SIGIL PAGE

DOLLHOUSE PAGE

LARKSPUR HOUSE LETTER

TITLE PAGE

DEDICATION

For my mentor and friend, David Levithan.

CHAPTER 1

VOICES ECHOED UP from below.

It was long past midnight, but Jason’s parents were fighting again.

“I cannot believe you think I’d do something like that,” said his mom.

His dad spat back, “It’s like you care more about that old toy than you do your own daughter.”

His mom and dad grew louder, angrier, and Jason cringed, pulling the thin blanket up to his chin.

“Why would I lie? I want to protect Louise as much as you do!”

“If you’d actually brought the dollhouse to the children’s home yesterday, why did Louise find it back in her bedroom this afternoon?”

“I have no clue! The director at the home was thrilled to have it. You can call her yourself!”

“It’s the middle of the night, Amy! Everyone is asleep!”

Well, not everyone …

Jason covered his ears, trying to block out the noise. His mom and dad must have known how loud they were being. It was like they wanted him to hear everything—as if the argument would force him to pick a side. Lou too. He pictured his little sister just down the hallway, huddled in her own bed, guilt wracking her small frame. Ever since she’d started sleepwalking, their usually peaceful home had grown toxic, as if a hidden, leaking pipe were rotting the walls. Jason riffled through one of the many catalogs he kept stored in his mind, thinking of the different kinds of mold he’d studied in his science class.

1. Penicillium
2. Trichoderma
3. Aspergillus

“I’m as freaked out about it as you are, Scott.” Mom’s voice cracked. “How do I know that you didn’t go to the city and bring the dollhouse back here?”

Jason crept out of bed and pressed his ear against the door.

He sensed someone standing on the other side.

He swung the door open quickly to find his sister in the darkness. Her long black hair partially obscured her pale face as she clutched at her torso. “Lou! Are you sleepwalking again?” he whispered.

The argument continued from the kitchen below.

“Not anymore,” said Lou. “Can I stay with you for a little while? At least until they calm down?”

Together, they perched on the edge of his bed. Lou squeezed Jason’s hand, and her chilled fingers sent goose bumps up his arm. “Are you okay? You’ve never actually sleepwalked out of the house before. Good thing Dad was up late watching television, or else you might have ended up—”

“I don’t want to think about that,” Lou said, taking back her hand.

“Was it the kids in the dollhouse?” Jason whispered.

“Same as always. But this time, in my dream, I was with them. And the creature … it was chasing all of us.”

“It was just a nightmare, Lou. Those kids aren’t real.”

“Maybe not. But the dollhouse sure is.” She released a ragged sigh. “Mom and Dad are right to be scared. How did it come back? I went with Mom to donate it!”

“One of them must have—”

“You know that’s not true, Jay.” Lou shook her head. “Something else is going on here—something … not right.”

“At least the dollhouse is in the basement now. Dad made sure of that after he brought you back inside from your sleepy hike.”

This made Lou smile. “Yeah, I heard him thumping it all the way down the stairs.”

“Maybe it broke.”

The dollhouse had once belonged to their mother. It stood almost three feet high and was nearly as wide as the antique trunk in the hall closet, where Mom kept extra bed linens. The roofline was filled with sharp points made of gables, turrets, and spires. The outside of the house was painted gray and black, and was covered in tall, skinny windows that made Jason think of ancient, haunted fortresses. And whenever anyone unlatched the dollhouse and swung it open, the hinges would squeal like a terrified animal pinned down by a hungry predator. Its rooms were linked in a confusing jumble—the total opposite of the simple, streamlined condo where the Benjamins lived. The dollhouse had always given Jason the heebie-jeebies, but now that it was haunting his sister’s dreams, he wished that his mom had never inherited it.

Lou backed away. He heard a quiver in her voice as she said, “I’d be happy if I never had to look at it again.”

A phone call pulled Jason out of a dreamless sleep, and when he wandered to the kitchen, he found his parents pacing. The anger of the previous night had been replaced by worry.

“What now?” asked Jason, thinking of the dollhouse. “Is Lou okay?”

“She’s still in bed,” said Dad.

His mom took his hands and sat him down. “Aunt Paige just called from Ohio. Your cousin Marcus is missing.”

Jason felt something in his chest tighten. “But we just saw him a few months ago.” Dad covered his face with his hands. Jason realized how silly he must sound. Every day, people see each other for the last time.

Mom continued. “Aunt Paige said that yesterday morning, he was simply … gone. He’d taken his cello and a bag with some clothes. They think he might have run away.”

“But why?”

“I don’t know, honey. But your aunt needs my support. I’m booking a flight to Ohio this afternoon. And I’m taking Lou with me.”

Jason flinched. “Lou?”

