by Kat Shepherd
She pushed down the last of the worries and fears that threatened to bubble back up and pasted a smile on her face as she opened the door and switched on the light. “Hey, Kira! I have such a cool experiment set up downstairs!”
Kira turned and blinked at the sudden brightness. Her blond hair was tousled, and her pale eyes looked round and owlish when they met Tanya’s. “Oh. Hi. I didn’t know you were coming today.” She turned around and went back to tending her doll, which was seated across from Kira in a chair at the little table.
Tanya couldn’t quite read the little girl’s mood. This definitely wasn’t the sunny Kira, but it didn’t seem like the ornery Kira, either. “What are you playing with Mary Rose today?”
“I’m feeding her,” Kira said faintly, her voice colorless and flat. She dipped a little silver spoon into a tiny china bowl, and the sound was so familiar that it made Tanya want to scream.
“Cool. Maybe you could take a break and feed her later so we can go downstairs and get started on our project?”
Kira dropped the empty spoon into the bowl with a clatter, and Tanya swallowed thickly. “It’s okay,” Kira said. “She’s finished.”
“Great.” Tanya tried to hide the relief in her voice. “Do the bowl and spoon need to be put away downstairs, or do they stay up here?”
“I just told you I fed her,” Kira snapped. “Everybody knows you don’t leave dirty dishes upstairs. You take them downstairs to be washed.” She picked them up and stalked over to Tanya, shoving the little bowl and spoon into her hand.
Tanya hid a smile. This sounded much more like the Kira she was used to. “You got it. When we get to the kitchen, you can show me where to put them in the dishwasher.” She shifted the dishes in her hand and winced when her fingers touched something wet and sticky. They were dirty. She looked down to find a small red film lining the bowl. She caught a hint of the same scent she had smelled downstairs. Blood. Her vision swam and she leaned weakly against the wall in the hallway, pressing her head against the cool plaster.
Kira switched off the light and pulled the door closed behind her. “Good night, Mary Rose,” she called softly. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “And don’t worry, my sweet. I’ll have more for you tomorrow.”
* * *
Tanya was on autopilot as she followed Kira downstairs and wordlessly handed her the little bowl and spoon to put in the dishwasher. She passed a towel after they both washed their hands, and then she pulled a banana out of the fruit bowl in the middle of the table. “You must be hungry. Why don’t you have a snack for a sec? I’ll be right back.”
Without waiting for an answer, Tanya walked straight to the bathroom and locked herself in. For a moment, she thought she might throw up, but the feeling passed, and she splashed water on her face with trembling hands. She stared at her reflection in the mirror. This is more than just some irrational fear, she thought. I don’t know what exactly is going on here, but there’s definitely something wrong.
Without hesitation, she pulled out her phone and sent a group text to the girls, Kawanna, and Ethan.
That brought a small smile to Tanya’s face. Just knowing her friends were there for her made her feel instantly calmer. Her phone buzzed again.
Tanya put her phone back in her pocket and looked again at her reflection in the mirror. Her normally tan skin had a waxen cast, and her eyes were glassy and feverish. Her mom would probably say she seemed a little green around the gills. She gripped the edges of the sink and took a deep breath. “Get it together, girl,” she whispered. “You’ve seen scarier stuff than this, and you barely even blinked. You got this.” But the girl in the mirror didn’t look like she believed a word of it.
CHAPTER
8
THE SUN WASN’T yet past the horizon when Tanya and the others met the next morning in Kawanna’s office at the back of Creature Features. A box of doughnuts sat in the middle of the lacquered coffee table next to a silver tray with a fresh pot of jasmine tea, and Kawanna and the kids quietly got settled with their early morning breakfast as they waited to hear what Tanya had to say. Tanya picked at her doughnut and looked at the circle of expectant faces, struggling to choose the right words to explain. But how was she supposed to fill her friends in on what was happening when she still didn’t know what was going on herself?
It was Kawanna who spoke first. She was cocooned in her bright-blue-and-vermilion bathrobe, her dreadlocks were wrapped in a silk scarf, and her fuzzy green monster slippers nestled together on the floor in front of her. “There must be something pretty serious going on if you got us up this early, so spill it, girl. We’re listening.” She took a long sip of the tall cup of chai Ethan had brought for her.
