A Story

"I was sixteen when I went to Black Cedar Manor. Ah... Black Cedar Manor is what's now called the House of Death. It got its name from the black cedar trees all around it. Lord Stephen Lancaster had moved here with his wife and child..."

"Normally, nobles like that wouldn't readily hire outsiders. They had servants whose families had served them for generations. But Mr. Stephen was different. I only found out later that Lord Stephen was a compulsive gambler. He'd gambled away almost everything his family owned, even their land. So he had no choice but to dismiss his other servants and come here... This house seemed to be the only property his family had left."

"To be honest, those days weren't happy memories. They hired us because our wages were very low. But even so, the family still thought of themselves as members of high society. They'd clearly lost everything, yet they still insisted on throwing lavish parties and inviting guests, as though that would prove to their friends and relatives that they were living well.

"But I knew it was all a facade. After every banquet, the family would spend quite some time eating bland, tasteless food. Of course, they never treated us servants kindly, either. At first, we really were afraid of Lord Stephen. He was a noble, after all. For people like us, serving a noble was an honor in itself. And back then, we didn't know much about their circumstances."

"Oh... Where was I? Right, the house. At the time, Lord Stephen, his wife, and their son lived there, along with us servants. Counting me, the cook, and the lady's maid, there were about ten of us altogether. Lord Stephen had a bad temper, and his wife was no kinder to us. She looked at us as though we were toads in the mud, but we could bear all that. The strangest one, though, was their child..."

The old woman's voice grew tense and uneasy.

"The young master was fourteen or fifteen then. Normally, he should have been going to school. But he spent every day shut up alone in his room and never went out. He wouldn't let anyone clean his room, either. Apart from meals, he almost never left it. No one knew what he was doing in there. Sometimes, when I was hanging laundry outside, I'd see him standing at the window, staring at me with a look that made my skin crawl..."

"Fortunately, I was the laundry maid, so I didn't have much contact with him. But Annie... Oh, she was the mistress's personal maid. It was different for her. Several times, she secretly told me that the young master stared at her with a strange grin. It wasn't the sort of smile a man gave a woman, either. It was something very strange, something chilling. And he had lots of dolls in his room. He seemed very fond of them.

"I was scared then, too, because I also thought there was something wrong with the young master. In fact, we even wondered among ourselves whether he was mentally ill, and that was why he didn't go to school. After all, dolls were generally something girls played with. You rarely saw boys playing with them.

"We were all very uneasy during that time. We even thought about quitting... The family treated us badly, after all, and the wages were low. At first, we'd gone there because of their standing as nobles, but by then we felt our pay didn't come close to matching the work we did. I had to wash everyone's clothes and sheets every day, but I only earned a dozen or so shillings a week. I could have earned far more washing clothes for a living elsewhere. It was the same for the others. We once went to the mistress and asked for a raise, but she told us that lowborn people like us should consider it an immense honor to work for the Lancaster Family, and shouldn't entertain any further presumptuous ambitions."

"Mr. Stephen? He hardly concerned himself with anything. Every day, he went out in the evening and came back drunk. Sometimes he was covered in injuries, too. A few times, the police brought him home. Apparently, he'd been causing trouble or getting into fights... We were all in turmoil then, thinking we might as well just quit..."

"...Then things began to go wrong..."

"Annie was the first. One day, she suddenly vanished. The mistress flew into a rage, convinced she'd run away. She even reported to the police that Annie had stolen things from the house and demanded they bring her back. But I didn't think it was that simple, because the day before, Annie had told me the young master wanted her to go to his room, and she was frightened. I comforted her then and told her to scream if anything happened. I'd be outside the whole time."

"Then... Annie disappeared. I wondered whether the young master had done something to her, perhaps even killed her. But the police seemed to think it was simply a servant running away, so they didn't take it very seriously. I went to Mr. Darren-he was the coachman, and the one all of us servants relied on-and told him about it.

"Mr. Darren was surprised by what I told him. He also told me he'd found signs that his carriage had been taken out at night. He always cleaned it thoroughly after returning each day, but on the day Annie disappeared, he found mud on its wheels, even though he hadn't been anywhere muddy that day.

"So Mr. Darren suspected that someone had secretly driven the carriage somewhere while he was asleep at night. He promised me he would investigate and tell me exactly what had happened."

