The Vampire Doll

by Kat Shepherd

  When Tanya walked inside the house, she already knew without asking that Kira would be upstairs in the doll room. Mrs. Fogelman disappeared out the back door to her studio, and Tanya made her way slowly up the staircase and down the hall. She tapped on the door of the doll room, and when Kira didn’t answer, Tanya pushed it open.

  At first, Tanya couldn’t see Kira at all, but then she found her. The little girl was curled up on the daybed, whispering to Mary Rose and the dozens of other dolls she had piled on the bed around her. Kira’s narrow face was more pinched than usual, and there were dark hollows under her eyes. Her skin had a slightly gray cast, and her thin lips were pale.

  In contrast, Mary Rose looked more alive than ever. The doll’s marble-white skin had a dewy glow, and its cheeks and lips were as pink and fresh as the first summer roses. The painted blue eyes sparkled, and the gleaming ringlets glowed like sunshine. Kira had dressed the doll in a new dress, ivory white with an embroidered bodice and a lapis cameo brooch pinned at its throat.

  “Hi, Kira,” Tanya said cautiously. “Mary Rose looks pretty fancy today. Did you get her a new dress?”

  “Auntie Dot found that,” Kira answered. She pointed to a small upright trunk open on the floor like a doll-sized closet. A row of long dresses hung on tiny hangers on one side of the trunk, and the other held a small mirror and a few cardboard drawers covered in floral-patterned fabric. Tanya remembered seeing something similar in Maggie’s room.

  “That’s cool.” Tanya knelt down and took one of the hangers off the little rack inside the trunk. On it hung a forest-green taffeta dress with puffy sleeves and a wide lace collar. It reminded Tanya of the picture she had seen of Elee in the old newspaper clipping. “These look handmade. I bet it would take forever to sew something like this.”

  “Auntie Dot said that every girl who had Mary Rose learned to sew so they could make her clothes. She says she might teach me to sew, too.” Kira sounded sleepy and wan, but Tanya could hear the hope in the little girl’s voice. If Mrs. Fogelman would only finish her sculpture, maybe she and Kira would be able to keep each other company instead of rattling around the house like two marbles in an empty can.

  “That sounds like fun. I wish I knew how to sew.” She put the dress back and pulled out another. This one was a rich, plum velvet with a bustle in the back. “I bet this would look really pretty on Mary Rose. Do you want to bring her over here and we can play with her together?” The idea of touching Mary Rose—or even being near her—was almost unbearable, but it was far worse to imagine what the doll might do if it was out of her sight.

  “Why?” Kira asked suspiciously. “You never wanted to play with her before.”

  “I don’t know,” Tanya said. “You just seem to have a lot of fun with her, so I thought I’d try to play, too.” She worked to keep her face bland and her voice natural, like she hadn’t really thought about it much. She wondered if Mary Rose was listening, and Tanya tried not to let her eyes slide over to stare at the doll.

  “I guess so,” Kira said sluggishly. She slithered out from between the dolls piled on the daybed and dragged herself over to sit on the floor beside Tanya. Kira’s eyes were dull, and she moved mechanically as she tugged the new dress onto Mary Rose.

  Tanya opened the little drawers in the trunk and found a pair of kid boots with tiny black pearl buttons. “Here. Do you want to put these on her?” Kira took them without looking at them and slipped them onto the doll’s feet. Tanya tried to smile. “She looks great. Where do you think she’s going in such a fancy dress?”

  “I don’t know,” Kira said.

  “Well, where do you want to pretend she’s going?” Tanya asked.

  “Nowhere,” Kira said. Tanya felt like she was floundering. Wasn’t this what little kids did when they played with dolls? They dressed them up and pretended things? She wished Maggie were with her; Maggie would know exactly what to do.

  “Well, then what do you want to do with Mary Rose instead? How do you like to play with her?” Tanya had always preferred more practical ways to spend her time, like building things and taking them apart. Maybe kids who liked dolls had some other kinds of games that Tanya didn’t know about.

  Kira set the doll on the floor. “It’s boring to play dolls when you’re here. Mary Rose is my forever best friend, and we like to be alone.”