Tanya took a deep breath and dived in, telling her friends about the nightmares, Mrs. Fogelman’s doll collection, and Kira’s strange behavior with Mary Rose.
Clio put her jelly doughnut back on her plate. “That is super weird.” She wiped the powdered sugar off her fingers with a napkin. “It definitely has to be more than a coincidence.”
Tanya picked up her teacup. “But I’m not sure the doll winked at me. I mean, what could possibly cause that? It may have just been my imagination. To be honest, every doll has me so scared at this point that I can’t even tell anymore.”
“I know what you mean,” Maggie said. “After I first saw Poltergeist, I got so freaked out I was sure I could see the tree outside my window coming to get me.” She looked around the room. “It totally wasn’t, though.”
“Yeah, we got that,” Rebecca said.
“Even if the winking part was just your imagination, I agree there’s something bigger going on either way,” Clio said. “Those are some pretty specific details to dream about and then see them happen in real life.”
“Hold up, though,” Rebecca interjected. “Kira was definitely feeding blood to the doll? You’re positive about that?”
Tanya nodded. “Just like in my dream.”
Maggie pulled off a piece of her pink frosted doughnut. “What kind of blood was it? It wasn’t, like, human or anything, was it?”
“I don’t think so,” Tanya said. “I asked Kira about it, and she said it was left over from the hamburger meat they had for lunch.”
“Well, that makes the situation about one percent less terrifying, I guess,” Maggie said. “At least it wasn’t from a living thing.”
“Cows are living things,” Tanya said.
“Oh, come on,” Maggie retorted. “You know what I mean. It’s not like Kira went out and killed a cow herself.”
“Can we just go back to the part where she fed the doll?” Rebecca asked. “You said the bowl was empty when Kira handed it to you, right?”
“Uh-huh,” Tanya agreed, “but there had been something in it before.”
“Right,” Rebecca said. “So where did the blood go?”
“What do you mean?” Maggie asked. “She said Kira gave it to the doll.”
“Yeah, I know,” Rebecca replied. She held up her teacup. “But say I had a cup of tea, and I wanted to feed it to that cat statue.” She pointed to the gold maneki-neko statue Kawanna had on the bookshelves behind her desk. “What would happen if I tried to pour this tea into its mouth?”
Ethan’s face brightened. “I get it. It would spill everywhere.”
“Right,” Rebecca said. “It’s not like the cat statue can really drink it, so there’s nowhere for the tea to go.” She put her teacup back down. “So unless you saw blood spilled all over the place, it must have gone somewhere.”
Tanya paled. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of that.” She pulled her knees up into her lap and hugged them. “Does that mean that Mary Rose really might have come alive somehow, just like in my dream?” A wave of dizziness washed over her. “I don’t feel so well.”
Kawanna stood up and put a warm hand on Tanya’s shoulder. “I know how frightened you must be, but remember, you’re still a scientist.” Her voice was kind, and she looked into Tanya’s face u
ntil she saw Tanya’s eyes meet hers. “And what do scientists do when faced with something they can’t explain?”
Tanya felt comforted by Kawanna’s steadying gaze. “They start by trying to rule out any logical explanations.” She nodded slowly. “Okay. I can do that.”
“Of course you can,” Maggie said. “It’s, like, one of your favorite things to do.”
“Brainstorming time! I’ll make a list,” Rebecca volunteered.
Tanya handed over her notebook. “Write it in here.”
Rebecca clicked her mechanical pencil. “Okay, ready. What have we got?”
Everyone was quiet for a moment, thinking. “I have an idea,” Maggie said. “Do you guys remember that baby doll I had in kindergarten? It had an open mouth, and they sold these little packets of food you could mix so you could actually feed it.”
“I remember that,” Rebecca said. “Didn’t you end up having to throw it away because you forgot to clean it and it got all moldy inside?”
Maggie waved her hand dismissively. “That’s beside the point.” She leaned forward and pointed to the notebook. “But Mary Rose could be one of those kinds of dolls, right? That would explain the disappearing blood. Put that on the list.” Rebecca diligently made it the first bullet point.
