This all started during the autumn of 2004, when myself and two of my best friends, Tommy Ellis and Jamie Campion, were walking home from school. We were walking through the woods that occupied the area between our homes and our middle school. In the woods there was a small memorial dedicated to a local World War I hero by the name of Grover Gunther. Grover had apparently saved the lives of at least 10 soldiers who fallen injured in No Man’s Land during the war. Had apparently dragged each of them, one by one, back to the safety of the trenches. And from the moment that memorial was put in place, the youth of our town began to call those woods “The Grove”. It was a name that would stick for years.
We spent a lot of time hanging out in The Grove. It was a bigger set of woods than you’d imagine. You could get lost in there for hours, if you truly didn’t know where you were going. But my friends and I had come to really love The Grove. Had found it a natural, serene place to be. No one gave you homework in The Grove. No one pushed you into a locker in The Grove. No one yelled at you for not doing your chores in The Grove. No, not in The Grove. The rest of the world could get bent, but The Grove? The Grove was rad as hell.
“Okay, go long.” Tommy had said that day, corking back the football he held in his hands. I ran forward, pretending to run a post route, pretending the trees in the way were defenders blocking me. Since that day I’ve spent a lot of time wondering, what if Tommy had thrown a perfect pass, hit me square in the chest? Or what if he had under-thrown me? How different would our lives had been? Maybe we never would have found what we found that day. We would have just kept walking the other way.
But Tommy didn’t throw a perfect pass. He overthrew me. By a lot. I watched as the football sailed over my head, hit a tree and then bounded away into the distance. I heard what sounded like a squirrel or rabbit quickly darting from the football’s path.
“Tommy, I’m sorry to say, but I don’t think a professional football career is in your future.” That was Jamie who said that. Jamie was British if you could believe it or not. He had moved from London to our little town just over a year before and had become fast friends with Tommy and I.
“You know my dear Watson,” Tommy said in a horrible faux-British accent. “I think you might be on to something.”
“Have you ever considered playing real football?” Jamie said motioning with his feet.
“That’s soccer,” Tommy said dropping the accent. “And no that’s disgusting-“
Already their voices were fading behind me as I went after the football. I came to an area and there was a squirrel hanging onto one of the trees, leering at me with accusing eyes, as if I was the one that had thrown the ball. I went a little further ahead and came to a small clearing and that’s where I found the football…..and something else.
It was a doll house.
The house was modeled after a two story home. It was painted pink with a grey roof. But it wasn’t a bright pink. It was a dull pink. Dull, like an old piece of gum you’d find under a school desk. Much of the house’s paint was chipped and it was stained with something black. Dirt? The windows actually had glass or some kind of plastic paneling, so you couldn’t stick your hands threw. The house looked old too. Used. This wasn’t a doll house that someone just bought at Toys R Us and then ditched in The Grove. Not recently, anyway. At least it didn’t look that way. No, as strange as it sounds the doll house not only looked old, but also perfectly natural sitting in that clearing. As if it had sprouted out from the ground it self.
There was something odd about the clearing as well. It was a bright autumn day, yet there was a dimness to the clearing. As if an overcast of clouds hovered over it, but when you looked up, you saw nothing but perfect blue sky.
“All I’m saying,” I could hear Jamie coming up from behind me. He was talking to Tommy. “Is that in our football we actually use our feet.”
“Yeah,” Tommy said coming up behind Jamie. “And it’s boring as hell. Don’t you agree Will-“
They both stopped as they joined me in the clearing. Now the two of them were looking at the doll house with the same confused look that I had on my face.
“What the hell?” Tommy said, chuckling a little. “Is that…a freaking doll house?”
“Looks like it,” I said. “Weird, huh?”
“Should we burn it?” Tommy said grinning. He pulled out a lighter which he had stolen from his dad. He was going through a bit of pyro phase at the time. Nothing serious. He had burned some of his old G.I. Joe toys and the like. A week prior Jamie and I had watched Tommy burn one of his action figures, while he laughed intentionally like an over the top James Bond villain. It had made us all fall over with laughter. Still Jamie and I had already made it clear we weren’t in on the pyro stuff. Especially not in The Grove.
