“Welcome home, Cameron!”
I hugged my mom as she said this, walking through the door of the house, carrying a luggage in my right hand.
“It feels good to be back,” I say to her. I was coming back to visit for a couple of weeks since I was on vacation from college. I hugged my dad next, who patted me on the back.
“Good to see you again, sport,” He says. I smile. I think I missed my dad the most. He was very caring and we had a lot of the same interests and thoughts on things. It was great. When I finally step back, I looked around.
“Where’s Violet?” I ask both of my parents as they stand next to each other. They both shrug their shoulders.
“She might be up in her room again. You should go check on her,” My mom says to me. I sigh as I put my luggage down and head for the stairs.
Violet was 13 years old, 6 years younger than me, so she’s starting to kinda go through a phase. It isn’t a normal phase though. She’s been in it for nearly her whole life.
She’s really into dolls. Not just any kind of dolls, though, but really weird and unsettling-looking dolls. She didn’t think they looked weird, though. In her own words, they were all “beautiful.” Ask anyone else in my family and they’ll all agree that every single doll that is laid out in her room are creepy and weird. Which is fair, since they all frequently shook me down to my core.
I made it to the top of the stairs and started to shout her name; “Violet, I’m here!”
No answer.
“Violet?”
No answer again. I started to get frustrated, I hadn’t seen her in a year and she was just not going to come out and greet me. Great.
As I walked to her bedroom door I started to try and give her the benefit of the doubt that maybe she was sleeping or that she had headphones in. I was young too, so I would be able to understand, but when I pushed her door open and walked into her colorful and decorative room, I saw her sitting in the middle of her room with 2 dolls in both of her hands, just looking at the ground, almost as if she was examining something. I shivered.
“Violet?” I said to her.
After a few seconds, she finally turned her head around to face me. She had a blank expression on her face but when she laid her eyes on me, she immediately lit up as she sprung up and dropped the dolls in her hands like they were just junk to her now. She ran and hugged me, but didn’t say anything.
“Hey sis,” I say, returning the hug. She wouldn’t let go for another minute. I started to get uncomfortable, but I let her do it. When she finally let go, she said; “Sorry if there are dolls everywhere, I forget to clean my room…”
“No, you’re fine. When I was 13 I never cleaned my room either,” I laughed. She laughed back.
“I got a new doll yesterday though. You wanna see it?”
I really didn’t want to but I figured that this is a good opportunity for us to spend more time together. I smile and say; “Okay,”
She walked over to her desk at the end of the room and I follow her. She had several dolls on the floor and I stepped over them, trying my best not to step on and break any of them. Violet’s room was expressive, half the wall was painted pink, and she had multiple posters for pop singers and movies on her wall. She had a bunk bed at the side of her room too.
When she made it to her desk I took a step next to her. She had a laptop and a pencil pouch on her desk but right next to the laptop, I saw the doll she wanted to show me.
“You can pick it up and look at it if you want,” She said.
The doll looked normal but something also seemed off about it, almost dejecting. I reach my hand out to it and pick it up. I raise it so I can get a better look at it.
It was made out of cloth and looked like it was tied together with knots. It had long braided blonde hair and buttons for eyes. The doll had a red mark for a smile across its face that looked uneven. It had a pink and yellow flower dress and a little blouse to go with it. Along with how it looked, it felt rough and scratchy, getting my hands itchy in the process.
The doll had an aura to it that I can’t explain. There was something tugging at my spirit and soul just holding it. I sat it down neatly and nodded my head.
“What do you think of it?” Violet says, leaning on the desk. I turn to face her and rub my hands against my jeans to itch them.
“It’s neat, definitely a good addition to your collection,” I respond, to which she reacts by just… Giving me a weird look. I look back at her and look around awkwardly.
“You don’t think it looks freaky, do you?” Violet asks me seriously. I hesitate for a second before shaking my head.
“Nope. I think it looks…” I take another glance at the doll. “…Perfectly fine,”
Violet returns to a normal look on her face. “Mom and dad think it looks stupid, so I’m glad that you at least think it’s fine,”
“Don’t worry about it, I’m not too critical with things, especially not dolls” I start heading towards the door. “I’m gonna start unpacking all of my things if you need me,”
Violet flashes me a thumbs up and I give her one back as I walk out of her room. I walk down the stairs, alarmed and wondering about that doll. Something wasn’t right about it.
When I finally finished unpacking all of my stuff, it was starting to get dark out and I was beginning to get tired. I wanted to do something relaxing, and I knew that mom and dad had Hulu and Disney+ on the downstairs TV so I figured that me and Violet could go down and watch a movie.
I left my room and went to her bedroom, pushing the door open, and walked in.
