Lucy frowned. She looked scared. She whispered so low I had to strain to hear her. “I don’t want to stay there, not without Grandma. I’m scared.”
CHAPTER FOUR
“What was that, Lucy?” Dad asked, tilting his head to the side in confusion. He squinted and looked to Mom, then back to my sister. “Did you say you’re scared?”
Lucy’s bottom lip quivered and her cheeks flushed. “No! I said I’m sad. I don’t want to go to Grandma’s if she’s not there.” She covered her face with her hands and started to cry. Dad wrapped his arms around her.
“It’s okay,” Mom said. “It’ll be tough for all of us.”
An awkward silence fell on the room. It lasted a little too long. I tried to think of something to say to make Mom feel better.
“I’m so, so sorry, Mom.” It was the best I could come up with.
Mom looked at me and nodded with a sad smile. She looked like she wanted to cry but held on.
“All right,” Mom said. Her voice cracked a little. “Let’s order a pizza, pack our bags, and try to get to bed early tonight. Tomorrow’s going to be a long day.”
***
I tossed some clothes, toiletries and books in my suitcase and set it by my bedroom door. That done, I walked down the hall and poked my head into Lucy’s room. She was lying on her bed, surrounded by pencil crayons, working on a Harry Potter colouring book.
“Hey, Lucy,” I said. “Is it all right if I come in?”
“Sure,” Lucy said without looking up. She was pressing the pencil crayon to the paper with more force than necessary, and was colouring quickly and messily.
“You okay?” I asked.
Lucy paused for a second or two, then continued. “Yes.”
“It’s just … you seem a little agitated. If you keep colouring so hard you’re either going to break your pencil crayon in half or rip through the paper and decapitate that poor hippogriff.”
She continued colouring without answering.
I sat on the edge of her bed. “If you’re scared, you’re not the only one. I’m scared too.”
That got her to stop. She dropped the pencil crayon and crossed her arms.
“You get scared?” Lucy asked doubtfully.
“Of course,” I said.
“What are you scared of?”
I said the first thing that popped into my head. “Bears.”
Lucy laughed a little, which was good.
“Bears?” she asked.
“Definitely. Aren’t you afraid of bears?”
Lucy shook her head.
“Well, you should be. They’re very dangerous. If one walked into the room right now I’m pretty sure you’d learn to be scared of bears really quick.”
She laughed some more, a little louder this time, but soon looked serious and thoughtful again.
“Zelda?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you afraid of anything other than bears?”
Something in her eyes — a mix of hope, fear and sorrow — made me answer truthfully and without pause. “Yes,” I said. “I’m also afraid of going to Grandma’s house tomorrow. I’m afraid being in her house without her there will be too upsetting. I’m afraid it will make her death too real.” My chest ached. It felt like someone had reached a hand inside my body and squeezed my heart.
“But what if she’s not really, really gone?” Lucy asked.
A chill spread down my back. Years ago I’d watched an episode of Screamers and I’d sworn I’d never make that mistake again. In the episode there was this little kid who repeated, “The dead don’t die. The dead don’t die. The dead don’t die,” in an eerie voice, which gave me nightmares for weeks. And here was my younger sister saying something eerie in real life, which was far creepier than anything a TV show could produce.
“I know you’re upset, Lucy, but Grandma is really, really gone.”
“I know,” she said quietly.
I nodded in sympathy and squeezed her shoulder. “I don’t think we should be scared of Grandma’s house. It’s just a house. It might be nice to see Grandma’s things and be around her stuff. What do you think?”
Lucy didn’t look completely sold, but she also didn’t look quite as upset as before. She nodded. I’d take that as a win.
“Good.” I stood up and opened a dresser drawer, then pulled out a few T-shirts. “All right, let’s get you packed.” I looked out my sister’s window. The sky was black and full of stars. It was getting late. I stifled a yawn. “Like Mom said, we’ve got a big day tomorrow. We should get some sleep.”
