Dollhouse Read online

  D O L L H O U S E

  Anya Allyn

  COPYRIGHT

  Copyright 2012 Anya Allyn All rights reserved

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced without prior written permission, excepting quotes not greater than four paragraphs used for review purposes.

  ISBN-13: 978-1475034721

  ISBN-10:1475034725

  Third Edition September 2012

  Book description:

  A young Adult Supernatural Mystery/Horror

  Fifteen-year-old Aisha disappears in the forests on a school hiking trip. She's the latest in a string of children to vanish there over the past five years. The towns surrounding the forests are on edge and they want answers. Wildboy Ethan—Aisha's boyfriend—is on the run after he and his grandfather are blamed for her disappearance.

  Cassie is just about the only friend Ethan has left. She's been secretly in love with him ever since her mother dragged her to the wilds of Australia from Florida six months ago.

  Desperate to prove Ethan's innocence, Cassie searches the forests with Ethan to find out what really happened to Aisha. But Ethan's growing strangely silent, and Cassie's left questioning if her feelings for him are clouding her judgment.

  Cassie discovers a dark secret lurking in the heart of the forests; a secret world of nightmarish horrors—where nothing is as it seems, where the supernatural invades your soul, where the people she trusts most might be the people she can trust least, and where escape exists only in dreams.

  Table of Contents

  1. ETHAN

  2. AISHA

  3. RAIF

  4. LADIES WELL

  5. QUESTIONS & LIES

  6. LACEY

  7. BLACK WINDS

  8. THE DECISION

  9. TRACKING

  10. TRAITOR

  11. WHEEL OF DEATH

  12. NOCTURNE

  13. WAKE ONCE AGAIN

  14. JESSAMINE

  15. ON A WHIM, ON A WISH

  16. EMPTINESS IS A PLACE

  17. DARKEST WAY

  18. LORD OF MISRULE

  19. CONFESSIONS

  20. AEOLIAN HARPS

  21. STARFISH IN THE SKY

  22. THE LOCKET

  23. ROSE PETALS

  24. STRIKES OF THE SERPENT

  25. SHRINE

  26. SOPHRONIA'S SIGHT

  27. ALL MY BLOOD

  28. REQUIEM

  Good evening, good night,

  With roses adorned,

  With carnations covered,

  Slip under the covers.

  Tomorrow morning, if God wants so,

  you will wake once again.

  —Cradle Song/ Johannes Brahms

  1. ETHAN

  He climbed through my bedroom window at the worst possible time.

  Night.

  I hated night. I'd had night terrors since I was a little kid. I'm not a screamer, but I would have screamed the neighborhood down had he not clamped a hand over my mouth.

  He crouched on the floorboards like a fugitive. "Cassie, I need to stay here tonight. I'll be gone before daybreak."

  I nodded, not understanding, struck by the strangeness of Ethan McAllister here in my room. Mutely, I breathed him in. Breathed in that warm scent of earth and trees and the faint tang of wood fires. He always smelled of the forest. He lived with his grandfather in a ramshackle cottage right at the base of the mountains.

  Outside my window, the mountains of Barrington Tops were far away, so far they were just black teeth edging towards the moon.

  His face fell into shadows beneath the faint yellow of my desk lamp. Stupidly, I wondered if he guessed I slept with the touch lamp on all night.

  "They're coming for me," he said.

  "Who... ?" But the next second, I knew.

  He cast his eyes downwards. "The police are saying it was murder."

  I shivered in my thin pajama pants and singlet. "How can they know that for sure? She ran off. She got lost...."

  He shook his head into my shoulder, dark hair brushing my shoulder, forests scents thickening in the air—so thick I could barely breathe. "They're saying it's not possible for someone to just disappear like that. And they're right. Aisha's footsteps just... stop."

  There had been light rain on the morning of our trek through the mountains. Enough to see our footsteps in places. And the police dogs had been able to track Ethan, Lacey and me all the way off the mountains. But not Aisha. Aisha had somehow been swallowed up, devoured. That's how it had seemed. We'd searched for half an hour before calling the police, but none of us had found so much as a trace of her.

