by Anya Allyn
Dr. Sharma gazed at the drawing. “What does it mean?”
“I don’t know.” Molly inhaled deeply. “All I know is that it means she’s in the service of the serpent for eternity.”
“You keep calling the alien a serpent.” Dr. Blakeney shook his head. “These are not serpents. They are not the stuff of myths and legends. These are alien beings the like we’ve never before seen on earth.”
“How do you know?” Molly challenged him. “How do you know they haven’t been here before? Legends and myths must come from somewhere, right?”
He adjusted his glasses. “True, but they are rarely based on anything factual. We’re not to believe that these aliens caused the last ice age, are we?” His voice grew thin, mocking.
“No one is saying that,” said Molly quickly.
I straightened, leveling my gaze at Dr. Blakeney. “I know for certain that at least one of them has been here before.”
He raised his eyebrows at me. “How so?”
I paused for a moment. “When I crawled into the cave of the serpent, I came face to face with her. Back then, we only knew of one of them. She didn’t speak, but I saw the hate in her eyes. She knew me. I knew she had watched humans for hundreds of years.”
Dr. Blakeney made an O with his mouth. “I’m afraid that is getting even more fantastical. These aliens simply found their way to earth and are using us as a food source—end of story. There’s no point in inventing stories to explain them.”
Sister Bettina threw her arms into the air. “Did you all hear the girl? The serpent knew her. She is evil. And both of the girls consort with spirits. We must cast them out!”
Sophronia stepped over to the Order with fire in her dark eyes. “You people are insane. Your own Order is headed by a spirit. Leave the girls alone.”
Sister Bettina’s narrow shoulders shook. “Lies! You speak lies!” Her eyes grew large as she stared across the room. A black shadow crept toward us.
The shadow wrapped around the feet of Molly and me.
“You see!” gasped Sister Bettina. “The darkness reclaims them. Evil seeks evil!”
Sophronia’s dark eyes were the last thing I saw as the shadow took Molly and me back to the castle.
10. LAST DAY OF THE DOLLHOUSE
~ETHAN~
Eighteen months ago
Universe 1
The explosion sends me reeling. Glass and tin shatters across my face and body. All I managed to do to the metal wall is just a tiny blackened dent. All I have is cans and jars and oil and matches. It’s not enough. Not nearly enough. I need a blow torch. I need a bloody tank. All I have is one hundred percent of nothing.
There are five girls in there about to die. Five girls who have no damned choice but to drink that evil tea. And I can do nothing for them. The look in Cassie’s eyes when she saw me take the gold and diamonds is a knife blade in my soul. She hates me now. Confusion racks my mind—here at the end, she’s the one whose face is stamped inside me. Pain, sorrow, regret—every freaking human emotion crawls through my veins like barbed wire.
Hacking the oil fumes from my lungs, I stumble down the passage back to the carousel. It refuses to move when I sit in a chariot. My fist slams the center column, smashing into those stupid little green and red light bulbs.
“You let me in,” I bellow. “Jessamine! Jessamine!”
My chest tightens. Unlike the girls, I don’t need to drink that tea to die. My lungs have never been this bad—I feel them filling up with phlegm, squeezing until there’s barely any oxygen. My head hits the floor of the carousel as I gray out.
I wake gasping for air, fighting unconsciousness. Above me, the red and green lights blink, mocking me. My muscles clench. The carousel is turning. Something’s made Jessamine lose control of it. I jump from the platform as it spins to the side of the dollhouse.
I drag myself to my feet. Sounds of the shadow echo down the corridor as I make my way to the bed chamber. Jessamine stands in the dark space of the chamber, almost transparent—her eyes hollow pits. A ghost without energy. Cassie isn’t there—she isn’t one of the dolls lying in their beds. That shadow demon hangs on the ceiling, like a leopard ready to pounce.
