by Derek Landy
She nodded.
“I’ve glimpsed impossible things,” Teddy said. “I haven’t seen them fully because I honestly don’t think I’m able. But I’ve seen enough to know that whatever path you’re on, it’s something I can’t help you with.”
“I understand.”
“You get back to bed now, Amber. And you have good dreams, you hear me? The world’s just about full up of the other kind.”
SHERIFF ROOSEVELT HAD ALREADY left for work when Amber got up the next morning. She joined Milo and Glen at the table and Ella-May served them breakfast, but didn’t eat with them. Amber ate in silence and Milo didn’t say a word. Even Glen seemed subdued.
They threw their bags in the Charger and went back inside to pay. Ella-May gave Milo a handwritten receipt and walked them to the door and they stood there, waiting for someone to say something.
Ella-May was the one to puncture the quiet. “I’m not going to ask about your business,” she said. “I’m not going to ask why you’re interested in a man who has killed so many people, or how you know what you know. There’s a dark underbelly to this country and I am well aware that there are people who have to walk through it – oftentimes through no fault of their own. If you’re on that path … well, I’d pray for you if I prayed.”
Amber gave her a small, pained smile.
Ella-May nodded brusquely. “I’ve called Heather. I told her to speak to you if she’s in the mood. That’s no guarantee that she will, mind you. My daughter is her own woman. The library opens late today, so she’ll be at work at two. You could call in then, see if she’s feeling talkative. Good day to you, now.”
She closed the door.
At ten minutes past two, they walked into the library and found Heather Medina restocking shelves in the Self-help section. Up close, she was an attractive woman with plump, soft lips but hard eyes. There was a thin scar on her neck that disappeared behind the collar of her blouse. Everything about her, from her manner to the shoes that she wore – practical, like she was ready to run or fight at any given moment – screamed survivor. Amber liked her instantly.
“Your mother sent us,” Milo said.
Heather nodded, and kept sliding books on to the shelves. “She told me you’re a curious bunch, with a particular interest in our town’s recent history. I told her I’d already been speaking to you. I told her you’re not exactly subtle.”
“She said you’d talk to us if you were in a talkative mood,” Amber said.
“And you’re wondering what kind of mood I’m currently in?” asked Heather. “It’s Amber, right? And Glen? I used to have a boyfriend called Glen. Really good guy. I guess he was my first love. My high-school sweetheart. Dacre Shanks came back from the dead and killed him when I was sixteen.”
She said it so matter-of-factly that Amber didn’t notice the words sliding down her spine until they made her shiver. “It’s true, then? Everything we’ve heard?”
“Well, I don’t know,” said Heather. “It all depends on what you’ve heard, doesn’t it?”
The elderly librarian passed, gave them all a suspicious look, and Heather smiled, keeping her eyes locked on her until she’d moved out of earshot.
“When I was a kid, we all knew who Dacre Shanks was,” said Heather. “I grew up hearing about the things he’d done and how my mother had been the one to figure it all out. In the playground, my friends used to re-enact the night he died. They’d take turns to be my dad and the other deputies, and they’d go in, guns blazing, and whoever was playing Shanks would howl and scream and whirl around and around as the bullets hit him. It was town history that quickly became town legend. My sister, Christina, she was older than me, looked just like my mom, so, even though my mother wasn’t actually there the night Shanks died, the kids decided it’d be neater, more satisfying, if she were. Christina was in great demand during recess.”
Heather smiled sadly, then shook the smile away.
“Christina went missing when she was sixteen,” she continued. “The ten-year anniversary of Shanks’s death, to the hour. She vanished, right out of her bedroom. Over the next few weeks, four others disappeared too – a man, a woman, a fourteen-year-old boy and a three-year-old girl.”
“I’m sorry,” Amber said quietly.
