The Dollhouse Read online

The train lurched again.

  “The train. Isn’t it going a bit too fast?”

  She looked out the window. Trees were flashing by.

  “Oh, I’m sure it’s fine. They speed up between towns.”

  I wasn’t so sure. I’d heard about train accidents. Trains just kept gathering speed and then they’d run off the tracks, leaving upside-down rail cars smoking, bloody bodies, people stumbling through the wreckage— No. I stopped myself. I didn’t want to get lost in a gory train-wreck fantasy. I’d think about Dad again, and how maybe he would come next week, and this would all be over and we could be a happy family.

  That’s when it happened. With a tremendous screech, the train came to a sudden grinding halt, and I slammed forward into the seat in front of me. Everything went black.

  Chapter Two

  THE MOON

  My head hurt. I could feel people moving around me, voices raised in alarm. Someone was crying.

  “Alice,” came my mother’s insistent voice. “Alice, are you okay?”

  I opened my eyes. My mom was leaning over me, her face full of concern. A conductor appeared behind her.

  “Does she need first aid?” asked the conductor briskly.

  “Alice?” said my mother again.

  “Am I dead?” I asked in a shaky voice.

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” said the conductor, leaning past my mother and taking my wrist. She held it for a moment, counting, then put it down.

  “Her pulse is fine.” She reached over and gently raised each of my eyelids.

  “Possible concussion,” the conductor said to my mother. “You might want to get that checked out. The train will be starting in a few moments, and we’ll be in Lakeport in fifteen minutes.”

  “Is it okay if we move across the aisle away from these broken seats?” asked my mother.

  For the first time, I noticed that the seats in front of us were leaning crookedly toward ours.

  “Of course,” said the conductor. “Now, I must go and see to the other passengers.”

  “I’m a nurse,” said my mother. “I’ll come and help as soon as I get Alice settled.”

  Mom gave me a hand getting around the broken seats and into the window seat across the aisle. There was something wet on my forehead. I put up my hand to feel and it came away covered with blood.

  “Am I dead?” I whispered.

  My mother clicked her tongue. “For goodness’ sake, Alice, you’re not dead. You just had a bump on the head.”

  “But the train crash!” I said. “It went off the tracks. There was blood everywhere. Dead bodies.”

  “There was no train crash!” said my mother. “We just had a very sudden stop and you hit your head. The lights went out and you were unconscious for a few seconds, but you’ve come back.” She took my wrist, the way the conductor had. It was comforting to feel her cool fingers on my skin.

  She peered into my eyes for a moment. “No dilation,” she muttered. “I think you’re okay.”

  “But I remember the crash,” I said in confusion. It was clear in my mind, like a snapshot. I could taste blood in my mouth, and I could still hear the echoes of people screaming.

  I looked out the window. We had stopped at the foot of a hill. It was getting dark, but I could just make out an old house at the top of the hill— a large, grand old house with a row of tall windows along the first and second floors, a fancy entrance with pillars, and twin wrought-iron staircases curving down to a stone terrace. Vines snaked up the house to the roof.

  “A haunted house,” I murmured.

  “Alice!” said my mother sharply. “Can you stop your imagination for just one minute and pay attention. I asked you what day it is.”

  I turned back to her. Weird. I hadn’t heard her talking to me. I had an odd, floaty feeling, like I was seeing everything through a haze.

  “Saturday?” I said. “June 21, 1997.”

  “And what’s your name?”

  That was just silly.

  “Alice Felicity Greene,” I said. “Duh.”

  My mother’s lips twitched with annoyance.

  “Alice, I’m serious. You could have a concussion. That was a nasty crack you got. Do you feel dizzy?”

  “Sort of.”

  She reached out her hand and touched my forehead lightly.

  “You’re going to have a big bump.”

  I put my hand up and traced the swelling. She was right. Maybe that was why I felt so weird.

  An announcement came over the sound system.

