Day 172

When her grandmother died she inherited the doll house.
It was a bulky old thing that'd been in the family since the early 1900s.

Nobody was quite sure who the original owner was or how it had
survived this long but the whole family knew it had to be passed on.
There was this old legend that so long as the doll's house was fine,
the family would prosper which never quite happened.

Whichever family member was given the house would live to (and die
the day after) their one hundred and sixth birthday.
This had been the case for several generations and showed no signs
of being discontinued, it seemed more welcomed as her relatives
scrambled for her to name them as the next in line for the doll's home.

After warding off their requests with vague considerations she finally
had the time to fully examine her inheritance.

It had three floors and an attic, all dustless and neatly arranged with
old fashioned furniture and tiny electric lights which she assumed had
been added at some later date.

One room that really caught her attention was the room with a miniature
ladder that lead to the attic.

It was the only room with no furniture, instead the walls were filled with
small photos of what looked to be young women.

Some were black and white but the last five or so were in colour.

She recognised the last two.
One was her grandmother.
The other was her.

She rummaged around on her desk to find the magnifying glass her
brother had given her last year, desperate to see her photo up close,
it might just look similar to her after all, or maybe her grandmother
had it commissioned in her final months.

After pulling it out of a back drawer she frantically rushed back to
the house to get a proper glimpse of her image.

It was definitely her.
It was recent too.

The photo was wearing the shirt she had purchased earlier in the morning,
that she had yet to wear.
There was no way her grandmother could have known she'd wear or even buy it.

What caught her eye next was even stranger.
The floor of that room was lined with cream coloured cardboard that she had
initially mistaken for patterned carpet.

The presumed pattern was, in fact,  writing.
It looked to have come from one of those old typewriters, like the kind her
parents used to have when she was young.

The words were all of the texts she had sent in the last twelve hours, including the
photos she'd texted her mother about this small room.

Then they began to change to things she would say after that.
How she would text photos of that tiny room to her mother begging for any
kind of answer only to be dismissed.

The writing went on to a texted conversation between her aunt and mother where
they discussed her decaying mental state and what kind of help they could get her.

As she frantically backed away from the fast-changing words a piece of newspaper
was dislodged from the ceiling of the room underneath the walls of photos.

Tentatively she picked it up.

It was dated two weeks from the current date and detailed the investigation into her death.

Arson or suicide?

The doll's house had apparently remained perfectly intact.