On a lively street of cafes and boutiques stood a house inside of a house. Rather, a collection of miniature houses sold inside an establishment to be known as Blanchard’s– an antique shop parents left out of with a slimmer wallet and a new dollhouse to gift their children. It’s been a staple for generations– starting out rather successful as a toy store before expanding to a more distinguished shop of goods meant for amusement.
Matheo Blanchard stands behind the counter everyday from as early as red-chested robins sing their morning chorus til as late as they’re peacefully asleep and hiding from owls. The man has a way about the order of things in the shop, brought on from the inherited teachings of his father. So much so he only keeps one other employee with him he could trust to service the customers and maintain a general upkeep. He insists the miniature houses had a “life” that required a special kind of care consisting of very, very meticulous safekeeping. Really, it only required a gentle hand in dusting the tiny little trinkets.
The shop mostly attracts customers endowed with deep pockets. They are the ones who spend longer than five minutes wandering around the showcase of odds and ends.
A repeat customer, being a retired doctor in her 60’s, came every Thursday afternoon after a stroll in the nearby park. Matheo anticipates this visit every week and waits by the door to invite her in with a hand on her back. “Wonderful day, isn’t it?” He’d greet like a custom.
Mrs. Sharpe is somewhat of an heiress herself who loves to dote on her grandchildren. However, there’s been a shift in her interest lately and she’s been eyeing a miniature house for her new estate down the South.
A gloved hand waves around the two rows of displays while she finds the words in her clammy mouth. “Which one do you favor, dear? There must be one you cherish over-”
“Surely not, madame! They all have a charm unique to their designs.” Matheo interrupts with a nervous chuckle. The usual sales talk.
Mrs. Sharpe squints her eyes at him in doubt of his sincerity as she stops in front of a display set in the center of the shop. The biggest and most complete of all dollhouses– complete in the sense every room is stacked with furniture from floor to ceiling and wall to wall. The house itself is about two feet tall and spreads open in the middle to showcase a beautiful french cottage interior. There’s specific details brimming in every tiny item you can find and the addition of three human dolls lounging within their respective bedrooms. No doubt an equally large price for the whole thing, hence why it’s been unsold at the shop for years no matter the number of interest it’s garnered from different visiting customers.
Matheo nudges his glasses up the bridge of his nose with a scrunch of hesitance. He knew Mrs. Sharpe was one of the few in the city to afford this beautiful project, and a bitterness settles in his conscience. He’s practically an open book of emotions. The shifting of weight on each foot, the crease of his brow, the rubbing of sweaty palms on his pants… Mrs. Sharpe found it more amusing than the purchase. And she hadn’t even mentioned a word about it.
“Does this interest you, madame? I can have a custom order with a similar style as this one placed, perhaps more accustomed to your taste in wallpaper.” Matheo offers after a beat of recovery.
“Is this one not available?” Mrs. Sharpe hums. She picks up a stained glass lamp from the second floor, about pinky nail-sized, and it almost makes Matheo jump out of his skin. He points at the sign next to the house display that stated a reminder of “DO NOT TOUCH.” but Mrs. Sharpe continues to turn the lamp in her hand.
“It is for display.”
Even his own lie shocks him.
He doesn’t think about it for too long as he moves to take away the lamp from her hand to return it back at its spot in the study with a swiftness belonging to one who was running out of patience. It prompts a noise in the old lady’s throat in resemblance to that of a snorting chuckle.
A custom order was placed that afternoon by Matheo with some requests from Mrs. Sharpe, like alternating the white oak doors for walnut wood and the special order of human dolls bearing the redhead features of her grandchildren.
Time eater. In his childhood years, he was known as Matheo “Time Eater” Blanchard.
He could sit in one spot for the better half of the day, merely playing with toy figures, and never feel the urge to eat or use the potty because the concept of time simply didn’t matter to him. It might be normal for young children, yes, but he has never gotten bored of just staring for hours and hours on one storybook either. From early on, he already liked the feeling of being in control and ruined many kindergarten friendships by dictating a game’s story and pretend roles. The habit carried over to his adolescent years except he’d given up on friends and became comfortable sitting at his desk alone for time to pass him by while he carried on his hobbies. Just an endless perpetuity of close to nothing but fixation on figurines.
What else could he be doing on weekday mornings but fiddling with tiny chairs and kitchenware on a spanish mini-farmhouse anyway? There was so much to notice and feel with these plastic masses. He could look at the same item numerous times in different angles and still see something new, like the shift of gradient red to a more chocolate-y brown as he turns a telephone on its bottom. How its numerical buttons balloon at the surface to give a realistic impression of being pressable.
He couldn’t stop staring. He’s even had his eye prescription increased beyond the accurate reading so he’d see everything twicefold closer.
