Revenge of the Dolls Read online

  Revenge of the Dolls

  Carol Beach York

  An [ e - reads ] Book

  No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, scanning or any information storage retrieval system, without explicit permission in writing from the Author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locals or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1979 by Carol Beach York

  First e-reads publication 1999

  www.e-reads.com

  ISBN 0-7592-4227-5

  Author Biography

  Carol Beach York has a long list of juvenile novels to her credit including REMEMBER ME WHEN I'M DEAD, I WILL MAKE YOU DISAPPEAR, and THE WITCH LADY MYSTERY. Born and raised in Chicago, she sold her first story to Seventeen Magazine. She contributed many stories and articles to magazines in both the juvenile and adult markets in addition to her activities as a novelist.

  Other works by Carol Beach York also available in e-reads editions

  Remember Me When I am Dead

  When Midnight Comes

  Takers and Returners

  For my dear friend

  Marge Barkan

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 1

  I REMEMBER that December afternoon as clearly as if I were there again now in the living room trimming the tree with Trissy. Light glowed and glimmered in the ornaments. Outside snow was falling. Mama sat on the couch opening Christmas cards that had just come in the mail.

  I can still hear the soft sliding sound of cards coming from envelopes.

  “Cousin Grace.” Mama leaned forward and handed a card to Daddy.

  “There’s a note on the back,” Mama added. “Aunt Sarah hasn’t been feeling well. The cold weather, I suppose.”

  Daddy lifted an eyebrow. He thought there was a lot more wrong with Mama’s Aunt Sarah than cold weather could account for. But he didn’t argue. He was feeling lazy and content in the warm Christmas room. Aunt Sarah was too far away to worry about.

  “Grace wonders if I could possibly get out for a visit before summer.”

  I hung a silver trumpet on a high branch. Only Daddy could reach the top, to put on the star.

  “Actually, it might not be bad to go in the spring this year, when the girls have their spring vacation,” Mama said thoughtfully. “It’s always so hot at Aunt Sarah’s in the summer.”

  Whether we went in spring or summer, I didn’t look forward to the visit. An air of gloom always hung over Aunt Sarah’s house — over the gardens and porches, in the shadowy corners of the high-ceilinged rooms. A sense of something I didn’t understand pervaded the house where Aunt Sarah lived, with Cousin Grace to take care of her, and a hired girl from town to cook and clean.

  Mama thought Aunt Sarah was harmless. A harmless old lady. “A little eccentric,” was the most Mama would concede.

  Daddy thought Aunt Sarah was quite mad, crazy as a loon. Harmless, maybe …

  Oh, Daddy, if you only knew. Am I the only one who really knows?

  In a room far away, Cousin Grace had sat at her desk. I could imagine her, neat and drab and growing old. Carefully, in a thin, spare script, she had signed our Christmas card, addressed the envelope, reached for a stamp in the shallow desk drawer with the brass lion-head knob. Probably she was alone in the living room; Aunt Sarah so rarely came downstairs.

  And then on the back of the card Cousin Grace had added a note. She wondered if Mama could come sooner than summer.

  Daddy laid Cousin Grace’s card in the basket with the other cards. I looked at it later. Silver and gold. Angels and stars. It had come from a snowbound house in the midst of a wintry countryside, come from a place I did not know. I only knew Aunt Sarah’s house in summertime … and oh, I knew the summers well. Mosquitoes by the Queen Anne’s lace, the creak of porch chairs, the slam of the back-door screen, shades drawn to keep the rooms cool, afternoon lemonade, the musty smell of the grape arbor with its sprawling vines and dark leaves, sunlight shimmering on the black asphalt road to town, birds scolding squirrels in the tree branches.

  But as I held the card, I thought I could imagine this winter place, this place I had never seen. I could imagine the garden covered with snow, the ground frozen hard, dead stalks where flowers had been, fires burning in the fireplaces, and bitter wind sweeping against the windows.

