Paper Dolls (8 page)

Henry sticks his head out of his compartment. “Get back to your seat and stay there. The old man gave instructions that he didn’t want to be disturbed.”

“I know that,” I say indignantly.

I pretend to retrace my steps, but instead wait until they are so engrossed in each other that they don’t notice me steal my way back past them. I creep past sleeping clowns—lazy clowns who didn’t bother to remove their makeup before boarding the train. A blast of hot air hits my face as I open the door. I don’t want to step out there into the open, especially not with the train rushing along a bridge so high it feels as though we’re travelling through the sky itself. With my heart banging, I balance along the join between the carriages and grip the handle of the next carriage—and wench it open. Grandfather is sleeping in his compartment, but his sleep is restless. Sitting beside him, I curl my legs up on the seat and rest my head on his shoulder.

The train chugs on relentlessly. The sight of the vast open spaces below the tracks makes my stomach churn like butter.

A ricocheting sound explodes in my ears.

Grandfather yells as he wakes. He stares into my eyes and grasps my arms.

Screeching—metal torn, ripped apart.

The train tips, hurtles downwards, into nothingness.

Grandfather shouts my name over and over and over. We’re tossed in the air like rag dolls. Flung from roof to floor. Desperately clutching onto whatever we can. Until we’re torn away.

Until blackness consumes me.

I had no fight left in me. I had nothing.

I woke more than I slept.

First thing in the morning, doctors came and carried out all kind of tests. One of the tests involved examining every square inch of my body and taking photographs, especially of the cuts and bruises. Another test involved examining my private areas. Mom held my hand while I waited for them to finish, whispering to me repeatedly that
it’s okay
.

I gazed directly at her, pretending strangers weren’t photographing my naked body. “Mom, I want to go home.”

“You will, soon. I’m so sorry, baby. They need to do their checks to make sure you’re all right.”

“Where are the others?”

She smiled tightly. “I’m not sure, Cassie. I haven’t heard anything.”

I fell in and out of sleep all day. Without the tea, I found it impossible to sleep for long stretches. Mom asked if the TV might help me into sleep and I nodded. I tried watching a movie—but the happy world it portrayed was just so remote I couldn’t bear it. Every line spoken was a lie, every smiling face was just a mask, and around every corner was some horrific vortex waiting to drag the actors inside. I began shaking, wanting to scream at the screen. Mom switched it off, brushing back the hair on my damp forehead.

A nurse came and gave me tablets.

“It’s a heavy dose,” she told mom. “But her body needs rest.”

I didn’t care that the nurse spoke to mom and not me as though I was a child. I gratefully swallowed the tablets. I wanted escape. I could no longer endure the thoughts crowding my head.

In the bleakness of the morning, I struggled awake. My head was a fog. Mom slept in a cot beside me. At least we had a private room where there was room for her to have a bed and not have to sleep in a chair.

At the back of my mind, the cruel silver eye bored through the haze, bored deep into me—knowing my past, knowing my future. My stomach knotted. I felt a sudden need to run and reassure myself that the world I used to know still stood beyond these four walls. With stiff steps, I walked to the window. I recoiled as my face triggered a furor of photo snapping from a ring of photographers in the street below.

Gathering my hospital gown around me, I made my way out to the corridor. It was empty of patients, the faint smell of bleach rising from the floor. Most of the doors were closed. Inside the few that were open, patients slept—hooked up to monitors and drips.

Was
Aisha
here somewhere?
Sophronia
?
Frances
? The doctors said they weren’t authorized to give that information. Desperately, I wanted to know where they all were. I’d been told they were all safe and recovering, but that was all.

A discarded newspaper sat in a trash basket, underneath a bundle of disposable gloves and gowns. A close-up of Ethan’s face was plain to see on the fold of the front cover. With trembling fingers I moved the plastics aside and picked up the paper. The photo of Ethan was the same as the one from school. Even in grainy newspaper print his eyes still held that same expression—a look that tore into your soul.

