by Lois Ruby
The voices must be theirs; there’s no one else around.
“Hear that, Brian?” My skin’s crawling, because the dolls tied in my shirt are thrumming with life, like I’ve got a shirt full of crawly worms. Double ugh!
“Hear what?”
He said he heard them before. Why not now?
The dolls are still again. “Nothing,” I murmur as I dump the three back into the grave and this time cover it with handfuls of rock. Dumb, because pieces of porcelain and stuffing and cloth aren’t going to rise up and push the rocks off their graves to get out. I mean, really.
But they did before. Unless Brian dug them up and won’t admit it. Or, here’s a worse possibility: Are Brian and I totally nuts? Like Emily?
We run back to the house and slam the front door just as the grandfather clock bongs five o’clock again.
“YOU GOTTA KEEP TRACK OF HOW MANY PEOPLE hit your website,” Brian says. He’s the official techie in the family, but we’re all kicking around ideas for SerenaStockPot.com.
“You need a catchy logo, too,” I add, scrolling through a bunch of graphics we can adapt for the website.
Mom’s making a stack of lists — ingredients, equipment, errands, customers, shipping supplies. “I’d better set up a post office box, oh, and I’ll have to buy advertising and figure out how to do online credit-card payments.”
“A smartphone will do it, with the right app,” Brian says.
Mom groans. “All I really want to do is cook.” A diabolical gleam in her eyes tells me there’s trouble ahead. “So it’s settled, then,” she says. “I’ll make the soups, freeze-dry them for shipping, and keep the books, and you two will do the computer stuff.”
“What? I didn’t agree to that!” I shout, at the same time Brian says, “Fair deal, Mom.”
“I’ll pay,” she promises, then adds under her breath, “just as soon as we start to make some money. Next year.”
“You have that pile of money from Aunt Amelia,” I point out.
“Fifteen thousand dollars doesn’t go too far for a start-up business. Besides, we have other bills, and I don’t have a job.”
“You get money from Dad,” I remind her.
Another one of those deep, shuttery sighs: “Yes, but he has two families to support.”
The conversation dead-ends, because we’re wandering into dangerous territory.
I’m setting up my horrible room, starting with stashing the red velvet bedspread on the floor of the closet. There’s a reasonably decent high bureau along one wall, with lots of drawers that I’ve already filled with underwear and sweaters and tops and jeans and winter hats and mittens. There are still drawers empty. We’re shopping for new school clothes this week, though now that Mom says money’s a problem, I’m not sure how this is going to work. I have to have new clothes for my new school. But then, I guess no one’s seen any of my old clothes. A suitcase full of them sits on the closet floor. At least it’s a nice, deep closet. I’ll take everything out and see what still looks wearable.
Leaning against the back wall of the closet, I feel a strange ribbon of cool air hit my shoulders. Doesn’t my closet back up to Brian’s next door? So why would cool air be coming from there?
When I knock once and barge into Brian’s room, he’s deeply concentrating on Mom’s laptop. “Just want to check something out in your closet,” I explain, and he doesn’t even look up. The last rays of sunshine brighten his space. My room’s dark, day and night. But I lucked out in the closet department, because his is only about a foot deep. The hangers have to slant sideways to fit, not that he’s bothered to hang anything up. Brian’s idea of a wardrobe is whatever he wore yesterday. I run my hand along the back wall of the closet, but there’s no cool air coming through. Something’s odd.
“Find what you were looking for?” Brian asks, eyes still glued to the computer.
“Yeah, sort of.”
Back in my room, I check out my closet again. Accounting for its depth, and the skinny closet on other side of the wall, one thing’s obvious to me: There’s a space between Brian’s room and mine! There’s no light, and I’m not going downstairs to get the flashlight in the kitchen tool drawer, so I crawl around on the floor and tap the closet wall, looking for a doorknob, a latch, anything that might open up to the space.
There’s a hole almost at the floor level. Sticking two fingers into it, I find a latch on the other side and … bingo! The wall slides open onto a crawl space just wide enough that my shoulders brush each side. The floor’s damp. Roof leaking? That’s all we need. I look up and see a small skylight window open about an inch, and there’s definitely cool air coming down. And then I spot something round like a drum in the farthest corner. Scooting over, I tap it with my nails. I can hear that it’s kind of hollow, but that there’s something inside. And there’s a yarn thing like a soft handle, so I scoot backward, pulling it with me, until I’m at the opening in the closet wall again.
