The Dollhouse (Paperdolls #1) Read online

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  ISBN 978-1-62007-102-1 (ebook)

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  For my sister and my Hufflepuff.

  To my sister, for telling me this wasn’t a stupid idea and for helping me every step of the way.

  To my Hufflepuff, for proving to me that there are still good people in this world.

  Thank you both for loving me, even when it gets hard to.

  “What matters most is how well you walk through the fire”

  Charles Bukowski

  he room was pitch-black as I lay in bed, and my heart pounded against my ribs as I waited. It was my turn tonight. Any second now, I would see a shadow of feet under my door. The hinges would squeak. The door would open wide. He would get into my bed.

  I was gripping the nail file so tightly in my hand I thought I would break my skin open. Didn’t matter. I had to keep it hidden. I couldn’t believe he forgot to put it away. It’s been so, so long, and he’s never forgotten. If I believed in God, I would be thanking Him.

  My eyes squeezed shut. My stomach turned, making my whole body feel weak as I watched the gaslights flicker from the crack under my door. Every tick of the clock was like a hammer to my head. Painful. I wasn’t sure how much more I could handle.

  My sisters knew. They were supposed to be told. I found the nail file, and I found Layla. She was too scared to do it, so I told her I would. It was her job to tell Adalyn and Kylie. That was the deal. She would get them ready, and I would take care of the rest.

  He was saying goodnight to them. Tucking them in. First Kylie, then Layla, and then Adalyn. That was the order since he was sleeping in my bed tonight. Then it would be over. No matter what, it ended tonight.

  I’d been waiting so long my eyes were adjusting to the darkness. That was a good thing. I got one chance, and I couldn’t screw it up. They were counting on me.

  The familiar sound of the door opening cut through the sound of the blood rushing in my ears. The hall light was dim, but I could see his silhouette in the doorway. I knew that shape better than anything. He was just an inch taller than me at five foot eight. I saw long, dark hair against shoulders, and a broad frame coming to me.

  This is it.

  I either set us free, or damn us all.

  The light from the hall let me see a glimpse of his face. He was smiling when he closed the door. The metal clicked as he walked to me.

  “You up, sleepy head?” he asked. His voice was deep and steady, as always.

  My voice was shaky, and I couldn’t fight it. “I’m awake,” I said, echoing into the room.

  “Good. I don’t like it when you’re already out.”

  No, he didn’t. He liked to hold me, listening to my breathing even out. I knew that all too well.

  He pulled my blanket aside, joining me in the small bed. When his arm went around me, I gripped the nail file tighter. I needed to wait until it was the perfect time.

  The blanket came up, and I felt his body against my back. It made me colder. Always so cold. Even when I wasn’t in this bed with him, I felt cold.

  I turned onto my back, keeping my hand hidden under the blanket. I was breaking out into a cold sweat, feeling it on my forehead and in my hairline. If he noticed, he would figure out something was wrong. Come on, keep it together. A few more minutes.

  After maybe a half-hour of lying there, I heard his light snoring. He was out, finally.

  I’d dreamed about this night for as long as I could remember being here, vivid fantasies of ending this and going home. I prayed my family was waiting for me somewhere. That they still missed me. They had to. If they were gone, I had nothing. Nothing but the girls in this house—a sisterhood that ran deeper than blood. They were why I was doing this. They were why I could be brave and save us. Any minute now.

  Three… two… one…

  It was nothing like I thought it would be. My head was turned and I raised my hand in the air. With a powerful rush, I slammed the nail file into the side of his throat.

  Blood, hot and sticky, sprayed my face and chest, somehow taking me by surprise. I screamed almost as loud as he did. His legs kicked as he jerked in my bed, and finally, he knew what it was like to be helpless. I was stunned into nothing but a shaking, useless little girl for a few moments. I watched him screaming, bleeding, dying, and I knew I had to get out.

  The key was on him. It was always on him. While he flailed, I dug into his pockets until I found it. My screaming dissolved into sobbing when my hand wrapped around warm metal. I cried out in shock as I pulled it from his pocket and sprang out of the bed.

  I ran to the door and threw it open. I needed to free the rest of them. Layla first. I ran to the end of the hall, shoving the key into the lock on her door. My hands were slick with blood as I pulled in painful, ragged breaths. Finally, the lock opened, and I saw her. She gasped at me, but we didn’t have time for more fear. Not when we were so close.

  The next door was Kylie’s. The key slipped from my hands, and I bent to pick it up, shaking the whole time. I only stopped shaking when Adalyn was free.

  Then it was the four of us standing in the hall, so paralyzed with shock that we might have died right there. Painless and quiet and just as freeing as we all thought it would be the first time we tried it.

  Someone grabbed my hand and yanked me along. We all knew where we needed to go, and we needed to hurry.

  We passed the hallway and slid into the kitchen. The girls rushed to the door at the stairs, but I stopped.

  “Riley!” Layla screamed. “What are you doing?!”