  “We apologize for that sudden stop. There was an obstacle on the tracks and we had to brake suddenly. We’ve called ahead to Lakeport and there will be medical personnel at the station waiting for us. Anyone who has been hurt will be attended to. We are clearing the tracks, and we should be on our way shortly.”

  “I’ll be back soon,” said my mother. “I’ll just see if anyone needs my help.” And she was gone.

  I peered outside. The house was almost invisible now, fading into the gloom. But then a glowing light appeared behind it, and the house stood out in silhouette for a moment. As I watched, the light grew brighter. Then I realized what it was: the moon, slowly rising above the house— a glowing silver circle.

  An almost full moon, shining above a haunted house. On June 21, the summer solstice. The longest day of the year.

  I shivered.

  There was something strange about this whole trip, hurtling through the darkness to some unknown place where we were going to spend the summer without Dad. It didn’t feel quite real. As if I’d fallen inside one of my fantasies and couldn’t get out.

  The train began to buzz, the lights flickered, and with a lurch, it started moving down the tracks. As I turned to watch the house disappear into the darkness behind us, I saw a small tree that had fallen down and had been pulled away to one side. I wondered if that was the obstacle that had brought the train to such an abrupt stop.

  The train trundled through the woods, slowly picking up speed. It was dark enough now that I could see my reflection in the glass. My face looked pinched, my eyes a bit wild, and my forehead had blood smeared across it.

  I’ve never been too happy with my looks. I think I look kind of insignificant. I have straight, light-brown hair I’m trying to grow longer and pale brown eyes. I’m small for my age, and Mom always says I look a bit like a waif. That’s an old word for a poor little abandoned creature. That’s exactly what I looked like tonight, a little skinny thing with haunted eyes and my head kind of floating along outside the train window.

  The Lakeport train station was a small, old-fashioned building with a peaked roof and the name Lakeport painted on the brick wall. An ambulance stood outside, with a growing line of people waiting to see the paramedics.

  Mom turned toward the taxi stand. “Let’s not bother with that,” she said. “I know as much about concussion as they do. You can take some painkillers when we get to Blackwood House, and I’ll keep an eye on you for the next few days.”

  She said it in her brisk, no-nonsense nurse’s voice, the one that brooked no argument. We gathered our suitcases, got into a taxi, and soon we were rolling through the dark streets. I couldn’t see much. The road we were on left the town behind, and a deeper darkness settled in around us.

  “So you’re going to Blackwood House,” said the taxi driver. “Rather you than me.”

  “What?” said my mother, irritated. I pricked up my ears.

  “That house stood empty for nearly seventy years. Something happened to the family and the house was locked up. All the furniture, all the dishes— everything left just as it was. Spooky, I call it. Not a person went in it all that time— except a cleaner who was paid to look after it and keep her mouth shut. You wouldn’t catch me setting foot in that house. It’s a legend around here.”

  “Is it ha
unted?” I asked breathlessly.

  “Haunted! I would say so. By all accounts that house has seen more sorrow than most, ever since it was built way back in the 1830s. It’s the oldest house in the neighborhood, and there’s been more sudden deaths and accidents there—”

  “Nonsense,” said my mother. “Any old house has seen its share of deaths and accidents. That doesn’t mean it’s haunted.”

  “No good ever comes to people who live in that house,” intoned the taxi driver, ignoring my mother. “Old lady Bishop, who lives there now? They say she came here all the way from England. She bought the house last summer, restored it to its former glory, so they say, but two weeks ago she fell down the main staircase, and they never found her till the next morning. If she’d been there much longer, she would have been dead, sure as shooting.”

  “Shooting?” I said. My head was spinning.

  “That often happens with old people who live alone,” said my mother. “If they fall, they have no way of calling for help. Nothing to do with the house being unlucky.”

