Paper Dolls

by Anya Allyn

  “You’re not eating, cousin.” Henry raises his eyebrows.

  “I’m not hungry. Where’s Sister Daniels tonight? Is it her day off?”

  Audette admires a new bracelet Henry has bought her. “Oh her. She was a nuisance. We let her go.”

  “Let her go where?”

  She laughs, throwing her head back. “We fired her. Told her services weren’t wanted here anymore.”

  “But grandfather said she has to stay here with me.”

  “Well, too bad.” Her eyes are cold, as cold as in the painting she made of herself. “She’s been sponging on this family for long enough.”

  I excuse myself from the table and run upstairs. I don’t care that she is gone, but I’m tired of people leaving me.

  The tiny dolls in my room sit in the dollhouse lonely and still. Kneeling beside the house, I peer inside. This house has a daddy and a mother and six beautifully-dressed children. The dolls go where I put them and do what I want them to do. None of them yell at me or do strange things.

  And none of them will ever leave me.

  Six days pass. Six days without grandfather. My dreams are filled with bad things. Trains in pieces on the ground, dead animals, spinning wheels, knives… and death. Always death. Thomas the gardener walks through my dreams too, but everything he plants withers and dies. I have no Sister Daniels to come into my room at night and give me water and a white pill to help the dreams go away.

  Audette says she can’t stand my screaming during the night anymore. She begins bringing me cups of tea just before bed. She picks up strange dark cubes with her long red fingernails and drops them into the steaming cups of water. The tea helps me sleep better than anything the pretend-nurse ever gave me. So much so that I don’t know which day it is anymore. But I don’t care, because the only thing I care about is grandfather coming back with my parents, and then I can leave Henry and Audette and this terrible place.

  Thomas the gardener plants three small rose bushes near the tree where I like to sit and watch the river. The roses are pink, white and red. “Not sure if they’ll survive this soil, but I hope you like them.” A grin spreads across his face like sun first thing in the morning.

  At this moment I think the roses are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. “Thank you!” I tell him in a breathy voice. Without realizing what I am about to do, I lift myself onto the tip of my toes and kiss him. I’m sure I mean to kiss him on the cheek, but somehow I kiss his lips. A strangeness enters my body—a fuzzy warmth. I feel big and tall and my lips feel swollen from the kiss.

  Thomas blunders backwards a few steps. “Jessamine… you don’t need to thank me… I’d best get back to work.”

  He goes back to planting his hedge at the front of the house. I stay out of his way, watching from where he cannot see me. He wears overalls with no shirt underneath, and the muscles in his strong back move over each other when he hoes the ground. He stops for lunch, wiping his brow with the back of his arm. He eats quickly, like daddy eats. As soon as he’s finished, he glances about him everywhere, like a fox looking for hunters. Some small hope fires inside of me, a hope that he’s looking for me. But he steps towards the garden shed and disappears inside. I kick stones into the river, waiting for him to return.

  The curtain in my room moves aside. I’m not the only one watching. I can barely see Audette but I know she’s there.

  I wake in a haze of Audette’s tea. Loud curse words cut the air below my window. Henry pushes the pipe organ across the grounds, huffing and puffing and growing angry. Audette wears baby doll pajamas and a new pink and white striped dressing gown. Her arms are crossed and the smoke of a cigar streams from her hand.

  “Do you think you could actually help?” Henry roars at her.

  She studies the fingers that hold the cigar. “Not with these nails.”

  He throws up his hands and tilts his face to the sky. “Bloody hopeless.” He notices me at the window. “Kid, get down here. I need you.”

  I shake my head. How can I help move such a heavy object?

  “Just come.” His voice has a harsh edge.

  I run downstairs, still wearing my night slip. My legs show through the transparent material. “I’d best go get dressed. I don’t want the gardener to see me like this.”

  “Don’t sweat it,” says Henry. “He won’t be coming back anyway.”

  My heart squeezes. “He’s not coming back?”

  “No. We don’t really need a blasted hedge or gardens. He’s been told he’s not needed here anymore.”

  I turn my head so that Henry doesn’t see tears filling my eyes. “Where are you taking that thing?” I ask him.