By the dim light in my room, I see that it’s one of those old-fashioned hatboxes, about a foot in diameter. There’s an inch of dust on the lid. On the outside, it says MADAME LOVEAU’S CHAPEAUX FOR THE DISCRIMINATING WOMAN. Under that it says Paris World’s Fair, 1925. I shake the box, and something clunks around inside, something too heavy to be a hat. It’s delicious to guess what’s in the box before I open it: a velvet drawstring sack full of gold coins, maybe. A fur collar like Gram used to wear. Chinese silk slippers. A gold mesh blouse with a hundred buttons down the back.
Or it could be a bunch of dead roaches or dried-up peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches crawling with ants. I’m afraid to open it — I’ll be grossed out or disappointed. I don’t know which is worse. Oh, well. I start to lift the lid when Mom knocks at my door and doesn’t wait for me to say “Come in.”
“What’s that you’ve got, Shelby? I don’t remember that hatbox.”
“I found it in the closet.”
“What’s inside?” Mom asks, her face bright with excitement.
Slowly, I lift the lid and unfold a doll the size of a real baby, but it’s an adult-type doll in a flowing gown with layers of silk and gauzy material, eyelet lace, tiny gems, and ribbons, all of it in lots of golden shades. Brocade high-heeled slippers poke out under the long gown. Her hair is the color of Ariel’s, the Disney mermaid, and her skin is light enough to practically see through, except for the circles of rouge painted on her cheeks.
“She’s beautiful,” Mom says, a catch in her throat. “Quite the elegant lady.”
My mind switches to that larger grave set apart from the circle of graves, and the marker: Lady R.I.P. Not another doll that escaped from the grave! But there’s something nagging at my memory. I rummage around in a box of junk I haven’t found a place for yet, tossing out useless things I just can’t part with. Sheltered under a mangy stuffed pig is a wrinkled mess of lacy gold fabric and ribbons.
“Look, Mom, her hat. It matches her dress!” I smooth the hat out on the doll’s cherry-red hair, tying it under her chin. It flops around her delicate porcelain face, as if it’s shading her from the sun.
I know who she is. She’s Isabella, the one Aunt Amelia told me about, the one with “friends in high places.” So why is there no grave for her? Or are Isabella and Lady the same doll? Now I’m curious about the dolls we haven’t dug up yet, but also scared to find them.
Mom picks Isabella up and straightens the folds of the gown to smooth out the wrinkles. “Let’s set her up on your bureau,” Mom says, propping the doll against the mirror. “What a wonderful find. See? I told you good things would happen here. Now, why did I come upstairs? Oh, well, I’ll think of it later. I’ve got three pots on the stove, so I’d better get back to my heavenly kitchen.”
I can’t take my eyes off the doll facing me, her back reflected in the mirror. She is beautiful, but her pale face looks vacant, her eyes staring into thin air, as though life has been somehow sucked out of her and left her a sad shell. Paris, 1925. This doll is really old and
probably valuable. Maybe we could sell her, if Mom needs money. But why was she hidden away in the closet? Was it to protect her, to keep her out of the grave? Or to protect someone from her?
Emily? No, the thick dust on the lid tells me that Emily never handled this doll. For some reason she was hidden so well that she’d never, ever be found. Was this Sadie’s doing?
Isabella blinks. Did I just imagine that? She blinks again, and suddenly I think I know why she’s been hidden away for so long.
Because she must have scared the living daylights out of Sadie Thornewood nearly eighty years ago!
IT’S ALMOST EIGHT O’CLOCK AND GETTING DARK, but Mom’s still going strong in the kitchen, humming and singing Broadway show tunes. She hasn’t been this happy since, well, he left. I wish she’d finish up, though, because I want to see what’s under the floor at the foot of our stairs. But I’m dog-tired, and so is Chester, the actual dog — the two of us could just drift off to sleep right here on the steps. My eyes snap open and drift shut and snap open….
