The Dollhouse

by Charis Cotter

  “It’s not the truth,” I said. “I have a concussion. I have headaches. I have weird dreams, and the dollhouse…I keep dreaming about the dollhouse, that I’m inside it, here, with you.”

  Fizz leaned toward me. “You’ve made up this story about the dollhouse because you don’t want to face the truth,” she whispered. “You’re a ghost.”

  I drew away from her. “No. I’m not a ghost. I’m not dead! I’m living in Blackwood House with my mom and Mrs. Bishop, and I’m just dreaming all this about the dollhouse.”

  “You’re still half in the other world…” said Fizz, in a gentle, singsong voice as if she was telling me a story. “You can’t accept that you’re dead. I’ve done a lot of reading about ghosts. A lot of ghosts are like that. They think they’re still alive. But every time you let yourself go to sleep, that’s when you’re dead. And for some reason you’ve come to our house. You’ll be nothing but a ghost here until you realize that you’re dead, that you died in the train accident.”

  I began to scream. “I’m not. I’m not. You’re lying! You’re horrible! You’re the ghost, not me! I’m not dead!”

  I pushed her away and fell out of bed, all tangled up in the sheets.

  “No!” I yelled, “No!” as I thrashed about on the floor, trying to free myself. Somehow the sheets had wrapped themselves around my head, and everything was dark and breathless for a moment until I managed to peel them away and struggle to my feet.

  The room was lit by faint moonlight. Fizz was nowhere to be seen. I stumbled into the hall, calling my mother, bursting into her room.

  It was dark. I could see a shape in the bed and I threw myself on her.

  “Mom, Mom, wake up! Tell me I’m not dead! Mom!”

  The figure stirred and muttered and then sat up and grabbed me by the shoulders.

  “Alice! Alice! Calm down.”

  She turned on the light.

  It was Mom. I began to sob.

  * * *

  —

  I cried for a long time. I kept saying I wasn’t dead, and Mom kept hugging me like I was a little girl and telling me of course I wasn’t dead, I’d just had a bad dream. Then Mrs. Bishop’s buzzer went off, and Mom pulled herself away and said she’d just be a minute and went in to Mrs. Bishop next door.

  I sat on her bed, hugging my knees, my sobs slowly quieting. I hiccupped.

  I was alive. I could feel every part of my body. I could feel the warmth in my mother’s bed where she’d been lying. I could smell the sweet night smell of trees and grass coming in the open window. I could hear Mrs. Bishop complaining next door and Mom trying to placate her.

  I was alive. Of course I was alive. But why did Fizz say I was dead? And was I just dreaming about going into the dollhouse? Or was I really going into it every time I fell asleep?

  Mom came back. She rolled her eyes.

  “Mrs. Bishop is fit to be tied. Let’s go down and make her some hot chocolate.”

  She sat down on the bed beside me.

  “Are you okay, sweetie?” she said, a frown creasing her forehead. “You scared the wits out of me.”

  I gulped. “Just a bad dream,” I said. “A really, really bad dream.”

  “Come on,” she said, standing up and reaching out a hand to me. “Come downstairs and we’ll talk about it.”

  I followed her through the shadowy house, holding her hand like I was five, looking over my shoulder for ghosts as we went. Downstairs, the kitchen looked ordinary in the overhead light.

  Mom put some milk in a saucepan to heat up and then sat down across the table from me.

  “Alice,” she began. Then she stopped and took a deep breath. “Alice, look. I know you’re upset about me bringing you here and messing up your summer. I know you’re worried about me and Dad and what’s going to happen.”

  “What is going to happen, Mom?” I whispered. “Are you going to get a divorce?”

  She didn’t answer me right away, but just sat there looking at me, her eyes filling with tears.

  “You are, aren’t you?” I said. She nodded.

  “Your dad and I talked about it on the phone tonight. It’s no good, Alice. This has been coming for a long time. Your dad— your dad— well, you know he loves you.”