  “Okay,” Tanya said, wondering if Kira had seen Mary Rose move or if the doll had talked to her, but knowing that she couldn’t ask. “Why don’t you bring Mary Rose downstairs with us, and she can watch us set up the science experiment I brought?”

  Kira stood up and carried the doll over to the daybed. “I want to leave her up here.”

  “No!” Tanya interjected, too quickly. Kira froze, and her eyes narrowed. The air seemed to go out of the room, and it was not just Kira and Mary Rose that Tanya felt watching her. It was all the dolls. Tanya knew the other dolls weren’t like Mary Rose; they were no different than the ones she had grown up with or seen at friends’ houses, but suddenly she could swear she felt their gaze, cold and calculating like the flat black eyes of sharks in an aquarium. “It’s just that, well, last time I was here you wanted to bring her everywhere, and I thought maybe you’d like to have her with you this time, too. But it’s fine. You can leave her up here if you want.” The air came back into the room then, and the other dolls’ eyes lost that watchful look, returning instead to the vague half smiles, guileless and blank once again.

  Downstairs in the kitchen, Tanya tried to coax Kira into eating dinner, but the little girl just picked at her food, nibbling at the edges and pushing the rest around her plate. Kira’s eyelids were heavy, and Tanya decided to forget about the science project she had planned. “Do you want to read a book together instead, or maybe watch something on your iPad?” Tanya asked. She put a hand on Kira’s forehead, but her skin was cool and dry. “Are you feeling okay?”

  Kira yawned. “I’m sleepy. Can I go to bed?”

  “I guess,” Tanya said, surprised. It wasn’t even seven o’clock yet. “But are you sure you’re not sick? Do you want me to go get your auntie Dot from her studio?”

  “I’m not sick,” Kira insisted. “I didn’t sleep that much last night. My mom says that it’s important to get lots of sleep.”

  Tanya felt a pang of sympathy. The little girl must have talked to her mother earlier, and she was probably feeling homesick. That would explain why she was so listless and droopy. Tanya held out her hand. “Come on. I’ll take you upstairs.” Kira allowed herself to be led without protest, her feet scuffing up the steps.

  A short while later, Kira’s eyes were already closing by the time Tanya had closed the bedroom door, smiling to herself. Kira had allowed herself to be tucked in, and she had even agreed to listen to a few pages of the book, Wicked Bugs, that Tanya had brought to read.

  For a moment, Tanya allowed herself to luxuriate in the feeling that this was just an ordinary babysitting job. It was nice to have a break from Mary Rose for a while, and Tanya was relieved that Kira hadn’t asked to bring the doll to bed with her. But then she wondered if it was only because Kira knew that soon enough the little kid boots would make their creeping way down the hall to keep her company.

  And now that Kira was asleep, and Mrs. Fogelman was still in her studio for another hour or two, Tanya was loath to realize that she was alone with Mary Rose. She stood in the hallway, unsure of what to do. She hated the idea of spending a single extra second upstairs in the doll room, but it was just as unnerving to imagine sitting downstairs and hearing tiny footsteps patter overhead like a rat scuttling in the rafters. Tanya finally decided to bring the doll back downstairs with her. Mary Rose seemed less frightening when she was away from the other dolls, and it would keep her away from Kira, too.

  Before she could lose her nerve, Tanya pushed open the door to the doll room and flicked on the light. Something in the room’s air felt different, the way it might feel to stumble into the middle of a private conversation. There were
still piles of dolls seated in clusters around the bed, but had some of them moved? The one with the yarn hair had its hands folded neatly at its waist. Hadn’t one arm been flung out across the pillow before? And the bride doll with the ruffled full skirt. Tanya could swear she remembered the veil had been covering the doll’s face, but now it was lifted back behind its hair.

  And there at the center of them was Mary Rose. Tanya didn’t allow herself to wonder if Mary Rose had moved; she didn’t allow herself to look at all, afraid that her face would betray what she knew and believed about the doll, and all pretense would vanish. She thought of the dream again, and the way that the doll had turned its head, looked right into Tanya’s eyes, and winked. Tanya could not face that in real life, not yet, anyway, so without looking, she walked quickly over to the bed, murmuring something about how much she bet Mrs. Fogelman would want to see that Kira had been trying the new dresses on her doll. Tanya said it like she was talking to herself, like this wasn’t a performance she was putting on for the benefit of all the dolls in the room. Dolls that should be ordinary things, just parts of a room to be played with or forgotten or discarded, like a block or a board game or an empty glass. And not this other thing that breathed and crouched expectantly just at the edge of her vision.

