Марни Азарелли - Strange Girls - Women in Horror Anthology

Her aunt’s lack of answer infuriated her. She had to see her mum, there were things to talk about with her. It was one more topic to add to the list of worries Sophie snuggled close to her chest. She had so much to remember, it was overwhelming for a ten year old. She had to keep on reciting her worries in bed at night. She mustn’t forget anything or get caught out, for there was too much at stake.

One of the secrets Sophie harbored was how Fanny and the dolls liked their new home and how happy they were at the change. Sophie ‘heard’ them whispering at night, while she lay under her pink frilled bed covers trying to sleep. She wasn’t sure how she could ‘hear’ the dolls’ voices so distinctly when she couldn’t hear those of her classmates or her family. Perhaps it’s by magic. After all the doll’s house is magic, so that makes sense.

She could feel the dolls’ movements as they went about their tasks. She could see their attenuated shadows moving around inside the doll’s house, climbing the stairs, eating, cooking, bathing and the rooms’ lights flickering on and off.

Fanny, in particular, worried Sophie. The other dolls did as Fanny ordered them to. Sophie knew Fanny could be malicious or worse downright dangerous. Fanny didn’t know she had to follow rules. She made up her own rules. It would not be safe for Sophie to tell on her. Not even to Aunt Jen, however kind and helpful she seemed. Fanny demanded total loyalty.

Lying in bed, her mind roaming, while she watched the doll’s house, Sophie remembered an odd incident when she’d been around six years old. One morning she had found the downstairs maid—Cleo—lying face down in the kitchen, her face marked by a red scratch and with tufts of dark hair missing from her head. Hair, which later that day, Sophie discovered clutched in Fanny’s right fist. Fanny had worn a smug expression. Cleo, Sophie knew, had been caught kissing Fanny’s husband in the pantry, and no one got away with that.

“Poor Cleo, you silly girl.” Sophie crooned, wiping her face and gluing her hair back to her scalp.”Don’t upset Fanny again, will you?” And as far as Sophie knew the maid had not ever stepped out of line again.

It had been hard work hiding the evidence of Fanny’s misdeeds from her mother. There had been

other incidents over the years. Patch, the dog, had gone missing for several weeks and when he returned, he was tailless. The appendage had been chopped off, Sophie guessed, with the garden axe. Sophie had bandaged the stump to hide its absence and claimed she was playing at being a vet, when her mum asked her.

Babies appeared and disappeared, some came back, some did not. Doll’s hands were buried in the garden, poking up out of the Astro Turf and sometimes worse of all, heads lay hidden under beds or were kicked around by the gardeners as footballs while Fanny stood and watched. Sophie knew Fanny used these cruel games as ways to keep her household under control.

“Fear is the best weapon of all,” she would whisper to Sophie. “Remember that. Are you afraid of me, Sophie?”

Sophie would shake her head, lips trembling.

Aunt Jen, in her efforts to help her niece, located a child psychologist.

“One of the best,” her family doctor informed her.

Dr. Vivien Lucas signed and smiled a lot at Sophie. She reminded the girl of a cat; a sleek brunette cat who watched you with amber eyes and stroked you better. Except cats stalk and kill small animals, Sophie reminded herself. So am I a little mouse?

Fanny had whispered to her that morning, “Beware. Be careful. Say nothing, child. We want to stay living here.”

The Victorian matron’s lips barely moved, but Sophie heard her clearly. Muttering to herself she held Fanny close to her own face, staring intently into her dark glass eyes. Did she see a flicker in their depths? Some intelligence? Yes, she was sure she did.

“Keep us safe.” Fanny had begged her. “We want to be safe, always. We are your family, Sophie. You belong to us.”

Sophie watched a tear fall from Fanny’s eye. It looked like a felt-tip dot, if you didn’t know better. But Sophie did know. Fanny was alive and this was the proof. As if she needed more proof.

“I promise.” Sophie whispered and kissed Fanny on her chilly, porcelain cheek. “We are family.”

Sophie didn’t mind the sessions with Dr Lucas.

“Please call me Viv , Sophie. I would like that,” she said.

But she did mind not being allowed to visit her mother. She switched from asking her aunt to asking Viv when she could to go to the prison. Sophie sensed the doctor held the power to decide when this would happen. In that Sophie was correct.

Four months after Alice began her sentence for matricide, Viv greenlit Sophie for a prison visit, with her aunt along as a chaperon. Delighted, Sophie drew pages and pages of smiley faces on her regular notepad, writing Alice’s name repeatedly in bright pink felt-tip pen with plumes of stars shooting out above the I. Jen laughed at her niece’s unusual giddiness.

“Happy?” she signed to Sophie.

Sophie nodded. Yes, for once, she knew she was happy. Not confused, or upset or downright sad.

It continued to worry Jen how quiet and withdrawn Sophie appeared. Though, of course, her deafness contributed to her isolation.

Aunt Jen told everyone, “You have to make allowances and she’s a lovely girl.” Secretly Sophie’s obsession with the doll’s house and its inhabitants worried her aunt.

“She treats them as if they’re real,” Jen told her husband one evening. “I worry they’re more real to her than we are. Mark, are you listening?” She chucked a cushion at her husband who was gazing hard at his tablet.

“Jen, aren’t you just glad she’s playing games? Like a kid should? She’s been through a hell of a lot. Just leave her be.”

Thank God Sophie’s not much trouble, Mark frequently told himself.

He’d barely noticed his niece’s arrival into their house. The less disruption there was to his routine the better. He’d never fussed about having children and this way he could be a fond uncle and never have to be a dad.

The night before the planned visit to the prison, Sophie lay in bed, sensing the dolls’ growing agitation; their frantic shuffling and rushing around the doll’s house, up and down the stairs, running the bath, throwing open cupboards, shouting at each other, breaking the kitchenware. It was as though the world inside their miniature house was in turmoil. Did they know what I’m going to tell Mum tomorrow? How can they?

Several voices overlapped and mingled. “We have to protect ourselves.”

“Hurry, hurry…” Tiny footsteps pattered.

“Check the locks. Check the windows.”

“Find the knives. Who knows who is out there?”

“We have to keep the girl safe.” Different dolls’ voices chirruped and whispered inside Sophie’s head.

“Family is all that matters.”

“Sophie, Sophie are you listening?”

Unable to drop off to sleep, Sophie churned over and over in her head the words she’d prepared to say to her mother. When her bedside clock flared 01:00 with its neon blue light, the doll’s house finally fell silent. Sophie sighed in relief. Glancing towards it, she jerked against the bedroom wall, knees tucked up to her chest with the duvet pulled around her for protection.

No! It can’t be.

By the dim glow of the mermaid night-light she espied a sea of faces pressing up against every window in the house. The dolls, the twelve of them, were standing propped up, staring at her, from the attic window down to the basement window. Their mouths open in silent screams; their china or plastic fingers pointing at her bed. The air vibrated.