  I nodded my head, although I really didn’t know, not anymore.

  “He just— he’s just so distant now. He’s never around, and I can’t rely on him for anything. I can’t take it anymore. I’m sorry, honey.” Her tears spilled over, and she wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand.

  “We’ll work things out so you’ll get to spend some time with him. Later in the summer.”

  I felt the world dropping away from me, the way it did in the kitchen when they were fighting on my last day of school.

  “I don’t want you to get a divorce,” I whispered. “I want Dad to come home. I want it to be like it used to be.”

  Mom came around the table and put her arms around me.

  “So do I,” she said. “But it’s not going to.”

  There was a gurgling sound from the stove, and she let go of me and went to see to the milk, which was starting to boil over. I watched her take it off the heat and stir cocoa and brown sugar into it.

  “I think that’s why you’re having these bad dreams,” she said, glancing over at me. “Because you’re upset about me and Dad. We just have to get through this next bit. It’s going to be hard for everyone.”

  “But the train accident,” I said. “I remember it.”

  “Alice, there was an accident. But it wasn’t a bad one. You hit your head and were out for a few seconds, that’s all. I was with you the whole time.” She came over and brushed my hair back off my forehead and smiled at me. “You’re not dead, honey. You’re very much alive. Now, help me bring this cocoa up to Mrs. Bishop.”

  Mom took the tray with cocoa and a plate of cookies and I went up behind her. The house seemed to whisper around me.

  I stood at the door and watched Mom hand Mrs. Bishop her drink. She was sitting up in bed with her glasses on, glaring at me.

  “You’ve woken me again, young lady,” she said. “I don’t appreciate it. I thought the house was on fire, at least.”

  “Sorry,” I mumbled.

  “Your mother tells me you get carried away with your imagination,” she continued. “I suggest you stop that.”

  “I would if I could,” I protested. Mom gave me a warning look.

  “When I was your age, there were enough troubles in the world without imagining more,” she went on, taking a dainty sip of the hot cocoa. “I grew up between two world wars, and I survived the Depression, the Blitz, and food rationing in London in the 1950s,” she said, taking a large bite of an oatmeal cookie.

  I said nothing.

  “And I did it all without waking up the house screaming with nightmares!” she ended, glaring at me some more. “Don’t let it happen again.”

  I turned and went into Mom’s room, where I got into her bed and started in on my cocoa and cookies. When Mom came in a few minutes later, I was lying under her covers.

  “Okay,” she said. “You can sleep here with me tonight. But tomorrow it’s back to your room.”

  Part Three

  THE PARTY

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  THE ROSES

  When I woke up, the sun was beating through the window of Mom’s bedroom, and I was alone. It was hot. I had slept in. No dreams. No dollhouse. No Fizz.

  I could hear a vacuum humming downstairs. I got up, went to the bathroom and then went down the hall staircase in my bare feet, yawning. It was getting a little easier to navigate the steep curves every time I did it, but I still hung on tight to the banister.

  The vacuum noise was coming from the study. I poked my head in, and there was Mary in shorts and a tank top, vacuuming in the corn
er beside the fireplace. She hadn’t heard me, so I left her to it and went downstairs to the kitchen.

  Lily was sitting at the kitchen table by the window, her tongue sticking out as she concentrated on something she was drawing.

  “Boo!” I said, and she jumped. Then she saw it was me and grinned.

  “What are you drawing?” I said, leaning over her shoulder to look.

  She had drawn three little figures in dresses with their legs stuck out, like they were sitting on the ground, and one bigger figure to the side, also sitting down. In front of them were teacups and saucers.

  Despite the heat, a shiver trickled down the back of my neck. Why was Lily drawing a scene from the dream I had yesterday afternoon? The sense of unreality I had in the attic the day before came rushing back.

  “Is this a…teapot?” I asked, pointing to a larger object on one side. My voice squeaked a little on the word teapot.