  Last year at one of the girls’ Friday Films, they had watched an old horror movie called The Birds. Tanya and her friends had laughed at how corny the special effects were, but what she remembered most was a scene when the main characters were walking from the car to the house, and they noticed hundreds of birds—thousands of them, even—perched on every branch and streetlight and roof, watching them. Watching and waiting. This is what it felt like when Tanya leaned forward, clasped her hands around Mary Rose’s waist, and picked her up.

  She did not flinch when her fingers closed around the lumpy softness of the doll’s middle, or when the cold porcelain arm brushed against her hand. Somehow, she felt sure that if she did, the careful, taut edges of the room would collapse like an imploding star, and Tanya would be crushed beneath the weight of the dolls as they descended upon her and crawled over her like lice.

  Easy, girl, Tanya thought to herself. Mary Rose’s insides seemed to squirm beneath her fingers like worms, and Tanya almost dropped her. She tried to remember her first chemistry set, how carefully she had learned to handle the delicate glass beakers as she carried them over to her desk. You’ve carried hydrochloric acid, she told herself. You can carry this. To calm herself, Tanya ran the periodic table through her mind, combining elements and reciting the formula of each compound she knew by heart. Water: H2O. Salt: NaCl. Carbon Dioxide: CO2.

  Tanya wanted to rush down the stairs as soon as possible, but she forced herself to take her time, popping her head into Kira’s room to check on the sleeping girl, turning out the upstairs lights as she went. Mary Rose hung limply in her hand, and her head lolled to one side when Tanya propped her in a chair and smoothed down the velvet skirt. “There,” Tanya said aloud. “Mrs. Fogelman will love that.”

  Tanya’s phone buzzed, and she pulled it out of her pocket.

  Tanya grinned. Her friends always knew just the right thing to say. Everything was going to be okay. It had to be. She yawned and stretched, feeling her wrists crack as her arms extended overhead. She snuck a glance at Mary Rose. Still in the chair, just as Tanya had left her.

  Not quite.

  The doll had slipped down the seat so that its legs were dangling off the edge. Its arms were splayed out at its sides, and its chin slumped against its neck. Its mouth had the hint of a smirk, as if daring Tanya to react. What kind of game was this? Tanya stood up and pushed Mary Rose back into place and positioned the doll’s hands carefully in its lap. She looked at her watch. Just one more hour until Mrs. Fogelman returned.

  Tanya had to go to the bathroom. She stood up, but then she hesitated. Should she bring Mary Rose with her? She snuck a glance at the doll. It would be way too weird to start carrying it from room to room all of a sudden. Maybe Tanya could just wait for Mrs. Fogelman. She looked at her watch again. There was no way she could hold it that long. She would have to go and leave Mary Rose unattended in the living room.

  Tanya walked casually out of the room, but as soon as she turned the corner, she raced down the hall to the bathroom. She locked the door behind her and hurried through her business, her hands trembling as she washed them in the sink. Her heart hammered in her chest when she returned to the living room and found Mary Rose’s chair empty.

  Tanya caught a flash of movement at the edge of her vision. She whirled around, but it was just a neighbor’s car lights reflecting off a glass-covered print on the wall. Tanya heard a titter, and she spun again, trying to locate the sound. Was it coming from the kitchen? She ran to the source of the sound, all pretense gone now. The kitchen was still, but there was an egg broken on the floor in front of the refrigerator, and Tanya let out a cry of horror.

  She heard another giggle and the scuttle of little feet on the steps. Tanya ran back to the hall. A tiny kid shoe sat on the staircase, the black pearl button gleaming dully under the overhead light. Kira’s room, Tanya thought. But as she arrived at Kira’s door, she heard a giggle farther down the hall, and then a door slammed, making her jump. Mary Rose had gone back to the doll room.

  Tanya felt sick. Her stomach was twisted in knots, and her breath was short and tight. She pushed open Kira’s door to find the little girl alone and sleeping soundly. Tanya closed the door behind her and stood at the top of the stairs, staring back at the doll-room door. What would she see if she opened it now?

