The Dolls(29)

I creep down the stairs, keeping my flashlight aimed low. In the front hall, I bend to inspect the floor just outside the parlor. This is the spot where the blood always pools in my nightmare, but of course it looks completely normal now. It’s just a dream, you dork, I tell myself. But then I touch the ground to get my balance as I stand up, and for the quickest of instants, I catch a flash of crimson staining the beautiful hardwood.

“You’re seeing things,” I tell myself aloud. But when I reach tentatively for the floor again, the dark stain reappears the moment my index finger makes contact. I hold it there this time long enough to notice two tiny, child-sized footprints in the faded stain. I stand up, and the floor returns to looking normal.

“What the . . . ?” I whisper. I reach for the thick, brass handle of the parlor door, but I pull away as soon as my fingers make contact. It’s burning hot. I try again, holding on tighter as I tug hard, and when I yank my hand back, my palm is a scalded red.

My hand shaking, I pull the paper clip tools from my pocket and prepare to insert the longer one into the lock on the door. But the second metal touches metal, I’m hit with a jolt of electricity so sharp that I’m thrown backward.

Completely weirded out, I scramble to my feet and place my palm against the wood of the door, trying to steady myself. But the second my skin makes contact, I’m hit with a vivid image.

There’s blood everywhere, and suddenly, a shadow in the corner of the parlor catches my eye. Before I have a chance to call out or see who it is, the figure slips out the door in silence. . . .

“This can’t be happening,” I murmur, yanking my hand away.

I take a deep breath and reach for the door once more, tentatively, but nothing happens. I pull away and try again, but when my finger connects with the door, there’s nothing unusual about it, no uninvited images of blood and shadows.

Slowly, I back away. Am I losing my mind?

But when I look down at my right palm, it’s still red, throbbing, and painful—proof that I’m not imagining things.

Something’s going on, but whatever secrets this house is holding, it’s not giving them up tonight.


After smearing Neosporin on my hand, I wander into the living room, my heart still racing wildly.

I sit on the sofa and reach for the framed photo of my mom on the coffee table to the left. Thinking about her always helps center me, and I feel as off-kilter now as I ever have. “What the heck is going on in this house, Mom?” I ask the photo, which was taken on her wedding day. She’s standing in the garden, wearing a beautiful gown of layered lace, her red hair done up in an elaborate twist. She’s laughing and looking at someone off to the side of the photo, but I can’t see his or her face. Curious, I turn the frame over and gently begin to slide the photo out. As I do, another picture, which was hiding behind the wedding one, flutters to the floor.

I bend to pick it up, and I’m so surprised that I almost drop it. It’s a photo of me when I was two or three months old, my red curls so vibrant that I look like a Raggedy Ann doll. My mother is holding me, her expression serene and happy, but what shocks me is the sandy-haired man beside her, his arm slung around her shoulders, staring down at me lovingly.

It’s my father—the father Aunt Bea always told me left before I was born and never returned.

“That’s impossible,” I say aloud. But the image is unmistakable. I turn the photo over after a moment and am even more surprised to see a note scribbled on the back.

I’ll watch over Eveny always.

—Love eternal, Matthias


Not only had my father come back to see my mother and me, but he’d made her a promise that he’d always watch over me.

The image from the cemetery, the one that hit me so vividly as we entered Carrefour last week, flashes through my mind again as clear as day. They’re coming for you, my father said. You have to be ready.

So was the cemetery recollection a dream, or had he really been watching over me like he promised? And does Aunt Bea know he’d come back at least once? I’m still staring at the back of the photo in confusion when something outside catches my eye.

I blink into the darkness beyond the back window. For a moment, I think I’m imagining things, but then I see it: three faint beams of light bobbing through the gloom of the cemetery beyond the garden wall.

I jump to my feet and press my nose against the glass as I peer out into the blackness. There’s no mistaking it: three shadowy figures are making their way through the maze of tombs beyond our back wall. Suddenly, I have the crazy sense that whatever’s going on out there is connected to the dreams I’m having and the weird mystery of my own house.