  Somehow, with the arrival of the card, the gloomy presence of Aunt Sarah’s house had also come. I could feel it close silently about me in the room that had been so perfect, so bright and Christmasy. Was I the only one who felt the change?

  Trissy threw icicles at the tree, and Mama said, “Don’t throw, darling.” Only Mama had the patience to put each silvery strand on separately, hanging it straight, perfectly positioning it. I love you, Mama …. We need people who are willing to do things carefully, patiently, perfectly. Everything would be so disorderly without people like Mama.

  But, oh, Mama — we should have gone in the summer, as we always did. Things might have been different then.

  Mama had taken up her copy of A Christmas Carol, and Trissy was snuggling beside her on the couch. Could Trissy understand the Ghost of Christmas Past?

  “Marley was dead, to begin with.” Mama’s voice was soft, lilting. The tree lights glowed. Snow fell at the windows.

  Marley was dead, to begin with.

  Read that again, Mama: Aunt Sarah was mad, to begin with.

  Chapter 2

  I NEVER DID see Aunt Sarah’s house in the wintertime.

  I never saw the garden deep with snow, the ice formed between the flagstones of the path leading to the grape arbor. I never saw the woods silent and white. I never saw the road to town blown over with drifting snow, that winter place from which the Christmas card had come.

  But I did at last see fires in the big old-fashioned fireplaces with brick hearths and clocks chiming on the mantelpieces.

  We went for a week in early spring — Mama, Trissy, and I, and the weather was damp and chill. There was always a fire in the living room, and I liked to sit beside it and watch the flames. The blazing fire made the whole room beautiful. Light glowed on the polished tabletops, the brass jardinieres, the oil paintings in their heavy frames.

  And there was always a fire in Aunt Sarah’s room upstairs. But the fire was less welcoming there. It cast mysterious shadows on the carpet, on the dark furniture, on the faces of the dolls — and made their glass eyes gleam like the eyes of wolves on the fringes of a campfire.

  Cousin Grace came to meet our train. I saw her first, a thin, melancholy woman in a beaver coat. The rails were silvery with rain as the train ground to a stop, and through the rain-streaked windows I could see Cousin Grace appear in the dusk like an apparition with her dark eyes and pale cheeks. Her face floated there in the misty light, and I drew back from the window silently, though I had been about to cry out, “There she is, Mama. I see Cousin Grace.”

  Later Trissy and I sat in the back of the car, lost on the wide, velvety, dove-gray seat. No one had ever used the ashtrays set into the doors. No fingerprints marred their chrome lids. No smudges stained the gray carpet at our feet.

  Mama sat in front beside Cousin Grace. All we co
uld see was the back of their heads. I watched the streets of town slip by and the desolate stretch of countryside begin. The fields and small patches of woods looked forsaken, forlorn. The trees were bare.

  “Christina and Jason are coming tomorrow.” Cousin Grace spoke to Mama in a somber tone.

  Mama was silent. I couldn’t see her face, but I thought she was probably worried. The family was gathering. “Shall we take a vote to send Aunt Sarah ‘away’?” And Mama wouldn’t want to.

  “Is Paulie coming?” Trissy wriggled up and stood with her arms on the back of the front seat. Wisps of pale-brown hair poked out from the edges of her cap. She had lost a mitten on the train, but she didn’t mind.

  “Yes, Paulie’s coming.” Cousin Grace’s voice gave no hint of her feelings. Last summer Paulie had broken a valuable vase. I think Cousin Grace was happier without big clumsy boys around.

  But it wasn’t her house, so it wasn’t her place to say “come” or “go.” It was Aunt Sarah’s house: every mahogany banister and latticed window and attic step, every long corridor and mantelpiece, and every door closing her in from the world outside. All Aunt Sarah’s.

  Whose house would it be if Aunt Sarah went “away”? I thought it would be nice if Cousin Grace could have the house. She deserved it. She had taken care of Aunt Sarah for many years.