  Tanya heard Mrs. Fogelman coming through the back door. “Yoo-hoo,” the artist called from below. “I’m back!” Tanya’s body felt wooden as she walked downstairs and into the kitchen. She quietly packed her things as Mrs. Fogelman chattered away at her about the sculpture. “I just put on the finishing touches tonight. I can’t wait to mount it in its proper spot of honor in the yard!”

  But all Tanya could think about was Mary Rose. She felt sick at the thought of leaving Kira at the doll’s mercy, but she didn’t have a choice. It was almost like the doll had been tormenting Tanya, intentionally frightening her and taunting her into revealing her suspicions. And whatever game Mary Rose was playing, Tanya was sure it would only get worse.

  CHAPTER

  13

  EARLY THE NEXT morning, Tanya stood with her friends in a park just a short walk from Kawanna’s downtown shop. It was a cold, raw day, and they were the only ones in the soggy little patch that ran along the river’s edge. The landscape here was bleak in winter, and their bright coats were the only spots of color to be seen.

  The sun was only just beginning to rise, and mist still sat heavy on the river. Tanya had her gray knit beanie pulled down tightly over her ears, and her striped scarf was looped as high as it would go around her neck. Her hands were growing numb inside her fingerless gloves, and she shoved them deep into the pockets of her coat to warm up. Maggie yawned next to her and pulled the neck of her fuzzy pink jacket up over her face. “Ugh. Tell me again why we have to do this so early?”

  Ethan squatted down next to the hole he and Clio had dug at the roots of a large shrub. “For the mist.”

  “Oh, of course. Right. For the mist.” Maggie rolled her eyes. “Do you have any idea what he’s talking about?” she mumbled to Tanya.

  “Nope,” Tanya answered. “But I was babysitting the possessed doll last night, remember? You were the ones who were supposed to be making the plan. Are you telling me you don’t even remember what the plan is?”

  “I don’t know, it was based on some poem or something,” Maggie said. “And part of it was an annoying riddle, which Clio obviously figured out in, like, five seconds, so after that I got kind of bored.”

  “I’ll show you,” Rebecca said. “We wrote everything down in here so you would have it for your research.” She pulled Tanya’s notebook out of her backpack and opened it to a page where she had written down a few lines of
verse next to a hand-drawn map. “Since you couldn’t be there last night I took the best notes I could. I tried to make them really neat and easy to read.”

  “Thanks,” Tanya said. She looked down at the poem Rebecca had copied into her book.

  Dipped in summer’s golden glow

  Trapped in mist where waters flow

  Buried ’neath the rowan tree

  Blood undone, returned to thee

  “I see where the mist comes in, but what’s ‘summer’s golden glow’?” Tanya asked.

  “We’re pretty sure it’s honey,” Clio answered. She walked over and pointed to a little doodle of a bee that Rebecca had drawn near the poem. “There was a little pen-and-ink drawing of a bee hidden in the artwork next to the poem Ethan found. I had Rebecca copy it into your notebook, too.”

  “It makes sense,” Tanya said thoughtfully. “Bees make honey in summer. It’s gold, and you can dip things in it.”

  “You would say that,” Maggie said. “Nobody ever likes my ideas.”

  “What did you think summer’s golden glow would be?” Tanya asked.

  “I don’t know, like a sunlamp or something.”

  “A sunlamp?” Tanya asked. “You do know they hadn’t been invented yet when this poem was written, right?”

  “Well, duh. I figured it meant the actual summer sun, but since it’s winter and we couldn’t get that, I was improvising,” Maggie said. “It’s something actors do. You wouldn’t understand.”

  Tanya grinned. “You’re right about that.” She pulled the bag of mirror shards out of a brown paper envelope, careful not to cut herself again on the sharp edges. “Where should we put these?”

  “I’ll take them,” Rebecca said. She squatted over a chipped china bowl and filled it with honey from a jar. She upended the bag into the bowl and watched as the silver slivers settled themselves along the surface and slowly sank. She poked them down with a stick until they were all covered. “There we go. Dipped in summer’s golden glow. Step one is complete.”