Haunted Houses

by Robert D. San Souci

  Rummaging through the stacks of stuff all around, she discovered the expected broken furniture, rusted gardening tools, and boxes of everything from moldy books to yellowing Christmas cards with dates twenty years old or more.

  She investigated further, sometimes pushing objects or cartons aside—careful not to upset anything that would make noise and alert her parents to what she was doing.

  One corner was walled off by stacks of boxes filled with old papers in file folders. But, between two tall stacks, she glimpsed something big and draped with a white sheet. Curious, she began tugging and pushing at the file boxes, until she had pried open a passage just wide enough to squeeze through. All at once, a carton tumbled over with a loud noise. She held her breath and waited, sure that someone would come downstairs to investigate, but no one upstairs seemed to have heard. After a few moments, she continued shouldering her way past the boxes. Then she was through; she was in a squarish open space with a crude table at its center. It was merely a thick sheet of plywood mounted on two wooden sawhorses. On top was a large shape completely covered with a sheet. For minutes she tried to guess what lay hidden under the dips and rises of the shroud. Then, impatient, she gave a tug and the cloth slid to the cement floor with a whispery sound.

  The dollhouse was amazing. Katie couldn’t give a name to the style of it—she just knew it was old-fashioned. In a way, it reminded her of the house where Mary Poppins came to work her magic in the movie—or like that big old house where the Addams Family acted out their weirdness in Nick at Nite reruns of the old television series. There were double windows on each side of the front door (which had a tiny black wreath on it) and twin windows on the second floor, with a single window above the front door.

  Katie could just barely move around behind the platform the dollhouse perched on. And she really had to squeeze along the narrow alley where the plywood was pushed pretty close to the basement wall. But it was worth the effort: There was no back wall on the dollhouse, so the inside was fully revealed.

  There were four main rooms—two above, two below—divided by a stairway that rose from the downstairs hall to the upstairs hall.

  The two downstairs rooms seemed to be a dining room and a kind of living room or den. The dining room was covered with brown patterned wallpaper, and the ceiling was a pale near white. The floor was polished bare wood. The furniture included a dining table with four chairs, a china cabinet against one wall, and a long buffet against the other. Curtains of some soft, shiny brown material framed the windows. The table was clearly set for three.

  Across the narrow hallway, the den was covered with a sea-green carpet, while the walls were papered in dark green. A couch and chairs were pulled up close to a fireplace. There were bookcases on one wall and a wooden desk, holding an antique typewriter, with an office-style chair next to the desk. Near the fireplace was a clunky old radio. Without TV and a Blu-ray player and a game console, Katie thought, evenings in a real house like that would be pretty dull.

  The most interesting thing here was the tiny figure of a man, reading a book, smoking a pipe, seated in a soft green armchair. A face with a thin mustache and tiny round glasses gazed at the open book. A floor lamp stood beside the chair. He was wearing a jacket of a pale material that showed up the black armband on his left upper sleeve.

  Upstairs were two bedrooms. The main one was pale gray. A silvery carpet covered the floor, while white curtains hung at the windows. The room contained a dressing table, a bureau, and a double bed with a cream-colored comforter.

  On the upstairs landing was the figure of a woman whose pretty face was set off by long red hair fixed in a style from long ago. She wore old-fashioned clothes—skirt, blouse, and shoes—that were all black.

  Has someone died? Katie wondered. In old movies, when people dressed in black and wore black armbands—there was the wreath on the front door, too—it meant someone had died. The woman was facing the closed door of the second bedroom.

  It’s a girl’s room, Katie decided. A pink spread covered the bed, while just above was the framed image, barely larger than a postage stamp, of a painting she’d seen in a Los Angeles museum on vacation the past summer. The painting, titled Pinkie, showed a young girl, standing on a hill long ago, her silky skirts blown by the wind. She had a flat, wide hat; its ribbons were untied and rippling in the breeze. Katie remembered her mother reading a guidebook that explained the girl was nicknamed Pinkie. She was eleven when the painting had been completed; she died a few months later. Weird, thought Katie, all that black, and the picture of someone who had died when she was just a little girl.

  Letting her eyes take in other details of the room, she saw tiny books and games arranged neatly on a low bookcase. A tall wardrobe cabinet was placed beside a small dressing table with ruffles around the skirting. This held a tiny mirror and pink plastic comb.

  Curious, Katie checked each room again but could find no little girl figure. Has it gotten lost? she wondered. Then an odd thought occurred to her: Could the absent child be the one who died? Is she the reason for the man’s black armband, the lady’s black outfit, and the black wreath on the front door? Then she told herself, That’s silly. Dolls don’t die!

  But she recalled a story her grandmother, who had come from England, told about a doll’s ghost. When a little girl’s best-loved china doll was broken beyond repair, the tiny ghost of the doll lingered, seen only by the girl. When there was a fire in the house, the doll woke the child, and she was able to save her family. After that, the doll’s ghost went away forever.

  Nana swore that it was true. Just to test things, Katie broke her third-favorite doll to bits. No ghost showed up. She decided her nana was just telling fairy tales.