Nine forty-five, and the lights are still on in the kitchen. “It’s hopeless, Chester. We might as well go to bed.” I drag myself up to my room and flop down on my spindly bed with the mattress that’s about two inches thick and feels like it’s stuffed with prickly hay. I’ll bet a cot jutting out from the wall in a jail cell is more comfy. Chester doesn’t even bother hopping up on the bed. So I lie there on my back, looking around and trying to figure out how to turn the room into a space I’d actually want to wake up in. Isabella — or is she Lady? — still sits on my bureau, her golden gown billowing out around her. Those vacant eyes are making me feel squirmy, so I turn to face the wall, but it feels like someone’s watching me. A quick peek at her under my arm startles me, and I bolt up in bed, sending the bed springs squawking like mad. Her eyes are definitely different now. She is watching me! I jump up, scaring Chester, who’s sleeping on the rug next to my bed, and I turn Isabella so her back’s to me.
That’s worse, because now I see her face in the mirror, and that’ll be even spookier in the middle of the night. Up again, this time shoving her into one of the empty drawers, which I slam shut. Then I pull my pillow down to the floor and curl up around Chester.
In the morning a little light leaks into my cave. I’m shivering because I never dragged a blanket down to the floor last night, and Chester’s warmth isn’t enough on this cold morning. I nervously look over at the bureau and the drawer where I tucked Isabella away. It’s wide open! Some of her gown hangs over the drawer, and her tall, laced boots have fallen off onto the floor. This is not possible!
There’s got to be a logical explanation. Sure. Mom must have come upstairs to tuck me in like she used to before he left, and when she didn’t see Isabella on the bureau, she poked around until she found her and just never closed the drawer. Simple.
But I feel in my bones, that’s not what happened.
I pick Isabella up. She’s more solid than I remembered, and warm, the kind of warm you are first thing in the morning, all cozy under the covers — if you don’t fall asleep on the floor. Her arms and legs don’t bend easily, and I get the eerie idea that she’s deliberately resisting my movements. Our eyes lock. Hers are brown-green, what Gram called hazel, like mine. We’re playing chicken; which one will blink first? I’m good at this. Brian and I do it all the time, and I can go for a full minute without blinking. But this is stupid; she’s a doll. I’m alive, and she’s not, so I let my eyes flutter madly, just to show her I can.
Her cherry curls are soft, not wiry like you’d expect on a doll. I take her huge satin-and-lace hat off to check out her glued-on wig, but I’m amazed to see that the doll maker has planted each hair in her scalp separately. Human hair. If that’s not creepy, I don’t know what is. What girl’s head did it come from? Was she dead when her hair was plucked off, one curly hair at a time?
She blinks! She’s mocking me, making fun of me, and I hear — no, imagine — her saying, “Shelby Tate is an ignoramus. I, myself, am a refined lady of the court of St. James, and she is but a country bumpkin. Ha!”
Okay, she asked for it! I stuff her and her billowing gown and ridiculous floppy hat and wild hair into the one drawer in my bureau that has a key sticking out of it. With lots of pleasure, I lock her in and drop the key into my sock, where no one will find it to let her out. Ha, yourself, Isabella, or Lady, or whoever you really are!
I’m nervously pacing the floor at the bottom of the stairs, dying to get into what’s under there — tonight, for sure — when I hear wheels crunching the gravel outside. I throw the door open to see who could possibly be coming to visit us, and there’s a Yellow Cab pulling into our driveway. My first thought is, Dad’s here! But of course that makes no sense, because he lives two hundred miles away, and even if he were here, he wouldn’t come by taxi. Besides, he’s a lot more athletic than the old man whose right leg slowly emerges from the taxi, joined even more slowly by his left leg, with a crooked walking stick between them, and then there’s a sort of rocking motion to propel the man to his feet. He stands up, spreads his arms like an eagle with the cane pointing skyward, and announces in a booming voice, “I have arrived. Let the show begin.”
“That would be Mr. Caliberti,” Mom says, wiping her hands on her apron. “Remember? Aunt Amelia told us that he now owns her cottage out back. I believe she said Canto Caliberti is his stage name.”
The taxi driver begins unloading boxes and suitcases, including some tied to the roof, until Mr. Caliberti is surrounded by it all.
