In Nightmares We're Alone (3 page)

“No. No, Macie, I
don’t
know. She’s just a doll. Come here.”

Mommy pulls me up out of bed and out of the room. She strategically leaves Kaylie in my room so that if I want to be rid of her I’ll have to throw her out a second time and risk starting the whole ordeal over.

* * * * *

Walking into the doll room next to Mommy, the room doesn’t feel as cold as it did with Sissy. Maybe it’s just that I don’t think Beth will try any of her crap with Mommy here. Instinctively I know she’s going to play Mommy’s Little Baby. If Mommy can’t see the wrongness behind her eyes, if Sissy can’t see it either, I’m in this alone.

Mommy steps up on her footstool and lifts Beth gingerly off the top shelf. “Here,” she says, stepping down. She holds the doll out to me. “Hold her.” I hesitate. “Hold. Her.”

I take a step back. I keep my hands firmly at my sides.

“Macie, this is not healthy. You can’t be traumatized by an inanimate object. Put your arms out and hold her.”

“No.”

“Macie, I’m about at my limit here.”

I take a deep breath and tug Beth violently out of Mommy’s hands.

“Careful!” says Mommy.

I hold the doll back out to Mommy. “There. I held her. Can I go now?”

“Not yet. You stand there and look at that doll until you realize it can’t hurt you.”

“I don’t want—”

“I don’t care if it takes all day!”

I exhale deeply. I concentrate on my breath. My hands are shaking, I’m sure Mommy can tell. I have to stop them. I have to look calm.

“Do
not
drop her,” says Mommy, but I’m so focused on breathing I can barely hear her.

Whoever made this one did a crummy job. She doesn’t look real, not like Mommy’s other dolls. The other ones are painted well, with that soft, dry paint that feels like a frosted Christmas tree ornament. Beth’s too polished. Her skin is shiny, like the kitchen floor after Mommy mops. Not like a baby. Her skin is too tan, her cheeks are blushed too red to look real. She’s ugly. A stupid, fake-looking doll.

Except for the eyes. What is it about the eyes? One blue, one green. The way they sparkle, that glassy coat of glaze over it like she’ll blink if you stare long enough.

My hands shake harder. My tummy hurts. I want to go to the bathroom.

I look up at Mommy and she raises her eyebrows, tells me silently to keep looking, keep conquering my fear.

I look Beth in the eyes. I try to remember what Sissy said about witches and fires. All that stuff about who the real scary people are. It doesn’t help. Reflected in Beth’s eyes I just imagine toothless old women riding on brooms, laughing hyee-hah-hah, that creepy witch laugh, stirring a big pot over a fire and dropping in puppies and babies and lizards.

And I want to throw Beth right in with the puppies and the babies and the lizards. I don’t care if she’s just a girl who looks different and I’m one of the crazy villagers who wants to burn somebody just because I don’t like her, I still want to burn the ugly bitch. I want to see what those eyes look like when the rest of her is charred and broken.

The harder I stare, the harder I hate, the more alive the eyes look to me, until they’re more alive than even a human’s eyes, almost like they’re shining or glowing. And then I can’t stand it anymore and I jerk my eyes away from hers.

That’s when I see it.

Oh God.

Oh my God.

The whole shelf behind Mommy, twenty dolls at least, every single one of them has Beth’s eyes. Blue on the right, green on the left. Every last one of them, staring at me with those impossibly deep eyes. Every one of them smirking that giggling baby half-smirk. Every last one.

I can’t help it. I drop Beth on the floor and scream.

* * * * *

“For Heaven’s sake, Macie.”

Beth’s barely hit the ground before Mommy has swept her up and inspected the head for cracks and scuffs and scratches. Even when I was as young as Beth looks, I’m pretty sure Mommy was never that concerned about me.

“What? What? What is it?” asks Mommy angrily.

“It’s all of… They’re all…” I try to put the thought into words but the fear clouds my brain.

Mommy waves one hand through the air in her
what am I going to do with you
gesture and gets back up on the footstool to put Beth away on her perch up there, way up high where I can’t reach.

As Mommy reaches up, she exposes her whole body to twenty blue-and-green-eyed dolls all grinning at me like something’s about to happen.

“Mommy, no! Stop!” I scream. “Be careful!”

She puts the doll away and turns to me, never looking at the horde of evil dolls. “What? What is the matter with you? This is ridiculous.”

Sissy comes running into the room asking, “What happened? What is it?”

Even Buster, who’d been sleeping on the couch, he’s standing in the hallway just outside the doll room with his head cocked to one side the way he does whenever there’s excitement he’s not involved in.

Mommy grabs my face and turns it away from the dolls so my eyes meet hers. “Honey,” she says. “Calm down and tell me.”

I take a moment to breathe, to find what I want to say.

“All the dolls have her eyes,” I tell her.

Mommy turns to look at them.

I can’t see the dolls now, but before Mommy even turns, I already know. Their eyes are normal now. Browns and blues and greens and blacks. No heterochromia. No depth. No life. Mommy and Sissy and maybe even Buster, they’re all looking at a shelf full of dolls and thinking I’m a stupid little girl who read a scary book.

I don’t have to look at the dolls to know it. You win, Beth. You’re Mommy’s favorite. You stay.

Mommy pushes me out of the room and shuts the door behind us and I’m still shaking and there are tears in my eyes and Buster wants to lick them off but I won’t let him. Sissy’s standing next to me and giving me a look like I’m being stupid and she’s disappointed in me. Mommy’s shaking her head and making that frustrated sound she’s always making.

But until the door is closed, I keep looking at Beth, sitting up there on her perch with the same expression as always, but it feels like it’s more pronounced the more I look at her. Handy craftsmanship, maybe. Or lots of lizards in her witch brew.

Mommy shuts the door. And just before it closes, probably I’m just imagining it, but that creepy doll up there in its little throne looking at me with its human eyes, I could almost swear I see it wink.

* * * * *

After Mommy tucks me into bed that night, I’m afraid to close my eyes. Kaylie sits there on top of the dresser staring at me, and every time I blink I expect her eyes to change. Sissy says if you’re scared your mind plays crazy tricks on you, but I know what I saw yesterday when I looked into Kaylie’s eyes. I know I saw Beth inside.

I wish she wasn’t there. I wish Mommy could have just left the dolls in the garbage and let me make my own decisions for once. Kaylie was supposed to be
my
doll. If Mommy gets to decide whether we keep Beth, I’m supposed to get to decide whether we keep Kaylie.

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.

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.