“Cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.”
We weren’t a religious family. We hardly ever went to church. But my granny, who died when I was five, was a great believer. I had a lot of nightmares when I little, and I was afraid of the dark, and my grandmother used to sit with me sometimes and say this Bible verse to me. “Let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.” And I would drift off to sleep, imagining myself clothed in shining silver armor made of tiny beams of light. When she died, she left me this verse in a little silver frame, and my mother hung it above my bed.
Cast off the darkness. Put on the armor of light. The armor of light.
“No!” I cried, and this time my voice came out loud and clear. I snatched the candle from Mrs. Bishop’s bedside table and took it over to the mantelpiece.
Four silver candlesticks stood there. With trembling hands I took one down, lit it from my candle, then placed it back on the mantelpiece. Then I took a second one down and did the same. I could feel the darkness rustling around me, and I still found it hard to breathe properly, but by the time I had the fourth candle lit, my hands weren’t shaking quite so much.
Light flooded the room— a warm glow that brought out the blue and yellow colors in the bed, the curtains and the rug.
Mrs. Bishop looked at me and shook her head, smiling slightly.
“It’s no use,” she said.
I ignored her and walked out into the dark hallway. The blackness beyond my candle flame seemed to eddy and flow like waves coming up the deep well of the staircase. I crossed into my room.
The thin light from my candle flickered over Fizz, still sleeping in my bed. I went directly to the mantelpiece, where two tall candles in brass holders framed the mirror. I placed them one by one on the floor and lit them from my candle. My hands were shaking and some hot wax fell to the carpet. I returned them to the mantel, then spun around and was out of my room and into Bubble’s. I lit the candles on her mantelpiece. Then into my mother’s room, finding another one on her dresser and lighting that. Then back to the hall to light a candle on the desk there. I was sharply aware of Mrs. Bishop lying silently in her bed beyond her doorway.
I headed down the stairs, candle in one hand and banister in the other. As I descended into the hall, I could feel the heavy darkness pressing all around me. Although I moved within the steady center of a circle of light, the darkness closed in behind. My breath was coming in little shallow gasps. I reached the bottom and turned into the living room. I knew there were rows of silver candlesticks on the mantelpieces, the same ones that had been lit for Harriet’s party.
I walked carefully between the couches and chairs while the darkness seemed to pull at me, tangling in my hair, sending tingles up and down the back of my neck. I ignored it the best I could, but a chill was spreading through me.
I reached up and lit the first candle. Then the second. Then the third.
The lovely room materialized around me— soft, silky, welcoming.
I made my way to the other mantelpiece and lit the candles there. Turning, I could see the entire room now, dappled with light and shadow. But I could still feel that brooding presence that was hovering just beyond the candlelight. Watching me. Waiting.
I went from room to room, lighting every candle I found. In the study. The hallway. The dining room. And then I went down the stairs to the kitchen.
The modern kitchen. Everything was clean, scrubbed and empty. I found some tea lights in a drawer and set six of them on the table on a plate, then lit them.
As I stood in that silent kitchen, watching the glow spread from the tea lights, I felt a flicker of fear. What if I couldn’t get back to the other world? Where my mother was bustling about up and down the stairs with trays for Mrs. Bishop. Where Lily sat drawing at the kitchen table. Where my father was running his hand along the silky white couch and strolling through the rooms, gazing up at the architectural details in wonder. Where Mary was talking on and on and serving up her horrible jellied salad.
I wanted to be back there. I would have given anything to be back there and forget all about Fizz and the dollhouse and Mrs. Bishop and the train crash. I gritted my teeth. I was going to get back. Somehow.
I went back upstairs, through the dining room, bright with candlelight, and into the hall, where the crystal drops on the chandelier high above me reflected tiny sparks of the light from the candle I had lit below.
I went up the staircase slowly, placing my feet firmly on each step.
The whole house was shimmering with light. But the big, impersonal presence had been with me every step of the way, and it still lurked just beyond the golden, wavering light of my candles.
I walked slowly through the doorway into Mrs. Bishop’s room. She lay back against her pillows, as I had left her. She looked very tired.
I sat down in the chair beside her bed and placed the candle back on the bedside table. We sat in silence for a while. I could feel her sadness spreading out from her bed and into me.
“What do you want?” I said finally.
She didn’t say anything, but her mouth tightened and then a tear fell slowly down her cheek.
“I want them back,” she whispered. “I want them all back. I want everything that we had back the way it was. I want my mother alive. And my father. And Bubble. I want to be in this house with them the way it was.” Now the tears were spilling down her face.
I put out my hand to her and she grasped it, holding tight.
“After you woke Fizz up, I was back with my family. They were all alive. I want that again.” She pulled her hand away and fumbled in her pajama sleeve for a handkerchief.
“But you weren’t happy,” I said. “None of you were happy. Except maybe Bubble.”
She laughed through her tears, wiping her eyes. “Bubble was always happy. Like Lily. Oh, she’d have her tantrums, now and then, whenever things got too frustrating for her. But most of the time, she was just— happy.”
“But the rest of you weren’t,” I insisted. “Fizz was miserable. Your mother and father were about to get a divorce, as far as I could tell, like mine.”