“My worldly possessions.” He squints in our direction. “Ah, you must be the illustrious Tate family. Dear departed Amelia did not tell me there were two sisters.”
Mom snickers and says, “I’m Serena, and this is my daughter, Shelby. Welcome home.”
“How entirely curious, at this stage of my vagabond life, that I should become a property owner. Well, let us away to my cottage in the countryside, ladies,” and he motions for us to begin carrying his worldly possessions.
At the cottage door, he pulls a key on a string out from under his shirt and leans into the door. This is our first peek into Aunt Amelia’s cottage in ages. It’s neat and plain, like her, with hand-crocheted afghans tossed over the backs of the couch and easy chair, and three towers of books, floor to ceiling, along one wall. A small round kitchen table sits in a little arched alcove, with one chair tidily tucked under it. But what really surprises me — and Mom, too, I’ll bet — is that there are pictures of Mom and Brian and me everywhere, even one of the four of us, before.
“Just set things down pell-mell, ladies, pell-mell, while I have a look around.” He stands in the center of the living room and slowly revolves. “Ah, she is everywhere,” he says.
Mom asks, “Would you like to have dinner with us this evening, Mr. Caliberti, since you’re not yet settled?”
“Kind of you, but I must decline. Best to establish my routine here from Act One, Scene One.” He flips on the porch light, even though it’s a brisk, sunny day. “I trust the light will not disturb you? There are so many superstitions in the theater.” He pronounces it “THEE-uh-tah,” with a flair. “One of them is the necessity of the ghost light.”
My ears perk up. “What’s a ghost light, Mr. Caliberti?”
“Oh, child, have you no THEE-uh-tah experience? We shall have to change that. The ghost light burns day and night outside the stage door, to keep the ghosts within at bay. Now, I must ask you to bring the rest of my worldly possessions in posthaste, as I’m dragging a bit after an all-night flight from Kathmandu.”
Mom yells for Brian to help, and we get everything into the cottage quickly, just as Mr. Caliberti is releasing his cat from a mesh travel bag. He kisses the cat on the nose and says, “Terpsichore, meet the Tate family. Amelia’s people.”
MIDNIGHT. THE HOUSE IS DARK EXCEPT FOR A DIM light over the stove, barely visible out here in the entrance hall. By flashlight I roll up the rug to expose the floor, and there it is, a smal
l thumbhole like in my closet wall, with the latch inside. The trapdoor squeals as I lift it. While I’m waiting a minute to make sure the noise hasn’t awakened anyone, I wonder how many other secret compartments were built into this house so long ago and whether Sadie knew about all of them. What about Emily? Are there clues and secrets locked away all over this house that other girls who lived here found, clues that reveal the mystery of the dolls?
Lying on my stomach, I shine the flashlight into the hole under the floor, to make sure there are no booby traps or mousetraps to scare me off. The hole seems to be about a foot deep and maybe two feet wide, curiously lined with soft wool carpeting. Now, why would the builder bother to carpet a secret compartment? Or did Sadie do it, to provide a cozy place for her dolls to live? Under the floor? How weird is that?
It’s there, smack in the middle of the compartment, exactly what I knew I’d find — a notebook like the one in the dollhouse, but lots bigger. Just as I reach for it, someone pushes me from behind. Brian! He jams my head down into the wool carpet and slams the trapdoor against my back. I’m stuck half in, half out of that secret compartment. I can’t believe my brother would do this to me, but I can’t yell and wake Mom. With my arms flailing around behind me, I manage to shove the trapdoor up and pull my head out. I will make Brian pay for this.
“Brian Tate,” I growl. “Where are you, you little snot?”
On my feet now, I swing the flashlight all over, looking for a foot sticking out from underneath a couch, or something knocked over in his hurry to hide. I expect to see him crawl out, shielding his eyes against the bright light, with a smug smile on his freckled face.
But there’s no sign of Brian.
I tiptoe upstairs, creep into his room. He’s sprawled out on his back, one foot sticking out of the covers, the way he usually sleeps. I whisper his name. Louder. If he’s faking sleep, he’s doing a real good job of it. When I shake his shoulder there’s a whiny “Whaddya want?”
