The Ragged Effigy

I know you have no reason to trust me, but every word of this is true. If you’re wondering why I’m not with my parents, it’s because my father and I went at it – fists and all – and my sister, Lena, and I were thrown out. And before you ask, no, I haven’t touched a drop since. That’s part of this too.

We ended up staying with an old friend of the family, Marcus, his wife, and their two-year-old daughter. Marcus had just bought this ramshackle place on the edge of a dying town. The house was from the early 1900s, and it had been sitting empty for years, a monument to decay. We’d been there a month, and the first week was quiet – too quiet, I suppose. Then the little things started.

One afternoon, while Marcus and I were digging postholes for a fence, my shovel clinked against something solid. I knelt down and brushed away the dirt. It was a doll, small and grimy, with a stitched-on mouth and the remains of a black dress clinging to its cloth body. The eyes were just dark buttons, but one was loose, hanging by a thread. Marcus laughed it off, said it was probably from some old trash pit. We chucked it in the burn barrel and went back to work. That night, I set my wallet on the nightstand, went to the bathroom, and when I came back, it was gone. I tore the room apart – nothing. Lena thought I was losing it. I didn’t sleep.

The next morning, I found the wallet on the kitchen table, propped up like it was waiting for me. Inside, the cash was still there, but my driver’s license was missing. I flipped it over, and there, in the little photo slot, was a picture of the doll. The photo was old, faded, but the doll was unmistakable – same black dress, same stitched mouth, but the eyes were both present and looked almost… alive. I showed Marcus, and he went pale. He said, ‘Where did you get that?’ I told him it was in my wallet. He said the photo was from his grandmother’s house, a house he’d never told anyone about. The doll was hers. He said she’d had it since she was a child, and it was cursed. He’d buried it deep in the woods, thinking that would end it. But it was here, in our yard.

That night, the baby started crying – not a normal cry, but a panicked, strangulated wail. We rushed in, and there, propped on the foot of the crib, was the doll, now with a fresh white dress, as if someone had made it new. The baby had scratches on her arms, thin lines like fingernails. We grabbed the doll and tried to burn it, but the fire wouldn’t catch. The wood was dry, but the doll just smoldered, never igniting. We threw it in a neighbor’s trash bin far away. When we came back, it was sitting on the porch steps, waiting.

That’s when I remembered what my grandmother once told me about old dolls like that: they can be vessels for something that wants to be held. The doll had been buried, forgotten, but we dug it up. It wanted a home, a family. And it was not going to let us leave.

We tried to leave the next morning. Packed the car, even got a few miles down the road, but the engine died. We pushed it back, and when we opened the hood, the doll was wedged in the engine block, its button eyes glinting. The baby started screaming in her car seat. We looked, and her tiny wrist was bent at a wrong angle. The doll’s mouth was open now, as if it had been screaming too.

We’ve barricaded ourselves in the upstairs room. Marcus is trying to call for help, but every phone line is dead. The power flickers. The doll is sitting in the hallway, just out of sight, but I can feel its presence. A while ago, I saw its shadow lengthen across the floor, and it moved closer. The baby is quiet now – too quiet. And I just realized: the doll’s dress is now stained with something red, and it’s holding a tiny hair clip that belongs to Lena. I think it wants to trade.

I’m writing this on my phone, hoping someone finds it. If you see a doll like that, don’t dig it up. Don’t touch it. Just walk away and never look back. Because it’s not the doll you have to fear. It’s whatever made it, and it’s been waiting a long time to get out.