Among the Dolls

by William Sleator

  “Now!” said the mother. “If only Ganglia would come down out of her room we’d all be here for this momentous occasion.”

  “G-Ganglia?” said Vicky, horrified. “That isn’t the sister’s name, is it? It couldn’t be!”

  “And why not!” snapped the mother. “You never bothered to give us names. We had to do it ourselves. And Ganglia,” she went on, snickering, “suits her personality perfectly.”

  “It does not!” shrieked a voice from the doorway. “Not one bit! Your name should be Ganglia.”

  “Do not speak that way to your mother,” said the aunt.

  “You can’t tell me what to do, you old goat. I’ll talk any way I want,” said the sister doll as she flounced into the room. Flouncing came easily to her, for she was made of rubber and could move her arms and legs in any direction. Vicky had spent hours putting her through grotesque contortions, leaving her tied up in knots for days at a time, lying helplessly in the middle of the dining room table while the others stared at her placidly over empty teacups.

  “Look who’s here,” said the mother.

  “I know,” Ganglia said, plopping down at the table. She turned to look at Vicky, her one eye glittering. (The other had fallen out weeks ago.) Over the years, the cracks covering her face had filled with black grime; and now they twisted into a kind of smile. “Yes, I know who she is all right.”

  “She is powerless now,” said the aunt.

  “Exactly,” the mother said. “Very well put, Diadama.”

  They were all staring at her except the brother, who was still looking at his plate. “But I don’t understand,” said Vicky, growing more and more uneasy as she looked from one malevolent gaze to another. “I didn’t think you were like … like this. Why are you looking at me so strangely?”

  “You should understand,” said the aunt. “It is you, after all, who has made us what we are.”

  Chapter Four

  Vicky was running up the stairs. Behind her she could hear the shouting and confusion caused by her sudden departure from the dining room. Fortunately, none of the dolls could move as quickly as she, for they were all quite stiff except for Ganglia, who kept tripping over her own feet.

  Made them what they are? Vicky wondered as she hurried through the shadows, barking her shins continually on the steep steps. What did that mean?

  She was panting by the time she dashed into the playroom. She had entered the dollhouse through this room, and without thinking about it she had assumed that it might be the way to escape. But how? she wondered frantically. It was far too high to jump; and there was no way to climb down. She could hear the dolls on the stairs below her, arguing in high-pitched voices. And then the gigantic door in the distance swung open, and her mother stepped into the room.

  “Mother!” Vicky screamed, “Mother, help me! I’m here, in the dollhouse.”

  “Vicky?” her mother said crossly, looking around the room, and for a moment Vicky thought she had heard her. But her mother’s eyes swept past the dollhouse as if it weren’t there.

  “Mother!” she screamed again. “Here! Over here! Oh, help me! In the dollhouse, I’m in the dollhouse!”

  Casually, her mother bent down to pick up a shoe lying in the middle of the floor. She tossed it in the direction of the closet, then moved toward the dollhouse.

  “Mother, I’m here!” Vicky kept screaming, jumping up and down and waving her arms. She could hear the dolls getting closer, Ganglia’s squeals rising above the other voices. But her mother, staring abstractedly down at the house from her great height, noticed nothing. In a moment, she walked briskly out of the room.

  Vicky dropped her arms to her sides, tears streaming down her cheeks. The dolls were just outside the door now. There was nowhere to go, so she simply sank to her knees in the middle of the floor, helpless, as the dolls clattered into the room. They seemed relieved to see her there.

  “Look!” Ganglia shrieked, her arms flailing as she staggered to a stop. “She’s crying!”

  “Why, so she is,” said the father, with a nervous titter. His voice was muffled and thick, as though his mouth were full of cotton, which it was.

  “Well …” said the mother, nodding. They stood in a group, watching her.

  Vicky wiped her eyes. “I … I want to get out,” she said. “And my mother came into the room, but … but she couldn’t even see me, or hear me.” Her eyes filled with tears again.

  “No, of course she couldn’t,” said the mother doll. “You’re in our world now. You probably just looked like another doll to her.”

