The wardrobe door was opening. It was a gentle, slow movement but the door was definitely moving. From the growing darkness beyond, something shiny and pale reflected the dim light of the hallway. I felt the colour drain from my face as a dainty, porcelain hand pushed against the other side of the door.
As the gap between the wardrobe and door steadily widened, the glassy eyes and glazed face of Maisie slowly leered out of the darkness. My mind reeled. She was moving, Maisie was moving on her own! With what looked to be great effort, she stood precariously on her delicate porcelain legs, dropping from the wardrobe and standing there on the carpet. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Maisie was standing at the foot of the wardrobe, her head jerking on its own as she appeared to survey my room.
Standing in place, her head and limbs twitched and spasmed violently, as though she was having great trouble controlling them. Seemingly satisfied that the coast was clear, with a quivering step she began walking across the room, the sounds of tinkling china accompanying her every footfall. Although she was an elegant doll her walk was laboured. A lurching, shambling walk, she seemed to stumble and trip although never quite toppling over. One of her smooth porcelain feet dragged limply across the floor behind her as she forced herself onwards.
My stomach writhed as I watched her gradually make her way over to my bed. My still form was softly breathing, fast asleep, as she came to a halt just before me. Standing there for several seconds, staring down at me as she twitched and spasmed, she seemed to hesitate before slowly moving again.
Reaching out a shaky porcelain hand, she gently stroked my hair. Disgusted, my hand reached up to touch my hair as bile rose in my throat. I felt sick at the idea of her watching me, at the fact that she’d touched me as I’d slept. Although her back was to the camera, I could see that her head was cocked at an odd angle.
Just like her walking, her arm movements were harsh and clunky with no semblance of fluidity. She stroked my hair gently enough not to wake me, her quivering hand moving slowly back and forth. The way she moved, it was with the same care and compassion that someone would stroke a much-loved pet. All the while the rest of her was twitching violently, struggling to maintain control as though her body was unfamiliar to her.
Watching this back was awful enough, but then she turned around, and I had to cover my mouth to stifle my scream. The beautiful, painted smile that covered Maisie’s face had contorted into a malevolent grin, with rows of tiny razor-sharp teeth glinting from behind it. Heavy black cracks now lined her ashen grey skin, no longer gleaming and delicate. Her glassy eyes were nearly black, faded and dull. Trails of a thick black liquid leaked from them, pooling just above her cheeks.
Her terrifying visage seemed to quiver and shake, snapping and twisting as those lifeless, glassy eyes carefully scanned the room. It was as though she was searching for something, scouring every inch of the space before her, and then her eyes locked onto Gerard who up until this point had been running around in his wheel.
With an unsettling, struggling lurch, she dragged herself across my bedroom, her glassy gaze fixed on Gerard. As she made her clumsy approach, a cold trickle worked its way down my spine as I watched her face begin to split. It started as a small tear in her nose, it seemed to gradually widen as she walked, the porcelain around it pulling back to reveal the raw flesh and sinew underneath. Peeling away from her top lip all the way to her forehead, her skin flapped open, and her once pretty face now revealed a large, gaping chasm of razor-sharp teeth leading into a dark pit.
All I could do was stand there, my hand shaking as I watched her on the feed, getting closer and closer to Gerard’s cage before coming to a stop just before it, her glassy eyes tracking every move of my poor pet. She seemed to stand there for what felt like an eternity, twitching and spasming as she watched Gerard unsuspectingly running in his wheel, unaware of the petrifying creature watching him just inches away. Time seemed to stand still, the twitching of Maisie and the running of Gerard the only indicators that the video hadn’t frozen in place.
Then I jumped with a start as Maisie’s arm suddenly burst forward in a flurry of uncoordinated movement. She reached out her tiny, ashen hand, ripping the cage door from its hinges and crushing the metal in a singular motion. Gerard, startled by the sound, turned to see the terrifying face before him and let out a gut-wrenching squeal. Frantically charging to the far reaches of his cage, I watched as he attempted to desperately bury himself beneath his bedding in a blind panic.
