Only, when I get back home, it’s nothing like a usual day.
The house is surround by cars.
Including at least four police vehicles.
*
Chapter 4
It’s not just police cars. There are also large police vans.
Motorcycles too.
Everyone parked as haphazardly on the street as the everyday cars of the moms who would drop off their kids to play with Sis.
Around the house itself, there’s even more chaos. Police in the garden, attempting to control excitedly barking dogs. Phones and walky-talkies crackling.
There’s the wailing of anguished moms too. Angry cries, coming from deep within the house through the wide open door.
Inside the house, things are even crazier.
Moms everywhere, all wringing hands, anguished faces. Dabbing weeping eyes.
Even the moms who aren’t crying, they’ve got all the signs that they’ve only just stopped; the white, strained expressions, the dark streaks of running eyeliner. Like down and out clowns.
When I walk in, there are gasps of relief, a turning of every head my way. Wide-eyed elation briefly passes over each face: a look instantly transforming into disappointment, dismay – even outright hostility towards me, for falsely raising their hopes.
From amongst all these weeping women crowding out our house, Dad suddenly rushes forwards, scoops me up hungrily. Like he used to do years ago, when I was still tiny and precious to him.
‘I sent a car for you, a police car!’ he says urgently, almost accusingly. ‘They couldn’t find you…’
‘I walked home the long way: what’s happening? Why are the police here?’
‘It’s Pearl – and the other girls!’
He glances about him at the weeping moms, like he’s reassuring them, letting them know he’s just as concerned for their kids as he is for Pearl.
He gulps, like he’s not sure what to say next.
He blurts it out.
‘They’ve all vanished!’
*
All the vanished kids had last been seen gaily trooping down the path towards the waiting wendy house.
Singing their happy little song.
‘Three-six-nine, the goose drank wine, the monkey chewed tobacco on the streetcar line…’
‘How do they all fit in there?’ one of the moms had chuckled, watching from the kitchen window as they’d all disappeared inside the wendy house: the door silently closing behind them, cutting off the last line of their singing.
‘The line broke, the monkey got choked, and they all went to heaven in a little–’
‘Oh, Jeanie’s bow!’
Jeanie’s mom had held up the bow her daughter had lost from her hair. She’d slipped out of the back door, running down the path towards the silent wendy house.
When she’d got there, peered in through the door: the wendy house was empty.
Confused, thinking what else but that she could only have missed them all filing back out, the mom had glanced anxiously about herself.
‘Jeanie? Your bow! Your hair must look a mess…’
She’d looked towards the wood, the dark lines of regimentally placed trees.
Surely they couldn’t have gone in there…?
The police had come out surprisingly quickly. One of the other moms, she was well connected: married to a high-ranking officer.
Well connected enough, too, to know the history of these woods.
A history involving the disappearance of other groups of young kids. Back in the Seventies. The Fifties too – and, some said, going back to even earlier times.
A regular Pied Piper, you ask me.
‘It’s dark, and all the same in there!’ this particulaly well-connected, well-informed mom explains worriedly to the other, increasingly frightened moms. ‘Anyone can get lost!’
It not an easy place to find anyone who’s got themselves lost in there either.
The police are having immense trouble in their attempts to hack their way through the closely tangled branches. The search dogs all come back into the garden whimpering, their delicate noses slashed and bleeding, caught time and time again on the sharp twigs.
The moms’ anxiety has turned to anger and recriminations. Dad should have fenced off the woods; there should have been warnings; how could they have been so stupid to let their kids come out to such a dangerous place?
One of the moms, she’s taken to pushing Dad, slapping him. Making him back farther and farther away as she pursues him down the garden.
Then, abruptly, she stops.
Her eyes wide. Intently focused on the wendy house behind him.
Dad whirls around. Everyone who’s seen the mom’s abrupt change in behaviour does so too, following her anguished gaze towards the wendy house.
With the merest of squeaks, the wendy house door has begun to slowly open.
*
The moms who see this wail out loud, only this time in relief.
A child peers around the edge of the door.
Blonde hair. Blue dress.
It’s Pearl.
Dad’s been holding his breath. He lets out a cry of relieved joy. Rushes towards the wendy house. Moms following him, those closest beating him.
‘Why’s everyone crying?’ Pearl asks, bewildered, perhaps even looking a little weary.
The door silently closes behind her. No one else has come out with her.
The first mom to reach the door wrenches it open so violently she just about pulls it off its hinges.
‘Mary!’ she yells out, her strained shriek both echoing and dulled by the wendy house’s wooden interior.
She dashes inside, other moms coming in immediately after, each shrieking out her daughter’s name.
Dad’s hugging Pearl, crying with joy, mumbling the questions he’s been dying to ask: ‘Where’ve you been? Didn’t you know we’d be worried?’
A burst of intense wailing emanates from the wendy house. The moms stumble out.