  “And it is no use trying to get out,” said the aunt. “It is no use. There is a barrier.”

  “Barrier?” said Vicky. “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, when you were out there you could take us in and out, of course,” said the mother. “But no one inside the house can get out on his own.”

  “You mean I have to stay here forever?” Vicky gasped.

  “Does she?” said Ganglia.

  Suddenly the dolls were clustered together, muttering secretively to one another. “How long … Did it ever … Your fault … No! No! I tell you it … Have to … only thing … But why … Yes! I insist … Will she … Small and helpless … Big surprise … .”

  At last they stepped apart. “I don’t have to stay here forever, do I?” Vicky asked again, terrified.

  “Perhaps you do and perhaps you don’t,” said the mother, with a toss of her head that sent several pink hairs fluttering to the floor.

  “But …,” said Vicky, beginning to cry again, “But … .”

  “Oh, stop it!” said Ganglia, stamping her foot so hard that her leg bent double and she almost tipped over. Righting herself, she put her hands on her hips and glared at Vicky. “It won’t do you any good to keep blubbering like that. It’s getting sickening. You’ll find out sooner or later. And what’s wrong with being here, anyway?” She stretched out her neck toward Vicky.

  “Quimbee. Dandaroo,” the mother said, turning to the father and brother and nodding at them meaningfully. “Remember what we decided. It’s time now.”

  “Hmmm, yes, yes I suppose it is,” mumbled the father. “Come, Dandaroo.” The brother followed him reluctantly out of the room.

  “Time for what?” Vicky asked, wondering if it had anything to do with her.

  “It’s not time for anything,” snapped the mother.

  “None of your business,” Ganglia said quickly.

  “One does not ask one’s hostess such questions,” said the aunt.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Vicky said, now even more curious, but afraid to ask them anything else.

  “Well, don’t you want to see the rest of the house?” Ganglia said suddenly.

  “I … I guess so.”

  “Well, come on, then.”

  She followed Ganglia out of the room, to the stairway. And there, at the very top of the stairs, was a narrow doorway that, since the landing was very small and dark, she had never noticed before.

  Though still rather numb with fear and confusion, Vicky was nevertheless surprised. “Hey,” she said, stopping. “I never knew that doorway was there. Where does it go?”

  The aunt and the mother were rustling behind her. “It goes nowhere,” said the mother, suddenly pushing her across the landing to the room beyond. “It’s just an artifice. There’s nothing behind it. Ganglia, show her the bedrooms. We have to go talk to Quimbee and Dandaroo, downstairs.” She said this last word with great significance, and then started downstairs with the aunt, as Ganglia pulled Vicky into the room.

  The bedrooms were across the stairs from the playroom. There were only two of them, and they were small, having been made by dividing a room the size of the playroom in half.

  “This is where me and Dandaroo go to bed,” Ganglia said, still walking, as though in a hurry to get Vicky into the further bedroom. “As if you didn’t know it. Why did you put that oaf in here with me anyway? I wish I had my own room.”

  “Bu
t there were only two bedrooms,” Vicky explained, trying to think clearly. “And so one had to be yours and the other one your parents’.”

  “Well, you could have put one of these beds in the playroom, couldn’t you, and made that my room?” Ganglia paused to think. “Then I’d have the biggest bedroom of all, and all the toys too.”

  “Uh, maybe I’ll do that, when I … I mean, if I ever do get out. In fact,” Vicky went on, growing suddenly hopeful as a brilliant idea occurred to her, “in fact, I promise I will. If you help me get out, I promise I’ll make it your room, and put more toys there too.”

  “Hmmm,” Ganglia said, folding her arms across her chest and letting her one eye rove thoughtfully across the ceiling. “I’ll think about it … .”

  “And if there’s anything else you want, I’ll do that too,” Vicky continued frantically. “Just tell me what it is. If you help me get out, I’ll do it, I promise I will.”

  “I said I’d think about it!” Ganglia shouted, stamping her foot again.

  Vicky shrank away from her. “Okay,” she stammered. “I’m sorry.”