Almost autonomously, Maisie thrust her hand into the cage, throwing sawdust and seeds left and right as she chased the horrified Gerard around the cage before finally trapping him in the far corner. Gerard screamed in protest as tiny porcelain fingers wrapped themselves around him, desperately trying in vain to bite the hand that restrained him as he was torn from the cage. He was clumsily raised into the air and held there before Maisie’s face for a few seconds while her eyes seemed to study him, full of contempt, before being shoved brutally into that abyss of horrid fangs. No sooner than Gerard was inside the flaps of her face, they began to close up again like some kind of grotesque Venus fly trap, stifling his panicked squeals until there was nothing but a wet crunching sound.
I retched as I watched Gerard disappear, vomit working its way along my throat as Maisie’s face knitted itself back together, returning to the horrific visage that it had been mere moments ago. And like that the carnage was over, the missing cage door the only indication that anything had ever happened.
Tears burned as they welled up in my eyes. Maisie had killed Gerard, killed my friend. I was certain now she’d been the one who killed Harry and my Lego set too. I knew there was something wrong with her, something unnatural. But why? Why was she doing this, and what did she want?
A twitching jerk from the phone screen caused a cold hand to tug at my scalp. Maisie had whirled around, violently spinning her whole body until she was facing the camera, her glassy lifeless eyes staring directly into the lens, directly at me.
I watched, paralysed, as she dragged herself over to where the camera was perched. All the while she stared directly into the lens, dragging herself closer and closer, bringing that horrific, lifeless face so close that it became the only thing I could see.
Still covered in that black substance that leaked from her eyes, and still showing those rows of now blood-covered, razor-sharp teeth, she stood there. She didn’t move, standing as still as she could as she stared, twitching into the camera lens.
I flicked through the video, fast-forwarding it, watching through hours of footage in a few seconds. All that the screen showed was her unsettling dead eyes, boring into me through the camera. She stayed like that, twitching and staring, until the sun came up and movement from my bed seemed to snap her attention away.
As soon as she noticed me stirring, she violently span on her heel before jerkily making her way back across the room. As she clambered back into the wardrobe, I could see her tiny porcelain fingers wrapping themselves around the door, pulling it closed as far as she could. The fingers slowly retracted back into the darkness as I watched myself sit up in bed and rub the sleep from my eyes.
I dropped the phone onto my bed, numb, not quite able to believe what I was seeing. Maisie was alive. Not just alive, alive and dangerous. I felt sick as the full weight of what I’d seen crashed down over me. I’d been in the same room as that thing for days now. I’d even let it sleep in the same bed as me. Terrified, I scanned the room again, hoping that what I’d seen on the phone moments ago was just a sick dream. My stomach dropped as I looked over to Gerard’s cage.
The door had been completely torn away and lay crumpled on the floor below it. The open cage was completely devoid of any life or movement. The tears that had welled up in my eyes slowly began to slither down my cheeks as I tuned my gaze towards the wardrobe and another frigid wave washed over me. Sure enough, the door was ajar, a tiny gap between the wood and the frame.
My mind was going a mile a minute as the realisation that it was all real hit me. There was something evil in my wardrobe, and I was sitting in the room with it. Swiping my phone from the bed and trying to keep my wardrobe in my peripheral vision, I ran to my parent’s room. I needed to show someone the video, I needed an adult. I didn’t know what to do.
Bursting into my parent’s room, tears streamed down my face as I tried to relay everything I’d seen on the phone. It must have sounded like a garbled mess of sound as my mother scooped me up in a hug and stroked my hair in an attempt to calm me down. After a few seconds, she asked me to try again, concern etched into her face.
Between sobs, I tried to explain what I’d seen on the phone, about Maisie and Gerard. Still perplexed as to what had gotten me into such a state, my mother took the phone from my outstretched hand before sitting back down next to my father.