  “Yup,” answered Lily, putting her head on one side and looking at it. She reached forward and added a little squiggle to the handle. “It’s me and my dolls. Having a tea party. I think so.”

  Weird. I gave my head a little shake, trying to clear it.

  “Do you like tea parties, Lily?” I asked.

  She nodded. “I love them. I have a really pretty tea set, with blue flowers on it,” she said, lifting her pencil again and starting to draw little flowers on one of the teacups.

  The same pattern as Bubble’s tea set in the summerhouse.

  “Where did you get that pretty tea set, Lily?”

  “Mrs. Bishop gave it to me.”

  Mrs. Bishop?

  “She said it should be played with and not just sit in a cupboard. It’s really old, and one of the cups is chipped.”

  “And…and are these your dolls?” I asked, watching as she moved on to another teacup and began to decorate it.

  She nodded her head. “Lucy and Ruby and Jane. They love tea parties too.”

  At least they weren’t April, May and June, like Bubble’s dolls.

  I took a deep breath. Lily kept on adding flowers to the teacups, sitting back after each one to admire her work.

  It was like dreaming backward. Back at home, I had noticed that sometimes things from my daily life would appear in my dreams, transformed in some way, but here at Blackwood House, things from my dreams were making their way into the daytime world. Unless I was dreaming the daytime world and the dollhouse world was the real one—

  “What’s wrong, Alice?” asked Lily, looking at me in concern. “You look funny.”

  “Umm…I feel funny, Lily. Weird things have been happening to me lately.”

  “Oh?” she replied, looking interested. “Like what?”

  “Well…” I hesitated. “I’ve seen the ghost again, the one in my bed.”

  “Oh! Is she scary?”

  “No. Not exactly. But I see other ghosts too. And some of them can’t see me.”

  “Oh…” whispered Lily. “That is scary. I think so.”

  “Kind of. And I think—”

  I hesitated again. Lily was staring at me with a look that was half-curious, half-apprehensive. I wanted to tell her. I wanted to tell someone. I needed to tell someone. I didn’t want to scare her too much, but—

  “I think I’m going into the dollhouse at night, and that’s where I see the ghosts.” It came out in a rush.

  Lily put down her pencil. Her eyes were big. “You go into the dollhouse?”

  I nodded. “I think so.”

  She jumped up. “That sounds like so much fun. I want to go too.”

  I guess I didn’t need to worry about scaring her. I shook my head. “I don’t know how to get you there. I don’t know how I get there myself. I just have these dreams. But I tested it. I found Mrs. Bishop’s keys and went up to look at the dollhouse, and I put a bowl of roses under the bed, and the next time I dreamed about the dollhouse, they were there.”

  “Let’s test it some more,” said Lily. “Let’s go right now!”

  “Okay,” I said. “But I have to eat my breakfast first, and we have to time it right so our mothers don’t catch us.”

  By the time I finished my toast and peanut butter, we had a plan. We’d tell our mothers we were going to go for a walk to Potter’s Pond for a swim, a place Lily went to all the time. But instead of going swimming, we’d sneak back into the house and up to the attic.

  I wasn’t so sure about how we’d get in without being seen, but Lily assured me we could do it.

  “It’s easy, Alice. We just play the invisible game.”

  “The…what?”

  “The invisible game. I play it all the time. Pretend I’m invisible. I just hide and stay very, very still.” She froze in place for a moment. “Like that. And listen.” She tipped her head to one side. “Then creep along quiet as can be.” She tiptoed around in a circle, then stopped and flashed that big, beaming grin. “Mama never sees me. Easy peasy. I think so.”

  When my mom appeared a few minutes later, and we asked her about the swimming, she gave me a searching look and asked about my headache. Once I told her I felt fine, she said we’d have to check with Mary.

  We all trooped upstairs to the study, where Mary was vacuuming.

  Mom asked her about Potter’s Pond.

