, it’s not ready for a swim yet,” grandfather chuckles.
I turn back to grandfather with my mouth hanging open. The hole runs half the length of the house—it seems far too big to be a private swimming pool. My gaze travels to the shining lake beyond the pool.
“It doesn’t look like much now,” says grandfather. “But when everything is finished and the lawns and gardens are in, it will look a treat.”
Grandfather is wrong. It already looks like paradise to me. Daddy picks mother up and spins her around.
“And a special garden for you,” he says to me, pointing towards the garden beds surrounding an ornate gazebo. “And together we’ll plant all your grandmother’s favorite flowers.”
Grandfather is the happiest I’ve seen him since before grandma died. I can hardly believe we are going to have a house—a real house.
My parents excitedly pore over the house plans with grandfather, making changes here and there, which grandfather doesn’t mind. They speak of adding a nursery to the left wing of the house. Father pokes me in the ribs and asks what I would think of having a sibling or two. The idea is surprising at first, but then I nod. I could instruct and teach a baby. Daddy says he wants to leave the circus and become a gardener. My mother crosses her arms and says she’s not ready to throw in her act as Lady Lark. She doesn’t want babies or for daddy to be a gardener. Miss Kitty purses her mouth and says she’s being ridiculous—that mother has to give up the thrill of highwire act. Miss Kitty doesn’t approve of the circus. It’s always difficult to believe that she and mother are family.
The wide marble tiles inside the house are cool under my bare feet. Workmen install cupboards in the kitchen and plumbing in the powder room. I wander through into a great hall—glossy black and white checked tiles underfoot. I dance one of the waltzes Miss Kitty taught me, twirling and curtseying.
Exhausted, I throw myself down and stretch out on the floor. I imagine a baby crawling across the floor towards me and daddy tending the garden just outside the glass doors.
The dream stays with me all the way to our next circus show at St. Louis. All the way until Mister Magnifico threw his knife at the Wheel of Death. The day daddy died. The day everything turned black.
The house on the island seems not so much a memory but a scene from another life. A life that was not mine. I don’t know what happened to the house. Grandfather never spoke of it again.
14. COPPER CANYON
We make no stopovers on the way to Mexico—the only stops we make are to change trains. We sleep and eat on the train. The train now thunders into the state of Chihuahua. It’s my first time here—the landscape looks foreign, barren. Massive red mountain ranges rise around us everywhere. Rays of burnt orange sunlight spark off the tunnel ahead. The sight of the land disappearing beneath us as the train passes over a long bridge is dizzying.
Brown-skinned people clothed in traditional dress stand at the station staring openly at the carriages, pointing at the carriages that hold the animals. I wonder if any circus trains have ever been here before or if the people have even seen an elephant or a lion. The lettering on the station’s sign says Creel.
The train seems to stall here. Grandfather strides from the train and along the platform.I ache to run out there to him but he has requested to be alone on this trip. Then I notice men here and there barely concealing guns as they watch grandfather. I want to warn him, but he nods at one of the men as though he knows they are there. Grandfather has a conversation with someone and quickly takes an object from them and hides it under his jacket. I realize that the men with guns are guarding grandfather as he steps back onto the train.
The train rumbles off again as I walk the narrow corridor past Henry and Audette’s compartment. Henry wears no shirt, just trousers and suspenders and his black magician’s cape. He chews a pencil, then makes marks on some kind of map. Audette stands behind him with her hands underneath his suspenders. She makes a long lick along his neck up to his ear. I shudder.
Henry sees me and smiles with all his teeth. Audette sees me too, but she doesn’t stop licking Henry. She sticks her tongue inside Henry’s ear. He moves a newspaper across his map, concealing it from my view “What’s up, cousin?”
“Nothing. Just stretching my legs.”
“Go stretch them someplace else.” Audette speaks with her mouth against Henry’s temple.
Henry sticks his head out of his compartment. “Get back to your seat and stay there. The old man gave instructions that he didn’t want to be disturbed.”
“I know that,” I say indignantly.
I pretend to retrace my steps, but instead wait until they are so engrossed in each other that they don’t notice me steal my way back past them. I creep past sleeping clowns—lazy clowns who didn’t bother to remove their makeup before boarding the train. A blast of hot air hits my face as I open the door. I don’t want to step out there into the open, especially not with the train rushing along a bridge so high it feels as though we’re travelling through the sky itself. With my heart banging, I balance along the join between the carriages and grip the handle of the next carriage—and wench it open. Grandfather is sleeping in his compartment, but his sleep is restless. Sitting beside him, I curl my legs up on the seat and rest my head on his shoulder.