‘It’s empty! It’s empty!’
‘There’s no one in there!’
*
Chapter 5
Pearl just turning up like that, safe and sound, while all the rest of the kids are still missing; well, it just makes the moms angrier that ever with Dad.
Like he’s arranged it all. Like he’s at fault, somehow.
‘Arrest him!’
‘He’s kidnapped them all!’
Some even take their anger out on poor little Pearl. They grab her, snarl at her.
‘Where are they all? What have you done with them?’
Dad wraps himself around her, protecting her from their slaps, the scratching of talon-like nails.
‘I’d hoped they’d come back!’ Pearl protests, her own face creasing with fear as it dawns on her what their anger with her means. ‘They’re in the woods! The woods!’
‘How’d you come out of the wendy house?’
‘I didn’t see you go in there!’
‘Please, please, Jackie’ Dad pleads, glaring sternly back at the anguished woman who made the last accusation. ‘No one saw her because we were all looking towards the woods, weren’t we?’
It doesn’t placate the moms.
How come she’s safe, they want to scream; you can see it just about hanging off their lips.
She’s the one responsible! Her and her wendy house!
It’s only the presence of the nearby police that’s stopping them tearing Pearl and Dad apart.
Some of the moms are still hanging around the edges of the thick wood, making the odd fruitless attempt to stride deeper into it before having to forlornly give up once more. Pearl’s sudden reappearance has given some of them hope that their own children will turn up safe after all.
Each hoping their own kid will be the next to show up.
Better that their own kid shows up but no one else, rather than everyone but their own kid being safe.
Yeah, I can see that in th
eir wildly bulbous eyes. Like a starving person, prepared to fight over the last morsel of food.
At last made aware of Pearl’s reappearance, a couple of the cops head over our way. Saying they need to speak to her. Try and figure out what went on here.
One of the cops places a protective arm around Dad’s shoulder as he leads him and Pearl back up the path, back to the house. Dad’s arm is similarly curled protectively around Pearl.
‘They must know what’s going on!’ a mom spits at them.
‘We all know what’s going on!’ the other policeman replies sagely, authoritatively, brooking no more arguments. ‘Kids have wandered into the woods; it’s happened before. The difference this time is we’ll find them – we’ve got better systems, more sophisticated equipment.’
As if to back up his statement of reassurance, he looks up towards and indicates the arrival of a police helicopter swooping in overhead.
One mom, she’s not accepting it.
‘You telling me,’ she snorts derisively, ‘they didn’t have helicopters back in the Seventies?’
*
Dad’s kept both me and Pearl off school
He’s not saying so, but I reckon he’s decided it’s too dangerous for us to attend.
Not because he fears we’ll go missing like the other kids. He fears we’ll get the blame for their disappearance.
The moms still come round here.
Not to drop off their missing kids, obviously.
No: it’s to throw pet mess at our windows. At our door.
Cry out ‘Murderers!’ That kinda thing.
So whaddya know; I’m even more friendless than ever.
And even Pearl, even she’s friendless now.
For slightly different if ultimately connected reasons, of course.
She’s quiet, withdrawn.
More like me, in fact.
For once, we could actually be taken as sisters.
Turns out that she hadn’t come out of her terrible experience as unscathed as everyone had previously thought.
Parts of her body, we’d discovered, when she’d had her first bath, were bruised and scratched.
Weirdly, she still spends time in that nasty little wendy house of hers. More time than ever, I reckon.
She’s even moved the dolls from her bedroom into the house. When I sort of casually drift past the tiny hut (stalking again!), I hear her singing that damn skipping song in there.
Talking to the dolls like they’re her new friends. Even given them the names of those missing friends.
Jeanie. Mary. Ellie.
They’re the ones I’ve heard anyway.
‘You’re safe, safe with me,’ she assures them. ‘Don’t worry!’
*
Chapter 6
I’m worried Pearl might be cracking up
Which, yeah, I realise is a little rich coming from me.
I’ve got to have a word with her.
Dad won’t understand. He’ll just deny it; say it’s just something she’s going through. Understandable really, he’ll say – she’ll handle it.
No one could handle what she’s going through.
And Pearl’s only nine.
I figure the best place to have a quiet talk with her is in that damned wendy house of hers.
A touch ironic, really; I mean, considering that was Dad’s whole point of building it. Somewhere where me and Pearl could hang out.
The next time I see Sis slipping out of the kitchen’s back door, weaving down the path towards the wendy house, I follow her.
There’s no singing coming from the wendy house this time.
Only lots and lots of excited whispering.
Like there really are lots of kids in there with her today.
*
As I open the wendy house door, it all goes abruptly quiet; like I’ve disturbed whatever was going on in here.
Pearl’s not here.
Her dolls are all tucked up beneath small blankets. Like they’re in bed.
I did see Pearl come in here!
There’s no way she slipped out past me!
