Nobody really believes in haunted dolls. Least of all me—after all, I got paid to ghostwrite haunted doll eBay listings.
I know, it was a strange side job. Why couldn’t I just pick up seasonal at the mall? It wasn’t like I had a choice; the work sort of found me.
My friend Daphne called one frigid afternoon last December. She had an antique doll that she’d found in her late grandmother’s attic. She’d put it up for sale, but it just hadn’t gotten any bids; it was nearing Christmas, and she was desperate for cash.
“You know, Jilly.” She was outside smoking; I heard the click-flissh of her lighter. “I finally figured out how they move these dolls so fast. People claim they’re haunted!”
“So, do it, then.” I was frankly sick of hearing her whining about her so-called problem; it wasn’t just that she needed money, but that the doll was some kind of trigger for memories of her grandmother beating her with a wooden spoon, which apparently had been traumatizing to the point that there wasn’t even one wooden spoon in her house. I’d pretty much gotten over all of my childhood traumas, so I had trouble relating. “You’re great at telling stories.”
“Well…it’s not as easy as…you’re a writer! I was wondering if…”
As a person with an overpriced MFA degree who had done nothing with it—my full-time job was shuffling corporate paperwork—this was where I got asked to help little Johnny with his essay, pen someone’s obituary or clean up a terrible manuscript. I don’t think normal people realize asking writers for favors isn’t the same as asking someone for help moving across town or for a ride when the car’s crapped out. It’s a lot of intense brain time and sometimes involves bullshit to protect the friendship; would you tell your friend her dying grandmother’s memoir sucks?
“…the ones that I notice sell the fastest are the ones with the best stories.” I heard her exhale. “I’m just…you know me. I can tell good stories, I just can’t write any. Shit, I can’t write anything period.”
“So, talk it out into a recorder and then type it.”
“Please? I’ll give you ten percent.”
I wasn’t a fan of dolls. The last memory I had of my sister was her clutching her Dolly Graham—a squishy yarn-haired doll that reeked of faux graham cracker scratch ’n sniff—as she fell to her death from our treehouse. But I considered the prospect as I scrolled through eBay.
Daphne was right; the stories were pretty interesting: dolls possessed by the spirits of dead children, bullied Girl Scouts (the doll was only active when it was in the woods, apparently), murdered Victorian ladies of the evening or jilted brides. Dolls that were attached to sprites who brought good luck, protected the home, or gave great sex dreams. Dolls that had been used in ritual sacrifices and were now concubines of demons. All of the stories were charmingly rendered in misspellings and bad grammar.
I could certainly do better than that, so I came up with a back story for Daphne’s doll. Willa is possessed by the spirit of a little girl who was run over by a horse and buggy in 1898. The spirit has told the owner, through a psychic medium, that Willa was her only playmate, as she was an orphan who lived on the streets. She especially loves cats and small children, and will bring you good luck as long as she is in a room with plenty of toys; expect the toys to move around and show up other places in your home; set her near electronics and they will turn on and off by themselves. There have also been reports of random giggling in the night. The current owner has been forced to move and won’t have a suitable environment for Willa; don’t leave a poor soul out in the cold on Christmas Eve!
Willa sold within hours. Nine hundred dollars in Daphne’s pocket, a hundred in mine.
Daphne referred me to a friend, who referred me to another, and so on, and so on, for a whole year, and…then I realized why make a cut when I can just go find beat-up dolls myself and keep the whole profit? There was certainly a steady supply stream; I lived down the road from a town that was established in 1706. There were loads of historic houses with cobwebbed attics full of ancient crap the grandchildren didn’t want.
I was staring at a box of dolls I’d braved a snowstorm to get at the indoor flea market. I examined each as I lined them up on the couch: a porcine-faced baby in a plaid dress. A blue-eyed, blonde-braided girl with a clown’s face. A lady with pockmarks—like scarring—on her face. Seven in all. None of them were particularly attractive or unique; they were definitely going to require the élan of being haunted. But there was something different about having them there to touch, to hold, to feel; for the past year, I’d only been working from people’s photographs.
I felt an unexplained twinge of guilt at selling them.
“Come on, now, ladies.” I took out my digital camera. “Everybody smile!”
I loaded my SD card into my laptop and flipped through the images, chuckling at my couple of clients who’d used their pictures—some obscured with shimmery mists, ghostly faces, or unexplained streaks—as proof that the dolls were, indeed, “haunted.” I’d always suspected most of those were faked, and sure enough, there was nothing out of the ordinary on mine. Plaid Dress, Blonde Clown and the others looked normal.
Except for Pockmarks.
It was as though a dark cloud had drifted over the lens.
I frowned.
Then I realized I’d been standing between her and the lamp on the opposite side of the room.
Idiot. It was your own shadow.
