“Molly.” That did it. This had to be a dream.

  I took her hand anyway and introduced myself. It got me a laugh. “I already know who you are, Quinn. Annie talks about you all the time.”

  “Annie? Like… My grandma?” I glanced around. There was still no sign of either of the old folks. “What happened to them?”

  “They aren’t here.”

  “Did they go out?”

  “Something like that.”

  “So… It’s just us?”

  “Don’t put words in my mouth,” chided Molly, with a cluck of her tongue. She pulled herself forward onto her knees, then draped her arms over the back of the couch. “You really don’t know what’s going on, do you?”

  I shook my head.

  Molly asked, “Didn’t you look in the mirror, down in the basement? I saw you go down there.”

  “Why would I look in the mirror? I was trying to figure out what was going on!”

  “Looking in the mirror will help you figure out what’s going on,” said Molly. “Go on, go use the mirror in the downstairs bathroom.”

  My brows pinched together. “Since when is there a downstairs bathroom?”

  Molly just shrugged at me. “I don’t know. Why is there a downstairs bathroom?”

  Was she talking about my story? I hadn’t wanted the house to look identical to the one where I lived. I thought that would be in bad taste. But… I didn’t see how that could actually affect anything.

  All the same, I wanted to get some actual answers, so I made my way down the hall and over to the room that, in my illustrations, served as the downstairs bathroom. I pulled open the door, realizing for the first time that there were no dolls sitting around.

  That was unsettling. Even more unsettling was the look of my reflection; I looked exactly like my own illustration, straight down to the fact that my hair was a fraction of an inch shorter, my eyes were drawn in a much bigger style similar to stereotypical animation, and my makeup was immaculate.

  A strange paleness had taken over my pallor. Like death. I could see the hint of blue on my cheeks, and heavy dark brown bruising under my eyes, as though it had been a very, very long time since I had gone to sleep.

  Though I could have sworn I had been wearing jeans and a t-shirt seconds ago, I now found myself in the tattered purple dress that my illustrations were always sporting, complete with my tall lacy white knee socks and my Mary Jane shoes.

  They were even scuffed shoes, just like the way I drew them.

  The only thing missing…were the stars.

  As is Written

  “Do you understand it now?” Molly asked from the doorway to the bathroom. Her voice made me jump. I spun around, looking at her with wide eyes.

  Jabbing a finger at my reflection, I demanded, “What’s going on?”

  “I’ve been here for a really long time,” said Molly, more somber than before. “There are others like me, old timers. You’ve seen a few of them.” She frowned, just for a moment. “You were mean to a few of them.” And then her expression brightened again. “You should try to make friends with a few of them.”

  “A few what?”

  “A few of the dolls.” Molly grabbed her tutu and did a curtsy. “See? My joints might look fleshy, but they aren’t. I’m no more human tonight than I ever am, and no less doll just because I can walk and talk.”

  Maybe this wasn’t a dream. Maybe I had hit my head so hard in the basement I flung myself into a coma.

  “Okay. Okay, fine. So there are others. Are you going to show me where they’re at?” Maybe someone else would be able to tell me what was going on. Molly didn’t seem keen on answering questions.

  “Upstairs.” She offered me her hand.

  I took it, letting her lead me away. “Why is your hand so cold?”

  “I don’t have a heart. What is there to warm me? What is there to warm you?”

  “My heart.” I pause. “Uh… Am I dead?”

  Molly countered, “Are you?”

  I thought about it for a moment. “I think I’m knocked out. Maybe in a coma. I’m probably in the hospital right now. Does this town have a hospital?”

  “It used to.” She nodded absently. “But that was a long time ago. Or it was yesterday. I’m not really sure.”

  Ugh. Molly was frustrating.

  We went up the stairs together. Frustrating as she was, Molly was maybe the most graceful person I had ever seen before. Her steps were fluid and totally soundless. Upstairs, she led me into the library.

