What Lies Below

by Mark Lukens

  But there was no mistaking these dolls—they were the same two dolls she had seen in her dreams, the same two dolls that she had played with as a child, the same two dolls that belonged to that doll house down in the basement.

  Why were they so muddy? Had they been buried? Who had dug them up? And who had put them in the bed with her?

  There were only three other people in the house who could’ve done it: Rita, Maria, or Sarah.

  She would start with Sarah. Maybe Sarah was still upset at Pam for yelling at her and grabbing her arm yesterday, and maybe she wanted to play a trick on her by leaving some old dolls in bed with her.

  Pam got dressed and headed for the bedroom door. She left the dolls on the bed just where she’d found them. She wanted to bring each person back to her bedroom so they could see the dolls, and then Pam wanted to gauge their reaction.

  She hurried to Sarah’s room and woke her daughter up. She told her to get dressed and meet her in the kitchen for breakfast.

  After that, she went to her dad’s room and asked Maria if she could step away from Carl for a moment so they could all meet down in the kitchen. Maria said that she would be down in a few moments—she needed to give Carl his medication first.

  Ten minutes later, Pam met with Sarah, Maria, and Rita in the kitchen. Rita had just begun preparations for breakfast, but Pam asked her to wait for a few moments because she had something really important to discuss.

  Both women stiffened like they were preparing to be scolded.

  Good, Pam thought. She was certain one of these two women had snuck into her bedroom and put those dolls into the bed with her; she really didn’t think her daughter had done it, but she couldn’t rule her out yet.

  Pam took a deep breath and told them what happened. “Someone snuck into my room sometime last night or early this morning and put two Barbie dolls in my bed with me.”

  Both women looked confused.

  “Both dolls were muddy and dirty,” Pam continued. “It was like maybe they’d been buried and then dug back up.”

  Rita and Maria looked even more confused, but they didn’t say anything.

  “Maybe it would be easier if I showed you.”

  Pam led all of them up to her bedroom. She walked to her bed and then stopped in her tracks as she stared at her bed. The dolls were gone. She darted to her bed and pulled the covers all the way off the bed, shaking them to make sure the dolls weren’t hidden somewhere inside the folds. She dropped down to her hands and knees and looked underneath the bed.

  They weren’t there.

  She got up and looked at Rita, Maria, and Sarah.

  They all looked more confused now than ever, and wary of her at the same time.

  “They were here,” Pam told them. “Two Barbie dolls. My Barbie dolls I had when I was a child. I’d forgotten all about them until yesterday when I went down to the basement and saw my old dollhouse. I used to play with the dolls and the house when I was …”

  Pam stopped and let her words trail off. She realized that she sounded like she was babbling.

  “Someone put those dolls in my bed while I was sleeping … and then … someone must have taken them away again while I was … while I was …”

  Rita took a step forward, her face scrunching in concern. “Miss Pam, maybe you need some more rest. I’ll get some clean sheets for you.”

  “No,” Pam barked. “I want the evidence on those sheets.”

  Rita froze.

  Then Pam looked at Sarah and saw the fear on her face. Sarah’s expression said: My mom is losing it.

  Pam sighed and nodded at Rita. “I’m sorry, Rita. Please, take the sheets.”

  “Yes, Miss Pam.”

  Rita went to work gathering the sheets up into her arms. She seemed relieved to have something to do.

  “I need to go check on your father,” Maria said.

  Pam looked at Maria and nodded at her, dismissing her. For a second, they locked eyes and Pam suspected Maria of putting the dolls there and then somehow taking them away. She would’ve had the chance—she was the last one down to the kitchen. But why would she do something like that?

  After Maria left the room, Pam walked over to Sarah and gave her a hug.

  “Are you okay, Mommy?”

  “Yes, sweetie. I’m sorry if I scared you.”

  Rita rushed out of the room with the balled-up sheets in her arms. “Breakfast will be ready in about a half hour or so,” she called over her shoulder and then hurried out of the room.