I opened a Word file and started with Pockmarks, because she had the most potential for a slam-bang back story based on her condition. I set her on the table next to me so I could keep her in sight. She said Old West to me for some reason…perhaps the ghost was a farm girl who had found the love of her life, but then contracted smallpox…no, even better! She found the love of her life, they moved to a small homestead and she became pregnant. She gave birth to a girl, someone gave her this doll, and then she contracted smallpox and died, and in order to stay with her child, her spirit moved into the doll. It was perfect!
I sat back from the computer and looked at the typed idea. I liked it. It needed spooky fleshing out, of course, and there had to be a promise of something, too, like, what kind of activity could be expected. Oh, and a name. She needed a name. Something old-timey.
Clementine? Reminded me of oranges. Delilah? Made me think of that song by Tom Jones. It needed an edge. Jessamine. Now that sounded like a frontier girl who wasn’t afraid of hard work in bleak fields or even a little frostbite.
I’d barely finished the first sentence when my cell phone played “Yesterday.”
I knew what today was. I shouldn’t have been surprised. “Hi, Mom.”
The rattle of ice in her metal cocktail shaker betrayed her mixing a martini. Since Selena’s death she’d never gone a day without one, and she had a special concoction for every occasion—and two or three for the Holidays. Thanks to Pinterest she’d recently discovered the Red Hot Santa Tini, a noxious blend of chili-infused vodka rimmed with cayenne pepper and cocoa powder. The last time I was at her house, the smell alone made me sweat, but don’t ever try to tell my mother that there could be such a thing as too much Christmas. Starting the year Selena died, she kept the Christmas tree up until April or it became a fire hazard—whichever came first—and her guests would be wiping themselves with festive toilet paper if it existed.
The shaker slammed on her wooden bar. “I just wanted to call on today in particular and make sure that you were doing okay.”
“Thank you,” I said, even though I preferred not to be reminded.
“I was just going through the Christmas presents.” She shopped all year, too. “I was wondering, you know…what do you think your sister would’ve wanted this year? She’d be twenty-one. Can you imagine? Maybe I could’ve gotten her a cocktail set.”
It had been difficult to compete with my sister when she was alive—Selena could never have done any wrong in my parents’ eyes, and I can’t say it didn’t bother me—but it had proven to be even harder to compete with her in death. Selena was so talented with those ice skates, maybe she would’ve even gone to the Olympics if she’d kept up her lessons. She would’ve been so close to graduating from college—probably at Smith—and she had a heart big enough that she would’ve gone, for sure, to Africa to build bathrooms; she had the sweetest, most giving personality. Even when she was a baby, she barely cried. “If only your father hadn’t built that treehouse.”
Twelve years ago, Dad had built us the treehouse as a consolation prize for going to live with his girlfriend, but of course he had stipulations on its use. “Stay outta there in the winter, Kittens,” he’d said before he’d closed the front door behind him. “It’s made of some great old wood, but water in the boards could freeze and make it a little bit treacherous. Not to mention the slippery ladder. Got it?”
We spent plenty of dreamy hours in the treehouse at other times of year—she’d have spring tea parties with her dolls, I’d go up there and drink lemonade and read Water for Elephants, and on Halloween, we’d stash our loot in the rafters. Those, however, were never enough for Selena. She was always on the make for the treehouse even if it was between Thanksgiving and St. Patty’s, and since I was her older sister and it was, therefore, my job to watch her, I was constantly muscling her off that ladder.
“I can’t talk about this now,” I said. “I’m in the middle of a new project.”
She swallowed. “I still remember that essay she wrote for Sunday school, about the fruits of the spirit. It was clever.”
Yes, it was. That was because Selena couldn’t put a sentence together so I’d written it for her. She’d been far from perfect—always needing help with homework, trashing our room, manipulating the hell out of my parents with that cherubic smile.
“I have to go.”
“If you get lonely, call me…we’re going to be snowed in for at least tonight and tomorrow. Seven shopping days until Christmas! The malls are going to be packed this weekend!”
That was her way of inviting me for a mother-daughter day out. “I might have my hands full this weekend, but I’ll see.” I hung up, wandered into the kitchen, poured myself a shot of Beefeater, and knocked it back.
I poured a second, seized the bottle and went back to my desk.
Thanks to the interruption, I hadn’t written much. If you’re looking for a haunted doll with an edge, Jessamine is your gal—the woman who is attached to this doll can be sad and bitter THAT’S NOT MY NAME
What the hell? I didn’t write anything in all caps.
It’s the gin, dummy. Your mother, and the gin.
I deleted the words, and instead of downing the whole shot, took a sip.
