With a shrug, one of the huge creatures simply allows his constituent skeletons to scramble free, to drop to the ground,
With jubilant, hungry yells, they rapidly swarm through the undergrowth towards me.
*
Chapter 27
Caught in a burst of sunlight, the bones of the pursuing skeletons flash like sparks of lightning as they rush towards me through the undergrowth.
Their greedily gawping mouths, like their eyes, seem dark and bottomless.
I need some way of escaping them. Yet my only hope now is that I come across a wendy house that leads me into another world.
Yes, I remember Pearl’s warning; but what choice do I have?
Then, suddenly, the wendy house is there.
It’s like a tree house, hanging high above me in one of the surrounding trees’ many branches.
I just have to climb a staircase of small steps carved into and spiralling around the trunk. And then I’m there.
*
Winding around the trunk, one moment I’m hidden from the pursuing skeletons, the next I’m putting myself in full view once more.
But I don’t have any choice. I have to reach the wendy house. To go on to – or down to – the next level.
Pearl warned me to avoid going deeper. But is she just wanting to keep Mom to herself?
Is Mom on those deeper levels she talked about?
Deeper levels where Mom will help me, just as she helped Pearl?
Not that I need Mom’s help, of course.
I can deal with most things that life throws at me. Mom doesn’t understand that: doesn’t understand me.
But it would be nice to see her again.
The stable door to the wendy house lies open. I charge into the hut’s dim interior, letting the door slam to behind me on its own accord.
The sounds of the chase vanishes in an instant.
Inside here, it’s silent.
There doesn’t – thankfully – appear to be any terrifying child waiting for me in here.
In fact, this wendy house is very much like Pearl’s. Pearl’s wendy house just after the disappearance of the first girl, poor little Ellie.
Just off to my side, I see a slight glint of reflected light.
Light reflecting off the polished china face of a doll lying in its own little bed.
*
The doll isn’t the one that Pearl had put to bed in her own little house, however.
Even so, it’s a doll I recognise.
It’s Diana; the doll who had saved me from the wendigoes, from the rats.
I nudge her slightly.
‘Diana?’
There’s no response from her. She still continues to sleep.
‘Diana? I think I need your help again!’
She still doesn’t respond to my request for help, my continued prodding.
Here she remains as lifeless as any normal doll.
She’s no more than an empty, worthless shell on this level.
Or was it the rats? Did they leave her like this?
I peel back the bed sheet, to see if the rats had caused her any damage.
She seems fine. The regular pattern of monkeys and trams remain unbloodied on her untorn dress.
Then, as I pull back the last of the sheet, I see that she is hurt after all.
She’s missing one of her legs.
*
I jerk back in surprise, in fright.
This reminds me too much of yet another Japanese tale.
Where, whenever you find a doll with unusual legs, it means that…
Oh no no no!
My leg already feels leaden, dead – useless.
I look down.
I’ve now also lost one of my own legs.
And it’s been replaced by a thicker, unmovable china-doll leg.
*
Chapter 28
Misery.
Was that the movie in which the poor guy was deliberately hobbled?
Oh how I’d chuckled nervously, grimly, as I’d watched that story pan out!
Well, if this is all down to my warped mind, then it’s sweetly happy Disney movies for me all the way if I ever get outta here!
I stumble out of the wendy house’s back door, wondering what’s awaiting me next out there.
The bright sunlight makes me blink. I’m on a path, but one surrounded by tall, thick hedges.
Like a maze.
The farther I walk, the more I believe I really am in a maze.
The path keeps on branching off at angles, into different paths. But I’m not allowed to see where I’m heading, the hedges way too high to see over.
I have to just about drag my useless, heavy leg.
But that, of course, if the Japanese tale comes true, is the least of my worries.
For in that tale, the doll-like qualities of the leg will continue to spread.
Eventually, it will take over my whole body.
And then, just like poor Diana, I’ll be nothing more than a dead, empty shell, of no more use to anyone.
*
My hobbling is already worse, my hip now of hollowed china, just like my leg.
Just like Diana’s hip and leg. As if we’re now forever linked.
Worse, the maze seems endless.
Tracks leading nowhere in particular. Just leading me round and round. Back to places I could swear I’ve seen before.
I’m constantly trying to remember each different section of the maze, trying to work out the maze’s pattern in my head. If I can figure out how it’s been designed, I can discover a way out of–
‘She must have followed me.’
That’s Pearl's voice, I’m sure! Coming for somewhere way over the hedges. But not that far away either!
‘Tell her to leave!’
Mom!
That’s Mom’s voice! I’m sure.
‘Mom! It me!’ I yell it out as loudly as I can. ‘It’s me, Dia! I’m here too!’
‘I told you not to tell anyone about this place!’
Mom continues talking to Pearl like she hasn’t heard me.
Yeah, that’s Mom all right!
