The Dollhouse Murders (35th Anniversary Edition) Read online

  Copyright © 1983 by Betty Ren Wright

  Foreword copyright © 2018 by R.L. Stine

  All Rights Reserved

  HOLIDAY HOUSE is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

  www.holidayhouse.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Wright, Betty Ren, author.

  Title: The dollhouse murders / Betty Ren Wright; foreword by R.L. Stine.

  Description: 35th anniversary edition. | [New York] : Holiday House, [2018]

  Summary: A mysterious dollhouse and dolls that move on their own lead Amy, twelve, and her mentally-disabled sister Louann, eleven, to investigate the mystery surrounding grisly murders that occurred years before.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017055728 | ISBN 9780823440306 (hardcover)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Dollhouses—Fiction. | Dolls—Fiction. | People with mental disabilities—Fiction. | Sisters—Fiction. | Family life—Fiction. Murder—Fiction. | Mystery and detective stories.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.W933 Do 2018 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2017055728

  Ebook ISBN 9780823441440

  v5.3.2

  a

  For Beverly Butler Olsen, dear friend, talented writer, and dollhouse lover, and for Cherry Barr Jerry, whose marvelous dollhouses made me want to create an imaginary one of my own

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Foreword

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  About the Author

  Exclusive Author Interview…

  The Dollhouse Murders by Betty Ren Wright is a ghost story and a murder mystery. My kind of book. And I’m very pleased to have a chance to write about it.

  Betty wrote many mysteries and many ghost stories. But this is the most popular of them all.

  The book was written way back in 1983—thirty-five years ago. And kids and adults still read it, still love it, and are still scared by it. Why has it been so popular for so long?

  Well…let’s say you wanted to write a creepy story. You need to fill it with all kinds of things to make it spooky and mysterious, right? So what would you choose?

  How about a dusty, cluttered old attic no one has visited for years?

  How about a strange dollhouse that’s been covered up and hidden away?

  How about a stormy night with lightning flashing outside the attic window?

  How about a double murder?

  How about dolls that come to life?

  Do those ideas sound like the right ingredients for a scary book? You’ll find them all in here.

  That’s all I’m going to reveal. I’m not going to spoil the story for you.

  I will say that The Dollhouse Murders is a ghost story—and more. It’s also the story of two sisters and how they find it so difficult to get along—until the scariest night of their lives.

  * * *

  Do you like to write? I have a theory that most authors discover their love of writing when they are very young.

  Betty started putting books together when she was eight. She kept her poems in notebooks and designed the book covers for them.

  I was a lot like Betty. When I was nine, I found an old typewriter up in our attic, dragged it to my room, and began to type endlessly—science-fiction stories, ghost stories, funny stories, and jokes.

  I spent so much time in my room typing, my parents begged me to go outside and play.

  Why did I enjoy writing so much? I couldn’t explain it. But I think I knew when I was nine years old that I wanted to be a writer.

  When my brother, Bill, and I were growing up in Ohio, we loved ghost stories and everything scary. We’d try to scare each other by telling long, scary stories late at night.

  Every Saturday afternoon, we went to our local movie theater to see horror films. We saw movies like The Headless Ghost and It Came from Beneath the Sea, and The Brain that Wouldn’t Die.

  Bill and I loved to be scared.

  When Betty Ren Wright was a kid, she loved to read. She said she “swallowed books whole.” And what were her favorite kinds of books? Ghost stories.

  Betty liked to be scared, too.

  But she discovered there was a problem with the stories written for kids back then. The ghosts couldn’t be real ghosts. They all had to be explained. Someone pretended to be a ghost. Or someone saw a shadow and thought it was a ghost.

  Betty wanted to read about real ghosts. The ghosts of dead people. Ghosts that really came back to earth to haunt people. She wanted the stories to be supernatural—not explained away.

  So when she grew up and became a writer, she wrote the kind of stories she wanted to read—stories about supernatural ghosts. The Dollhouse Murders was the first ghost story she came up with.

  It was inspired by a real dollhouse. A friend had built it to look exactly like her grandparents’ house. The dollhouse was perfect in every way. But when Betty saw it, she thought: It needs one more thing. Ghosts.

  So…go ahead and start reading. You are about to meet Amy, who discovers the truth about the dollhouse. And Louann, her mentally challenged sister, who causes many problems for Amy. And Aunt Clare, who refuses to believe that dolls can come alive.

  Many surprises are in store for you. And many chills. I think you will quickly learn why so many people have loved this book for thirty-five years. I bet you will love it, too.

  AMY Treloar kicked off her shoes and climbed onto a cushioned bench in the middle of Regents Mall. The mall was crowded with Friday-evening shoppers, some of whom turned to stare.

  “Can you see her?” Ellen Kramer asked. “You ought to be able to see her. She’s so—”

  “Big,” Amy finished, and hopped down from the bench. It was true; she should have been able to find Louann’s bright blue windbreaker, even in a crowd. At eleven, Louann was two inches taller than twelve-year-old Amy, and she weighed twenty pounds more. She was the biggest girl in her class at the Stadler School for Exceptional Children.

