by Anya Allyn
Ethan looked straight through me, gulping. He turned and raced to the corridor.
“Lacey!” I gestured wildly to her to come with me. “Come with us! We’re going to check the beds!”
Lacey held her hands over her head. “Oh God, Oh God. I can’t go back there! “Her voice rose to a shriek. “Don’t make me go there!”
I backed away. “It’s okay, Lace. I’m sorry. Stay here. Stay safe!”
13. WAKE ONCE AGAIN
When I caught up with Ethan he was standing before a bed at the far end of the bed chamber. In the dim light, I only just made out a form under the blankets. I squeezed my eyes for a moment, trying to adjust my sight to the darkness.
I moved inside the dark crevice. Cold and damp surrounded me. I forced my legs to keep going, move. I stepped past the large doll and clown figure. Four smaller dolls rested out in their oversized beds. Human-sized dolls—with pallid faces and deep red cheeks that looked like bruises in this light. Their arms were crisscrossed over their chests. All wore thin, yellowed night gowns and ribbons in their hair.
My heart clenched and thudded.
They were real. Not dolls. Not playthings.
The crazily high beds had made them seem doll-like before.
I stared about in horror at the occupants of the beds. The smallest of them couldn’t be more than five years old.
Someone—Henry—was keeping these children down here. Revulsion coursed through my body. We had to get them all out of here... that’s if any of them were still alive.
Ethan bent to touch a dark ponytail bound up in a reddish ribbon. A high ruffled collar hid her face from this angle. Delicately, he moved her chin so that he could see her face in full.
Aisha.
Thinner. Hollowed cheeks. But Aisha.
Ethan seemed to throw off the covers and scoop her up in a one motion. Her head flopped onto his shoulder like a soft doll. He ran with her from the room.
My feet made wooden steps out of the room. Dim light from the corridor streaked across the Raggedy Ann doll’s face. The light shifted slightly, making the doll’s face seem like it turned a little. Of course—it hadn’t.
Did the doll’s hand just twitch?
You’re in shock, I told myself. Like Lacey. Just get out of here—breathe.
I fled—following Ethan to the carousel.
Ethan laid Aisha carefully in one of the chariots. He turned back to me with wild eyes. “It won’t turn, this stinking thing won’t turn!”
I wanted to ask if she was breathing. But I couldn’t. Maybe Ethan was fooling himself and wanted to pretend she was okay. Stepping forward, I bent down to Aisha. A vein in her neck pulsed when I touched it.
She’s alive.
I could scarcely believe she was there before me. Solid, whole.
“Go get Lacey. We need to get out. Now!”
I rushed away back down the corridor.
The chamber we’d left Lacey in was empty. No Lacey on the daybed. No Lacey anywhere.
Overhead, something moved across the ceiling. Heart pounding, I slowly raised my eyes. Shadows—shadows that shouldn't be there—slithered. Shadows that pierced you, clung to you—as though to merely look at them was to take them inside you—like a reflection on a still, dark lake.
I forced my eyes shut. You had to shut out things that weren't real. Trauma caused you to see and hear things, right? Finding Aisha alive— that was as shocking as finding her remains. My mind was spewing out bile.
The shadows were gone as I opened my eyes. But traces of the shadows remained, both cloying and poisoning inside me.
I took frantic steps to the kitchen and bathroom. They too, were empty. Lacey had vanished. Elbows over my head, I knew there was one more place to look—that deathly dark tunnel we’d entered earlier.
I turned to see a girl of about my age shrink into the wall opposite, her face so pale it was ashen.
“Are you here to hurt me?” She trembled in her thin knee-length night gown.
“No,” I said fervently. “No. We’re here to help.”
The girl nodded, bending her flaxen head. She recoiled as I went to touch her shoulder.
“It’s all right. Just come with me.” I attempted to smile, but I was sure it looked more of a grimace.
She hesitated—then walked with me to the carousel.
Ethan brushed Aisha’s hair back from her face.
