My footsteps thundered up the stairs. This time, they made sound. It was like before, I was floating down soundlessly as the Ghost, and now I was just myself again, hurrying to wash up in the bathroom.

  I skidded through the open door and over to the sink, flipping on the water almost before I even glanced in the mirror. I was expecting to see red spattered over my skin, but if there had been any blood there, it was gone—just like the blood on the floor and the blood on my fingers.

  My face wasn’t clear, though. I could instantly tell what Molly had been pointing at.

  Right there on my cheek, in the same spot as the first illustration—the same spot as the star that had gotten stuck there with printer ink—was a bright blue star.

  “No way.” My breath left me in an exhale. I leaned closer to the mirror, letting the edge of the counter press hard against my belly. Reaching up, I scratched at it with the tip of my nail.

  It didn’t come off.

  “That’s… That’s actually pretty cool.” I turned from side to side. “Okay, this is a weird dream but… It’s pretty awesome, too.” Then I leaned back down, settling on the flats of my feet.

  Even though there wasn’t any blood visibly left on my hands, I washed them off anyway, turned around, and found a doll sitting on the wicker table just across from the sink, nestled in among the porcelain figurines of people wrapped up in towels and taking baths.

  I stepped forward, reaching out and carefully picking the doll up. My palms settled on the fabric middle of the doll on either side, just beneath her arms. She was fully plush, save for her face, which had an almost rubber sculpt to it. Silicone, probably.

  Long blonde hair ran down the doll’s back. She had stars in her eyes. Her bright pink coveralls were rolled into cuffs just above her glitter-covered sneakers. They were shedding. Glistening red sparkles coated everything. The table she had been sitting on and somehow, even though I hadn’t touched them, my hands, too.

  “Gross.” I dropped the doll back unceremoniously onto the table.

  Molly had once again managed to sneak up on me without me hearing her coming. She was standing in the doorway to the bathroom, leaning almost luxuriously against the door. “See? It’s all taken care of. It’s just how it’s supposed to be. A new doll, a new friend.”

  “Like my story,” I said, with a slight nod. I wiped my hands off on the skirt of my dress, then staggered. “Whoa.” I wasn’t wearing the Ghost’s dress anymore. I was back in my jeans I’d been wearing when I passed out in the basement. “That is seriously freaky.”

  Molly laughed and turned away. “Come on! I want to show you something!”

  Without even looking back at the doll once, I followed her out of the bathroom. Who knew what other secrets this dream would hold?

  What's Out the Window

  Molly wanted to take me into the kitchen, where Tabitha was already waiting. The little girl in the black dress was sitting on the counter; her back was so straight, and she was so proper about it, I almost thought that she had turned back into a doll. But then she blinked.

  I smiled at her—the most convincing one I could muster. “So, what’s… What’s actually going on?”

  “Over here,” Molly beckoned. “I knew that if I told you at the start, then you weren’t going to believe me. You had to see the way things worked elsewhere, first.”

  Tabitha frowned. “What are you doing?”

  Molly ignored her and went to the kitchen counter. There was a window just behind the big metal basin of the sink. It was closed. “Look!”

  “Molly,” Tabitha warned.

  Molly ignored her. “What do you see?”

  I joined Molly at the window and frowned. “I don’t see anything. It’s just like the window out in the back hall. There’s just nothing out there. Why? What do you see?”

  With a laugh, Molly hopped up onto the counter, twisting around so that she was sitting on the edge. Her legs swung, the heels of her shoes bumping against the cabinet doors. She tilted her head to the side and blinked at me.

  “Nothing,” she prattled. “Duh!”

  “Then… what was the big deal about showing me? I already knew that the windows are broken,” I said, a frown tugging at my face.

  “Do you know why they’re broken?”

  I shook my head.

  “It’s because that’s all you imagined when you were playing pretend!”

  Tabitha slid off of the counter and straightened her dress. She had a strange look on her face, like she wanted to say something. In the end, she decided to just be quiet and step out of the room, soundless as Molly ever was.

