Adeline Lane

Dear reader, 

The last house on Adeline Lane was supposed to be a new beginning for us. What happened within those walls is something I have never spoken about. Until now. 

Clay, my younger brother, was at the center of it all. I wasn’t able to save him. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but for me, it’s the stuff monsters are made of. 

It’s ok if none of this makes sense right now. Soon it will. In time, you’ll know everything about the last house on Adeline Lane, and how my little brother, in a way, is still there.

You’ll know why I have to write this letter, how I have to tell someone, anyone, because it’s all happening again. The red paint soaking my sheets; her incessant, raucous giggling; the low lull of rolling, of something rolling… I can’t escape it. 

So now I write, in the hopes you’ll find this, dear reader, and tell them the truth, before it’s too late. 

It might already be too late.

***

It’s as if it had been sitting there, waiting for us. 

When Mom pulled into the driveway of the last house on Adeline Lane, the first thing I noticed was the towering turret oddly angled at the top left corner of the house. Following the grand exterior down, a large weeping willow, which I suspected was decaying, drooped away from the house. 

The house, which had been painted a pastel blue, now paled, chipped and faded by weather and time. I couldn't help but feel this house had been abandoned.  

With such a foreboding first impression, initially I didn’t want to go inside. But then Mom said we could pick our own rooms, if we were quick enough. Without a moment of hesitation, Clay and I spilled out of the car and we ran straight to the second floor, where the bedrooms were. 

Clay was a few paces ahead of me, but when I caught up to my brother I could see he had found the room that belonged to the turret.  

Looking in, the curve of the turret evoked a feeling of vulnerability, like the room itself was watching you. Its arched windows offered a wider view of the front lawn and surrounding woods, with the top of the willow tree just brushing the windowpane. Its unconventional shape provided limited functionality, but I could see the appeal. For Clay, this was the wild excitement of a child's room. 

Clay was standing in the far right side of the room when I watched his face drop. He was looking at a large painting hanging on the wall. It was huge, practically life-size. 

As I got closer, I could see it was the portrait of a woman dressed in a light pink frilled dress and matching tights. She wore silver slippers meant for dancing, and her head, which was tilted to the left, was adorned with long brown curls. Her arms were stretched out far in front of her, as if she were reaching towards us. But perhaps the strangest thing of all was she appeared to be suspended in a doll stand. Was she a dancer, or a doll? I could not tell. Her thin lips were painted passive, but her eyes, they held something, a knowing, I think. It was as if she were looking right at me. 

An odd picture for an odd room. 

Clay pointed to the bottom right corner of the painting and there, written in clean cursive, was his name. First and last. 

We stood and stared at it for some time, and when he finally tore his eyes away from the painting, I could see the uneasiness wash over him. I couldn’t explain this, not to me and certainly not to him, but I tried my best, because that’s what big sisters do. So, even though I didn’t mean it, I laughed and told him that this room was meant for him. That it was a sign, quite literally, that he was exactly where he should be. 

His face softened and he declared the tower room to be his. I poked his stomach and we laughed. 

We didn’t think about the woman in the portrait again until later that night. 

***

On the first night we went to bed in the last house on Adeline Lane, it was around 12 am when I heard Clay scream out my name. It cut through the night like a knife. 

Jumping out of bed, I ran to my brother. 

When I entered the tower room, Clay was sitting upright in his bed with the bedside lamp on, pointing at the portrait. He told me he heard someone whispering his name. He said it was the woman in the painting. 

I eyed the painting then walked closer to it, until I was face to face with the doll dancer. I noticed right away that something was off. Her head was now facing Clay’s bed straight on. I could have sworn it had been tilted a different way before. 

No matter what I thought, I knew I couldn’t tell Clay. He’d fixate on the painting, and getting him to fall asleep would be impossible. So, I decided to take the painting off the wall. 

I reached for the painting, making sure to hold on tight, then I pulled. 

But nothing happened. 

It didn’t move, it wouldn't move, not in the slightest. It was like this painting was glued to the wall. I tried again with all my strength to get it just to budge, but still, nothing happened. I turned around and saw Clay starting to cry. I thought of Mom and how she had worked so hard to get us this house. I had to fix this. 

So, I walked over to the corner of the room where Clay’s unpacked boxes were piled high, and pulled a thin sheet from one of them. I walked back to the painting and draped it over. The sheet wasn’t thick or long enough to completely cover the painting but it was better than nothing. This seemed to settle Clay, and so I hopped into bed with him and turned off the lights. 

