by Alex Bell
My fingers fumbled with the clasp and I could hardly breathe as I lifted the lid. If there had been something as wretched as a severed limb or a rotting corpse inside I wouldn’t have been surprised. So when I raised the candle, I was startled to see that the box was filled with dozens of little china Frozen Charlotte dolls, their naked bodies and painted hair smeared with dark soot and grey ash. A note, in the same spiked handwriting, lay on top of them, consisting of just four words:
Let’s play a game…
My breath caught in my throat as I stared at the dolls. Of course they were Vanessa’s – I recognized them from Whiteladies. They must have survived the fire somehow. Their painted eyes stared straight up at me as if they recognized me, too. They were all as pale as death, as white as corpses – all almost identical but for one solitary male doll right on top of the pile – a Frozen Charlie. I reached out towards it but as my fingertips brushed against another doll, I felt a sharp stab of pain and hurriedly snatched back my hand.
A bright bead of blood welled up on my finger and dripped on to a Frozen Charlotte, landing right where her heart would be, if she had one. I realized then that the dolls hadn’t been well-packed for the journey and many of them had been damaged – an arm or a head or a leg snapped off, broken pieces rattling about at the bottom of the chest, like bones. I’d managed to cut myself on one of the jagged edges of the porcelain.
Suddenly I frowned. My eyes darted around the chest, looking for the male doll, but it was nowhere to be seen. It had been right on top before, standing out starkly among the female ones, and yet now it seemed to have vanished. There was a noise behind me and, this time, there was no mistaking it for anything other than what it was – a giggle.
I twisted round, still half crouched on the floor. “Who’s there?” I cried.
The candle flickered, shadows shifting against the walls. There was someone in the room with me, I was quite certain of it. I turned back to the dolls and gasped. The male doll was right back where it had been before, perched on top of the others. I stared at it, my heart beating too fast and too hard in my chest.
Then I heard a voice, small and strange and shrill.
“Hide and go seek!”
There was the sound of breath being blown out in one puff. The candle was extinguished, filling the room with the scent of smoke and the cold horror of total, black darkness.
Chapter Five
Isle of Skye – January 1910
I leaped to my feet in the dark, my whole body trembling as I stumbled blindly towards the door of the luggage room.
Before I could reach it there was the scratch of a match being lit and a small girl all in white appeared before me in the doorway. For a wild moment I thought it was Vanessa Redwing but then the girl giggled and said, “Did we frighten you, miss?”
There was a second girl behind her in the corridor outside. My eyes focused and I saw I was looking at Martha and Bess, both dressed in nightgowns. Just a couple of students up past their bedtime, causing mischief. My breath came out of me in a relieved whoosh.
“Girls, you scared me half to death!” I exclaimed. Recalling that excited squeak of a voice in the dark – hide and go seek! – I realized one of the girls must have uttered those words and I was immediately irritated with myself for giving in to the foolish fancy that the dolls had spoken. “It’s extremely late and you shouldn’t be out of bed. Now is certainly not the time for hide and seek!”
Martha frowned, looking confused. “Hide and seek, miss?”
“One of you said ‘hide and seek’ just now. I heard you,” I said.
The girls shook their heads. “We didn’t say anything. We only just got here.”
“Please don’t lie to me,” I said with a sigh. “Look, it doesn’t matter now. The important thing is that we get back to bed before Miss Grayson catches us and there’s really trouble. What are you doing out of bed, anyway?”
“Estella woke us up,” Martha said. “She woke everyone up.”
“She said she had a nightmare,” Bess put in. “About a doll who wanted to kill her.”
“Goodness!” I exclaimed. “That sounds dreadful. But it doesn’t explain why you two are down here in the basement.”
Bess shuffled her feet, looking embarrassed, and it was Martha who spoke.
“We came to get George,” she said. “Bess’s teddy bear. Miss Grayson took him away because Bess made too many mistakes on her spelling test but she can’t sleep without George, miss! And he was probably lonely down here all by himself. So we thought we’d just come and … take him back.”
I sighed again. “Don’t you girls know the luggage room is kept locked? And won’t Miss Grayson think it’s odd that the teddy has just reappeared?”
“She’s probably forgotten that she took him away in the first place,” Bess said. “But if I ask for him back then she might hurt him.” Her eyes suddenly filled with tears. “She killed Toby.”
“Who’s Toby?” I asked, startled.
“Bess caught a little mouse and named him Toby,” Martha said. “But when Miss Grayson found out about it, she stamped on his head, miss.”
I winced and Bess let out a sob. “She cracked his skull!” she said. “Sometimes I still hear the noise as I’m falling asleep.” She really started to weep then.
“All right, all right.” I hurriedly used Martha’s candle to relight my own, held it up and said, “Can you see George in here?”
“He’s there.” Bess pointed with a trembling finger. “On top of that suitcase.”
I reached up for the bear, which was fat and fluffy and had warm, brown eyes – just the thing for making you feel less alone. I couldn’t help wishing I was young enough that a stuffed teddy could do that for me, too.
