Paper Dolls (24 page)
Authors: Anya Allyn
“I don’t want to.”
“If you don’t, I’ll get Henry up here, and we’ll strip you and put it on you ourselves.”
I stare at the floor for a moment, wishing myself anywhere but here. I pull off my slip and let it fall on the floor. Audette drops the dress over my head. She’s not gentle when she does the strings up at the back. Next, she fiddles with my hair, combing and pulling and sticking pins in it. She holds my face between her thumb and fingers, then dusts it with powder that makes me cough. She puts greasy red lipstick on my lips and tells me to rub my lips together.
“You’re a young lady now and you should look like one.” she says. “Have a look.” She points to an oval full-length mirror in my room. “I’ve brought you this in from my room.”
I shake my head firmly. “Grandfather doesn’t want me to have a mirror. He says mirrors can’t show your soul.”
Her nose pinches as she frowns. I can see up her nostrils. “Your grandfather is a few clowns short of a circus. Of course people need mirrors. Now take a good look. You haven’t seen yourself in a while and it’s time you did.”
I count my steps as I walk to the other side of the room, trying to stretch out time.
One, two, buckle my shoe. Three, four, knock at the door. Five, six, pickup sticks.
Audette hisses impatiently.
Someone else looks back at me in the mirror. It is me but not me. I am stretched, grown, strange—like a reflection in a funhouse mirror. My face is longer, my cheeks not so round. The dress is a big girl’s dress but it fits me. My eyes stare wildly like the eyes of the bobcat that once got trapped in Miss Kitty’s trailer.
“What a big girl you are. Fifteen tomorrow.”
I shake my head. “I am not.”
“Oh yes you are.”
She moves so that she stands behind me in the mirror. “Shame about the scars.”
Scars form on my neck and shoulder, bubbling up and spreading in angry dark red slashes. I gasp, holding a hand to cover them. I remember the scars, remember seeing them before—in the hospital.
“You’re ruined, Jessamine. You were a pretty girl, but you’re ruined now.” She pats some powder over the scars, but they don’t disappear completely.
“Can I take this dress off now?” My voice is small.
“No. Someone is waiting to see you in this. It’s your wedding dress.” Her cigar breath sighs in the air. “Don’t you remember Mr. Baldcott? You’re getting married soon. Another month maybe. ” Her face hardens.
I turn my back to the mirror, swallowing hard. My head hurts and feels wrong. I try to tear the dress off but I can’t reach the corset ties at the back. What is Audette talking about? I’m not getting married. And this is not my wedding dress.
“I want daddy.”
“Oh sweetie, that’s never going to happen. Don’t you know why?”
“He’s trapped on an island with mother. No one can get to them and they can’t get off. But grandfather has gone to find them.”
She laughs without opening her mouth, making a deep sound in her throat. “They’re not on an island. They’re dead. Both of them.”
Panic rises inside me. “No, they’re not. You’re a liar.”
“Daddy died a long time before mommy. Don’t you remember the knife that got stuck in his chest?” She makes a fist and pretends to stab herself.
I see a wheel spinning in the air, not attached to anything. There’s a blue star in the center of the wheel, and a bright streak of blood.
A moaning sound comes from deep within me and doesn’t stop.
Audette frowns in disgust. “Compose yourself. You are a young lady. I’ll be waiting.” She whirls from the room.
I open the trinket box grandfather brought me and take out his note. I hold it against my chest, rocking backwards and forth. It’s all I have left. A promise. Closing my eyes I step back to the mirror and slide the note into the mirror’s frame. If she makes me look in the mirror again, I’ll look at grandfather’s note instead and I’ll hear his words,
you and only you
. Because that’s the only thing I understand. Grandfather is coming back for me.
“Closing your eyes won’t help.” Audette’s sharp voice slices the air around me. “Get out there now.” She taps her foot in the doorway.
I push at Audette as I run past. The dress makes me trip on the stairs. I stop like a deer in headlights at the bottom of the stairs. There are people here. Lots of people. People from last night.
Audette stands with her gloved arms folded at the tops of the stairs.
