In Nightmares We're Alone Page 3

  Her eyes. Still blue. I can’t look away from them. I don’t know what will happen if I look away but I don’t want to know. What if I glance away and when I glance back the eyes are Beth’s? Or if she’s not there at all? Or if she’s moved closer?

  She stares at me and I stare back. Just a toy. Only a toy sitting on a dresser. But that’s all Beth is too, and there’s something I feel. Something she wants from me, maybe. Or something she feels about me.

  I realize I’m biting my nails and I make myself stop. I always do it when I’m nervous, but anytime Mommy sees she scolds me. She says I can paint them when I turn sixteen if I stop biting them before I’m ten, and I want them to look pretty like Sissy’s when I’m older, so I’m trying.

  The door to the doll room opens and then closes out in the hallway. I gasp and my head turns to my door. When I look back at Kaylie, she’s not Kaylie anymore.

  Beth’s eyes. Blue and green. Even that crooked half a smile like she knows she’s been bad and she wants me to know she’s proud of it.

  I start sobbing in fear. I don’t know whether to cry out for Mommy or if she’ll only scold me again for being scared. Whup me. Make me spend the night with Beth in my room so I’ll stop being afraid of her.

  For a long time I just sit in my bed shaking with my blanket pulled up to my chin. I watch Kaylie to see if she moves. If she stands up, or winks, or talks to me, that’s when I’ll scream for Mommy or Sissy.

  But she doesn’t move. She just sits and watches me. Stares with those deep, evil witch eyes. I wonder if she’s casting a spell.

  That thought forces me to action. I pull the pillowcase off my pillow and stand up. As fast as I can I throw it over Kaylie and pull her off the dresser. With her in the pillowcase, I throw it into my closet and dump all my dirty laundry on top of it. I shut the closet doors and pull the little latch to lock them.

  I’m safe. I have to be safe now.

  Except…

  That sound a minute ago. The doll room door opening and closing. I was so afraid of Kaylie I almost forgot. What if Beth is out in the hall now? What if she’s crawling to my room from out there?

  I run to my door and hold the knob. If it starts to open I can hold onto it. She can’t be stronger than I am. Not if she’s that small.

  I hold the knob for a long time before I realize I’m being stupid. Beth couldn’t even reach the knob.

  But I can’t go to sleep now, with something going on out there I can’t see. I can’t go to sleep unless I know I’m safe. And if I open the door to see if she’s out there, that’s when she can get in. She could be there right now, just outside the door, knowing I need to open it for my own peace of mind, biding her time…

  But that would mean she opened the door to the doll room. And if she could open that door…

  I turn the knob slowly. I squeeze my eyes tight and take a few deep breaths. She can’t be there. Sissy told me. The scary people in the story are the crazy ones who thought witches were real. I pull the door open a crack and look down at the floor.

  Nothing. No doll. No witches.

  I open it more. Slowly. Inching it little by little and keeping my hand ready to slam it shut as soon as I see the glow of heterochromia in the hall.

  But when the door is open all the way, still I see nothing. I stick my head into the hallway and look.

  The house looks empty, and the door to the doll room is shut, but the light is on inside.

  I put a foot out into the hall and tiptoe toward it. The closer I get, the more I hear a muffled voice behind it. I’m halfway to the door before I breathe a sigh of relief realizing it’s just Mommy. I tiptoe up to the door and put my ear to it.

  “She doesn’t mean it,” Mommy is saying behind the door. “Macie has a wild imagination and she can be difficult sometimes, but she’s full of love. She’ll get used to you soon. She’ll love you like I love you. And we can all be one big happy family like we were supposed to be. That’ll be nice, won’t it? I’m so glad you finally came back to us. We’re so happy to have you here.”

  I stand there in terror. Beth is stealing Mommy from me. Mommy talks to her dolls sometimes, but not like this. Not about her life. Not about me. Beth is casting a spell. I’m sure of it now.