“It tore us apart for a while, my family. But my parents … I don’t know. They’re stronger than most, maybe. Then, exactly a year later, another five people went missing. Man, woman and three kids. Year after that, another five … They wouldn’t be related, the five people, but they would all look vaguely alike in some way. It’s what Shanks used to do. He’d make his grotesque little families.”
“And everyone thought it was a copycat killer,” said Milo.
“Everyone but me,” said Heather. She rolled the cart of books to the Cooking section, started transferring them to the shelves. “Even my mom couldn’t see what was happening. She has an amazing mind, but believing that a killer had returned from the dead was a stretch too far for her. I was sixteen years old and Shanks came after me – chased me through the old theatre where we used to hold our recitals. I ran straight into the janitor and we went flying, but, when I looked up, Shanks was gone. Me and a few friends broke into his old store and found a secret room that my dad and the other cops hadn’t even looked for. There were all these dollhouses. They were fully furnished, but only half of them had any figures in them. These little people, like porcelain or something, sitting at the table or watching TV or playing with tiny, tiny toys on the carpet. I recognised my sister immediately. She was sitting on a bed upstairs, reading a book with a big smile on her face.”
“Figurines of his victims,” Glen said. “Creepy.”
Heather shook her head. “You’re not getting it. Shanks made the house, the furniture, all that stuff. But he didn’t make the figures. He caught them.”
Milo frowned. “Sorry?”
Heather made sure the elderly librarian wasn’t within range, and she leaned in. “The figures were his victims. That was my sister sitting on the toy bed. My actual sister. He’d got her smile wrong, though. Christina always had this lopsided smile. He got that wrong.”
“But you said the figures were made of porcelain,” said Amber.
“That’s what it looked like,” Heather replied. “But I saw what he did to their bodies, when they were dead. He embalmed them. The cellar of his toyshop was one big embalming room. Then he dressed them and … and posed them. He’d stitch expressions on to their faces and arrange their arms this way or that … When he had them the way he wanted, he’d cover them with a kind of resin to hold them in place, and put them in the dollhouse.”
“Yeah, no, still not getting it,” said Glen. “Because the figures in dollhouses are tiny. It sounds like what you’re telling us is that he killed them, embalmed them, and then shrank them, but you’re a normal, sane lady so that can’t be what you’re actually saying.”
“He didn’t shrink them,” said Heather. “Not really. Shanks called it doorway magic. He had this key, this special key, which acted as a tunnel, I guess, from one door to any other, whichever one he wanted. That’s how he took people. That’s how they vanished.
“When he took Glen – my boyfriend – he told him about it. Glen wrote it all down. I found it when I went looking for him, a scrap of paper soaked in his blood. Shanks was linking a normal door to the dollhouse doors – when you passed through, you became smaller. Shanks would work on the bodies here, get them into the proper poses, and then put them through into the dollhouse, where they’d be the size of figurines.”
“I really don’t mean any offence by this,” Amber said, “but I hope you realise how nuts that sounds.”
Heather smiled sadly. “I know.”
“Because it really sounds nuts.”
“And it is,” Heather said. “But it’s also what happened. People know it, too. Well – everyone of my generation. They’ve all heard the stories. They were there when Shanks started coming after me and my f
riends. They might not believe the story anymore, they may have come up with more rational explanations or dismissed the whole thing as nonsense, but a part of them still believes.”
“That’s why they beat up those kids last year,” said Milo.
“Poor little Walter,” Heather said, nodding. “I’ve heard his theory, that this is all some plot to get kids to behave themselves. If I were him, I’d probably think the same. But keeping the dollhouses at the school was our way of honouring Shanks’s victims – remembering them even if we couldn’t come right out and tell everyone what had really happened. The people who beat up those kids probably didn’t even understand why they were so angry – not consciously, at least. But this entire town has been scarred by Dacre Shanks, and he still haunts us.”
“How did you stop him?” Amber asked.