With my head down, I make my way through the loud, sniggering crowd. Wine glasses clink above the sound of New Orleans jazz playing on the gramophone. Thick smoke fills the ballroom and chokes my lungs. Through the haze, eyes stare at me.
A man presses up against me. “Jessamine, where are you going in such a hurry?”
His face is bloated, reddened. I remember him. I remember a night in grandfather’s tent. I remember a dance, a dance where the feel of his body against mine made my skin crawl.
“You’re going to make a sexy bride.” His breath is hot on my face. “Do you like the dress I bought for you?”
“No,” I shout at him.
The faces around me laugh at me with their mouths open wide and all their teeth showing.
His face drops. “Oh now that’s not polite. You’re going to have to do better than that on our wedding night, when you’re in my bed. You can’t tell your husband,
no
.” His gaze fixes to my chest. “Then again, perhaps I shouldn’t keep you waiting that long.”
Audette treads down the stairs, her eyes gleaming. “I must apologize for her behavior, Allan. She’s running a bit of a fever today.”
Something different enters his eyes. “I’ll take her for a walk to cool down.”
He takes my arm and I go with him. Not one person is here to stop him. Not one. I try to tug my hand away but he holds tight. He heads outside to the porch and then down to the tree where Thomas planted my rose bushes. The animals and birds of the forest hammer their screeches through my head.
His hands grasp my shoulders. “You do feel hot. Well, I have a suggestion. This dress looks incredible on you but it has far too much material.”
He plucks at the strings at the back of my dress. I think the ties must have come loose and he is doing them up. Then I realize he is undoing them. Why is he doing that?
My dress hangs loosely around my shoulders. He pulls it down in a single motion. My bare skin feels a cool rush of night air. A sound rumbles within his throat. His hands grab at my chest, squeezing and pinching. It hurts. It feels
wrong, wrong, wrong
. He stops to unbuckle his trousers.
My mind scatters.
I run. Across the dark grounds. I run to the only place I can. The place grandfather made for me. The elevator is already at the bottom. I climb down the rope stairs and send the elevator back up. I don’t want to go beyond the Wheel of Death. I climb back into grandfather’s car. I shake uncontrollably as I lower my knees and head to the floor.
Sharp memories jab me.
Mother dead and tangled in her wheelchair. Miss Kitty lying face-down on the rocks, her head smashed in. The train lying like a broken Christmas toy below the mountains. Grandfather and the stars. Mr Baldcott and his wedding ring. Blood on the Wheel of Death after they pulled daddy from it….
I’m fourteen, I’m fourteen, I’m fourteen.
The hum of the elevator vibrates through my bones.
“Jess! Jessamine! Are you down here?” Henry calls.
I hear Audette’s shoes on the rock floor. Only Audette walks with that
scrape-clomp
sound.
“Fuck you, Audette. You didn’t have to do this to the kid,” he says.
“Someone had to. She couldn’t act like a baby forever. And you didn’t have to punch Mr. Baldcott out.” Her voice is whiny and pleading.
“The bastard wasn’t supposed to lay his filthy hands on her before the wedding. And I was planning on getting rid of him before Jess would have even had to marry him.”
“He was tired of waiting.”
Someone else walks up to Henry and Audette, someone with squeaky shoes. “You’re lucky I don’t have you tied up and thrown in the river, Fiveash. I don’t appreciate your jab to the temple. I’m going to get a black eye out of this.”
The sound of Mr. Baldcott’s voice sends icy water through my intestines.
“I saw what you were doing to Jess, Baldcott. You weren’t supposed to do that shit.”
“She’s mine, right? That’s what we agreed on as part of all this. I mean, I am bankrolling this whole venture. I’m paying men around the clock to hunt the old guy down and get the book. We’re talking seven different countries at the moment. And it all could be a wild goose chase.”
“The agreement was marriage. When she’s of age,” Henry tells him.
“The way things are going, there’s no incentive for me to marry her. No circus, no fortune, no prospects. Unless the old man does have a secret fortune and properties stashed away and you’re not telling me. So Henry, are you playing me for a chump?”
“No, of course not. Let’s just go have a few drinks and forget all this.”