“I can’t find Lacey,” I told him.
He stared at the girl.
“She’s coming with us,” I said.
He merely nodded. “I still can’t get this thing cranking. Maybe if we all get on a ride, it will kick-start it. Like before.”
The girl shook her head numbly. “Kicking it won’t help. And I’m quite sure you cannot start it.”
He eyed the girl with interest. “Do you know how I can get it going?”
The girl stared at Ethan as though he’d said something stupid. “You’re asking completely the wrong question.”
Ethan forced a lungful of air through his teeth. “Well, tell me what the right question is!”
I glared at Ethan.
We tried sitting on the rides—me on the dragon again and Ethan on the gargoyle.
“Sit on the unicorn,” Ethan ordered the girl.
She shook her head. “It won’t help, I’m afraid.”
Ethan jumped to his feet. “There has to be a lever or switch, or something. He felt around the wall.
The rough, rounded wall seemed not to have anything resembling a switch. I joined Ethan in searching the tunnel’s surface.
“What’s your name?’ I turned back to the girl.
“Jessamine.”
“Pretty,” I said.”
The girl’s rosebud lips formed a small smile. “Do you think I’m pretty too? I used to be prettier before the bad thing.” She tugged the collar of her nightgown across, exposing ugly dark gashes on her neck and shoulder.
My back stiffened. “Who did that to you?”
“The bad thing did it.”
I had no words of comfort for Jessamine—nothing that would do those injuries justice.
“Maybe there’s another way out.” Ethan eyed me desperately, and then turned to Jessamine. “Do you know if there’s any other way out?”
She stepped backwards. “You’re planning on leaving me, aren’t you?”
I shook my head. “You can trust us. We just don’t have much time.”
“Is there anyone else here, besides the girls? Any adults?” Ethan asked her.
“There’s the toys, of course,” she said.
“Is there any other way out?”
“There is only patience.”
He turned away as though he’d given up on her. I guessed she’d been here for a long time and been traumatized in ways we couldn’t guess at.
“If we can’t leave by the carousel, there has to be another way out. I’ll go look myself,” he said.
Jumping back on the carousel's platform, he traced a finger over Aisha’s forehead. “Baby girl, I have to leave you here for a moment. I’m sorry and I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“Oh she won’t hear you.” Jessamine straightened the skirt of her slip.
“Why not? Why won’t she wake up?” I asked her.
“She’s had her special tea. She’ll sleep for hours.”
Ethan’s face lengthened as he stared down at Aisha. He turned to Jessamine. “Please—Look after her. We’ll be back. Cassie, come with me—two will be quicker than one.”
Ethan and I raced to the first room—the kitchen. I comforted myself that we were looking for Lacey and searching for another exit at the same time.
Ethan placed both hands on a square metal object set against the wall. He pushed upwards—a cover slid up. Sticking his head in, he tried to see upwards.
“It’s a dumb waiter.” His voice echoed.
“A what?”
“It’s used to transport food up and down floor levels. If it was a heap b
igger...."
But it wasn’t big enough for even a dog to travel in—none of us could escape that way. Bits of chipped bark were scattered in the bottom tray. Now at least we knew where Henry’s firewood had disappeared to.
Kneeling, I checked the cupboards. A makeshift system of pipes wound from the sink to the floor. I wondered if the water came direct from a river. A wooden crate held empty cans of food.
Cupboards above the benches held a large selection of cans and packets of dried fruits.
For a moment I was hopeful that next time Henry came down to deliver food or collect garbage, we could overpower him—but then I thought of the dumb waiter. If he mostly used that, then long periods of time could pass without him physically coming down here.
Ethan exhaled hard. “Aisha’s been eating from these cans. I was so close to her then when we dug up that sack in the woods, but didn’t know it. How stupid was I? That was a lot of garbage for one man to be putting out.”
We sprinted down to the large chamber with the chandelier, searching behind and under everything. We found nothing.
“Lacey!” I cried. “Please, where are you?”