Jessamine paces, not seeing me. “I must stay… I must remain. This is my fate. Grandfather told me. Patience.” She stares up at the stone angel. “But I have lost another of my dolls to the serpent. I failed to take care of her. I cannot do this any longer. I must go to Grandfather. If he cannot come to me, is it the right thing that I should find him? I pray you give me an answer.”
Blood drains from my limbs. What does she mean, she lost another doll?
I know the answer and it starts drumming in my head—my mind murderous.
She wails, stepping alongside Philomena. “Precious little doll, if I go, I cannot leave you behind. All of you are my charges, my responsibility. I cannot leave any of you.”
Raising her eyes to the shadow, she bids it downwards. It wraps around the sleeping girls.
I charge inside the chamber. “What are you doing forcing that thing onto them?”
Her dark eyes snap around to me. “You should not have come back here.”
“Why are they sleeping? They were supposed to wait for Cassie and me. Where the hell is Cassie anyway?” I raise my fist to her. “Where the hell is she?”
“If you mean Calliope, she is gone.”
“What do you mean, gone?”
“Exactly what I said. She did what I told her not to do. She willfully traveled to the lair of the serpent and she met her end in this world. That is all I know.”
“No….” My hands are numb as they grab the end of a bed. Despair rattles through my veins like a train. But I refuse to believe it, refuse to believe she’s dead.
“I am leaving, and I am taking them with me.”
“Taking them? Just how do you intend to move them from here?”
“I do not know if I can, but I am going to try. If Henry is able to use the shadow, then surely so can I. I will not abandon my girls… as you did.”
She sends one of the empty beds rearing upright. It slams against me, pinning me against the wall.
“No!” I put my shoulder against the bed frame, but I can’t shift it.
The blackness gathers about the girls again, circling them. Jessamine steps between their beds. The girls are vanishing—like they’re dust being swept away. Jessamine disappears into the blackness and dust.
With a roar I push at the bed again. It topples to the ground. Philomena is the last one still in her bed. I rush through the swirling shadow, trying to reach her. My body is hauled in, sucked into a nether space, a place where nothing exists.
Dust swirls in a vortex. I can’t move my arms and legs.
My mind drifts out of consciousness.
11. THE COMING
I wake on a hard floor. Light streams across me, light from a window. Hazily, I rise, my hand shielding my eyes. I am in a room, an old room—but clean and bright. Breaths come rapidly in my throat. Beyond the window is a day. A day....
It’s a trick of my mind. A dream.
My hands fall heavily against the windowpane. Streets and houses and cars. Sunshine. Noise. Life.
Someone murmurs behind me. A girl lies in the bed. Not the same bed. But it’s Philomena. Still sleeping, but breathing. Alive.
I blunder from the room into a hall. The house contains many bedrooms—every room with drawers upturned and things everywhere. Someone has been desperately searching these rooms for something. In each room, someone has placed one of the girls. They lie with their arms crossed just as they did in the dollhouse. I know that it had to be Jessamine who placed them there like that. I try to figure out where we are, but fail. This isn’t the Fiveash mansion. This house is smack-bang in the middle of a suburb.
Rage bleeds through my brain. If Jessamine was able to bring us here so easily, she could have done it at any time. But she waited until the girls were hours away from death. Until Cassie disappeared. I need to get b
ack to the underground. I need to find her.
A telephone sits on a receiver on a side table. My fingers grip the telephone, bringing it to my ear. The line’s dead.
My head is buzzing and hazy as I make my way to the bottom floor. The house is enormous, filled with furniture from another era, all upturned like the furniture in the rooms. Jessamine stands inside a library, searching through papers inside a heavy desk. She’s looking for something. I know she must have been here before.
She kneels and drums her fingers on the underside of the desk, and makes a series of presses that seem calculated. A small, square drawer springs free. She takes a set of bound papers from the drawer and begins to read, her straw-colored hair in strands around her shoulders.
Soundlessly, I step back. I need to get out of here. Get help. It’s hard to process that I’m here and I’m free. But I need to pull myself together. Do what I need to do—bring help for the girls.
Then go find Cassie.