  But before Rita left, Pam saw the expression of fear on her face. It was the same expression she had seen on Maria’s face for a moment before she’d left the room. She imagined it was the same expression they wore when they were at her father’s bedside as he babbled about something, demanding that something was true, and they patiently tried to explain what was really going on.

  And what was really going on?

  Had she imagined the dolls in the bed with her?

  She hadn’t imagined the dirt and mud all over the sheets. All of them had seen that.

  So what did that mean? Did that mean that she had gotten up in the middle of the night and dug around in the dirt outside? Had she been looking for her dolls? Had she buried them somewhere outside when she was a child, and now she was looking for them in her sleep?

  Pam looked at Sarah in the eyes. “Baby, I need to ask you something.”

  Sarah nodded.

  “Did you maybe play a trick on Mommy and put two dolls in my bed? You won’t be in any trouble, I swear. I just want to know the truth.”

  “No, Mommy.” Sarah’s eyes began to well up with tears.

  Pam hugged her daughter again. “You’re not in any trouble, Sarah. None at all.”

  “I swear I didn’t put any dolls in your bed,” Sarah said into Pam’s shoulder as she held on to her mother.

  “It’s okay, honey,” Pam said and then let her go.

  Pam stood up again. She was sure Sarah was telling her the truth about the dolls. That left only Rita and Maria. Rita had been working here for over twenty years as the housekeeper, and Pam found it hard to believe she would do something like this.

  That only left a few possibilities. Maria had done it, but Pam didn’t know why she would. Another possibility that came to her was the old man she’d seen in the woods. Maybe he had come inside their house and left the dolls for her. But no, there was no way the man could’ve gotten inside the house without the alarm system going off.

  If that old man had really been there, Pam reminded herself.

  Another possibility that was frightening was that she had imagined the dolls being there. Maybe she had walked in her sleep and went outside last night, digging in the dirt and flowers, looking for her dolls. Or maybe she had been looking for a golden key. Maybe her dreams had triggered a sleepwalking episode.

  But then another thought occurred to her.

  “You want to go help Rita with breakfast?” she asked Sarah. “Maybe she’ll let you crack the eggs.”

  Sarah brightened and wiped away her tears. She nodded.

  “Go ahead and help her,” Pam told her. “I’ll be down in a few minutes.”

  Her daughter bolted out of the room, and it pained Pam to see the same expression of relief on her daughter’s face that Rita and Maria had had.

  She rushed over to her now-bare bed and sat down. She lifted up her bare feet and inspected the bottoms of them. No dirt or mud anywhere. She checked her slippers and shoes, no mud on them either. She inspected her hands, her fingernails—no dirt or mud caked underneath the nails. If she had been sleepwalking and digging around in the dirt, then there would be dirt on her hands and feet. And on the carpet.

  But maybe she cleaned the dirt off in her sleep. Was it so impossible to believe? If she’d been sleepwalking and digging in the dirt, she could’ve been sleepwalking when she cleaned up.

  She really needed to talk to Dr. Stanton right now. But she didn’t want to do it here in the house—she di
dn’t want to take the chance of being overheard on the phone. She would call and make a quick appointment to talk to him on the phone this afternoon. She would drive into town so she could be alone to talk to him.

  Dr. Stanton would know what to do.

  Right now she needed to write everything down in her journal while all the details were fresh in her mind. And she wanted to write down the images she’d seen in her dreams over and over again: the dolls, the flowers, the gold key, the white sheet, the scratching noises and the whispers. They had to mean something.

  She grabbed her leather-bound notebook and opened it. She jotted everything down so quickly that her handwriting was scrawled, like her mind was moving faster than she could write. As she wrote, she felt the memories trying to surface in her mind.

  Burying the dolls.

  Had she buried her dolls when she was a child?

  Why would she do that?

  There was something important trapped in her memories, she was sure of it. Maybe Dr. Stanton would tell her what to do.