  It was filled up with books, but not with dolls. There were glass dogs all over the place, and glass cats. A big leather reading chair was next to an oil lamp. Sitting in the chair was—

  “No way,” I gasped, stepping backward. “The clown doll?”

  “That’s Harry to you,” said the clown. “Not that you should get to say anything to me.”

  I rubbed at my eyes. The clown stayed. My makeup was not affected.

  Sitting on the floor next to him was another doll, which I knew for a fact normally sat on a shelf in the living room. She had a pudgy face and a black dress. Her long white hair was tied back with a black silk ribbon, a bow just slightly on the side.

  She was lying on her stomach, legs akimbo behind her, skirt spread over the hardwood floor. A book was spread out before her, sitting open. One arm was folded in front of it, to keep her propped up. “Just ignore Harry. He’s been in this kind of a mood all day.”

  I gaped, “Who are you?”

  “Tabitha,” She didn’t look up. “And you’re Quinn.”

  “Annie has told all of us about you,” Molly explained.

  Harry turned to Molly, rather than me. “Is she here to take care of those new folks? I’m not happy about the mess they’re making.”

  Shaking my head, purple curls bouncing against my cheeks, I asked, “What new folks?”

  “Six people moved in, just last month.” Molly bobbed her head from side to side. “You know about them already. From your story.”

  My stomach flipped. “In my story, I kill those people.”

  Molly blinked, just once. It made her look a bit like a cat. “And?”

  Harry laughed. It wasn’t a nice laugh—it was…maniacal. “And she doesn’t want to! Think about that. All this anger she keeps going on about, and she doesn’t want to!”

  Tabitha interjected, “I wouldn’t want to, either. There are so many of them. I’ve never seen a family this big before!”

  “You’ve never been raised in a circus.” Harry harrumphed.

  “Okay, wait, we’re totally off track. What’s going on with the doors?” I gestured over my shoulder. “I tried to leave, but I couldn’t.”

  “Molly’s been here longest,” said Tabitha, glancing at the ballerina.

  Molly pursed her lips. “It’s just that sometimes doors work, don’t you know, and sometimes doors don’t work. I guess they didn’t work today.”

  “Why?” I insisted. “The window, too. It was like nothing was out there.”

  “The yard is out there,” said Harry, as though I’m stupid.

  Hotly, I snapped at him, “It should be out there, but there wasn’t anything out there! I looked, and I looked a lot!”

  Molly waved her hands, stepping neatly between the two of us. “No fighting. Does it matter why the door didn’t work, really? You aren’t going to leave, not yet.”

  Stubbornly, I said, “Maybe I wanted to leave.”

  “Doesn’t matter. You can’t.” Molly shrugged. “You have to take care of the family.”

  Surprised, I questioned her, “Did you want me to kill them?”

  “It’s a lot of people,” said Tabitha, doubt in her voice. She finally sat up, tucking her legs underneath herself so that the skirt covered all of her skin. She folded her hands nice and properly in her lap. “A mother and father, and their four children. Three girls and a boy!”

  Harry gave another one of his mean laughs. He lurched forward, bracing his arms on the tops of his thighs. His makeup was glossy. “Not a chance! It’s a grandfather, and his kid, and then her kids.”

  “Three girls and a boy,” Tabitha repeated, insisting.

  Harry nodded. “Yeah, three girls and a boy.”

  Molly shook her head. “You’re both wrong. I’m certain they aren’t related at all. They just showed up here one day, and all of them decided that here is where they would stay.”

  “That sounds stupid,” said Harry, bluntly.

  “It might sound stupid, but it’s true.” Molly let out a little huff and turned to Quinn. “Do you know who they are?”

  My art-history teacher, the school counselor, Alice, May, and Trevor too. Then the original girl, the one that I drew to be the hero. They were all random people who had made me mad, but in my pictures, I had made them a family.

  “I think it might be a little bit of all of that.” I frowned.