  “Katie!” Her mother’s voice, faint but clear, came from somewhere overhead. Startled, Katie began edging out from behind the dollhouse. When she reached the corner of the table, she heard her mother’s voice—fainter now, suggesting she was looking for Katie outside the house—probably in the front yard. It wouldn’t be long before someone thought to look in the basement. Hastily she gathered up the dust sheet and flung it over the house. She wasn’t sure why, but she wanted to keep the dollhouse her secret for as long as she could.

  When the little house was shrouded, she wormed her way back through the piled file boxes. She put out the basement lights and then hurried upstairs, stumbling once or twice because it had grown quite late and the fading light through the grimy windows, as well as the few dusty overhead bulbs, left the stairs dangerously dark. The clutter below was only a mass of looming or pooling shadows.

  At the head of the stairs, Katie listened carefully to be sure no one was in the hallway outside. Then she risked opening the door a bit, peering through the crack. Deciding that the coast was clear, she stepped out and closed the door softly behind her.

  She hurried down the hall to the kitchen. Her father was just straightening up, palms pressed into the small of his back, relieved to be done with whatever he had taken care of under the sink.

  “Hi, Daddy,” she said. He spun around. “Hey, princess. Mom’s looking everywhere for you. Where have you been?”

  She shrugged.

  “Well, Mom’s in the front yard. Go tell her you’re back from Wonderland or wherever. I think we’ll call it a day and go for pizza. Sound good?”

  “Sounds great,” she called over her shoulder as she went to find her mother.

  The pizza at Lonnie’s was cheesy, deep dish, with extra cheese buried in the thick crusts—Katie’s favorite. But she couldn’t get the dollhouse off her mind. She was eager to explore it further and perhaps tease out some of its secrets.

  The next day, while her mother and the older kids were shopping and her father was repairing the brick barbecue pit at the back of the yard, Katie slipped into the basement. Eagerly, she uncovered the dollhouse. Trying for a better view, she climbed onto one of the two plywood planks that supported the house, being careful to test that it would hold her. The thick wood
felt as secure as solid ground. She particularly wanted to have a closer look at the figures and furniture. But when she reached for the mother doll in the upstairs hall, her fingers ran into something that felt almost like a sheet of plastic protecting the open side of the house. There was no real covering; it was just a sensation that the air had grown almost solid. When she gave a gentle push, the barrier yielded a little, but she had to push really hard to reach past it. With the feeling of something tearing, her hand suddenly punched all the way through, though she felt as if the unseen wall was closed up around her wrist, like the air was healing itself. Weird, she thought.

  She pulled the mother doll out and studied her closely. Whoever had carved and painted the wooden figure had done an expert job. The green eyes seemed almost alive, watching Katie, and the lady’s expression was so sad, it made her feel sad, too. Gently, she set the doll back exactly where she had been, staring at what Katie thought of as the little girl’s room.

  Next, she lifted the man doll, still in sitting position, out of his chair. The painted corners of his mouth were turned down as if he, too, was very sad. She put him back. Then she began pulling out things, admiring how the drawers on a miniature bureau really opened, the shelves of the china cabinet held cups and plates, and tiny books could be taken one by one from the bookcase. Clearly a great deal of work had gone into making the dollhouse. She was just reaching to open the wardrobe in the girl’s bedroom when she saw a small patch of pale light beside the cabinet.

  It was only about two inches high, and the brightness seemed to fade in and out, like a bulb about to burn out. Before Katie was sure she’d seen it, it flickered out. But, a moment later, she spotted it near the mother doll in the hall outside. A moment later, it winked out again, only to reappear in the den beside the chair where the father sat reading. Hardly thinking, Katie stretched a finger to touch the oval of light, but it vanished for good.

  Very strange, Katie told herself. She sat still for a long time, as if the thing were shy like a hummingbird that would fly off at the slightest movement. But it didn’t return, and Katie didn’t wait very long. She was making her visits to the basement short, so that no one else would start to wonder about longer absences. This was all part of her plan to keep the dollhouse secret.

  Two days later, the light was back, flickering from one dollhouse room to another. It moved so quickly, and faded so often, Katie sometimes couldn’t be sure it was there at all. Then there were moments when it stayed put just long enough for her to study it. At times she saw the hint of a shadow within the little oval of light that reminded her of the time Mrs. Waxman, her first-grade teacher, had brought an egg to school and held it up to a lightbulb so Katie and the rest of her class could see the shadowy shape of an unborn baby chick inside.

  The shadow inside the dollhouse light seemed, at first, to have no special shape. But, as Katie played at rearranging the furniture (though she was always careful to put everything back the way it had been before she covered up the dollhouse), she had more opportunity to study the tiny wonder. She had begun to think of it as a ghost perfectly suited to the dollhouse. She also started to consider if Nana’s story of the doll’s ghost might be true. Like a shy animal, the ghost light seemed to get used to Kate and would linger longer near her hand before flashing away to some other room. Over the next two weeks, she became sure she could see the shape of someone—a child—inside. She grew certain that she was looking at the shadowy outline of a child’s head, a body, two arms, and two legs.

