My roommate, Lindsay, has an uncanny eye. She finds money on the sidewalk. She picks bouquets of four-leaf clovers. She finds amazing stuff at yard sales and flea markets. She has a knack for finding great things. Until last month.
She brought back a dummy to our room. Actually, a store mannequin. She found it lying in an alley downtown and dragged it all the way back to campus. The dummy is a tall, willowy girl with a striking bald head. She has large eyes, a turned-up nose, a perfect cleft in her upper lip. And in spite of a few dings and scuffs she’s actually rather lovely in her own strange way. We propped her in a corner on Lindsay’s side of the room and dressed her in an oversize t-shirt. We named her “Dolly.” Maybe naming her was a mistake.
Because Dolly moves around. I don’t mean, “she’s flexible in her joints”, I mean she moves around, literally, without any help. I first noticed it a few days after she arrived. I would leave for class in the morning and she would be in one position, and when I got back later, she had moved. It was subtle at first. Just a slight turn of the body or a repositioned arm. But the other week I came back to find her on my side of the room leaning against the wall by my bed. I put her back in her place but the next day, I found her standing in my closet.
I thought Lindsay was moving her around as a joke, but she denied it. Then last week it happened on a Saturday when Lindsay was away. I came back from breakfast and Dolly was standing at the window as if she were looking out, one hand outstretched toward the morning sunlight. But she hadn’t been like that when I got up. And nobody else has a key to our room.
I told Lindsay about it but she thinks I’m making it up. Or doing it myself.
I’m not.
Over the past few days, Dolly’s moves have gotten even weirder. Exaggerated. Extreme. Both arms reaching upward. Body and head turned in opposite directions. It gives me the creeps so I put her back where she belongs each time. But she always moves again.
I have a theory. There’s a ghost story on campus I’ve heard since I was a freshman. They say a girl killed herself in our dorm. A dancer. Everybody knows somebody who claims to have seen her. But that’s exactly what I think is happening with Dolly. Those are dancer’s poses. Dramatic. Expressive. Bigger than life. It’s what a young girl might do on a stage. Turning, reaching, trying to express deep feelings that words can’t capture. I think that dead girl has gotten inside of Dolly.
Lindsay is away again this weekend so I’ve been alone with Dolly. Last night I heard her move in the dark. Just a little creak from across the room. Maybe she thought I was asleep. This morning when I woke up, she was pointing at me.
I’m so afraid of what I might see tomorrow morning. Her hands reaching out to me? Her body twisted grotesquely? But what about tonight? What if I felt a hard, painted hand touch my cheek in the night? I might go crazy. But I’m even more afraid of what’s here in the room, right now. The dark thing that stirs inside the mannequin’s hollow shell. Those flat plastic eyes watching me. What exactly could a dead girl get up to when she gets her body back?