My gaze fell to the headline,
Dollhouse shock find—Ribbons under floorboard.
I told myself not to read on. But I did. Line after line of words laced my body with invisible cuts….

In a shocking twist to the Dollhouse case, hair ribbons matching the ribbons of the dollhouse abductees were found under a loose floorboard in the home that Seth McAllister and his grandson Ethan shared in the Barrington Tops region.

Ethan McAllister was age nine when the first of the five girls, thirteen-year-old runaway Molly Parkes, was taken from the Barrington Tops forests and kept in the underground tunnels beneath the Fiveash house. Seth McAllister claims his grandson had no knowledge of either the Fiveash house or the horrors that lay beneath it.

Ethan was found with part of an unknown Fiveash inheritance of gold and diamonds on his person when rescued from the tunnels. The inheritance was buried beneath the landslide that occurred on the Fiveash property immediately after the abductees rescue. Also buried in the landslide were the underground tunnels and the Fiveash house itself.

There is speculation that the body of an unidentified sixth girl lies within the tunnels. Due to the instability of the earth, no recovery operation can be carried out.

The owner of the Fiveash house, Mr. Henry Fiveash, fled from the property some time before the date of the rescue.

Detectives on the Dollhouse case are working to piece together the macabre puzzle.

A court date has yet to be confirmed.

The paper fell from between my fingers, fluttering to the floor.

One of my doctors—Dr. Pearson—insisted upon staying for the duration of the interview. I was his patient, he told the detectives, and he didn’t want me over-stressed.

Detective Kalassi sat heavily on my right. “Cassie,” he sighed, “there you are.”

The others smiled at the warmth in his voice.

“Maybe,” I told him. “I still don’t feel all here.”

“No,” he sympathized. “You’ve been through most ever will. But I have to tell you how good it is to see you. I can’t tell you what it did to me when I found out we’d lost more kids in that forest. We followed every lead, but nothing. And then you just… appear. It’s a good day when a missing kid is returned. A very good day.”

A few of the detectives murmured assent. I stared beyond the detectives, to the patch of muted blue sky through the window. “What about Sophronia, Aisha, Frances? Where are they? Are they okay?”

Detective Kalassi placed a hand on my arm, giving it a light squeeze. “Yeah, they’re all okay. Recovering well. All in different hospitals.”

“Have you spoken to them?”

He scratched his head. “Aisha and little Frances, yes. Sophronia won’t speak to us.”

My forehead drew in tight. “What did they tell you?”

“It’s best that I don’t go into that right now. I hope you’ll understand. And Frances is understandably experiencing nightmares at the moment—we couldn’t stay and talk with her for more than a minute.”

“She was brave in the underground—Frances.” It physically hurt me to think of her trying to process everything that had happened to her. She was just a little kid. It hurt me also that Molly didn’t live to see Frances escape from the underground. Molly would have given anything to see that day. I drew a long breath. “When will… when will Molly’s funeral be? I want to go.”

He bowed his head. “I’m sorry. That’s not going to be possible. There’s a private family matter that I can’t explain at this time.

Tears misted my eyes. “I didn’t get a proper chance to say… goodbye.”

“I know.” He raised his eyes to me. “I know.”

He leant his tall frame back in the chair. “Now, we have a few questions for you, but we’ll try not to overstay our welcome.”

“I’ll make sure of that,” said mom, casting her stern look around at the detectives.

The men and women were introduced, but their names flew past me. I was still drowsy from the sleeping tablets, still reeling from the newspaper article about Ethan and his grandfather. The only name I caught was Sarah Bryant—the detective who had been at the site of the rescue that night with Detective Kalassi.

A dark-eyed man with thin, pinched cheeks breathed outwards loudly. “Okay, so we know the basics, as awful as they are. I’d like to focus for a moment on the makeup you all had to wear—a rather special makeup. Can you tell us more about that?”

