The Porcelain Task

I’ve always been a skeptic, but my dreams have a way of blurring the line between sleep and waking. Last autumn, I moved to a small coastal town named Dredge Harbor, population barely three hundred when the fishing boats are out. The air stank of brine and rotting wood, and the only sound at night was the groan of the pier and the distant foghorn. I rented a cramped apartment above a closed fish cannery, and the landlord, a stooped old man named Mr. Crane, warned me about the ‘settling’ of the building. I didn’t think much of it until the dreams started.

It was the same dream every night: a woman in a yellow raincoat standing at the end of a wooden dock, her back to me. In the dream, I was always walking toward her, but the dock stretched endlessly, and the water beneath was black as oil. She never turned around, but I could hear her humming a lullaby, soft and off-key. I’d wake up with my pillow damp from tears, my heart pounding. I chalked it up to stress, but the dream began to bleed into my waking life. I’d catch the scent of salt and mildew in rooms with closed windows, and the floorboards would creak underfoot even when I stood still.

One evening, I came home from the market to find my kitchen door slightly ajar. I was sure I’d locked it. Inside, a single ceramic plate lay shattered on the linoleum floor, shards scattered like white teeth. My cat, a skittish tabby, was huddled under the table, hissing. I swept up the pieces, but the image wouldn’t leave me. The next night, I set a cup on the counter. By morning, it had been knocked to the floor, cracked but intact. I felt a cold draft, and the dream came again, this time with a new detail: the woman in the raincoat was holding a small, white porcelain doll, its face cracked.

I called my friend, a librarian, and she told me about the town’s history. The cannery had been the heart of Dredge Harbor until a fire in the 60s. A worker named Elara had lost her daughter in the blaze. The girl was never found, but some swore they saw a little figure on the pier that night, clutching a doll. Elara threw herself into the harbor a week later. The locals avoid the dock after dusk. My apartment, the one above the cannery, was once the manager’s office, and Elara had lived there with her daughter.

Armed with this, I decided to confront the presence. I left a porcelain doll I’d bought from a thrift store on the kitchen table, along with a note: ‘I’m sorry. Tell me what you need.’ That night, I didn’t dream. Instead, I woke to a sound like clinking porcelain. I crept to the kitchen and saw my doll on the floor, placed neatly beside the shattered plate I’d swept away. The note was gone. In its place was a single word scratched into the wooden table: ‘MINE.’

I should have left, but I couldn’t. The dream returned, but now I was on the dock, and the woman turned. Her face was hollow, black pits for eyes, and she held the doll out to me. When I took it, I felt a cold, pulsing life in it. I woke with the doll in my hands, the one I’d bought, but now its face was cracked, and it smelled of saltwater. The walls of my apartment seemed to close in, and I heard a child’s laugh from the hallway, but it was empty.

I tried to destroy the doll, but every time I broke it, it would mend itself by morning. I tried to bury it, but it returned to my bed. The presence grew bolder: objects flew across the room, the lights flickered, and my reflection in the window showed a little girl standing behind me, waving. I called a medium, but she refused to come, saying, ‘That’s not a ghost. It’s a hunger.’

Desperate, I searched the cannery’s archives and found a photo of Elara and her daughter, Margot. In the photo, Margot clutched a porcelain doll exactly like mine. The caption read: ‘Margot and her precious Dolly, 1962.’ The fire had consumed Margot, but the doll was never recovered. I realized then: the doll was the vessel, and it had been waiting for me to find it. The presence wasn’t in the house; it was in the doll. And now, it had attached to me.

I threw the doll into the sea, but the next day, it was back on my doorstep, wet and grinning. The dream changed: I was Margot, standing in the rain, watching the cannery burn, my mother’s hand tight on mine. I woke screaming. My hair had been braided overnight, and the doll lay beside me, its arms wrapped around my neck.

I left Dredge Harbor that morning, but the doll was in my bag. I threw it out the window on the highway, but in my rearview mirror, I saw it sitting on the roadside, gently rocking. I drove for hours until I reached a city, and I checked into a motel. I placed the doll on the nightstand, and it toppled over by itself. I heard a voice, faint but clear: ‘You can’t leave without me.’

Now, I never keep a mirror in any room I stay in, because she likes to watch me from the glass. And every time I close my eyes, I’m back on that dock, and she’s waiting. I don’t know if it’s a ghost or something else, but I know one thing: she wants a friend. And she’s decided it’s me.