  “Well, you should be! And come on in here,” Ganglia went on impatiently. “Don’t you want to see their room too?”

  The bed in the parents’ room was made of wood with tall, carved posts. There wasn’t room for much else, and though of course she was interested in seeing all of the house, it did seem strange that Ganglia should seem so eager to get her into this room. There was really nothing to do there, but Ganglia slumped down on the bed as if she wanted to stay for awhile, saying, “Why don’t you sit down?”

  Vicky sat as far away from Ganglia as possible. The bed was extremely hard and uncomfortable, she noted with surprise; and then remembered that of course it would be, for there was nothing under the blanket but a block of wood.

  “Not too comfy, is it?” Ganglia said, seeing the look on Vicky’s face.

  “No, I guess it isn’t.”

  “And my bed’s just the same. I’ll bet you never wondered what it felt like to sleep on one of these things, did you?”

  “No, I didn’t,” Vicky admitted. “But … do you really sleep?”

  “No, but we have to lie here for hours, because you make us.”

  “I’m sorry,” Vicky said. “I know I’ve done a lot of things you didn’t like. But how could I know you were alive, that you felt things, that you cared what I did to you? If I’d known, I’m sure I wouldn’t have treated you the same way.”

  “Hmph!” Ganglia snorted. “I’m not so sure.”

  At that moment there was a faint noise from the stairway, as though a door were being opened very carefully. Vicky stood up. “Who’s on the stairs out there?” she said, moving toward the door. “I thought everyone else was downstairs.”

  “They are! They are!” Ganglia cried, leaping from the bed and running to stand in front of the doorway, so that Vicky could not get out of the room.

  “But I heard a noise—”

  “What noise? I didn’t hear any noise. There was no noise.”

  But just then Vicky thought she heard the sound of descending footsteps: one pair like heavy feet trying to be quiet, the other only a soft patter. It was difficult to tell if they were really there, however, for suddenly Ganglia was talking incessantly in her loud, high-pitched voice.

  “Everyone’s downstairs, there’s nobody else up here; you were imagining it. Isn’t that an ugly picture over the bed? Don’t you just hate the wallpaper in here? You’re wearing such a pretty dress; I wish I had a dress like that; I always have to wear the same dress all the time; why don’t you ever change my clothes?”

  And on she babbled, while Vicky stood there, trying, but unable, to hear more. Someone, she was almost sure, had come out of that little doorway at the top of the stairs.

  chapter Five

  They all gathered before dinner in the conservatory.

  “Getting hungry, Vicky?” said the mother, watching her with the expression of amused surprise that never left her face.

  “No, not really.”

  “That’s just as well, because, as you know, there’s nothing in the house to eat. Yet here we sit, preparing to go into the dining room and sit there for no reason, staring idiotically at each other, all just so we can fit into your little scheme of how—”

  “Will you get off!” cried Ganglia. “It’s my seat, I tell you!” She and Dandaroo were fighting over the little ottoman. He had been there first, but now she was sitting on the edge, trying to push him off. Stolidly, looking at the floor, he refused to move, while she kept banging herself against him until her arm was bent all out of shape.

  “But I’m not making you do anything now,” Vicky said to the mother, raising her voice in order to be heard over Ganglia’s grunts and squeals.

  “Yes, but one falls into patterns,” said the mother doll, with a little sigh of resignation. “Even if you didn’t come near us for a month, we’d still be doing this.”

  “We would still be what you have made us,” the aunt said darkly.

  “Yes, we would still be what you have made us,” agreed the mother, nodding, and several glinting hairs drifted down to the oriental rug. Everywhere she went she left little piles of her hair behind her; Vicky had never before noticed how thin it was on the top of her head. “Not,” the mother went on, “that I really mind being this way. I rather enjoy this streak of cruelty you’ve—Ganglia!” she shrieked suddenly, spinning around in her chair and knocking Ganglia to the floor with one quick swipe of her fat arm. “Will you shut up!”