  FIFTEEN

  After breakfast, Pam called Dr. Stanton’s personal cell number. He had given his number to her before she left for her father’s house in case of an emergency.

  And this was an emergency.

  He called back thirty minutes later. She explained to him on the phone that she really needed to talk to him. He told her that he had another patient coming in soon, but he could spare some time about four o’clock this afternoon. She breathed out a sigh of relief. That would be perfect.

  After the phone call, Pam spent a few hours playing with Sarah in the backyard. As they played, Pam kept an eye out, checking the shrubs and other areas, looking to see if the dirt had been disturbed anywhere. She still hadn’t ruled out a sleepwalking episode, even though it seemed far-fetched.

  It was after lunch when Pam went up to see her father. Maria left the bedroom so Pam could be alone with him.

  Carl lay in his gigantic bed as usual. Only once had she seen him sitting up, and that had been when he’d sat on the edge of the bed and whispered to Sarah, whispering about the secret that they shared.

  Well, that was the only time she’d seen him out of bed unless she counted the time he’d been standing at the window.

  If that had been real.

  Pam still felt a little ashamed that she had blown up at Sarah and her father yesterday when they’d been sitting beside each other on the bed. She was sure that it was just an innocent game that her father had been playing with Sarah for years, and now Sarah wanted to continue with it. Perhaps Sarah didn’t completely understand that Grandpa wasn’t always in his right mind anymore. Sarah was so smart for her age that sometimes Pam had to remind herself that she was only eight years old, still a child in so many ways.

  Pam sat down in the chair next to her father’s bed.

  It seemed like Carl was awake even though his eyes were closed. His eyeballs shifted back and forth rapidly underneath his eyelids. He was mumbling something to himself, but she couldn’t make out too many of the words. Both of his arms were above the covers, an IV tube in one of them, and he was moving his hands a little, wiggling his fingers as he mumbled.

  “Hi, Dad,” Pam said.

  Carl didn’t answer or even acknowledge that she was there—he just mumbled some more.

  Pam wasn’t really sure if she should talk to her father like he was still in his right mind. She had seen Rita talking to him like he was still the same old Mr. Westbrook that she had worked for all these years. Well, not really. Rita was a little less formal with him these days.

  Maybe I should try to have a normal conversation with him, she thought.

  “It’s a nice day outside. I was just out there with Sarah. We were playing. Running around in the backyard. We took the rowboat out to the pond yesterday and Sarah had a good time.”

  More mumbling from Carl. He didn’t open his eyes or stop wiggling his fingers.

  Pam sighed. Her words didn’t seem to be getting through to her father today. She watched him for a moment, and his eyes opened just a little, and now she understood his words perfectly as he stared at her with milky blue eyes.

  “… Girl M …”

  She leaned forward.

  Girl M. That was one of the chapter titles in the blue book—one of the case studies. It meant something, she was sure of it.

  “Who was Girl M?” Pam asked.

  Carl just mumbled some more and turned his head the other way.

  Pam had already read the case study of Girl M. It was a case where Carl had put a young girl into a deep hypnosis to help her deal with a traumatic experience she’d had in her past—that was it. But she couldn’t help feeling like there was more to this case than just what was in the book.

  She asked her father again, but he wasn’t responding now. He mumbled something about a man named Dr. Wainwright, and then something about a lunch meeting and a round of golf.

  Pam sighed and sat back in her chair. She had lost her father again. She was about to get up and head into town so she could call Dr. Stanton at four o’clock, but her dad’s next words froze her.

  “Did you find the dolls?”

  She stared down at her father on the bed who had turned back to look at her. His eyes were wide open now and staring right at her. He seemed fully coherent now. Those ice-blue eyes of his brought her right back to her childhood. Those piercing eyes could pin her to her seat, those eyes could scare the hell out of her, those eyes could make her cry.