The squeak of Mr. Baldcott’s shoes draws nearer. “So the old guy put his 1910 Model T down here. In perfect nick, but why would you bother keeping one of these crankers when you can have a LaFayette?”
“Let’s go, Henry,” Audette whines. “Our guests are waiting.”
“I’ll just hang here for a bit,” says Mr. Baldcott. “I got a nasty headache from that punch in the head I copped. And I like looking at circus stuff.”
I scream silently as Henry says, “Suit yourself. I’ll go find Jess.”
For a moment I want to jump from the car and run to Henry. But I hear the elevator moving and I know Henry has already gone. I stay perfectly still, barely taking a breath. Until Mr. Baldcott has gone too, I need to stay here like this.
His legs move across in front of my vision. He stoops, his needling blue eyes staring into mine. “Hoo, there she is, my little runaway bride. Is this a game? Well, never let it be said I’m not up for games. How about you run and I’ll catch you?”
Blood leaves my head and I nod rigidly. “Up there in the forest.” I point to the elevator.
“Oh no, that gives you far too much advantage. You little circus monkey—you’ll be climbing a tree in no time, swinging from branch to branch. That’s hardly fair. No, we’ll have the game in the tunnels.”
“I don’t want to go in there.”
“Well, that’s the game. Unless you’d like to christen your grandfather’s car here and now.”
I don’t know what he means but I don’t want to find out.
A humorless smile stretches his round face. He pulls me from the car and takes me over to the pipe organ. Reaching around my middle, he plays the tune that unlatches the Wheel of Death.
I bolt to the carousel, so fast that I leave him huffing far behind me. My heart thuds against my ribs. I could hide in a kitchen cupboard. No—if he found me so easily in the car, he could find me in a cupboard. The store room, the ballroom, the bathroom—all had hiding places but nowhere that I can't be found. A lump forms in my throat. I grab the Andy doll and crush it to me, as though it can save me. A single thought enters my head. The statue of Saint Jerome—grandfather had said he was here to watch over me.
But down in the dark tunnel, the horror that was the shadow might still lurk
.
I hear Mr. Balcott’s chuckle echo in the still air. My mind and body numb, I blunder through to the secret passage and run to the statue of Saint Jerome. In the pitch darkness I desperately feel his face. One of my arms falls through the wall next to Saint Jerome. Someone has moved the statue away from the cave opening. Mr. Baldcott will not find me in there. I climb into it. My knees scrape over bags of hard things—the bags of grandfather’s treasure. I push Raggedy Andy ahead of me—a buffer from the darkness of a tunnel that leads straight down. I lay my feverish head on Andy’s chest and curl into a ball, my body spent.
I hear the secret door scrape across and know that Mr. Balcott saw me open it. He must have brought a lamp with him, for a dim light taints the air.
A darkness creeps across the ceiling of the cave. I cannot move as the shadow drips into the small space with me. It’s all around me like a magician’s cape, pulling tighter. A
thousand, thousand, thousand
little pincers piece my skin.
I’m going to die. Like Thomas died
.
The shadow whispers deep inside me.
Come with me. I’ll take you to your grandfather. Come now….
No! Grandfather said he would come get me. I breathe wildly, willing the shadow to leave me. My screams echo through the cave. “I’ll never go with you. I’ll never go with you.”
Another shadow moves across my body, the shadow of a man. “Never go with me will you, Jessamine? Well that’s hardly fair, seeing as I won the game. Peekaboo, I found you!”
Mr. Baldcott pudgy fingers slide over the edge of the tiny cave and he peers inside at me. His grin drops like a stone from his face as his eyes fix on the black mass that envelopes me. He turns to run, a pained cry twisting from his lungs.
The shadow springs from my body and swoops down on Mr. Baldcott. It winds itself around him, grinding itself into him. Until all that is left is black dust swirling in the air. And the shadow is gone.
Pains shoot through my chest. I know the thick metallic liquid in my throat is blood. I want to crawl out and run, but weakness claims every part of me. My breaths are ragged as my blood drips onto the doll’s soft chest. Heat like a furnace sears my body. I drift into the darkness of sleep and close out every thought and conscious fear.
