Drawtober 2023: Dolls in the Attic

Despite everything—the chase, the dream, the blanket—I don’t think of the intruder at all for the next week. There are far too many preparations to make. All Hallows Eve is the night where the most travelers walk the crossroads, when they are most likely to find their way to my doorstep. In preparation, the House needs to be cleaned and the wards re-inscribed. I gather some of the House’s denizens to carve hundreds of pumpkins with gruesome grimaces, lining the porch and walkway with their candle-lit smiles. I even send one of the more human-looking fairies along the crossroads to the mortal realm to pick up some candy for any errant trick-or-treaters, though when they return, I find I’ve already squirreled some away in the kitchen.

It is the day before All Hallows Eve when I have time again to turn my mind to the stranger in the House. I find myself sitting in the kitchen, a cup of tea untouched before me. The cackling laughter of a coven of witches who’ve arrived for tomorrow’s celebration echoes through the halls, but there is no one in the kitchen but me. Well, me and my thoughts.

The feeling of the blanket weighs on my mind like grave dirt. I don’t want to think of it. I don’t want to imagine this stranger, whoever they are, creeping into my bedroom, taking my blanket from my bed. I don’t want to imagine them laying it over me without me knowing.

But that must mean that they know me. The Keeper’s bedroom is protected by the House, a private sanctuary where none may enter except those who are invited. So whoever took that from my bed is known, both to me and to the House. I just can’t seem to remember them.

A throat clears in the doorway. Dusthollow, her cream-colored apron smeared with ash, bobs a little curtsy.

“Keeper, we’ve run out of paper lanterns for the ballroom.”

I frown. “Did you check the linen closet?”

“I did. We’ve used them all.” She hesitates. “I think Jack used to put them in the attic, though, so we might have some up there.”

The attic. I suck on my teeth, considering telling her to just make do. But All Hallows Eve is the most important night of the year, and I don’t want it to be less than perfect.

“I’ll check,” I say. “In the meantime, why don’t you start working on the bunting out front?”

#

The attic is the only place in the House I’ve never liked. Every room here has a purpose. The cellars house the vampires and ghouls, the drawing room provides a place for séances and tea parties, the gardens play host to dryads and gnomes. The attic, though, is where things go to be forgotten.

The stairs come out of the ceiling with a dusty thud, and each step creaks as I ascend. Yellow sunlight, coming through a round window that hasn’t been cleaned in far too long, illuminates crates, boxes, old furniture, discarded knickknacks, and forgotten clothes. Dress forms with sheets draped over them like simulacra ghosts peek out of the shadows.

I frown as I look around at the various end tables and dressers that litter either side of a narrow walkway. The House is the ultimate arbiter of what ends up in the attic, though Keepers will sometimes move things up here, too. I’ve started pulling open dresser drawers, wondering which one Jack might have used, when I hear a giggle behind me.

I turn. “Who’s there?”

A shape, no taller than my knee, detaches itself from the shadows, spinning in slow arabesques toward me. I see a pink tutu, sprinkled with dust, and once-shiny gold curls that now hang limp around a porcelain face.

“Did I startle you?” the Ballerina asks, her voice a high chime.

I let out a breath. “No,” I lie before turning back to my search. I remember the Ballerina. She was here when I arrived, though at that time she was still in the front parlor. She’s not like anything else in the House. Not Fae, nor mortal or ghost. She’s something else entirely.

Her slippers creak over the floor as she comes nearer. “What are you looking for?”

“Lanterns.”

“Why?”

“Because All Hallows Eve is tomorrow.”

She laughs again. “Fancy you looking for lanterns up here. I guess they finally discarded you, too, didn’t they?”

I slam the drawer with more force than is necessary and turn. She’s managed to climb up on a table, and she stares at me with her glassy eyes. Jack moved her up here a few years after my apprenticeship started. She was always turning up where no one wanted her, unsettling the other denizens of the house. Jack had finally told her to either walk the crossroads or go to the attic.

“If she can’t move on, she moves up,” he’d told me gruffly. “She’s been terrorizing everyone for long enough.”

“What do you want?” I demand. “I’m busy.”

“Oh yes, I can see that.” Her teeth are too-white when she smiles. “Did he give you something to do, or did you come up with this little errand all on your own?”

The back of my neck prickles. “Who are you talking about?”

“You don’t remember?”

“Who?”

She smirks. “The Keeper.”

“I’m the Keeper.”

She giggles. “No you aren’t, silly. Oh, but none of the others will tell you, will they? They’re all trying to be oh so gentle with the fragile former Keeper. Don’t want to damage her. Why, you’d think you were the doll and I was the person, the way everyone’s treating you.”

My breath comes faster. “What are you talking about?”

The Ballerina pirouettes to the edge of the table, taking fistfuls of a nearby dust cover in her porcelain hands.

“Do you know why Jack put me up here?” she asks. “He spouted some nonsense about ‘walking the crossroads,’ but that wasn’t the reason at all. It’s because I tell the truth. And this House doesn’t like the truth. It’s all dreams and cobwebs, air and light. He couldn’t stand that. He’s not here now, so here is the truth that everyone but you seems to know—you’re afraid that someone has taken your place. But someone already has.”

The dust cover slides slowly in her hands, peeling away from a mirror. I stand as if transfixed, unable to move, the Ballerina’s words sinking into my skin like nails.

“I remember when you came here, you know. A scared fifteen year old, running from her past. Jack didn’t even ask why you were covered in blood when you showed up on his doorstep.”

“Stop it,” I bite out.

She ignores me. “You’re a guardian of the crossroads, and you’re terrified to walk them. But now, the place you worked so hard to protect, to insulate yourself from the world beyond, is gone. Slipped out of your cold fingers while you slept. And the crossroads are all that is left.”

The dust cover falls away.

How long has it been since I looked at myself in a mirror? Days? Weeks? I can’t remember now. But as I stare at myself in the glass, I know that I have been avoiding them.

My dress is familiar, with its slightly ruffled collar and long sleeves. My hair is familiar, tied away from my face with a long ribbon.

What is not familiar is the translucence.

I lift my fingers to my face and start right through them, still seeing the horrible vision in the mirror. The me I’d always feared becoming, and always knew I would be in the end.

“No.” I take a step back, watching the hem of my dress phase through a nearby dresser. “No.”

“You can’t run from this,” the Ballerina says, spinning slowly on the table. “You’ve been trying for months now.”

I stare at her, breathing hard. But I don’t need to breathe, I realize. I press my hands to my chest. My heart isn’t beating. I can’t remember the last time it did.

“I’m dead,” I whisper.

The Ballerina smiles a terrible smile. “There she is,” she says. “Keeper Jack’s pet, finally seeing what everyone else has known all along. Keepers can’t stave off death, you know. Not even you.”

I squeeze my eyes shut. No, no, this can’t be happening. I would remember, surely I would—

But I do, I realize. I dreamt of it. I dreamt of my own funeral. I dreamt of a new Keeper standing beside my grave, with his strangely familiar face and flame red hair. This whole time, I’d been mistaking him for an intruder in the House. But it wasn’t him who’d taken up a place uninvited.

It was me.

The Ballerina’s chiming laughter follows me down the stairs as I flee from the attic, from the mirror and the truth and all the lies I’ve been telling myself. I run and run and run until I can’t anymore.