  “Underground.” He heaves his shoulder against it. “And I can’t get anyone else to help, because people…” He pushes again. “…are bloody busybodies…” He frowns deeply. “…who can’t mind their own damned business.”

  I take the ropes and try to pull the organ as Henry pushes. It is slow, hard work. But we manage to get it all the way to the shed.

  “Get in front and help steady it as I slide it.”

  My legs are weak and rubbery. “I don’t want to go down there.”

  “For Christ’s sake, is everyone around here useless? Just do it.”

  He slides the organ onto the lid and I try to keep it from falling over. I am stronger than I thought I could be. We descend into the cave and move the organ down a ramp. Bits and pieces of brass tubing lie scattered on the floor.

  “What is all that?”

  “A warning system.” His mouth stretches into a cold smile. “Can’t have people just wandering around where they shouldn’t be.”

  With the organ in place against the back wall of the cave, Henry begins hammering and welding. My job is to hand him pieces of tubing when he asks for them.

  I notice a massive circle of wood has been placed across the tunnel opening. It fits almost perfectly. I wander over and trace my hand along the edges of the blue star at its center.

  Henry places his knuckles on his hips. “I’m going to fix it so that someone has to play a certain piece of music before the door will open. I’m putting in a spring-loaded device. I’d like to see someone get past that without a truckload of trouble.”

  Audette saunters down the ramp, still smoking her cigar—or smoking a new one. “Bloody stupid if you ask me. How are you going to manage to make that work? You’re a magician, with silly magician tricks, not an inventor.”

  “You’ve seen what I’m capable of.”

  A smile melts into her face, like butter on toast. She hobbles over to him on her silly high heels and gives him a long kiss that sounds wet.

  I turn away in disgust, playing with the metal spokes of the round door. The door spins slightly.

  “Don’t you know where that came from, Jessamine?” Audette has that deep tone in her voice that makes me feel strange. She steps closer, blowing smoke onto the back of my neck.

  I shrug a shoulder.

  “It’s from the circus, of course,” she says. “It was your dear daddy’s. Don’t you remember the Wheel of Death?”

  I remember daddy, dressed in trousers and suspenders, strapped to a flat circle of wood—the wheel spinning round and round. I remember crowds cheering as Mister Magnifico threw his knives. I remember the sweat on daddy’s face and bare chest as the performances end, and him smiling at me upside-down.

  “That’s enough, Audette. Leave the kid alone.” Henry’s voice is quieter than Audette’s, but I know she’ll listen and do what he says.

  Henry works on the door and the pipe organ for the next week. I hate it down there in the cave but I don’t want to be at the house with Audette either. And I can’t spend time with Thomas anymore—and the grounds are empty and ugly without him.

  The last thing Henry does is to put a metal wall across the middle of the carousel. The carousel now completely blocks the way to the rest of the tunnel. He curses as he burns himself with the welding gun, but he keeps going—grunting
as lifts the heavy pieces of metal and melts them into place. He works hard while lazy Audette lounges on the sofas inside the house, listening to the gramophone.

  I’m grubby after being underground all day and I head for the bathrooms. My parents used to bathe me in a tub, but now I have to do it myself. I use a shower because there are no tubs here. The water runs down my face and body and I wash quickly. I don’t like washing—my body feels wrong. I feel knobby lines on my neck and shoulder and I don’t know what they are. I have hair where I shouldn’t and I’ve grown fat in the chest. I’ve become a circus freak. Maybe that’s why grandfather doesn’t allow mirrors in the house. He doesn’t want me to see what I’ve become.

  The door opens and Henry stands there with sweat shining on his face. His gaze runs over my body. “Oh boy, Jessamine, if you weren’t my cousin….” He looks at the patch of hair on my privates. “And if you didn’t think you were five….”

  In the circus, people dress in front of each other all the time. They have to, to get ready for shows. But I don’t like Henry looking at me now.

  Audette walks behind Henry and her face pulls down when she sees me. “Why are you letting men stare at you, you little hussy!” She reaches past Henry and slams the door shut.