I heard something outside and went to the large picture window. The snow was coming down and accumulating fast. Across the street, I saw old Mr. Volaris, clearly underdressed in a pair of ratty jean shorts, slippers and a T-shirt that said ROCKIN’ GRANDDAD, open his front door; a little girl in a fur-collared coat bounded into the snow. He seemed to sense someone was watching him; he looked at me, waved, and smiled—then his expression darkened, and he ducked back inside the house.
I drained the shot glass and went back to my desk.
On the page below my description: THAT’S NOT MY NAME
I heard giggling.
My heart stopped. I looked at the dolls.
No, that was impossible. Fur Collared Coat girl was outside, rolling in the snow and making a snowman. She was the one who was probably giggling. And I only thought I’d deleted the phrase.
I got back to work. The woman attached to this doll can be sad and bitter, but it is because of her tragic past. She lived just outside of Dodge City, Kansas, in the late 1800s, until she died of smallpox. She has told a medium that she…
No, the reader needed to see the joyous tale of finding the love of her life first; save the smallpox kicker for the end, right? I got up to pace and consider that.
That’s when I heard the quiet clicking of computer keys.
WHY WOULD YOU MAKE UP THIS LIE ABOUT ME
I dove for the laptop and slammed it shut.
There was only the frantic beating of my heart. I felt nauseous.
Alright, I told myself. Alright, alright. Calm down. It’s just your imagination, and the call from your mother, and the snow, and the gin.
I opened up the laptop again.
I WAS MURDERED
The air was sucked from my lungs. Maybe it was possible that this haunted doll thing wasn’t all bullshit. How else could I explain this? I certainly wasn’t doing it. I thought back to when I’d first started spinning these dolls’ tales of woe. It was true that sometimes, there were dolls that were resold, explanations in the comments: I thot I could Handle This but I can’t…Sometimes I just don’t like the way it looks @ me…Things fall off the shelves all the time…I’m selling this at HAlf what I paid for itGHOstbusters u can hve it.
Was it possible there was actually something to this?
Oh my God. I heaved a deep sigh. I had two choices: run out of the house (yes yes right now), or see what it wanted (be an adult—or an idiot). With trembling fingers, I typed: What is your name?
Giggling.
I want to get it right.
YOU SHOULD KNOW IT
Humor me.
No response.
Shit. I probably shouldn’t have been so flip. What if it wasn’t the spirit of a person? I wasn’t a fool. If I truly believed this was happening, I knew some listings featured dolls possessed with demons from the underworld, angry ancient gods, and spurned faeries.
WHY SHOULD I
YOU SHOULD KNOW IT
Clearly, we were at a standoff.
I’M UPSET YOU DON’T KNOW IT
I typed, Why?
I’M UPSET YOU DON’T KNOW IT
I panicked.
I typed, I don’t think I know anyone who was murdered.
No response.
I typed, How were you murdered?
A bitter winter’s eve silence filled the room.
No answer.
I typed again, How were you murdered?
No answer.
My legs went weak. Clearly, whatever this thing was, it wasn’t human. Then it came to me: burn the doll. Just burn it. Like they do with Ouija boards in those documentaries I used to watch on the Discovery Channel. Burning the cursed object always worked.
I went into my dining room, disrupting everything in my buffet’s center drawer to get my hands on a long barbecue lighter. I moved toward the doll. I was stopped by the message on my screen.
GO AHEAD AND BURN IT, IT DOESN’T MATTER
I’M RIGHT BEHIND YOU
Without another thought, I dropped the lighter, tore through the living room, and plunged out the front door into the snow. It wedged into the ring of mink around the tops of my slippers; it stung my face like a thousand wet needles. The world smelled of iced eucalyptus and someone’s fireplace smoke. The cold air hurt my struggling lungs.
It was like that day.
Selena had bundled up, taken Dolly Graham, and snuck out to the treehouse while Mom was in the kitchen. Cursing, I pursued. “Get back here, Selena!”
She was nearly at the top of the ladder by the time I reached the base. “Come down here now! If Mom catches you—”
She looked down at me with a sneer. “No.”
“Yes!”
“She’ll blame you anyway.”
My face grew hot. I seized a rung of the ladder and clambered after her. I reached just below her, and I’ll never forget the look she gave me right before she tried to kick me in the face.
Everything hit me then. I was sick of being her second, sick of her being queen, sick of her clearly being Mom and Dad’s favorite. Just sick of it. I wrapped my arm around her leg and yanked with everything I had. “Come. Down. Now!”
I remembered her pink-coated form catapulting past me, the snap as she hit the sharp rock that the base of the ladder was anchored to, the landing with her neck cocked unnaturally and her eyes wide open.
The almost accusatory stare of Dolly Graham.
“It was an accident!” I’d yelled at the doll. “It was!”
Now, I clenched my eyes closed and tried to push it all away.
The front door, which I’d left open, creaked behind me in the rising winds.
I’M RIGHT BEHIND YOU
