Pitch
Pan’s Labyrinth meets Chucky
Puerto Rico, 1898. When her father is called to fight the Americans, twelve-year-old Violeta de Cervantes moves with her mean aunt to a remote convent. Having already lost her mother, Violeta is anxious without her father by her side, so she looks for connection in the hundreds of dolls her aunt keeps. One day, Violeta damages a forbidden doll…and now the doll wants atonement—or else she’ll turn Violeta into a doll.
As isolation sets in, Violeta’s only comforts are her cat and writing letters to her best friend, unanswered letters that describe her gradual transformation and her escalating attempts to reverse it: First, she burns her mother’s photo as sacrifice; then, an offering of blood by slashing her hand. But these offerings don’t work. Will Violeta turn completely into a doll, or will she lose her moral purity forever and offer a much bigger sacrifice…a toddler? But is she really turning into a doll…or is it all in her head?
Chapter One
Puerto Rico
May 26, 1898
It’s rocky and bumpy inside the carriage. My stomach is squeezed into a knot, and it’s hard to balance the desk on my lap. Dina looks miserable inside her carrier, even though she’s snuggled in my old baby blanket. Poor Dolores. She sits across from me with her ringlets spilling out of her lopsided hat and a frown that hasn’t left her forehead since we left. Once in a while she fans herself with her abanico, or she touches the rosary that hangs from her neck.
‘Think of it as one of Alice’s adventures,’ Dolores said last night, gesturing to my favorite book, which I’d been reading again.
I wonder how Alice would feel if she were me. On my way to an unknown world with Dina by my side. I touch Mami’s photo inside my pocket. That usually makes me feel better, but now it only reminds me of how she’s gone, and now Papi is too. For a while I try to distract myself with the landscape. We wind through coffee farms dotted with workers, past sugar cane fields with emerald-green stalks glistening in the sun. Far away beyond the rolling hills, I can see the sea.
The clatter of the horses’ hooves echoes in my ear as I pull out a sheet of paper and set it on the writing slope. I dip the quill into the ink well and I’m about to write today’s date when a sudden jolt shakes the carriage—
‘Meooww!’ Dina yowls.
‘Oh!’ The quill falls from my hand and a blotch of ink spiders outwards onto the page, spreading like a shadow.
‘Careful, your dress!’ Dolores says, putting down her fan.
I glance down at my white lace dress, now sprinkled with ink droplets. Oh well.
‘That was Brussels lace,’ Dolores says.
Continued…