We were only able to sleep for a couple hours before the noises began. 

***

Later that night, I woke to the feeling of something dripping on my cheek. I patted my face, expecting to find beads of sweat, but there was nothing. I looked up at the ceiling, wondering if there was a leak, but there wasn’t. 

At that moment, Clay tugged on my sleeve and pointed at the portrait. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, and when I finally did follow his gaze, I could not believe what I was seeing. There, from across the room, the sheet I had used to cover the painting had fallen to the floor. 

And the woman in the portrait was holding her head.

I froze, dumbstruck. I was trying to rationalize what I was seeing when I heard it.   

At first I couldn’t tell what it was, or where it was coming from, but it sounded like a string of slow, soft thuds approaching from far away. The noise had a rhythm to it and it was definitely getting louder. And closer. 

It sounded as though it were just down the hallway. As it grew even louder, I could tell it was the sound of something being rolled, something heavy, like a bowling ball. Then, Clay whispered look. I knew he was talking about the portrait, and I didn’t want to look at it, but in the end I did. And my first thought was, where was her head? 

Looking at the portrait, it was clear her head was missing — completely missing — not just from her shoulders, but from the painting all together. 

Her head? Where the hell was her head? Was she losing hers or was I losing mine? 

Chills ran down my spine. Panicking, I reached for the lamp light with shaking hands. Once I found it, I flicked the switch two, three, ten times, but it wouldn’t turn on, and all the while that maddening, low rolling grew louder and louder, until I was sure whatever it was, was in the room.  

Her head. Where was her head?

I tried to steady my breathing as the rolling traveled past the door, across the room, and then, it sounded as if it was headed directly underneath us. Underneath our bed. 

All at once the rolling sound stopped. 

Then, high-pitch giggling broke out from all corners of the room. I frantically looked from left to right, trying to find the source of the laughter, but it only grew louder and continued to disorient us. I turned and looked at the painting. The woman in the portrait was gone. Only her doll stand was left. 

When I couldn’t take the madness of the moment any longer, I screamed like I never had before in my life. 

A few seconds later Mom slammed open the door, switched on the lights, and asked what happened. Clay pointed at the picture, and when we all looked at it, there she was, the doll dancer, back in her place, suspended in her doll stand. 

I stammered, trying to put into words what had just happened. Mom sighed, said she expected more from me, then walked over and covered the painting with the sheet again. She told us to really try and give this house a chance, and that maybe we should sleep in my room from now on. 

She didn’t believe us and how could she? The doll dancer losing her head, the unexplained sounds? It all was too much, I knew that. 

But it was real. Oh, god, it was real. 

***

The next day, Mom tried to take the portrait down with a hammer and other tools, but nothing worked. Clay and I knew it wouldn’t. Standing from the doorway of the tower room, we watched her give up and drape a large, thick white sheet over the portrait. 

Even with the sheet, we couldn’t bring ourselves to sleep in Clay’s bedroom. So later that night, we locked ourselves in my bedroom, making sure to keep the lamp on the nightstand on. 

We made one final promise to each other: to stay awake, no matter what. But it didn’t work. Clay fell asleep, his small body snug against mine. I stayed up as late as I could, but in the end, I fell asleep too. 

Much later, in the early morning hours, something dripped onto my cheek. Then again on my forehead. Through my sleepy haze I wiped at the drips, expecting nothing to be there like the night before. But when I pulled my hand away from my forehead, a shocking red substance was smeared across my palm. I looked up at the ceiling and saw thick red droplets trickle down onto the bed. 

I lifted my other hand to my cheek and felt the same slippery substance. I looked down at my T-shirt, my pants, and reached up to my hair… I was matted in it, drenched in it, whatever it was. Red. All I could see was red. It couldn’t be, blood, could it?

In a panic, I sat upright and pulled the covers back. They made an awful splatting sound as they landed on the mattress. The sound woke up Clay and when he saw me, he screamed out “blood!” 

“No, no, no,” I reassured him. “It’s not blood, it’s, it’s….” My voice faltered as I didn’t know what to tell him. It wasn’t blood, it couldn’t be. It didn’t smell like blood and it had a strong scent. It almost smelled like, like, paint —

Before I could finish my thought, the sounds started. 

From far down the hallway, that familiar, horrifying rolling sound began. I could hear its monotonous lull growing louder and louder with each passing second, and I knew it was her. 