‘I didn’t tell her!’ Pearl wails, like she’s about to burst into tears.
Like I’d just imagine her to act.
‘If they find out about this place, they’ll burn it down!’ Mom snaps angrily.
I’m hurrying as fast as I can through the maze, using the talking voices as a guide to where I need to be.
I just about crumple to the floor in my eagerness to throw myself around what I believe is the final corner.
‘Mom, it’s –’
Both Pearl and Mom have their backs to me. They’re walking away, walking up a long corridor running between the bordering hedges.
But there’s another Pearl and Mom, walking away from me up another long, straight corridor.
And another.
And another.
I whirl around.
There are nine pairs of them.
All walking away from me as if I don’t exist.
*
Choosing the pair I had first come across, I hobble painfully after them.
It’s hard to keep up with them, let alone gain on them; the stiff china-like quality of my doll’s leg has already spread to my waist, making the whole leg more of a dead weight than ever.
I feel such a fool. Humiliated beyond belief.
I’m not calling out to them anymore. I want to retain some of my pride.
At last, with an extra, agonising effort on my part, I find myself within reaching distance of them. I stretch out an arm, touch Mom on her shoulder.
She stops. Turns around.
She has no face.
*
Chapter 29
Mom’s face is blank, featureless; like a white balloon.
When Pearl spins around, she has exactly the same kind of featureless face.
Even so, they’re both chuckling wickedly.
I spin on my own heels
, anxiously looking back up the other corridor I can still see. Wondering if I’ve simply chosen the wrong pair to follow.
Pearl and Mom are still walking away from me in this corridor. But, as if at last sensing my presence, they turn around.
Once again, they’re both faceless.
They both laugh.
Suddenly, I’m no longer standing in the single corridor I’d chosen to hobble down. I’m back in the hub, the central point from which all nine corridors emanated like the spokes of a wheel.
Up every corridor, Pearl and Mom are staring at me with their horrifyingly blank faces.
Even the pair I had originally caught up with are now standing a good distance away from me.
Their laughter, however, is as loud as ever.
Then, abruptly, the laughter vanishes. As does every faceless pair.
I’m in the maze on my own once again.
‘Mom?’
There’s a wail in my voice I can’t control; a helplessness I don’t like admitting to.
‘Pearl?’
My whole body shivers, as if I’m suddenly incredibly cold, freezing. I can’t move any farther; my other leg is now of china, as is one of my arms.
Why does Mom do this to me?
Why does she always have to leave me whenever I need her most?
She didn’t like me, did she?
Not the way she liked Pearl.
She loved Pearl.
But not me.
That’s it, isn’t it?
That’s my greatest fear.
That’s what’s festered away inside me for so, so long.
*
The doll-like quality is spreading through me.
Leaving me now almost unmovable. Statue like.
Mom wasn’t angry with me.
I was the one angry with her.
‘Oh Mom: I wish you were here! I didn’t show it, I know; but I did love you!’
The tears run down cheeks that are now of hard, glistening china.
‘Dia? You called me?’
My eyes are so welled up with tears I can hardly see through them
The approaching figure is hazy. Dissolving and liquefying, even as I attempt to blink my eyes clear of water.
She smiles.
It is Mom.
She reaches out to hug me. Wraps her arms tightly, warmly, about me.
Lovingly about me.
‘Ohhh Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom!’ I weep. ‘I love you, I love you, I love you!’
*
Chapter 30
‘I know, I know,’ Mom replies brightly, kissing away the wet tears on my cheeks of china. ‘I know because I love you too.’
‘But…but I was so awful to you! Because I thought you were being awful to me!’
Mom chuckles lightly.
‘That was one heck of a protective shell you’d created around yourself, sweetheart. The hard-bitten teenage girl who can’t be hurt; who doesn’t really have any true feelings!’
‘You…you knew it was all an act?’
‘Isn’t it always? It certainly was when I acted like that, that’s for sure.’
‘You, you too Mom? When you were younger, you mean?’
She nods in agreement.
‘It’s a confusing world, isn’t it, especially as we grow up in it? We all need to hide our fears; and we fear more than anything that we might reveal them to others, show our weakness. Show that we can be hurt.’
She tenderly strokes the hard china of my cheek, the increasingly hard skin around my mouth.
‘The trouble is, once we’ve created our protective shell, we even fool ourselves into believing it’s the real us! We endlessly go through the same reassuring motions, the same patterns of behaviour. Fooling ourselves that it gives us control over our lives – no longer realising it’s now a barrier, preventing others from getting to know the real you.’
‘Mom, I don’t want it anymore. I really don’t.’
I’m hoping this admittance will finally begin to dissolve away the spreading of the hardening shell. But I feel no better. If anything, the skin around my face seems to be hardening, become stiffer.
‘Good, good,’ Mom smiles. ‘Because it’s your creation; and only you can decide to shrug it off.’
She kisses me once more; but then, she begins to pull away.