  Molly shrugged again. “I suppose it doesn’t really matter. The only thing that matters is whether you’re going to do something about them.”

  “This is our house,” said Harry. “They put all of the dolls in boxes in the basement.”

  “Your dolls,” said Tabitha, but I wasn’t sure that she was actually talking to me.

  Molly looked at me. “Are you going to find them? Are you going to take care of them?” She took hold of my hand. “You’ll do what’s right. You always do.”

  I didn’t know about that.

  In my own opinion, I had a very long track record for always doing the wrong thing. But this was a dream, right? And it didn’t matter if I did the wrong thing in a dream, because—it wasn’t actually happening.

  “I think I could do that,” I said with a nod of the head. “It would mean they became ghosts too, right?”

  Tabitha nodded. “And we could get the other dolls back out of their boxes. It would be our house again, not theirs.”

  I looked toward Molly, brows raised in question. She smiled at me, but the look didn’t seem to meet her strange and haunting eyes. “That’s what the story says,” she muttered. “As is written. As it must be.”

  “As is written, as it must be,” I repeated, though what I was really thinking was my own personal little motto: Whatever, forever.

  This was a dream.

  I might as well have some fun while I was here.

  Not Real

  The first thing I realized when I left behind the library was that this manor was way, way bigger than it should have been. None of the rooms were in the right spot, either. Just like there had been a bathroom down on the first floor, there were three different bedrooms on the second floor. None of them were mine, either, despite the fact that I had woken up in my own room earlier!

  Sitting at the bottom of the stairs was a knife—a big butcher knife. I had drawn this exact knife earlier. I picked it up and carefully ran my finger over the edge of the blade. Ouch! It was sharp!

  Yeah, okay, that was dumb.

  “This might be the weirdest dream I’ve ever had.” I shook my head. But the fact that it was a dream, that meant that there wasn’t anything wrong with seeing my story through to the end, right?

  The way I was looking at it, I might have been able to even use this to my advantage. If I could remember any of this when I finally woke up, then I might be able to get some more details for my story.

  Heck, yeah.

  Unable to see any drawbacks to this plan, I started trying to make my way through the maze of the house. There were more staircases than there should have been. The furniture seemed to be a mix of pieces from different eras and time frames.

  One room must have belonged to Harry, because it looked like a party shop had thrown up on it. Big bright streamers were tacked up on the wall, a dart board hung across from the bed, and more toy model cars than I could count. There was no sign of the person, though.

  I was starting to get irritated.

  “Where could they be?” I muttered. Then, more loudly, “Hello?”

  Could the people in my story hear the Ghost? I had never figured that one out. I guess there was no harm in trying to get their attention. It made me feel better, at least.

  “Hello!” I shouted again, stepping into the hallway. It seemed to stretch out and then shrink again, like a rubber band. Quite suddenly, I was standing in the house, just as it was meant to be.

  There was the bathroom door. There was the door to my grandparents room. And there was someone with long blonde hair making her way down the stairs. My heart skipped a beat. It was one of the girls!

  Excitement surged inside me. Licking at my top front teeth, I started after her. I was weightless, suddenly. My feet slammed heavily against the steps as I went down them, but there was no sound.

  The blonde girl hit the landing and paused, looking around for something. She was wearing a chic pink pair of coveralls with glittery red shoes. Her blonde hair was down loose, hanging over the spread of her shoulders and her back.

  “Did anyone else hear that?” she called out. There was no answer. “Weird. Did you guys go out or something?”

  “I didn’t,” I growled in the scariest ghost-voice I could muster, finally hitting the bottom step. I slammed my hand forward, jamming the knife through her chest. She made a sound; it wasn’t really a scream or a yelp, but something in between. She staggered, falling forward.

  The blonde hit the floor with a thump. Blood spread out around her, staining the wooden floor crimson. Her hair splayed out, soaking up the red.