Dad chimed in. “It might be good for your sister to get away from Walnut Creek for a while.”

Jason sensed that there were other reasons hidden inside his father’s first reason: It might be good for your sister to get away from the dollhouse in the basement. Also: It might be good for all of us to have some time apart.

CHAPTER 2

LOU WAS AFRAID to fall asleep on the plane, but the engines whirred in her ears and she caught herself nodding off several times. In the few moments of creeping unconsciousness, she could hear screaming and creaking doors and footsteps coming up quickly behind her … echoes of the familiar nightmare that had woken her so many nights over the last month.

Then the plane was braking hard, throwing her body forward, the lap belt catching her before she could smash into the seat in front of her. Outside, past all the roads and fields, a dense line of foliage revealed land that was almost totally flat. Quite a difference from the rolling hills and mountains around the Bay Area.

Mom leaned over and whispered in her ear, “We made it, honey. Safe and sound.”

The words safe and sound made Lou think of her cousin, and for a second, she felt nauseated, knowing that Marcus might be neither of those things.

When they got to the Gellers’ house, Aunt Paige pulled Lou’s mom into a long hug. “We’re so glad you’re here!” she said, her voice cracking a little. “The police have been in the house all morning, and we don’t know what to do. What could have happened?”

Marcus’s oldest brother chimed in. “The little freak is probably just hiding out somewhere, practicing his cello.”

Aunt Paige’s expression hardened, and she turned to Lou. “Thank you for coming,” she said. “It means a whole lot. Ethan, show your cousin up to Marcus’s room.”

Late daylight streamed through gauzy curtains upstairs. Lou plopped her suitcase on the floor and stared around. It felt strange to be in here when Marcus was not. A blue button-down shirt hung on the back of his desk chair, and colored pencils were scattered across the surface of the desk. Several keys on the electric piano in the corner of the room appeared to be smudged with remnants of purple Popsicle melt. A stack of books sat crookedly on the bedside table—The House with a Clock in Its Walls by John Bellairs, Coraline by Neil Gaiman, 50 Simple Magic Tricks to Entertain Your Friends and Family, and a dog-eared biography of a jazz musician named Dave Brubeck.

Lou sat on the bed and cracked the book about magic tricks. One page in the center stuck as she flipped through it. Someone had placed a piece of folded paper inside, and Lou opened it. The email was addressed to Aunt Paige.

Dear Mrs. Geller,

My name is L. Delphinium, and I am the director of the Larkspur Academy for the Performing Arts in New York State. I work with several professional scouts around the world and when one of them attended your son’s recent recital at the Oberlin campus in Ohio, she was overcome by the power of his performance. We would love it if Marcus came to study with us …

Lou read the email over and over, trying to make sense of it. Could this be the answer to where Marcus was? Did Aunt Paige not remember receiving the email? Maybe Marcus had gotten it directly and had never showed it to her. But Marcus didn’t seem like the type to just take off for a music camp in New York without his parents being on board.

Downstairs, horror dawned on Aunt Paige’s face as she scanned the page. “Where did you get this?”

Lou worried that she’d made a mistake. “It was stuck in a book by Marcus’s bed.”

Aunt Paige showed the printout to Lou’s mother, who gasped, “Call the detective!”

“This has got to be some sort of joke,” Aunt Paige went on, as if talking to herself. “Larkspur Academy?”

“Larkspur. You don’t think …” Mom trailed off before glancing at Lou and then pulling her sister away into the kitchen. The two women whispered, and Lou crept to the doorway to catch what they were saying.

She could only hear snippets. “That old mansion burned down years ago, long before Mom and Dad left Greencliffe. Even before Shane went missing …”

Lou knew that Shane had been Mom and Aunt Paige’s brother, and that he’d died when he was young, but no one ever talked about him. At least not around her. Lou leaned closer.

“Maybe the Caldwell family rebuilt it.”

“I don’t think any of them survived the fire.”

“Still, it doesn’t answer why Marcus would have hidden the email from me …”

Her mother gasped, and Lou jolted, covering her mouth to keep from squeaking. “You don’t think this has anything to do with our old dollhouse, do you?”

“The dollhouse?”

“Yes! Gramma was always so proud that it came from Larkspur House …”

Lou clutched at the door frame, her head spinning. The dollhouse had come from a place called Larkspur? Her mother caught a glimpse of her. “Louise … honey, why don’t you go sit with your cousins.”

Aunt Paige was making a call. “Yes, Detective Dosteler? This is Paige Geller … thank you. Listen, my niece found some information that I think you need to see … Now? Yes, I can bring it to the station right away.”

Lou sat in front of the television as the sun sank past the horizon. She couldn’t fathom Marcus spending another night without his family, and it felt like they’d made no progress in finding him.