  Her desire to keep the dollhouse secret let her slip downstairs only when the other family members were involved in their own business and not paying attention to her. Now she was also concerned that anyone else might scare away the light once and for all and undo Katie’s patient efforts to make friends.

  She still had to push through the invisible wall. It was soft, stubborn, but always, in the end, allowed her to reach into the rooms it guarded. Though the ghost appeared more comfortable with her exploring hand, it never quite permitted Katie to touch it, though she felt that sometimes it was teasing her, staying just an inch or two away from her fingertips as if daring her to touch. But when Katie tried, it blinked out and turned up in another corner.

  Then, near the end of the second week, came the moment when Katie moved her finger quickly as the “ghost” drew tantalizingly near. For an instant, she felt something like an electric shock race down her finger, through her hand, and up her arm, almost to the elbow. It felt like the jolt when she hit her funny bone, not nice at all. Her finger numbed, while the rest of her hand and her lower arm had pins-and-needles prickles for almost five minutes. She was just about to go looking for her mother when the sensations faded away.

  After this, she didn’t see the little light again; she was afraid the ghost had disappeared completely. So it no longer seemed important that it was becoming harder to keep the dollhouse hidden.

  Things were pretty settled on the upstairs floors. There were still lots of little jobs to do, and Katie was expected to pitch in sweeping and dusting and so on. When she could sneak down to the basement, she found herself growing bored with the toy house. She had tired of moving the furniture around. She never saw the ghost anymore. She wondered if she had scared it away—or even killed it. But how can you kill a ghost? she thought. That makes no sense. A ghost is dead already.

  One afternoon she took a really close look at the base on which the dollhouse sat: a rectangle four or five inches high, covered with green felt that looked like a lawn. At the back she noticed two shallow drawers, also felt-covered, with only a faint crack, no bigger than a hair, outlining them.

  With the tip of her nail, Katie pried them open. The drawer under the dining room held odd bits of tiny furniture: an end table, a chair missing a leg, a little throw rug rolled up and tied with a piece of string. She guessed these were items that had been replaced in the dollhouse but that some former owner couldn’t bear to part with.

  The second drawer was much more promising. There was an old black-and-white photograph turning yellow at the edges. It showed a man with a mustache and round glasses standing beside a pretty woman with long light-colored hair in an old-fashioned style. The girl felt certain it was red. Katie instantly recognized them as the painted dolls in the house. They stood behind a little girl who looked about Katie’s age. She had long blond hair held in place with a pair of fancy combs, a lacy party dress with dangle ribbons at the waist, and gloves. She was holding a wide hat of some soft material with long silky ribbons at the back. It was hard to see the girl’s face: Her eyes were scrunched up against the bright sun, and her face seemed to have been bleached by the light. She didn’t look happy, though the man and woman—surely her parents—were both smiling. A breeze had blown the girl’s skirt and her hair and hat ribbons into streamers. Something about that made Katie think of the picture of Pinkie in the miniature child’s bedroom.

  Under the photo was a book, bound in red leather and stamped with gold letters, JOURNAL OF MARIE CANTWELL, 1949.

  Katie flipped through the first pages, but found them blank. Nothing had been written from January until June. Then, on June 21 of that year, she found the first entry. Someone, Katie was sure it was Marie Cantwell, had written:

  I thought this journal a sweet but useless gift. Now I have need of it. Our beautiful Madeline—Maddie—has been taken to the hospital. A week ago, she was sick with fever. I wanted to take her to the hospital then, but Henry said it was just a passing thing such as all children get. Sometimes he thinks, because I came from France all those years ago, I make too much of things. But yesterday she had a stiff neck and back, then she began to have problems swallowing and even breathing. I write this in the hospital waiting for the doctor to tell us what is going on. It helps me keep my thoughts together. I fear it may be polio. It is always worse in the summer. I learned that our neighbor took several children, Maddie included, to the community pool. I had forbidden Maddie to go there, but she went with her fri
ends. Such is the way with children. Here is the doctor. I am so very much afraid.

  Fortunately, Marie had printed rather than using cursive, so Katie had a fairly easy time reading the sentences. She knew, from hearing adults talk, that polio had once been a big problem, but doctors now gave shots that kept people safe except in parts of the world where medicine cost too much.

  After a break, the journal went on.

  It is polio, the very worst kind. They are putting my darling in an iron lung to help her breathe. Oh! To see only her beautiful head on a pillow, and the rest of her, from the neck down, shut away in that ugly machine. She was awake. But sometimes she just stares. Sometimes she recognizes Henry and me. Then she begs us, “Let me come home.” I promise her that all will be well and that she will be home in good time. Henry says nothing, but his eyes are full of fear.

  Katie rushed on past pages of Marie pouring out her troubled heart to her journal. She was anxious to learn what happened to Maddie. The writing became harder to read; the entries would often start or stop in midsentence. Then there was a break for several days. Finally, on July 13, Marie wrote:

  Our baby is gone. Henry tries to be strong for me. Family and friends try to comfort me. But how am I to be comforted, when every waking moment, and in every dream, I hear Maddie calling, “Let me come home”?

  Again, there was a series of blank pages. Then, for August 29, Katie found a new entry. Marie’s printing looked less shaky. Her thoughts were clearer.