  “So you say,” said the taxi driver. “But you mark my words: Blackwood House is an unhappy, lonely place, and if I was you, I would go back to where I came from and—”

  “That’s enough,” said my mother. “We don’t need to hear any more of your scaremongering, thank you very much. I’m a nurse, and I’ll be looking after Mrs. Bishop and living in the house with my daughter, and there’s no need to fill her head with this foolishness.”

  The driver grunted. “Just don’t say I didn’t warn you,” he said.

  The car turned off the road and up a steep, curving driveway through a stand of trees. When we pulled out on top of the hill, he stopped the car.

  “Here you go,” he said.

  Standing before us, illuminated by the silver shining moon, was the haunted house I’d seen from the train.

  Chapter Three

  THE DARK ANGEL

  Mom paid the driver and he drove away, muttering. We stood and stared up at the house. It was large, with a row of tall windows on each floor. Thick vines crawled up the stone facade, which looked slightly blue in the gentle light of the moon. It was definitely the same grand house I’d seen from the train, but something was different.

  I frowned. The porch roof was supported by pillars, but it wasn’t the fancy entrance with the curving iron staircases I’d noticed before. A few stone steps led up to the front door. Then I realized this must be the back of the house, and what I’d seen was the front. Or this was the front, and that was the back.

  My head was still a little fuzzy.

  “Mom,” I whispered. “We’re going to live in a haunted house? Really?”

  Beside me Mom stiffened. “No,” she snapped. “We are not. This house is not haunted, it’s just old. There is no such thing as ghosts, and I don’t want you starting off your summer letting your imagination get the best of you!”

  Just at that moment the front door swung open with a creak.

  Mom jumped. I squeaked.

  Light flooded out and a dark figure appeared in the doorway, its face in shadow and its head lit from behind, like a halo. It was draped in some dark material that fell from its shoulders to the ground.

  A dark angel welcoming us to the haunted house? Yikes. I grabbed Mom’s arm.

  The figure stood there, motionless. Then slowly it began to move toward us, and as it stepped under the porch light, it shrank into a girl about sixteen with long dark hair and a blanket draped around her shoulders. Underneath she wore shorts and a T-shirt.

  “Hi!” she said. She was gazing at us in rapture, as if we were her long-lost best friends.

  “Hello,” said my mother. “I’m Ellie Greene, and this is my daughter, Alice. I think we’re expected.”

  The girl walked right by my mother to me. She reached out a hand and lightly touched my hair.

  “Alice,” she said, smiling even more widely. “Are you going to be my friend? I think so.”

  I glanced at my mother. She was trying to convey something to me by nodding her head and blinking her eyes, but I wasn’t sure what. I looked back at the girl, and I couldn’t help but smile back at her.

  “Yes, I think I am,” I replied, and the girl responded by throwing her arms around me and giving me a big hug. After a small hesitation, I hugged her back.

  “Lily?” called a voice from within the house. “Lily, are they here?”

  The girl broke away from me and yelled, “Yes, they are, and Alice is going to be my friend!”

  A woman bustled out of the house and then stopped, looking at us. She was short and rather plump, with curly brown hair, wearing jeans and a red sweater.

  “Welcome to Blackwood House,” she said, reaching out to shake hands with Mom. “I’m so glad to see you safe. We heard the train stop suddenly, and Mrs. Bishop was ever so fussed about it, worried that it was some terrible accident, but I called my friend Marsha, whose husband works at the station, and she told me no one was badly hurt, and we were so relieved! And now here you are! Come on in and let us help you with those bags.”

  She and Lily started hauling our suitcases in the door. The woman kept up a running commentary as we entered the house.

  “I’m Mary Barnett, call me Mary, and I help out Mrs. Bishop with the cleaning here, and you’ve met Lily, my daughter, and…”

  I didn’t hear whatever it was she said next. We had walked into a wide hallway with big doors opening off each side. An alarmingly steep, curving staircase climbed to the second floor. I gulped. If that was the staircase Mrs. Bishop had fallen down, the one the taxi driver was telling us about, I’m not surprised she broke her leg. A fall down those stairs could easily have killed her.