I crouched down in front of Bess and held the bear out to her. “Here you go,” I said. “And if Miss Grayson notices then you must say I gave him back to you, so you don’t get into too much trouble.”
Bess took the bear from me and then, to my surprise, threw her arms round my neck in a tight hug. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been hugged. It had probably been before Mother went away on her honeymoon and everything changed. I would have thought I’d recoil at physical touch now, yet the feeling of Bess’s warm little body pressed up against mine was oddly comforting.
“Come on now,” I said, giving her a squeeze. “It’s absolutely freezing down here and you’re shivering like anything. Can you take yourselves back to bed or do I need to supervise you?”
“We’ll go straight back, miss,” Martha promised.
“I’ll be up to check on you in a moment,” I said.
Once I’d heard their steps echo away down the corridor, I turned back to the box of Frozen Charlotte dolls. They lay there like little corpses in their coffin. I snatched the brown wrapping paper up off the floor to stare at the writing again – my name and address, spelled out in an uneven scrawl. Was it the same handwriting? Or was it just my mind playing tricks, making me see a resemblance that didn’t exist?
Slowly I reached out and picked up one of the dolls. It lay cold and heavy in my palm. My fingers wrapped round the chilled body as I closed my eyes.
Charlotte says don’t open the door, whispered that voice from my nightmare. Charlotte says there are some horrors that burn…
Suddenly, in the darkness of my mind, a flame flared into life and I was back at Whiteladies again. The smell of burning hair filled the air and a growing pool of blood spread across the floor towards my feet…
The Frozen Charlotte doll fell from my hand, smashing into pieces when it hit the floor. An arm here, a head there, a leg over in the corner. My heart beat its fast thud, thud, thud in my chest as I looked at the shattered doll and tried not to think about that last night at Whiteladies and what might have happened. I shoved the broken pieces of the china doll back into the toy chest and then closed the lid.
As quickly as I could, I replaced the key in Miss Grayson’s desk and then went back up the sta
irs to the girls’ dormitory to check all was well. There were no curtains and moonlight filtered in through the bare windows, providing just enough light to see by. Everybody seemed settled enough, including Bess and Martha who had returned to their beds, Bess with her arms wrapped round her teddy.
But when I walked over to Estella’s bed, which was in the corner by the window, I saw that she was awake, clutching her thin bedsheet tightly enough to turn her knuckles white.
“Are you all right?” I whispered, crouching down by her side. “Bess said you had a nightmare.”
Estella turned her head towards me. A strip of shadow fell across her bed from the window frame and I couldn’t see her face properly as she spoke in a dull voice. “I dreamed there were dolls in the basement,” she said. “Their china hands were knocking and their little fingers were scratching and their teeth were biting, and they wanted to get out and tear us all to pieces.”
I frowned, unable to suppress a shudder, although I tried to tell myself that my reaction was simply a result of the icy temperature of the room. Still, it did seem a little odd that Estella should dream about dolls the very night a box of them arrived at the school.
“It’s all right,” I said. “It was only a dream.” I thought of my own recurring nightmares and, seeking to reassure myself as much as Estella, I added, “Dreams can’t hurt us.”
“But the dolls—”
“Dolls can’t hurt you, either, Estella,” I told her. “Only people can.”
Chapter Six
Isle of Skye – January 1910
After returning to my room, I hardly slept. The chest full of dolls played on my mind, causing a dull ache to start up behind my eyes. Several hours later, a strange blanket-like hush seemed to fill the air and, when I got up to look out of the window, I saw that it was snowing heavily, with a thick carpet already covering the ground. The moonlight reflected off the snow in a pinkish haze, making my headache even worse. By the time morning came I’d resolved to take the toy chest and throw it away but, when I went downstairs, I discovered that someone had already beaten me to the dolls.
Today was a Sunday and there would be church that morning but no formal classes. The girls had some free time after breakfast, during which Miss Grayson insisted they went outside to get some fresh air. She seemed to enforce this no matter how bad the weather might be and today was no different.
I went outside to find a small group of pupils, including Martha and Bess, wrapped up in their threadbare cloaks and hunched over something on the ground. I thought they were probably making snowmen but, as I got closer, I saw that they were playing with dolls and I stopped in my tracks. They were Frozen Charlottes.
“Where did you get those?” I asked. My breath smoked and my lips felt stiff in the freezing air.
The girls all fell silent at once and looked up at me guiltily.
“Well?” I said, when nobody spoke.
“They didn’t want to be locked away in the luggage room, miss,” Martha finally said. “They were lonely in there and cold.”
Martha and Bess must have seen the dolls last night and decided to go back for them. I supposed that, for children who had nothing, an entire box of dolls was too much of a prize to ignore, even if they were broken and chipped. Unfortunately Miss Grayson chose just that moment to come out from her study and immediately asked about the Frozen Charlottes.
Panicking, I came out with the first lie I could think of. “Someone from the village just dropped them off,” I said. “As a gift for the girls.”
Miss Grayson narrowed her eyes and I could tell she didn’t like this random act of kindness from a stranger but, in the absence of any sensible reason to object, she simply shook her head and pressed a key into my hand. “You may retrieve your parcel from the luggage room,” she said. “I hope that you might have finally learned your lesson about time-keeping.”