The train chugs on relentlessly. The sight of the vast open spaces below the tracks makes my stomach churn like butter.
A ricocheting sound explodes in my ears.
Grandfather yells as he wakes. He stares into my eyes and grasps my arms.
<
br /> Screeching—metal torn, ripped apart.
The train tips, hurtles downwards, into nothingness.
Grandfather shouts my name over and over and over. We’re tossed in the air like rag dolls. Flung from roof to floor. Desperately clutching onto whatever we can. Until we’re torn away.
Until blackness consumes me.
CASSIE
Present Day
15. CRIMSON RIBBONS
Mom drew the curtains in the hospital room. I should have been jubilant I was out of the darkness of the underground, back into a place I never thought I'd see again. But my mind was brittle and dry, like bones. Clawing things swept around me—memories and nightmares. Monsters.
I had no fight left in me. I had nothing.
I woke more than I slept.
First thing in the morning, doctors came and carried out all kind of tests. One of the tests involved examining every square inch of my body and taking photographs, especially of the cuts and bruises. Another test involved examining my private areas. Mom held my hand while I waited for them to finish, whispering to me repeatedly that it’s okay.
I gazed directly at her, pretending strangers weren’t photographing my naked body. “Mom, I want to go home.”
“You will, soon. I’m so sorry, baby. They need to do their checks to make sure you’re all right.”
“Where are the others?”
She smiled tightly. “I’m not sure, Cassie. I haven’t heard anything.”
I fell in and out of sleep all day. Without the tea, I found it impossible to sleep for long stretches. Mom asked if the TV might help me into sleep and I nodded. I tried watching a movie—but the happy world it portrayed was just so remote I couldn’t bear it. Every line spoken was a lie, every smiling face was just a mask, and around every corner was some horrific vortex waiting to drag the actors inside. I began shaking, wanting to scream at the screen. Mom switched it off, brushing back the hair on my damp forehead.
A nurse came and gave me tablets.
“It’s a heavy dose,” she told mom. “But her body needs rest.”
I didn’t care that the nurse spoke to mom and not me as though I was a child. I gratefully swallowed the tablets. I wanted escape. I could no longer endure the thoughts crowding my head.
In the bleakness of the morning, I struggled awake. My head was a fog. Mom slept in a cot beside me. At least we had a private room where there was room for her to have a bed and not have to sleep in a chair.
At the back of my mind, the cruel silver eye bored through the haze, bored deep into me—knowing my past, knowing my future. My stomach knotted. I felt a sudden need to run and reassure myself that the world I used to know still stood beyond these four walls. With stiff steps, I walked to the window. I recoiled as my face triggered a furor of photo snapping from a ring of photographers in the street below.
Gathering my hospital gown around me, I made my way out to the corridor. It was empty of patients, the faint smell of bleach rising from the floor. Most of the doors were closed. Inside the few that were open, patients slept—hooked up to monitors and drips.
Was Aisha here somewhere? Sophronia? Frances? The doctors said they weren’t authorized to give that information. Desperately, I wanted to know where they all were. I’d been told they were all safe and recovering, but that was all.
A discarded newspaper sat in a trash basket, underneath a bundle of disposable gloves and gowns. A close-up of Ethan’s face was plain to see on the fold of the front cover. With trembling fingers I moved the plastics aside and picked up the paper. The photo of Ethan was the same as the one from school. Even in grainy newspaper print his eyes still held that same expression—a look that tore into your soul.
My gaze fell to the headline, Dollhouse shock find—Ribbons under floorboard. I told myself not to read on. But I did. Line after line of words laced my body with invisible cuts….
In a shocking twist to the Dollhouse case, hair ribbons matching the ribbons of the dollhouse abductees were found under a loose floorboard in the home that Seth McAllister and his grandson Ethan shared in the Barrington Tops region.
Ethan McAllister was age nine when the first of the five girls, thirteen-year-old runaway Molly Parkes, was taken from the Barrington Tops forests and kept in the underground tunnels beneath the Fiveash house. Seth McAllister claims his grandson had no knowledge of either the Fiveash house or the horrors that lay beneath it.