“I don’t think it’s like that,” Tanya said slowly. “This doll seemed really old.” She shivered. “With its creepy porcelain face and weird sausage-curl hair.”
“Yeah, but I’m sure my doll wasn’t the first to be the kind you can feed, right?” Maggie said.
“That’s right,” Kawanna said. “Even as far back as the 1930s there were dolls that worked like that. My mother used to talk about her first Betsy Wetsy doll. She said you could give it bottles of water and then later change its diapers.”
“So it was basically a doll that just peed all the time?” Maggie asked, mystified. “Why would anyone want a peeing doll?”
Rebecca piped in. “So. Action item: research the doll. Get a closer look. Find out its history. Got it. Okay, what else?”
Ethan looked down and toyed with the hem of his black T-shirt. “There’s still the possibility that the doll is actually haunted by something,” he said quietly.
“You’re right,” Rebecca said. She added haunted doll to the list. “Is there a way to test that? Some experiment we could do?” She looked at Tanya. When Tanya didn’t say anything, Rebecca prodded her gently. “What about that book that Ethan lent you? Maybe there’s something in there?”
Tanya’s mind felt slow and mushy. A part of her had been hoping her friends would tell her that all of her fears were just in her imagination. That there was no way the dreams could possibly have any link to her babysitting. But instead, here they were, making lists like a doll coming to life was a totally plausible thing to happen. Was everything she had ever learned about the world just totally meaningless? Were there really no rules at all? She closed her eyes. It was all too much.
Clio and her aunt exchanged a look. “Let’s forget Kira and the doll for a second. When did you start having these bad dreams?”
“A few weeks ago,” Tanya answered. “I don’t remember the exact date, but I recorded them all in the notebook.”
Rebecca flipped through the pages, scanning each one quickly. “It looks like it was just under two weeks ago.” Her eyes narrowed as she took a closer look at Tanya’s notes. “In between your entries about the dreams you have a lot of notes about the shards we found from the Night Queen’s mirror. Did your dreams begin at the same time you started investigating the mirror?”
“No,” Tanya said. “I’ve been studying the mirror pieces since before Christmas, but the dreams started more recently.”
“Hmm,” Kawanna said. “And the Night Queen isn’t in any of your dreams?”
“No,” Tanya replied. “That’s the weird part. The two don’t seem to be connected at all.”
“I mean, there has to be some kind of connection,” Clio said. “It’s just too much of a coincidence otherwise.” She paused and took a bite of her jelly doughnut while she thought. “Has anything strange happened with the mirror? Even something little, like you caught a flash of something, or one of your experiments had an unexpected result?”
“The only unexpected thing is that I haven’t discovered anything from the shards at all, not even when I thought I would. A rock would react more than those stupid mirror pieces.”
“Well, let’s put it on the list anyway.” Rebecca added it to the list of bullet points in the notebook. “I don’t like the idea of those shards sitting around where someone can find them,” she added. “Sure, they haven’t done anything so far, but I still think they could be dangerous.” She grimaced. “And they’ve been in your room for more than a month. If I had something of the Night Queen’s in my room for that long, I bet I would start having nightmares, too.”
“Yeah, I think we should get rid of them just to be on the safe side,” Clio agreed.
“How?” Maggie asked. “It’s not like we can just throw them in the trash or something.”
Clio looked at Ethan. “Any ideas?”
“Maybe,” Ethan said. “I gotta do some more research.”
Kawanna stood up. “While you’re at school today, I’ll check the books in Miss Pearl’s collection here and see what I can find.” She stacked the empty teacups and picked up the silver tea tray. “So, do we have a plan?”
Rebecca looked back at her notes. “Mostly. We’ll see what we can find out about this Mary Rose doll, check out Ethan’s collection of books about haunted stuff, and research anything we can find about how to properly dispose of an evil mirror. So, as much as that can be considered a plan, then I guess we have a plan.”
Maggie made a face. “Why do our plans always seem to involve reading? Can’t we ever have a plan that makes us go shopping? Or give someone a makeover? Nope, it’s always just dusty old books!”
“There is something I need help with, and it has nothing to do with books,” Tanya said.
Maggie leaned forward. “Ooh, what is it?”
