A Nest of Nightmares

Karen looked at the top of the old dresser, where Kristina used to sit with Beverly. Now Beverly sat there alone. Karen felt tears in her eyes: Kristina had been her favourite. She suddenly felt uncomfortable standing above her dolls, felt that they were blaming her for Kristina’s disappearance.

She felt guilt, a heaviness in her stomach, and thought she saw grim indictment on the still, staring faces.

‘Poor Kristina,’ she said. ‘If only someone had warned me.’ She stepped down from her perch, shaking her head sadly. ‘If only daddy had told me before – then I could have protected her. When I think of all the times I’ve left some of you out – well, now that I know I’ll be sure to take good care.’

She looked around at the dolls, who had not changed expression, and suddenly the silence of the attic became oppressive.

Louisa, Karen’s best friend, called that afternoon. ‘Would you and Kristina care to join me and Isabella in having a tea party?’ she asked in her best society-lady voice.

Karen assumed a similar voice to reply. ‘Oh, my deah, I would love to, but Kristina has been kidnapped.’

‘Oh, how dreadful, my deah.’

‘Yes, it is, my deah, but I think I shall bring my other child, Elizabeth.’

‘Very good. I shall see you in a few minutes. Ta-ta.’

‘Ta-ta, my deah.’

Elizabeth was one of the talking dolls, always her favourite until golden-haired Kristina had come as a birthday gift.

Louisa’s little sister Anne and her ragdoll Sallylou were the other guests at the tea party, treated with faint disdain by Louisa and Karen for their lack of society manners.

‘Why don’t you let Elizabeth eat her own cookie?’ Anne demanded as Karen took a dainty bite. Elizabeth had politely refused the treat.

‘Be quiet, silly,’ Louisa said, forgetting her role. ‘Dolls don’t eat cookies.’

‘Yes, they do.’

‘No, they don’t.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘They do not.’

‘Well, if they don’t, then what do they eat?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Pretend food,’ Karen amended. ‘They have to eat pretend food because they only have pretend teeth and pretend stomachs.’

Anne shook her head. ‘Sallylou has real teeth, and so she has to eat real food.’

‘Oh, she does not,’ Louisa said. ‘All you do is mash cookies in her face so she gets crumbs all over her. Show me her teeth if she has them.’

‘I can’t, ’cause her mouth is closed,’ Anne said smugly.

‘You’re just stupid.’

Later, when they were alone, Karen told Louisa what had happened to Kristina and watched her friend’s eyes grow wider. This was no story; it was real and immediate, and the proof was the blue eye now lying on a bed of dust and staring unceasingly at the attic roof.

Karen’s ears ached from trying to hear movement downstairs. She always lay awake at the top of the house, feeling silence and sleep wrap the house from the bottom up until it finally reached her and she slept. But now every distant creak of board, every burp of pipe, made her tense and listen harder. She’d left no dolls downstairs, of course, but what if those men should not be deterred by stairs but were lured on by the scent of dolls up in the attic?

She thought of Louisa across the street and wondered if she too lay awake listening. Louisa, she knew, had put all her dolls under the bed, the safest place she could think of.

Karen suddenly thought of her own dolls, more frightened than she, sitting terrified in the dark attic, listening to the sounds as she did and wondering if the next creaking board would bring a dark sack over their heads, labelling them dollburger meat. It was her duty to protect them.

She went on bare feet to the attic door, the full moon through her window giving her light enough to find her way. She opened the attic door and thought as she did so that she heard a movement inside, as if perhaps a doll had been knocked over.

She had to go inside the attic several feet to reach the light cord. Her bare foot nudged something as she did, and when the light came on, she looked down to see what it was.

Poor, bald, legless Susan lay naked on the floor, and Karen noticed at once that Susan now was not only legless, but armless as well. When she picked her up, small shards of pink plastic fell from the arm sockets.

Karen felt an almost paralysing fear. They were up here, somehow in the attic without having come past her bed, and already they’d begun on her most helpless doll. Holding Susan to her, she began to gather all the other dolls into her arms. She lifted the skirt of her nightgown to make a bag and tumbled the dolls in there. They were scattered around as if they’d been thrown, none in their right places. Barbie on the floor, Ken in the rocking chair with Raggedy Andy and the bride.

Every time she bent to pick up another doll, she was sure she could hear the muffled breathing of the hungry dollburger eaters and feel the pressure of their eyes against her back.

She began to pray, whispering and thinking, ‘Oh, please, please, please, oh, please.’