  “You mean when I was making my story,” I started to put more pieces together.

  Molly tapped her heels against the cabinet doors again. “Sure, that!”

  “Okay, that made sense,” I told her. At least, it made sense as far as dream logic went. This was the only part of the setting that I had made for my book. I hadn’t even included windows in most shots, so of course there wasn’t like, a backyard or something outside to go wandering around in.

  I’d figured I just didn’t need to make the world that big. All of the other students in my class had these massive sets! Things outside, people that came and went from different buildings and cars and drove around.

  But my piece—it just had the one set. I’d liked how closed-in it felt. My own world was closed in, you know? I had lost all of it in the fire, and now I just had this stupid house. So, I had just made the stupid house.

  “So, I can’t go outside?” I inquired.

  Molly answered with a statement. “There’s nothing out there. Just darkness.”

  “Do any of the windows open?” I questioned.

  Molly shook her head. “No. Everything is just as it was, and just as it is meant to be. You played pretend here, but you didn’t give it doors or windows. Not ones that go outside. You just made us…and you made them.”

  “The strangers,” I stated. “That family. So I’m right about it? The other people—they’re all the characters that I made for my illustration class. That was Alice then.”

  “I don’t know their names,” Molly said in a disinterested tone. “I just know I don’t like them very much. They came here one day, and they locked us all up. All of us, in boxes!”

  “The boxes in the basement?”

  “That’s right. They didn’t like the other dolls. It’s funny, right? They hated them so much, but then they turned into them. Heh. I like that.” Molly pursed her lips but allowed the corners to turn upward. “Very fitting.”

  “Do you know where the other kids are? The—there should be another girl, right?” I looked around, but the kitchen was empty. Tabitha was standing in the doorway, peeking around the ridge like she thought I couldn’t see her.

  She didn’t seem very fun. I thought that her dress looked a bit like someone in mourning, too.

  Molly said, “I don’t know where they are. You have to find them. Like Hide and Seek!” She clutched her hands in front of her chest. “I’ve always loved Hide and Seek! It’s so fun!”

  “But I didn’t count. So it’s not like that at all. When you play Hide and Seek, you count. And while you’re counting, you can hear the direction people run off in,” I said, tapping my chin with one hand. “How am I going to find them when I don’t even know where to look?”

  Molly bent forward at the waist, reaching out and curling a dainty hand around the jut of my shoulder. She said, “You do know where to look! You already played pretend with them, Quinn!”

  “...How do you know my name?”

  “Why wouldn’t I know it? This is your story. This is your game! You’re Quinn!”

  That was a fair point.

  Why would I dream up a girl who knew all of the rules to the world but didn’t know me? I had to just get better at accepting that dream logic is what’s running this place. I mean, a dead girl just turned into a doll. What did it matter if Molly knew my name, even before I had told it to her?

  It didn’t.

  “Do you want to help me find one of the other girls?” I offered.

  Molly’s eyes went bright. “Do I ever!” She jumped off of the counter. “We should check the study!”

  “So you do know where they are!” I said with a snap of my fingers.

  Molly’s cheeks turned bright pink with an embarrassed blush. “No,” she protested. “But if I was a girl, I would be in the study. Especially if I liked to read.”

  Did my heroine like to read? No, I hadn’t really given her any personality. That meant that May must have liked to read. I bet she just did romance novels and stupid stuff like that. She didn’t strike me as a secret nerd.

  “Do you wanna lead the way?” I suggested. “I knew the old manor—the one in my world; the real one—like the back of my hand.” Something changed on Molly’s face, but the slip in expression was only there for a second and then it was gone again. “But this one changes so much, I might not be able to find it on my own.”

  “Okay!” Molly smiled and skipped out of the room on her silent feet. She walked straight past Tabitha, who watched her with big eyes.

  As I stepped out into the dining room, Tabitha snaked one hand out and curled it around my wrist. “Be careful.”