“First thing I did was steal his key. Then I trapped him. I managed to fool him into trapping himself, actually, in the fourth dollhouse. I was the only one of my friends to survive, and I barely did that.”
She lifted her top to show them a jagged scar across her belly.
“Cool,” breathed Glen.
Amber watched as Heather cast a furtive glance at Milo and then, almost like she’d just realised what she’d done, she blushed, and busied herself with tucking in her shirt.
“Where’s the dollhouse now?” Amber asked.
“Why?”
“We … we need to talk to Dacre Shanks.”
Heather stopped what she was doing. Thirty seconds passed in which nothing was said. Even Glen stayed quiet.
“Who are you?” Heather finally asked.
“We just need to ask him something,” Amber said. “Just one thing and then we’ll be gone.”
“Who are you?”
Amber tried figuring out the best way to say what she had to say. “Some people want to kill me. They’re monsters, I guess. Like Shanks. They won’t stop until I’m dead. My only hope is to find this guy we’re looking for and Shanks is the only one who knows his name.”
“They’re like Shanks?”
Amber nodded. “And there’s five of them. Please, Heather, all I want is to ask him this guy’s name.”
“I’d like to help,” Heather said. “I really would. But no one talks to Shanks. No one. Any opportunity to get free, he’ll take it.”
“We won’t do anything to risk—”
“I’m sorry,” said Heather. “He’s killed too many people already. I’ve kept him trapped by not letting anyone know he’s there, and certainly not letting anyone talk to him. You’re just going to have to find another way to get what you need.”
“There is no other way,” said Milo.
“Then I’m sorry. I truly am. But if Shanks gets free it won’t be you he goes after. It’ll be me. It’ll be people from this town. Springton will go back to being his hunting ground.”
“Maybe we can help,” said Amber. “He’s trapped in a dollhouse – but how secure can that be? Those kids easily trashed two of the dollhouses kept at the school. He will eventually be found.”
“And I suppose you have a better way?”
“We’ll take the dollhouse away from here,” Milo said. “Destroy it, bury it, burn it, whatever.”
“Too risky. Sorry, but I’m not going to change my mind. My mom suggested I talk to you, and I’ve talked to you. If I had known you wanted to actually communicate with him, I’d never have agreed to it. If my mom had known that, I doubt she’d have even mentioned you to me. I can’t help you, and I won’t help you. I’m sorry about that, I really am. But I have to ask you to leave the library.”
Amber had no argument left, and so she found herself walking out into the sunshine with Glen and Milo at her heels.
“Huh,” she said. “I didn’t think she’d actually say no. I mean, I should have but I didn’t. We can’t make her tell us where she’s keeping Shanks, can we? I’m … I have no idea what to do now. What do we do?”
Glen shrugged. “How about we break into her house?”
Amber frowned. “Seriously?”
“Of course. This is life or death, right? You need to speak to this guy, so let’s search her place and find him, then get the hell out of here before her dad comes after us with his gun. Do we know where she lives?”
“Pine Street,” said Milo.
“There you go,” Glen said, clapping his hands. “That’s our plan, right?”
Amber looked at Milo.
“Sure,” said Milo. “That’s our plan.”
Pine Street was a picket-fence affair: neat lawns and trimmed hedges and not one oil stain on a single driveway. They found the Medina house without a problem, passed it and drove down to the corner. Amber and Glen walked back, rang the doorbell and waited. They chatted about nothing, but they did so loudly and with much false cheer. A neighbour walking her dog glanced at them. They smiled politely, and rang the doorbell again.
The door opened, and Milo let them in.
While they searched, Milo did his best to patch up the window he had broken. He left money on the table for the damage. The dollhouse wasn’t in any of the rooms. The attic was empty. The cellar was bare.
The dollhouse wasn’t there.
They got back to the Charger.
“Okay,” said Glen, “I’m out of ideas.”
“It’s in the library,” Amber said. “It is, isn’t it? Big old place like that probably has a hundred rooms that aren’t being used. I bet they have big old locks on the doors, too.”
