not a one
“Miles!” Flora calls without turning. “Stop moving my dolls!”
There’s a thud from his bedroom behind her. Flora ignores the sound and pets the doll version of Rebecca’s hair as she cradles it in her hands. Everything else seems to be in order. Owen’s doll is in the kitchen. Hannah’s doll is in the hallway. The others are scattered about in the usual places. So long as the Lady isn’t there, Flora has decided to be content about it.
Save for one thing:
Jamie’s doll is in Dani’s room.
Specifically, Jamie’s doll is in Dani’s bed .
But that doesn’t make any sense. Normally, when she wakes up, Jamie’s doll is nowhere to be seen. If she looks in the middle of the day, sometimes she’ll find her in the kitchen or the entry room. Some nights, Flora will go to bed with Hannah, Owen, Dani, and Jamie’s dolls in the sitting room or the kitchen.
“I didn’t move your dolls!” Miles calls back.
“Yes, you did!”
Footsteps through their shared bathroom and then Miles is standing behind her. “They look alright to me,” he says. “I didn’t touch them. I wouldn’t.”
“Then why is Jamie’s in Miss Clayton’s room?” Flora asks, pointing at the doll currently sharing Dani’s bed.
Miles is quiet for a long moment and then he shrugs. “Maybe that’s where she is,” he says, then steps away and heads for her bedroom door. “Let’s go. I want breakfast.” He flings her door open and thunders down the hallway to the stairs, Hannah calling after him to slow down.
Setting Rebecca’s doll down in the sitting room, Flora considers leaving Jamie where she is, but thinks better of it. She plucks the doll up and moves her down to the kitchen where Miles’s now is, setting her to stand by Owen, then gets up to get dressed.
__________
By the time she gets down to the kitchen, Jamie really is there, but so is Dani now. They’re sitting at the table with Miles and Owen, talking quietly to one another. Flora sits beside her brother in front of a plate of eggs and toast and watches them interact.
Dani always seems very happy when she’s talking to Jamie. Flora understands that. She likes Jamie too. Jamie’s funny and nice and really cool. Sometimes she lets Flora help her prune the roses, which she says is dangerous because of the shears they have to use. She said once that Flora is her favorite helper and Flora told her she was being silly because no one else ever really helps Jamie. She doesn’t normally let them.
“Good morning,” Flora says. Only Owen greeted her when she entered and it feels strange to sit in silence.
Immediately, Dani turns to her and grins. “Good morning, Flora,” she says. “Miles said you were already up and ready. Did you sleep okay?”
Flora nods and takes a crunching bite of her toast. “Yes, very well.” She swallows and looks between Jamie and Dani. “Were you in Miss Clayton’s bedroom today, Jamie?” she asks next, needing to know.
Three strange things happen when she does this:
First, Owen chokes on his water, Jamie gives him a dirty look, and Dani's eyes get so big that Flora’s worried they might pop.
“Sorry,” Owen says, wiping his face off with a napkin.
“Should be,” Jamie mutters.
He gives her a strange sort of smile that Flora doesn’t understand.
Finally, Jamie turns her attention to Flora, looking very serious and contemplative. Flora doesn’t like it when Jamie is serious. Usually it’s because she’s sad. Flora likes it when Jamie smiles and laughs because she’s very pretty when she does that.
But she isn’t doing that now.
“Why do you ask, poppet?” she says.
Flora nearly tells her the truth, but she doesn’t want to upset anyone. Sometimes the things in her dollhouse are upsetting. “I don’t know,” she answers.
Jamie stares her down. “Right.” A pause. “Well, yes, I was. I went to wish Miss Clayton a good morning.”
When Flora looks at Dani, Dani is hiding her face behind her mug, taking a long drink without looking at anyone. She’d like to say she knows when people are lying and she really thinks Jamie is, but she’s not sure why she would lie about that. Saying good morning doesn’t usually involve being in bed. At least, not in Flora’s experience.
Instead of prodding any further, Flora fixes Jamie with her best smile and says, “You could have done that at breakfast, silly.”
And Jamie smiles back which makes Flora almost immediately forget about anything else. “Yeah,” she says. “Suppose I could have.”
Dani is quiet for the rest of breakfast. She keeps giving Jamie looks that Flora doesn’t understand, but Flora is hungry and tired of being confused. She decides to let it go.
__________
That is, until that very night when she wakes up thirsty. It’s late and very dark in her bedroom, but the moon is shining in through her windows enough that she can make it to the bathroom. There’s a cup beside the sink and she has to lean forward really far to grab it so she can fill it up.
Back in her bedroom, she sits on her bed and sips at her water, looking over at her dollhouse. She normally keeps it open at night in case the Lady shows up, but she can’t see anything except for the shadowy shape of the house’s innards. In the dark, the whole blackened out inside looks like it’s breathing, pulsing. Like it’s alive.
Frightened, Flora quickly reaches for the lamp beside her bed and turns it on, spilling a little water on her rug in the process. It’s funny how normal it looks in the light. How it’s anything but despite its observable simplicity. It looks exactly as it had when she’d looked in on it before going to bed.
Except—
Jamie’s doll is in Dani’s bed again.
Specifically, Jamie’s doll is on top of Dani’s.
Flora splutters, fumbling to set her cup down and jumps to her feet hurrying out into the hallway. It’ll be tricky to open Dani’s door quietly and peek in just to see if Jamie really is in there or if there’s something truly strange going on.
Well, Flora thinks. Stranger .
The floorboards around Dani’s bedroom door squeak in some places, so Flora makes sure to set her feet carefully around those points. Holding her breath, she concentrates on trying to listen as closely as she can. Waiting for wet footsteps, maybe, or that sound Peter made when that ghost-white hand wrapped around his throat.