  I told her, “I bet that I can’t get hurt. I never imagined my Ghost Girl getting hurt.”

  Tabitha gave me a sad look and let go of my hand. Molly had already made it to the doorway on the far side of the room. She planted both hands on her hips. “Come on! What’s taking you so long, Quinn? I thought you wanted me to show you where the study was!”

  “I’m coming.” I waved at Tabitha over my shoulder as I hurried to catch up to Molly. Now, in my own world, the dining room would lead into the foyer, and that would lead into the living room.

  Instead, the dining room led me out into a long, long hallway. The walls were sloped at a weird angle, like I was looking at something in a fun house's room of mirrors. “What’s wrong with the building?”

  Molly didn’t answer me. “The study is this way!”

  She walked fast. That meant I needed to walk fast to keep up with her. I hurried along the hallway, trying not to let the strangely distorted walls push out and make me too dizzy.

  Molly stopped outside of a door on the left. “This is the study!

  “Cool.” I reached for the door knob. My fingers had barely curled around it when Molly grabbed my wrist.

  “Wait,” she instructed.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I mean… You said it yourself. This is what I imagined, right? Harry doesn’t like the strangers. You don’t like the strangers.” I didn’t know what Tabitha thought about it all, but it wasn’t Tabitha’s dream. “So I’m going to kill her, like in my book.”

  Molly shook her head. “I meant how.”

  “Oh. I guess I hadn’t thought about that. The knife, I only put that in one of my pictures. I think… The study?” I frowned, wracking my brain. “Why can’t I remember how the other people died?”

  “There’s a big window in there,” said Molly, instead of answering my question. “You could push her out of it, straight into the nothing!”

  Is that how she died in the book? I wasn’t sure. “Aren’t we on the first floor?”

  “Not anymore,” said Molly. “And it doesn’t matter, because there’s no ground out there. Do you have a better idea?”

  The second half was said like a challenge, but I just shrugged at her. “Not really. I guess that’s what I’m going to do then.”

  This time, when I reached for the door handle, Molly let me turn it. I stepped into the study. There was a strange cool sensation that washed over me. I was once again wearing the Ghost Girl’s dress, with its tattered hem and her pale skin.

  The star on my cheek was warm, and almost felt like it was tingling. Like when your hand fell asleep and you tried to bend your fingers anyway. I reached up and brushed the tip of my thumb over it, and the feeling vanished.

  The study was a tall room. I must have drawn it at some point, because it felt familiar even though I knew that there wasn’t a room with a big taxidermied deer head in it back in my Real World Home. The deer had glassy eyes, but they still seemed to follow me as I crossed the room.

  It really was just a dream version of May. She was sitting in a big overstuffed red clawfoot armchair. Her legs were tucked up on the seat next to her. She had on an olive-green spaghetti strap dress, with a white t-shirt on underneath of it. Her hair even had the big ugly bows I’d drawn in it.

  Her nose was shoved so deep into an Art History text book that she didn’t even notice that anyone was in the room with her. At least, not until Molly slammed the door.

  We both jumped, me and Dream May. She looked up, saw me, and shrieked. It wasn’t even a scream. It was a straight out shriek. She threw the book at me, but I had effectively become Ghost Girl, so it passed through my chest with a rippling water sensation. The sight made her eyes bug out.

  “Ghost!” she shouted, jumping to her feet. “I knew I’d been hearing things!”

  She stumbled sideways. A window was right behind her. Had the window always been there? It was a grand bay window, stretching from floor to ceiling. The type of window typically reserved for adorning the walls of a second-floor room.

  Only darkness shone behind it.

  “You should have been nicer.” I stalked toward her, my steps soundless as I mostly floated across the floor.