Present Day
31. BATOPILAS
My heart caught high in my chest at the sight of the valley charging away from us. The mountain road dipped into a series of sharp switchbacks—a ragged zigzag cutting through the bare mountains. Rocks skittered under the wheel of the car.
Zach’s arm came tight around my shoulder. “Close your eyes until we reach the bottom.”
“How far is that?”
“A six hour drive, according the GPS.” Emerson shot me a shrugging glance over his shoulder. He negotiated a corner where a beeping truck came at us from the other direction. There didn’t seem enough room for us and the truck, but we narrowly scraped past each other.
“Lethal,” Zach muttered under his breath, but he turned to smile at me.
As soon as I’d mentioned needing to go to Copper Canyon, Zach had insisted on himself, Parker and Emerson coming along too. The boys had dropped everything to organize the trip and I was grateful they were here with us. They had made the difference between mom allowing us to go or not go—almost. In her mind, the dangers of Molly and I travelling to a remote part of Mexico had swapped to the dangers of Molly and I being alone with three teenage boys. Help had come at the last hour from the most unexpected person—my father. Andy had volunteered to travel down to Copper Canyon on the day after our arrival and keep a close eye on me and Molly. He said he could do with a few days off, and told me he’d been to this part of Mexico before and could help show us around. Mom had begrudgingly agreed that Molly and I could go—although she didn’t understand why we hadn’t just chosen a Florida resort to go holiday in if we’d needed time away.
Molly sat in the seat next to Parker and Emerson, silent and focused, seeming barely bothered by the chaotic ride.
A family of Tarahumara Indians rounded the next corner on foot, appearing as though from nowhere. In leather sandals that looked homemade, they trod down the mountainous road with ease.
The air grew warmer the further we travelled towards the valley. Zach’s body heated against mine. Despite everything, I was looking forward to spending time with him. After what he’d said to me in the yacht, I knew we were on borrowed time.
Maybe everyone in the world was on borrowed time. And this time with Zach would be amongst my last hours.
It didn’t seem possible, here in this bright, surreal landscape. I hadn’t told Zach everything. There was no way I could. With some things, you had to experience them for yourself or you wouldn’t believe them. It was enough of a stretch for him to understand that people were pursuing me and hypnotizing me in order to find the location of a book.
When I’d told him what Henry wanted from me, his blue eyes had stared into mine, troubled and dazed. He’d said, ‘I don't know exactly what's going on here. But I don't like it. And I like that Henry guy even less. And if he's prepared to go to those kind of lengths to get something, maybe that thing is something he shouldn't have’.
Massive cacti claimed the sides of the mountains, like soldiers guarding the towns below. As we reached the bottom, uneven houses held tightly to their places in the rocky ground, their paint peeling from years under a sun that must be harsh in the summer.
My stomach clenched at the sight of the first sight of the aqueduct—the one I’d seen during the trance Henry had put me under. We were here. We crossed a high stone bridge into the Batopilas. The reddish sun lit the buildings of a town that seemed carved out of the mountains themselves. The architecture had a simple beauty—faded accents of purple and yellow amongst the weathered whites. Children chased chickens along the wide main street while townspeople stopped and watched inquisitively. The people were dressed in everyday clothes, unlike the native dress of the Indians we’d seen travelling the road by foot.
We were sticky and hot as we reached the hotel. Emerson and Zach checked us in, and we pulled our bags into our rooms. The boys were to share one room, with Molly and me in the room next door.
Molly stepped out to buy some batteries for her camera while I stepped into the bathroom to splash my face. For a moment, I shrunk back. The bathroom was large, as large as the bathroom had been in the underground. Small things often triggered memories. Doctor Alexia had said to let memories flow through me and not to resist them. I held onto the towel rail and allowed the moment to pass.
A knock came at the door. "Cassie, it's Zach. Are you okay?"
"Yes," I called back, amused.
"Because if you need me to scrub your back or anything, I'm here."
I gave a short laugh. "Okay. I’ll keep that in mind.”
Zach chuckled as he walked away. I freshened up and changed clothes.