So it comes to his immediate attention when he finds one of these frivolous items missing. It was the same glass stained lamp Mrs. Sharpe was holding from his favorite miniature house. He searched everything in the shop and confronted his assistant for not watching the customers closer for thieving. He spent the rest of the day carrying a storm in his chest, like mulling over a sin.
It was one of the more beautiful objects and he couldn’t blame whichever child it was that swiped it, but it left him dispirited all the same.
Matheo couldn’t sleep the night it happened, a permanent scowl on his face that remained even in his 2 hours of slumber. When he awoke, his surroundings were strangely lit by colorful shades of jade green. His eyes are automatically drawn to the windows where he scours the view for what may be the source. Upon being lost to an answer, he glances vaguely to the right and finds something else he’s been looking for.
Prickles of needles pierce his skin as he comes to recognize a glass stained lamp set on his bedside table. Familiar, yet sinister. The size is disproportionate but it was still the very same thing he was grieving the loss of.
He racks the same question in his freshly roused mind while his breath picks up: “How could it be?”
At first, Matheo was hesitant to come even remotely close to it in proximity, but he needed to ground himself and realize that touching it and actually feeling it is the only way to make sure he didn’t need to douse his face in cold water again. True enough, the glass stained lamp was tangible and heavy in his hands; it was the very same lamp that had gone missing as it carries the same dent at the handle which happens to be a manufacturing error all too hard to replicate.
For the first time in his dedicated career, Matheo arrives late to the shop that day and earns a questioning look from his workfellow. He ignored it like how he ignored much of the other events of the day in favor of dwelling on the abnormally large reappearance of an object that simply shouldn’t be.
It was also the first time he only spared a passing glimpse at a certain french cottage dollhouse instead of doting on the display for an hour in the morning and another hour right before closing shop. He was aware and very guilty of it.
Matheo becomes one miserable man in the coming days when the objects of his favorite miniature house convey a trend of going missing and reappearing life-sized in his own home. It was the stained lamp, then an oil painting of a flower, then a chandelier that replaced an old lighting bulb in the living room with a crash and almost started a fire, then an upright piano that split the floors of his apartment and got him a complaint from his downstairs neighbor.
His downstairs neighbor being his older cousin, Florent, who’s witnessed the fast descent of his fragile sanity.
“Everything… alright at work, Theo?” Florent clears his throat, pushing a cup of warm coffee to his jittery hands.
Matheo stares at the cup like he’s inspecting it, and not for the coffee but for the cup itself. It makes Florent sigh. They look at each other’s faces for a moment. Similar amber eyes, straight and streaky hair, hooked nose… but one of them has a haunting look in their expression marked by defeat, or even surrender.
“Have I told you I’ve always dreamed of owning a cottage near the riverside?” Matheo starts, his fingers wrapping tighter around the porcelain cup, numb to the heat of it.
“Well, I don’t believe so. Why… why the mention?”
“There’s a miniature house at our shop, and it’s the most delightful dollhouse model you could set your eyes on. The prettiest thing, Florent. I tell you, it’s my dream house.”
“Yeah?”
Matheo set the coffee down on the kitchen counter, untouched. He looks around their home before flinching at the sight of the chandelier over the sofa set. He shuts his eyes with a groan. “I know you might think me crazy. But things from that house have been going missing. I thought it was some kid with grubby hands, but the things- the things, they appear again here. In our house. But bigger.”
The air is tight with confusion and wariness. Judgement, too.
“I know, I know! It can’t be, right? But that chandelier!” Matheo begins to shout, pointing a finger to the direction of the accused. “Neither of us called for anyone to install it there! It just showed up! And it almost KILLED us!”
Florent looks between him and the white oak chandelier, a slow frown forming. He jolts when Matheo grips him by the shoulders and he reacts with a shove back, frightened by how he’s acting. It startles him into a slurry of panicked words.
“Listen to me. Yesterday, the dolls were there. Three of them, a- a family! They’re glued to their bedrooms, but they disappeared when I checked this morning. Gone! Human dolls, Florent! Who knows what we’ll wake up to tomorrow?! They’ll be here! A father, a mother- they’re next! The child-”
Florent knocks his cousin into a drawer of dishes, stopping him before he can get more hysterical. Matheo didn’t even realize he was already in tears until he tasted his own snot. There, they share a cloud of hurried pants. It was sinking in for the older man too. If everything he said were of the truest nature, then they were next.
In a lively street of cafes and boutiques stood an empty shop of dust and abandoned houses. Every little kid in the city has tried peeking in through the curtained windows, curious about their once-favorite toy shop, only to be pulled away by their parents in haste.
Written by: Sarina Bautista
