The Glass-Fronted Doll

I’m writing this only 48 hours after it happened, to preserve exactly what we saw. My cousin Derek from Boulder brought his girlfriend, Maya, along with his mom, Aunt Ruth, and our other aunt, Aunt Ginny, up to stay with us in Portland, Maine. Derek and Maya rented a small house in the quiet, leafy neighborhood just off Congress Street, not far from the old Deering Oaks park. It was one of those pre-war bungalows with a low stone front and a sunken basement, surrounded by tall oaks and overgrown hydrangeas.

On the first night, they invited me, my boyfriend Jack, my brother Sam, and our cousin Emily over for drinks and games. While Derek and Maya ran out to grab last minute supplies, the rest of us were admiring their Airbnb. It was cozy but odd. The furniture was mismatched, with a musty, faintly sweet smell. The basement door was at the end of a short hall, and it had a brand-new deadbolt on it, which struck me as strange. I mentioned it to Emily, but she just shrugged.

When Derek and Maya got back, we settled into cocktails and charades. Around midnight, Maya brought out a board game from a dusty shelf: ‘The Glass-Fronted Doll.’ It was an old, handcrafted thing, with a miniature cabinet on the board and plastic pieces shaped like tiny dolls. None of us had seen it before. Derek said it came with the house and looked vintage. We decided to play it to break the monotony.

The rules were simple: you move your doll through rooms of a house, trying to avoid the ‘collector.’ But every time someone rolled a certain number, the player had to look under the board and read a ‘tale card.’ Those cards had creepy stories written on them, each about a different doll that came alive. We laughed it off, but after a couple of hours, Jack noticed that the doll pieces seemed to have moved slightly when we weren’t looking. We brushed it off as vibration or our own clumsy hands.

It was past 2 AM when Maya screamed. She pointed to the board: one of the tiny glass-fronted cabinet doors was open, and the doll piece that was supposed to be inside was standing in the center of the board. We all froze. No one had touched it. Derek, ever the skeptic, tried to close it, but the tiny door wouldn’t budge. He forced it, and the glass cracked. That’s when we noticed the basement door—which had been closed—was standing ajar.

We decided to leave, but Maya refused to stay alone. We all ended up crashing on their living room floor, talking in hushed tones. I couldn’t sleep. I kept staring at that cracked cabinet door, and at the basement door, which was now closed again. Around 4 AM, I heard a faint tinkling sound, like tiny glass pieces being tapped together. I sat up and saw one of the doll pieces, the one from the board, standing at the threshold of the basement door, as if waiting.

I woke Derek and pointed. He turned white. He quietly grabbed a flashlight and edged to the basement door. He swung it open, revealing a steep, wooden stairway that descended into blackness. The walls were lined with shelves, and on those shelves were dozens of identical glass-fronted cabinets, each containing a single doll. The dolls all had the same face, with painted black eyes and a red smile. They were arranged facing the stairs, as if watching.

We all gathered at the top. Jack said we should go down, just to prove nothing was there. But as we took the first steps, the dolls began to vibrate, their porcelain limbs rattling against the glass. The sound grew louder until it was a deafening clatter, and then, as one, the cabinet doors swung open, and every doll turned its head upward to look at us.

We ran. We didn’t stop until we were in our car, driving to my apartment. Derek and Maya stayed with us. The next morning, we went back to get their luggage. The house was quiet, but the basement door was sealed with a heavy padlock we hadn’t seen before. The board game was gone. There was no sign of the dolls or the cabinets. The landlord, when called, said no one had ever installed a lock on that door, and the basement was empty.

That’s the story. I’m not a superstitious person, but last night, I dreamed I saw one of those same dolls on my nightstand, its tiny painted smile glinting. When I woke, my hand was resting on a small piece of cracked glass, the kind from a miniature cabinet door. I don’t know if this is real, but I can’t stop thinking about all those empty shelves, and the way the dolls all turned to face us at the same time. I doubt I’ll ever step foot in that house again.