On Melissa’s latest visit to the rural home of Aunt Sally and Uncle Pete, they gently break the news that Susan Henderson's family have moved back to the city.
As Melissa hangs on the tire swing on her Aunt and Uncle’s lawn, she gazes at the vacated house of her friend, and sees, through an upstairs window, a sudden twitch of a curtain. Curious, she approaches the house.
Through the unlocked door, she passes sheet-covered furniture. On the upstairs landing, she finds a spacious cupboard, still hung with shirts and jackets. She pushes these aside, and finds, at the back of the cupboard, a set of wooden steps.
At the top of the stairs, she pushes open a trapdoor, and climbs into the house’s attic. By the far wall, a small table holds a large doll’s house. Melissa peers through one of its windows at tiny affectation of a domestic room. Suddenly, the room’s tiny open door swings shut.
Startled, Melissa stumbles back, and dislodges a large drapery, beyond which, the wall is set with a door; arched, brightly painted, and flanked by two cloth-covered windows. She finds herself entranced, and slowly approaches it.
Just before she reached its doorknob, the anxious voice of her Aunt calls from behind, and urges her not to snoop around the abandoned building.
Last winter, Aunt Sally explains, Susan vanished without trace, whereupon her bereaved parents, unable to live with the memories, moved back to the city. However, just in case their daughter is found, they’ve decided to keep the house.
That evening, Melissa overhears her Aunt and Uncle argue. Marge Henderson, beside herself with grief, claimed the house to have taken her daughter.
Late that night, asleep on the couch, Melissa hears a distant voice whisper her name. She wakes, to see through the living room window, the Henderson's attic door to be open, and the room beyond to be lit.
She takes a key from the wall, sneaks out, and re-enters the empty house. Back in the mysterious attic, she shines a light on the dollhouse, and sees, in its roof, a window-flanked arched door, just like the one in the wall of this attic. What's more, the tiny twin windows are lit from within.
Melissa turns to face, in the far wall, the door's life-size counterpart, through whose keyhole shines a shaft of light. She opens the door. From within a brilliant yellow glow, a familiar voice calls her name. The light dims to reveal what appears to be a lifesize replica of the brightly decorated upstairs hallway of the doll's house. From behind a door, in a bright pink nightie, her friend Susan steps into view. With dreamily stiff movements, and pink circles painted on her cheeks, Susan stares obliviously, and wanders away.
Melissa prepares to step in after her. An anguished yell from behind is followed by the arm Uncle Pete, who pulls her to safety - the door now leads to a lethal outside drop.
Next day, from a drawer, Melissa takes a hefty ball of string and a hammer; steals away, and breaks into the locked house. In its attic, she prises away recently nailed boards from the arched door. When opened, the door once more reveals the mysterious hallway.
Melissa loops the string around the door handle, and gingerly eases her foot onto the floor of the hallway. Assured of its solidity, she takes her string, and delves further in. She calls out to Susan. Suddenly, a repeated heavy thud shakes the building. A nearby window shows a view of the attic through which she entered. However, it now appears gigantic. Through it towers the familiar, although now gigantic, figure of Aunt Sally, whose footsteps boom thunderously. Melissa realises herself to be inside the dollhouse.
As her Aunt’s giant hand looms by the dollhouse window, Melissa calls out to her, but Sally turns to leave. From nearby, a familiar voice says it’s useless. Seated in an armchair is Susan.
Melissa fretfully ponders Susan’s subdued stiffness, pristine pallor and quaint makeup: she looks like a doll. Melissa asks if the dollhouse did this to her. Stiffly and forlornly, Susan nods. With limited power of speech, she entreats for "the attic."
Melissa retraces her string, only to find its end to have fallen to the floor, while the arched door has been seamlessly replaced by solid wall. She starts to panic, and notices her hands to have been bleached china-white: like Susan's. Frantically, she deduces the architecture to parallel that of Susan’s house, which means the end of this hallway must lead to an attic - which must be what Susan meant. However, the far wall is barred by a tall, heavy set of shelves. She unsuccessfully tries to shift it, and returns to Susan.
Melissa needs help to shift the heavy shelves. Susan admits her inability. In demonstration, she pulls at her hand, which, with a tinkling rattle, slips off. Melissa resolves to try again.