As soon as she was out of earshot I turned back to the girls and said, “How did you manage to get in without a key?”
Martha shrugged and said, “The door wasn’t locked, miss.”
I frowned. Had I forgotten to lock it behind me? I honestly couldn’t remember. Either way, I thought I’d better get down there quickly, before Miss Grayson could discover anything amiss.
I left the girls to their game and hurried back downstairs to find that the door to the luggage room was indeed wide open. The toy chest stood in the middle of the floor, with the lid pushed back. It was completely empty – every doll had been removed and so had the note.
In the light of day, I suddenly noticed something I hadn’t seen before and I frowned, peering closer. The inside of the lid was completely covered in scratch marks that crossed and criss-crossed each other over and over and over in angry-looking slashes.
Estella’s words from last night came back to me: Their china hands were knocking and their little fingers were scratching and their teeth were biting, and they wanted to get out…
I shook my head. It had to be a coincidence. Squinting closer, I ran my fingertips over the marks. Could someone have shut a cat up in the box, perhaps? The scratches didn’t seem quite deep enough for that, though. I saw that the sides were covered in similar marks.
It really was most odd. Perhaps some deranged person had filled the box with mice or rats? I shuddered at the thought but didn’t have time to wonder about it. Miss Grayson would be expecting me at the school gates in a few minutes to accompany the girls into the village for the church service.
I gathered up the box and turned back to the door. And then stopped in surprise. All around the keyhole on the inside were dozens of marks, like scratches made by tiny claws or fingers. As if something had been trapped in here, seeking a way out. Had those marks been there last night? I didn’t remember them but, in the candlelight, I probably wouldn’t have seen them anyway.
Shaking my head, I left the luggage room, locking the door behind me before taking the chest up to my room. I just about had time to tie the ribbons of my black mourning bonnet under my chin before hurrying down to the school gate where the girls were already lined up waiting with Miss Grayson. I was sure she’d hoped to catch me being late again but this time I managed to deny her the pleasure.
We set off in procession with Miss Grayson leading the way, the girls following in pairs behind and me bringing up the rear. There was an odd number of girls and I noticed that Estella was walking on her own, up near the front. She often seemed to be the odd one out if the girls needed to split into pairs and she didn’t appear to have any particular friends. Unfortunately what Miss Grayson had said my first morning about Estella being a compulsive liar did appear to be true to some degree – I had heard the other girls complaining about it and they seemed to avoid her where they could. No one likes to be the odd one out, though, and I had tried to make an effort to be particularly friendly towards her.
About five minutes after we set off, Henry caught up with us with Murphy. It took the best part of an hour to walk to the church in Dunvegan, which was too far for the little dog, so Henry had scooped him up, buttoning his coat round him so that only the dog’s head poked free.
The clifftop had been transformed into smooth fields of white and the snow compacted beneath our boots with every step. In London the carriages and new motorcars usually turned the snow to muddy ice, so I rather enjoyed seeing this pristine country snow, even if my mind was still troubled with thoughts of the mystery package.
Henry chattered away as we walked and I did my best to respond to him but, when we were about halfway to the village, Henry said, “So do you want to tell me about it, Mim? Or should I mind my own business?”
“Tell you about what?” I asked.
“Whatever is bothering you,” Henry replied.
“What makes you think anything is?”
Henry shrugged. “I can still tell when you’re upset, you know,” he said. “Plus I just asked you whether Miss Grayson was easing up on you a bit and you agreed with me that it was very cold we
ather, so I thought that perhaps you might not have been paying attention.”
“I’m sorry,” I sighed.
“Not at all,” Henry replied. “Mother says that my ramblings are enough to bore the hind legs off an albatross.”
“Isn’t the saying meant to be a donkey?”
“I believe so, but nothing makes Mother more cross than being corrected over such things, as you may remember,” Henry replied. “Fastest way to get your ears boxed for cheek, that. So is it Miss Grayson?” he asked. “Is she still being rather a witch?”
“Yes, but that’s not the problem,” I replied.
I hesitated for a moment, unsure whether I should confide in Henry or not. But then my eyes fell on the two girls directly in front of us – Violet and Olivia. They were two of the older girls, at around nine, and I saw that they were leaning over a Frozen Charlotte doll, clutched in Violet’s gloved hand. The head of another doll poked out of Olivia’s pocket. It seemed like its eyes were screwed up tight against the cold, its rosebud mouth pinched in distaste.
“A package arrived for me,” I said. “A box of dolls.”
Henry raised his eyebrows and I realized that a box of dolls didn’t really sound like something to be overly concerned about.
“I think they were sent by someone … from my past. Someone who wishes me ill.”
Henry gave me an astonished look. “Why on earth would anyone wish you ill?” he asked.
He looked so genuinely puzzled by the idea that I was on the verge of telling him everything. But before I could say another word, one of the girls suddenly cried out, “No!”
I looked up in time to see Olivia give Violet a push that sent her tumbling on to her knees in the snow.
“No!” Olivia said again. “Charlotte says you’re the bitch!”
