Music Box (The Dollhouse Books, #4) (22 page)

“So,” said Ben. “There’s some girl actually living down there, and she can keep us down there, if she wants.” He folded his arms. “Okay, sure, I’d be crazy to say no to that.”

He and Raif exchanged questioning glances, but said no more.

I eyed the frozen-over lid of the rainwater tank again. “I’ll run into the house to find matches. I don’t know how we’re going to do this, but it’s a start.”

“Hang on.” Ben shucked the backpack off his back and pulled out an assortment of items, including a small tent. He stared up at us. “I used to be in the boy scouts. I come prepared.”

He took a few of the hundred-year-old books from the bookshelf and placed them on top of the tank lid. He tried three matches before managing to spark one that wasn’t too damp, and set the pile of books ablaze. The ice melted in rivulets of water.

I knelt at the tank lid, closing my eyes and trying to remember the rotations that made the elevator work. The lock combination was simple—whoever had designed it must have known that no one would ever think the lid was actually the floor of an elevator.

It had been Ethan, Lacey and me who had been hiding in the shed that time we’d heard Henry come in and open the lock. In my mind, I heard the series of clicks, and saw Ethan as he turned the lid back and forth. Leaving my eyes closed, I copied Ethan.

To the left until it clicked, to the right until it clicked, then to the left again and completely around.

Taking a shallow breath, I stood. “We can all fit, if we move close together.”

Lacey hung back as everyone moved toward the rainwater lid.

“Aren’t you coming?” Ben said quietly.

Her eyes stared straight ahead. “I don’t know why any of the girls want to go back there. Wasn’t once enough?”

“Lacey,” I said, “we need to talk to Jessamine.”

“I don’t want to talk to her... ever again.” Lacey’s eyes grew even more distant.

“It’s important. But you can stay here if you want,” said Molly. “But I kind of thought you were on our side now.”

Lacey’s pale lips parted. “But I’m not one of you. I was the one... on the outside.”

“You were trapped by the dollhouse as much as we were,” Sophronia told her. “So why don’t you become one of us? I believe there is a pipe organ down there that needs playing. Cassie told me you can play—and my piano skills are very rusty.”

Lacey’s gaze snapped to Sophronia’s face. “You need me to help?” She dropped her head and nodded softly. “I’ll come.”

Together, we all stepped onto the lid.

I heard the strange knocking sound I’d heard the first time I’d stepped onto this lid. But somewhere, at the back of my mind, I felt as though I’d stepped onto this elevator a hundred times. A thousand times. As though I’d always known I’d come back here.

Ben whistled as the elevator jumped and whirred and started to make its way down. “Some crazy stuff this is.”

For a moment, I worried that the ice and cold might have affected the working parts of the elevator, and we’d be trapped between solid rock, with no way out. But the machine slid down into the darkness of the cave beneath.

We held out our torches and lamps. Shivers travelled down my spine. All the circus paraphernalia still sat on the shelves and floor. So still, so quiet down here—nothing but the sound of our breaths.

“Wait,” Sophronia said, as everyone moved off onto the rock platform. “This contraption appears to work by weight—and we need to keep it down here. What if it freezes over again if it goes back to the top?”

“Good thinking.” Impressed, Raif nodded at her.

She closed her eyes slightly as she smiled at him.

Raif and Ben climbed down the rope ladder and brought back two heavy barrels to sit on top of the elevator. The elevator would stay down here until we returned—and I had to hope that we’d be back here within an hour or so.

One by one, we made our way down the ladder, Molly catching Frances as she jumped from the end rung.

Lacey quietly crossed the room to the gloomy recess that held the pipe organ. Seating herself, she played the midsection of Chopin’s Nocturne No. 20 on the pipe organ—just as she had last time. The somber music filled the space, and the Wheel of Death clicked and unlocked.

The others looked back at Lacey and me—the only ones here who knew the way in. Dread combed my back as I walked to the round door with the faded blue star. This door had been the barrier that had stopped me from escaping last time.
No, that wasn’t true. From the second I had stepped foot into the forest with Lacey to look for Aisha, I had sealed my fate.

The words carved into the cracked wood of the door were seared into my mind.

Out of this wood do not desire to go,

Thou shalt remain here, whether thou wilt or no.