I watched through blurry eyes as they watched the footage. Their expressions changed from confused to amazed and then into a horrified grimace as the macabre clip unfolded before them. A stunned silence settled over them as the video finished. They were well and truly baffled.
After what felt like several minutes, my father turned to face me, asking what the hell that was. I tried to explain that it was what I’d filmed last night after I’d gone to sleep, that I’d left the camera recording, but he didn’t believe me.
“There’s no way you recorded… that. Look, I know you’re old enough to have this phone now but you need to be careful what you do with it. There are lots of apps that can change videos and you’ve obviously managed to download a horror-themed one or something. It’s not real, but just be careful which sites you’re going on to”
My heart sank as his words hit my ears and my limbs felt heavy. They didn’t believe me, they thought the video was fake. I knew it had to be real, there’s no way I’d accidentally downloaded something, I’d only set the camera up and pressed record, and then there was the wardrobe door being ajar and Gerard’s cage… Gerard’s cage! The door had been ripped off, I’d seen that for myself this morning.
“What about the door for Gerard’s cage? When I woke up this morning it had come off and was lying on the floor, just like in the video. And I can’t find Gerard anywhere!” I said, a sob catching in my throat.
“Are you sure you closed it properly when you put him in last night? If he’d managed to open the door it wouldn’t surprise me if it snapped under his weight as he climbed out, it’s only thin metal. He’s probably somewhere in your room, give me a few minutes to get dressed and get some breakfast and I’ll help you look for him”
The tears came back in heavy, racking sobs at my father’s insistence that nothing was wrong. I ran out of my room crying, much to the bemusement of my confused parents. If they weren’t going to do something about Maisie, then I would have to. She’d killed Gerard, destroyed Harry and trashed my Lego set. She was escalating and I had no idea where it would stop. What if she decided to do something to my parents next?
Charging into my room, I stopped dead outside of my wardrobe. It seemed to tower over me, the ajar door filling me with dread as I imagined the split face of Maisie sitting on the other side, just waiting for me to wrap my fingers around the wood. Still, I needed to do this, I had to.
Tearing open the door as fast as I could, and half expecting something cold and smooth to grab my hand the second it touched it, relief washed over me as I was met with the empty space of my wardrobe. It was just as I’d left it, the hanging clothes and piles of underwear and socks still just as I’d placed them. The ruffled old coat still sat there on the bottom left of the wardrobe, although it looked as though it had been recently moved.
A cold pit opened up in my stomach, I knew Maisie was under there, buried and hiding, pretending as though nothing had happened last night. Gingerly, I reached out a hand, ready to jerk it back at the slightest sign of any movement. Grabbing the coat as lightly as I could, I slowly pulled it away, steeling myself for the terrifying visage of Maisie beneath.
My jaw dropped as the coat fell to the floor, revealing the gleaming porcelain face of Maisie, no longer ashen and marred. She looked exactly as I remembered her. All except for the position she was now placed in. Once again it had changed, unassisted.
Stamping down the revulsion that crawled through me as I touched her skin, I grabbed her by her porcelain ankle and tore her from the wardrobe, running as fast as I could to the front door. All the while I was pushing down the nausea rising in my throat.
Ripping the front door open, I ran to the end of our drive, flinging open the bin lid and hurling Maisie inside. Slamming the lid closed again, I jumped on top and sat, holding it in place with my weight, there was no way she was getting out of there.
It was Sunday morning, and the bin hadn’t been empty when I’d thrown her in, so all I had to do was wait. It wouldn’t be long until the binmen made their rounds, and then this nightmare would be over.
I sat there for what felt like hours in my pyjamas, half expecting the bin to jerk and clatter underneath me. With the rumbling of every engine, my heart soared, only to drop again as a regular car would speed by. Passers-by looked at me in confusion as they made their way along the street but I paid them no mind. I needed to stop Maisie from getting out before the binmen could take her.