  I looked to my right, staring at the counter. I rushed to it, unlocking it as fast as I could. My hand wrapped around a knife, and then it was mine. Oh, the dreams I’d had about it.

  The way out was on the far end of the house. He’d kept it hidden from us for so long, but I’d seem him coming in with groceries. That was the day he added even more locks. There wasn’t a room that didn’t have a lock on it for us. If we wanted to go somewhere, he had to let us. That was the point of all of this.

  We were moving again, having to unlock every door on the way. My body still shook, and my legs felt heavy. Every step was a struggle. Like in a dream. You try as hard as you can to run, but it feels like you’re not making progress. You’re stagnant, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

  Losing time. We were losing so much time: the thing that used to seem infinite, the thing we cursed. I wanted more of it. I wanted a lifetime.

  The house was underground, and when we were at the stairs, my eyes glistened with tears. They didn’t fall. Not yet. I hadn’t earned it.

  Up those stairs led to the outside: a dream that had died for me so long ago. I still dreamt about it. I imagined I was in the grass. The sun was on my face, and I could hear my parents talking beside me. We were happy. It was like the way it used to be.

  Metal groaned as my sisters and I ran up the steps. The ho
use was old. Things always broke down. Something he had to deal with a lot. We were taught how to fix things with very little supplies. I wasn’t sure if it was because his resources were limited or because he didn’t want anything to be easy for us.

  When we were at the top step, my hand froze before it could touch the locks. Adalyn ripped the key out of my hands and jammed into a lock.

  Adalyn gasped as she held it. “It doesn’t fit.”

  “What do you mean it doesn’t fit?” Layla screamed. “It has to fit.”

  Adalyn’s fingers touched the rusted locks. “We’re missing another key. Where is it?”

  Kylie whimpered. “But… we’re so close.” Her breath quickened, and she doubled over. “Can’t go back. Can’t go back. Please!”

  I rushed past her. “It’s in his room. It has to be.”

  Then we were all running back down the stairs, almost tripping on the way. We were in a line, rushing through the house in a panic. His bedroom was in the same hall as ours. He almost never used it for more than our bath time and grooming. Our beds were his.

  Adalyn slammed into the door at the end of the hall, unable to stop herself beforehand. She got the door open, flipping on the only electrical light in the house. The dank room illuminated, and the search began.

  We all split up, tearing through his things. I was at the dresser, pulling clothes out and dropping them on the floor. I gasped and covered my mouth for a moment when I found the hair bags. Every trimming from us since we got here. I knew he kept them, but seeing them was overwhelming at a time where I couldn’t stop to be overwhelmed. There were other things, too. Old clothes and random objects. Shoes from when we first got here. We weren’t allowed to wear anything but heels. At least, back when we were allowed to wear them at all. That privilege was taken away last time I got sent to the Bad Girl Room.

  Layla was flipping the mattress when Kylie screamed from the bookshelf. We all turned, and she was holding it, silver and small in her palm.

  We took off running, me on the tail end since I had to stop for my knife again. Up the stairs we went, and I wasn’t even breathing anymore. When the door swung open, I whimpered. It was so dark, but it was the lightest I’d felt in God knows how long.

  The next scream was from Adalyn, who’d slowed and ended up at my side. She fell through the air and crashed against the stairs with a painful-sounding thud. She was being dragged back down, thrashing and all.

  He had her by the foot, tugging with the dwindling strength in his body. I couldn’t let him take her. Not again. It was all of us or none of us. That was the deal.

  She was too scared to fight. That was okay, because I was there. I kicked my bare foot into his face, making contact with his nose. He cried out, pouring more blood onto the already soaked stairs. Layla yanked Adalyn up and started pulling her to the door. We just had to run now.

  I took one step before I slipped and fell. My butt hit the metal, and my stomach dropped. He saw me as he crawled up. There was so much blood, and he was so pale. Why wouldn’t this monster die?

  The girls were behind me, screaming and trying to get to me. The corridor was narrow, and it made for difficult moving. He was on me, and I wasn’t even sure he knew what he was doing. Just pulling me down.

  The knife was slippery in my hands, but I sent it into his stomach anyway. His mouth formed an “O,” and he wheezed. I gripped him by the shirt and slammed him into the stairs. He hit it hard, and I sent the knife right back into him again. And again. And again. And again. I did it until my vision was red. Thunder boomed outside, and I didn’t believe the sound. So powerful as the lightning showed me what I’d done.

  His chest was pulp, face missing as I kept going. There was so much blood… My hands slipped, and I was cutting myself raw, screaming at him.

  “Riley,” Layla cried at the top of the stairs. “Please.”

  She and Adalyn took my hands, pulling me up and over him. I turned and, with a kick, sent him tumbling down the stairs. I was yanked away before I could do anything else.

  Rain hit my skin, and it was surreal. I watched it bleed into my soft pink pajamas. Shorts and a shirt, like the rest of the girls. We were all the same, only my blonde hair, always lighter than the rest, was soaked with blood that wasn’t all my own. It hung in damp locks to my hips, matting together where it could.

