And what about Fizz? Where was she now if the dollhouse was gone? Was she still in Mrs. Bishop’s bed? Haunting her instead of me? Or were she and Mrs. Bishop one person now, the way they were supposed to be?
Poor Fizz, sleeping and sleeping all those years while the world went on without her. Sleeping…
I opened my eyes again with a jerk. I couldn’t go to sleep. It was too dangerous. I didn’t know when my time would come. It could be five minutes from now or it could be seventy years.
I couldn’t possibly stay awake that long.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
A GUARDIAN ANGEL
I listened to the muted sounds of the hospital. People walking by in the hall, talking, their voices rising and falling as they drew nearer my room and then passed on by. A kind of humming noise— electricity? Air conditioning? I listened, all my senses alert, wondering if I could feel that gathering darkness I had felt in the dollhouse. The darkness that was Death.
Then I heard footsteps coming along the hall, approaching my room. Stopping at my door.
I opened my eyes. I didn’t even know I’d closed them again.
“Alice?” said a small voice. “Are you still awake?”
“Yes.” My voice was a dry croak again. “Come in, Lily.”
“I brought you some ice cream,” she said, coming into the room and showing me a bowl of chocolate ice cream and a spoon. “Dr. West says you can have it.”
I looked beyond her, and Dr. West was standing in the doorway, grinning and nodding his head. For a moment he reminded me so much of that daydream I had of a different dad, living on a hillside, welcoming Mom and me home. A very comfortable, predictable dad.
“Go ahead, it will do you good,” he said, then turned and walked away down the hall.
After I finished the ice cream, I lay back against my pillows. Now I was really tired. My eyes closed. The darkness started to move in. I jerked them open with a gasp.
“Alice?” said Lily, looking alarmed. “What’s wrong, Alice? Does your head hurt again? Should I get Dr. West?”
“No, it’s not that.”
“What is it then?”
I searched her face. “Do you remember anything, Lily? Anything about being in the dollhouse with me? Talking to Fizz and Mrs. Bishop? The wind? The fire?”
Lily frowned. “There was a fire. Did your mom tell you about that? I don’t remember any of the other stuff.”
“What fire?” I struggled to sit up.
“The dollhouse. After you came to the hospital. My mom and me were staying with Mrs. Bishop. Mom smelled smoke coming from the attic. The dollhouse was on fire! The fire engines came and everything. It was so exciting, Alice! I think so. But the dollhouse burned away and it’s all gone now. Mrs. Bishop was sad. We had a good talk after. She told me it was her dollhouse from when she was a little girl. I asked her why she kept it a secret and she said, ‘Some things are better locked away, Lily; you’ll find that out yourself someday,’ but I don’t think so. I think it’s better to keep things like the dollhouse unlocked, so anyone can play with them. What do you think, Alice?”
I lay back against the pillows. “I think you’re right. People shouldn’t lock things away.” I sighed. I was so tired. I closed my eyes.
We were quiet for a while. I felt myself drifting off and opened my eyes. Lily was sitting beside me, gazing out the window.
“Lily?”
“Yup?”
“Lily, have you ever been afraid to go to sleep?”
“Afraid?”
“Yes, afraid. Because of what might happen while you’re sleeping?”
She frowned. “Like a bad dream?”
“Yes. Like a bad dream.”
“I used to be. But my mom said I had a guardian angel that watches me while I sleep and keeps me safe no matter what. So now I don’t worry.”
“Do you think everyone has a guardian angel, Lily?”
“Sure. They must. That’s how it works. I think so.”
I smiled. “Lily, I think maybe you’re my guardian angel. Mom says you saved my life.”
Lily leaned in closer to me, a little frown creasing her forehead. “I was so scared, Alice. Your mom told me it was time to wake you up. I shook your arm and shouted really loud, but you kept sleeping. Then I thought maybe you were like Sleeping Beauty and needed someone to kiss you, so I kissed you. But you still didn’t wake up. So I went and got your mom. I think so.”