Preferably nightmare-free, I thought as the Screamers kid’s voice echoed in my mind: The dead don’t die. The dead don’t die. The dead don’t die …
I really hated that show.
CHAPTER FIVE
I shot up in bed with a gasp. I’d had a weird dream, but whatever it had been about was gone as soon as I opened my eyes.
Lucy was standing beside my bed.
“Sorry!” she said, sounding shocked.
I took a few deep breaths and let my heartbeat return to normal. I leaned back and placed my elbows on my pillow — it was soaked in sweat. “It’s fine. I’m fine. I had a bad dream, that’s all. What’s up?”
“It’s almost time to go. Mom asked me to wake you up.”
I hopped out of bed, pulled on the same shorts I’d worn the day before, and looked at myself in the mirror. My hair was a mess. I pulled it back and tied it into a ponytail with a hair elastic as I made my way to the bathroom. Lucy followed. I turned on the taps and splashed some water on my face.
“All right,” I said. “I’m all set.”
“Aren’t you going to shower?” Lucy asked.
“I just did.”
Lucy laughed. “Well, you better come downstairs soon or else Mom and Dad will get mad.” She turned and left.
I returned to my room and grabbed my bag, then paused in the doorway and looked back at my bed. Sadie Sees’s hair was poking out from under a fold in the comforter. I picked her up and stared at her eternal smile for a moment. I unzipped my bag and nearly placed her in it, but then paused and put her back on the bed.
Wait a minute, I thought. Camryn won’t be there, but Grandma will.
I packed Sadie Sees and flew out the door. It wasn’t until I’d reached the bottom of the stairs that I realized I’d forgotten that Grandma was gone.
All the more reason to keep Sadie close.
***
We pulled into Grandma’s driveway. Dad killed the ignition, and a heavy silence descended on us. We’d stopped to pick up lunch a few blocks away and the greasy smell of hamburgers filled the car. It had smelled good a minute ago, but not so much anymore.
The midday sun was at its peak in a clear, blue sky that was far more cheerful than our moods. I had to shield my eyes as I looked at Grandma’s pale yellow house. Bay windows jutted out on either side of the front door, which was constantly shadowed by an overhang and tall bushes. A sloping cellar door on the side of the house led to the unfinished basement. I pictured the backyard, where I’d spent many hours playing outside, which was walled off from the empty lot behind the house by a row of tall cedars. Somehow, despite all of its quirks, Grandma’s house had always felt like one of the most comfortable and inviting places in the world.
But the house didn’t feel comfortable or inviting at that moment.
We grabbed our bags in silence and walked slowly to the front door. Mom stopped and put her bag down before setting foot on the porch.
“You coming in?” Dad asked.
Mom shook her head. “Not right now. It’s so nice out.” She tried on a smile, but it faltered and fell from her face almost immediately. “I’ll join you in a bit.”
Dad nodded, picked up Mom’s bag, and waved Lucy and me into the house. We dropped the bags in the front hall and closed the front door, leaving Mom alone outside. I could still see her through the small window on the door, but the glass was coloured and bumpy so she look
ed red and blurry.
“Who’s hungry?” Dad asked.
“I am,” Lucy said. She carried the food down the hall and into the kitchen.
“Coming?” Dad asked me.
“In a bit,” I said. “I’ll … um … take the bags upstairs.”
Usually he’d say something like “Food’s not going to get any warmer,” or “You’re going to waste away if you don’t eat.” But this time he simply said, “Okay,” and patted my shoulder. Then he joined Lucy in the kitchen.
I stood alone in the front hall.
Make yourself at home, my dear. I heard Grandma’s voice in my head.
On my right was a bathroom, a small dining room, and the kitchen in the back. On my left were the living and the family rooms. In front of me was the staircase to the second level and the attic. I looked at the bags but decided to leave them for a moment and wandered to the left.
I walked into the living room first. The floor, baseboards, door and window frames were all made of dark wood. The furniture was large and brown. Everything was so cozy even though the colours in her house were very dark. I happened to catch a glimpse of Mom through the window. She was sitting on the front porch swing staring at the garden.