“No, burning,” I said. “Not in The Grove. Remember?” And I stuck my hand out like a parent. Tommy chuckled and threw the lighter to me.
“No fun,” Tommy said with a wry smile.
“And the lighter fluid,” I said. Again like a parent scolding a child. Tommy sighed and took out a small flask, which he had also stolen from his father, and had filled with lighter fluid.
I put both the lighter and the flask in my coat pockets.
Tommy shrugged and said, “Somethings deserve to get burned. That’s all.”
Jamie approached the doll house and looked over it quizzically. Tommy had called him Watson jokingly, but now Jamie seemed to take on the appearance of Sherlock Holmes. He bent over the doll house, rubbing his chin. He walked around it, taking in every nook and cranny. All he needed was a magnifying glass and pipe to complete the role. Then taking both his hands and he grabbed the house and began to pull, as if he was trying to rip the house apart.
“Jamie, what are you doing?” I said, now with an even more confused look on my face.
“Why won’t it open?” Jamie said out of breath. He stopped pulling.
“What do you mean?” I said.
“Well, it’s a doll house right? Doll houses are suppose to open.”
He was right. Doll houses were segmented and would normally split open so that kids could actually play inside of them.
“Look here,” Jamie said. And he pointed to something on the doll house. Tommy and I approached. Jamie was pointing at a line that ran across the top of the doll house. It was clearly the seam where the doll house was suppose to pull apart. But no matter how much Jamie pulled it would not open.
“Well, somebody opened it,” I said and pointed to one of the windows on the side of the house. The window looked into a small room, and in the room was a small figurine of a man, who sat in a plastic chair. The figurine wore a black suit with a black tie. It’s face was completely blank. No mouth. No nose. No eyes. Just a blank white face. “How else did that get in there?”
“You’re right,” Jamie said. “And look, there’s toy furniture in all the other rooms. Someone put that in there.”
“Guys, who cares really?” Tommy said. “It’s just a stupid doll house. Are we really not gonna burn it?”
“No!” Jamie and I said in unison. And then we all broke out in laughter.
Then Jamie bent down and opened the front door of the doll house.
“Maybe there’s something,” Jamie put his hand through the front door, and then Jamie was gone. There was no popping sound. No woosh or loud effect. One moment Jamie had been there and the next he had completely disappeared. Tommy and I stared at each other, not knowing what had just occurred. Dumb shock covered out faces. Fear too…
“Jamie?” I said stupidly looking around. As if he had run off, even though I had clearly seen him just disappear out of thin air.
“W-what the hell?” Tommy was saying nervously. “Where did Jamie go?”
“I don’t know,” I said shaking my head. I began to back away from the doll house as if it were a bomb that might blow up any second. Tommy began to do the same. And then I did hear something. It was faint, but it was the sound of tapping. It was coming from the doll house. I bent down, and what I saw made my eyes bulge.
It was Jamie. He was IN The Doll House. He was standing at one of the windows on the first floor, knocking on it. He was knocking very hard. It was all too bizarre to take in. Jamie had somehow shrunk down and was now inside the doll house. Jamie stopped knocking when he saw he got my attention and a smile broke out on his face. He waved. I stupidly waved back as if I was seeing him across the hallway at school. Tommy had bent down as well.
“No fucking way,” Tommy said. “Jamie is that you?”
Jamie nodded and winced a little as well, as if the sound of Tommy’s voice was too loud.
“Jesus, this is like that movie Honey I Shrunk The Kids or something,” I said. “What the hell do we do?”
Jamie began mouthing something, but we couldn’t make it out. He sounded faint, far away. Muffled. Jamie then pointed to his right, toward the front door of the doll house, which was still open. Jamie then began gesturing his hand, pulling it back and forth.
“I get it!” Tommy said. “I get it Jamie!” And the scared expression on Tommy’s face was replaced by a kind of mad glee. The same kind of expression that appears on a kids face when he suddenly understand some secret or realizes how to beat the final boss of a video game.