“Hey Violet, did you want to watch a movie or something-“
Violet wasn’t in her room.
The room was dark, with no sign of her anywhere. Everything was the same in her room as it was earlier. My eyes danced around everywhere, searching for her to see if she was hiding but nope. She wasn’t anywhere.
I took another step into her room and accidentally stepped on one of her cloth dolls. I lightly kick it away as I see the doll from earlier, sitting up on her desk with a piece of paper in front of it.
I get curious and walked over to the desk. I pick up the piece of paper and stare at the doll for a moment. It was as if the doll’s eyes were looking at every move I made, every action I did. It was starting to freak me out. I looked at the piece of paper, the text written in red marker. My eyes widened as I read; “You will be bloody tonight, Cameron,”
I wasn’t taking it too seriously at first because I didn’t even know what that meant. Did it mean I was going to get stabbed or something? Did it mean they were gonna pour something on me? I didn’t know, but my brain was telling me to make sure whatever it meant didn’t happen. I started to take it more seriously.
At that instant, Violet walked into the room and turned on the light. I jumped at the feeling of the lights and turned around to see her standing in her doorway.
“Cameron, what the hell are you doing in my room?” She says angrily. I understood her tone because I went into her room and was looking at her stuff without asking but I didn’t care then because I truly needed to know what the writing on the paper meant.
“Can you come here for a second?” I motion for Violet to get closer to me.
“Not until you tell me why you’re in my room,”
“I was going to ask if you wanted to watch a movie and I saw a piece of paper- It doesn’t matter, just come here, please?”
Violet groans as she walks to me. I give a slight smile. “Yeah, so I found this in front of your doll, um…” I lay the piece of paper flat on her desk. She leans over to read it and I hear her gasp. “What does this mean? I’m confused here…”
“I did not write this!” Violet exclaims.
“Then who could’ve written it, because mom and dad wouldn’t write something like this so it’s only logical,”
“Cameron, don’t be stupid, does this look like my handwriting to you?” She picks up the paper and puts it in my face. I pay more attention to the writing as I take it from her. It looked kind of messy and sloppy like a toddler wrote it with their left hand.
I started accepting in my head that I was just jumping to conclusions and she did nothing wrong but admitting that I was wrong never sits right with me so I just kept going; “Violet I’ve never paid attention to your handwriting so what are you trying to prove right now?”
“Cameron!” She says in an annoyed voice.
“Okay fine. I know you didn’t do it,” I say.
She crumples up the piece of paper and throws it into her trash. “I don’t know where that came from. I’m just gonna go downstairs,” Violet doesn’t say another word to me as she walks out of her room, taking a doll with her.
I slump against the wall, feeling awful. I couldn’t believe I’d accuse my sister of something like that. I was never good with that sort of thing. I look back at the doll and notice that there was a streak of red on both of its hands.
I went to sleep shortly after. It was a long day and I felt like I needed some rest anyway after that encounter with Violet. It was about 9 PM at that point.
I woke up at some point in the night in a sweat, staring up at my empty ceiling. My eyes were wide and my body was stiff, my legs not being able to move, almost as if I was a paraplegic. The room was dark and ominous, and I felt a presence in the room with me. I wasn’t alone.
It was a feeling I had never experienced before but once that feeling was over me, I didn’t want to move. I didn’t even want to move my eyes around. I shortly realized that it felt like there was something in my left hand, and I felt something warm on my right wrist. It also felt gross. What was once desperately not wanting to move, I was now fiending to move my arms to see what was going on.
I looked down at my left hand, and even in the pitch black that was my room, I was able to make out a knife in my hand.
I let out a quiet scream and let go of it, perplexed and concerned. Why was I holding a knife? I stared at it for a while then I quickly looked at my right hand to see what was on my wrist and I realized in a matter of seconds that there was a deep cut on my wrist, and blood was oozing out of me.
I put two and two together and I was able to register that I had done this to myself.
But how? I was asleep. I was never a sleepwalker so me sleepwalking wouldn’t make sense. I wouldn’t be able to know what happened anyway because we didn’t have cameras in the house.
I wrapped the bottom of my shirt around my wrist to slow down the bleeding and heal the puncture in my wrist. I steadily got up from my bed and took in the surroundings of the room. It was dark but almost too dark.
I looked at the chair in the corner of my room that my parents said they forgot to move and figure I could sit there for a while before I potentially go to the hospital since I didn’t know how much blood I lost. I didn’t think I lost that much so I supposed I’d be fine enough.
I stood in the void that was my room. My legs felt wobbly like they were noodle sticks, but also like something from beneath me was trying to pull me down to the floor. My gut was telling me to get out of the room but I didn’t.