When I stepped out of the bathroom, Zach and Emerson were sitting on the chairs in my room. Zach pointed to a platter of fresh fruit and cheeses were waiting on my bed. Mangoes, guavas, bananas and some others I didn't know the names for. I sliced some cheese and a piece of mango and popped them in my mouth together.
"Delicious," I told Zach.
"Better be. I had to race all over town for that."
"No he didn't.” Emerson stretched his lanky legs out. “He had the kitchen make it up."
I smiled at Zach’s joke. "Molandah back yet?”
Just then, Molly and Parker stepped through the doorway.
Molly held an armful of supplies. “Hard to find what I wanted—none of the shops had names on them. And I don’t speak Spanish anyway. Good thing Parker does!”
Parker grinned, pushing black hair back from his eyes. “I know a little, not a lot. At one store, I think they thought we were asking for condoms, because the packet they were trying to give us looked an awful lot like…” He raised his eyebrows.
Molly flushed a deep color but laughed along with everyone else.
We all finished off the plate of fruit and cheese while a chorus of frogs and toads echoed from the river. For the first time in days, a positive note lifted amongst the sinister music that constantly played through my mind.
As night fell, we took a stroll through the town and dined at an outdoor restaurant. I started to fall into the easy rhythm here of Batopilas life, and forgot, for a while, why I was here.
Morning dawned cool and hazy. With the car refusing to start, it was going to be a trek of three hours to our next destination. Molly and I loaded up our backpacks with enough water and food for the day.
I eyed the mountains, daunted by the thought of a hike all the way to the next town. But Molly gazed at the same mountains with an expression of awe on her face.
“I love it here,” she said wistfully. “Even before my time in the underground, I never thought I’d go places like this.”
The boys joined us outside the hotel and we started out without delay. It was going to take all day to get to Urique and back.
A green and red macaw flew low through the valley ahead. The road looked almost the same as it had in my dream, twisting and turning. We crossed a river filled with large stones. A swarm of bright things descended on us. Bright orange butterflies.
"Hey!" cried Zach helplessly, as hundreds of butterflies alighted on him.
Laughing, I snapped a photo of him.
"He must be the sweatiest of us,” said Emerson in a mock TV presenter voice. “The butterflies are mud-puddling, which means they’re looking for extra nutrients. If they can get it from human sweat, they will." He held out a guidebook, one eyebrow raised.
"Get off you little vampires." Zach brushed them from his arms.
We continued on for the next three hours, the valley growing greener. The village of Urique spread before us with its cobblestoned main street and buildings of purple, yellow, blue and red.
“Hey we’re in the lowest part of the canyon now,” said Parker. “Seven thousand feet to the bottom.”
The sight of the soaring mountains was almost overpowering, crushing. How could we find what we’d come for in the midst of all this?
A group of Tarahumara women sat weaving baskets from pine needles by a small stone house. They glanced at me intently for a moment, as though they guessed my thoughts were out of step with the valley, as though they saw the turmoil inside me.
“Cassie? We’ll just follow wherever you head from here.” Zach’s arms came around me.
I stared around at everyone, nodding.
We walked on through the town. Tumbledown houses dotted the landscape here and there, but none looked quite like the one in my vision. I retraced my steps twice. There was no sign of the house.
“I can’t see it anywhere,” I said finally.
Emerson sat on a rock, tearing his hat off and wiping his brow. "Are you sure?"
"Makes sense," Parker offered. "Back in the 1920s, silver mining would have been going full steam. They would have had a much bigger population of workers. Maybe lots of abandoned houses have just crumbled into nothing."
“Or someone tore houses apart looking for the book,” said Molly grimly.
I felt stupid. Like one of those TV psychic shows where the camera follows the psychic around waiting for him or her to show that they really aren't just fooling themselves that they can see more than the rest of us.
Zach tuned into my discomfort. "How about we sit for a while and let Cassie take a look around by herself? She probably can't think with us tagging along."
Emerson stared at me, his hand shading his eyes from the sun. "Yeah, if that's ok with Cassie, let's do that."
"I don't think she should go off alone." Molly stepped beside me. "I'll go with her.”
