The String’s Last Pull

In the autumn of 1957, my cousins and I were sent to our grandmother’s farm while our parents dealt with a family crisis. The farmhouse was old, with a cellar that had been converted into a playroom and guest quarters. It was vast, with concrete floors and walls that smelled of damp earth, and it was lit by a handful of bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling, each controlled by a long, grimy pull string. The windows were high up, near the ceiling, and the glass was painted over with black, so no light ever came through. During the day, we’d play board games and read comic books down there, but as the sun set, the cellar became a pit of darkness.

My cousin, a girl named Elsie, had a room in the cellar, a corner with a mattress and a pile of old quilts. She was older than me, twelve, and she had a collection of porcelain dolls that lined the walls, their glass eyes reflecting the dim glow of the single bulb in her alcove. Every night, I’d beg her to cover them with a sheet, because their painted smiles seemed to follow me as I tried to sleep. She’d laugh, call me a baby, but eventually she’d toss a blanket over them, muttering about how I was afraid of everything.

The three bulbs that worked were positioned so that one was near the stairs, one in the bathroom, and one in the largest room, which we used as our main gathering spot. The pull strings were long, but we were too short to reach them, so we had to use a broom handle to hook the loops and yank them down. It was a game to see who could do it fastest, but at night, it was a terror because the darkness felt alive, and we’d have to navigate by memory, our hands out in front of us, praying we didn’t touch something cold and unyielding.

One evening, after our grandmother had gone to bed, we were in the cellar playing hide-and-seek. The lights were on, but they flickered with the old wiring, casting dancing shadows. I hid in the bathroom, behind the door, my heart pounding. I heard footsteps, then a low, raspy voice that wasn’t Elsie’s or my brother’s. It said, ‘I see you.’ I stayed still, thinking it was a prank, but then the light in the bathroom went out, and the blackness was absolute. I stumbled out, and the only light left was in the main room, where Elsie and my brother were huddled, their faces pale. They said they hadn’t turned off the bathroom light. We all looked at the third light, which was swaying slightly, as if something had just let go of its string.

That night, we decided to sleep in the same room, all of us on the mattress in Elsie’s alcove. We left the main light on, but the bulb was old and dim, casting a sickly yellow glow. I lay awake, staring at the dolls’ covered mound, when I heard a sound like a string being pulled. The light in the main room flickered and went out. I felt a presence, a cold breath on my face, and a voice whispered, ‘Pull.’ I screamed, and my brother scrambled to the light switch on the wall, but it was a separate switch, and he managed to turn it on. The light blazed, and we saw nothing unusual, but all the dolls had been uncovered, their heads turned to face us.

We tried to tell our grandmother the next morning, but she dismissed it as our imagination, saying the cellar was just drafty and old. That day, we avoided the cellar, staying in the kitchen, but as evening came, we knew we had to go down to sleep. We devised a plan: we’d all hold on to a single long rope, tied to the banister at the top of the stairs, so we could find our way out in the dark. We also took a flashlight, but the batteries were weak, and it only gave a faint beam.

Once we were in the cellar, we focused on Elsie’s room, but the main light wouldn’t turn on. The pull string hung motionless, as if frozen. We tried the bathroom light, but it was dead too. The only light was the one by the stairs, which we’d left on, and it cast a long, distorted shadow of the stairs onto the wall. As we huddled in the dark, we heard the sound of all three pull strings being yanked at once, and then the lights flickered on and off in a frenzy. In the strobe-like flashes, we saw a figure – a tall, gaunt silhouette with long arms, standing near the center of the room, its head tilted as if it were listening.

I shouted, ‘Who’s there?’ and the figure turned. In the next flash, I saw its face: it was a porcelain doll’s face, cracked and worn, but huge, as big as a dinner plate, with a wide smile. It spoke, in a voice that sounded like grinding glass, ‘I’ve been waiting for you to pull my string.’

We bolted for the stairs, but the door at the top was locked from the outside. We screamed, pounded on the wood, but no one came. The lights went out completely, and we were plunged into absolute blackness. We felt our way along the rope, but it was cut. Disoriented, we huddled together, crying. Then, we heard a soft, rhythmic dragging sound, coming closer. I reached out and grabbed something: a long, greasy string. I pulled it. The light above the stairs came on, but in the harsh glare, we saw that the figure was gone. The door was ajar, and we scrambled up, never to sleep in that cellar again.

Years later, I learned that the farm had been owned by a reclusive dollmaker whose daughter had died in a fire in that very cellar. He had installed the pull-string lights as a way to ‘call’ her spirit, believing he could summon her by pulling the strings. He had left a single, perfect doll in the cellar, one with no string to pull, and it was said that whoever pulled its string would see her. I never went back, but for the rest of my life, whenever I saw a pull-string light, I felt a phantom tug, and a cold whisper: ‘Pull.’