“Watch this Will,” Tommy said to me. And then Tommy reached forward and put his hand through the front door of the doll house. And then Tommy was gone too. Vanished out of thin air, just like Jamie did. And then a few moments later, Tommy was standing in the window with Jamie. The two of them began high-fiving each other, jumping and down. I could faintly hear their cheers and laughter, but it still sounded muffled, far away. Then they turned to me and gestured toward the front door.
I began to move my hand toward it and then stopped for a brief moment. All of this was hard to take in, but even more so there was a rational voice in the back of my head telling me this was all wrong. Unnatural. That we should not be playing Honey I Shrunk the Kids with this Doll House in The Grove. But I was overwhelmed by curiosity. And part of me that that perhaps I was just dreaming. And there was also that terrifying feeling of being left out. Isn’t that what drives so many kids to do the dumbest things? The idea of missing out on something. I couldn’t help but noticed how excited and in awe Jamie and Tommy seemed to be.
I stuck my hand through the front door. There was an odd sensation. Kind of like when your stomach drops right at the top of a roller coaster. And then I was no longer kneeling in the grassy clearing.
-——–
I was in the foyer of a house. A very large and expensive looking house. There was a grand staircase just up ahead, and to my right and left were different entry ways. Fancy portraits and paintings adorned the walls of the foyer. The kind of portraits whose eyes always seem to follow you. From the outside the doll house seemed fake, plastic looking. A broken and dirty looking toy house. But on the inside it seemed as real as any house. But it seemed old too. Very old.
I heard the sound of running and laughter. Seconds later Jamie and Tommy came running through the entry way and then we were all high-fiving each other.
“Dude this is insane-“
“Holy shit can you believe this-“
“We’re inside-“
“This is NUTS-
“We Shrunk-“
“It’s like that movie-“
“This house is HUGE-“
“How is this possible-“
“We’re inside! Inside!-“
Our mad delight consumed us. We had discovered something incredible, something you only read about in fairy tales. We ran up and down the foyer hooting like dumb children at a sleepover. The more we cheered and laughed the more our excitement and curiosity seem to grow. Some kind of mad fervor had taken over us. We began to explore the house. It was so much bigger on the inside. It was two stories, but there was an exorbitant amount of rooms and hallways. They were furnished with the best looking beds, chairs, and desks. None of it looked like the plastic furniture we saw from the outside looking in. And when we jumped on the beds and sat on the chairs, they felt very real and very comfortable. There was even a library with hundreds of books. And when we took the books off the shelves and opened them, it wasn’t blank pages that met us. They were filled with words and stories that we had never heard of before. The books were real too. It was all real. And when we looked out the windows we saw The Grove, now looking so much larger than it had before.
“When I saw you guys out there,” Jamie had said during our exploration of the house. “You looked like giants. And your voices were too loud. It hurt my ears.” As if to emphasize Jamie’s point, a squirrel ran past one of the windows, it’s feet making large thudding sounds. The squirrel looked huge and terrifying and I was very glad when it was gone.
“This is so weird,” I said staring out the window.
“It’s amazing,” Jamie said wide eyed.
“The trees are like sky scrapers now,” Tommy said. And he was right. Looking out the windows, even if you careened your neck all the way back, you couldn’t make out the top of the trees. They were too tall, and we were simply too small.
There was only one door we couldn’t open. It was at the end of the hallway on the second floor. No matter how much we tried, it wouldn’t budge. It was locked tight. Thinking of the geography of the house, I was faintly aware that this would be the room in which I saw the figurine of the man in. And as I looked at the locked door a horrifying thought came over me.
If everything in the doll house was real on the inside, would that figure be real now too? Was there a real person on the other side of that door? I thought of what the figure had looked like from the outside. A man in a black suit with a black tie, but with a blank white face. I shuddered and pushed the thought away and dared not express it to Tommy and Jamie. And is it possible that as the three of us were walking away from that locked door, that I heard faint footsteps coming from the other side of it?
