Paper Dolls (28 page)

And I dance. I dance the waltzes Miss Kitty taught me. I dance for every day of my young life that has been ripped so cruelly from me. Miss Kitty never waltzed with a man but she knew how to dance perfectly.

The day arrives that I curtsey to the wooden clown and he bows back. It shocks me and the clown topples to the floor.

I spend every day learning how to
hold
each of the dolls upright. I try holding all of them upright at once. The effort exhausts me and I drop to the ground and sleep. It takes what could be days or weeks to be able to hold them all for any length of time. And then I learn to separate my mind and make the dolls walk—up and down the corridors at first, like sentinels. But then I learn how to make each one walk a different path.

The dolls are like perfect children in a perfect dollhouse. They go where I command them to go and they dance when I command them to dance. Controlling the dolls helps to fill in all the empty, desolate spaces in my mind. My mind is a network of corridors and rooms. I keep the dolls to a routine, because order is good.

But controlling them is taxing and I must sleep frequently to regain my energies.

When it seems that months have surely passed, I find the courage to collect grandfather’s locket. I tear a hole in the hessian bag that contains my body and rip the locket from the chain. The sight of dark bones wrenches a strangled cry from me, as though a sword has been plunged down my throat—my body has been eaten away by time, reduced to a skeleton.

Henry arrives in the underground with a crowd of people. I recognize them. They were there at the party he had at the house. Except now they are ghosts. I turn away. I have no interest in them. He takes the people deep into the tunnels.

He begins bringing them often, disturbing my peace and the world I have built with the dolls of the dollhouse.

Today he is alone. He drops himself down on the daybed, looking like he is flesh and blood. He has even learned how to clothe himself in clean attire—clothes that are not spattered in blood.

“Jessamine…” He brushes some lint from his shirt. “I’ve missed you. Audette is in a foul mood most days and the other Henry gets on my nerves. He thinks he’s some kind of lord of the manor now and he goes about quoting Shakespeare—badly I might add.”

“None of those things are my cares,” I tell him.

“But aren’t you bored as hell down here all alone?”

“I have my friends.” I gesture to the dolls standing to attention against a wall.

“Very clever. You must have practiced long and hard to be able to do that.” He leans his head back. “I have a suggestion for you.”

I raise my eyebrows at him.

“Wouldn’t you like some real company?”

“That’s not a suggestion. That’s a question.”

“Touché. Look, Jess, what would you think of bringing a real friend down here for you? A girl.”

I startle. “What? A live girl?”

“Yes.” He studies my face.

“No, of course not. What girl would want to spend any time down here? The thought is insidious.”

“I think you mean
ludicrous
,” Henry corrects me. “Anyway, the idea isn’t ludicrous. There’s lots of young girls out there looking for a safe haven. It’s a nasty world for many kids.”

My world had indeed been nasty and without a safe haven.
I gaze intently at him. “But any girl would run away at the sight of this place.”

“Not if they were… encouraged to stay. If it’s for their own good, to keep them safe from danger, it would be a blessing for them to be kept here. It would be tough for them at first. But they would learn to be grateful. People are drawn to their fate. No one would come here who didn’t want to.”

“I didn’t choose to be here.”

“Didn’t you?” His eyes are bright. “You had a choice that night, a century ago. You had the choice of alerting me that you were hidden there in your grandfather’s car. But you didn’t. You stayed there, put yourself in the grasp of old Baldcott and then went running headlong into the depths of the underground. Perhaps you wanted to die, Jessamine. Perhaps, deep down, you knew your grandfather was already dead and you wanted to save yourself the pain of finding that out.”

“No….”

Henry’s thoughts were surely twisted, wrong.

“The universes are interconnected. We can’t begin to understand why things happen the way they do or why people make the choices they do. Look, I can get the other Henry onto this. He can seek out a girl who is in trouble, who is danger and needs safety. Someone you can help and guide. There are lots of lost girls out there in the world, Jessamine. Girls who are unappreciated in their families, unloved, unwanted, homeless. I could bring you one of these.”

In the circus, everyone was older and they told me what to do. I did always want a younger sibling, someone I could instruct and guide. Someone that I wouldn’t let anything bad happen to.

I point to the shadow that slithers over the ceiling. “How can you even talk about bringing someone here with that thing roaming about. Get rid of it.”

Henry rubs his temple. “I can’t do that. I have a bargain in place that I cannot undo.”

