Dollhouse (26 page)

Skull.

Hat.

Hot tears wet my face. Strength left me—I crouched on the ground like an animal.

Lacey.

I forced myself to see her again. The skeleton was propped upright and standing in the cavity. A long yellow dress encased the body of bones—a dark stain spreading from the bodice downwards. A summer hat was tied under the chin.

No, it couldn’t be her—couldn’t be Lacey.
The bones were aged. The skeleton had to have been here for a long time.

She had to be
The First One
.
Prudence.

I knelt—my mind deadening.

Something reached around and clamped over my face. I struggled, slipping on the rock. Fingers dug into my shoulders, shaking them violently.

Wake up! Wake up!

A high voice.

With a shudder I felt myself dragging backwards, my back hitting a wall. The eyes of Aisha and Sophronia bored into mine.

“Don't scream again,” said Aisha. “Please don't scream again. You'll wake Jessamine. What happened?”

I shivered feverishly. “Get this dress off me.”

Ethan had an asthma attack and came close to dying. Aisha kept a vigil in front of Ethan's cell—her hands locked onto the bars. Missouri grew worse. Philomena tried repeatedly to engage me, but I refused her. Jessamine drifted about the underground almost wordlessly. And the food...  the food dwindled to the last can.

I watched it all from a distance.

Missouri rose from the daybed, and stepped unsteadily from the room. Sophronia looked up in alarm. Philomena slept peacefully on her chest after she'd spent half an hour settling the restless little girl.

Aisha's pale face appeared in front of mine. “Cassie. We have to go help Missouri.”

“You go.”

“She could fall. She can barely stand up.”

I turned my head away from her, away from her accusing eyes. Her hands grasped my arm, half-wrenching me to my feet.

 “Get up, damn you,” she yelled. “What makes you think you're so special? We're all going through this!”

I leapt to my feet, pushing her away.

Her mouth drew in. Her fist connected with my jaw.

She snatched her fist back. “Oh God. I'm sorry...  I'm sorry...."

I shook, unable to speak for a moment. I ran from the ballroom and into the corridor. Missouri's bent frame stumbled into the bathroom. She gripped the sink with both hands, spluttering into the steel bowl. Bright blood exploded in the sink.

Moving behind her, I touched a towel to her mouth. She stared in the mirror at the two pallid figures who stood side by side. Breathing heavily, she padded into the bed chamber. She laid herself back, gasping on her bed.

Aisha pushed past me, through the crevice to the chamber. “Why'd you let her come in here?”

A strained sigh came from deep within Missouri's chest. “This is where I want to be.”

“The air is wet .. and too cold in here. Please ….” Aisha bowed her head.

“I don’t want Philly...  to see me, like this.”

I edged my back into the wall.

Missouri's gaze drifted over to me. “You're full of rage, Calliope.”

“This place,” I said, “operates on a spider web of lies and deceit.”

“You want to know everything? Look at yourself. You discover a truth and can barely function.”

My bottom lip quavered. “Yes I know about Jessamine. But you shouldn't have held back the truth...  about Prudence. I found her...  I found Prudence.”

Missouri's eyes watered, her features losing composure.

Aisha strode up to me, her hand gripping my arm. “You
found
Prudence?”

“She's dead,” I spat. “She never left here.”

Aisha turned slowly around to Missouri. “Tell me that's not true.”

Missouri plunged into silence. Aisha's arm slackened and fell away from mine.

“The reason I told no one about Prudence...  is because of Prudence,” Missouri said finally.

“But why?” Aisha's voice wilted.

Missouri’s cheeks were wet, shining. She took in some labored breaths. “Prudence was brought in a year after I was. It was terrible of me... but I was glad to have someone else to share my days with, to share the horror with. I told Prudence—about Jessamine—soon after she was brought in. Prudence took the news badly. She began drawing madly every day...  reams and reams of paper. I couldn’t reach her. Couldn’t stop her.”