I steeled myself.
Just answer the questions. Don’t think
. “We had to wear makeup every day. Makeup that made us look like dolls.”

“Can you say why you had to wear this?”

I went to answer
Jessamine
, but stopped myself. “I don’t know.”

“Who required that you wear it? Henry Fiveash?”

“I guess. All the girls knew they had to wear it.”

“What happened if you didn’t?”

“If we disobeyed any orders, we were starved of food.”

The detectives busily wrote in their notebooks.

“So you were rationed?” said the thin-cheeked man. “How were the rations supervised? What would happen if you’d taken more than your allowed ration?”

I closed my eyes. “We were forced into a secret cave, to spend time in complete darkness.”

My mother gasped, placing her hand over her mouth.

“You were put in isolation?” he said.

“Yes.” I closed my eyes.

I had to wear Audette’s black dress that swarmed over me like insects and then other people’s dreams ran through my head and I found myself in endless black tunnels and I didn’t know how I’d got there and I sensed the shadow coming for me….

“Cassie, are you okay?” asked Detective Kalassi. I opened my eyes into the detective’s concerned face.

“I’m okay,” I breathed.

The thin-cheeked detective steepled his fingers. “I want to ask about Ethan McAllister. I understand he was put in a cell within the underground—for almost the entire duration that you were there.”

“Yeah, he was.”

“Why is that?” he asked.

Because he took a knife to Jessamine. To a ghost.
“Because he was violent.”

“Violent to whom?”

“He was just… very angry. Angry at those who were keeping us in the underground. He threatened to kill our captors.”

The detectives scribbled in their notebooks again.

Detective Bryant gave me a sympathetic smile. She had pale eyes that drooped at the corners and messy auburn hair. “I’d like to ask about Lacey Dougherty now. I hope that’s all right.”

I nodded, taking a breath.

She drew her lips in, appearing to think carefully about how to phrase her words. “Lacey… she came into the underground with you, didn’t she?”

“Yes. She did.”

“But she disappeared soon afterwards?”

“Yes.” I gazed directly at her. “Where is Lacey now?”

“She’s been put in special care,” she told me.

“You mean she wasn’t arrested?” I stared around at the detectives.

“There were no grounds for arrest,” said the thin-cheeked man.

Inwardly, I burned and seethed. “She brought all the girls to Henry. She admitted it to us on the night of the rescue.”

“We’ve heard… lots of things from Lacey,” said Detective Byrant. “It’s all quite… fantastical. She’s admitting all kinds of things. Even things involving ghosts and demonic creatures I’m afraid. She’s experiencing acute guilt that she escaped becoming an abductee herself. She’s in psychosis and may not be well for quite some time to come.”

“You think she’s admitting to things that aren’t true?” Anger seeped through my voice. “She knew exactly where all of us were all that time.”

Of course they believe what Lacey’s saying isn’t true. Ghosts and serpents are insane. Don’t give yourself away, or they’ll lock you away too. Don’t give yourself away. You can’t tell any of them what really happened.

“We understand you being angry at Lacey for not ending up in the same situation as the rest of you,” said the thin-cheeked man. “There’s no telling why she was allowed to go free. Often we never come to an understanding of how the minds of abductors work. But we can’t discuss this further I’m afraid. Lacey is not a suspect. That’s all we can tell you.”

“Well, is there something you
can
tell me?” My tone was harsher than I’d meant it to be. “I know that the police can’t look for Prudence’s body. But it’s down there. Please, I want to know who she is… who she was. Have you checked your missing person’s lists?”

A tear ran down mom’s face. She stepped away, gazing out the window. I guessed what she was thinking.
Prudence could have been me
.

Martin Kalassi sighed, shaking his large head. “I’ve checked the lists ‘till my head's spun. Right around Australia. Now, we know her name is unlikely to be Prudence, but there’s just no missing girl matching the description, age and dates. I remember the night of the rescue you telling me you hadn’t seen her in person, is that right?”