  The ceiling was twice as high as any ceiling I’d ever seen, with a glittering chandelier floating in the middle, hung by a metal rod that disappeared into the murky shadows above. Dark woodwork on the walls and doors reflected the light from the chandelier. Huge, gloomy paintings in gilded frames lined the walls. A tall grandfather clock stood just to the left of the door.

  It reminded me of a historic house my dad and I visited last summer. As usual, he didn’t have time for a proper holiday, but my mother had booked us some rooms at a bed-and-breakfast in a small town for a long weekend. On the Saturday, Mom felt like sitting on the porch reading a murder mystery, and Dad and I went exploring. We found a historic house in a nearby town that had been restored and turned into a museum, and we spent about two hours wandering through the rooms, with Dad filling in details about everything we saw. Dad and I loved doing stuff like that: he’s an architect and he also knows all about antiques, and he used to take me to antique markets every once in a while. Before he got so busy. The house we saw that day was Georgian, Dad said, built in the early 1800s, but it wasn’t as big or as grand as this one.

  Mary led us up the staircase, talking all the time. The stairs were so steep on the curve that Mom and I held tight to the banister, but Mary and Lily just charged up without any hesitation. Mom was staring at everything as much as I was. The stairs had a thick, dark-blue carpet, and my feet sank into it a little with each step. When we got to the second floor, that hall was just as big as the one downstairs, furnished with a small desk and a couple of armchairs. A soft light emanated from a lamp on the desk, but it did not penetrate the dark shadows that gathered near the high ceiling.

  Mary lowered her voice and leaned in close to my mother. “Why don’t we get your daughter settled, and then I’ll take you in to meet Mrs. Bishop. She’s had a bad day, and she really doesn’t like children very much—”

  She opened the first door on the right and we went in.

  I stopped inside the threshold and just stared. It was the most luxurious bedroom I had ever seen.

  Chapter Four

  THE GREEN BEDROOM

  I couldn’t believe that this was going to be
my room. Nothing could be more different than my little boxy bedroom at home that looked out over the railway tracks.

  To start with, it was enormous. You could fit at least four of my bedrooms in here. It was hard to see exactly how big it was because it was too dim to make out where the shadows ended and the ceiling began. A softly glowing lamp on the bedside table was the only illumination. There was just enough light to see the light-green wallpaper printed with little vines and tiny yellow and blue flowers.

  Long, silky green curtains that reached from ceiling to floor were drawn partway across two tall windows with window seats upholstered in the same material. On the far wall was an old-fashioned fireplace with a mirror that reflected the lovely room back at us, making it seem twice as big, as if there was another room just like this one beyond the fireplace. Two slim silver candlesticks stood on the mantelpiece, and an armchair covered in dark-green velvet stood to one side of the fireplace.

  But the most impressive thing by far was the bed. It stood against the far wall, a four-poster enclosed in flowing green curtains hanging from a carved wooden canopy.

  Lily dropped my suitcase and ran forward, pulling me with her, the dark blanket still hanging round her shoulders like a cloak.

  “I helped Mama make the bed for you,” she chirped. “Look what I left you!”

  She held back one of the curtains so I could see what lay inside. Propped against a heap of pillows was an antique baby doll with a china head and auburn curls peeking out from under her white lacy cap.

  “She’s Mrs. Bishop’s, but Mama said I could touch her if I was really careful. She said you could too. But you have to be careful! And not play with her in the dirt. I think so.”

  Her mother came over. “I thought Alice would be old enough to take care of the doll. Lily is a little careless, so she’s not allowed to play with it on her own.”

  I was too old to play with dolls, but I didn’t say anything. Lily was grinning at me, and her mother was looking on fondly. I couldn’t quite figure Lily out. She was so pretty, with her dark hair and eyes, and she had the body of a teenager, but she acted and moved more like a six-year-old.