Short Horror Stories

Many Watchful Eyes

Sometime around the 1700s and 1800s, in a cozy home on a pretty piece of land, there lived a family of three. The father, Frank, worked hard at his job to provide for his family. The mother, Martha, stayed home to take care of their beautiful daughter of eight. Her name was Irene.

In this cozy home was Irene's bedroom, where on a shelf, she kept her favorite dolls.

On the top shelf sat some old rag dolls and cloth dolls. On the second shelf sat fine porcelain dolls, given to her by her mother. On the last shelf sat her most favorite doll, Alaina. This doll was bigger than the others and had long curly brown hair and crystal blue eyes.

Every day, Irene would play with her doll; sometimes her and her mother would play together, and every night, she would sleep with Alaina next to her.

One cold winter day, Irene came down with a fever. Worried, her mother called the town's physician.

When the physician got through checking Irene over, he gave the bad news that Irene had come down with a serious case of a new disease called Influenza. He gave the news to the parents that their daughter was probably going to die.

Distraught, the parents sent the doctor away and began spending as much time as possible with their daughter.

One night, while her parents slept, Irene sat in her bed playing with her doll Alaina. She giggled as she held an imaginary conversation with Alaina. As if the doll could really hear her.

From her giggles, her mother woke up and came in to check on her. She asked her daughter why she was up.

"Mama, I'm having a tea party with Alaina. Would you like to join?" Irene asked her mother with a smile.

Laughing softly, her mother joined her, and they had their tea party. After a while, her mother told her she'd been up too late and must sleep so she could get better.

The next morning, Irene's parents woke and went in to check on their daughter, only to find she had died in her sleep the night before.
Her doll Alaina still laid beside her.

Full of grief, the parents held their daughters' funeral, not entering the room again.

After a few weeks of grieving, Martha decided to enter the room one last time before locking it up for good.

As she entered, she saw that the bed was neatly made and Alaina was on her shelf, where she always went during the day while Irene was at school.

Too numb with grief to notice that the room was not where it had been the night Irene died, Martha sat down on the bed and began to look over photos of her and her daughter.

After a while, she heard the soft creak of the rocking chair rocking in the corner. Martha looked over with blank eyes, not processing the strange sight. She then went back to looking at her pictures.

Until, not long later, she heard, very softly, the sound of a child's laughter.

Thinking her daughter had finally come home from school, Martha stood and went to the door to look down the hallway.

As she made it to the door, it slammed, and when she put her hand on the knob to open the door, it locked, trapping her inside.

Yelling for her husband, she rattled the knob, trying to get out of the room.

She heard again the very soft sound of a child's laughter, and then the very soft sound of tapping as small shoes crossed the hardwood floors. She felt a tap on her back, and when she turned slowly, she saw Alaina standing there, her crystal blue eyes eerie.

She yelled again for her husband, and when he finally opened the door, the room was as it had been when Irene died. With Alaina on the unmade bed.

Sitting on the bed, though, was a picture that had never been taken. A picture of Martha, Irene, and Alaina.