  “Oh, it’s fine, the kids all go there,” said Mary. “It’s only about a fifteen-minute walk, down a shady road allowance, no cars or anything. And the pond isn’t that deep. I let Lily go with her friends all the time. They’ll be fine.”

  “Well—” said Mom, undecided.

  “Mom, you know I’m a good swimmer. I’ve been taking lessons for ages.”

  “It’s not even over their heads, Ellie,” put in Mary. “Nothing to worry about.”

  “Oh, all right,” said Mom finally. “But before you go, I need to ask you something. Come upstairs for a minute.”

  I went along, Lily trailing behind me.

  Mom stopped in the hall beside the little table. “Yesterday I put a bowl of fresh roses here from the garden, and now they’ve disappeared. Did you move them? Mary hasn’t seen them.”

  I froze. “Umm— Umm—”

  Lily was giving me a funny look.

  “It’s all right if you did,” said Mom kindly. Way too kindly.

  “I— I think they might be under my bed,” I blurted out.

  “What on earth—?” she said, but then stopped herself and got all nursey and kind again. “Let’s have a look, shall we?” she said, and went into my room.

  Lily and I made desperate faces at each other and then followed her.

  Mom was on her knees, pulling out the bowl of roses. She looked up at me.

  “Now, why would you do that, Alice?”

  “They smelled good,” I said, thinking as fast as I could. “I wanted to smell them while I was going to sleep, and I thought you wouldn’t let me bring them into my room, so I hid them and then forgot about them.”

  Mom was having a hard time keeping her face unconcerned. “Alice, if you want roses in your room, we can get you roses. But they won’t be doing anybody any good under your bed.”

  “Okay. Sorry.”

  “Are you sure you’re up to this expedition with Lily this morning?”

  “I feel fine— honest. I think it would do me good. You know, fresh air, stuff like that.”

  Mom put the roses on my bedside table and then came over to me. She reached out and smoothed my hair off my face.

  “Alice, remember the talk we had last night?”

  I nodded.

  “I know it’s hard for you right now. Just come to me if you need anything— like roses— or anything. Okay?”

  I nodded. I wished I could tell her. But I couldn’t. If she was worried now, what would she be like if I started talking about ghosts and magic dollh
ouses?

  “Okay,” she said. “You can go. But if you start getting a headache, come straight home. And wear your hat and sunglasses. Lily, you take care of Alice, okay?”

  Lily nodded solemnly. “I will.”

  Once Mom left us, I went and touched one of the roses.

  It was real. The candy-sweet smell wafted up to me and the petal I touched fell off. Lily came and stood beside me.

  “Tell me about the test,” she said, frowning. “You put the roses under the bed in the dollhouse?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not in the real house?”

  “Yes. I mean no, not in the real house.”

  “But they were under your bed in the real house?”

  “Yes. You know what this means, Lily?”

  “What?”

  “This proves that stuff I do in the dollhouse can happen in this house too. It works both ways. Whatever I do in the dollhouse can happen in the real house, and whatever we do to the dollhouse in the real house happens there too.”

  Lily looked completely confused. “I don’t understand, Alice.”

  “Okay, so I put the roses under the bed when I was playing with the dollhouse. Next time I dreamed I was in the dollhouse, there they were, under the bed. But they were also under the bed in the real house, where Mom found them. And remember how you dressed the dolls in blue dresses?”

  Lily nodded. “Yup.”

  “Well, the next time I saw Bubble and Fizz, they were both wearing those dresses.”

  “Wow!” said Lily, her face lighting up. “This is so cool. A magic dollhouse! I think so. Come on, let’s go!”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  SNEAKING

  After we assembled swimsuits and towels and snacks, we said loud goodbyes to Mom and Mary and headed down the driveway.

  Once we were out of sight of the house, Lily hauled me behind some bushes and then led me in a roundabout fashion into the back garden. By dashing from one tree to another and edging along the side of the house, we managed to get right up to the kitchen door without being seen. Lily had obviously done this before.