  But the house was too big for one graying, middle-aged lady. Aunt Christina and Uncle Jason thought the house should be sold and the money divided, along with Aunt Sarah’s other money. I knew all about that. The grown-ups would have been surprised at how much I knew. Paulie had told me. “Someday we’ll all be rich,” he had bragged.

  Cousin Grace turned off the road a mile or so farther on, and Aunt Sarah’s house appeared through the trees. The winter winds that must have blown across the garden were gone now; thin gray rain fell through the twilight. It was a place I knew, yet did not know.

  The sky was nearly dark, and lights shone at the windows.

  I could see Aunt Sarah’s windows, where a dim light showed behind drawn curtains. She would be sitting there in her rocking chair. I wondered if she would come downstairs for dinner. I liked it better when she didn’t come. But I wondered if she would.

  Chapter 3

  TRISSY AND I sat on the floor by the fire.

  Full dark had fallen outside now, and the rain had stopped. Annie, the hired girl, was in the kitchen fixing dinner. It was a cozy moment in a gloomy house. I felt the room surrounding me like a cave of golden warmth in a countryside hushed now that the rain had stopped, lying blind under a starless sky.

  Trissy’s stockings drooped, a shoe was unlaced; the green of her dress cast reflections on her face in the firelight. I sat beside her, half listening to the low murmur of voices across the room. Mama and Cousin Grace were talking — the same things I had heard so many times before.

  “I know it’s been hard on you, Grace,” Mama said.

  “Things just seem to get worse.” There was a hopelessness in Cousin Grace’s voice. “There’s no way I can please her. She hardly goes out. And lately she doesn’t want me to go out.”

  I glanced at Cousin Grace over my shoulder. What would it be like to live with someone who didn’t want you to go out? I went out all the time: to school, with its echoing corridors and the sound of locker doors closing, with its notices on the bulletin board ….

  “Hey, Alice, have you got the arithmetic? Sally Foster leaned close to me, showing her braces. “Have you got the arithmetic, Alice?”

  And I went to Sunday school, dressed too tightly in good shoes and gloves. “Can I wear your cologne, Mama?” … Sunday mornings were stacks of newspapers Daddy was reading, coffee cake from the Elm Street bakery, Trissy hopping from foot to foot while she had ribbons tied in her hair, Mama asking, “Do you remember your Bible verse?”

  “Let’s go!” Daddy was ready with the car. Rain or shine, we went to Sunday school.

  And we went shopping. We went to the library … to the dentist … ice-skating at the park. We went to birthday parties …. “Have you got a bow, Mama?” From somewhere, marvelously, at the last moment, bows appeared for birthday presents for the girl next door, the girl two rows over at school, my best friend Margie.

  Snowflakes struck our faces when we went out, sometimes rain and biting wind.

  “Wait for me, Alice!”

  “Hold my hand, Trissy!”

  But we went out. Doors closed behind us. Hugs and kisses waited when we returned.

  We had never lived with someone who didn’t want us to go out.

  “I told her someone has to do the shopping,” Cousin Grace was saying. “But she doesn’t listen.”

  “I know ….” Mama let the words drift off.

  Cousin Grace sighed. She gazed down at her closed hands. She looked so sad and tired. The disappointments of a life I could only vaguely imagine were etched forever upon her quiet face. There was nothing she could hide. As long as I could remember, through all the summers of my life, she had been the same: Cousin Grace, the poor relation who lived with Aunt Sarah.

  “When Christina heard you were coming, she wanted to come too.” Cousin Grace didn’t lift her eyes as she spoke. “Christina thought we should all be here together to talk.”

  “I suppose so.” Mama’s voice was barely audible.

  “Where’s Skippy?” Trissy hopped up suddenly and wandered around the room, looking behind chairs, between table legs.

  “Here, Skippy. Here, doggie.”

  “Yes, where is Skippy?” Mama was glad to change the subject.

  “Skippy isn’t here anymore,” Cousin Grace said.

  She said it like that because it’s hard to say to a little girl like Trissy, “Skippy is dead.”