“That was the right thing to do, Lily,” I said sleepily. Maybe that’s why I dreamed that Lily had kissed Fizz. But it was me she kissed. Everything was mixed up.
“You were so sad,” she continued. “Crying. In your sleep. When I couldn’t wake you up. I felt so sorry for you. You were crying and crying.” She reached out and took my hand. “Are you still sad, Alice?”
I gave her hand a squeeze. “No, Lily. I’m happy now. I just wish I wasn’t so scared to go to sleep.”
“You can go to sleep now, Alice,” she said. “I’ll stay right here with you.” She smiled at me, one of those joyful, beaming Lily-smiles, and gave my hand a little pat. “You won’t have nightmares. You’re safe now. I think so.”
I smiled back and let my eyes close. The darkness came in, but now it was a friendly darkness, and I could feel the warmth of Lily’s hand in mine. I let everything go— and fell instantly and deliciously to sleep.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
QUESTIONS
Lily came to visit me nearly every day over the week I was in the hospital. Her mother would drop her off then pick her up a couple of hours later. Mom and Dad came too, and I saw Dr. West every day. But it was Lily I looked forward to seeing the most. I felt calm when she was there, and her happiness seemed to spread to me. Whenever I was drifting off to sleep, I’d imagine that she was there still, watching over me. My guardian angel.
I had a lot of time to think in the hospital. I didn’t feel like watching TV or reading, because my head still ached, so I lay there quietly a lot of the time, thinking about what had happened.
Was it all a dream? A hallucination? Something caused by the injury in my brain? Mom explained what a bleed was: a tiny blood vessel burst and leaked blood into my brain. So my brain wasn’t quite working properly. Is that why events and people in my life were transformed into the people in my dream?
I became Fizz. Lily became Bubble. Dr. West was Adrian— but that was a bit of a stretch, because Adrian was vain and good-looking, and Dr. West was ordinary-looking and kind. And Mom wasn’t anything like Harriet, and Dad wasn’t anything like Bob— except that he was away a lot at work. The train accident that killed everyone— well, it was a much worse version of my train accident. And Mrs. Bishop was just Mrs. Bishop. A cantankerous old lady.
I went on thinking like that, trying to draw the parallels, trying to work it out.
Everything that had happened in the dollhouse did have a dream-like quality to it, where things were turned around and unexpected and sometimes really scary. But it also felt completely real.
There was one way to find out. Or maybe two ways. One would have to wait till I got home. But I could do the other from the hospital.
The next time Mary came in to pick up Lily and say hello, I told her I needed to speak to her alone, so she sent Lily down to the cafeteria for ice cream.
“What is it, Alice?” said Mary once we were alone, looking a little puzzled.
I took the plunge.
“Mary, you need to help me. I…I found out some things, and you need to tell me if they’re true. It’s very important, because I don’t know if I dreamed it all. When I was sick.”
“I’ll help you if I can, Alice,” she said. “What kind of things?”
“Well, is it true that Mrs. Bishop lived in Blackwood House when she was a little girl?”
Mary’s mouth fell open. I waited
.
She seemed to recover herself. Then she nodded. “Well, yes. It is true. It’s not something she wants known, so I keep it to myself.”
I swallowed. “And is it true that her whole family was killed in a train accident? A long, long time ago? Say, in the 1920s?”
Mary nodded again, her eyes filling with tears. “I don’t know how you’ve discovered these things, Alice, but it’s true. It was terrible. She lost all of them, and she was only your age. Just a girl.”
“And is it true that after that Blackwood House was locked up and no one ever lived in it again till she came back last summer?”
“Alice, how do you know all this?”
“It’s true, then?”
“Yes, it’s true, but how did you find out about it? Did Mrs. Bishop tell you?”
I thought back to the candlelit room with Mrs. Bishop propped up against her pillows, telling me how she came back to Blackwood House.
