The gifts seemed innocent at first.
It all started one day when a bright red package appeared on my porch. The box had no name or return address, so it didn’t come through a postal service.
“Someone left you a gift, dear,” my neighbor Edna shouted across the street as I picked up the box.
Cool, a present, I thought, feeling like a kid as I tore into the present. A small object surfaced: a Hummel figurine.
The cherry-cheeked Bavarian boy wore a green cap and mittens, gazing gleefully toward the sky. The note around his neck read: “Thinking of you as always.”
Must be from Grandma or Aunt Sue. Probably forgot to sign their name.
The gift was odd, but sweet.
But when I called to thank them, neither knew anything about the gift.
“A Hummel?” my grandma said, confused.
“I don’t even like figurines,” Aunt Sue said. “Maybe a girlfriend bought it?”
I didn’t have a girlfriend, and my exes wouldn’t send me a Hummel. No way.
So, who sent it?
I asked friends and other relatives, but no one knew. So I set the figurine on my counter and forgot about it.
But two days later, another package arrived. Once again, I opened it, wading through more tissue, until another Hummel appeared.
A very pale schoolgirl wearing a winter coat smiled, holding her arms in a hugging gesture. I frowned.
What the hell?
And like before, a note hung from her neck: “Zachariah, here’s a partner for your Hummel friend. They remind me of us.”
No signature. No address. Just three hearts scribbled after my name.
And Zachariah? No one calls me that.
But my friends and family didn’t send the gifts. So who did?
I placed the new figurine beside the other one, but my curiosity grew as time passed.
__
Soon, the packages arrived daily, and I amassed quite the figurine collection—schoolchildren, sea turtles, and lions—but who sent them?
“That’s so weird,” my buddy Richie said, eyeing my collection.
“They’re, like, old-people gifts. But why send these and not sign your name?”
“That’s what I want to know.”
But the gifts took on a darker tone as the weeks passed, and an uneasy feeling washed over me. Something felt off, and I felt unseen eyes watching me as I opened the boxes each morning.
Sometimes, I’d see Edna working in her garden, but I didn’t want to bother her with questions.
The next day, a brown box appeared, but this one was plain. No bow. No festive wrapping paper. Just an ugly doll—a muddy little blonde boy—greeted me when I opened it. The doll looked ancient and raggedy, like a dog toy. Its clothing was tattered, and it smelled sour, like sweat socks.
What is this thing? I wondered.
This time, the note read: “Zachariah, being ignored makes me feel as cruddy as this doll looks.”
Something isn’t right here.
Then, the next day, another box arrived. Inside was a cloth clown doll. Red cream was streaked across its face like blood, and its eyes were gouged out, as though someone had removed them with scissors or a knife.
The note read: “Does my sadness mean nothing to you?”
Goosebumps raced down my neck.
What’s with the creepy gifts?
And the next day, another box arrived with another strange note: “This is our life in a box.”
Inside was a polyphon, a disc-playing music box, the wood chipped and time-worn. When I opened it, an eerie nursery rhyme sounded, a music-box version of Pop Goes the Weasel. The tune played for a moment, then ended with a chorus of maniacal laughter. It sounded like a mob of demon-possessed clowns cackling.
Is this a joke? I wondered as I snapped the box shut. My heart raced.
__
But the gifts kept coming. The next day, a delivery person from a rare flower company dropped off a bizarre floral arrangement: a dozen Monkey Face Orchids.
“You must be a popular guy,” the delivery man joked when I asked about the flowers. “These orchids are pretty rare. Someone paid a lot for them.”
But my buddies laughed. “Zack got man flowers!”
I swatted them off as I read the card: “Dear Zachariah, thinking of you and wishing you well.”
I called Richie.
“Dude, you’ve got a stalker—like stage ten,” he said. “You need cameras.”
We drove to the store to buy cameras, then planted them in the bushes. We’d record the activity and play the footage in the morning.
The cameras blended into the rocks, so the mystery gift-giver would never notice.
__
The next day, we played the recordings. Minutes turned to hours without activity. Then, just before dawn, a dark figure appeared on the porch. We didn’t even see it approach.
“Zoom in!” Richie shouted.
I zoomed in, doubling the image’s size, then paused the video.
“Wait, who is that?” I studied the figure, but it was an amorphous blob, blending into the darkness.
I played the recording for a second, then paused it when the figure stepped near the porch light.
But we still couldn’t see the person’s face.
“Zoom in more,” Richie said.
We kept zooming until the figure came into focus.
Suddenly, the person turned and faced the camera dead-on. Richie and I jumped back.
“Whoa, how did he see the camera?”
I shrugged, and my jaw dropped.
Then, a woman’s face appeared, her features obscured by shadows. But a smile crawled across her lips as she waved at us, then dissolved into the night.
Richie and I exchanged looks.
__
After that, I stopped opening the packages and threw away the unopened boxes. Soon, they stopped coming, and I sighed with relief, figuring the debacle was over.
Days later, I woke up to a strange phone call on the landline. Someone breathed into the phone, then a woman spoke: “Don’t ignore me, Zachariah.”
Then the line went dead.
But the calls continued, and I called the police, eager to know who was calling. The next day, an officer stopped by with news.
“It’s strange, but all the calls trace back to a local graveyard. Turns out, the names on two of the graves match those of a married couple who lived here sixty years ago. Names are Edna and Zachariah Rogers.”
The officer handed me a photo, and a younger version of my neighbor Edna stared back. And the man beside her looked—like me.
My stomach flip-flopped.
“Her husband left her, and it sounds like she didn’t take it well.” He pointed to the entryway. “Hung herself right there in the hallway.”
__
I never saw Edna again after that, but I learned the house across the street had been unoccupied for years. No one but me had seen Edna gardening all those mornings.
Then one night, as I drifted off to sleep, my cell phone dinged. The text message read: “I didn’t mean to scare you. You just looked so much alike. My bad.”