The doors and windows at the front of the house are locked. I want to smash a window but I don’t want to alert Jessamine. Half a minute later, I change my mind. The girls upstairs can’t wait for me to find my way out of here. They’re dying. I pick up a chair and race towards a window.
I hear the cold click of a gun. A woman in a shawl stands at the right of me, gun pointed directly at me.
“Put that down and place your hands in the air,” she says.
“Is this your house? Lady, all I want is to get out of here.”
“I am Madame Celia. I seek the second book of the Speculum Nemus.”
Her accent is lilting and French. Something about her is not quite right. Parts of her are not distinct. She’s a ghost, like Jessamine. A ghost with a gun.
“I don’t know what the hell that is. But there are four girls upstairs with poison in them. I’m going for help and don’t try to stop me.”
“I am afraid you will not get far with a bullet in you. Do you have the book?”
“Lady, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The woman and I turn at the sight of Jessamine. She steps into the foyer, papers in her fist.
“It is you, ma chérie,” says the woman in surprise. “Jessamine.”
“How did you find your way here?” Jessamine tilts her chin like a petulant little kid.
“I warned you, child. I told you what would happen if you didn’t heed me. I tried to help you.”
“Why are you here in my grandfather’s house? He would not want you here.”
“I seek the book.” Her light-blue eyes harden. “The second book of the Speculum Nemus. I have gone to great lengths to obtain it… and it pains me deeply to know all I have done."
Jessamine eyes her suspiciously. "What have you done, Madame Celia?"
Madame Celia sighs and shifts her shawl around herself. "Your cousin, Henry, paid a group of rail workers to have a bomb detonate at the next station your train was due to stop at. It was meant to be a diversion in order to gain possession of the book. I found these men and I paid them to place the bomb somewhere else instead—in the middle of a bridge travelling over the gorge.” She gazes toward the floor. ”I am sorry, but I had to do this terrible, terrible thing. I had to try to destroy the book.”
Jessamine grimaces. “You. You are the one that made the train fall from the tracks....”
“I did what I had to do. But it wasn’t enough. I must finish what I set out to do. I must have the second book.” She steps toward Jessamine. “What do you hold in your hand, ma chérie?”
“Just some old writing. It’s nothing.”
The woman’s eyes sharpen. “You cannot trick me. I am too old. You have the translations for the second book—I can feel it.”
“No! I won’t give them to you to destroy. With these I can find my way to Grandfather. And I might see Daddy again. You once said you wanted to help me, Madame Celia? Then you must stand back and let me go.”
“Child, I cannot do that. You do not understand the forces contained in those writings. You cannot control them. Give them to me. And then go where you should have gone when you died. Go to your papa. Let the light take you.”
“I cannot go to Daddy as I am—a mere spirit. I am to return to life—the life I had before my father died.”
“Don’t you understand, ma chérie?” Her voice softens. “You will return to life. But you will go where God determines you to go. We cannot choose this ourselves. Our minds cannot grasp the order of the infinite universes.”
Trembling, Jessamine closes her eyes, turmoil showing on her pale face.
I take my chance to back away slowly. Madame Celia’s attention is entirely focused on Jessamine.
A gust of cool wind blows through the room. Henry and a blonde woman stride down the stairs. I know the woman—she danced with me at the Feast of Fools. Her name is Audette. A cruel smile curls into Henry’s mouth.
Shock travels through me as I realize this Henry is not the Henry that I tracked through the mountains of Devils Hole. This Henry is a ghost and so is Audette. I understand now that this Henry lived back in the time of Jessamine and Madame Celia.
“Madame Celia.” Henry gives a curt bow of his head. “We seem to keep bumping into each other.”
“Henry.” Her voice is curt with a barely perceptible edge of fear.
“You know why we’re here,” he tells her.
“And you know why we’re here.”
“We?” he turns and looks from side to side. “I see no one except my crazy little cousin, an old woman who should know better, and a boy.” He scrutinizes me. “The boy from Jessamine’s dollhouse.... why on earth is he here?”