“Yes. But I wondered if I dreamed it.”
Mary sighed. “No. It’s true. I’ve kept her secret, and my mother and my grandmother before me have all kept her secret. People around here thought the house was sold long ago. All kinds of rumors have sprung up over the years, but we never told. It’s important to Mrs. Bishop that nobody know her business. I’m surprised she told you.”
I said nothing. My head was reeling again. If that part of the story was true, then what about the rest? Was I just dreaming that I went into the dollhouse whenever I fell asleep? Or was I really there? Would I ever know?
But now at least I knew that the train crash was real. It happened, all that long time ago. Fizz lost everyone.
I thought of the only time I saw her whole family together, the night of the party, with Bubble looking so beautiful in her grown-up dress, laughing when her father broke open the bottle of champagne, and Harriet sparkling on the couch, and Bob teasing the girls and making them go through the ritual of how they got their nicknames. And Fizz rolling her eyes, but enjoying it nonetheless. All of them so alive, so vibrantly alive. And then all of them gone. In a moment. When the train crashed.
Poor Fizz. Poor Mrs. Bishop.
Beside me, Mary stirred. “Well, I can see you’re tired,” she said. “You need to get your rest. I’ll go find Lily and take her home.” She stood up to leave.
“One more thing, Mary.” I put out my hand to stop her. “Lily said there was a fire— and the dollhouse burned down?”
“You know about the dollhouse too?”
I nodded.
“For goodness’ sake! Is nothing secret?”
“But why did it burn down?”
“The fire chief said they couldn’t figure it out. A complete mystery. Spontaneous combustion maybe, I don’t know, but it’s an awful shame. Such a beautiful dollhouse, but of course nobody could play with it except Her Nibs, and she hasn’t been up to look at it since she broke her leg. I’m surprised she’s not more upset about it, but she seems resigned. Funny, nothing else in the attic was affected. Just the dollhouse. By the time the firemen got there, the fire was out. Nothing but a pile of ashes, with the rug burned away underneath, but that’s all.”
“Weird,” I said.
“Yes, very weird. Now, I must get Lily. I don’t know how you know all my secrets, Missy, but you better keep them to yourself. Mrs. Bishop wouldn’t want the whole world knowing her business.”
“I won’t tell anyone,” I promised.
“That’s a good girl,” she said, giving my hand a squeeze, and she left.
I lay back on my pillows and closed my eyes.
* * *
—
The day they let me go home, Dad came to collect me, saying Mom had something she was busy with. I was a little miffed that she hadn’t come herself, but Dad was cheerful, driving me home in Mrs. Bishop’s car.
When we pulled up in the driveway, the first thing I saw was a paper banner across the front door that read “Welcome Home Alice” in uneven painted letters, and Lily burst through the door with a bunch of balloons, hopping up and down in excitement. Mom and Mary appeared behind her and then led me downstairs to the kitchen, where I discovered what Mom had been busy with: a “lunch.” It was just as lavish as the lunch Mary had made for us the night we arrived.
The kitchen was festooned with streamers, and there was a big chocolate cake with sloppy pink rosebuds and another “Welcome Home Alice” message straggled across it in pink icing.
“Your mom let me ice the cake,” said Lily.
There were tuna sandwiches, potato chips, ginger ale, carrot sticks and radishes cut to look like rosebuds. “My specialty!” said Mary. And she had brought her other specialty, a jellied salad, this time red with weird green slivers of something in it and multicolored mini-marshmallows.
We took our plates out to the terrace and sat at the table under the umbrella to eat. It wasn’t as hot today, and a light breeze stirred the trees. Lily and Mary kept up a steady chatter, with Mom and Dad and me joining in when we could.
Just when we were finishing our second pieces of cake, a train whistle blew down the valley.
“That’s the twelve-thirty passenger,” said Mary, and forked a large piece of cake into her mouth.
I put my fork down on my plate. I suddenly felt a little sick.
Mom noticed.