  "You know I'll always be on your side." It wasn't much, but it was all I had to offer.

  "You're about the only one left in this town who still is."

  "And Lacey. She was there too that day. She knows you didn't do anything."

  It seemed a lifetime ago now, the four of us out on a day's hike for that stupid school assignment.

  "Lacey's dad is a cop. She won't side with me for long."

  I swung my legs out of bed and sat beside him on the floor. "Ethan, how are you so sure the police are looking for you?"

  He gave a short, derisive snort. "I was outside—getting wood for the fire—when they came to talk to granddad. They didn't see me, but I heard what they said. Seems someone claims to have seen Granddad in the woods that day. It's a dirty lie. Granddad can't walk further than the letterbox these days."

  "But why would it matter if he had been there?"

  He eyed me with a direct gaze. "Now that it's a murder investigation, police are pretty anxious to pin down a culprit...."

  "Oh God...."

  "And if they think Granddad is involved, for sure they think I am too."

  I shook my head against that thought, shutting it out. How could Ethan and a frail old man be accused of Aisha's murder?

  He turned his face slightly. A dark bruise curved from his temple to his cheek.

  "Who did that?" I gasped.

  "Doesn't matter."

  "Raif... right?"

  Aisha's brother had been pushing Ethan around ever since Aisha disappeared, demanding to know what he did to her.

  "Forget it."

  The smell of cold sweat hung in the air as Ethan shrugged a backpack from his shoulders. I realized he must have run here all the way from his grandfather's house.

  I eyed the heavily-laden backpack. "That's camping gear. You're not heading back into the mountains... are you?"

  No answer came.

  "You can't go back there. If the police are looking for you, their dogs will track you no matter where you go."

  He shrugged uneasily. "I know how to dodge being tracked."

  "How long can you live out there? It's crazy."

  "I'm going to find out what happened to Aisha, no matter what. For granddad's sake. And for Aisha's." The muscles around his jaw clenched.

  I toyed numbly with the ties of my pajama pants. "But who's going to look after your grandfather? He's been sick a lot lately, yeah?"

  "Yeah. But if I don't fix this, maybe both me and granddad will end up in jail. He'll die in there. I can't let that happen."

  I knew Ethan had a close relationship with his grandfather. Aisha had told me he'd first come to live with him when he was nine, the year his parents died in a car crash. Ethan often missed school to look after his grandfather, but he refused to tell anyone what was wrong with the old man.

  "Cassie, I need to trust you. You can't tell anyone I was here. And you can't tell anyone where I'm going."

  His eyes were fathomless. I'd do whatever he asked, even if I ended up wading in so deep I drowned myself. And I knew with all certainty that something had began, like an invisible stream pulling me adrift.

  He settled back
against the scatter cushions on the floor. He nodded gratefully as I pulled a spare blanket from the end of my bed and gave it him. Sitting cross-legged beside him, I watched as he fell into a troubled sleep. My bedroom felt suddenly small, too small to have the long, wiry frame of Ethan lying there.

  I should have gone straight back to bed. But a ball of pain sat low in my stomach.

  I'd been dragged from my home seven months ago by my mother and her new boyfriend. After the non-stop parties and crowded beaches of Miami, this deeply forested part of Australia had seemed the end of the world. But on the first day at my new school, I'd laid eyes on Ethan, and I'd glimpsed a piece of home—not any home I'd ever known before, but just home.

  Too bad he and Aisha had become an item. I'd had to stay content having Ethan as a friend.

  I'd never wanted any boy before him.

  And now, I might never see him again.

  A crushing guilt closed over me as a single thought invaded my head—the thought of Ethan being free to love again. Maybe in a couple of months, when this was all over....

  No, it was wrong to feel... this. Ethan was Aisha's boyfriend. Even if... she really was dead.

  If I could go back to the day of the hike, I wouldn't let myself notice the exact hue of Ethan's sepia eyes, or wouldn't allow myself to stand so close to him that we breathed the same honeyed square inches of air.