“He must have come through with my girls. He wasn’t wanted,” says Jessamine stiffly.
Henry arches his eyebrows nonchalantly. “It is of no consequence. I see the gray shadow of death on him. He doesn’t have long. And we saw the girls upstairs already—they are even closer to death’s door.” His eyes shadow as he mentions the girls, as though he is conflicted about the fact they are dying.
“It’s about time those little brats finally died.” Audette rolls her eyes. “All those years we had to pay that idiot Henry to keep them.”
“No!” Jessamine glowers at Henry. “They will sleep and then they will wake.”
Audette places her hands on her hips and gives a sharp laugh. “They’ll wake all right—into the next life. If you imagine they’re going to choose to stay behind with you, you’ve got bats in your belfry.”
Heat prickles my temples at Audette’s words. I struggle for breath, as though I am sucking oxygen through a straw. “What did you people want from them? Why the hell did you keep them in that place?”
Audette’s eyes flicker over me. “Well... I never could keep a secret from a handsome male... even a scrawny, dying one. You see, we did a deal with the serpent....”
Henry casts her a warning glance and she plunges into silence.
Madame Celia edges towards Jessamine, her hand outstretched. “Chérie,” she whispers “do what is right.”
Henry raises his hands and sends Madame Celia flying along the floor. She hits the far wall and lies there, slumped. He fixes an intent expression on Jessamine. “Show me what you have there, cousin. It looks like you found what I could not. But then, it makes perfect sense the old bastard would trust you with his secrets. You always were his perfect little angel.”
It’s the first time I’ve seen such anger on Jessamine’s face. She stands her ground, her eyes narrowed. “You spoke of a bargain with the serpent once, before you brought me my girls. But you never told me the bargain was to do with the girls.”
“It’s of no consequence now,” says Henry.
“I won’t give Grandfather’s work to you.”
“I’m not playing little-girl games.” His face grows ugly. Closing his eyes, he seems to concentrate all his energy. He raises Jessamine up into the air. Wind swirls around her, fast and whistling. My chest sinks as the papers ar
e snatched from her hands, lost to the flurry of air. Soundlessly, she falls to her knees. The set of papers lie loose on the floor around her.
Satisfaction snakes across Henry’s features as he snatches up the set of papers. I want to stop him. I know I can’t. I don’t know what this book is—all I know is that he’s the last person who should have it.
Jessamine picks herself up, her pose rigid and her fists clenched.
He shuffles through the papers impatiently. “Everything is out of order now. And what's here is but a chapter. Where's the rest?”
“Henry Fiveash,” Jessamine accuses, “all the time you were supposed to be looking after me, you were chasing after Grandfather, weren’t you? It is you who prevented Grandfather from returning to me.”
“His face turns ugly. “It’s not my fault you were a gullible little girl. Your grandfather oughtn’t have kept you as innocent as he did. And I have news for you. My name isn't Fiveash, and neither is yours. We're Batistes. Your grandfather hid the truth from you. He can't be trusted. Now where’s the book, Jessamine? It must be where you found the papers?”
“I don't believe you. It's you telling nasty fibs. And there was nothing else. He must have taken it with him, wherever he went.”
Henry storms into the office and finds the hidden drawer—it still hangs open beneath the desk. With a yell he heaves the desk over. “Where is it?” He returns to the foyer, fury mottling his skin.
“I’m tired of this fox-and-rabbit chase.” Audette yawns. “It can’t be that hard to get one book from one old man.”
Henry glares at her. “Well if the vaguest clue should ever pop into that cotton-wool brain of yours on just how we should do that, let me know.”
Audette crosses her arms.
The sound of splintering wood crashes behind us.
I spin around. Twenty or more men and women burst into the room. Most are old, and their eyes blaze with fervor. A couple of them seem to be ghosts, but the rest are human. One of the women rushes to the supine form of Madame Celia. The rest surround Henry.
