The Doll

I bought the doll from a garage sale being run by some old guy who lived a few blocks away. I can’t say what drew me to it, really. I just knew that it was something I wanted. Plus, the guy was selling it for dirt cheap. It didn’t seem like he was sad to see it go, nor did he desperately want to get rid of it. I handed him the money, and he casually tossed the doll towards me. I grabbed it, thanked him, then left.

The doll is about 5 inches tall, and probably made of cotton. It’s wearing a black-and-blue dress, old-fashioned shoes, and it had straggly black hair. The features were the strangest thing about it. The eyes were small, almost like pinpricks, but the smile was shaped like a thin horseshoe, extending from cheek to cheek. When I got home, I put it on top of my chest of drawers, next to all of the other dolls and teddies I owned. It sat between a Pikachu I’d bought when I was a child and a strange dragon-like teddy with a round belly and a pointed tail. I didn’t forget about the thing, necessarily, but it blended in with the rest of the stuffed animals I owned. That night, I watched some TV, had a beer, and went to sleep.

The next day, I climbed out of bed around mid-day and all of the dolls on my chest of drawers had moved position. They were position in a curved line off to the left of the new doll, and the dragon-thing was lying down, chest sliced open and stuffing puffing out. Confused, I walked over to the stuffed animals and picked up the damaged doll. Next to it, there was a note, written on a scrap of paper. It read:

First this one,

Then the rest,

And rest assured,

You’ll be next!

I didn’t know what to think. I lived alone—there was no way anybody else could have been responsible for this. Of course, my family knew where I lived, but they lived miles away, and wouldn’t have done something like that. I had friends in the city, but they weren’t exactly hardened criminals. I moved the dolls back to their originals, took my sewing kit, and stitched the dinosaur-like thing back together.

I started to wonder if it was me that had done it. I had a history of sleepwalking, but in the past I’d usually just walked into rooms, stood for a while, then returned to bed. Never anything like this. I went to work that night, and tried not to think about it for the rest of the day. I think I knew how strange it was, and that’s why thoughts of that new doll, with its horseshoe smile and pinprick eyes, kept appearing my thoughts, plaguing me. I finished working at five in the afternoon, and headed home straight away, desperate to figure out what exactly had happened.

While I was on the bus, I looked down at the bus stop, and saw a life-size version of the doll, that horseshoe grin, those pinprick eyes. Except this time, instead of black, they were stark crimson, the colour of blood, which was bleeding from the sockets and pooling on the floor, spreading around the soles of the commuters’ shoes. None of them seemed to notice.

I looked forwards, and the bus wasn’t moving. The other passengers were frozen in place, as was the world outside, and the doll extended its arm and spread its fingers, revealed its palm. Its smile grew, and I felt something in my own palm. The people on the bus remained entirely still. I opened palm, and unfolded the note. It said:

The second is blue,

It’s important to you,

You should start getting stressed,

You’ll be next!

The world around me became animated again, and the bus shunted forwards in the traffic. People used their phones, read books, spoke to each other, and whatever had been standing at the bus stop disappeared. As soon as I reached my stop, I headed home as quickly as I could.

I opened the front door and rushed upstairs. I remembered being young, maybe five years old, and my mother gave me a plush blue turtle, which I played with all the time…

I ran upstairs, and pushed open the door to my bedroom, and all of the toys were in a semi-circle on the bedroom floor, the blue turtle in the centre on its back. Just like the dinosaur, its centre was slashed open, but this time, there was no stuffing puffing out of the incision.

Except this time, blood was pouring out of the wound, organs which I couldn’t identify sliding slowly to the ground… I felt sick. I regarded the semi-circle, and noticed the doll I’d bought from the old guy wasn’t there.

I turned, looked in the corridor, but I couldn’t see the doll. I went back into my room and there it was, standing at the edge of the room, that smile seeming to get large and more sinister every time I saw it. I tried to run, get away from the thing, but I found myself locked into place, facing it…

It walked towards me, still grinning, then stood in front of me, close enough to touch me. Once again, it opened its palm, and there was a piece of paper inside. The doll held it up to me:

The blue one’s gone,

It’s guts on the floor,

What a shame that,

You’ll never make it to the door

I closed my eyes, still unable to move, and I felt something dig into my eyelids. Whatever tool the doll was using, it sliced them both off, and I was forced to watch as it cut open my stomach slowly took out my innards and chewed them apart, swallowing them bit by it, until I couldn’t take it any more, and I passed out…

Only to wake up again, and notice that one of my arms was missing, and the doll held one of my fingers in its own hand, tearing it apart with its teeth. The last thing I saw was a knife pass into my line of vision, move closer to my face, and then cut into my neck. There was a sharp pain, then I felt nothing.