Doll House
Denzil Lawrence
Copyright 2013
Readers
The setting and characters from this story were meant to be part of a much longer story. I penned down the ideas for “Doll House” ages ago, but didn’t actually work on writing it until just recently. It was originally supposed to focus more on Amberose and the girl (who has a name), and how they sort of team up to solve crime mysteries. For this short story version of Doll House, I decided to focus more on the early events from the original outline and less on the actual plot of the longer story.
The Doll House
Four children were wandering around some time during the evening. School had ended a few hours ago but the group decided to hang out until after dinner time.
One of the boys in the group was lagging pretty far behind. He dragged his feet as he walked.
“Sammy,” one of the girls name Quinn said. “How could you possibly be that slow?”
“I’m tired,” Sammy replied. “We’ve been walking for ages.” He made a half-hearted dash to catch up with the group. “Where are we even going?”
The girl, Quinn, shrugged. “Dunno.”
“Hey,” Edward said. “I know something cool.” He led the group onto one of the side roads. It was a dirt path surrounded by tall weeds. The weeds were a whitish yellow color and somewhat resembled wheat. “Have you guys ever seen the Doll House,” he asked.
Sammy and the other girl, Amma, shook their heads.
Quinn gasped. “You mean that house full of life sized dolls?”
Edward nodded. “Yeah, that house. It’s practically a mansion and it’s completely stuffed with dolls. Life sized ones.”
“It’s also haunted,” Quinn added.
“Yep, it’s haunted by very old and angry ghosts.”
Sammy laughed. So loudly that it sounded really forced and totally fake. “There’s no such thing as ghosts, you idiots.”
Edward raised an eyebrow. “So you’re not scared?”
“Of course not. I’m not scared one bit.”
“Well then,” Edward said. “Let’s go check it out. He brushed aside some weeds to reveal a green hill in the distance. On top of the hill sat a giant house. “There it is. That’s the doll house, right over there.”
Sammy looked shocked. “Wait. Are we really going in there?”
Quinn didn’t seem to notice his obvious uneasiness at all when she said, “Don’t worry, the doors should be unlocked.”
Amberose
Amberose Brookenwise slowly opened the door. It was dusty and form large dust clouds as it creaked open. Amberose hurried into the building and shut the door behind her. With the door shut it didn’t take long for her to realize that there was almost no light in the hallway she was standing in. There was only the faintest glow coming from the evenly spaced rows of almost dead candescent light bulbs.
Amberose continued down the hallway while making careful mental notes of everything she saw, especially the seemingly insignificant things. The empty old picture frames backed up against the walls, the messages written on the walls, and the pieces of broken china on the carpeted floor. Everything in this house was significant.
There was a huge painting hung up on one of the most visible walls. It was a painting of a man and woman smiling together. The setting of the picture seemed to be a boat. In the background, you could see the beautiful bright blue sea stretching on forever even within the limited room of the picture frame. The man in the painting had jet black hair and was holding up what looked like a map and the woman was a brunette. She was embracing a doll that looked very much like her, with the same energetic brown hair and adventurous blue eyes. Under the painting was a plaque that read:
Mr. and Mrs. Kitchered July 1986.
The Kitchereds depicted in this painting were the owners of this household. They were married in year 1980, only six year before this was painted. They might have had this made for their sixth wedding anniversary. That would be plausible. Amberose scanned around the room once more to make sure she wasn’t missing anything important. She saw nothing but subtle signs of neglect. It only seemed to back up Amberose’s theory that Mr. and Mrs. Kitchered probably didn’t live here anymore.
The Dolls
Things were beginning to get weird. As Amberose covered more and more ground, she became more and more disturbed at what she was seeing. At first it was only a little strange. There were dolls all over the place. Some of them were life sized dolls, strewn the floors and sitting on things, tables and chairs for example. But the vast majority of the dolls were more usual in size. Small traditional stuffed dolls that young girls used to play with years ago. There were literally hundreds of them visible in the dozens of rooms Amberose passed by.
In one room Amberose found a circle of dolls sitting with small bowls placed in front of them. The bowls were filled with a weird green and blue substance that Amberose soon remarked was mold. It reeked. Amberose almost threw up when the smell reached her nostrils. The dolls obviously didn’t mind the smell though, since they were all smiling. Their ignorant smiles made her feel even sicker. Something about their inhuman actions or lack of actions was upsetting. She left that room pretty quickly.
The deeper Amberose got into the house, the fresher that tracks were. They were also creepier. In one room there were dolls dangling from ropes. They were noosed around the necks and hanging from and iron rod, just a few feet down from the ceiling, which stretched from one end of the room to the other. Some of the dolls seemed to have been tortured before their execution. They were missing body parts. Some of them had missing arms or legs and some of them were impaled with pikes and needles. Quite a few of those pikes had also fallen out, leaving gaping holes and tears all over the bodies of the victims. It was fascinating, in a twisted way, that anyone would go to the trouble of doing something like this, hanging dolls.