  I’m still standing there paralyzed when Mommy puts Beth back on the shelf and opens the door. She almost bumps into me in the doorway and screams.

  “Macie. You scared me. What are you doing out here?”

  “I… I was thirsty.”

  Mommy shakes her head, trying to catch her breath. “You should think about whether you’re going to be thirsty before you go to bed. Come on. Let’s get you some water and then you need to sleep. It’s a school night.”

  She looks back over her shoulder. “Goodnight, girls. Goodnight, Beth,” she says as she shuts the door to the doll room.

  Monday, September 27th

  I’ve never been so happy to leave for school in the morning. All weekend I haven’t been able to stop thinking about that doll. Every time I close my eyes I see blues and greens floating around on the insides of my eyelids and all of a sudden I can see her face in front of me.

  Kaylie’s still in my closet under that pile of dirty clothes. I haven’t had it in me yet to throw her out again but I didn’t want her staring at me while I sleep either.

  For Show and Tell one of the boys is holding up a doll he got for his birthday. Boys call them action figures, but they’re just dolls with their clothes painted on. This doll, it wears army clothes and comes with a knife and a gun. I know this because I’m listening to him talk, not because I’m looking. I don’t want to look at the weaponized doll. I’m afraid I’d see Beth’s eyes. Beth’s bad enough without a knife and a gun.

  “Thank you, Bobby,” says Mrs. Harris. “Who’s next?”

  Nobody raises their hands. All of us look around at each other and avoid eye-contact with Mrs. Harris. We know she’s going to make somebody go next.

  “Macie?” she says. “I haven’t heard from you in a long time.”

  I look up at her, then back down at my desk. “I’ve got nothing to share.”

  “Have,” says Mrs. Harris. “You have nothing to share.” Mommy and Mrs. Harris, both always telling me how to talk, but I hear grown ups talk wrong all the time.

  “I don’t have anything, Mrs. Harris,” I say, sour.

  “Well, it’s Show and Tell. You don’t have to bring anything to tell.”

  “I don’t have anything to tell.”

  “Everybody has something to tell. Come on. Let’s hear it.”

  I push my chair out from my desk and sulk to the front of the classroom. Mrs. Harris starts clapping and everybody else joins in. I stand there and look at all their uninterested faces. I have nothing to say to them. There’s only one thing on my mind. It’s been on my mind for a long time now.

  “A long time ago everybody thought a lot of the ladies in their towns were witches because they looked weird and some of them had two eyes that were different colors,” I say, “so they tied them all up and burned them even though really they were just regular people.”

  Mrs. Harris scowls. A few girls gasp quietly. Two of the boys say “cool” to each other and laugh.

  “Macie…” says Mrs. Harris.

  I continue. “My mom has a doll like that, with the weird eyes, and I think it’s a witch doll. It’s making me see weird things. I want to burn it like the people did a long time ago.”

  “Macie, enough!” says Mrs. Harris.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  A few students clap and some of the boys are still laughing. Some of them look at each other uncomfortably. I don’t care if they’re scared. So am I. I’m always scared now. I walk back to my desk.

  “Macie, where did you hear all this?” asks Mrs. Harris.

  “From my sister,” I say. “She’s in high school and she’s really smart. She says in a few years we’ll learn about it in school.”

  “Is it true, Mrs. Harris?” a
sks some dumb girl in my class.

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “It totally is!” I say. “You’re lying!”

  “Macie, this is not something we’re going to talk about at school.”

  “But it’s true.”

  “Your mother doesn’t have a witch doll. There are no witches, and nobody is burning anybody for looking different.”

  “They used to.”

  “Well they haven’t for a long, long time.”

  “Well maybe they should.”

  Mrs. Harris sighs. “Go to the office, Macie.”

  “But I didn’t do anything.”

  “You’re telling lies and scaring your classmates. Go to the office, and I’m going to call your mother.”

  I start crying and stomp out of the room. Nobody believes me. This is what Beth wants. She’s toying with me. Little girls are supposed to play with dolls, not the other way around.