“I don’t really want to babysit at Mrs. Fogelman’s house by myself anymore,” Tanya began. The others nodded in agreement. “And Kira’s a little bit more of a girly-girl type than I am. And she’s kind of hard to read sometimes. I told her all about you, and she wants to meet you. Maybe you could come with me the next time I babysit?”
Maggie looked surprised. “You want me to come help?”
“Well, yeah,” Tanya said. “You know I’m not the most outgoing person in the world. And you’re always the one who makes us laugh, so you’re the perfect person to help get Kira out of her shell. And maybe distract her from Mary Rose.” Tanya stood and picked up her backpack. “And also, like, investigate Mary Rose. Because I still don’t want to go near that thing.”
Maggie shrugged. “Works for me. I still have, like, a million American Girl dolls, so how scary can one more doll be?”
Tanya’s smile was grim. “Trust me. You have no idea.”
CHAPTER
9
MAGGIE AND TANYA checked their phones one more time as they walked down the sidewalk to Mrs. Fogelman’s house. It was a raw, soggy afternoon, and both girls had wool hats pulled down tightly over their ears. Droplets of water clung to the red curls that spilled out of Maggie’s fluffy angora beanie, and Tanya’s breath came out in clouds from between the folds of the scarf she had pulled up over her nose to keep it from going numb.
“Ethan and Rebecca are checking Moina’s old papers to look for anything about haunted dolls, and Clio and Kawanna are seeing what they can find out about getting rid of the mirror,” Tanya reported as she read from her screen.
“Cool,” Maggie said. “We can leave all that boring junk to them, while we get all the fun stuff. What if the doll’s eyes go all red, and it’s like, ‘YOU WILL NOT LEAVE THIS HOUSE ALIVE’? That’s what always happens in the movies.”
“Don’t joke about that,” Tanya said, surprised at the
sharpness in her voice. Having Maggie with her did feel better, but it wasn’t enough to take Tanya’s fear away.
“Sorry,” Maggie said. “I’m just trying to lighten the mood.”
“No, I’m sorry for snapping at you. It’s not your fault,” Tanya said. “It’s just that nothing has ever really scared me before, and I guess I don’t like it.”
“Well, I’m scared pretty much always, and joking about it is actually one of the things that keeps me from running away screaming most of the time.”
Tanya nodded thoughtfully. “Okay. Good to know.” She tapped Maggie on the arm. “Hey, we should get some pictures of Mary Rose, too. We might be able to use them to find out more about where she came from.”
“Got it.” Suddenly Maggie brightened. “I have an idea! Maybe we could pretend we have to do a research project on heirlooms for our history class, and we can ask Mrs. Fogelman to tell us about how the doll came into her family.”
“That’s not a bad plan,” Tanya said. “If we can get Mrs. Fogelman to sit down long enough to talk to us. She basically jets straight out to her studio the second I arrive.”
“Well, that’s because she hasn’t met me yet,” Maggie quipped. “I am a profoundly charming individual, you know!”
Tanya laughed. “You wish!” She opened the front gate and led Maggie up the steps to the porch.
Mrs. Fogelman opened the door almost immediately. “Perfect timing! I was just telling Kira that you would be arriving any minute.” Her silver-streaked hair was twisted into a braid and coiled at the nape of her neck, and she wore a handmade, plum-colored poncho over paint-splattered jeans. She was barefoot.
“Great,” Tanya answered. “This is my friend Maggie. I told you she’d be coming with me today. She’s a babysitter, too.”
Mrs. Fogelman shook Maggie’s hand, gripping it tightly. Maggie winced as the artist’s silver and turquoise rings dug into her fingers. “It’s lovely to meet you,” Mrs. Fogelman said. “What beautiful hair you have, like a girl in a Renoir painting.” She reached out and touched Maggie’s curls. Maggie shot Tanya a secret See, I told you so! smirk, and Tanya grinned. “Do come in,” Mrs. Fogelman continued. “I’m sure Kira will be thrilled to have another friend around, especially with so many demands on my time tonight.” She picked up a flyer from the side table near the door and handed it to Tanya. “I’m attending a poetry reading this evening at the library, and Kira absolutely refused to come along. I’ll leave straight from my studio around six, and I should be home by ten.”