Did Dad create some sort of secret door in the back of this place after all?
I step towards the darkened back wall, reaching out to run my hands swiftly over the panelled wood. Hoping to find any kind of indent that could indicate a hidden door.
I don’t need to do any searching. This close up to the wall, the door built into it is obvious: as large as the front door, with all the regular, rectangle panelling you’d expect to find on an interior door.
There’s no attempt to hide it.
How come I never saw it before?
How come no one – not even the police, when they were relentlessly searching this whole area for any clue to the kids’ disappearance – ever saw this before?
How come Dad never mentioned it?
‘Pearl?’
I twist the handle, pull open the door.
Naturally, I’m expecting to step out into the garden lying behind the back of the wendy house.
I don’t.
I step into a ridiculously long corridor.
*
Chapter 7
The corridor winds, dips and rises – it even slips crazily off angle in certain sections – creating corners I can’t see around.
On either side, the walls have lots of doors, but they don’t seem completely real. They’re similar to the flat, coloured doors we see on cartoons. Standing between these doors there are also the same, endlessly repeated sofas and lampstands; ones that are once again typical of cartoons, the type where cats chase mice or ghosts pursue overly curious teenagers.
Much farther down the corridor, but hidden from sight by one of the sweeping corners, I hear the rushed footfall of someone running away from me.
‘Pearl! Wait!’
I break into a run myself, feeling quite dizzy as I rise and fall along with the corridor’s constantly dipping floor. At last, as I rush around a final corner, I come to a much straighter section, allowing me to see what must be the corridor’s end lying far ahead of me.
Pearl is there, standing by a table.
She’s also with a large white rabbit, one standing on its hind feet, wearing a waistcoat – and nervously checking his pocket watch.
You’re kidding me, right?
*
‘Pearl!’
I run down the corridor as fast as I can. Shouting, hoping to catch Pearl’s attention.
She either doesn’t hear or she ignores me. Either way, she swiftly drinks from a bottle she’s picked up from the table.
And yeah, just like in that story, she suddenly begins to shrink.
The rabbit has already opened and ducked through an incredibly small door standing to one side of the table. Now that Pearl has shrunk down to a similar size, she follows him through.
The door clangs to behind her.
And suddenly, I’m in this long corridor on my own.
‘Pearl!’ I shriek out, more uselessly than ever.
I’m breathing hard by the time I reach the table. Not just because I’ve been running so hard. I’m also worried for Pearl.
Probably for the very first time in my life, if I’m being honest.
Where the heck has she vanished to?
Is that where all the other girls have disappeared to?
I have to follow her. I haven’t got time to go back and get help.
Who’d believe me anyway?
I reach for the bottle, bring it hurriedly up to my lips–
Stop!
Isn’t that the mistake Alice made? Alice in Wonderland?
Didn’t she leave the key to the small door on the table, leaving it out of her reach?
I glance about the table top; there it is!
It’s small, and almost the same glaring white as the table. No wonder Alice had missed it when she came down–
Wait, wait!
What am I saying?
That Alice really existed?
/> That Wonderland exists?
Nah! It can’t be!
Can it?
*
Chapter 8
I take a quick drink from the bottle.
It tastes of fizzy sherbet. Other than that, there’s no other odd internal sensation.
The corridor about me seems to be suddenly expanding, however. The table growing as if alive, as if it were a rapidly growing tree.
Of course, I realise, it’s really me that’s shrinking. But it doesn’t either look or feel that way.
The lip of the table top soars above me. The legs appear to be thickening.
The small door looms larger and larger before me. Its key, the one I’m holding in my hand, seems to be gaining in both size and weight.
In my other hand, I’m still holding the bottle. Thankfully, that seems to be shrinking along with me. Otherwise it would now be much too heavy for me to hold safely.
As soon as I think I’m not going to shrink any further, I slip the bottle into the loop of one of the numerous straps decorating my jacket, securing it with a tightening of the buckle. It’s come in handy after all, it seems, wearing clothes with multiple straps and studs.
The projecting clawed foot of the table is flattened on its top, as if it were a small table top in its own right. On top of this there’s an extremely small cake, yet one that appears normal to me in my shrunken state.
There’s no label on it, however. No label saying ‘Eat me’, as it did in the story of Alice’s adventures.
Even so, as I did with the bottle of magical liquid, I take a few slices of the cake – thankfully, it’s already cut into pieces – and place them within my jacket pockets.
Who knows when they will come to be useful, right?
As I step closer to the small door, I discover that the label that should have been attached to the cake has obviously come undone, its curl of string having somehow got trapped within the woodwork of the frame. Even when I try and pull the label free, it refuses to come away from the frame, as if snagged on some splinter or knot lying within the wood.
‘Me eat,’ it says on the label.
Odd – everyone knows that’s the wrong way round!
The key, at least, works as it should. It turns smoothly within its lock. The door effortlessly eases open.