No, of course not. I told myself. It’s our own footsteps causing the house to creak. That’s all.
-—-
“Do you guys smell that?” Tommy said as we were walking down toward the foyer. The front door was still open. We had just finished exploring the last room of the house(the last open one at least) and we were thinking of leaving. That mad glee that had consumed us was dying off now. Curiosity was turning into anxiety. Delight was turning into realization. We were exploring something unnatural. And I had the strange sensation that we were being watched.
“It smells like….cookies?” Jamie said. Tommy nodded. And if there was another smell, a horrible rotten smell, it was only there for a moment, before being replaced by the sweet aroma of freshly baked cookies. We followed the source of the smell and found ourselves in a homely looking kitchen. Dim sunlight from outside poured through the windows. But the light was getting lower, and the shadows were beginning to grow.
It’s still light outside, I vaguely thought in my head. But it will be dark soon
I thought of that white blank face. Those faint footsteps. I didn’t want to be here after dark.
Sitting on the kitchen table was a plate of chocolate chip cookies. Three tall glasses of milk surrounded the plate. The sweet smell of the cookies was overwhelming. Tommy moved forward to grab one, and for a moment I wanted to scream for him wait, but the cookies smelled too good and the thought passed. No, more like the thought was dulled by something. Tommy grabbed a cookie and bit into it. A huge smile broke out on his face.
“Sooo good,” Tommy said with a mouth full of chocolate. He grabbed one of the glasses of milk and greedily began to gulp it down. Then Jamie and I grabbed a cookie and began to eat as well. We sat there in that kitchen eating and drinking our fill. Not one of us asked who could have made these cookies for us. And they surely had been for us, as there were three glasses of milk. Three glasses for three growing boys. And as we ate that same mad glee seem to come over us again, kept us rooted to our chairs. And no matter how much we ate there always seemed to be more cookies and no matter how much we drank, the milk never quite reached the bottom of the glass, and would perfectly wash down our chocolate filled mouths.
It was dark outside when we finally finished. Dark when the plate of cookies was finally clear, except for a few pathetic looking crumbs. Dark when our glasses of milk were finally empty. For a moment, the three of us sat there in the dark, breathing heavily. Then a look of disquieted fear came over Tommy’s face. But there was another look too. It was a look of embarrassment.
“I-I think I’m done exploring now,” Tommy said numbly. “I want to go home.”
“Me too,” Jamie said. He also looked embarrassed and afraid.
“Same,” I said also embarrassed. In that moment I couldn’t believe that we were even still in the house. That we hadn’t run out screaming the moment we had found ourselves inside. Why the hell had we decided to even explore this place? What the hell were we thinking? It was embarassing and stupid and wrong. “Come on, lets go.”
We made it to the foyer and stopped in our tracks. The front door was closed. It had been open the entire time we had been exploring. Open the entire time there had been light outside. But it was dark now. And the only light was the moonlight that poured through windows of the house. And those windows which looked so immaculate and clean during the day, seemed dusty and stained now. I reached for the door and pulled.
It didn’t open. I jangled the door knob harder. Still, it wouldn’t budge. Locked. Just like the room upstairs.
Oh god, the room upstairs
Tommy tried the door and then Jamie. And then all three of us were pulling and banging on the door.
“Why won’t it open?” Tommy screamed. “Why won’t it fucking open!”
And those fancy portraits that adorned the foyer walls truly did appear to be staring at us. And grinning too. The portraits were grinning.
“Why did we come in here?” I said. “Why did you make us come in here Jamie?”
“I don’t know!” Jamie said still banging on the front door. “Oh, why won’t it open? Why won’t it open?”
“I want to go home,” Tommy said as if trying to wake himself up from a dream. “I want to go home. I don’t want to be here. I want to go home! I want to home. I want to go-“
A loud horrible noise came from upstairs. It was the sound of a door being slammed open.
Oh god the room, I thought. The locked room.