I started to walk to the best of my ability to the chair but once I got up to it, I noticed Violet’s doll was leaning on the back of the chair, the same doll that she showed me earlier in the day. Its red, crooked smile illuminated itself at me and it felt like its button eyes were staring at me, waiting.
“Damn it, Violet,” I grunted. I reached my hand out to grab it but as my hand touched it, I had a flaming sensation going through my hand. The doll was BOILING HOT. It felt like my hand had just been scorched in a fire. I lept my hand away swiftly and took a look at my hand. I had a burn mark now. Great.
I looked at the doll again and wondered why it felt so blistering. If it had been set on fire, it would have burnt to a crisp, not be perfectly fine. I poked it and the same sensation went through my finger but this time it felt worst. I had to suck on my finger to make the pain slightly less critical.
The doll was still in its same position and the knots tying the cloth together looked a little looser than before. I was getting freaked out because I didn’t know what was happening. I looked back at my wrist and unwrapped my shirt from it. The bleeding was still happening but it wasn’t as bad and it didn’t look as severe anymore. The questioning about how I even got a knife when I was sleeping was still seeping through me but when I looked back at the doll, it was now sitting perfectly still and straight at the edge of the chair.
I took an instinctive step back. The doll JUST moved. Admittingly I didn’t see it happen but it wasn’t in that position before. It looked like it was defying gravity, a stuffed doll couldn’t sit perfectly straight at the edge of a chair, that’s just not possible. I wrapped the bottom of my shirt back around my wrist as I surveyed the doll, trying to understand what was wrong with it. The whole time I’ve been here, nothing has been right about it.
“You did what???” I heard a voice from beside me at the door. I swung my head around and saw Violet standing there, with her eyes closed. I got confused but I got scared at the same time. It didn’t appear that she was talking to me.
“Violet, who are you talking to?” I say to her. She didn’t respond or react to me though, or open her eyes. I noticed then that she was facing the doll. I turned to face the doll again and it had moved once more, this time it was looking at Violet at the door.
I looked back at Violet and her eyes were still closed. She continued to look at the doll but she wasn’t saying anything. It was as if she was listening to something but nothing was making any noise.
“You don’t need to do that…” Violet says to the doll. I alternate between looking at the doll and Violet, and they both just keep looking at each other. I don’t know if I should say the doll was looking at Violet but I could’ve sworn I saw its buttoned eyes laid upon her.
“Okay…” Violet continued saying carefully. I was getting ready to wake her up, open my window and throw this damned doll out of it but then something happened. Something… Horrible happened.
I watched as I heard a rip come from the back of the doll and before I could question what was happening, something slowly crawled out of the doll.
It was an absolute abomination. It was a mixture of black and grey, it looked tall, and had 3 arms. I couldn’t make out its facial features but it had a scrunched-up, bloody face, and just looking at its back, it looked like it had 2 spinal cords. It had little branches sticking out everywhere in its entire body. I wanted to vomit, I’ve never seen something I’d consider a monster, but this was an actual monster.
I don’t know what to call this thing but I saw it turn around and look dead into my eyes, almost mocking me, and before I knew it…
I blacked out.
I woke up the next morning on the couch in the living room. The sun was bright, shining through the window curtains, giving a nice shade of orange in the room. I breathed a sigh of relief, knowing I was out of that nightmare of a night and that everything was going to be normal today. I started to sit up, moving the pillows when I heard Violet’s voice from next to me.
“Mom and dad are at work now. They found you passed out in your room and saw your wrist slit. They even saw burns on your hand. They’re awfully worried about you Cameron, are you okay?”
I listen to what she was saying without looking at her. I look at my wrist and saw that it had been wrapped with a cloth. It didn’t hurt anymore. I looked at my other hand where the burns had been soothed. I didn’t feel like I was in agony anymore. I hoped my parents didn’t think I tried to kill myself though.
I turned my body to look at my sister and she was sitting in a chair next to the couch. My heart sank when I saw what she was holding though.
She was holding the doll in her arms. That damned doll.
“No, no, no, no…” I mumble. Violet gives me a weird look.
“Did you say something?” She asks me. I shake my head. Violet smiles as I look into the doll’s lifeless, buttoned eyes as I felt something warm running down my calf. Something warm and gross. “My doll only wanted to play. I also decided to name it so we can properly call her something. Say hi, Deidre!”
From the couch, I inched away from the doll as I continued staring at it, dread forming over me by the second. I didn’t bother responding to Violet. I pulled the blanket that was on me off me as I look at my foot and see my calf slit open, blood running down onto the couch. I start to feel light-headed as I look back at the doll, and I see its buttoned eyes now on me, watching me.
Whatever is in that doll heard Violet.
“Hello, Cameron.”