  She reached forward, trying to drag herself away from the steps. I grabbed the knife, pulling it out with a wet schlick and brought it back down on her again, slightly further to the right, and then a third time, and a fourth time, until she stopped moving; until she was still as death beneath me.

  There was more red than I had ever seen before, spilling out, seeping into the digital watercolor wash of the world. The bright shine of it could only have been obtained through digital animation.

  Blood clung to my fingers. It was warm and wet. A part of me thought I should have been scared, but mostly, I was just exhilarated. It was like playing a violent video game, right? No one felt guilty when they killed other players in a first-person shooter. Why should I feel guilty over something like this—that didn’t actually matter?

  So, I didn’t.

  I didn’t feel guilty about it.

  I didn’t care.

  The way the blood dripped down the blade of the knife. The light of the chandelier when it caught on the blade. It was fascinating. I didn’t know that the red would swirl like that, the way it would slide.

  The sight stirred something in me. Something dark and vicious and mean.

  And then…something curious.

  I laid the knife down on the bottom step of the stairs, and then I reached out, and I took hold of the girl’s shoulder. With a thump, I rolled her over.

  It was Alice.

  At least, it was the version of Alice that I had drawn for my illustration class. She looked exactly the same. My throat went tight. There was something about seeing her laid out there on the ground that just…

  It made me feel a whole lot of ways, all at once. I stepped closer, crouching down beside the prone body. Reaching out, I jabbed one finger against her cheek. Her body was already starting to grow cold. Her eyes stare ahead. The stars that I had drawn in them to make the comic less gruesome were right there.

  Well, that was the kicker, right? Those stars wouldn’t be there if this was real. A final wave of relief crashed over me. I let out a heavy breath, my chest shuddering on the exhale. The tension that had started to build up in my shoulders faded away.

  It was just a dream. This whole mess. This house. This person. That body. The knife. None of it was real.

  “You’re not real,” I told the body. The dream body. Dream Alice.

  She didn’t answer me.

  “You got one of them!” Molly announced from the top of the stairs, her voice cutting through the otherwise silent room. “I wasn’t sure if you were actually going to be able to pull that off.”

  “I wasn’t either,” I admitted, turning and picking the knife back up. “What am I supposed to do now?”

  Molly tilted her head to the side. “What do you mean?”

  “With her,” I gestured at Dream Alice with the tip of the knife. “What am I supposed to do with her? I mean, I can’t just leave her here, can I?”

  Molly gave one of those tittering giggles of hers. She climbed up onto the railing, and then hopped onto the side of it, sliding down it standing up; with her arms held out to the side and her tutu glittering, the twist of satin ribbons fluttering beside her. It looked almost like she was flying.

  She hopped off before she hit the end of the banister, landing nimbly on the tips of her toes. She gave a sharp-kneed little bow and smiled at me. “Leave who where?”

  “That’s not funny,” I told her, and turned to wave my arms at Dream Alice. Except… there was no one there. Even the blood had vanished, cleaned up so quick and so swift that there wasn’t even a stain left on the hardwood.

  Molly shrugged. “I’m not making a joke. It just doesn’t look to me like there’s anything there that needs cleaning!”

  “Oh.” I frowned. “What happened to her?”

  Molly just hummed. “Does it really matter?”

  “I guess not,” I agreed, after a little bit of thought. It was a dream, right? So it didn’t feel as if anything was going to matter. Dream Alice might not have done anything to me, but her real world counterpart had.

  A solid month, that’s how long Alice had been hassling me. And… A thought struck me. “How many kids did you say there were?”

  Molly flipped up her fingers. “Four.” Then she lowered one of them. “Well, three of them now.”

  She rocked forward. A slow smile spread over her face. She reached out and tapped a finger against my cheek. I jerked backward, startled by the touch.

  “You should go look in the mirror.”

  My stomach turned. I figured she meant I had gotten blood on my face and dream or not, the thought of that on my cheek was enough to make my stomach churn. I dropped the knife, letting it clatter to the floor at my feet, and flung myself past her.