Stell's Little Book of Terrors

Porcelain Nightmare

A toy from childhood goes through some drastic changes

I was out on a chilly December day around Christmastime, walking through a large garage sale with my mother when I first spotted her. Being a little four-year-old girl at the time, I quite literally fell in love at first glance. She was all I'd ever dreamed of and I was enthralled. So much so that I literally begged my mother for this new dolly to play with. To my unending delight, she obliged me and bought it as an early Christmas gift. The doll was beautiful, and I loved her so much that I gave her the same name as me. Meredith. She had curly blonde hair, green glass eyes, and a sweet smile complete with dimples. Her outfit consisted of a red and green velvet dress with gold glitter accents and white fur trim, a matching purse, shiny shoes, and a glittering rhinestone tiara placed on her head. For years, that porcelain doll was my best friend. I took her everywhere I went and talked to her more than anyone else. She was my item of choice for every show and tell I attended, every game I played, and even laid right beside me when I slept. In those early days, I had no reason to suspect anything weird was going on. She didn't display any signs of being outright haunted. There were no odd ghostly encounters that I can recall. The doll didn't appear to move or do anything out of the ordinary at all. As I grew older and began maturing out of my doll phase, my parents decided to keep Meredith with the Christmas decorations. I still got to see her every holiday season, so it didn't even feel like we were separated at all. She spent the remaining part of each year in a carefully packed box in the attic. Despite no longer playing with her, I would let nobody else take her out or pack her away. She just remained in a special place in my heart. As I got older, I began to notice the doll's increasingly creepy appearance that seemed to worsen with each time she was revealed. The once sweet smile started to come across as cold and artificial-looking, almost like the expression someone would wear when they were mocking you. The green eyes began to resemble those of a cat - sly and calculating. But the strangest part of all was that each year, Meredith seemed to age. Not only did her clothes fade as one might expect, but the doll's body itself did as well. I only realized these at first subtle differences as I was going through an old photo album with my mother. We came across a picture of my five-year-old self standing with the rest of my family. As expected, Meredith was cradled in my arms, staring into the camera with her usual happy smile. I got to observe first hand how unmarked her fine porcelain features had once been. But in each progressing family Christmas photo after that, the doll seemed to weather a little more. At first it was small things that I had been too young to notice. A clump of hair would fall out, or a tiny crack would appear in her sculpted cheek. But after a while, my family stopped taking her out because even they saw the changes. In the final photo of her, she appeared so old and chipped that it looked like she'd been shattered and glued back together though I distinctly remember no harm befalling her. I tried to rationalize it as the passage of time and the general wear and tear of being the favorite toy of a child, especially since I had gotten the doll second hand in the first place. Whatever the case may be, Meredith left my mind as I graduated high school and moved on with my life. Twenty-eight years went by that I never remembered the doll that had once been my best friend. I got a job, got married, and even gave birth to a daughter of my own without ever so much as thinking about her. But one morning, I got a call from my mother, who explained that she and my father were going to sell my childhood home. I immediately offered to help them out and they happily took me up on it. We decided to make a weekend out of it. My last couple of days in the house where I grew up went great. We had lots of time to reminisce about the good times as we packed. Once the whole house was done, it was time for the laborious task of moving long-forgotten boxes shoved into the back of closets and the attic. In the darkest most dusty shadows under one of the eves was where I found her. The box was small, thin, and warped with age. Just the sight of it brought back so many memories that hadn't stirred in decades. Curious to see my old friend one last time, I opened it carefully. I just wanted to say goodbye to the one who had meant literally everything to me all those years ago. I figured she deserved that much. Meredith stood in the middle of some tissue paper and packing foam to protect her from getting broken. Gingerly lifting her from that box was the worst mistake I think I've ever made. Instead of the thick blond curls that I remembered, the doll's hair was thin and silvery to the point of being white. Her skin appeared lined, as if wrinkles had developed in the solid porcelain. But that's impossible, I told myself firmly even as I stared at the very real evidence in front of me. Then I saw her face. It was straight out of every ill-advised horror movie I had watched as a teenager. Those big beautiful green glass eyes from my memories were now a dull, nearly colorless gray. Her cheeks seemed to be sunken, and they were so cracked they appeared wrinkled. The small rhinestone-studded tiara on her head and the faded Christmas dress she wore told me that it was definitely the same doll that I had loved in my childhood. The smile is what still haunts me to this day, though. Meredith had always been smiling before. In each and every memory and photograph with her in it, her painted red lips had been curved upwards. But as I held her in that attic, I stared in confusion at her completely blank expression. There was not even a smirk in sight. Let's just say I dropped her pretty fast when I saw it, my scream drawing both my parents and my husband to my side. Her incredibly fragile body had shattered like brittle bones upon impact with the floor, so the only explanation they got was the garbled one I blurted out between frantic gasps. That had been three years ago. I am with my own four year-old daughter right now, walking through a large garage sale on a cold December day close to Christmastime. I'm inspecting some wall art when my little girl Mandy races up to me, her face lit up in excitement and delight. "Mommy, look! Isn't she pretty?" she cries, holding something out to me. I lift it from her hands distractedly, and then stare in shock at it. The porcelain doll is dressed in a red and green velvet Christmas dress with gold glitter accents and white fur trim with a matching purse hanging from her hand. Shiny shoes adorn her feet, and a small tiara studded with rhinestones is perched upon her head of thick, blonde curls. Transfixed, I gaze disbelievingly into those perfect green glass eyes, the ones I remember so well. They seem to mock me as Meredith smiles sweetly up at me. There's truly not a single difference between this doll and the one I'd grown up with. The most awful sense of all-encompassing dread overtakes me because I already know what will happen next. "Can we buy her, Mommy?" my daughter begs, utterly enraptured. "Please? I love her so much! I'll play with her every day! I think I want to name her Mandy."