The Dollhouse Read online

  OTHER BOOKS BY CHARIS COTTER

  The Ghost Road

  The Painting

  The Swallow: A Ghost Story

  Screech! Ghost Stories from Old Newfoundland

  Footsteps in Bay de Verde: A Mysterious Tale

  The Ferryland Visitor: A Mysterious Tale

  A World Full of Ghosts

  Born to Write: The Remarkable Lives of Six Famous Authors

  Wonder Kids: The Remarkable Lives of Nine Child Prodigies

  Kids Who Rule: The Remarkable Lives of Five Child Monarchs

  Toronto Between the Wars: Life in the City 1919–1929

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2021 by Charis Cotter

  Cover art copyright © 2021 by Chloe Bristol

  Tundra Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House Canada Young Readers, a division of Penguin Random House of Canada Limited

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher— or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency— is an infringement of the copyright law.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Title: The dollhouse : a ghost story / Charis Cotter.

  Names: Cotter, Charis, author.

  Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 2021009124X | Canadiana (ebook) 20210091274 | ISBN 9780735269064

  (hardcover) | ISBN 9780735269071 (EPUB)

  Classification: LCC PS8605.O8846 D65 2021 | DDC jC813/.6— dc23

  Ebook ISBN 9780735269071

  Published simultaneously in the United States of America by Tundra Books of Northern New York, an imprint of Penguin Random House Canada Young Readers, a division of Penguin Random House of Canada Limited

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2020951912

  Edited by Samantha Swenson

  Book design by Emma Dolan adapted for ebook

  The text was set in Harriet

  www.penguinrandomhouse.ca

  a_prh_5.7.0_c0_r0

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by Charis Cotter

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Part One: The Haunted House

  Prelude

  Chapter One: The Train

  Chapter Two: The Moon

  Chapter Three: The Dark Angel

  Chapter Four: The Green Bedroom

  Chapter Five: The Lunch

  Chapter Six: The Ghost Room

  Chapter Seven: Breakfast

  Chapter Eight: The Photograph

  Chapter Nine: The Locked Door

  Chapter Ten: The Old Lady

  Chapter Eleven: Secrets

  Part Two: The Dream

  Chapter Twelve: Bubble and Fizz

  Chapter Thirteen: The Silver Room

  Chapter Fourteen: The Other Dad

  Chapter Fifteen: Behind the Locked Door

  Chapter Sixteen: The Dollhouse

  Chapter Seventeen: The Yellow Dog

  Chapter Eighteen: The Tea Party

  Chapter Nineteen: Invisible

  Chapter Twenty: The Perfect Summerhouse

  Chapter Twenty-one: Buttercakes

  Chapter Twenty-two: The Keys

  Chapter Twenty-three: A Magic Dollhouse

  Chapter Twenty-four: Four Ghosts

  Chapter Twenty-five: The Phone Call

  Chapter Twenty-six: The Truth

  Chapter Twenty-seven: A Very Bad Dream

  Part Three: The Party

  Chapter Twenty-eight: The Roses

  Chapter Twenty-nine: Sneaking

  Chapter Thirty: Playing

  Chapter Thirty-one: Dollhouse Furniture

  Chapter Thirty-two: Ball Gowns

  Chapter Thirty-three: Sparkly and Beautiful

  Chapter Thirty-four: Into the Dark

  Chapter Thirty-five: The Grouch

  Chapter Thirty-six: The Hospital

  Chapter Thirty-seven: Money Isn’t Everything

  Chapter Thirty-eight: The Rocket

  Part Four: The Train

  Chapter Thirty-nine: Sleeping

  Chapter Forty: Alone

  Chapter Forty-one: Left Behind

  Chapter Forty-two: The Crash

  Chapter Forty-three: Blood

  Chapter Forty-four: Wreckage

  Chapter Forty-five: The Telephone

  Part Five: The Dreamer

  Chapter Forty-six: The Witch

  Chapter Forty-seven: Locked Away

  Chapter Forty-eight: Broken Glass

  Chapter Forty-nine: The Connection

  Chapter Fifty: Death

  Chapter Fifty-one: Candles

  Chapter Fifty-two: Sleeping Beauty

  Chapter Fifty-three: Double Trouble

  Chapter Fifty-four: The Illuminated Dollhouse

  Chapter Fifty-five: The Stairs

  Part Six: The Undiscovered Country

  Chapter Fifty-six: Touch and Go

  Chapter Fifty-seven: A Guardian Angel

  Chapter Fifty-eight: Questions

  Chapter Fifty-nine: Chocolate Cake

  Acknowledgments

  for Sarah Legakis and Ruth Redelmeier,

  two bright lights

  To sleep, perchance to dream— ay, there’s the rub;

  For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

  —William Shakespeare, Hamlet

  Part One

  THE HAUNTED HOUSE

  PRELUDE

  Fizz

  I slept for a long, long time.

