Music Box (The Dollhouse Books, #4) (27 page)

With a weary sigh, he sits himself down on the chair. “My soul was warped by my act of evil, but I couldn’t tear myself away. I began to believe that I was once again the great ringmaster of the Fiveash circus, with my loving family surrounding me. I told myself I would remain in the fantasy for only a short while, then I would return and take you away somewhere and start again. But a year in that world was a century in this.” He takes in a sharp breath. “I had forgotten what a happy child you were, Jessamine—so full of life and laughter—as a child should be.”

Bitterness chokes me like ashes in my throat. “I can’t remember that life. I can’t remember the girl I was before Daddy died.”

“But you will have that life again, in another body, in another world. Trust in that, Jessamine. I cannot claim to know or understand the grand design of life, but I know we live again. We are given chance after chance to redeem ourselves. That is all I know.”

Silence—silence like the empty space between ticks of the clock—hangs between us.

He stares at my larger-than-life doll and bear as though he has never seen them before. “Why did I imagine that this—this underground dollhouse—was ever a good idea? And providing you with replicas of your childhood toys as companions—that was not something I should have done. My child, all I can say to you is that as much as I tried to run from the castle, I am a product of it. As a small boy, I once wandered down to the secret underground chambers of the castle’s original lord—Balthazar. I spied his terrible cabinets, filled with wooden dolls—replicas of all his past wives.” His body sighs. “Why he kept them, I cannot say. But of course, those could never substitute for anything real. Yet, I convinced myself that you would be kept safe, down here alone, with none but dolls to keep you company. Because I denied my history—kept it buried deep within me—I didn’t recognize the echoes of my past.”

I lift my chin. “Not all my dolls are made of wood and cloth, Grandfather.

His wet, rheumy eyes are uncomprehending as he stares at me.

“Look in the sleeping chamber. You will see them. They were gone for a short while. But they came back to me.”

A deep V forms between his eyebrows. His steps are heavy on his walking stick, and he huffs as he reaches the doorway of the bed chamber. I follow behind.

He gazes through the opening and then back at me, shock registering on his face. “Who are they?”

“I told you. They are my dolls. My companions.”

“But how can they live here, Jess? There is nothing here for them.”

“I exist here. Why cannot they? And besides, the eldest of them lived here for five years under my care.”

His expression breaks down—the edges of everything in his features crumbling. “I cannot imagine the times you’ve spent here whilst I’ve been gone.”

He extends a hand to me. “Come with me now. I will gladly end my life, so that you will not have to take that journey alone. That is all I can offer.”

“I must remain and care for my dolls. It is a great responsibility and a vexation, but one that I must follow through to the end.”

“No... no Jessamine. They have to leave here and live out their lives. I will not ask how they ever came to be here, but I will tell you that their lives are not your responsibility.”

I shake my head. “I cannot go with you, even if my dolls had not returned.”

It is a cold and wretched thing to have grandfather here with me now. At least, when I was waiting, I had some semblance of hope. But now he tells me everything was wrong. I waited for nothing. And now I cannot leave and go to another place with him. The weight of it all hangs on me, the terrible burden that hangs on those who waited too long.

He gazes at me steadily, his eyes glistening. “Then I have no choice but to take my leave. There is something I must do before the end of my miserable life.”

“You’re going to leave me alone again?”

“I must travel back to the place of my birth—La Falaise. I have travelled this life for eighty one years—running away from my past at the castle. But I didn’t manage to erase it. I have brought great evil to the worlds of men. I should have listened to Zeke, I should have listened to the fortune teller. I should have listened to my own better judgment. But I was so intent on what I desired, I blocked all else out.” His face crumples. “I can’t atone for my wrongs, but I must face them. My best hope is that I’ll do something worthy in my next life.”

Something inside me is squeezed so tightly I can almost imagine my breath has been stolen away. “You can’t leave me again. Remember what you wrote?”

Pain casts shadows in his eyes. “
You and only you
.” Again, he holds out a hand to me.