"Then... Mr. Darren disappeared, too... No, I can't really call it disappearing, because we still saw his carriage coming and going every day. But we could never find him anymore. Before that, whenever Mr. Darren came back, he would rest in the back garden for a while and have a smoke. After that, he never appeared there again.

"But... But I knew Mr. Darren was still there... One day, during a downpour, I saw him through a window on my way back to my room. He was sitting at the reins of the carriage, stopped at the front entrance. He sat perfectly upright, and even with the storm raging outside, he stayed just like that. Then I saw the mistress get into the carriage, and they left..."

"Then... Things grew stranger and stranger. The mistress disappeared, the master disappeared. It was as though everyone had disappeared. Each morning when I woke up, I found another person missing. The cook no longer appeared in the kitchen, but there was still a steaming breakfast on the table every day. The mistress no longer came out, either, but I could still often hear her hysterical screams and angry shouts. The master never appeared again, but I could still hear his drunken groans coming from his room, just as always. Yet I still felt as though I was the only person in the entire house... No, there was the young master, too. Every day when I went to hang out the laundry, he would stand at the window and stare at me."

"...It was the same that day. I was hanging out the laundry when I felt that terrible gaze. I turned and saw the young master standing at the window, watching me. He wore that eerie smile, just as before. But this time, I also saw other people standing behind him. The master, the mistress, Annie, Mr. Darren... They were all standing behind the young master, staring at me.

"Suddenly, I felt that I was going to disappear, too, and then I would become one of them. So I ran... Yes, I ran out of that house without looking back, and I never returned. As for what happened to the family afterward, I don't know. I only heard that they'd apparently all gone missing..."

"...That's everything I know... I don't know what's become of them, or what really happened. But I know that, in the end, I still couldn't escape any of it..."

The old woman's voice gradually faded away. By then, Katie was cold all over, hugging herself and trembling. The old woman's account had been dry, without the entertainment or dramatic conflict a storyteller might strive for, and had even been somewhat muddled. But just imagining those scenes sent a chill through Katie.

"M-ma'am, what do you mean? Did you discover something?"

Katie asked uneasily, but the old woman still said nothing. Li Wei stood up, reached out, and pulled the curtain aside.

Then they saw a doll shaped like an old woman sitting propped up in bed, covered by a blanket. Its entire body was made of wood, and its cloudy glass eyes were gazing out the window.

"Eeeek!"

At the sight, Katie almost jumped out of her chair. She clenched her small fists and stared at the doll before her.

"W-what's going on?"

"Now this is interesting."

Li Wei examined the doll carefully, then looked around.

"All right, we've heard the story. Time to go."

"Ah... Okay..."

Katie nodded and followed close behind Li Wei as they turned to leave the room. Before stepping out, she looked back once more, only to discover something startling...

"Mr. Detective!"

"Hmm? What is it?"

"The doll's gone!"

"Hmm, that is rather interesting."

Li Wei didn't look back, merely offering an offhand reply.

"Let's go."

"Ah, okay..."

Katie nodded and stayed close behind Li Wei. By now, she was deeply uneasy, even frightened. As she'd said, she wasn't afraid of monsters she could deal with using her fists. After all, apart from their strange appearances, she didn't see anything particularly dangerous about them.

But someone who had just been talking to them and telling them a story had turned into a doll in the blink of an eye?

And then that doll had disappeared?

That was another matter entirely!

When the two left the damp room and reached the entrance, they saw the laundry worker sitting on a bench, leaning against the wall as though she had fallen asleep.

"Um... Miss..."

Looking at the laundry worker, Katie hesitated, unsure what to say. Was she supposed to tell her that her grandmother had turned into a doll and disappeared?

But just as Katie leaned closer to speak, she froze. Sitting on the bench wasn't a living person, but a doll.

Like the exhibits in a doll museum, it sat with its hands open in front of its knees, a few shillings resting on them.

At that moment, Katie felt every hair on her body stand on end.

"M-Mr. Detective! What should we do now?"

She clutched the hem of Li Wei's clothes and stared at him anxiously, terrified that when he turned around, she would see a doll's face on him, too.

Fortunately, Li Wei was still Li Wei.

"Hmm..."

Li Wei considered Katie's question for a moment.

"My personal opinion? How about we just set that house on fire and burn it down?"