  Cousin Grace had a stiff, holding-back look on her face, and I thought maybe it made her want to cry to have to tell us Skippy was dead. The little dog had been hers, something in the house that was especially hers, not Aunt Sarah’s.

  “Where’s Skippy?” Trissy wanted to know.

  “Darling.” Mama drew Trissy to her chair, her arm encircling Trissy’s waist. I saw the flash of Mama’s wedding ring on her slender finger. Diamonds catching firelight.

  “He fell from the attic window.” Cousin Grace’s voice faltered. “The … the windows were open … to air the attic last fall. Somehow he got up there and fell out.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” Mama said in a hushed tone. She drew Trissy closer.

  “Did he died?” Trissy’s eyes were wide with wonder.

  “Skippy’s gone to heaven,” Mama said gently.

  Skippy’s gone to heaven, Trissy. He went to heaven right straight out the attic window. Aunt Sarah pushed him.

  And then Aunt Sarah was suddenly there in the room with us. We hadn’t heard her coming. She stood in the doorway, gaunt and old — older than anyone I knew. Her heavy-lidded old eyes stared straight into mine.

  “Aunt Sarah.” Mama rose and went to greet her, holding Trissy’s hand.

  Aunt Sarah accepted Mama’s kiss with indifference, as though it had never been given.

  Mama was motioning to me, and I scrambled up.

  “Alice is here, Aunt Sarah. See how tall she’s getting.”

  Aunt Sarah had been closeted in her room when we came. Cousin Grace had tapped on the door, but Aunt Sarah had said, “Go away.”

  “Margaret and the children are here,” Cousin Grace had called through the door.

  “Leave me alone,” Aunt Sarah had said. Cousin Grace had looked embarrassed, but Mama had touched her arm, smiling gently. “It’s all right, Grace,” she said.

  “I want to see the dolls,” Trissy had said, but Mama had herded us back along the hall, away from the closed door.

  We had unpacked our suitcases and come downstairs to sit by the fire. And now Aunt Sarah had come to join us.

  She was wearing a dressing gown and a shawl and soft bedroom slippers. She didn’t look like a rich old lady. But she was.

  She sat d
own in her chair by the fire and adjusted her shawl. “It’s cold in this house,” she complained.

  “It’s the damp,” Mama soothed her. “It’s this rain.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Aunt Sarah grumbled. “I’m tired of the rain.”

  The conversation wasn’t much. Mama did most of the talking. “We had such a nice ride on the train …. Alex was so sorry he couldn’t come, he’s so busy at his office just now ….”

  Aunt Sarah nodded absently as Mama talked. And finally even Mama ran out of things to say. The room fell silent. I could hear the clock ticking on the mantel.

  “Trissy wanted to see your dolls,” Mama tried again, and the first spark of interest lit Aunt Sarah’s eyes.

  “Little girls like dolls,” she whispered, thrusting her old furrowed face down toward Trissy.

  Cousin Grace sat silent in her chair.

  “Well, yes, of course they do,” Mama agreed. Her voice was bright. “Is there time before dinner?”

  Aunt Sarah didn’t hear that. Or perhaps she didn’t care whether there was time or not. She pushed up from the chair. Her shawl slipped to the floor, and Mama picked it up and put it around her shoulders again.

  “Go along, Trissy,” she said as Aunt Sarah started toward the door.

  But now that she could go with Aunt Sarah to see the dolls, Trissy hung back shyly.

  “Go along,” Mama said again. “Alice is going.”

  I was going, but I didn’t want to. My steps lagged as I followed Aunt Sarah up the stairs. I didn’t like her room much. It was always stifling hot in the summertime, and often dark at midday with the shades down and the curtains drawn to keep out the sun. Ranged about in this dim summer twilight, amid the heavy claw-footed furniture, were the dolls. There were about twenty. One by one over the years Aunt Sarah had made them up in the attic and brought them down. Some were only ten or twelve inches high; some were larger. But they were all hideous. Their bodies were stuffed with rags and sewn together with haphazard stitching. A long arm, a short arm. Some dolls’ arms were longer than their legs.