Maybe for Dani to scream.
She’s not really certain. But she’s shivering and it’s not because she’s cold.
She notices it after a few seconds—a squeaking sound. It’s strange, like the kind of noise her bed makes when she jumps up and down on it—which she doesn’t anymore because that’s for children , thank you.
Carefully, she reaches out and grasps the doorknob, the cool metal making her jump when it hits her palm. Taking a deep breath, she turns it and opens it just the slightest amount, peeking inside. It’s too dark to make out anything clearly, even darker than the hallway. Dani’s curtains are drawn, hiding the moon and any light that might have strayed inside.
Flora can’t see much save for the shapes on the bed, a big lumpy mass that’s moving a little. She’s not actually sure what it is and the thought terrifies her—makes her imagine the worst things possible. Some sort of giant, sludge-y monster that’s come out from the lake and come inside. And it ate Dani in her bed and now it’s going to come for her, too.
She makes a little noise and then takes a step backward. The floorboard creaks loudly under her foot and she gasps. The mass stops moving and she hears something that sounds like whispering so she pulls Dani’s door shut, turns on her heels, and runs back into her bedroom where she dives underneath her covers, pulling them up over her head.
The light from the lamp seeps through her blankets, pink and strange and her breath is coming out heavily, hotly. It’s too stuffy and she feels like she’s going to suffocate but if she moves, if that thing sees her —
As distracted as she is imagining all the different terrible ways this could end, she doesn’t hear her door open. Nor does she hear the footsteps coming towards her bed.
So when the blankets get pulled down, she shrieks, expecting some horribly monstrous thing . Instead, she is met by the sight of Dani—ruffled hair and flushed cheeks and her robe wrapped tightly around her body.
“Miss Clayton!” Flora cries, jumping up to throw her arms around the woman. “I was worried you’d been eaten!”
“Eaten?” Dani asks, hugging Flora back. “Honey, what—?”
“I thought something terrible happened! That some monster ate Jamie and ate you and was going to come for me next!”
Dani pulls away, holding Flora’s shoulders in her hands as she looks her over. “Did you have a nightmare?” She presses the back of her hand to Flora’s forehead for a moment before pulling it away. “You don’t have a fever,” she says, frowning.
“I’m not sick,” Flora says, shaking her head resolutely. “Jamie was in your bed and I thought it was because a monster ate her.” She points to her dollhouse and Dani looks, but it’s no use.
The dolls have already shifted. Flora is in her bedroom on her bed, Dani’s doll standing beside it, and Jamie’s is in the doorway. Flora lifts her eyes to see—
“Jamie! You’re alive!”
In a flash, she’s out of her bed and slamming her body into Jamie’s, wrapping her arms tightly around her waist. As excited as she is, she doesn’t notice that the only thing Jamie is wearing is a large t-shirt that hands mid-thigh, and she certainly doesn’t notice that it’s Dani’s.
“Alive?” she asks, placing one hand on Flora’s head and the other on her shoulder.
“She thought a monster ate us,” Dani explains. “Because she saw you in my bed.”
“She what ?” Jamie asks, sounding shocked and frightened.
Flora pulls away, wanting to reassure her. “I thought it had gotten you. Your doll was in Miss Clayton’s bed, so I thought—”
“Oh, Christ,” Jamie says, then winces and looks down at Flora. “Sorry.”
“I’ve heard you say that before,” Flora tells her.
Over her shoulder, Dani gives Jamie a stern look.
“That why you were hanging ’round outside Miss Clayton’s room?” Jamie asks and Flora nods.
“I was worried something terrible happened, so I went to look and that’s when I saw the... thing .”
“What thing?” Dani asks, her words rushed and panicked.
“The...black blob-y thing. But it must have just been a shadow,” Flora explains, then hesitates. “Jamie?”
Jamie is wild-eyed when she looks down at her. “Yeah?”
“What were you doing in Miss Clayton’s room?”
A long stretch of silence follows this, one that makes Flora fidget nervously. Dani and Jamie are looking at one another, having some sort of conversation without saying anything. Flora remembers her parents doing that before. It frustrates her when she doesn’t know what’s going on, and she’s just about to say that when Dani cuts in.
“She had a nightmare,” she says. “You know how when you get nightmares, you come in and I help you get back to sleep?”
Flora nods. Dani is very good at chasing away bad dreams. Her mom used to be good at it, too, but it’s nice to have someone again. “You were doing that for Jamie,” she says and Dani nods. Flora looks up at Jamie with a serious look on her face. “She’s very good at that. I hope you’re not afraid anymore.”
Jamie’s jaw is dropped open a little. She closes it, then opens it again. Says, “I’m not. All good now, yeah? Why don’t we get you back to bed?”
They do just that, Dani tucking Flora in and petting her hair, kissing her forehead and Flora snuggles warmly beneath her blankets. It should feel strange to have Jamie there to say goodnight, but it doesn’t. Flora watches as Jamie reaches out to hold Dani’s hand and decides that she rather likes it.
“Stay in bed, okay?” Dani says and Flora nods emphatically.
“You, too, Miss Clayton,” she reminds her and Dani nods, agrees.
“Goodnight, Flora.”
“Goodnight.”
On their way out, Flora thinks she hears Jamie say something like, “I’ll make sure you stay in bed.” Thinks maybe Dani giggles. Can’t be sure.
She falls asleep soon after that.
__________
The next morning, Jamie has breakfast with them again and her and Dani keep holding hands and smiling at one another. Owen notices, too, and winks at Flora, making her laugh.
“Did you have anymore nightmares, Jamie?” Flora asks, sipping her juice and swinging her legs in her chair, sun-happy and soft.
Jamie glances at Dani with a smirk then turns Flora’s way and says, “Not a one.”
..