  Because Aisha noticed everything. Every detail. Every moment.

  No one knows that but me.

  I'm the reason she ran off that day.

  2. AISHA

  Four weeks earlier

  The calves of my legs ached and burned. Ethan, Aisha, Lacey and I been trekking uphill for hours—on what Ethan said were the extinct volcanoes of Barrington Tops.

  Ethan walked ahead with the sun touching his shoulders. Misting rain made the hair on the back of his neck moisten into curlicues. Everything about him was off-kilter, from the wiry slant of his back—where his backpack swung from one shoulder—to the carelessness of his voice.

  He was the most real person I’d ever known.

  Aisha and Lacey strode behind Ethan in their butt-length drill shorts—Lacey with her match-sticks for legs and Aisha with legs that were really too big for clothing like that. Spots of cellulite dimpled the very tops of Aisha's thighs—tiny spots, but still, they were there. Did Ethan even notice that?

  Ethan took a step back to let Aisha catch up to him, his mouth flicking upwards in that familiar grin—holding the expression in a way that made her cheek flush. I knew it was meant to be a private moment, but I couldn’t help staring.

  The green fractals of the forest and the eons of faint star clusters above—my math teacher’s order in the universe—were nothing like the thoughts that jumped at me like thieves. When your friend has a boyfriend, you are supposed to back off. But I'd liked Ethan before he and Aisha had hooked up, which had only been in March, at Lacey's fifteenth. And Aisha was so moody—sooner or later she’d drive him nuts. Maybe it was just a waiting game.

  Finally, we reached Devils Hole lookout. We had the bulk of the assignment done already. The 'Tops had the distinction of being one of the few places in the world where you could walk through such a range of forest types in a single day—everything from sub-alpine to sub-tropical.

  I traced my finger along a dirt-encrusted metal plaque:

  Devil’s Hole lookout

  1450 metres above sea level

  “That’s about 1000 miles for you Yankee folk.” Ethan’s voice boomed directly behind me.

  I elbowed him without looking around, then turned to give him a fake smile.

  “Ouch!” Ethan rubbed his ribcage. His face creased into a smile, showing slightly snaggy teeth that made my blood caramelize.

  Aisha motioned us over to the viewing platform, where she and Lacey were headed. “When you two are ready?” she said pointedly.

  The forests below the lookout stretched in almost unimaginable distances, undulating and falling away into deep gorges and wild rivers. Wafts of mist hung above the higher tree lines.

  Ethan cupped Aisha’s face and kissed her mouth and forehead. Aisha gazed back at him in a moment of complete calm. But then she wriggled out of his arms and began setting up her tripod and camera. She was soon lost in her own sphere—so wrapped up in herself she didn’t even notice the lost expression on his face.

  We moved to the picnic tables to have a late lunch. I devoured my squashed sandwiches and waterlogged grapes, and wished I'd brought more food. Lacey nibbled a meager portion of crackers. Aisha remained uncharacteristically quiet.

  Reaching for my backpack, I pulled out a map of Barrington Tops. With an orange marker, I circled the forests we’d walked through, and made quick notes of the flora and fauna we’d found in each.

  Ethan leaned over and jabbed a finger at an area named Captain Thunderbolt’s Lookout.

  “That’s named after a relative of mine.”

  “Yeah Ethan,” I mocked. “I believe you there was actually a person named Captain Thunderbolt. Did he carry bolts of lightning in his holsters?”

  “Nah. He just basically stole stuff.”

  “He did what?”

  “He was a bushranger—back in the 1800s. He used to hide out in caves—and steal from the rich.” Ethan shrugged.

  “What a rebel,” I remarked.

  “Not as much of a rebel as his woman.”

  “Was she Mrs. Thunderbolt?” Lacey piped in.

  “Her name was Mary Ann.” Ethan stretched his fingers. “Granddad told me she used to wear men’s clothes and go on raids with the Captain. She was part-Aboriginal and so beautiful she got away with just about anything she did. Plus her dad was rich.”

  “So, she must have spat out a kid or two in between raids—that's if you’re related to her as well as Thunderbolt?” I asked.

