The dark clapboard exterior. The zillion fireplaces and the creepy secret rooms upstairs. The original ice house that used to serve the village in the 1700s. This place had history. Creepy, weird, depressing history. Too much of it.
The only good thing about being back here was that Tammy had kept all her stuffies and toys locked in a trunk in her room. She’d taken a few of them with her to medical school. She’d never have parted with Goldie, for instance. And she had a few pacifiers and jigsaw-puzzles and coloring books — things to help keep her calm. Medical training was full-on, and she needed the coping mechanisms.
But back here, in this trunk, there were so many memories. Her Tiny Tears doll. Her miniature tea set, with real china cups and saucers, which had little hand-painted rosebuds on them. A gift from her mother for her fourth Christmas, it was still in perfect condition. And then there were her wooden peg dolls, which she had made with her mom one rainy afternoon. And the lace curtains from her old playhouse. The playhouse which her dad turned into a shed on her twelfth birthday. Told her she was too old for the sort of thing now. It was time he had somewhere new to keep the lawnmower.
Pah.
Her father might have been a doctor, but there was nothing soothing about that man. Not at all.
Tammy lined up all the toys in her trunk all over her bedroom floor. Everything smelled so musty, but so full of her childhood. She didn’t really want to wash any of that away, but she kinda had to. Things needed dusting. She needed to check for mildew. Make sure it was all sanitary before she started playing with it all over again.
‘Youneed the biggest wash, Maisy,’ she told a peg doll that looked like it was a little rotten on the back of its head. ‘Maybe we even need to shave some of your hair off.’
She put the peg doll to one side, and then inspected an old hairbrush.
‘Ew,’ she said. ‘All my old hairs on it. Back when I had long, golden locks.’
She reached up to her hair and patted it. It stopped just below her chin now. She kept it short so that she looked more business-like. She felt like it was important for patients to trust her. She had a baby face. The smart, grown-up haircut was an attempt to look more serious. At least her hair wasn’t such a bright yellow color as it used to be. More like dirty blond now. That seemed more fitting for a grown-up doctor like her.
She put the hairbrush to one side too. That needed a deep clean.
‘Dear me,’ she said under her breath. ‘What a lot of work I have cut out for me.’
She giggled to herself.
Everything since leaving home had been such hard work. Getting her bachelor’s degree: four years of study. Completing medical school: another four years. Completing her residency: three more years. That was the hardest part, working at a family practice in Pennsylvania. No offense to Pennsylvania, it was just… so different from home. The clinic she had worked at in Pittsburgh was so busy. You barely saw the same patient twice.
As much as twenty-nine-year-old Tammy felt strange to be back here, it was home. And her father’s family practice would be hers once he retired. Which, hopefully, would be any day now. Her father was nearly seventy and needed to take a freaking break. And she… she was raring to go.
‘Just as long as I get my own place soon,’ she said. ‘Then I don’t have to rely on my stinky old dad. I’ll get somewhere bright and modern with funky plants and feature walls. And maybe a bounce house in the living room. And mini-golf in the bathroom.’
Tammy smiled. Being a grown-up wasn’t so bad. You got to work hard and play hard. And design your perfect home, just how you wanted it. No-one to tell you what to do.
Just as she was stroking the hair of her old Tiny Tears doll, there was a creak at the door. Tammy looked up, and standing there was her father.
Gulp.
Tammy dropped the doll and got to her feet. ‘H-hello, sir,’ she said. ‘I, uh, I didn’t s-s-see you there.’
Tammy’s father, Vincent — even at sixty-nine years of age — struck an imposing figure. He had slick gray hair, a serious mustache, a coldness in his eyes. He was the sternest, scariest man Tammy had ever come across. And that was saying something. She’d worked with all kinds of difficult patients and obstinate doctors over the past decade. Still, though, nobody came close to her old man. A doctor who seemed to enjoy inflicting pain. A dad who never doted.
‘Well, Tamsin,’ he sneered. ‘I’ve seen a lot of things in my time. I’ve referred a lot of patients for a lot of different therapies. But I’ve never come across anyone as perverse as you. A real-life “Little”, living under my roof.’
Tammy frowned. What was he talking about? Alittlewhat?
Seeing the confusion upon Tammy’s face, Vincent motioned at all the toys on Tammy’s floor.
‘I suspected it long before you left home, Tamsin. Tried to nip it in the bud. Confiscated your toys. Locked you in your room. Kept you away from corrupting influences. But clearly, the problem has not been eradicated.’
He took something out of his pocket — a small white notepad that Tammy recognized all too well. It was his prescription pad.
‘N-no,’ she said. ‘I don’t need medication, sir. Please, not the tablets again.’
When Tammy was sixteen, her father had prescribed her medication for her ‘depression’. She had been in bed for a week, crying and hiding under the covers after the Healy brothers left town. But she was hardly depressed. She was just… lonely. Shocked and confused. She felt abandoned. What she hadn’t expected was her father to dole out a prescription for lithium supplements.
Now she thought about it, he’d made her take tablets after her mother died too. Only five years old, and she was on sedatives. For the anxiety and insomnia, her father told her. She stuck at it for a week and then began hiding the pills under her tongue and spitting them down the plughole.
‘Do yourself a favor,’ her father said, scribbling on the pad, then ripping out a small sheet of white paper and handing it to her. ‘Go get this prescription, and take it until the delusional behavior dissipates.’