Ethan was found with part of an unknown Fiveash inheritance of gold and diamonds on his person when rescued from the tunnels. The inheritance was buried beneath the landslide that occurred on the Fiveash property immediately after the abductees rescue. Also buried in the landslide were the underground tunnels and the Fiveash house itself.
There is speculation that the body of an unidentified sixth girl lies within the tunnels. Due to the instability of the earth, no recovery operation can be carried out.
The owner of the Fiveash house, Mr. Henry Fiveash, fled from the property some time before the date of the rescue.
Detectives on the Dollhouse case are working to piece together the macabre puzzle.
A court date has yet to be confirmed.
The paper fell from between my fingers, fluttering to the floor.
16. THE DETECTIVES
Detective Kalassi came with a team. They were organized, their expressions intent—focused on ferreting out the truths behind the dollhouse. But there were no truths to find—at least, none that I knew. The dollhouse didn’t come with explanations or reasons.
One of my doctors—Dr. Pearson—insisted upon staying for the duration of the interview. I was his patient, he told the detectives, and he didn’t want me over-stressed.
Detective Kalassi sat heavily on my right. “Cassie,” he sighed, “there you are.”
The others smiled at the warmth in his voice.
“Maybe,” I told him. “I still don’t feel all here.”
“No,” he sympathized. “You’ve been through most ever will. But I have to tell you how good it is to see you. I can’t tell you what it did to me when I found out we’d lost more kids in that forest. We followed every lead, but nothing. And then you just… appear. It’s a good day when a missing kid is returned. A very good day.”
A few of the detectives murmured assent. I stared beyond the detectives, to the patch of muted blue sky through the window. “What about Sophronia, Aisha, Frances? Where are they? Are they okay?”
Detective Kalassi placed a hand on my arm, giving it a light squeeze. “Yeah, they’re all okay. Recovering well. All in different hospitals.”
“Have you spoken to them?”
He scratched his head. “Aisha and little Frances, yes. Sophronia won’t speak to us.”
My forehead drew in tight. “What did they tell you?”
“It’s best that I don’t go into that right now. I hope you’ll understand. And Frances is understandably experiencing nightmares at the moment—we couldn’t stay and talk with her for more than a minute.”
“She was brave in the underground—Frances.” It physically hurt me to think of her trying to process everything that had happened to her. She was just a little kid. It hurt me also that Molly didn’t live to see Frances escape from the underground. Molly would have given anything to see that day. I drew a long breath. “When will… when will Molly’s funeral be? I want to go.”
He bowed his head. “I’m sorry. That’s not going to be possible. There’s a private family matter that I can’t explain at this time.
Tears misted my eyes. “I didn’t get a proper chance to say… goodbye.”
“I know.” He raised his eyes to me. “I know.”
He leant his tall frame back in the chair. “Now, we have a few questions for you, but we’ll try not to overstay our welcome.”
“I’ll make sure of that,” said mom, casting her stern look around at the detectives.
The men and women were introduced, but their names flew past me. I was still drowsy from the sle
eping tablets, still reeling from the newspaper article about Ethan and his grandfather. The only name I caught was Sarah Bryant—the detective who had been at the site of the rescue that night with Detective Kalassi.
A dark-eyed man with thin, pinched cheeks breathed outwards loudly. “Okay, so we know the basics, as awful as they are. I’d like to focus for a moment on the makeup you all had to wear—a rather special makeup. Can you tell us more about that?”
I steeled myself. Just answer the questions. Don’t think. “We had to wear makeup every day. Makeup that made us look like dolls.”
“Can you say why you had to wear this?”
I went to answer Jessamine, but stopped myself. “I don’t know.”
“Who required that you wear it? Henry Fiveash?”
“I guess. All the girls knew they had to wear it.”
“What happened if you didn’t?”
“If we disobeyed any orders, we were starved of food.”
The detectives busily wrote in their notebooks.
“So you were rationed?” said the thin-cheeked man. “How were the rations supervised? What would happen if you’d taken more than your allowed ration?”
I closed my eyes. “We were forced into a secret cave, to spend time in complete darkness.”
My mother gasped, placing her hand over her mouth.
“You were put in isolation?” he said.
“Yes.” I closed my eyes.
I had to wear Audette’s black dress that swarmed over me like insects and then other people’s dreams ran through my head and I found myself in endless black tunnels and I didn’t know how I’d got there and I sensed the shadow coming for me….