I turn to gaze upon the sleeping heads of my charges. They sleep so beautifully—unlike me, who cannot remember the depth and surrender of the human night. My rest has only been in the fading of the energies that sustain me—a gray void. Some long-buried part of me desires the human night, even if I were never to wake again.

The dolls of my dollhouse have taken their own path, and I can do no more for them.

I take his hand. He looks down, surprised he can feel the weight of my fingers. I am practiced at making any part of myself feel solid.

Wetness glistens in the corner of his eye.

And we are gone.

J
ESSAMINE

We step into a night. It is fitting, for I have known almost one hundred years of night.

The castle is everything Grandfather said it was and far more. I believe I should respect it as a place of my ancestry, but Grandfather says I should not. He stole away from the castle as a young man—but the castle never left him. I can see that as I look upward at the dark, forbidding structures. The high stone walls close in around me, claiming me as one of their own.

Grandfather treads towards the drawbridge. It opens as we approach, though no one seems to be about. The castle desires us, it wants us to enter.

Hunger emits from the rooms of the castle. I am inside a beast. Although I no longer have flesh, and although I am made of smoke and mirrors—fear travels through me. Grandfather is still human—he cannot sense what I do. There are forces here that can bind me, even as a spirit. I want to flee and return to my safe place deep within the earth, the place that Grandfather built for me. I stop in the midst of the wide corridor lit by torches—the orange light upon the ancient walls a vision of hell.

Grandfather turns toward me with an expression of dread and sadness. “I must continue. But I will not ask that of you.”

“I will take my place beside you.” I have come this far and I must see it through. It is the order of things to see them to the end.

We step into a cavernous hall. Humans and spirits turn to stare at us in shock—my relatives—ancestors and descendants of my family.

Henry strides up to Grandfather. “You old bastard. You’re alive. Uncle Tobias, I didn’t think you had the guts to make your way back here.”

Grandfather glares coldly at Henry. “It is a far greater thing that my granddaughter has ventured here. You will deal with all that you brought upon Jessamine in the next life. You and that woman of yours.”

Audette—standing next to a fireplace wearing a shiny red gown—smiles widely. “You left her, old man. We were stuck with her, remember?”

Anger crosses Grandfather’s lined features. “I left her
in your care
. And that was the worst mistake of my life.”

A boy not much older than myself introduces himself as Emerson Batiste and welcomes us into the fold. “Tobias, finally we meet. One of my residences is the house you built in Miami. The wall carving of the mirrored tree was quite spectacular.”

Grandfather bends his head slightly as he turns to stare at Emerson. “I knew not what I was doing when I had that made. I thought the mirrored tree held the answer to everything, all life’s woes. Now I know better.”

“Bit late for that, Uncle,” Henry interjects. “You let the cat out of the bag. Can’t stitch that bag up and suffocate the cat now.”

Audette meows, her eyebrow arched and mocking.

A girl with bright eyes and red hair surveys me with interest, a tiny monkey perched on her shoulder. “I’m Emerson’s sister, Viola. And that’s my other bro’ over there—Zachary. Oh, but don’t expect to get much sense out of Zach—he’s still mooning over that girl. Hmmm, what was her name? I think you called her Calliope.”

I nod in her direction but hardly think I need respond, and I do not show my distress at the mention of Calliope’s name. I don’t know how Calliope became mixed up with my relatives of the castle but I fear for her. She was always going to seek out the darkness.

The girl named Viola saunters across the room with her gaze fixed on me. “So it was you in that photograph with Great Uncle Tobias. You looked so strange and serious, like your favorite pet had just died. Shame you didn’t live longer than fourteen. You’re the one who kept those girls cooped up in that weird underground place.” She hoots loudly. “I love this family. We have more skeletons in the closet than a serial killer.”

When a group of people move aside to replenish their wine glasses, I see a man sitting in a high-backed armchair, drinking from a metal chalice. His eyes are cold, like an empty night. It is rude to stare, but I cannot focus elsewhere. He is flesh and blood, but the human essence of him is missing. I cannot understand him, cannot figure if he is human or spirit. He is perhaps only as old as Emerson or Zach, with dark hair and aristocratic features—but the others gaze at him in reverence.