The floorboards creaked as I walked into the family room, which was always my favourite place in the house. Grandma had a TV in there, sure, but what I loved most was the large brick fireplace. It burned real wood, not like the gas fireplace we had at home, and the smell of the smoke was the best. Grandma never seemed to like the fireplace. But she knew I loved it, so when I visited she’d humour me by lighting a fire on cool evenings.
Grandma’s reclining chair was just as I always remembered it: large, brown and covered with a blanket. On the small table beside the chair were her reading glasses and an open book placed face down. Was it the last thing she read? Was that the last thing she did, period? I hadn’t asked where Grandma was or what she was doing when she’d had her stroke.
I wiped at my eyes and left the family room.
The bags weren’t going to carry themselves upstairs (a variation on another one of Dad’s favourite sayings), so I grabbed my bag and Mom’s and took them upstairs.
The door to Grandma’s room was closed, which was a relief — I wasn’t ready to go in there yet — so I tossed Mom’s bag and my own in the other bedroom. She could move hers later. Although we hadn’t discussed where we’d all sleep for the week, I figured my parents would be in Grandma’s room and Lucy and I would share Mom and Aunt Joyce’s old room.
I looked up the narrow staircase at the attic door. Something made me hesitate. I shook my head and took it step by step. Each one groaned, and one or two were so loud that I thought they might crack in half. I opened the door, walked to the middle of the dark, windowless room, and pulled the string to turn on the overhead light bulb. Click-click! Pulling it reminded me of Sadie’s string and I heard her voice in my head. I wish you and I were twins.
One of the first things I saw in the light was the flashlight on the floor beside the door, kept there to light the way to the string. “Right,” I said to myself. “Next time.”
The attic was floor to ceiling wood with a curved ceiling that reminded me of the hull of an old boat, like a pirate or Viking ship or something. Shelves lined the room and were packed with stuff — some in bins, some not. Old clothes, purses and shoes. Paintings, records and books. Tons of scrapbooking supplies. Piles of holiday decorations. An entire bookshelf of my grandmother’s journals, dated and arranged in chronological order.
In the corner, nearly completely buried by a pile of old clothes, was an old-fashioned trunk. I’d stumbled on it one day when I was my sister’s age. Inside the trunk were six super-old dolls. None of the dolls matched, which for some reason gave me a really unsettled feeling. They seemed jarringly out of place in the trunk, like they didn’t belong in there. Grandma caught me just as I was about to pick one up. She yelled at me to stop and slammed the trunk shut, nearly pinching my fingers. Once she’d caught her breath, her face returned to normal. Then she explained that the dolls were antiques, quite valuable and too fragile to touch. She asked me to never open the trunk again. I’d promised, but I guess she still felt bad for yelling at me, because the next day she gave me Sadie Sees.
I’d had really weird, vivid dreams that night. In them, the dolls had walked and talked. They had wanted to do something bad to me, something I couldn’t quite remember by morning. And I’d also dreamt that I’d looked out the bedroom window in the middle of the night and seen a large stone building behind Grandma’s, like her house had been picked up and moved to a big city or something. Like I said: weird.
Even though discovering it had gotten me Sadie, the trunk was the only thing in Grandma’s house that I didn’t like. The only thing that scared me a little.
I hadn’t seen the trunk in years. Maybe Grandma had hidden it. Or maybe I’d avoided looking for it on purpose.
But there it was, what I could see of it. It was made from dark wood and the rounded lid was covered with stones that looked like bright-red cranberries. And although I couldn’t see the odd assortment of old dolls inside the trunk, I knew they were there. Not seeing them was worse than if they’d been splayed out on the floor.
I wiped some dust off the red stones and then heard something, something that sounded sort of like laughter. Children’s laughter.
I turned around, thinking Lucy must’ve followed me up, but the attic was empty. Just me and the dolls.
I turned back to face the trunk.
The lid rattled.