  But she wasn’t a child anymore. She was an adult now. She was in control. She wouldn’t be bullied by her father.

  “What did you just say?” she whispered.

  He smiled, but it was a mean smile, a vicious and thin slash of a smile. And he sat up a little in his bed, resting his thin frame up on his bony elbows. “The dolls … she left them for you, didn’t she?”

  Pam felt like she couldn’t breathe for a moment, but she forced herself to ask him the next question. “Who left the dolls for me?”

  “You know who. It was your mother. I told you she was back. I told you she’s here in this house.”

  “No … that’s not true, Dad. You’re just … just mixed up, that’s all.”

  Carl lay back down in the bed and turned his head towards the windows and began mumbling again. “You’ll see,” he said. “You’ll see.” And then his words turned to gibberish.

  “Dad?”

  But he wasn’t responding now.

  Pam left her father’s bedroom in a hurry.

  SIXTEEN

  Pam found Rita and Sarah in the kitchen.

  “Rita’s going to let me help make dinner,” Sarah said with a huge grin on her face.

  “That’s great, honey,” Pam said and she forced a smile on her face even though she was still in a mild state of shock from the conversation she’d had with her father. She hoped she was fooling her daughter, but she could tell she wasn’t fooling Rita.

  “Everything okay?” Rita asked Pam.

  “Uh, yeah. Could I talk to you for a second outside?”

  “Of course, Miss Pam.”

  “We’ll be just a minute,” Pam told Sarah who continued snapping the ends off of green beans.

  Pam and Rita stepped out onto the back patio and closed the French doors.

  “Are you okay?” Rita asked.

  “I don’t know,” Pam answered. “I was just up there with my dad. He was saying some … some crazy things.”

  Rita just nodded, her face solemn now.

  “He told me that my mother was back. He told me that she was here in the house. He seems so … so convinced of it.”

  Rita just stared at Pam, and there was a trace of alarm in her eyes.

  “I know this is going to sound crazy,” Pam said, and she could tell Rita was bracing herself. Rita had already seen Pam acting crazy this morning, and she was preparing herself for the second round. “Is there any possibility that my mom came back here, maybe in the last few years to visit my
dad, and maybe he never told me about it? Or maybe he didn’t want me to know.”

  Rita shook her head no almost violently. “No, Miss Pam. Not that I know of.”

  “You’re absolutely sure? If he didn’t want you to tell me, I want you to know that’s okay to tell me now.”

  “Yes, Miss Pam. Of course I would tell you. But I’ve lived here at this house for almost twenty-five years and I’ve never seen your mother since—”

  Pam nodded as Rita stopped her sentence short.

  Since she left me when I was eight years old, Pam finished Rita’s sentence in her mind.

  “Your father, he gets mixed up now,” Rita said. “Sometimes he thinks it’s still twenty or thirty years ago.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  Rita smiled again, but it was a nervous smile. She seemed antsy to get back inside.

  “I’m sorry I snapped at you this morning and accused you of putting those dolls in my bed.”

  Rita just nodded again and smiled politely.

  “I would never think that you would do something like that, I just wanted you there. I really suspected Maria at first, but now I’m wondering if I had just imagined them there. I’ve been having bad nightmares for the last few months. I might have walked in my sleep. If you ever see me walking in my sleep, please wake me up.”

  Rita nodded, but she looked a little nervous at that prospect.

  “Maria wouldn’t play a prank like that on me, would she?” Pam asked. She had asked the question quickly to catch Rita off guard and gauge her reaction, an old psychiatry trick of her dad’s.

  “I don’t think so, Miss Pam. I barely know her. She’s only been here for two months now.”

  “And these other home health care nurses who have quit …” Pam asked her.

  Rita sighed, her expression telling Pam that they had already been over this.

  But Pam wasn’t ready to let it go.

  “You don’t think Maria might have run these other nurses off, do you?” Pam asked her.

  Rita shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

  But Pam didn’t really believe her.