I turned back to look at Zach just before we left. There was something sad and distant in his expression, the way you’d look if you thought someone wasn’t coming back.
“Which way?” asked Molly.
“I wish I knew,” I told her.
I wandered along the river, trying to see the line of mules, trying to remember where they stopped. Even though it was winter, the air was slightly muggy, cloistered. I shrugged off my shirt and stuffed it into my backpack. Molly didn't seem bothered by the warmth of the day. Her pale skin always seemed cool. I was like mom—I sweated buckets.
I stepped up into the hills, avoiding the spiky arms of the cacti that grew here. An ancient tree clung precariously to the bare rock, its root system exposed to the elements. I closed my eyes. I’d seen the tree before. The house was close to the tree.
But no matter which way I went, I couldn’t find the house. Maybe there were a hundred trees hanging onto rocks around here, all looking the same.
“Maybe we should try to hypnotize me again,” I told Molly.
I was about to give up and head back when I noticed the crumbling foundations of a stone house—barely noticeable amongst the rocks. It was the house. I was sure of it. But the walls were gone, almost leveled to the ground. We’d come here for nothing.
A figure in a cowboy hat and checked shirt walked towards us, his shadow crossing the reddish dirt. He was tall—taller than most people you see. My father. I'd never seen him in anything but a suit before. He stepped in front of me, tipping his hat up. "Cassie. You were a trick to find."
"Andy? I thought you were going to meet us at Batopilas tomorrow."
He shrugged. "I came early.”
“Okay.” I tried not sound peeved. It was hard enough trying to find a needle in a haystack without my father being here. “This is Molandah, anyway.”
Andy shook her hand. “A distant cousin of Cassie’s—on Cassie’s mom’s side of course—right?”
“Right,” Molly said awkwardly.
“You two aren’t here on your own, are you?”
I pointed downstream. “The boys are down there somewhere.”
I glanced helplessly at Molly and walked with him back to Zach, Emerson and Parker. They jumped up and shook Andy’s hand as I introduced them.
My father folded his arms. "Have you lot had lunch? Shout you all at the local hotel."
We trekked back to Urique and lunched on tortillas at an outdoor eatery, shaded by the abundant trees on the main street.
Zach smacked his lips. “Those were good.” He politely thanked my father and then suggested everyone leave me alone with him for a catch up.”
Parker yawned. “Done deal. I feel like a siesta.”
They stood and left the table, Molly shooting me a sympathetic smile. I’d told her how uncomfortable I was whenever I had conversations with my father.
Andy asked the waiter for tea with lime, without asking if I even liked tea or lime. In truth, I hadn’t had a single hot drink since the escape from the dollhouse. I couldn’t bear the thought of it.
He stirred his tea. "So your mother tells me that you and Zach are an item?"
I blushed. "We're good friends."
"And his family are the Batistes?"
"Yeah. From Miami. Just not the part of Miami I grew up in."
"Yeah… yeah." Andy had a habit of answering that to things I said. It always felt as though he were asking questions to be polite, without being interested in the answers.
"I must apologize for not getting over to Miami to see you sooner."
"It's okay," I said clumsily. "You did make the trip out to Australia."
His eyes looked pained. "You were barely speaking back then. I think you barely knew I was there."
"I kind of closed up for a while there. Trying to process everything I guess."
He was silent for a time, studying me. I grew uncomfortable. He'd never paid me too much attention before. Barely seconds used to pass before he was staring off into the distance or taking a phone call. Even here, out in the middle of what seemed a wilderness to me, there was that strangeness.
I peeled the skin off the wedge of lime that sat next to my cup of tea, unsure of what to say next.
“You look so much like your mother,” he said finally. “You sound like her too, the way you put a sentence together.”
“Is that a bad thing?” Immediately, I wished I’d kept my mouth shut.
“No, it’s not a bad thing. It’s a good thing. Your mom is a lot cleverer than I’ll ever be.”
“You’re a hotshot lawyer. You must be full of smarts.” I managed a smile.
“You know what they say about lawyers. They’re
full of it
all right.” He chuckled at his own joke.
“So what are your plans for the next few days?” I asked him. “Are you actually going to be staying in Copper Canyon?”