  “My mother is going to kill me,” Amy moaned. “She hangs on to Louann every single minute when they go shopping together.”

  “Did she ever wander away before?”

  “Only about a million times,” Amy said. It was the first time she’d gone shopping with Ellen—the first time they’d planned to do something together after school. Ellen was new in Claiborne, and Amy was eager to have her for a friend. This’ll probably finish it, Amy thought. We’re wasting the whole afternoon. This’ll be the shortest friendship on record.

  “What can we do? Does she know how to make a phone call home?” Ellen was looking at a window display of designer jeans, probably wishing she’d come to the mall alone.

  “She gets mixed up,” Amy said. “Besides, my mother isn’t home yet. Let’s go down to the crosswalk. She might be around the corner where we can’t see her.”

  As they neared the crosswalk, a squawking sound cut through the piped-in music. A moment passed before Amy realized that the squawking was voices.

/>   “Oh, no,” she groaned. She’d recognized two words: Louann Treloar. There was a ripple of childish laughter.

  Amy darted ahead. Around the corner, a thick carpet had been laid down the center of the walk, and a puppet stage was set up at one end. A crowd of small children and their mothers sat on the carpet and looked up at the stage, where a hawk-nosed puppet was shrieking questions at the audience. In the center of the group stood Louann, her face shining with excitement. She was answering the puppet in a voice as shrill as his own.

  Amy felt rather than saw Ellen step back around the corner. If only she could back away, too! But she couldn’t. Already some of the mothers were looking annoyed.

  “Louann!” Amy worked her way through the audience, trying not to step on small fingers. “I’m sorry. Excuse me, please.” She grasped a sleeve of the blue windbreaker and tugged. “Come on!”

  Louann turned, her broad face radiant. “The puppet talks to me, Amy,” she said. “He asks my name.”

  “Louann, move! This is for little kids.” She gripped her sister’s wrist. Louann let herself be dragged away, but her eyes didn’t leave the stage.

  “ ’Bye,” she called. “Bye-bye, puppet.”

  “ ’Bye, sweetie,” the puppet replied. “Come back soon.” There was laughter and some exasperated sighs from the mothers. “Who else is going to talk to me?” the puppet demanded.

  A chorus of little voices sounded behind them as Amy pulled Louann into the main part of the mall. Ellen was several stores away, examining a display of shoes. Her face was carefully blank when they joined her, and she didn’t look at Louann at all.

  “What shall we do now?” Amy asked quickly. “Do you want to shop for something special, Ellen?”

  Ellen shrugged. “We could go to the Casual Shop and check out their sweaters,” she said. “If you think it’s all right.” She risked a hasty glance at Louann.

  “I want to see the puppets,” Louann said. “Let’s go back, Amy. I like the puppets.”

  “We’re going to the Casual Shop,” Amy snapped. “Come on.” Louann’s mouth opened wide in the beginning of a wail. “It’s down this way, past the flower shop.” Amy pointed. Her sister loved flowers.

  “Where?” Louann broke away and started down the mall.

  Amy let her go. There was no reason to hold Louann’s hand every minute, as long as she kept her in sight.

  “Are you going to buy a sweater?” she asked Ellen. “I wish I could.”

  “A rugby shirt, maybe. I want a striped one.” They walked slowly, following the blue windbreaker. “I can’t buy it, but if I find exactly the right one”—Ellen rolled her eyes and grinned—“I can just sort of mention it at home. My birthday’s in two weeks.”

  “Two weeks? Mine is next Friday—June fifteenth. The last day of school.”

  “Mine’s the twenty-second. We’re practically twins.”

  “Maybe we can have a party or something to celebrate,” Amy suggested. “A double birthday party would be fun.”

  She waited for an answer, but Ellen was looking at the flower shop, where Louann had stopped to gaze at a floral display. “Uh-oh,” she said. “That man…”

  Amy followed her stare. A tall man had come out of the shop and was shaking his finger in Louann’s face. Louann shrank back and looked around for help.

  Amy started to run. This time Ellen followed right behind her.

  “—and don’t ever do that again!” the man shouted as the girls drew close. “You shouldn’t be running around alone—” He stopped as Amy reached for Louann’s hand. “Are you with her?”

  Amy nodded. The hand in hers was trembling.

  “Then why don’t you watch her?” He was furious. “Look what she’s done!”

  A cluster of yellow tulips in pots stood on a low shelf in front of the store window. One of the blooms was broken and drooped over the edge of its pot.

  “That’s a nine-dollar item ruined!” the man fumed. “I ought to make your parents pay for it. They shouldn’t let this kid out without someone responsible enough to look after her.”

  Amy’s face burned. “I’m sorry,” she said over Louann’s mounting sobs. “We have tulips at home, and she knows it’s okay to pick them. She just forgot—I mean, she understands she shouldn’t pick other people’s flowers, but she likes them so much—”

  “That helps a whole lot, doesn’t it?” the florist said sarcastically. “Somebody’d better teach her how to behave if she’s going to wander around in a public place.”