  We were in the woods, and I looked back at where we came out of. I’d never seen it before. That place that we were locked inside… It looked like nothing. A shed. A metal shed that held us prisoner.

  I was dragged off again, Layla pulling me by the hand. We didn’t know where we were, or where we were going. There was no plan. No way to know who was waiting for us. Lightning was the only thing to light our way.

  The woods were dense, leaving me with the feeling that we could never really be free. I doubted it was only me that believed this was nothing more than a dream. We would wake up and be there again in those small, locked rooms. And he would be there, not a scratch on him. The nightmare would go on forever.

  We ran and ran, and then we came to the edge of the woods. There was a narrow strip of pavement, old and rocky. It hurt my bare feet when we crossed it. It didn’t matter. We had to keep going.

  And we did. Right until we saw headlights coming our way.

  iley Cain. Layla Hall. Adalyn Mitchell. Kylie Michaelson. We gave them our names, and the whole world changed. We were brought to a room with doughnuts and water. The pastries were gone in three minutes.

  We sat in a row, staring out of a wall of glass. We watched the police station function like it did in the movies. Desks and people in uniforms. The nice old lady in the car brought us here. She wanted to stay, but the policeman at the front room told her to go home. She hugged everyone but me before she went. She didn’t want to get blood on her. I couldn’t blame her.

  The policeman asked us who we were, why I was covered in blood, and why my hands were cut up. Layla was the one to tell him. She could speak clearer than I could. We told him our names and that I killed the man. They typed our names into the computer that looked too small to be a computer, and then we were swarmed. Everyone gathered around us, asking questions. Then the policeman, Officer Wigmore, brought us here and told everyone to leave us alone.

  “Do you think I’m going to be in trouble?” I asked.

  Layla looked over from the end of the table. “He kept us there for”—she paused, not knowing the answer—“a long time. He deserved to die.”

  “That wasn’t the question,” I said.

  “They won’t get mad at you. You saved us.” Adalyn smiled, rubbing my shoulder.

  I stared down at myself, still covered in blood. It was clean from my skin, but it remained in my damp clothes under the sweater they’d given me. They gave one to each of us before they patched my hands up. Officer Wigmore was very nice.

  “Does anyone else feel like throwing up?” Adalyn swallowed, fingers combing her long blonde hair.

  Same length as mine. All the same.

  I nodded. “They’ll be here soon. I’m scared.”

  “Me too,” Kylie whimpered. “What happens when they get us? They’ll take us away. We won’t see each other.”

  My heart thudded hard. I hadn’t gone more than seven hours without seeing them since we met. I honestly didn’t think about it until that moment. Those days were gone, locked away in The Dollhouse forever more. My sisters would be taken from me.

  We all joined hands without a word. I ignored the pain when Layla gripped me. It hardly mattered.

  It was her family first. Her mother, father, and sister walked in. I only knew because of the shade of blue in her sister’s and mother’s eyes. Just the same as Layla’s. Her father was gruff, lips pressed together and dark eyes covered with the same glassy look as his wife and daughters.

  “Melissa,” Layla cried, taking off. She hugged her sister, and the sobs started. “Oh God, you’re so big.” She laughed.

  Her baby sister laughed too. “I
know. You too.”

  Layla looked up at Melissa, a couple inches taller than her, hair a little darker. “How old are you?”

  Melissa’s breath hitched, but she spoke through it. “Sixteen.”

  There were more tears when Layla hugged both of her parents at the same time. They fawned over her, dissolving into tears while I did some math.

  When we first met, we’d told each other about our families, trying to keep our spirits up. Layla had a nine-year-old sister, just turned. At the time, we were all twelve. Layla had been almost thirteen.

  “Oh God,” I whispered. “Seven years.” I choked on the words, looking at my sisters. “We were gone seven years.”

  Layla’s mother looked to us, clearing her face as Wigmore walked in behind her. “No one told you yet?”

  I shook my head.

  She turned to Wigmore. “They all have people coming for them, right? They can come with us if they don’t. All of them,” she gazed at her daughter, touching her hair.

  Officer Wigmore nodded his head. “Everyone is on their way. Should be here soon. Turns out,” he cleared his throat, “you all lived pretty close.”

  We were just outside of Seattle last time I checked. At least, that was where our houses were. It was a long drive to get here, but finding out we were this close to home the whole time… It was another punch to the gut.

  “What now?” Layla’s father asked. “Can we take her home?”

  The officer nodded. “We need to call her in for questioning later, but you can take her for now.”

  Layla ran to us, hugging the life out of each one of us. “I’ll miss you. We need to get back together. Really soon.”

  We said our goodbyes and then had to watch her walk out of the room without us by her side. It stung, but it was almost okay. She was going home. We were all going home.

  Next was Adalyn. When the only one to walk through the door was her father, her face sank. As she rose to meet her father, she looked over his shoulder.

  “Daddy,” she hugged him. “Why isn’t Mom with you?”