With a heave, Melissa manages to dislodge the towering chest of shelves, which falls to the floor with a clatter. A door beyond reveals a cupboard with wooden steps - just like those by which she entered the attic. She climbs up, and finds a rather more brightly decorated attic, set with gigantic plush toys and scattered stationary. A far wall holds a brightly painted arch door, like the one in the wall of the attic outside.
Into the attic, Melissa gently helps Susan along. Melissa opens the arched door - which reveals the same open-aired, lethal drop from which Uncle Pete narrowly steered her. Beyond the second story roof ledge, the Henderson’s lawn lies far below.
Melissa helps Susan to the door, and into a seated position in the doorway. Melissa nervously edges her foot into the open air. With a deep rushing sound, the space before her shoe yields to a brief, rippling distortion. She pulls herself and Susan into a slide along the roof ledge. With a ripple of the air around them, the two vanish…
As Pete and Sally agonise over their suddenly missing niece, Sally sees, on the lawn, a familiar figure running to the house. Overcome with relief, they run out to greet Melissa, whom they feared to have vanished, like Susan. In the distance, on the Henderson’s porch, appears a second figure. Free of paint and china pallor, a fully flesh and blood Susan peers delightedly at her restored, fully mobile hands. As Pete and Sally start to sob with relief, Melissa leads her friend across the lawn.
That night, concludes Betty Anne, Uncle Pete burned the dollhouse. Without a dollhouse to bridge, wondered Melissa, where would the arched door now lead? As they all head off, Kiki finds Betty Anne’s doll, and calls after her. Kiki and Tucker peer at the doll - whose clothes and hair now closely match those of Tucker, who wonders where Betty Anne could have acquired such an item. From the shadows, she re-emerges to claim her doll, and saves its eerie likeness for another story...
This episode provides examples of:
- And I Must Scream: Confinement to the dollhouse seems to have reduced Susan’s mobility to a point where her speech is limited to brief sentences, and she can barely move unaided.
- Bigger on the Inside: From the perspective of those who enter the arched door, the dollhouse.
- Bizarrchitecture: Through an arched door in the Henderson’s attic, entrants find themselves in the hallway of a nearby dollhouse which, from their perspective, is now life-size.
- Body Horror: With her body largely transformed to the likeness of a doll, Susan’s movement is severely limited, and her hand, now made of china, comes off.
- Creepy Doll: Invoked by Betty Anne’s eerily precise china replica of Tucker.
- Creepy Monotone:
- While not a monotone, Susan’s speech is constrained to brief, emotive yet eerily calm utterances.
- Used by Betty Anne on revelation of her alarmingly convincing doll replica of Tucker.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Through venture into a bizarre location, Melissa risks becoming trapped therein, and, aids her incapacitated friend to freedom.
- Eldritch Abomination: A house, via a magic door, transfers entrants to the inside of a dollhouse replica, which, from their perspective, is now life-size. Thereon, the dollhouse replica aims to ensnare the entrants in its inert environs. Might this process manifest the will of some sentient, incorporeal entity?
- Eldritch Location: An attic door leads intermittently to a lethal outside drop, and to a hallway which, from the perspective of entrants, is a life-size replica of a nearby dollhouse. The dollhouse replica of the attic holds a similar door, which leads...to the lethal outside drop. Falling off here leads, in turn, to a safe landing on the lawn of the original house.
- Fisher Kingdom: The dollhouse gradually transforms visitors into dolls.
- Genius Loci: The arched door, and the dollhouse beyond, seem able to rearrange their structure. Furthermore, the dollhouse transforming visitors into dolls may be some kind of predation.
- Portal Door: In the attic, the arched door leads to a suddenly life-size perspective of the inner dollhouse. In the dollhouse attic, the equivalent door leads to outside the attic of the original house - however, the space around this view ripples on touch, and leads to a safe landing on the lawn.
- Scenery Porn: Some lovely shots of the forested district.
- Slow Transformation: The dollhouse has the ability to change the people within it to dolls, but it's an agonizingly slow process that gradually consumes the body. Susan has almost completely morphed into china and can barely speak, while Melissa's hands begin to blanch after just a few minutes inside. The worst part, though, is that the brain doesn't change, so the victim is entirely aware of the transformation but can't do anything to stop it.
- Supernatural Light: The arched doorway initially exudes a brilliant glow.
- Taken for Granite: Visitors to the dollhouse are slowly turned into dolls. Luckily, Melissa and Susan escape before either of them are totally transformed.
- Tears of Joy: Aunt Sally and Uncle Pete, when Melissa and Susan safely return.