  “Yeah—she had a few—and stashed them at relatives’ houses while she went raiding with the Captain.”

  I laughed, shaking my head. Ethan always had a story or two up his sleeve. Half the time you didn’t know if he was making it all up, although this time he’d seemed genuine.

  He took my marker and drew a lightning bolt on a couple of spots that he said the Captain had hidden out at. Still laughing, I closed my hand around his, trying to grab the marker back.

  Aisha began packing her camera into her backpack with more force than necessary. I realized I'd had my eyes—and hand—on Ethan a fraction too long. I snatched my hand away.

  A busload of tourists pulled into the parking lot.

  Ethan was first to rise from the table. "Well kiddies, I reckon we’ve just about got it in the bag. We can take it easy down the mountains.”

  Aisha eyed the dark forest. “I didn’t capture enough shots of the wildlife.”

  “They’re not expecting David Attenborough. What we’ve got is good enough.” Ethan flicked crumbs from the side of his face.

  “Eeth, I wanted to do a bit better than good enough,” Aisha pleaded. She stared up at him with wide green eyes.

  Ethan exhaled slowly. “Yeah, okay, no problem. We can head off the track and see what we can find down near the river.”

  “How far?” I didn’t see the point of trekking cross-country in the hope we might grab a few extra photos of animals.

  “Depends on Aisha and Lacey and what they need to finish the project.” It was Ethan in unusually serious mood.

  Lacey raised her eyebrows at the mention of her name, but stayed silent.

  “Can’t we just grab some snaps of animals from Google Images?” I shrugged for emphasis.

  “No, we can’t. Photos on there belong to people?” Aisha made a habit out of making questions out of statements. “Anyway, this project is meant to be a team effort. Don't I get a say in anything?”

  Aisha could just go on and on when she wanted to—her tone becoming increasingly strident.

  “Yeah, fine,” I said. “Let’s do it.” I tried to keep the annoyance out of my voice.


  Aisha turned on her heel, strapping her backpack on.

  We headed back up the track, following Ethan. Ethan stopped still, and then wandered up and down for a few minutes, seemingly to determine the best way in.

  “Okay, here,” he said finally. “I think this will be a shortcut to the nearest river.”

  The entry point he choose didn’t seem to look any different to any other point along the track, but we all piled into the woods after him anyway. Luckily there wasn’t as much understory growth compared to lower parts of the forests, and you could wind your way around the trees and branches. But it was still a difficult walk. I missed the track already. I missed the easy walk that Ethan said we could have if we’d headed out of the forests instead. My mind drifted, settling on an image of Ethan and me walking alone out here.

  “A dollar for your thoughts, Cassie.” Aisha stepped alongside me.

  I was thinking about your boyfriend, Aisha.

  “Save your dollar,” I replied. “I wasn’t thinking enough to pay a cent for.” A thread of guilt wound through me. Aisha never stayed in a funk for long—not even when I'd been practically flirting with her boyfriend it seemed.

  She smiled. “I guess this must seem a world away from your home.”

  I picked out a strand of hair away that had somehow stuck inside my eyelid. “We had some forest stuff there too—well, really it was, like, swampy, jungle-y kind of stuff. With alligators, raccoons and wild pigs. The Everglades.”

  “I’d love to see it. I want to travel everywhere.” She flashed pretty, white teeth.

  Aisha had the kind of face that looked just so… clean. Like the inside of a shell. I was sure I’d even seen the exact shade of pinkish olive her skin was—on a cone shell in a seashell emporium back in Florida. Even her eyes matched the beach look—the aqua of a shallow ocean, the kind of ocean they put on those trite tourist postcards.

  If her looks were what Ethan wanted, how could I compete? I'd inherited my mother's Mexican dark looks and thick chocolate hair, and my father's child-like high, round brow. I looked younger than fifteen, closer to thirteen. Boys passed me over for other girls—perhaps because I looked less than womanly or perhaps because I wasn't exactly approachable. But I'd liked it that way. And I'd always been comfortable in my skin. Until now.