The three of us went dead quiet. We cowered against the front door. For a moment the entire house was dead silent, except for the pathetic sounds of our whimpering. Then, the sound of footsteps came. Horrible creaking footsteps. They came from the far end of the hallway and grew louder and louder.
Then a man in a black suit walked out of the upper hallway and appeared at the top of the stairs. A black suit with a black tie. But it was his face that made my skin crawl. His face was completely blank. No eyes. No nose. No mouth. Just a pure white blank face. Only as the man began to walk down the steps, did I noticed that wasn’t entirely true. There was a seam that ran down the middle of his face. A seam not un-like the seam that ran over the top of the doll house that was suppose to allow it to split open.
The three of us stood there frozen, watching the man, the thing with no face, walk slowly down the steps. And then Jamie screamed. That broke our stupor. Jamie ran for one of entryways and I followed. But Tommy didn’t move. He stood there frozen, with his back toward the front door.
The man with no face made it to the bottom of the steps.
I whirled around.
“Tommy move!” I screamed “Please, move!”
But Tommy didn’t move. He watched the man in the black suit walk toward him, almost memorized. Almost, as if he really didn’t believe what he was seeing. Tears ran down his face, as he mumbled to himself
“I want to go home, i want to go home, I want to go home-“
“Tommy! Tommy move!” Jamie and I yelled together from the entry. And then Tommy finally seemed to notice and hear us. And he finally seem to really see the thing that was walking towards him. His eyes which had seemed dull, were now awake and bright. He screamed. Then he tried to run towards us.
He was too late.
The thing with no face grabbed Tommy. What happened next only took mere seconds, but standing there watching, it felt like an eternity.
“Wait!” Tommy screamed as the thing lifted him in the air. “Please, wait!”
The seam that ran down the thing’s face split open, revealing an endless parade of sharp teeth. So many teeth. Rows and rows of them.
“No no let me go! Please let me go!” Tommy screamed as it lifted Tommy’s head toward it’s horrible teeth. “Plea-“
The teeth collapsed on Tommy’s head.
There was a sickening crunching sound.
And then Tommy’s head was gone.
Blood shot out of Tommy’s neck like a geyser and seem to shower the entire foyer, spraying the grinning portraits, which stared down at us, mockingly. The thing made a horrible wet gulping noise as the remnants of Tommy’s head were chewed and swallowed down it’s throat. And then the thing’s face started resealing. It dropped Tommy’s headless body, which fell to the floor with a horrible thud. One of Tommy’s legs was twitching.
It turned towards us.
We screamed.
We ran.
“The library!” I heard Jamie yell. “The library!”
We hooked down the hallway and open the door to the library. We slammed it shut behind us, and then moved one of the large sofa chairs in front of it. Books immediately began to fall from their shelves on their own accord. Several of them sprung open, and the pages flipped madly. Some of the pages were torn from their spines seemingly by invisible hands and began to fly madly around the room, pushed by an invisible wind.
“Will it hold?” I said looking at the door and swatting away the flying paper, which had begun to cut Jamie and I.
“I don’t know,” Jamie said. Tears streaking down his face. One of his tears were broken by a piece of paper which zipped past and cut him right underneath his left eye.
“It killed him,” I said. More to myself than Jamie. “Oh god it killed him.”
Suddenly the flying pieces of paper fell to the floor. The books stopped falling from their shelves and the pages stopped flipping. The room went quiet. And then came the sound of creaking footsteps coming down the hallway. Closer. Closer. Until finally they stopped right outside the library door.
Hold, Please hold, I thought.
It did not hold.
The door burst open as if shot by a cannon ball from the other side. Shards of splintered wood went flying, as did the sofa chair which flew back and hit me. I hit one of the books shelves, crumpled to the floor and yelled in pain.
Then I heard Jamie scream. I looked up to see the thing in the black suit lift Jamie into the air. One of the shards of wood from the door had pierced Jamie in the leg, and blood poured down it. The thing’s face split open, revealing those horrible rows upon rows of teeth. Jamie turned away from the teeth and looked towards me, his eyes wet with tears. Then he seemed to notice something on the ground and a look of realization broke out on his face. Jamie looked back at me.