  I wrench the shower off and quickly dress. Audette is angry with me again. I tramp noisily to my room, making sure every step is extra-loud. Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! Everything I do makes her angry, even when I’m not doing anything, so what does it matter?

  I lie with dripping-wet hair on my bed, letting cool air from the open window blow across my face. I hate this place. I hate Audette. I hate my freaky body. I don’t know what’s happening to me. Perhaps I am crazy and I’m going to spend the rest of my life here getting crazier and crazier. I sleep until the afternoon. My heads hurts.

  I don’t hear Audette when she walks into my room. She holds out a hot cup of tea. “Here you are,” she says in a sugary voice.

  “I don’t want tea.” I’ve been in bed for hours and I feel sick and I don’t want to be put back to sleep.

  “Well you’re to have it. It’s to help your bad lungs.”

  ‘Why do I have bad lungs?”

  “Because you broke your ribs and they stuck into your lungs, silly. You got all kinds of infections in there and almost died.”

  “When did that happen to me? I don’t remember.”

  “Don’t you remember being in the hospital?”

  “Kind of. And grandfather was there too.”

  “Well there you go then.”

  Swinging my legs off the bed, I pick up a paddle-bat from the shelf. “I still don’t want the tea.” I begin hitting the ball.

  “Stop that noise,” says Audette almost immediately.

  I keep hitting the ball against the bat and I don’t want to stop. I just want her to leave the room.

  Audette brings her hands down hard on my shoulders. “Stop playing with toys! It’s about time you realized just how old you are.”

  I tremble, even though I don’t care what she says. “Don’t yell at me.”

  “Tomorrow night, we’re having visitors. I was going to have you sleep through it, but I’ve changed my mind. You have to stop living in your little-kid dreamland. There’s someone who very much wants to see you again, and he’s bought you a special dress. A very special dress, and you will wear it.”

  She points at the cup of tea. “Make sure you drink it.”

  I take four sips of the tea. She whirls away in a stink of perfume and smoke.

  When I wake again the house is dark. Audette must have made the tea extra-strong to make me sleep like this. I’m on the floorboards, next to the dollhouse.

  No one has bothered turning on the lights. Else, they’ve all gone away and left me alone. The only light is the one inside my dollhouse, where a tiny chandelier burns on the ceiling of a tiny ballroom. I sit for a while with my arms wrapped around my legs, too frightened to move. But no one has even given me dinner and the clock says it’s nine ‘o’clock. Henry and Audette never go to bed early. If they are here, they must be downstairs.

  I don’t count the stairs as I normally do on my way down. The ballroom is empty and so are the kitchen and living room.

  Beyond the thick, velvet curtains is a pale moon shining down on a line of parked cars. But I don’t see visitors anywhere. I thought Audette said the visitors were coming tomorrow and not tonight. I’m afraid to go out in the dark.

  Why doesn’t grandfather come back? He’s been gone too long.

  Perhaps a bad thing has happened. Grandfather said I must go to the underground if a bad thing happens. A dim light shines in the big shed. I slip out the front door and race across to it. I hate the sounds coming from the forest. I imagine enormous black birds with claws out there looking for prey to swoop down on. With my arms over my head I run inside the shed.

  The elevator is at the bottom of the cave floor and there is a rope ladder down. My legs shake climb down into grandfather’s storeroom. It’s filled with toys Audette won’t let me have. She says I’m too big for them. There are lamps along the way through the tunnel. I don’t want to go in there. But I don’t want to be in the house all alone either.

  I hasten through the tunnel to the carousel. The wall of metal across the carousel blocks my way. The lights begin to shine red and green and the music starts. I hear voices on the other side of the wall. “I’ll go do the watch this time, okay?” a deep voice says.

  The carousel groans as it turns slowly about.

  I hide behind a chariot as a woman in a long red dress walks away down the corridor, her heels clattering on the smooth rock floor. The man with the deep voice must now be on the other side of the tunnel.

  Voices echo through the air. I feel horribly exposed as I edge along the corridor and peek into the ballroom. The space is just as empty as when grandfather showed it to me.