Just as I was beginning to give up hope, wondering if the bin collection had perhaps been cancelled this week, the heavy rumblings of a diesel engine broke through the hustle and bustle of the street. That sound was like glorious music to my ears, and sure enough, the bin lorry made its way into view, steadily working its way up my street.
“Hey there, mind if I take that? Wouldn’t want you to get mixed up with it” Said one of the binmen approaching with a smile as he gestured to the bin.
I slid from the top of the lid and thanked him, retreating to the front of my house and staring at the truck. As my bin was raised into the air, I watched with a pounding heart as its contents were swallowed by the mechanical jaws of the crushing mechanism. I could make out a small, white porcelain hand jutting out from the mound of refuse before it was buried by another dump of rubbish from my neighbour’s bin.
As the truck began to pull away, a serene sense of relief washed over me when the sounds of the crunching scoop and crusher activating reached my ears. It was over, there was no way anything could have survived being in the back of the truck. Maisie was gone, what remained of her would be taken to a landfill somewhere and never seen again.
Slinking back inside, the weight of what had happened crashed down on me. Gerard’s terrified squeal as he was thrust inside that gaping chasm of teeth echoed around in my head constantly. I couldn’t believe that I’d been sleeping in the same room as that… thing… all this time. I felt sick as I remembered the way she’d stroked my hair as I slept. I wished my mom had never bought her inside. If she’d have just left her on the doorstep then none of this would have happened. And I still had no idea who’d sent her.
The rest of the day went on as normally as it could. The thoughts of Maisie eventually quieted down as I distracted myself with the rest of my toys, now safe in the knowledge I wouldn’t wake up to find them destroyed tomorrow.
After finishing his breakfast, my father set about the task of searching my bedroom for Gerard. I’m pretty sure he scoured every inch of the room, even moving the furniture, but he found no sign of my poor pet. I knew it was futile, that Gerard was gone, but my father was convinced that he’d managed to escape the room and was probably hiding somewhere deeper in the house.
“I’m not sure that we’ll be able to find him today sweetie, but if we keep our eyes peeled we might be able to see where he’s hiding. Don’t worry, I’m sure he’ll turn up” He said after about an hour, finally admitting defeat.
The day passed me by in a blur, and soon enough my mother told me that I should start getting ready for bed. Getting myself ready, the wardrobe no longer instilled a sense of dread as I opened it to get my pyjamas. There was no lump in the bottom left corner, the old coat that had been covering Maisie was now hung up with the rest of my clothes.
Clambering into bed again, that same relief from this morning washed over me as I surveyed my room, happy that I would wake up to no broken toys or something even worse the next morning. I’d finally figured it out. Even if my parents didn’t believe me, I still managed to fix it on my own, although it had meant that Gerard had paid the ultimate price.
That night, as sleep took me, a familiar nightmare took hold. The sounds of tinkling china and a young girl’s eerie laughter again woke me with a start. Darkness clouded my vision as I took a second to adjust to my surroundings. I was still in my bed, still in my bedroom, but it must have been the middle of the night.
The only light was the dim light from the hall and a thin beam of moonlight seeping in from a narrow crack in the curtains. I sat there, shaking off the unease of the nightmare, when I heard it. A sound that sent a cold shiver down my spine.
Three gentle knocks echoed through the still silence of my room and my skin broke out in goosebumps. I could have sworn the sound had come from my window, a gentle rapping. I sat there for what felt like minutes, holding my breath and waiting, my heart pounding in my ears.
Then it came again, slightly louder this time, more insistent. Three slow knocks, as though something out there was asking to be let in. Terror washed over me as I realised I hadn’t imagined it, and it hadn’t been a byproduct of my nightmare. There was something out there.
Gingerly, and against the screaming protests of my rational brain, I edged my way across the darkness of my room until I was inches away from my window. The knocks came again, cutting through me as they sounded, even louder than before, like stone hitting glass.