“With that thing? What is the bargain?”

“I don’t want to talk about it. Anyway, we’ll start getting the dollhouse ready, just in case you change your mind. What do you say?”

I shake my head, and go to have a sleep on grandfather’s rocking chair.

The other Henry brings down supplies of food and stocks the kitchen. He even brings down boxes of that tea Audette used to give me, until there is far more tea than food. He brings down loads of heavy planks of wood and constructs beds in the cave—in the damp space beyond the crack in the wall. He builds ten of them. I ask why he would think of putting beds in there and why so many. He replies that there is nowhere else they can go and that if he is building two, he may as well build ten. I don’t grasp his logic but I don’t question it. The mattresses and bedding come next. At least now I have a place to rest each day.

Henry comes down to inspect other-Henry’s work. When the two of them stand together, they look they brothers, and if a bystander was told one was a ghost and one was living, they would be unable to tell which was which.

Henry tells me I must learn to control the carousel. I must keep it from turning—otherwise, any child he brings here will leave without receiving proper guidance. At first, it is difficult, although not nearly as difficult as making the dolls walk. I simply picture a spinning object and put a hold on it. After a time, I don’t even need to think about it.

The last thing other-Henry brings are my dresses. After a hundred years, the clothing is moth-eaten and fragile. I can barely stand to see my clothing in that state, but that’s all there is. I remove the wedding dress I have worn ever since that night that Mr. Baldcott chased me down here and place it on a stand. Audette’s awful black dress sits on a stand beside the wedding dress.

I tuck two of the toys in the beds—Raggedy Ann and Clown and I lay myself in a bed beside them. I wanted the Raggedy Andy, but he has deteriorated very badly in his place in the tunnel. I cross my arms across my chest and lightly tap my fingers—so I can pretend to myself I have a heartbeat. After weeks of sleeping like this, I begin to feel a heartbeat all the time.

But my heart feels wrong. I feel my heart harden, like a metal box with springs and gears and bolts. And my mind has become a mere machine—a machine that functions only to keep the toys on their correct paths and stall the carousel. Everything else is pushed out, until I can barely hold any memories or thoughts. My pain lessens each day. The girl I used to be subsides.

The next time Henry asks if we should bring a girl down to the underground, I say yes.

I have one request. I ask that she should look like one of my dolls. I don’t think I can bear to look upon a live human when I have no life left in me. I will find it easier to instruct a doll. Henry brings down the old theatrical paints from the circus.

Now everything is ready.

He brings a tiny, thin girl dressed in boys clothing, with disheveled hair. Who would dress a girl in this way? While she sleeps I apply the makeup to her face and brush her hair. Henry tells me she is the daughter of a local policeman—a cold and sometimes violent man that she longs to run away from. Other-Henry researched and found us a girl that needs safety.

When she wakes, she wets the floor and cries. I ask her what her name is, and she answers with
Lacey
, which seems to better suit the name of a piece of material than a girl.

She sits with her knees raised to her chest, back pressed against the wall, shaking uncontrollably. Moisture runs from her eyes and nose, which ruins her makeup. "Please… please… let me go. I want to go home,” she whispers.

The shadow of the serpent drops from the ceiling and wraps itself around her.

I manage to banish the serpent, but it takes every scrap of energy I have. My carefully-constructed shell fades. I now look more ghost than live human.

The girl stares blankly, her eyes huge. Then she begins screaming, screaming like she will never stop. She tells us she will bring more girls, if we only let her leave.

I don’t like this girl—with her wheedling voice and running nose. I rename her Lilith, after the Greek myth I read about in one of my books. Lilith reminded me of the serpent-shadow, and reminds me of this girl now, both so willing to sacrifice children for their own gain. She doesn’t understand that I am here to help and instruct her.

A voice deep,deep inside me tells me she is just a terrified child—a child nine years of age and away from all she knows. I lose my resolve. I tell Henry to let her go. Henry strides back and forth but eventually agrees.

He snaps a bracelet around her wrist. “You are bound to us,” he tells her. “If you tell, or if you don’t do what you have promised, I will feed your sisters to the serpent—not the shadow you see here, but the real serpent—which is more terrible than anything you can imagine.”

The girl swallows and makes a brittle nod.

“Remember,” Henry tells her. “You are responsible for what has happened to you. Those who most want escape end up imprisoning themselves."

The toys and Henry take the child back.

I lie in my bed with the angel watching over me, waiting….