Grabbing the spokes of the wheel, I spun it around. The door swung open.

“We need to keep this open, too,” I said quickly, the fear of being trapped rushing through me like a chill wind.

Raif brought another of the barrels over to hold the door, deftly rolling it with his one arm.

Molly held Frances’ hand as we stepped inside. Lacey kept her arms crossed and tight against her body. Ben and Raif said little as we headed deeper into the underground. I hoped they were steeling themselves and not beginning to wish they’d stayed behind. We had no time to waste.

Henry’s steel wall loomed ahead, but it had been peeled back like a tin can. Nausea rose at the pit of my stomach. This was the wall we’d come against when we thought we’d found escape. Instead, we’d had to return to the dollhouse and make the decision to drink enough tea that it would poison us and we’d never wake. I saw the desolation on the girls’ faces and knew they were remembering the same. Molly had been the only one that hadn’t been with us—she’d been lying in the dollhouse bed chamber, comatose.

I guessed that Henry and the people from the castle hadn’t needed any tools or machines to get through the wall.

We made our way through the opening and raced along the passage to the carousel.

“What the hell is that thing?” Raif’s panting voice was hoarse.

“And more to the point,” said Ben, “how do we get through and how do we get out again?”

“All I know is how we get in...” Aisha pointed to the fantastical creatures of the carousel. “How we get out again is another thing.”

Wordlessly, everyone climbed onto the platform.

The red and green bulbs on the center column lit up, and we slowly spun around to the dollhouse.

In the dark chill, the dollhouse was terrifying. There were no lights on. Either the generator had frozen or Jessamine had destroyed the lights. The dripping of water punctuated the stillness. In the distance, far away and around the corridors, I could hear a low wind roaming. Everywhere, there was that closed, almost wet smell of the underground.

Debris still littered the corridor ahead, but Jessamine—or someone else—seemed to have cleaned up most of it.

Ben shone his flashlight into the kitchen. His beam shone over the dress and porcelain face of the eight-foot dolls sitting on the chairs. He wheeled around, his breaths quick as he eyed Lacey. “It’s one of those things, isn’t it...? Those monsters that marched into the forest that night when we were on school camp.”

Lacey nodded, her blue eyes wide.

Ben exhaled forcibly. “Vindicated. Finally.”

“I’m sorry..,” she whispered. “I let everyone believe you were crazy.”

“Don’t be,” Ben told her. “You were the one they abducted. I got off easy.”

Aisha and I exchanged a small smile. Ben and Lacey had just had their first real conversation.

Molly peered into the bed chamber, casting the glow of her flashlight over the dolls lying in the beds. “Jessamine’s not here.”

“You mean—whoever Jessamine is—you expected her to be in
there
?” Raif gasped. “Man, I’ve never seen anything so damned creepy. If I had to sleep in there, I’d eat my own face and stuff myself under the bed the first night.” Realization edged into Raif’s expression. He stared around at us. “Oh no. Jeez. That’s where you girls slept?”

Ben’s face paled. “Hell....”

“Let’s keep going,” I said in a determined tone.

We continued on to the ballroom. The books had all been returned to their places on the bookshelves. Our pictures had been replaced in the desks.

“Jessamine,” said Molly carefully. “If you’re here, please show yourself.”

Nothing moved in the gloom—no shadow, no flutter of light.

Ben and Raif exchanged half-frozen glances, but to their credit, they didn’t speak.

Walking on, we headed toward the Dark Way.

“Okay.” Ben stopped dead. “I don’t know if it’s a good idea to head down there.”

“Yeah.” Raif nodded. “That looks like a good place for something evil to jump out and eat us alive.”

Sophronia leveled her gaze at him. “We lived here with a being capable of doing that. You did have the choice of not coming here with us. And you can wait outside right now if you wish.”

Raif returned her stare, breathing heavily between his teeth. “No, can’t let you girls go in there alone.”

Ben straightened. “I’m right with you.” But his voice sounded less certain than his words.

Molly kept Frances close by her side as she walked in. “Good. We’re safer together, rather than splitting up.”

The rest of us walked on either side of Molly and Frances, keeping Frances in the middle of us as best we could.