CHAPTER SIX
I jumped back. My gut felt like it had twisted into knots.
The trunk’s lid had rattled. I was sure of that.
Well, mostly sure.
But how could that be? Maybe I had imagined it. Or maybe there was something trapped inside. An animal?
If there was an animal trapped inside it, I needed to let it out.
I took a deep breath and placed my hands on the lid. I heard Grandma in my head yelling at me for opening it just as she had done years ago. I flipped the lid open and quickly blocked my face with my hands, just in case there was a raccoon or a family of opossums or something hiding inside, ready to pounce.
Nothing happened.
“Huh,” I said in the darkness.
I peered into the trunk. It was nearly empty. All that it held were the same six antique dolls that had been stored in it before.
That settled it: the rattling must’ve been in my imagination. I laughed a little and took a closer look at the dolls. I hadn’t had time to examine them in detail the first time I’d found them.
One looked like a big baby. She wore a bonnet and had a pacifier in her mouth. Another looked like an old woman with curly grey hair and metal wire-framed glasses. One was neither female nor male. It had a blank face and a flap in its torso that opened to reveal plastic organs inside, like it was used to teach human anatomy or something. One was a girl with eyes much too large for her face and set too low. Her ceramic skin was cracked around the left eye and the corner of her mouth. Another was made completely out of wood and had posable limbs, with joints at the ankles, knees, waist, wrists, elbows, shoulders and neck. The final doll was old, like the others, but in much better shape. It was a pleasant-looking girl with curly red hair, a few freckles on each cheek and blue eyes. She wore an emerald-green dress that looked nicer and fancier than anything I owned.
I reached into the trunk and pulled out the doll in the green dress. She was heavier than I expected. I turned her over and saw that someone had written a name on her calf: Hattie.
“Is that your name?” I asked the doll, turning her back around to look at her face. “Hattie?”
The doll winked and I dropped her. She landed with a dull thud on top of the other dolls in the trunk. I quickly slammed the lid shut. I shivered as a slight feeling of revulsion rolled over me.
Almost as quickly as it had happened I realized that, like seeing the
lid rattle, the wink must’ve been in my imagination. I opened the trunk again. I picked up Hattie once more and noticed that her eyes opened and closed when I tilted her up and down, which made it look like she was awake when upright and sleeping when lying down.
“For a second there I thought you were alive,” I told Hattie with a laugh. “And here I am now, by myself in the attic, talking to a doll.” I tossed her back in and put my hand on the lid but hesitated before closing it.
There was a small loop of dark-red ribbon sticking out from between the bottom of the trunk and one of the side walls. I slipped my finger into the loop and tugged it. The foot of the trunk lifted up, causing the six dolls to tumble to the opposite side and revealing a secret compartment beneath.
Hidden away were two items: a school yearbook and a journal. Why wasn’t this journal kept with the others on the bookshelf? I removed both books and turned my attention to the yearbook first.
The cover read SUMMERSIDE COLLEGE 1952 in gold foil. Above this lettering was a stamp of what I assumed was the school emblem.
There was a picture of the school on the first page. It was a tall stone building, three or four storeys, with large windows and a bell tower that jutted up to the sky above the front door. It was a creepy-looking building, like a classic haunted house but larger, more intimidating. I couldn’t imagine going to school in a building like that.
On the next page was a letter from someone named A. Ashton, who was listed as the school’s headmistress. I glanced over the letter and learned that Summerside College was a private institution for “girls from the finest families from our country and beyond,” and that the school had a “sterling reputation for educating and shaping tomorrow’s women.”
I flipped through the pages and saw black and white pictures of teachers and children from kindergarten to grade eight. I closed my eyes and did some quick calculations. Assuming the yearbook was Grandma’s, she would’ve been eight years old in 1952 and probably in grade two. I turned to the page of grade twos and scanned through the students’ faces until, sure enough, I found a picture of a familiar-looking girl with the name Edith Fitzgerald printed beneath it.
Night of the Living Dolls Page 2
