The Toy Room Incident

My grandfather, Lolo Ben, had a workshop at the back of our house in a small town in Ohio. He was a carpenter, and the place smelled of sawdust and varnish. When I was seven, my parents left for a weekend trip to Chicago, and my grandparents, Lolo Ben and Lola Nena, were to look after me and my little brother, Miguel. I was supposed to be asleep, but I snuck into the workshop, which we kids used as a playroom when it wasn’t in use.

I was digging through a box of old toys when I found a rag doll I hated. It had button eyes, one loose, and a stitched mouth that always looked like a smirk. It was a gift from a neighbor’s mom, and I thought it was creepy. I was about to toss it aside when I heard a child’s voice, clear as day, say, ‘Saan tayo maglalaro?’ (Where should we play?) I spun around, but no one was there. The doll had fallen off the shelf and was lying on the floor, its head twisted at an odd angle.

I ran to my grandfather, who was in the house watching TV. ‘Lolo, there’s a voice in the workshop!’ I said, shaking. He chuckled and went to check. He looked around, moved a few things, and said, ‘Nothing there, anak. It was just your imagination.’ But I knew what I had heard. For days, I avoided the workshop.

Years passed. We moved to a new state, and I forgot about the incident. Then, when I was 17, we returned to Ohio for my grandfather’s funeral. After the service, I found myself in the old workshop, now dusty and abandoned. I remembered the doll and felt a chill. I went to the corner where I’d left it, but it was gone. I shrugged it off as clutter.

That night, I stayed in the house with my parents. As I was about to sleep, I heard a faint, singsong voice: ‘Gusto mo na ulit maglaro?’ (Do you want to play again?) I froze. It was the same voice, but older, as if aged with me. I turned on the light, but the room was empty. The next morning, I found the doll on my bed, its button eyes now sewn shut with thick thread.

I tried to throw it away, but it kept coming back. Each night, the voice grew clearer, and I found myself answering. ‘Fine, let’s play,’ I whispered one night, and the doll’s head slowly turned to face me. That’s when I realized: it wasn’t a doll. It was something that had been waiting, patient, in that workshop all those years. Now that I had spoken, it had permission to play forever.

I no longer see the doll, but I hear it. It asks me to play, and I can’t refuse. It’s followed me to New York, to my new apartment, and it will follow me to my grave. But the worst part is, my little brother Miguel has started hearing it too. And he’s only seven.