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| - While she was rummaging through the boxes, she came upon one that had been labeled: 'DOLLS'. As a young girl she had a collection of dozens upon dozens of them. So, for nostalgia's sake; she opened it. Through her digging she found one she'd never seen before. Or at least, one she couldn't recall ever owning. There was something very off-putting about it... It was dressed in a torn linen shift dress which looked like it had been originally white; but it had been yellowed with age. The hair had been at some point at time a fiery shade of red; but now it was an ugly and gnarled rust colored ball tangled up with things like lint; and small mothballs. These characteristics were of course not very appealing in the least. But not nearly as much as the other thing that was off about the doll. When she turned it over, she stared down at a bisque face contorted into what could only be described as a maniacal, laughing and dimpled expression, and had no eyes. Another thing that struck a peculiar chord was the fact that there seemed to be no damage to the void eye sockets. She was uneasy at this point; slightly shivering at the morbidity of its tiny painted lips, which curled up into a grimace of a malicious; rather than being set in the soft and expressionless rosebud lips that dolls like this were supposed to have. Julie, then for a reason that wasn't beknownst even to her, took the doll down with her. For the next few months the doll lay facedown in an empty drawer in the guest room. Because of her being the supermom that Julie was, the doll was forgotten completely. She had more important things in her life that she had to care about. And so it laid there, forsaken in the darkness of the drawer. Waiting to be found again... Julie's parents' marriage had come to an unfortunate end in their advanced age, and so Julie and her husband welcomed her mother Audrey, to live with them with open arms. Audrey moved into the guest room. It didn't take long for her to discover the doll that had been tucked away in the top drawer. Big mistake. When she found it she held the doll upside down by its feet and stood there, her feet feeling rooted to the ground. Julie eventually came and found her mother standing there in her strange tranceish stare at it; her eyes boring into the doll's fiendish face. When she saw her mother like that, it scared her and she took the doll from Audrey's hand. She blinked as she was broken out of her stupor. The room felt cold and Julie could hear her own heart beating in her ears. "Where did you find that?" Audrey asked with her voice heavily shaking. "In some boxes. Why?" "I thought I got rid of that—thing the minute I got it." So, Julie told me that they both went outside (leaving the doll inside) and both had a cigarette... The first that Audrey had had in nineteen years. Her daughter stared at her, worried. She exhaled and began to explain, sitting down on the porch swing; staring straight ahead. Hello ma'am, I'm Mr. Rikard-Gates. I am a custom doll-maker and am new to the area. May I interest you in a brochure?" He produced a pamphlet from his briefcase and handed it to Janette who, with genuine interest, looked it over. I saw some pages, entailing how he would make the doll to have any shade of hair desired, the same dimples as a person, the same everything. She told him in an odd flat and upfront tone "I want one. Let me go get my check book" She opened the screen door and came back out in just a few moments. I saw that the check she gave him was already completely filled out. Then he asked to see her daughter. She yelled into the house calling Leslie. I remember hearing her little steps running to the door and her bursting out of the screen door with a cheerful look on her face. She just glimpsed at the strange man, when she was blinded by a Polaroid that he shot of her. And then, just like that he left. I had a rocking chair in front of the window that I would feed and rock you to sleep in. I'd turn off the light so you would go to sleep faster and I would occupy myself by looking outside. A week and a half after seeing the doll-maker, I was rocking you to sleep like I would always do, when I saw the silhouette of a man carrying a collapsible ladder. It was him. He began to look around before he went to the side of the house and set his ladder up. He set it up so he could reach Leslie's window. I saw as he lightly rapped on the window and the tiny hand that opened it. I saw him offer her something and as he went down she climbed down along with him. That's when he took her hand and led her away." Audrey began to sob, but when she gained some composure she continued.
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