Lights Out

The House with Dolls in its Walls

It said there was a room for rent. It was in my price range, in my home town, and I could move in immediately. It sounded perfect, and normally that would seem too good to be true but how many people get this opportunity? I mean people all over find their perfect place after years of searching so it didn't strike me as odd. The pictures of the building looked old and the yard wasn't well kept but that didn't bother me any. Old houses didn't scare me.

They should have, because the months following my move in were the worst kind of hell I could imagine. The house was huge, bigger than it had any right to be, and the land lady's entire family stayed with us. She had a daughter and son-in-law as well as a granddaughter and newborn grandson. The boy barely made noise, a weak mewl here and there. The parents said he was sick when he was born and it got worse when he came home. But those weak baby noises were nothing compared to the knocks, groans, and screams you hear late at night.

I thought it was the girl, at first. Playing in the hallways or running from room to room, laughing all night long, but one night I was up unusually late. I couldn't sleep no matter how hard I tried so I went into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. The landlord was there, her back to me and her curly gray hair falling down her back in a tangle. She stood perfectly still even when I tapped her on the shoulder. But when my tea was finished and the microwave beeped she flung into action, screaming and flinging my cup at the wall. It shattered and rained down porcelain over her head. I tried to calm her, bring her back to bed, but she screamed nonsense words at me with spittle dripping from her pale lips. Her daughter, Gerty, woke and brought her to bed. But the look she speared me with as she walked away chilled my soul.

The next few nights were peaceful, if you call the cacophony of eerie noises normal. I began to notice that they stopped exactly at dawn and began at 2 in the morning. Sometimes I saw a shadow out of the corner of my eye, standing at the toilet or taking out clothes to wear. The grandma continued to act weird, shuffling room to room and screaming or wailing. Gerty was at a loss for the sudden change in behavior, but her son's rapidly declining health took the forefront of her worry. Even I could tell the child should be thriving by now. I was concerned for her daughter, too, when she began to sleep walk and stand by my bed watching me.

And then the knocking in the walls started. It was light at first, maybe a mouse or squirrel caught between the dry wall, and then grew louder and persistent. I ignored it the best I could until deep scratches appeared in my door, as if something was trying to get in and ultimately failed. At this point, I wanted out. The house was too much for me but the grandmother was mentally somewhere else still and Gerty refused to take time away from her son. So, I moved myself up into the attic thinking I wouldn't hear the strange going-ons anymore. It was the biggest mistake I've made so far.

As I moved my bed up piece by piece, I accidentally dug a piece of paneling out of the wall. I panicked at first, and then I saw what came out. It was a thick book, easily the size of a dictionary, and a small hand-sewn doll with no face. Inside the book were pictures, some sleeves stuffed with multiple. All of them were sepia stained and fading at the edges, but they were all people. No children, no older folks, just middle aged people. One was wearing some strange robe with a standing hood, white paint slathered on her face and her hair braided in dreads with beads and feathers. There was another woman beside her, more stately and average looking that I recognized right away. The other woman was my great grandmother and she looks exactly like my mother at that age.

I dropped the book, wiping my hands but it doesn't appease the icky feeling. Or stop my racing heart. The doll's seam was beginning to shred, strings hanging everywhere so I pulled on one. Ground plant material spilled out, a few spindly things that look like bones, and a tooth. The tooth is rotted and pitted, yellowed to the point it looks like yellow corn meal. I drop the whole thing, scooting backwards to get away from it. Whatever, whoever, placed those items in the wall, they clearly had not meant for anyone to find it. And it made my skin crawl knowing my family was in that creepy book.

I had had enough. This was the final straw, which was odd considering Cursed Granny downstairs. I put some clothes and my most precious valuables in a bag, took the key off my chain, and left the attic. I didn't care about anything else, I just wanted out.

The landlady cornered me as I rounded the kitchen, frying pan in hand. I didn't think she was strong enough to lift it, let alone wield it against me. But here she was, dressed in a floral pink dressing gown and her hair knotted against her head.

Before I could wrestle it from her or call for help, Gerty appeared behind her. She had a faraway, glazed look to her eyes and she was holding a hot dog roasting spit. It was the kind that had two prongs so the food couldn't drop into the flame. She had it clenched in her hand and I was very aware it could gauge my eyes out or worse. I knew both must be possessed by whatever has been in the house since I got here, and it wasn't anything good.

"Hello, Daniel. Do you like your new home? We like you...and we want you to stay. Forever." Gerty came forward waving the fork, a dried on substance coating the ends of the prongs that looked an awful lot like blood. I screamed and the fork went through my jaw, piercing my skull and then everything went dark.

Old houses didn't scare me.