She moved her head to the side, eyes squeezed shut. “And then one morning... one morning I woke to find her in a pool of blood. There in her bed. She’d cut her wrists sometime during the night.”

Aisha and I quietly moved to Missouri's side.

“Knowing the truth killed Prudence,” said Missouri softly. “She’d been here less than a month. That’s why I knew if there was ever another girl brought down here—I’d never tell.”

The hellish scene Missouri had painted of Prudence's last days and night seared my mind. And there was something else, something underneath the horror.

“But she can't be
The First One
...  Prudence,” I said slowly. “Not if she was brought in a year after you.”

Missouri shook her head in soft, sad movements. I realized then Missouri had never said she was.

“Then who is she... 
The First One
?”

“I don't know,” Missouri responded. “I've seen her, perhaps three times in all.  But I barely see her before she is gone—and she's always shrouded in a strange darkness. Years ago, when I first came here, was the first time. I knew she'd been here before, because Jessamine greeted her—like someone she knew. I've always felt she is the key to the mystery of our imprisonment. But I haven't seen her for a long time. I don't know what happened to her. I hoped you could find out.”

I raised my eyes to the stone statue in the wall. “So that's yet another girl that something awful happened to.”

Missouri touched my arm. “Time has run out, for all of us.”

Aisha drew out Prudence's sketches from her clothing, and placed them in Missouri's hands. “Please tell us what the pictures mean?”

Missouri lifted weary eyes to the ceiling, frowning as her fingers touched the paper. She brought the drawings around to her face. The papers dropped through her fingers as though they were laced with poison.

Missouri's expression froze. “She comes here.”

“Who comes here?” Aisha sat next to Missouri on her bed.

“The serpent.”

I grasped Missouri’s arm. “What do you mean, she comes here?”

Missouri moved her head away sorrowfully. “We only see her shadow. Jessamine fears her too.”

Aisha gasped. Horror charged through my entire body, turning my limbs to stone.

Lamia was real?

How could she be? She was a myth, a drawing, an imagining.

I thought back to my first time in the underground, and the shadow I’d seen pass over the ceiling—the shadow I'd thought had been a product of my own fear.

“There's more...  about Prudence.” Missouri's eyes were distant. “Prudence saw her—the shadow—the night she died. The shadow wrapped itself... around her. Jessamine commanded the shadow to leave... but it was too late. Prudence had already been on the edge of losing her mind. I think that’s how the shadow was able to hurt her.”

I bowed my head, barely able to conceive what Missouri was telling me.  Her words ate through me like a plague of rats.

“God,” I whispered. “That’s why she—Jessamine—sleeps with the toys in the room? That’s why you called the toys her
guardians
that first time we talked, isn’t it? They’re not guarding her from us so much as guarding her from... Lamia.” My voice fled from me, raspy and cracking.

She nodded, her face drained. “Don’t think of the serpent as a name. I don’t think she can be defined. She could become more dangerous, if you define her. Prudence drew the serpent the way she saw her—and then the serpent struck.”

“But what does she want? Why does she come here?”

Missouri inhaled sharply from the effort of speaking. “You need to stay strong, Calliope and Angeline. There's nothing I know that can help you.”

I bent close to her. Her breath dusted the air white.

“Tell us. We need...  to know.”

Her eyes locked with mine, staring into me. “I’m afraid. I’m afraid for you if you know it.”

“No more secrets,” I whispered.

She shook her head stiffly, her face twisting with pain.

I backed away from the bed, knowing I couldn’t push further.

She drifted to sleep.

Fear and revulsion clung to me like the material of the black dress—malevolent, evil. Aisha sat stonily, eyes glazed and unseeing.

Running to the bathroom, I slammed the door behind me.

I let my back slide down the tiled wall, hugging my knees close to my chest. Part of me had torn away—screaming down the passage like a mad thing, yelling and fighting.

I’d crossed over to some other side. A place where beings such as ghosts and mythological serpents roamed.

But I was alive again, blood coursing and pumping through the dry deserts of my veins.

Jessamine fidgeted with her hands.