“You’re right. We weren’t happy. But we were alive.”
The darkness seemed to press more closely around us.
I watched her struggling to gain control of her tears.
“Do you think you’ll be with them all again if you die?” I asked slowly. “In the dollhouse?”
She laughed bitterly and shook her head. “I told you. I don’t believe in any of that. Heaven. God.”
“You believe in Death,” I said slowly, feeling it murmur around me as I said its name.
“Because I’ve experienced it,” she said. “That night, when the train crashed. And after, when Fizz died inside me. I know Death, so I believe in it.”
I began to shiver again.
“It’s coming for me,” she said simply. “I know it. I can feel it. And so can you because it’s coming for you too.”
“No,” I said loudly. “It’s not! It may be your time to die but it’s not mine. I have my mother and my father waiting for me, not Death. I have things to do in my life. I have to live my life. It’s not my time!”
“Do you think it was Bubble’s time?” she asked, angry again. “Do you think it was my mother’s time? And my father’s time? And Fizz? We all had things to do in our lives, too, but it still came. And it’s coming again. I can’t stop it and you can’t stop it.”
A pain sharper than anything I had ever felt in my life knifed through my head and I bent over, my hands to my head, trying to breathe. It seemed to blot everything out so that there was no Mrs. Bishop, no candlelight, no bedroom. Just darkness and this piercing agony.
Chapter Fifty-Two
SLEEPING BEAUTY
I had never experienced anything like it. I felt like my head w
as going to burst open. I closed my eyes, rocking back and forth, breathing hard, saying, “No, no, no, no,” over and over again.
There was nothing else in the world, only the unbearable hammering in my head. It went on and on.
I needed my mother. I needed to go to the hospital. I stumbled to my feet and out of the room, still holding my head, through the bathroom into Mom’s room.
The candle burned steadily on the dresser. The bed was neatly made.
No Mom.
Of course. This was the dollhouse. No, not the dollhouse. The place in between the dollhouse and the real house. Mom wasn’t here. Only Mrs. Bishop and Fizz. And me.
I had to get back to the real house. The real world. To my mother. And my father. And Dr. West, who maybe could help me stop this awful pain.
Unless it was too late. Unless that image of me so still in the train was true and I was dead.
But being dead wasn’t supposed to hurt like this. Was it?
I staggered across the hall to my bedroom, clutching the doorframe for a moment for balance, then focused on the bed. One step. Two steps. If I lay down and closed my eyes, maybe I would wake up in the real house. And Mom would be there.
The bed loomed up before me, a pale green bubble. And someone was in it.
Fizz. Sleeping. The blinding, overwhelming pain had made me forget about her.
I sank down to the rug and held my head tight between my two hands, as if by holding it I could stop my head from exploding, which is what it felt like was going to happen any minute.
And then I could feel the darkness circling around me, closing in on me from the corners of the room. If I took just one more breath, would it sweep me up and take me away and make this agony stop?
I took another breath. But it didn’t stop. I was past caring about anything except this huge, raging headache that was eating me alive. I lost all sense of time or place.
And then gradually, in the depths of that void, I became aware of someone else’s voice there with me.
“No, no, no, no—”
I opened my eyes. Through the curtain of pain, I saw Fizz sitting up in the bed, clutching her head just like I was, crying.
“Fizz?” I gasped. “Fizz?”
And then the battering in my head stopped. Just like that. I felt breathless, and somehow lighter, as if a huge weight had suddenly been lifted away from me.
But Fizz kept crying, and rocking back and forth in agony, like she would never stop. It was as if the unbearable pressure in my head had left me and gone to her.
I didn’t know how, or why. In the sweet relief that came with the absence of pain, I began to understand something. Maybe what Mrs. Bishop said was right. She and I were connected, from the moment my train crashed and I hit my head. Fizz— Mrs. Bishop— and I were in this together.
I stood up and went to the bed and reached out my hand to touch her shoulder. She was shuddering with sobs.
“Fizz?” I said again, softly. “Can I help you?”
Then she opened her eyes. They were such a beautiful green. But they were blank. She didn’t see me. It was as if she were still asleep. She was in that dark place, all by herself, consumed by the anguish of losing her family.
She curled herself into a ball and lay there, crying. I sat down on the bed beside her and smoothed her hair back from her forehead, the way my mother did when I was sick.
She gave no indication that she knew I was there, or could feel my hand, but I kept smoothing her hair back and murmuring, “It’s okay, it’s okay.”
Only it wasn’t. It would never be okay for Fizz. I had felt an echo of what she felt, ripping through my head. Mine was a physical pain, but what Fizz felt was even bigger. No wonder Mrs. Bishop had locked it all up in the dollhouse and gone away.
Fizz finally stopped crying, but every now and then a little sob worked its way out between breaths.
The house was quiet. I felt like I’d been wrung out like a dishrag. I was aware of those candles all burning steadily, from the basement up through the ground floor and the second floor. Like the whole house was a candle, lighting up the darkness that was all around us. The armor of light.
A whisper of a breeze feathered in through the window, bringing that sweet after-rain smell of wet leaves and grass.