  “But he’s on my chair,” Ganglia wailed, writhing snakelike against the red and blue pattern on the rug.

  “Well … ,” said the mother thoughtfully, “yes, I suppose he is.” Her voice became firm. “Dandaroo, get off her chair this instant.”

  “But,” said Dandaroo in a thin, reedlike voice, “I was here first, and she never decided whose chair was whose in this room.” He looked at Vicky.

  “If Ganglia says it’s hers, it is hers,” declared the mother. She pointed at the door. “To your room.”

  But as he left, still looking, strangely enough, right at her, Vicky almost thought she saw a flicker of expression cross his fading features. It was an expression of resentment, but mingled with pity. But who was he pitying? Could it be her?

  What you have made us. The aunt’s words lingered in her mind as she followed the dolls downstairs to the dining room. She was beginning to understand. The rough and violent things she had made them do had become their personalities. She had created them, and now they were turned against her. She shivered on the dark stairway. What were they going to do to her? So far they hadn’t really done anything, but she could feel a crackle of anticipation in the air, as though some secret plan against her were evolving.

  She stopped walking and, trembling slightly, stood on the stairs and considered running away from them again. But now she knew it would do no good. The only solution was to get out of the house, if only there were some way to do it. She felt tears springing to her eyes at the thought of being caught here forever, but she quickly brushed them away, took a deep breath, and started after the dolls again.

  It was the thought of the doorway at the top of the stairs that kept her from giving way to despair. The mother had said it wasn’t real, but she was almost sure she had heard it open and footsteps coming from it. When Ganglia had finally let her out of the bedroom, she had looked all over the house and found no one new who could have come out of the door.

  So perhaps that was where Quimbee and Dandaroo had gone, and it was their footsteps she had heard. Somehow, she felt that something very important was beyond that door, and she was determined now to get through it. But she had to wait for the right moment. If she tried now, they would stop her, and she dreaded to think what they would do to her then.

  The dining room was on the first floor. Just beyond it she could see her bedroom carpet, stretching hazily off into the distance in the fading afternoon light.
Each thick strand was as high as her knee.

  “So near and yet so far, eh Vicky?” said the mother, noticing her wistful glance. “You could always try just stepping out there, I suppose, if you wanted to spend the rest of your life the size of a doll. It sounds rather amusing at first thought, doesn’t it? But you’d probably get quite tired of things like climbing those huge stairs and fending off cats, and come crawling back to us in the end, I expect.”

  “There is a barrier,” said the aunt.

  “Oh, yes, there is a barrier,” the mother agreed, sitting down languidly. “You may try getting through it if you like.” Her eyes came to rest on the turkey. “Ugh! How I hate that thing. So revoltingly naked.”

  Vicky couldn’t resist. She was sure they were right about the barrier, but she could not see it, and the thought of getting away from them was unbearably tempting. Feeling their eyes on her, she stepped toward the edge. But at the threshold it became difficult to move forward, as though some great force were pushing against her. She struggled, using every bit of strength she had, but the force was so strong that, even leaning with all her weight against it, she did not move at all. When she turned back to the room, the pressure was suddenly gone.

  Ganglia was giggling at her, one hand over her mouth. “Didn’t she look funny?” she said. “All panting and puffy. And look at her hair.”

  Vicky brushed back her hair, which had fallen into her eyes, and sat miserably down at the table. Ganglia’s taunts were hard to bear. Think of the door, she said to herself. Think of the door.

  Getting through it might be difficult, however, for at least one of them was always watching her. As she sat at the table she studied each of the dolls’ faces in turn, trying to decide which of them, if any, might be persuaded to help her. For there was one other hopeful thing, and that was the power she would have over them when she did get out.

  She could put a proposal to them all at once, that she would do anything any of them wanted; but that wouldn’t work because she was sure that each would selfishly want whatever she promised to someone else. They would never agree. And remembering her conversation with Ganglia in the bedroom, it seemed that bribing them individually might be more effective. After all, it wouldn’t much matter what it was she promised them; to the dolls, whatever she offered would be enticing only if it were something the others couldn’t have.