  Amy’s embarrassment was swallowed up in rage. She had ten dollars in her wallet, the last of her Christmas money from her grandmother. She’d hoped to pick out a bathing suit today and use the ten dollars to put the suit on layaway until after her birthday. Suddenly, though, it was more important to make this man regret his rudeness.

  “We have money,” she said. “Louann, stop crying. It’s okay.” She glared at the florist. “You said nine dollars?”

  He glared back. Then his gaze flicked over the people who had stopped to listen and were looking at Louann.

  “That poor child,” one woman said. “She’s heartbroken. Look how she’s crying. She didn’t know any better, you can tell.”

  Amy took the ten-dollar bill from her wallet and held it out. “I need change,” she said.

  Louann stopped crying. The mall became very quiet. The florist started to reach for the bill, then turned away in disgust.

  “Forget it,” he snapped. “Just keep that girl away from my stock.” He went back into the shop, muttering under his breath.

  The mall came back to life. Spectators moved off, shaking their heads, and the three girls were left by themselves.

  “Let’s get away from here,” Amy said. “I hate that man! If I were a tulip, I’d fall over and die just having him around.”

  “Die?” Louann looked down at the bright yellow flowers. She was ready to cry again. “Flowers die?”

  “No, no, no! Not unless you pick them!”

  “Maybe we’d better just go home,” Ellen said. “I don’t think I feel like shopping today.”

  Amy felt sick. “Okay,” she said. “Whatever you want.” It was just awful, Ellen would tell her mother when she got home. Everybody was looking at us. I’ll never go shopping with Amy Treloar again.

  Outside, the sun was low in the sky. An early evening breeze stirred the banners across the mall’s main entrance. Louann lagged a few feet behind Amy and Ellen. “The puppet show…” she murmured sadly as they started across the parking lot. Amy pretended not to hear. She was waiting for Ellen to say something.

  “You were fantastic in there, Amy. I loved it when you pulled out the money. I was scared to death of that man. What a beast!”

  Amy took a deep breath. Maybe Ellen wasn’t completely disgusted after all. “I was scared, too,” she confessed. “But he made me so mad! Louann makes me mad, too, but I still don’t like it when people insult her. She can’t help the way she is.”

  That was something Amy kept telling herself. Lately, though, it hadn’t helped much. The only time she could feel sympathy for her sister was when someone else spoke sharply to Louann or made fun of her. Otherwise, resentment was always boiling under the surface.

  “I’m sorry Louann spoiled the shopping,” Amy hurried on. “I didn’t want to bring her with us, but my mother works, and there’s no one at home after school.”

  “It’s hard for you,” Ellen said. “I don’t know if I could do it.”

  “You would if you had to.” The words came out tartly, and Amy rushed to change the subject. “About the picnic tomorrow,” she said. “What time should I pick you up?”

  She stressed the I ever so slightly, hoping Ellen would take that as a signal that Louann wouldn’t be coming. The two girls had made plans for Saturday earlier in the week, when Amy had mentioned Rainbow Falls north of town, and Ellen had said she’d like to see it. Since they’d be taking their bikes, there was no question of Louann’s tagging al
ong. She couldn’t ride a bike, though she’d tried at least a hundred times.

  “Oh, I meant to tell you,” Ellen said, “I can’t go tomorrow. My uncle and aunt are coming from Chicago for the day, and my mother wants me to stay home.” She ignored Amy’s tiny gasp of dismay. “We hardly ever see them. I’m sorry—maybe we can have the picnic later.”

  “Sure.” Amy thought of the yellow tulip hanging over the edge of the pot. That was how she felt inside—broken. Dead! A few minutes ago, Ellen had seemed to understand what it was like to have Louann for a sister. But she wasn’t really any different from the other girls who were too busy to do things with Amy when they found out Louann might be there, too. People were all the same.

  They walked in silence to the corner where Ellen had to turn south. “I’m really sorry about tomorrow,” she said.

  Amy felt as if her face might crack when she spoke. “Have fun with your aunt and uncle. I’ll see you Monday.”

  “Right.” Ellen hurried away.

  Amy took Louann’s hand and waited for the light to change. Her sister’s face was puffy and streaked with dried tears, but she looked around cheerfully at the busy street. “Tomorrow we can see the puppets some more,” she said.

  “No way!” The toot of a car horn cut through Amy’s reply. It was their mother, on her way home from work. She waved and pointed to the opposite corner. Amy led Louann across the street, and they climbed into the front seat of the car. Amy was squeezed between the door and Louann’s soft bulk.

  “Well, did you find the bathing suit you wanted?” Mrs. Treloar asked. And then, without waiting for an answer, “What’s the matter, Louann? Have you been crying?”

  Louann nodded.

  “Well, what happened, Amy? Did somebody say something nasty to her?”

  “The florist in the mall,” Amy replied. “She tried to pick a tulip from a pot, and he made a big scene.”

  Louann rubbed her eyes with her fists.

  “And where were you when it happened?” Mrs. Treloar demanded. She sounded tired. “You certainly couldn’t have been watching her very closely if she had a chance to—”