It’s the doll dancer’s head. It’s her head rolling down the hallway, coming for us. 

For what seemed like hours, the rolling sound traveled down the hallway, and then, with a loud thud, it beat hard against our door. And then it was quiet. 

The bedside lamp, which had been on all night, flickered twice, then gave out. We were in silent, still darkness. And something was outside our door. 

Clay started to shake and I pulled him close. I whispered empty promises about how everything would be ok. How she couldn’t get us, couldn’t get in, because we had locked the door. I told him monsters didn’t exist and that we would be ok. We had to be ok. 

I do not know how long the figure had been standing in the far right corner of the bedroom, for Clay and I never took our eyes off the bedroom door. But when it started moving toward us, we saw it.

There, just a few feet from the edge of the bed, was someone, or something, wearing a white bedsheet. The ghostly figure in the sheet froze when I noticed it, and like that we stayed, still as statues, staring at one another. I can’t tell you how much time passed in those moments, if they even were moments, or minutes, or hours. But eventually, the figure lifted something round from under the sheet up high, and it looked as if it had placed something on top of its head. 

At that moment, the figure took form, and it hit me: This was her, right in front of us. This was the doll dancer. 

The sheeted ghost inched forward, step by step, closing the gap between itself and our bed. It made no sounds as it moved, as if it were gliding across the floor, and all I could hear was my heartbeat pounding out of my chest. 

When it was just an arm's length away from the bed, I noticed the sheet started to discolor a dark maroon right where the head would be, and the image of two eyes, and, and — a mouth? — began to bleed through the sheet. I could see the mouth was lopsided, curved into a crooked grin, the corners of its lips dripping red droplets down the sheet. 

I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t scream. Paralyzed with fear, we sat there and watched the figure pause when it got to the edge of our bed. 

Then, it lowered itself down to the floor, got on all fours, and crawled under our bed. The bedsheet caught on the floorboards, slid off of the figure, and I was just able to catch a glimpse of a silver slipper slide under the bed. 

Clay was shaking violently. I leaned to the left and looked at the floor. The white sheet was sitting in a pool of red and the figure was nowhere to be found. 

But I knew where it was. I knew where she was and what she wanted. I had to protect Clay. 

So, I sucked in a shaky breath and prepared to lean over and look under the bed. I didn’t have any type of weapon to defend us, I didn’t have a plan, or any sense of strategy. I only knew that Clay and I would not be able to leave this room as long as the figure was under our bed. 

I leaned to the left, gripped the side of the bed, and held the weight of myself as I lowered my head. Then… 

His scream, my brother’s last gut-wrenching scream, sliced through the silence. 

I bolted upright and saw only the end of it: A white flash, the bedsheet being thrown over Clay, and then he was gone. 

My brother was gone.

But I knew who took him.

“Clay!” I called my brother's name and jumped out of bed. My feet carried me to the tower room. It’s where she would be. It’s where she would always be.

As I approached the portrait, I noticed the doll dancer was back, suspended in her doll stand, her arms stretched out towards me once more. But now, there was an audience that wasn’t there before, watching her. They all looked like children, and some of them had their hands in buckets of popcorn, while others held gobs of cotton candy. 

And in the far corner, one boy stood out. 

It was Clay. Make no mistake of that, my brother was now in this painting and I had no idea how to reach him. He looked at the doll dancer with worry on his face. 

Clay. Oh, Clay. What happened to you? 

I backed away from the painting as the room began to spin, praying that this was just a nightmare. 

Then the doll dancer turned her head, offered me a wide grin, and winked. 

And I hit the floor. 

***

I woke with maddening worry in my bedroom with the yellow walls. The red substance that had soaked my sheets was completely gone, and I knew even before I stretched out my arm that Clay would not be beside me. I ran to my mother, and I suppose the look on my face told her something was terribly wrong. 

She never believed me, when I told her where Clay was. She shook her head, tears in her eyes, and reported him missing. 

They never found my brother, but not without effort. For weeks and even months, our family was in the headline of every article and at the center of every police search. Overtime, the police’s leads dwindled, until one day, they stopped calling with updates all together. And it didn’t take long for the local lore to spread, too, especially during Halloween time. The police had their theories of what happened to Clay, the townies had theirs, but me? I knew. I’ve always known the truth. 

That my little brother was still inside, trapped between colors and canvas, forever frozen on the walls in the last house on Adeline Lane.