There were still papers strewn along the floor from the maelstrom of fury Jessamine had unleashed. As I opened the door to the secret passage, I could almost hear a rush of whispered voices—voices from times past.

Icy fingers knotted my spine as our flashlights found Jessamine’s skeleton. I’d seen rescuers take her remains away in the other world. But this was my world, the world in which the dollhouse was never discovered by outsiders. A world in which Jessamine’s skeleton still lay on the cold stone floor, the pieces of the shattered saint statue all around her.

Molly bent her head. “So this is where Jessamine died. All alone.”

I remembered Henry’s words, about how Jessamine had died—chased by some relative of the Baldcotts. There hadn’t been time to pay a moment of respect before—and I hadn’t had any sympathy for her. But I saw her more clearly now, manipulated by the adults who should have been looking after her.

“Wait.” Raif swallowed hard, his eyes deep in shadows. “This is Jessamine? This is her?”

“Yes.” Molly gently pulled Frances against her side, stroking her head.

Ben jumped and shouted out as his flashlight illuminated the blackened and decaying remains of the Raggedy Andy doll. The doll was still in the grisly crawling position that it had been when it was crawling toward me, trying to rise to its feet.

He blew out a rush of air, calming himself. “Okay, just a doll. A dead, slimy doll. What else would there be in this place?”

Aisha raised her lamp, training it around the gaping hole in the wall. She moved closer, peering into it. The howling wind that had spilled from it last time I had seen it had died away. Now, just a haunting, distant sound prowled the tunnel.

“God.” Aisha turned back to me. “This must be it—the place you escaped through?”

I nodded.

“Where does it go?” Ben stepped over to look inside.

“It goes all the way through the mountain,” I told him.

I felt her, the presence of the shadow. She was moving through the twisting, writhing tunnel toward us. “We need to go!”

Molly eyed me in alarm.

Below, in the hollow eye sockets of the skeleton lying on the floor, two dark eyes opened.

The boys stood frozen, staring at Jessamine’s skeleton.

“Go!” I shouted.

Ben and Raif jolted. We turned and fled.

Gathering in the ballroom, we hung close together—holding our feeble sources of light out.

Vibrations and whispers rushed through the air, like an evil bird swooping on us. The shadow was all around us, large and rising.

Something unseen forced the shadow back. The blackness slipped away, its terrifying sounds bouncing and echoing from the walls.

No one spoke for a few moments—nothing except for shuddering breaths and gasps.

Near-silence gripped the dollhouse again. There was not even the tick of the grandfather clock—the clock lay smashed and upended in the library.

“We need to leave. Now.” Raif’s voice fell away.

“We can’t do that,” said Aisha.

“Why?” His voice cracked. “The girl you want is dead. Long dead, by the look of her.”

“Let’s go and sit.” Molly indicated toward the chairs and desks—what were left of them.

We pulled the pieces of furniture together, and seated ourselves.

Ben lifted the lid of the desk he was sitting at. He frowned in horror as he pulled out Frances’ drawings—pictures of Jessamine with dark pits for eyes, pictures of a shadow hanging over a sick Molly. “You girls need to start talking—tell us why we’re here and what that thing was and why that skeleton back in the tunnel was alive.”

Beside him, Raif gripped his head in his hand, looking shaken.

“We will,” Sophronia assured him.

“It was her.” Lacey’s blue eyes were wide and childlike above her torchlight.

Frances nodded. “She helped us.”

“Do you want to explain that to me?” Ben asked Lacey.

Lacey toyed with tendrils of long hair that were still caked in blood. “Jessamine. She made that thing—the shadow—go away.”

He tensed. “Shadow? You mean that thing I saw pour out of you before?”

She tried to untangle her hair, nervously pulling at it—but the blood had dried. “Yes. But I have just a small part of it inside me. But the shadow... the real shadow is as tall as it wants to be.”

“But it’s okay now,” I said. “The shadow knows she’s going to protect us.”

Raif’s head jerked as he stared from place to place around the room, as though demons would jump out at any moment. “So, what we have here... is a ghost battling a shadow.” The muscles in his face strained as he tried to compose himself.

“Raif,” said Aisha quietly. “These are the things we knew, when we were down here in the dollhouse. Things that you think can’t possibly exist... are real.”