Sophronia struggled to her feet, lifting the sleeping Philomena into the pram. She then stepped over to her desk. I knew that was the signal that she wished to communicate. The thought came to me that even now, at a time when I was close to sharing death with this person, I didn't know her in the least. We'd die together, but as strangers.

Rising, I strolled as casually as I could manage to my desk. I lifted out paper and pencils.

Jessamine sat in her rocking chair—observing us silently for a time—then she decided to stroll backwards and forwards like an army sergeant. It was going to be impossible for us to write messages to each other.

Sophronia drew an oval-shaped sun shining down on a rose—coloring in the sun with intense shading. She penciled in a ribbon around the stem of the flower, in the shape of a bow. Next she added another rose with a ribbon, and then another and another—until there were five roses.

Frowning, I stole a long look at her page. Why draw ribbons on flower stems? It didn't seem Sophronia's usual style. She was more likely to draw something ugly than something so trite.

The penny dropped. The roses were us. We wore ribbons in our hair. And the sun—it was oval rather than round. The sun was the locket?
No, it was the picture inside the locket—Jessamine.
The sun was Jessamine.

Each time Sophronia added a rose, she rubbed out a little of the sun’s color.

I stared back at my own page, scribbling as Jessamine passed.

What was Sophronia trying to tell me? The more roses—girls—that were added, the more the color of the sun—Jessamine—drained away. Did color meant energy?

Next to the roses, Sophronia added a strange person – with button eyes, a clown’s mouth and a square grid-like body.  

I peered closely at the figure as Jessamine stepped away from us. The clown’s mouth could only mean Clown—but he didn’t have button eyes. But Raggedy Ann did. So the figure was part Clown, part Raggedy and part something else.  The body resembled a grid—like the bars of a cell. It had to mean the cell. The grid was meant to be the cell—and Ethan.

She rubbed out so much of the sun it was barely there—just a pale ghost of a sun.

Sophronia’s dark eyes flickered over me.

I gave a cautious nod, looking out for Jessamine.

Doodling, Sophronia tuned the ribbons into leaves and rubbed out the figure—until the picture just looked like any other drawing of flowers.

I sketched aimless circles on my pages, trying to think, trying to make sense of what Sophronia was trying to tell me.

So, everything Jessamine controlled in the dollhouse was
draining her
. Watching us, guarding us, keeping the cell locked up—maybe even keeping The Dark Way blocked. She’d had more energy since she’d released Aisha from her cell—now I understood why.  The empty cell had to be one less drain on her reserves.

Staring down at my page with the heavily outlined circles, my spine stiffened.

Circles—
the carousel
.

If Jessamine controlled everything—then she must also be keeping the exit carousel from turning.

Taking another page, I drew a carousel unicorn—it was clumsy and childish—but Sophronia understood. The unicorn was only on the exit carousel.

I drew a question mark, then scribbled over it.

Jessamine marched over.

“Calliope, don’t bother to sketch if you are just going to deface the page.”

I stared down at my page. Manic circles surrounded the clumsy unicorn.

Jessamine stayed close by us after that, keeping an eagle’s watch on everything we did.

The day dripped on.

Aisha woke with a quick intake of breath, and stole away from the room. I knew she was going to see Ethan.

She truly loved him, I mused. What I’d thought I’d felt for Ethan had faded until I could barely remember it. Until the only thing I had left was the memory of the frozen kiss in the mountains. There was nothing else—none of the dreams I used to have about him. I was relieved, not to feel it anymore. But at the same time, it was disturbing to have something so potent drain away like that. Maybe I was just like Lance and my father—unable to remember love long enough to keep it safe.

Philomena climbed from the pram. She played for a time with her skittles—knocking them every which way. She then ran about the room banging into things, much to the dismay of Jessamine. Philly had been almost aggressive since Missouri moved to the bed chamber. I tried to settle her—read her a book—but she flung herself away, spinning like an out-of-control top. Climbing onto the carousel, she began kicking into one of the carousel horses.