‘Mom, please!’
It’s so hard to talk now, I wonder if Mom can even hear me.
She’s drifting away from me, still looking my way. Still smiling warmly. Still holding out her arms, as if she wants to hold me again, to hold me forever.
‘Don’t leave me again! I need you!’
The tears fall down my face once more. Slipping over lips of hard ceramic.
‘I am with you, always,’ Mom says kindly, continuing to slowly move away from me, as if hovering across the ground. ‘You’re a part of me. But so is Pearl: and so together, I am there for you.’
I can’t run after her. I can’t move at all now.
The only thing of me that’s still moving are my tears, running down my polished cheeks.
As Mom drifts away, she fades. Vanishes.
But someone else is there. Standing exactly where I’d last seen Mom dissolve away into nothing.
She’s looking my way.
She smiles.
It’s Pearl.
*
Chapter 31
‘Three-six-nine, the goose drank wine, the monkey chewed tobacco on the streetcar line…’
The mice are jumping over the skipping rope. The cute puppy and even cuter rabbit are taking turns to jump with them. A joyfully squawking duck is holding and expertly twirling one end of the rope.
Beyond the duck, there’s a monkey, dancing on top of a jovially rolling tramcar.
I’m holding the other end of the rope. And I’m singing along with them all. Singing the song I can’t stand anymore.
‘The line broke, the monkey got choked, and they all went to heaven in a little row boat.’
As we sing this, the monkey is suddenly choked and flung into the air by a snapping cable. The rail buckles, the car topples from the line. The monkey lands in a small boat already being rowed up to heaven in a lazy spiral by a tipsy goose.
It’s all a cartoon. All a Silly Symphony. All repetitive action, to a repetitive tune.
No, it’s more an Alice in Cartoonland. The one that was an early mix of black and white cartoon characters and a real girl.
Because Pearl is also here. Taking part in the skipping, the song. Only she’s for real: she’s not a cartoon like all the others.
And me?
I stretch out my hand a little bit more before me, to see what I’m like.
It’s not a hand.
It’s a paw.
A cat’s paw, I think.
*
‘My mama told me, if I was goody…that she would buy me, a rubber dolly.’
I’m a cartoon cat. Dancing inanely. Uncontrollably. I don’t seem to have any choice in the matter.
Is that better than ending up as nothing more than a rigidly unmoving ceramic doll?
Probably. But not much.
‘My sister told her, I kissed a soldier…Now she won't buy me, a rubber dolly.’
Sister?
Shouldn’t that be aunty?
Is that why I’m here? Pearl’s revenge for ignoring her, for mistreating her – being jealous of her?
Nah! It’s all just a coincidence, isn’t it? And me just searching for reasons why all this is happening to me.
‘Three-six-nine, the goose drank wine…’
And so it all begins again. The goose tipping his bottle to his mouth.
The mice jumping over the rope.
Just like one of those damn cartoons.
An endless cycle of sheer fun, right?
*
Why’s Pearl keeping us all here, keeping us all like this?
Why isn’t she letting us go free? Letting us go home?
That’s not like Pearl
; she’s not a nasty person.
Far from it.
There: I’ve admitted it.
She’s a better person than me.
A kinder person.
One with – yeah, let’s face it – nicer, purer thoughts.
Which is why she’s survived this place.
And I haven’t.
But then, why is she holding us here?
Because…because she thinks she’s protecting us.
Giving us something repetitive and easy to remember to distract us; so we don’t dwell on our fears. And fall prey to this evil wendy house.
We’re safe here, for the moment. Here in our own, self-contained little world.
But Pearl obviously hasn’t figured out yet how to get us all out of here.
Which means the wendy house has us all trapped here after all.
*
Chapter 32
‘Pearl! I need to talk to you!’
I hiss urgently at Pearl as she takes her turn jumping over the twirling rope, along with one of the mice.
She acts like she hasn’t heard me, like she wants to ignore me.
But I caught her frowning worriedly. She heard me all right.
She’s glancing nervously about herself, like she’s frightened something awful’s about to happen.
‘Pearl!’
‘Sing: you should be singing,’ Pearl hisses back without even glancing my way.
Her eyes are still fliting nervously, as if she wants to take in everything she can all at once. As if she’s expecting things to start altering for the worse any moment now.
‘Everyone else can sing,’ I persist. ‘I need to ask you some questions.’
She still continues to ignore me, her own singing increasing in volume, in urgency.
‘My mama told me, if I was goody…that she would buy me, a rubber dolly…’
‘Pearl, if you don’t talk to me, I’m going to stop swinging this damn rope…’
‘Okay, okay!’ she grimaces. ‘But keep swinging the rope!’
She glances everywhere about herself once more, obviously still frantic that our talking is somehow going to result in something terrible happening.
‘Correct me if I’m wrong,’ I say, ‘but all this is your creation, right?’