Hanging dolls was the only way this country handled executions though. In this land the French guillotine seemed to be all the rage. The on the left side of the room was about two meters wide and four meters high. It was human sized and undoubtedly one hundred percent real. There were scores of heads on the floor, piled up into a little pyramid in one corner of the room. Beside the pyramid of heads were the bodies, stacked up neatly with care. What kind of sick person would keep an authentic guillotine in their house?
Amberose unconsciously backed up and covered her mouth. The faces, they were smiling. Even the severed heads were smiling. Their ignorant smiles made her sick again. Amberose left the room feeling somewhat nauseas.
The Girl
She was a remarkable girl with long black hair and bizarre dark red eyes, an astonishing eye color that Amberose had never seen before. Her skin was extremely pale, essentially pure white. She wore a simple black dress with white frills around the bottom hem and the shoulder straps. The dress was also quite short, so it showed much of her pale legs. She sat on her knees with her legs in a triangular formation behind her. If Amberose had to describe the girl’s appearance she would most likely say that the young girl looked very much like a vampire.
The girl didn’t even acknowledge Amberose. She just continued talking to her dolls. One of the dolls was red head with freckles and the other was blonde. It was weird to watch. It was like listening to a telephone conversation from the outside. You could hear what the speaker who was in the same room as you said, but you couldn’t hear what the person on the other end was saying. This made it impossible to keep up with what was being discussed.
“Do you live in here,” Amberose asked. The girl finally made eye contact with her. Her face was almost expressionless.
“I do,” the girl replied. “Why are you here?”
Amberose flinched. T
he question totally caught her of guard because technically she had no right to be here. “Um,” she said. “I’m here on a-” she looked up at the ceiling as she scrambled for words. “Private investigation.”
“You mean ‘personal investigation’.”
The girl was right. This was a personal investigation. She had no legal right to break into this residence. If it were officially labeled as abandoned, she might have been able to get the necessary permits, but since it wasn’t, that would be impossible. Amberose looked the girl straight in the eye. “This house is very important to me,” she said.
“Did you fall in love here? Lose your virginity?”
“That’s not what I meant. This place is important to me. So I have memories of it, but they definitely aren’t good ones.”
“So you were raped here,” the girl said with a smirk on her face. She wasn’t being serious it seemed.
Amberose remembered the incident that took place eleven years ago. She still remembered the last time she saw them. The hallway at the entrance wasn’t very different from how it was today. The only difference was it was decorated with extremely creepy life sized dolls and it was in much better condition.
“Don’t be afraid,” Sammy had said. He’d always been the leader of the group. Sammy was a strong willed boy with as much courage as a soldier.
Amberose remembered Quinn laughing. She definitely wasn’t scared in the slightest. She’d been very adventurous and energetic. There was nothing that could hold her back. Edward on the other hand, was very obviously afraid. Had he been any more scared he would’ve probably been shaking. But Edward, being Edward, had a “reputation” to up hold. He was a self-proclaimed prodigy, a genius waiting to be crowned and awarded with the Noble Prize. No way in hell would he be scared of a few dolls and a stupid ghost story, right?
“I’m leaving,” Amberose had said. “This is a stupid idea.” And she later found out she was right. Leaving was the wisest decision.
“Amma please stay with us. There’s nothing to worry about.” Sammy was trying his best to make her feel safe. He was a great person. He hadn’t ever tried to put her down or push her away, even when she held the group back. Instead, he always did his best to build her up and pull her in.
So she lied. “Okay,” she’d said. “I’ll stay. Just don’t get separated and we’ll definitely be fine.” They did a chant and were all smiling. Nothing made Amberose happier than their close friendship. She wanted their little group to stay together forever. But those feelings didn’t stop her from running away…
Someway into the house, when no one was looking, she slipped away. Turning the corner she calmly back tracked their steps and soon exited the house. She remembered the feeling of guilt was she turned back one last time at the entrance of the Doll House, and wondered what her best friends thought of her now. What were they saying? Would they still be close friends tomorrow? Should she go back in?
Amberose noticed that she’d spaced out. She looked the black haired girl in the eyes. The girl wasn’t smiling anymore. Instead, now she was staring at her with innocent red eyes. She looked perplexed. “I never saw them again,” Amberose said. She realized she hadn’t told the girl anything. “Sorry. I and my friends once came to this house to explore. We were young and I was scared. So I ran away. I abandoned them.” Amberose’s eyes were beginning to water and the pitch of her voice was increasing. “It was stupid and selfish, and even though their disappearances were never my fault, I feel guilty. And I know I always will.”
The red eyed girl remained silent. She was studying Amberose’s face. She dropped her dolls into her lap. “When did this incident occur?”
“Eleven years ago.”
“I was three eleven years ago. Mr. and Mrs. Kitchered lived in here back then.”
“So what about now, do you live on your own?”
The girl shook her head. “No. I live with these dolls.”
Amberose frowned. “Yeah,” she said. “I noticed the dolls on the way in. I’ve always wondered why there are so many dolls in here.”
“Well they need somewhere to live, don’t they? There have always been dolls in here. Mr. and Mrs. Kitchered let them live here. They had hundreds of big guests. I personally don’t like big dolls though, so when Mr. and Mrs. Kitchered left, I killed them. This is my world, but you’re not from here. You’re from the scary outside world. The world I have never visited.”