There was no sound from Mrs. Bishop’s room.
And then suddenly, there was a small noise from my closet.
A click— followed by a squeak— followed by a slow creak.
Immediately I was alert, adrenaline rushing through me, bracing myself for whatever was coming.
A muffled, spooky whisper. “Ahhh…lisss.”
And then louder and more ghost-like: “Ahhh…lisss.”
I watched as a white hand reached out of the darkness of the closet, followed by a shadowy form that seemed to bend and flicker in the candlelight and then resolve itself into a form.
Lily.
Lily, emerging from the secret passage to Bubble’s room, with a big smile on her face.
“Hi, Alice! Did I scare you?”
I let go of the breath I didn’t know I’d been holding.
“Yes! Yes, you did! But oh, Lily, I’m so glad to see you!”
She laughed, and then walked slowly across the floor toward me. “I came to see you, but your mother said to let you sleep. I got tired of waiting. I came by the secret passage.”
Was I back in the real world? But no, Fizz was still there, sleeping in my bed. What was Lily doing here? Was I in the dollhouse again, dreaming?
She came right up to me and peered into my face. “Do you feel better?”
“A little, I guess,” I replied.
She put her warm hand into mine and gave it a squeeze. Then her eyes slid over to Fizz, who had started crying softly again.
“What’s wrong with Fizz?” asked Lily. She didn’t seem at all surprised to see her in my bed.
I didn’t know how to begin to tell her.
“Is she having a bad dream?” asked Lily, her forehead knotted in concern.
“Yes,” I replied. “She is.”
Lily watched her for a moment.
Fizz’s crying was soft but incessant. It would grow quieter one moment and then pick up strength the next. It was the crying of someone who could never be comforted.
“Wake her up,” said Lily. “That’s what Mom does when I have a bad dream. Wake her up. Then she’ll stop dreaming. I think so.”
I leaned over Fizz and shook her shoulder gently.
“Fizz!” I said. “Fizz, wake up!”
She kept crying, her eyes closed, completely unaware of me.
I tried again, speaking more loudly. “FIZZ! Wake UP!”
Nothing.
“It’s no good,” I said to Lily. “She’s been sleeping for years. She won’t wake up.”
“A hundred years?” asked Lily. “Like Sleeping Beauty?”
“Yes. That’s exactly what she’s like.”
“She was awake before,” said Lily. “You said she was awake in your dream. In the dollhouse.”
“That was a different dream.”
“She needs a prince,” said Lily. “That’s who woke up Sleeping Beauty. I think so.”
“We haven’t got a prince,” I said.
Lily looked at Fizz for a moment. Her hopeless crying was enough to break your heart.
“I can try,” said Lily, and she leaned over and kissed Fizz softly on her cheek. “Wake up, Fizz,” she said gently, looking into her face. “Don’t cry anymore.”
Fizz’s eyes fluttered. Her sobs caught in her throat, and she opened her eyes and looked into Lily’s.
“Bubble?” she said.
Lily smiled her radiant, contagious smile. “Hi, Fizz,” she said. “You were crying and wouldn’t wake up. I woke you up. Just like Prince C
harming. I think so.”
Fizz sat up, wiping her cheeks. She looked at Lily, taking her in, and then looked at me. The tears welled up again.
“Alice,” she said. “Alice, they’re gone.”
Chapter Fifty-Three
DOUBLE TROUBLE
That searing pain flashed briefly through my head again and I saw it reflected in her eyes. Then it was gone.
“They’re all dead,” she said dully. “Bubble, Mother, Dad. They’ve all left me.”
“No,” I said. “They’re not all dead.”
“But the train—” said Fizz. “They all died.”
“No, Fizz,” I said again. “There was one survivor.”
“Who?” said Fizz.
“I’ll show you,” I replied, and reached out my hand to her. Lily took her other hand and we walked slowly out of the room.
The hall was hushed and soft in the candlelight. Mrs. Bishop’s room was dark. We crossed the hall and went in.
“Who—?” began Fizz, and then stopped when she saw Mrs. Bishop.
Mrs. Bishop struggled to sit up. I dropped Fizz’s hand and went to help, propping up the pillows behind her again.
Fizz just stood there, staring at her. It was like she was looking into a mirror that showed her what she would look like in sixty-eight years. Lily stood gaping at them.
The eyes were almost identical, but Mrs. Bishop’s face was Fizz’s carved more distinctly and weathered by the years. Her nose seemed longer, her chin sharper. And where Fizz’s cheek was smooth and fair, Mrs. Bishop’s was wrinkled and dark. But even though there were lines around Mrs. Bishop’s mouth and none around Fizz’s, they were the same shape.
Fizz reached out her hand and gently touched Mrs. Bishop’s cheek.
“You’re really old,” said Fizz, a sense of wonder in her voice.
“And you’re really rude,” countered Mrs. Bishop.
They stared at each other for a moment, then they both threw back their heads and laughed.
Lily slipped her hand into mine.
“They’re the same person,” she whispered, her eyes big. “Mrs. Bishop is Fizz grown up!”
The Dollhouse Page 21