Although I knew it was probably nothing, that there was probably a perfectly innocent explanation for that incessant sound, I still had to bite back my unease as I stood before the curtains. I knew I should have just gone back to bed, ignored the sound and checked in the morning, but a part of me needed to know what it was. After all that had happened, I needed to prove to myself that everything was fine.
With a trembling hand, I reached out and took hold of the thick fabric, slowly peeling it back to reveal the glass pane. As the moonlight flooded in through the now unobscured window, I screamed at the silhouette standing on the ledge outside.
Clearly visible in the bright moonlight, the glassy, dead eyes of Maisie locked onto mine. She looked exactly the same as she had done yesterday before I threw her into the bin, immaculate and beautiful. All except her face. Her mouth had warped into something akin to a sad grimace, and the betrayal in her eyes was palpable.
As I stood there screaming, she pulled back her hand in a jerking motion before slowly smashing it against the glass of the window three times, all the while keeping me in her unnerving gaze.
Flinging the curtains closed, I ran from my room, screaming. Maisie had found me! How had she found her way back from the refuse centre? The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end as I imagined what would happen if she got in, what she would do to me. That look of betrayal in her eyes was still burned firmly into my vision.
I burst into my parent’s room, tears streaming down my face, startling them both from sleep. It took them a few seconds to come around, and I could tell from their voices that they were irritated with me, but I didn’t care. Frantically, I told them about what I’d seen, about Maisie knocking at my window.
Although they listened to me, they both assumed I’d had a nightmare. If it hadn’t been for my unwavering instance that I’d seen Maisie standing outside my window, regardless of any argument they put forward, I don’t think my father would have gone to check it out.
I watched as he left his room and walked the short distance down the hall to mine, my heart hammering in my ears all the while. What happened if Maisie had gotten in? What if she attacked him?
I waited for what felt like an eternity, my ears pricked for the slightest sound that anything was wrong as I heard my father pull back the curtains and look out of the window. A few seconds later his heavy footsteps returning along the hall met my ears as he made his way back to his room.
He’d found nothing, just my regular, empty window. No sign of anything having been there at all. My heart sank. I knew what I’d seen, Maisie had been there, knocking for me to let her in. She’d made her way back here and now she was here for me. I burst into tears again, curling into a ball on the carpet of my parent’s floor. They let me sleep in their bed that night, I think it was because they could see how distressed I was, even if they did think it was just a nightmare.
The tapping on my window returned the next night, and every night after that for the next 2 years. As the days went on and I tried my best to ignore it, it was accompanied by the quiet sing-song voice of a young girl asking for me to open the window. I tried everything, from putting cooking oil on the window ledge outside to make it slippery, to blocking off my window with cardboard boxes, but still, she was unrelenting.
After two years of that, it was getting to the point where I couldn’t take it anymore. I was so close to giving up when a ray of hope came in the form of my dad getting a new job. It was a massive promotion but it meant that he’d be relocated to another part of the country. We had to move.
I had nothing to base it on, but I hoped against hope that Maisie wouldn’t be able to follow us that far. Sure she’d made it back to my house after the bin lorry took her, but that would have been a tiny journey in comparison.
I eagerly counted down the days until we moved, doing my best to ignore Maisie’s nightly visits until finally, the day arrived. The moving truck was packed full to bursting with boxes and our car was filled with the remainder. Our entire lives packed into two vehicles.
As I clipped my seatbelt in and turned back for one final look at our old house, the blood in my veins turned to ice. Maisie was lying there on the floor directly beneath my bedroom window. She was facing me, her glassy eyes fixed on mine. They drilled into me, the hatred behind them burning into me from across the driveway. As we pulled away I watched in horror as they followed me, not breaking contact until we turned the corner and the house vanished in our rearview mirror.
That was the last time I saw Maisie, and I’m glad to say I’ve not heard from her in the years since then, although the sight of porcelain dolls still sets me on edge. I don’t know what happened to her but I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s still out there, trying to latch onto some other unsuspecting child.