My eyes burned. I couldn’t have another friend just disappear.
“We better check the bedroom.” Ethan’s neck muscles strained.
I swallowed. “I need light if I’m going back in that room.”
We ran back to the storeroom and slipped the torches from our backpacks. Curious, I opened the drawers there. Neatly folded were jeans and jumpers, a tiny pair of purple shorts, runners and a couple of phones. Aisha's Beatles t-shirt sat on top of one pile.
Everything Aisha had come in here with was here in the drawers. The drawers probably held the possessions of all of the girls.
We squeezed through the crevice of the bedroom. The girls still slept... if they were sleeping at all... and not lifeless.
I flashed my torch beam onto the Raggedy Ann doll. It was still. My fear had made me imagine crazy things when I was in here before.
Ethan trained his torch light on the ceiling next, possibly hoping for some kind of escape hatch.
“The beds must have been built in here,” said Ethan. “There’s no way they could have been moved in here from the outside—the entry isn’t big enough.”
Nothing down here made sense.
We checked beneath the beds and around the walls. A dark stain spread on the floor beneath the last bed that we checked. I forced myself to look closely. Whatever the stain was—it was old and not fresh.
We shone our torches about the room for one last look before we stepped towards the exit. Our beams flickered over the pasty faces of the girls.
They stirred, rising one after the other to a sitting position, nightgowns loose around bony bodies. Wide eyes stared out from thin faces, red makeup smeared on their cheeks and lips—like a set of Russian nesting dolls.
“Hello.” My voice strained from my throat, thin and quavering.
The small child hugged a bear that was missing its head. She rubbed an eye as one of her long ponytails fell from its ribbon. “Did you come to play with us, too?”
An older one, about seventeen years old, hushed the little girl. “Philomena, they’re new. They probably don’t know yet.”
The third girl just stared, the dark pits of her eyes void of emotion.
In my peripheral vision, something moved. There were no more girls in the room, and the thing that had moved was large, bulky. Vomit hit the back of my throat as I turned on my heel.
The Raggedy Ann doll twitched and sat bolt upright in the bed. It twisted its head to the clown. With a sickening rattle, the wooden clown levitated from its resting place and settled against the exit—barring us from leaving.
Ethan gaped from the clown to me. “What’s going on!”
The child bent her head. “He won’t let you out unless you know the password.”
“The hell with this.” Ethan charged at the clown. The clown held its ground, barely swaying from the impact of Ethan’s shoulder.
Ethan picked himself to his feet and hurled himself in a rage at the clown again. The clown slanted backwards, but sprung straight up again, like a punching toy.
“What do we do?” I pleaded at the eldest girl.
Her deep red hair spilled over her shoulders. “If you don’t guess the password, you’ll never get through. The password is always ever only a single word.”
“This is crazy. Let us out,” I screamed—to the air itself.
“I’ll drill a hole right through you if whoever’s operating you doesn’t move you.” Ethan stared upwards, above the clown. “Where’s the strings? A pulley maybe? Whoever you are, you’re not that clever. When I find you, I’ll beat you to a damned pulp.”
Ethan turned his attention to the erect Raggedy Ann doll. He lunged at it with his fist held high.
“Don’t hurt her,” cried the small child. “Or she’ll hurt us.”
Ethan pulled his fist back, breathing heavily.
Something primal chugged within my brain. Survive.
“Clown,” I said quietly, “Is that the password? Clown?”
The clown figure moved swayed from left to right.
“That’s a no?” I said. “What about... bed?”
It swayed again.
I racked my head for a one-word password. Far off, in the kitchen, the kettle boiled and hissed.
“Is the password... tea?”
The clown moved grotesquely forwards and backwards. It slid across the floor with a heavy scraping sound, leaving the entry open.
My whole body trembled.
The girls each pulled a dress from their bedpost and pulled it on over their slips. Then they tugged slippers onto their feet.
