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“Light. Too light.” Clara’s closed eyes squinted.
“What does the attic look like?”
“The walls are white. There are no windows, but someone painted some on the walls. The furniture is all made of wood, and it’s small, like the things at school when we play house. There’s a kitchen and a bathroom, a bedroom and a lounge room. The floor is cold, but there are some colorful rugs in the lounge room.”
“A dollhouse,” he murmured to Allina, who nodded her agreement. It made sense if the killers wanted the children to be dolls, they would make them live in a doll’s house.
“You said you’re cold, Clara. What are you wearing?”
“A blue and white dress.”
“That’s what her doll was wearing,” Jonathon interjected quietly to the doctor. But it hadn’t been what she’d been wearing when she’d escaped. At some point, the killers must have changed her into her doll’s clothes and then back out of them again. “Ask her if the back of her neck hurts.”
“Clara, does your neck hurt?”
“No, I'm just cold.”
“Clara, where are you when you wake up?”
“I'm in bed, but it’s not a comfortable bed, not like my bed at home, it’s hard.”
“Is anyone there with you?”
“A little boy. Tommy. He’s in the lounge room watching the TV. It’s not a real TV, just a wooden box with a picture painted on it. My throat feels dry, and I want a drink of water, but the sink in the kitchen is just pretend.”
“Do you feel anything else? Does anything else hurt, Clara?”
“Just when I talk.”
“What happens when you talk, Clara?”
“It hurts.”
“Hurts how?”
“Like a zap.”
Jonathon would bet anything that the Doll Killers had used a shock collar, like the kind people used to try to train their dog to stop barking, to keep the children quiet.
“All the time when you talk or just sometimes?”
“If I talk quietly, it doesn’t hurt, but if I talk loud—if I try to call for help then it does.”
“Does the same thing happen to Tommy?”
“Yes.”
“Is there something on your neck?”
Clara’s hand moved to her neck. “Yes.”
“Can you hear anything, Clara?”
“No. Just Tommy. He’s always crying.”
“Can you smell anything?”
Wrinkling up her nose, she murmured, unsure, “Doctor things?”