Eventually, she crept upstairs and turned on the family’s computer in the alcove over the front door. Logging on to her messenger account, she found that Jason was also online. She mentioned what was going on with the email printout, and Mom and Aunt Paige’s conversation about Larkspur.

You found a clue! he wrote back. Nice work, Detective!

How’s everything in Walnut Creek? Miss me?

You wish, he teased. It’s finally quiet around here.

She knew he was joking, but still, it stung.

Tired from the flight and the lack of sleep the previous night, she stretched out on Marcus’s comforter and closed her eyes. Her stomach grumbled. Uncle Gilbert had said he’d order pizza. She hoped that he hadn’t forgotten. She thought about flipping through the book about magic tricks, but she couldn’t stop thinking about five children running through the dollhouse and the shifting mass of shadow that chased them. Before she knew it, the words on the page blurred and shadows swirled as her eyelids grew heavy and her head began to nod.

In California, Jason enjoyed an evening of peace and quiet in his bedroom. His sister’s dollhouse was locked in the basement storage room two floors below, and it felt as though the bizarre energy that lived inside the condo was gone now.

According to Lou, Marcus had secretly made his way to a music academy in New York. Jason knew that his cousin loved music and was kind of a cello prodigy, but he had never taken Marcus to be adventurous. To travel alone across the country without even telling your parents? That was actually kinda punk.

If it were true, the police would probably find Marcus within the next couple of hours. Mom and Lou would have a nice visit and then come home. And Jason could focus on his summer science project, mapping the ecosystems surrounding Mount Diablo. It made him feel good to keep organized, to know where everything fit. It helped him understand how he fit in too. He opened a folder on his computer containing photographs he’d taken of plants and animals while hiking in the parks, and then began to organize the images into categories.

1. Elevation
2. Habitat type
3. Predators
4. Prey

After a moment, he thought of a new category.

5.Environmental dangers

Brush fires. Earthquakes. Drought. Floods … Dollhouses and nightmares.

Lately, it seemed that anything could happen, and nowhere was safe.

There was a knock at the bedroom door. Jason turned to find his father standing in the hall. His face looked gray. Something was very, very wrong. When Jason stood, his chair tumbled over backward and whacked against the floor.

The noise snapped Dad out of his spell. He rushed into the room and threw his arms around Jason, squeezing so hard that Jason couldn’t catch his breath. He managed to ask, “What happened?”

“Lou is gone. Missing. Just like Marcus.”

Jason felt like someone had removed his skin, the cool air in his bedroom biting directly into his flesh. “That’s not … I just chatted … You’re joking!”

“I wouldn’t joke about this,” Dad said. “Your mother went upstairs to get Lou for dinner and found Marcus’s room empty. The Gellers searched the whole house and the yard and the neighborhood. The police came, but they found nothing.”

“Do they think someone took her?” Jason choked out.

Dad shook his head violently. “They don’t know. The first available flight to Ohio isn’t until early tomorrow morning. I booked tickets for us. Pack a bag so we can just get up and go.”

Later, in bed, darkness throbbed at the corners of Jason’s vision. His lungs felt like they’d shriveled. In his mind, he tried to list places where Lou could be hiding, but he didn’t know Marcus’s neighborhood well enough. If she were here, he’d scream at her for frightening all of them, mentioning all the reasons she should never do it again.

1. I’m scared
2. I’m scared
3. I’m scared
4. I’m—

Something crawled across his cheek. Jason bolted upright, imagining spiders. When he wiped at his face, his fingers came away wet. The tears only made him angrier.

“Jason …”

It was a whisper from the hallway. Jason opened the door and peered around the corner. The voice called, louder, as if from the mudroom near the condo’s back staircase. “Jason …”

“Dad?” Jason called out. “Did you hear that?”

But his father didn’t answer. Jason made his way down the hall. His father’s door was locked, and when Jason knocked, his father didn’t answer.

“Shhh …” The voice came again. This was followed by the squeaking of the mudroom’s door.

“Louise? Is that you?” But he knew it wasn’t.

Footsteps pattered down the stairs, and Jason ran to keep up. Glancing out into the lighted stairwell, Jason saw a shadow disappear around the lowest landing.

“Hurry!”

This time the voice was clear and present and totally real. It echoed up the chamber, pulling Jason forward. Barefoot, he raced down the steps as if the owner of the voice might get away along with all the answers he’d need to ever get to sleep again.

Down and down and down he went. Past the first floor, toward the basement.

It wasn’t until he was standing in front of its open door that he realized the voice had called him to the storage room. His father had warned him and Lou that neither was to open it.

Darkness flickered inside.

After a few seconds, Jason’s eyes began to adjust. Against the far wall, perched in shadow like a hidden beast, was the dollhouse.

“Come in,” the voice whispered.