  * * * * *

  I don’t feel like playing at recess. I’ve been lectured all day about witches. First by Mrs. Harris and then by the principal and then by Mommy over the phone for a few minutes, and she says we’re going to have a long talk when I get home. All because Mrs. Harris made me talk in class. I wanted to stay quiet and do my schoolwork. She told me everybody had something to tell so I told her what I had to tell.

  I’m sitting on the curb next to the hopscotch courts. The other girls are playing hopscotch and jumping rope and singing. Way out to my right the boys are playing tetherball.

  The jump rope girls, they’re singing a new song they made up:

  Good little dolly,

  Eyes of red,

  How many days

  Till Macie’s dead?

  One…

  Two…

  Three…

  Four…

  I’m thinking about getting up and punching their cute noses until blood comes out. I’m already in trouble, so it’s now or never. I know how grown ups think. Whether I fight these girls or not, I “had a bad day.” If I punch them tomorrow, then I’ve been “acting out lately.”

  Use your words.

  That’s what Mommy would say.

  Maybe I should. I have a big sister. I know some words. Words that would probably give heart attacks to these goody-goods and their prude mothers. That c-word Sissy’s friend used that Sissy told me never to repeat. Maybe that’s the one I’ll start with.

  I clear my throat and I’m about to shout at them just as I hear a voice behind me.

  “You really think it’s a witch doll?”

  I turn. It’s Martin. He’s a year older but he’s in my class anyway because he had to repeat the second grade. Maybe it’s because he’s really dumb but I don’t know because normally he never talks.

  “I know it is,” I say.

  “Does it look like one? Like, black dress and pointy hat and all that?”

  I roll my eyes. “No.”

  He sits down next to me on the curb. “The real evil stuff never looks scary,” he says. “Wouldn’t make sense. If everybody knew it was evil nobody would want it. Evil stuff’s always pretty.”

  I don’t say anything.

  “My dad had a bird that told me to kill him,” says Martin all of a sudden.

  I turn and look at him.

  “My dad, I mean. Not the bird.”

  “It talked to you?” I ask.

  “Yeah, but it was one of those talking kind anyway. A parakeet. It would only say ‘Hello’ when he was around and he always got pissed that he couldn’t teach it anything else, but man, that thing never shut up when he was out of the house.”

  “Don’t they only say things they’ve already heard?”

  “Well if he heard the stuff he was saying, I don’t know where he could’ve heard it. He told me my dad was doing stuff with this woman down the street, like sex stuff. Seemed to be true too, because I went by the house on my bike one time and his car was there.”

  “Gross!”

  “Yeah. I told my mom and they were always fighting for a while. Then my mom went to stay with my aunts for a while and my dad wouldn’t let her take me. So the bird told me where my dad’s gun was. It said if I killed him my mom would come back and I could live with her. It told me I just had to shoot him while he was sleeping and he wouldn’t even feel it.”

  “Did you?”

  “Nah, I wouldn’t be here if I did. My mom kidnapped me from school and I haven’t seen my dad since. Heard he died a few months ago though. I bet it was that parakeet.”

  I shudder.

  “What does the witch doll tell you to do?” asks Martin.

  “She doesn’t talk. Just watches me. I don’t think she wants me to do anything. I think she’s going to do something herself.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You should definitely burn it. It’s probably gonna kill you or something.”

  I turn away and look down at the pavement. I can still hear the jump rope girls chanting.

  Six…

  Seven…

  Eight…

  * * * * *

  Mommy’s already there when I get home, sitting on the love seat and waiting for me in the living room. I take off my backpack and drop it on the floor.

  “Hang it up in the closet,” says Mommy.

  I sigh angrily, pick up the backpack, and put it away. I sit in the chair across from Mommy.

  “Over here please.”

  I make a big show out of getting up and walking across the room and sitting next to her on the love seat.

  “Now are you going to tell me what happened at school?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Doesn’t sound like nothing. Your teacher doesn’t call me at work for nothing.”