  I turn slowly, dread in my spine, now knowing where the people are. I step into the low, dark tunnel opposite. Water runs down the slimy walls here. Voices vibrate through my bones. They sound like the Aboriginals I saw once in the forest—chanting and dancing. But this chanting is different. It’s slow and makes my stomach squirm.

  Staying close to the wall, I find my way in deeper.

  Something bumps my arm, something that is not the wall. I open my mouth to scream as I stare into the shadowy eyes of a man. But I see who it is and stop myself. Thomas the gardener’s mouth is clamped shut with a bandage. His arms and legs are tied with thick rope. The whites of his eye grow huge as he stares from me to the fuzzy shapes of people ahead. The people stand in a circle, each extending an arm out to a fire in their midst—the fire a blue unlike any blue I have ever seen. Their faces sweat and their eyes… their eyes, their eyes… stare like they cannot see.

  My body shakes. I don’t know what’s happening but I want to leave. Now. And I want Thomas to come with me. My fingers fumble with the knots at the back of Thomas’s body. His hands bleed where he has rubbed them against the rock wall and the rope is frayed.

  Henry throws back his magician’s cape and steps forward. He reads strange, ugly words from a book and the people answer him in chants. Audette’s eyes roll back and she sways. She wears an odd, black dress—I’ve never seen her wear black.

  Something twists in the flames. Like snakes. A black shadow like oil rises from the fire. A few of the people step back in shock but the others don’t move. Terror floods me. I am sure my rapid breaths can be heard. My feet step backwards. Away. Away.

  Audette’s head snaps as though she has just woken. She and Henry step forward, hand in hand.

  “You, the entity we have brought to this world, may not touch we, your summoners. Nor may you touch any wearers of our garments. This will hold true even though thousands of years may pass.”

  The shadow forms a shape… twisting, writhing, growing… a snake shape tall as a room.

  Audette’s lip trembles but she doesn’t move.

  Her shoes e
cho as she marches towards Thomas. She slips her hand into her jacket and pulls out a gun. “Come with me.” She points the gun at his temple.

  Audette and Thomas stand next to the fire, next to the shadow.

  Thomas’s muscles strain against the ropes. He breathes wildly. “I don’t know anything.”

  Henry rubs his temples. “Well that’s unfortunate, Thomas, seeing as you spent all that time trying to find out about us. And now, tonight, you know more than you ever wanted to.”

  “Please, allow me to go. I’ll forget I ever worked here. I’ll move far away. For the love of God, I have a wife and baby. They need me.”

  Audette twists the gun at his temple. “Quiet, or we’ll bring your little family down here too.”

  Thomas’s jaw quivers. Shock speeds along my spine. Shock at Audette's cruelty. Shock that Thomas has a wife and child.

  He stiffens as the shadow moves towards him. It wraps itself around him like ivy on a tree. His screams slice through the dark, suffocating air. The people stare intently, expectantly.

  My feet stumble over each other. My heart pounds as I retrace my steps along the cave wall, and then flee through the dark corridors. The ugly heads of the carousel stand before me, and there is no way out. Whimpering, I squeeze myself under the seat of a chariot.

  I should have taken Audette’s tea. Then I wouldn’t have known any of this. I wouldn’t have seen those things that I just saw. Minutes pass. My knees and arms ache. My head is hot and my lungs pain.

  Voices drift towards me from the other end of the corridor. They’re coming.

  A grinding sounds underneath me and the carousel music fills my ears. The carousel turns. The man who said he would keep watch must be on the other side. Perhaps the carousel can only be operated from the other side and he has come to let the people out. I must run quickly.

  I untangle my limbs and slide out, then race to the round door. It is held open with a wedge. If I close it behind me, I will shut in all those horrible people. They killed Thomas. They killed Thomas. They killed Thomas.

  I kick the wedge out and let the door click shut. I am in grandfather’s storage room again, with all grandfather’s things. More of them are coming. With a whirr, the elevator shudders to a stop on the platform above me. I slip through the dummies and clown tricycles to grandfather’s car. The smell of polished leather fills my nostrils. I’ve been in this car a hundred times or more but never without grandfather.