Ethan and I edged out of the room, looking repeatedly from the doll and clown—Ethan jabbing the clown with his fingers as he passed it.
We raced back to the carousel.
Jessamine sat stroking Aisha’s hair, singing a lullaby. I knew the tune—it was the old Cradle Song my mother used to sing to me. But the words were a different version to the one I knew:
Good evening, good night,
With roses adorned,
With carnations covered,
Slip under the covers.
Tomorrow morning, if God wants so,
you will wake once again.
“Why is she still asleep?” Ethan rushed to Aisha’s side.
Jessamine lifted her eyes to Ethan. “I’ve given her a nice cup of tea.” She wiggled a finger at a large cup of steaming tea just behind the chariot.
“Why,” Ethan demanded, “did you give Aish more tea? What’s in that stuff anyway?”
“Why are they calling Angeline, Aish?” whispered the tiny girl to the biggest of the girls.
Jessamine jumped lightly to her feet. She had changed into a knee-length dress with a dropped waist and faded ribbon posies around the bottom. Her stockings bore holes. “Let’s all have supper. You two can dress properly too. You’ll find a variety of attire in the dressing room.”
Confusion and anger rose inside me. “What? No, we are not going to dress nor have supper. We are going to leave. Now do you know where our friend Lacey is? Have you been giving her cups of tea too?”
She frowned. “I’m sure I don’t know who you mean?”
Jessamine strolled away down the corridor, disappearing into the kitchen. The girls looked nervously over their shoulders at me, but followed after Jessamine.
Jessamine had simply being playing a game with us before. She had no intention of escaping from here.
“Henry is warped in the head to do all this.” Ethan held Aisha’s limp hand.
I nodded woodenly. “It’s an enormous dollhouse. Maybe if we play along we’ll learn how to get out of here.”
14. JESSAMINE
Ethan and I seated ourselves at a bizarre tea party.
Jessamine sat at one end of the table, her fingers laced on the table. The darker-skinned girl handed out cracked pl
ates to each of us.
Ethan had brought Aisha into the kitchen in a huge pram he’d found in the big chamber. We hadn’t wanted to leave her alone again. She slept, curled up and peaceful.
A spread of stale bread and thin soup awaited us. Mold grew on one end of the bread. The eldest girl cut the mold off, fixing her gaze downwards. She had bound her red hair up in a loose bun.
Even the bear and doll that were seated at the table got a serving.
The girls ate slowly, in petite spoonfuls.
I shot Ethan a sideways glance. We pretended to eat the food, but didn’t let a speck of it pass our mouths. Who knew what was in it?
Jessamine let out a cooing sigh. “I haven’t introduced everyone to our guests. “How rude of me.”
She turned to Philomena. “I guess it’s best to start with the youngest first. They do get restless you know. Well, this is our Philly, Philomena. She likes to draw flowers and princesses—and she rides the tricycles at terrifying speeds along the hallways. You must watch out for her, or she’ll send you flying.”
Jessamine smiled brightly at Philomena. Philomena eyed us coyly, sucking her lips in. She looked like any other five year old who suddenly had the spotlight on her.
Jessamine then turned her gaze to the darker-skinned girl. “Now this is Sophronia. She’s our quiet one. She's a mute. She’ll knit you a fine scarf, if you ask nicely. It does get chilly down here. She writes poetry in another language sometimes—she’s from the Indian sub-continent I believe—and you would do well to get her to teach you her language.”
Sophronia didn’t look at us at all. She stared stonily down at her food.
“Of course,” Jessamine continued, “missing from the dinner table is our Angeline—or Aish—as per the odd pet name our visitors have for her. She’s a sleepy girl tonight. She’s still finding her way around here, but she’s an excellent artist and she has developed a great interest in the photographic books. She may say some quite odd things at times, but like all artists, she’s prone to fancy.”
Ethan and I shared glances. It was bizarre having Aisha spoken about in that manner. And the girls didn’t merely tolerate Jessamine—they seemed to allow her to control them.