“If the dollhouse is not where she lives,” said Milo, “then it’s probably where she works.”
Glen sounded grumpy in the back seat. “It’ll take ages to search that place.”
Milo started the car. “Then I guess we’ll have to do it at night.”
THE LIBRARY WAS CREEPY when it got dark.
The staff turned out the lights and locked up. Heather Medina was the last to leave. When the silence had settled and ten minutes had passed, Amber and the others emerged from the restroom where they’d been hiding. The occasional bright sweep of headlights from the street outside was the only illumination they were granted as they made their way through the maze of bookcases. Those lights sent shadows dancing and flitting from floor to wall to ceiling, and each one set Amber’s heart to drumming.
They split up, their task made easier when Glen found a set of keys lying in the office inbox. Locked doors swung open and revealed storage spaces, boxes of books and plaster busts gathering dust. They found desks piled on top of each other and a room full of broken chairs.
Finally, they found a door at the end of a dark and windowless corridor for which they had no key. Milo knelt and proceeded to pick the lock. It took a lot longer than Amber expected.
When the last tumbler slid into place, Milo pulled on the handle and pushed. The door opened to a small room with a single table at its centre, and upon that table was a dollhouse.
Amber stepped in. They were deep enough in the library that she felt confident in turning on a light. The single bulb brightened slowly, its radiance dimmed by dust.
The dollhouse was magnificent. Front opening, with two stories and an attic space. It was the kind of thing Amber would have loved as a little girl, if only her parents had paid more attention to her subtle hints. If only her parents hadn’t been planning to murder her from the day she was conceived.
She peered through the little windows, saw furniture. Beds and dressers. Downstairs, there was a hall with a staircase, and a kitchen.
“Can you see anything?” Glen whispered from beside her.
Something moved past the window and Amber recoiled sharply.
There was a moment, while she stood there, the hair on her neck prickling and every instinct urging her to run, when she genuinely considered just calling up her parents and imploring them to rethink their plans and let her come home. She was ready, in that moment, to forgive them, to carry on with her life as if nothing had happened.
The moment passed.<
br />
She cleared her throat. “Hello?” she said. She peered closer, but it was dark in there. “Are you there? Dacre Shanks, can you hear me?”
No answer. At least none that she could hear.
Glen hunkered down to look through the side windows. “Maybe he’s sleeping,” he said, then knocked heavily on the roof. “Hey, wake up in there!”
Milo took hold of Glen’s wrist. “Please don’t do that to the serial killer.”
Glen took his hand back. “What? He lives in a dollhouse. He’s the size of Thumbelina, for God’s sake. You think he scares me?”
“It’s not about whether or not he scares you,” said Milo, “it’s the principle of the thing. Wherever possible, you do not antagonise serial killers. That’s just a general rule of life.”
“I don’t think it applies to serial killers you could fit in your pocket.”
“Quiet,” said Amber, leaning closer to the large upstairs window, the one looking on to the landing. Someone was standing there, very still. Someone who hadn’t been there a moment earlier.
“Hello? Mr Shanks?”
Then she heard it. They all heard it. A man’s voice. Quiet.
“Hello,” it said, from inside the dollhouse.
If a voice could crawl, this one did. It crawled over Amber’s face to her ears, scuttled in and burrowed its way into her brain. She could feel its legs, cold and frenzied. “You have my attention.”
Her mouth was dry. Her mouth was so dry. “Mr Shanks, my name is Amber. I need—”
“Pleased to meet you, Amber.”
For a moment, she couldn’t talk. “Yeah,” she said, feeling stupid and scared and childish. She was so very afraid. “I need your help. We’ve come—”
“And who are your companions?” Dacre Shanks asked in that creepy-crawly voice of his.
“Um, this is Milo and that’s Glen.”
“Hi,” said Glen. Even he sounded scared.