I turn to Grandfather, but his eyes give no clue. It is as though he is looking at this man through a dark window, unsure of whom he is.

“
Vous avez retourné
, Tobias Tibault Batiste.” His words are slow and deliberate, iced with amusement.

A stone mask pulls down over Grandfather’s face. “
Non
, Balthazar,” he says, with a hint of French accent I have never heard in his voice before. “I have not returned. I am here simply as a messenger.”

Balthazar raises his eyebrows in a lazy fashion. “Ye bring forth a message to the castle?”

A smattering of nervous laughter erupts around the hall.

Grandfather takes a long, measured breath. “Yes. And my message to you all is that we are wrong. Anything that destroys our humanity cannot be the best course, for it only destroys us, in the end.”

Henry bristles. “Uncle, you should remember that you are in the presence of Monseigneur Balthazar Batiste. Everything around you was built by him and has endured in our family throughout the centuries. Yet you come here and try to tell him you know better?”

This man before me built the castle centuries ago? I try to peer into the depths of him, but am afraid. This man has power beyond any spirit I have known.

A man—no, a spirit—strides forward, a heavy black beard obscuring most of his face. “Tobias, you’re one of us. You sought the book, when any other miserable creature would have left such books well alone.”

“Armand Baldcott,” says Grandfather, “perhaps your words are true. I was blinded by grief, and at that time, I allowed my grief to lead me back to my heritage.”

A grim smile indents itself in Balthazar’s stone-like visage. He holds out his arms to Grandfather. “But of course thou grieved. Thy son, Simon, was the blood of thy loins. Thou wanted him back. And just as thee art my descendant, I did grieve for thee when thou took leave of the chateau. Thou hadst the spark to do great things, even as a boy.” He spits, his mouth curling. “The rest of them just clung to the protection and past glories of my name like
filles
in a thunderstorm.” He glances at Henry. “Seigneur Henry Batiste was the only one amongst ye to attempt to restore the might of my name and restore my vision. Thou art all of my loins and destined to rule.”

Henry bows, while the others look on with a mixture of anxiety and wrath—shielded behind tightly-held expressions.

A butler enters the room, his ancient eyes filled with a cold satisfaction. “Monseigneur Batiste, we have the boy.”

A struggling male is brought into the room. Six others flank him. He catches my eye and then twists his head away. At first I am surprised to see him, but I should not be. In the spirit realm, we see connections that we did not in our human lives. Evander has a tie to the castle. I can at last see the good in Evander.

Balthazar’s lip sneers when he sees him. The men shove Evander to Balthazar’s feet, and Grandfather and I are told we must wait until Balthazar has dealt with the boy before we can have an audience.

––––––––

C
ASSIE

The second I woke, I knew Jessamine was gone. The dollhouse was
her
—every corridor and room, every toy and puzzle. But now, the dollhouse was a mere skeleton. Rising, I walked the still, eerie corridors. The years of anguish, of desperate prayers hung in the air like a shroud. I could almost hear whispers and hushed voices—and nursery rhymes sung in a dull monotone.

The kitchen, the ballroom... everything had that hush. One of Molly’s drawings lay on the floor in the ballroom. I scooped it up. It was the picture that she’d drawn for Frances—an image of Frances’ whole family. In the other world, Frances was back with her family, readjusting to life after the dollhouse and the strangeness of a family she hadn’t seen for three of her six years. In this world, none of us knew whether her family were dead or alive, and she faced the daily horror of the serpents. She still hadn’t returned to the life Molly had always wanted her to return to. I let the drawing drift from my fingers and settle back to the floor.

I searched the ballroom for any clue that Jessamine might have left behind—any clue to the answer of Tobias’s riddle. There was nothing. But the letter—the letter was gone. Frowning, I stepped over to the library shelf where the letter had been. In the letter’s place was an old drawing of mine—from the day when Jessamine had asked me to tell her about my home town, and I’d made up a story about a girl who rode a dolphin in the warm waters of Florida. My picture, in my childish drawing style, was of the girl turning into a mermaid as she dove beneath the water with her beloved dolphin.