  “Yes she does.”

  “Enough with the attitude, Macie. You’re telling your classmates about people burning witches and your mom’s evil doll? What’s gotten into you?”

  “Mrs. Harris told me I had to do Show and Tell, so I told her what I was thinking about.”

  “Why don’t you draw a picture to bring? Why don’t you show them the new dress I made Kaylie? Why are you talking about witches and people getting burned? That’s disgusting, Macie. Where did you even hear that?”

  “From Sissy.”

  “I might have known.”

  “But it’s true. She learned it in school.”

  “Okay. I’m going to say this one more time. There are no witches. People don’t burn each other. A doll can’t hurt you. And frankly you’re too old to be believing this kind of junk anymore.”

  I roll my eyes so far my head leans back into the couch cushions.

  “Come here,” says Mommy, standing up. She takes my hand and pulls me to the doll room.

  Up on the shelf where Beth should be, there’s just a blank space—a doll on the left and a doll on the right but no doll in the middle.

  “See?” says Mommy. “She’s gone. I sent her back like you wanted. Are you happy?”

  I look from the space to Mommy and back. “Where is she?”

  “At the shop that sells them. I took her back so that some other woman with a more grown up daughter can have her. Are you going to stop all this nonsense now?”

  I hug Mommy’s legs.

  “Thank you,” I say. “That’s all I wanted, Mommy. I feel better now.”

  * * * * *

  In the middle of the night I wake up and Kaylie’s sitting on the shelf, not under the pile of clothes in the closet where she belongs. I thought of getting her out last night, but I decided to wait another day or two, make sure nothing strange happens now that Beth is gone. And sure enough, here’s Kaylie. Up on the dresser. Not where she’s supposed to be.

  I turn and face the wall. I wrap my pillow around my head. I try to forget about it. I try to go back to sleep. Maybe I did get Kaylie out of the closet late at night while I was really tired and now I’m forgetting about it. Or maybe I’m imagining seeing her there on the shelf. The room is dark,
even with the night light, and the dresser is covered in shadow. Maybe she’s not there. Maybe I’m kidding myself.

  Except… no.

  No, she’s there. I know I saw her there. And I didn’t get her out of the closet last night. I know that too. And what does that mean?

  Kaylie’s alive.

  Or Beth is alive and she’s here and she moved Kaylie.

  Or somebody is in the house and he’s moving dolls around.

  None of these explanations make sense and I don’t know which one scares me the most.

  I notice I’m crying. I try to stop and pull it together. It’s just a doll, Macie. A stupid doll. A stupid doll that’s maybe not even really there.

  There’s a flashlight on the table next to my bed. Mommy put it there one night last summer when the power went out during the night and I was too scared to get up to go to the bathroom. I could grab the flashlight now, point it over and see if Kaylie’s there, see if it’s just shadows in the dark playing tricks on my eyes. I could shine it around the room and see if there’s anybody else here.

  That’s the only “logical” explanation, as the grown ups say. Sissy or Mommy wouldn’t deliberately scare me. So it has to be a maniac who escaped from a mental institution and broke into my room at night to reorganize the toys while I’m sleeping. It has to be that, or something “illogical.”

  I grab the flashlight and shine it at Kaylie. She’s there, like I already knew she was. And one eye is blue and the other is green, like I already knew they would be. The only thing she’s doing that I didn’t already know she’d be doing is extending an arm, like she’s pointing. Pointing at my door. Pointing low, about the height one of Mommy’s dollies might stand if it were on the other side.

  The door to my room is cracked. I always close it tight. Maybe somebody has been in here after all. A person? A spirit? A doll?

  I want to scream for Mommy, get her to come in, but she’s still mad at me for what happened at school. I know she’ll wake up startled, she’ll run into my room, I’ll tell her Kaylie is pointing at the door, and she’ll get frustrated and angry and whup me and say, “What do I have to do, Macie?”