“The lig-“
And then Jamie’s head was gone. I screamed in terror, trying to crawl backwards, but was met by the bookcase. I could go no further. Jamie’s blood showered the library, staining all the white pieces of paper that covered the floor a deep red. I again heard that terrible gulping noise as the thing chewed and swallowed. Then it’s face resealed and it turned towards me.
Then I saw what Jamie had seen right before it killed him. There was a glint of silver on the ground. It was the lighter. Tommy’s lighter. I had forgotten all about it. It must have fallen out of my pocket when I struck the bookshelf.
Somethings deserve to get burned. That’s all.
The thing in the black suit tossed Jamie’s body to the side like a child throwing away a toy it had lost interest in. It began to walk towards me. I grabbed the lighter, pulled the flask out of my pocket and popped the cap. The thing grabbed me with cold hands and lifted me in the air. It’s face split open.
I poured the lighter fluid all over those horrible teeth and down it’s black throat. The thing in the black suit didn’t seem to notice or feel it. Or maybe it just didn’t care. It had gone dumb with hunger. I flicked the lighter, but it only gave a small spark. Tried again. Nothing. Again. Nothing.
Then as it brought my head closer to those horrible sharp teeth, just as I thought I’d be joining my two best friends, the lighter flicked on. I threw it.
This time it did feel it.
This time it did care.
The thing in the black suit’s head was engulfed in flames. It gave a completely unnatural cry and dropped me to the floor. So horrible was that cry that my ears began bleeding. It screamed and screamed, slamming it’s body against the bookshelves causing the books to catch on fire. It tried to reseal it’s face, but it’s head kept opening and closing, as the flames licked it’s skin. Opening and closing. The thing in the black suit made one last pathetic attempt to grab me, and for a second I thought it would get me, and then it fell to the floor, it’s whole body now a-light. And yet as it laid there crumpled, it still screamed.
And now the whole library was going up in hellish flames. I ran out the library and hooked my way down the hallway. I could feel the warmth of the fire behind me and when I turned back I saw that the fire had made it’s way out of the hallway and was licking the floor and ceiling of the house.
I ran. And as I did I could still hear it screaming from behind me. And for one horrible moment, I thought I heard the screams getting louder. As if the thing had gotten up and made it’s way out of the library and was now chasing after me. I did not look back.
I made my way back to the entry way foyer, not daring to look down at Tommy’s headless body, afraid that when I did I would still see his leg twitching.
And the screams behind me were getting louder. Closer.
The front door was open. The portraits on the walls glared down at me, no longer grinning. Their hateful eyes followed me as I ran through the front door opening. I felt that same sensation of my stomach dropping and then I was panting and breathing on the floor of the clearing.
I was out of the doll house.
I was back in in The Grove.
I felt warmth on the back of my neck and turned around.
The entire doll house was on fire.
Faintly I could hear screaming. But it sounded muffled. Far away.
-—–
Of course neither the authorities nor my parents believed my story. And of course when I took them to the clearing, all that was left there was the husk of a burnt doll house. That was the last day I stepped foot in The Grove. The charred remains of the doll house were “taken into evidence”, but Jamie and Tommy were designated as missing children. That was the official story. Jamie’s parents eventually moved back to London, and Tommy’s parents never quite stopped looking for their son. Sometimes I would see Tommy’s mom waiting on the front porch, looking down the road. As if any moment Tommy was going to walk down it.
The psychiatrist that had been assigned to me told my parents, and myself, that my story was the result of deep seeded trauma and that I was using it to cope. That perhaps I saw what really happened to Tommy and Jamie. That I had witnessed them being abducted or hurt in some way. In a real way. By a real person. Part of me wants to believe that. It would make things easier if that were the case.
But I know what happened that night. It will be 18 years ago this autumn. 18 years since that horrible night. And in the end I suppose it doesn’t matter if anyone believes me or not.
All that matters is that Tommy had been right.
Somethings deserve to get burned.
That’s all.