The Porcelain Visitor

I have always been a skeptic at heart. A firm believer in logic, in the cold and in the tangible. But our family moved into an old farmhouse in the autumn of ’88, and that’s when things began to unravel. My sister Elsie and I were nine and five, respectively, and we shared a room at the end of a long, drafty hallway. Our parents, ever the antique lovers, had picked up a pair of porcelain dolls at a flea market in the neighboring town. They meant to give us something pretty to play with, something to keep us occupied on those long, rainy afternoons. The dolls were oddly detailed: one had raven hair and wore a deep crimson dress, the other had golden curls and a gown of pale blue. I took the crimson one, Elsie the blue. I, being a careful child, placed mine in a glass cabinet in the living room, away from harm. Elsie, however, clutched hers like a talisman, and insisted on placing it on her nightstand, right beside her bed.

That first night, I was woken by a sound—not a scream, but a low, guttural humming, as if something was trying to remember a lullaby. It came from Elsie’s side of the room. I sat up, rubbing my eyes, and saw Elsie standing by the window, her silhouette outlined by the moonlight. She was holding the blue doll, its glass eyes glinting. ‘Elsie? What are you doing?’ I whispered. She turned, and her face was blank, but her lips moved, not in her own voice. ‘She wants to play,’ she said, but her voice was too high, too thin. Then she went back to bed, and the humming stopped. I told myself it was a dream.

The next night, I woke to find Elsie’s bed empty. Panic seized me. I called for her, and a faint giggle echoed from the hallway. I followed it, my bare feet cold on the wooden floor. The hallway was pitch black, but a soft, blue glow emanated from the bathroom at the end. I crept forward, and through the crack in the door, I saw Elsie kneeling on the tile, the blue doll before her. She was talking to it in a language I didn’t recognize, and then she turned the doll to face me. Its porcelain mouth was painted in a perfect smile, but that smile seemed too wide, and I felt a chill crawl up my spine. ‘She’s waiting,’ Elsie said, not looking at me. I ran back to our room, buried myself under the covers, and didn’t sleep.

By the third day, Elsie had stopped speaking to me. She only spoke to the doll. My parents noticed her gaunt appearance, the dark circles under her eyes, but they dismissed it as a growth spurt. I tried to tell them about the doll, but they laughed and said I had an overactive imagination. That night, I decided to hide the doll. I waited until Elsie was asleep, then carefully lifted the blue doll from her nightstand. It felt cold, heavier than it should be. As I tiptoed to the closet, I could have sworn I heard a voice whisper, ‘That’s not yours.’ I froze, but the room was silent. I shoved the doll into a shoebox, and hid it in the attic, behind a stack of old magazines.

The next morning, Elsie was in a rage. She tore the room apart, screaming, ‘Where is she? Where did you put her?’ My parents tried to calm her, but she was inconsolable. They demanded to know what I had done, and I told them the truth. They looked at each other, then sent me to my room. That evening, I heard their muffled voices through the wall, and my father climbing the attic stairs. Later, I heard him coming down, and then the sound of the blue doll being placed back on Elsie’s nightstand.

That night, I had the worst dream. I was in a vast, empty room, and the blue doll sat on a pedestal, its head turned at an unnatural angle. ‘You tried to separate us,’ it said, its voice like the screech of nails on a chalkboard. ‘But we are one.’ I woke up screaming, and found Elsie standing over me, holding the blue doll inches from my face. Its porcelain hand was raised, as if to touch me. ‘She’s not happy,’ Elsie said, and then she smiled, but it was the doll’s smile.

I begged my parents to get rid of the doll, but they refused, saying Elsie was attached to it. The next few weeks were a blur of sleepless nights and odd occurrences. I would hear scratching inside the walls, and occasionally, I’d catch the blue doll in different positions, as if it had moved on its own. Elsie grew paler, her eyes becoming hollow, and she stopped eating. The doll seemed to be feeding on her vitality.

One evening, I came home from school to find the house eerily quiet. I called for my parents, but there was no answer. I ran to Elsie’s room and found her sitting on the bed, the doll in her lap. Her head was bowed, and she was whispering the same strange language. ‘Elsie?’ I said, but she didn’t respond. I approached slowly, and that’s when I saw the doll’s face. Its eyes were no longer painted glass; they were wet and human, and they looked at me with a malevolent hunger. I stumbled back, but the doll’s head swiveled to follow me. ‘You should have let us play,’ the doll said, and then Elsie’s head snapped up, her eyes now matching the doll’s glassy emptiness.

I fled the house, screaming, and my parents found me hiding in the barn. They tried to calm me, but I was beyond reason. When we went back in, Elsie was in the kitchen, smiling, holding the blue doll. The doll’s eyes were closed now, but I could feel its stare on my back. My parents saw nothing wrong, but I knew. That night, I refused to sleep in the room. I slept on the sofa, and I heard, through the floorboards, the hum of the lullaby, and Elsie’s laughter, too high, too thin.

In the morning, we found that Elsie had vanished. The only trace was the blue doll, sitting on the pillow, its porcelain face turned toward the door, as if waiting for me. My parents searched the whole farm, but she was gone. The police were called, but they found nothing. They eventually concluded she had wandered off, but I knew better. The doll was placed in the attic, after my parents couldn’t bear to look at it.

Years passed, and I tried to forget. But the memory of that room, that doll, never left me. Eventually, I returned to the farmhouse after my parents passed, to sell the property. As I cleared out the attic, I found the blue doll, wrapped in an old cloth, still pristine. I should have burned it, but a perverse curiosity made me bring it back to the city. I put it on a shelf in my apartment, telling myself it was just a relic.

One night, I woke to the sound of humming. I sat up, my heart racing. The shelf was empty. I turned on the light, and there, on my nightstand, was the blue doll, its head turned toward me, its painted smile widening. And from its lips, I heard Elsie’s voice, pleading, ‘Help me.’ But the doll’s eyes were hollow, and I knew, with a certainty that chilled me, that the doll had been waiting for me all along. It had never let her go.

I backed away, but my hand found something cold. I looked down. It was a crimson cloth, torn from a dress. And, from the closet, I heard a faint, childish giggle, and a whisper: ‘You’re next.’