  “Please…” Dream May started to cry. Tears rolled down her cheeks in fat, glistening gobs. The kind of tears that you saw in richly illustrated books, thick and stretchy. They didn’t behave like water, but they looked super pretty. “I didn’t do anything. I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  “Yes you do,” I told her, and then I lunged. My palms slammed into her so hard, she went soaring backward. There was a big throw rug under her. Just as Dream May was starting to catch her balance, I reached down, grabbed the rug, and yanked.

  It came straight out from under her.

  With another ear-piercing shriek, Dream May went backward and straight through the glass, out the window. Crash! It shattered behind her, a spray of glistening silver shards.

  It was like watching a movie about space where the astronaut cut the cord. She went out into the blackness, and it seemed to grab her, pulling her farther away from the house. Dream May screamed and screamed, her body twisting and contorting. The blackness was an ink wash, I realized, and it seeped over top of her, covering her up completely.

  Molly gave a giddy laugh and started to clap behind me. “That was amazing, Quinn! I thought that you might not have done it right at first, but then you pulled the carpet and—” She laughed even harder. “That was great!”

  An easy smile crossed my features. People didn’t compliment me very often. Even though this was coming from a dream toy I’d made up, it still gave me the warm fuzzies.

  “Look.” Molly pointed behind me.

  When I looked, it was to find that the window had totally sealed itself up, as though it had never been broken in the first place. “That’s so weird.” I rapped my knuckles against it. “It’s totally solid now.”

  No sign of Dream May out there, either. Which made sense, because two blinks later, Dream May was sitting in the armchair again, only now she was a hard-bodied poseable doll, with a book in her hand. The Art History textbook she’d thrown at me was gone too.

  “She’s not very pretty, is she?” Molly asked, stepping over to the armchair. She braced both of her dainty hands on the rolled fabric at the side of it. “Even as a doll. I certainly wouldn’t buy her!”

  I laughed too, giddy to have finally made a friend that understood. “Me neither! You know, they put everyone else in boxes. We might as well do the same to her. Do you know where there’s a shoe box or something?”

  “Yes!” Molly quickly darted to the door, giving me no choice but to grab Doll May by the arm and hurry after her. We ran through the distorted hallway down to the end. Molly jumped up, grabbing a rope from the ceiling and tugging it down.

  A cloud of glittering dust came down with it. We both coughed, but Molly recovered and scaled the ladder quickly, straight up into an attic that totally didn’t exist in my version of the manor.

  I followed up after her, not bothering to be careful with the doll. It bumped and bashed up against the ladder. The book broke out of her hand and fell onto the floor.

  The attic itself was dark, lit by a strange golden orb above us. There were cardboard boxes labeled CHRISTMAS and HALLOWEEN sitting around the attic, and more of those weird full-sized mannequins that I’d seen down in the basement.

  “Weird. You don’t know why the house looks like this?” I asked.

  “It’s just old,” said Molly. “Old things get dusty and creaky and squeaky and loud.” She squeaked a board beneath one perfectly clean dust-free white shoe. “See?”

  “I meant…the attic.”

  She stared at me blankly.

  “Why is there an attic here? And the changing halls. That kind of thing.”

  Molly’s eyes went bright. “Look! That box is perfect!”

  Okay. So she just wasn’t going to answer that question. Alright, that was fine. Whatever, forever. Right? It didn’t actually matter. This was a dream, so it wasn’t like I could get lost out here forever or anything like that.

  Molly grabbed an old shoe box and carried it over. She blew the dust off. It glittered in the golden light. The dust made me sneeze, but the box was the perfect size for Doll May.

  I put her in it. Molly closed the lid and shoved it aside. “There! Now who should we try to find?”

  I thought about it for a moment. “The dad.” A pause. “Or the grandfather? Tabitha and Harry didn’t seem to know what he really was.”

  “He’s whatever you made him and nothing at all,” Molly sing-songed. “He likes to pace.”

  “Pace?”

  “Yes. He’s always pacing. Up and down he goes, from one room to the next.” Molly uses two fingers to mime out a person walking. “I don’t know what he’s looking for or what he’s thinking about, but he’s always on the move.”