“Mum! Mum! We found a new room!”
“Another one?”
“Yep!”
“It’s the second one this week!”
“This room was full of dolls!”
“They’re so creepy.”
“They all look at you!”
“And keep looking at you!”
“The whole time you’re in there!”
“And then you can hear them laughing when you leave!”
“One of them winked at me,” Daniel said. “And then her eye fell out!”
“Well, I always wondered where they all came from,” Agnes said. “You must have found their nest.”
“It’s behind Ethel’s bedroom!”
“You have to crawl through a little tunnel to get there.”
“There’s a door in my cupboard,” Ethel said. “That’s how you get in to see them.”
“And how they get out to see us!”
“There never used to be a door there,” Agnes said. “I’d have noticed.”
“We know, Mum.”
“We already told you this is a new room.”
“Well, don’t tell Oya and Anna,” Agnes said. “They might not want to know they live in a house that grows. It might frighten them.”
“Anna’s not scared of anything!” Ethel said.
“Well, Oya might be,” said Agnes. “You did say these dolls were frightening, remember?”
“We did not,” said Claire. “We said they were creepy!”
“They make you all shivery just to look at them,” Tina said.
“But they’re not scary at all,” Ethel said.
“Not even when they wink at you!” Daniel told his mother.
“And their eyes fall out!”
“And they start bleeding doll’s brains out of their eyeholes!”
“I really don’t think you should tell Oya,” Agnes said firmly.
__________
Notes:
1. Written on May 4th, 2021
__________