“I think you’ve had enough excitement for today, Alice,” she said, and pushed back her chair. “Come on, let’s get you settled in bed for a nap.”
I didn’t protest. I said goodbye to Dad and followed Mom up the basement stairs to the dining room, and then around the corner and up the steep curving staircase.
I got up to the bend in the stairs and then a wave of vertigo hit me. For a moment, the world began to spin around me. I clutched at Mom’s arm.
“You okay, honey?” she said, putting her arm around me.
“I’m a bit dizzy,” I whispered.
“That’s to be expected,” she said. “Take a deep breath.”
I did. The dizziness faded.
“When I was sick, that last day, I dreamed I fell down these stairs.”
“Well, you didn’t. You were in your bed the whole time.”
Mom helped me up the rest of the stairs. I glanced over to Mrs. Bishop’s door, which was shut.
“Mrs. Bishop is having a nap, but she wants to see you later, after your rest, to welcome you home.”
I let Mom tuck me into bed, leaving the bed curtains open so I could see out the window. She bent over and kissed my forehead.
“Sleep well. You’ll feel so much better when you wake up.”
And she left.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
CHOCOLATE CAKE
When I woke up the light had changed. I felt groggy, uncertain of how long I had slept. One hour? Two? I had been out like a light, with no awareness whatsoever of being asleep or time passing.
I swung my legs out over the side of the bed and dropped to the floor on the window side so I could look out.
The shadows were lengthening on the lawn. The air smelled sweet and fresh. Warm, but not hot. I must have slept for three or four hours. I was used to long naps in the hospital, so it was no surprise.
I heard a train whistle, and I braced myself. I was going to have to get used to it, since about six trains passed every day. The whistle shrieked as the train sped down the valley, and then I could hear the train rumbling and it whooshed past.
Then the trees stirred in the wind like a lady settling her full skirts, and the train thundered into the distance.
It was a beautiful spot, with the lawn stretching out to the hill, the pretty flowerbeds, the pale blue lake in the distance, and the summerhouse just visible off to the right. A peaceful spot. If it wasn’t for the trains.
I shivered. A cool breeze fluttered the curtains. I turned away from the w
indow and went to the closet to find a sweater.
As I stood there, still sleepy, I noticed that someone had hung up the midnight blue cocktail dress I had worn to the party. The spangles shimmered in the dim, shadowy closet. The dress Fiona had given to me to wear. In the dollhouse.
“Alice?” Mom called from my room. “Are you up?”
I dropped my hand and walked out of the closet to meet her. “Yes.”
“Feeling better?”
“Yes.” And I was.
“Mrs. Bishop wants you to come and have a cup of tea with her in her room. I’ve brought her some of your cake. Better brush your hair and wash your face first.”
As I walked across the carpet to fetch my hairbrush from the closet, I felt something hard under my bare right foot. Hard and a little lumpy.
I looked down. Something had spilled on the carpet. But it was stuck. Gum?
I crouched down to inspect it.
It was a little puddle of dried candle wax. Big enough that I would have noticed it before if it had been there. And then it came back to me, as clear as if it was happening all over again.
I came running in here from the hallway, trying to light all the candles in the house, trying to beat back the encroaching darkness. I placed the candlesticks from the mantelpiece on the floor to light them from the candle in my hand, my hands were shaking, and some hot wax fell to the carpet.
Just here.
Not a dream then.
Thoughtfully, I continued to the closet and found my hairbrush.
After tidying myself up, I knocked gently on Mrs. Bishop’s door. She called out for me to come in.
Mom had set up a tea tray on a little folding table beside the bed.
“You can pour the tea, Alice,” said Mom, smiling. “I’ll leave you two alone so you can have a nice visit.”
I approached Mrs. Bishop warily. She was sitting upright in bed, wearing yellow pajamas with little blue flowers. Her hair was neatly brushed, held in place by a blue headband. She matched the room.
The Dollhouse Page 23