  Now and then sounds filtered through heavy layers of sleep. The murmur of voices. Faint, faraway music. Summer rain pattering on the roof. Birds chattering high in the branches of trees. Wind whistling around the corners of the house. Thunder. People calling to each other. Children laughing. Someone walking in the garden, singing.

  And every so often the train whistle, blowing sharp and lonely through the night, rising and falling as the train approached, passed and then faded away into the distance.

  I turned over with a sigh in my soft, high bed and fell deeper into sleep.

  I slept for a long, long time.

  Chapter One

  THE TRAIN

  The train rumbled through the gathering dusk. Every so often it gave a long, mournful hoot that echoed through the countryside. I shivered. Our house was near the railway tracks in the city, and I had always loved hearing that lonely, haunting sound when I lay safe and warm in bed at night. But it was very different to be inside the whistling train, in the very heart of that desolate cry, hurtling into an unknown future with my mother sitting rigid besid
e me, tears falling in a steady stream down her face.

  We had been on the train for five hours. I first noticed that she was crying somewhere in the middle of hour one, and her tears had been ebbing and flowing ever since. Every now and then I reached out and gave her hand a squeeze, and she’d come out of it for a moment, shaking away the tears impatiently and wiping at her face with the handkerchief she kept gripped in her fist. “I’m all right,” she would say. “I’m fine.”

  But a little while later, when I turned back to her from the hypnotic view of houses, trees and roads, the tears were slipping down her face again, and her eyes looked far away at something that was not visible to me.

  It was all wrong. Tonight we were supposed to be in a rental cottage with Dad by a small lake far to the north of the city. We’d arranged for me to get out of school a week early because these two weeks were the only time he could get off work. He traveled a lot, and lately it seemed like we hardly ever saw him. We hadn’t had a summer holiday together for years, and we were all looking forward to it. At least, I thought we were. Yesterday when I came home from school, charging happily into the kitchen, bubbling over with that fizzy school’s-over feeling, I ran smack into a big fight.

  Mom was yelling, “It’s the last straw, Stephen, I won’t take it anymore,” and he was shrugging his shoulders and saying calmly, “What can I do, it’s my job,” and then Mom started yelling again. “If you loved us, you would make this holiday happen, the way you promised. You never keep your promises to me or to Alice, and I told you, if you let us down this time, I was leaving. That’s it.” Then she turned and saw me, standing at the door with my heavy knapsack full of everything I’d cleaned out of my desk from the year at school: notebooks and books and markers and colored pencils.

  “Alice,” she said, her face crumbling, “I’m sorry, honey, we’re not going to the cottage. Your dad can’t make it— so none of us are going.”

  I looked from one to the other.

  “Dad?…Mom?”

  “I’m sorry, Ally. I’m really sorry, but I absolutely have to be in LA tomorrow. It came up at the last minute—”

  “It always comes up at the last minute,” yelled my mom. “I warned you, and as always, you didn’t listen. We’re done.”

  “Done?” I said in a squeaky voice.

  “I’m leaving you, Stephen,” said my mom. “And I’m taking Alice with me.”

  My knapsack fell to the floor with a thud.

  “For goodness’ sake, Ellie, don’t be so dramatic,” said my dad.

  She shook her head, tears falling, and picked up the telephone.

  “Who are you calling?” he demanded.

  “The Wilsons. I’m canceling the cottage.”

  “What are you talking about? We’ll lose our deposit! You and Alice can still go.”

  My mother spoke remarkably calmly into the telephone.

  “This is Ellie Greene. I’m calling to cancel our booking at the cottage. There’s been a family emergency. Please call me back when you get this message.” She hung up the phone just as my father lurched toward her to try and grab it.

  “It’s done, Stephen,” she said. “Go to LA. Alice and I will not be here when you get back.”

  I stood, gaping at her, feeling the floor tilting beneath my feet as my family slipped sideways and fell in pieces.

  * * *

  —

  That was yesterday. Dad left an hour later to catch a flight to Los Angeles, where a building project urgently needed his attention for the next few weeks. He hugged me before he left, the familiar, peppery smell of his expensive aftershave filling my nose as he held me longer than usual. When he pulled away, he automatically smoothed down his snappy designer jacket in case I’d wrinkled it, like he always did, but his eyes were full of tears and his mouth tight.

