Марни Азарелли: Strange Girls: Women in Horror Anthology

There had only been the three of them in the house when Alan plunged to his death, rolling head over heels down the cellar steps. Alice’s guilt was assumed. After all there had only been her and their daughter, ten-year-old Sophie, in the house at the time. The neighbors, when questioned, admitted Alice had been beaten by her spouse, more often than a rug. The police arrested her. Alice confessed. One day it was headlines, the next fish and chip wrappings.

The problem of ‘that poor little mite,’ as the neighbors dubbed her, was solved when Sophie went to live with her maternal aunt and uncle in their large detached house on the nouveau-riche Greenwoods estate. A handful of geographical miles away, but socially a seismic leap.

“You can choose whatever colors you like for your bedroom, darling,” Jen eyed her silent white-faced niece, but she also was careful to ensure she stood facing her and spoke clearly. She was never sure what Sophie was thinking, with her impassive almost adult gaze. How her sister Alice had coped with it all, the spousal violence and this strange child, she couldn’t begin to imagine.

“We’ll make this as cozy as your old bedroom, you’ll see.” Jen smiled, aware it was a clown’s grin. Trying too hard, she knew.

Sophie barely reacted, but her eyes tracked Jen’s lips and her hesitant hand signing. Not like mum’s fast and fluent hand patterns. Nothing in this modern lush house was like her old home.

Sophie’s thoughts drifted from her aunt’s chit-chat. She couldn’t pinpoint how old she’d been when her parents’ rows affected her: memories of her father’s flushed face, eyes bulging, hovering above her or her Mum flashed into her head.

Later, as her lip reading improved, Sophie pieced some of her father’s words together “…it’s your fault… no one in my family’s deaf… bad genes… drain…”

There was something else in his face too. Sophie could smell it on him, apart from the ever present alcohol. She was nine years old when she understood her father was frightened, not for her, but of her. She didn’t understand why, but it gave her a warm cozy feeling. This huge man who lashed out, was wary of her. Of her! It amazed her.

“She doesn’t look like me, Ali. Are you sure she’s mine?” he’d demand, smirking.

Alice’s eyes would well up, her nose turn pink and Sophie’s tummy would clench; a fist of pain and sadness.

Sophie knew her Dad didn’t love her. He never put his arm around her, like other dads or took her out to the park to play or helped with her homework or read her a good night story.

He said he loved Alice, but one wet Monday, Sophie, along with her favorite doll, were playing their game of shipwrecked inside her Mum’s mammoth wooden wardrobe, which involved emptying the shoe boxes, when through the crack in the door, Sophie caught a rare glimpse of her Mum undressing. Sophie had had to bite her lip hard not to give her presence away when she saw the ugly pattern of black and blue bruises scattered over her mum’s body. The sight of them made Sophie feel sick. She pressed her own hands hard onto the doll’s plastic body, until it cracked.

Later that same day, in her bedroom, Sophie pulled out the doll’s fair nylon hair and drew purple marks on its plastic shoulders with a felt-tip pen, before carefully redressing the doll and

placing it inside her doll’s house.

“Now you’re safe,” she whispered. “No one will hurt you in there. Look after her, Fanny.”

A ‘family heirloom’ her mother called the doll’s house. “Look after it, Sophs. It’s been handed down from mother to daughter for over a hundred years.”

Sophie traced her fingers over the wood’s grain, memorizing the angles and corners, letting it take a hold in her head. Over the years she learned every detail of its paintwork, every splinter in the woodwork, every corner of each miniature room.

The doll’s house had a Victorian heart, built by a master craftsman. Then pre-World War I several wings had been added and within rested a mosaic maze of interconnecting rooms and linking staircases. It housed an eclectic mix of several generations of young girls’ choices in furniture and dolls’ clothing encompassing ‘mini’ skirts and crinolines.

The oldest doll had always been known as Fanny , Alice told her. She was a late Victorian lady, who wore a blue velvet dress, now somewhat worn down, with her hair in a chignon and lacy gloves. Fanny was the undisputed mistress of the doll’s house, ruling her world, from the cellar to the attics, with a will of iron.

“Make no mistake, no one argues with Fanny,” her Mum would say smiling. Sophie wasn’t sure if she was joking or not; for she knew it was true. No one stood against Fanny. She’d tried and failed.

Fanny employed a household of staff, who reported to her plus her husband, Edward and her son, Edwin. There were two French maids, a chauffeur, a trio of gardeners, Cook, Nanny and several babies, who came and went from the premises, rather mysteriously. There was even a pet dog called ‘Patch’ sporting one black eye.

( Just like mum’s, thought Sophie).

The dog, being a new addition, was added to the household by Sophie’s mum, to placate Sophie’s burning demands for a pet.

Sophie didn’t choose to linger on what happened to the one and only pet her parents adopted. Her memories were fuzzy – of a tiny scrap of kitten, boneless and supple, who batted at the doll’s house with her paws in play, rousing Fanny’s ire, before disappearing between one sleep and the next morning. Neither of her parents had talked about keeping pets after that and Sophie wasn’t sure why. She had loved the kitten and missed her. Had she loved her too much? Had her love driven her away? It was confusing.

The night her father died, Sophie and her mum had been home and asleep in their beds.

“I found Alan, lying… at the bottom of the stairs,” Alice sobbed to the calm female police officer, hands trembling and holding a mug of tea. “His eyes were… blank. I knew he was gone.” Though Sophie couldn’t hear her wails, but she saw her shoulders shaking.

The female officer asked if there was a family member to come to stay with Sophie and that was when Sophie knew they were going to take her mum away.

“Nah!” she’d yelled, and everyone in the room had stared at her with that strange mix of repulsion and concern which was the usual response her speech incurred. Except her mum, who gazed at her with love.

“Yes, my sister, Jenny. She’ll come. I’ll phone her.”

Sophie raced back to her room, wrapped herself in her duvet and stared at the ceiling. That was where her aunt found her several hours later. Her aunt, not being adept at sign language, scribbled on a pad. ‘Your Daddy is… at the hospital and your mum’s had to go with the police…”

Sophie noticed how composed her aunt appeared, no tears in her eyes for her brother in law. Sophie knew her Dad was dead and she was pretty sure she knew who had killed him. She glanced across the room to her doll’s house. Good, all the doors and windows are closed, she thought. They can’t get out. I’m safe.

Sophie didn’t see her mother after that fateful morning. Her Aunt Jen decided her niece was too young to attend the court proceedings nor did she let her go to her Dad’s funeral It turned out hardly anyone else went either. Alan had not been a popular chap.

Sophie didn’t mention her Dad, but she did ask about visiting her Mum. “When can I go?” she would sign, fingers fluttering, tapping her aunt’s shoulder to get her attention. “Tomorrow? The next day?”