The house was impressive. A grey stone frontage studded with four majestic bay windows was overhung by an ornate gothic portico. Through each window lights shone, and the glass of the door gleamed like a jewel. The front steps swept down to the polished mahogany of the dining room table at just about the waist height of Anna-Maria Hurwitz, an unpleasant child with a pallid face and narrow lips.

Anna Maria leant forward and opened the front door of the dolls house with the tiny pin-sized door knob. Her fingers suddenly felt clumsy and fat as a giant’s, and for a moment she considered that she had the power to tear the door from its hinges. But she restrained herself and peered into the front hall. A maid was frozen in the act of carrying linen up the carpeted stairs, her tiny feet out of proportion with the fibres of the carpet. Anna Maria inserted a podgy hand into the front hall like a giant pink crab and plucked the maid from the stairs, scattering tiny sheets. Anna Maria fancied the maid had been given a deliberate expression of fear. She felt a thrill, and gave a little squeeze with her thumb and forefinger, crumpling the starch of the neat dress. The doll’s face appeared for a moment to crease as well, as if in pain. Anna Maria dropped the maid to the table and it hit the mahogany with a strangely heavy blow, landing skewed and unnatural. Anna Maria wondered what it was made of.

Behind a bright window a couple sat at the table of a gleaming dining room. The man wore a high collar and looked towards his dark-haired wife in her red dress. His wide-set eyes gave him a look of wearied disdain, while hers were bored. Anna Maria liked neither of them.

She grasped at the first figure her fingers found. Something responded from inside the room, a thin noise like the cry of a small animal. Anna Maria withdrew her hand quickly and examined the doll in the red dress that she held. Close up it was a badly painted thing, Anna Maria thought, for it looked like the face was screaming.

Dropping the wife beside the prone maid Anna Maria reached in again. Not finding the husband at the table she groped to the back of the room, her hand feeling its way sightless. She found him crouching behind the ornate settee, and this time the cry from the house was so loud it made her snatch back as if burnt. Stepping back she stared at the house, her eyes playing tricks so for a moment it looked like a real house, far away. Lights blazed in the windows and two figures lay splayed by the front steps. Anna Maria turned away.

The door into the room behind her opened and her grandfather stepped through.
“Grandpapa, I would like to know how you made this house. I do not think I like it. It is enchanted.”
The Grandfather let out a dry laugh.
“Oh, it’s not that house that’s enchanted, my dear. Not that house.