  “I’m sorry, Ally,” he said, his voice cracking. “We’ll fix this, I promise.”

  Behind us, my mother snorted. She was really mad. And we all knew how many times he’d promised things would be different, and they never were.

  This afternoon Mom and I boarded the train to Lakeport, a small town a six-hour ride from the city. Mom made a few phone calls last night and accepted a job there looking after an old lady who had broken her leg.

  My mother’s a nurse and works on contract. The agency had called her earlier in the week to see if she would take this job, and now they were happy to hear she was available after all. It started right away, a live-in position, and a twelve-year-old daughter was no problem. Lots of room, they said. A big house.

  I didn’t see why we couldn’t go to the cottage and leave Dad after our holiday, if we had to leave him at all, but Mom was determined. Maybe she thought if she postponed it she would lose her nerve.

  So now here we were on the train, speeding into the future, with lush green countryside flashing by and tears trickling down my mother’s face.

  I watched as city gave way to suburbs, then green fields framed with rows of trees, then a few farmhouses, some small towns and, finally, the lake.

  The lake was enormous. The train ran close to the shore for a while, and all I could see was water going on and on to the horizon. Then the train veered inland again and rattled along past farms and villages, rivers and woods.

  When we went through small towns, the train slowed down, and I stared into backyards at swing sets, flower gardens and kids playing. As the light began to fade, some of the windows lit up, and I had brief glimpses inside kitchens and living rooms. I wondered about all those people’s lives, and I was filled with a sense of longing— if only we could stop, walk into one of those kitchens and find Dad waiting for us, then go on with our lives in another place where everything was okay and there was no fighting.

  It could happen. We could get off the train and drive away from the station, up a hill and into a house where we were a happy family. I could see my mother smiling at my dad and him taking off his glasses to give her a hug.

  Wait a minute. My dad didn’t wear glasses. This was a different dad, a chubby, comfortable kind of dad who wore old flannel shirts and baggy pants, with a bald spot and a job that didn’t involve getting into airplanes and flying away from us.

  I glanced at my mother. The tears had stopped, but she was still gripping the handkerchief tightly in one hand, and she still had that sad, faraway look in her eyes.

  I sighed and looked out the window again. I didn’t really want a new dad. I love my dad. But I had a bad habit of getting lost in my imagination. Sometimes it got me into trouble. Not just trouble from my teachers and Mom, who were constantly telling me to stop daydreaming and pay attention to real life. That was nothing. I mean serious trouble, when I would scare myself so much that I would forget what was real and what was just in my head. One time when my mom was half an hour late coming home, I thought maybe she’d had a car accident. Then I saw the accident happening and then I saw me and Dad at her funeral, then we were packing up her clothes and bringing them to the local thrift store, then Dad got a girlfriend, and they got married, and I had a wicked stepmother, and it went on from there.

  I’d got so lost in the story that when my mother came in the door complaining about the traffic that had held her up, I was so happy to see her there instead of lying dead in a graveyard that I threw myself into her arms, sobbing.

  That took a little explaining.

  The problem is that this kind of thing happens to me all the time. Every day. I always have stories running in my mind, some good, some bad. I try to stop myself when I get started on a bad one, but it’s hard to put on the brakes. I get caught up in it before I realize what’s happening.

  And ever since Mom and Dad have been fighting so much, my fantasies have veered way out of control: Mom and I shivering in a horrible apartment with no heat and people being murdered down the hall in drug deals gone wrong while Dad moves to Singapore
and forgets all about us. A horrible custody battle where I have to choose between them. Mom getting a boyfriend who I hate. Dad getting a girlfriend who hates me. These worst-case divorce scenarios made me feel even more sick about them fighting, but I just couldn’t stop.

  Now that it had finally happened, it was a relief in a way. At least I wasn’t an orphan in foster care with both of them dead or in prison. I tried to look on the bright side. Maybe Dad would finish early in LA, come looking for us and talk Mom into going home. Maybe we could rent the cottage after all, later in the summer. Maybe.

  Or maybe not.

  I gazed out at the landscape. It had changed. We were running through woods now, thick stands of trees. The train seemed to have picked up speed, swaying from side to side. It gave a sudden lurch, then kept barreling forward.

  I looked over at Mom. “Umm…” I began. “Isn’t it going kind of fast?”

  She turned and I watched her eyes slowly focus on me as she pulled her attention back from that sad place she’d been in ever since we boarded the train.

  “What did you say, honey?”