CHAPTER 3

JASON SWIPED AT the wall inside the door, but he couldn’t find the switch. A sliver of light beamed from the stairwell.

“Hello?” Jason tried to take a deep breath, but his chest refused to expand. Tightness at his temples made him squint. He crept past shadowed cardboard boxes that were stuffed with Hanukkah decorations and baby clothes and old books and art projects from when he was little. The boxes were stacked neatly in several rows.

The dollhouse was straight ahead. In the dark, it seemed larger than it did in Lou’s bedroom. The roofline was pointier, with several more towers and turrets than he remembered. Was it a trick of the light?

Between his own shallow breaths, he could hear someone else breathing too. He closed off his throat, trying to pinpoint where it was coming from. It sounded as though someone was on the other side of the dollhouse, but that was impossible. Just behind it, a cinder block wall rose up from the basement’s concrete floor.

Jason was about to turn around when every window of the dollhouse at his feet blinked to life and a cool glow spilled out.

He stumbled backward and then scrambled toward the storage room’s door, but the boxes were gone now, and so was the light from the stairwell. He couldn’t tell where he was.

Jason shouted for his father, but only silence answered him. As the darkness expanded in all directions, he spoke to himself instead. “Wake up, Jason … Please …”

Something brushed against his cheek. This time, it wasn’t tears. He spun, waving his hands blindly. A wet slap hit the floor behind him, and his chest constricted. He leapt away, realizing for the first time that he was barefoot. The floor was no longer smooth concrete, but gritty and pockmarked and damp, like he was outside. Something dragged itself toward him, slithering quickly over his toes, leaving behind a warm stickiness. He clamped his throat shut to keep from shrieking. He pictured the photos of insects and snakes and furry things with claws and fangs that he’d been organizing for his science project.

This had to be a dream. A very bad dream. And all he had to do was wake up …

“Jason!” The voice was calling from somewhere far behind him. It was no longer a whisper. Now it belonged to a young girl—high and sweet, like a song. “This way!”

He scanned the darkness and found a pinpoint glow in the distance. It was a singular and unmoving spark, like someone had punched a hole in a giant piece of black construction paper and was shining a powerful spotlight from behind it. That was where the voice was coming from—hundreds of feet away. “Hurry!” Jason raced toward it, his bare feet pounding against the uneven ground. Sounds of scrabbling and scraping followed him. The pinpoint glow grew brighter. Hope swelled in his chest until he realized what he was running toward.

The dollhouse.

How had the distance grown so far? Unless this was like Lou’s nightmare … Unless …

He didn’t want to come any closer to it, but he sensed the things in the dark creeping toward him. He imagined:

1. Claws
2. Rank breath
3. Teeth made for breaking bones and tearing into muscle

His mouth agape, Jason ran faster than he’d ever done during gym class. If Mr. Lingnofski were timing him, he knew he’d have broken some sort of record. He approached the glow that beamed from inside the dollhouse’s windows, and then he skidded to a halt. His sister’s toy was only a few feet away now. There was nowhere else to go, nowhere to run.

To his relief, the sounds that had followed him faded away—grunts and scraping footfalls retreated into the dark. He swung out at the shadows. “Stay away from me!” he called out, before bending over, heaving breath, trying to not vomit.

A few moments later, he straightened his spine and listened for the voice that had saved him, as if it might be whispering to him from nearby.

Instead, Jason heard other voices. Frightened voices. They came from inside the house. Crouching, he peered through the slim windows. There appeared to be several dolls scattered throughout the maze of rooms and halls inside. One of the dolls caught his eye. It had pale skin and long, dark hair. It looked exactly like his sister.

The sight of it knocked away his breath again. “Louise … ,” he whispered. His voice echoed around him, and he felt foolish. Then the figure moved. Jason nearly toppled over. The doll that looked like his sister actually walked through a parlor, shuffling her feet in his sister’s familiar gait.

Was this really happening? Could he trust his own eyes? Even if this was a bad dream, there had to be some logic to it. Right? Talk to her. Ask her what’s going on …

“L-Lou? Can you hear me?”

She paid no attention but continued to look around the space, dragging her tiny fingertips across miniature marble busts, as if collecting dust.

“Lou!” he yelled. Again, no response.

“Hello?” Another voice came from another part of the house. It was another tiny girl whose skin was brown, with hair even darker than Lou’s. It was brushed high in the front and pinned up on the sides before falling in long curls to her shoulders. Her short-sleeved, red-and-white polka-dot dress revealed long, thin arms. She stood stiffly in the center of a large bathroom. An elegant claw-foot bathtub sat on top of black-and-white tiles, which were laid out in intricate diamonds across the floor. “Is this a joke?” asked the girl. “I don’t find it funny! Mama! Auntie Kerani! Where did you go?”

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