Eventually, loneliness was said to have destroyed him, and as the tax collector was visiting his house one damp morn, he found, to his absolute horror, the doll-maker, knife in hand, throat slit from ear to ear and surrounded by hundreds of china smiles. One of these beaming jaws was particularly wide, the nearest one to the slain and the only one without sleek, jet-black hair. Instead its fiery red curls threw the room’s light off the walls.
The lonesome man left no will, and as a result the entire estate was re-collected by the government, and the dolls were sold off to the highest bidding member of the public. All that is except for the red-head who was considered scary and ugly, and was buried along with all the other useless items in a desolate field, which there were plenty of back then.
Any events, regarding the man, his death and his dolls materialised after his death still remains a mystery to me. Although I could give an educated guess, I won’t as it could be misleading and bring a false dimension to my tale.
My recital now jumps to the recent past, about four years ago to the present day, where I lived in the great city of Thraughan with my wife and three-year-old son. Our large house was situated in the north most suburb of the city. It was a depressing time in the city, as it had been grasped by a chain of suicides. The first of these suicides was a gravedigger found suffocated in an empty grave. After this there had been at least one reported suicide a day for the last three weeks. Others included an accountant, a little girl, a florist and a distant relative of mine. All these deaths were occurring in the northern suburbs of the city.
Although they were suicides and people were doing them of their own free will, you can’t help feeling in danger and vulnerable. People were saying that the city was cursed and that it was all a big jinx. Other, more logical, people said that there was a serial killer making it all look like suicides. But police and forensic scientists were certain, and all evidence proved it, that there was no other person involved except the victim of depression.
The part I played in these events began at my discovery. After a long battle of figures at the office I stopped off to buy a flourish of flowers as it was the five-year anniversary of being married to my wife. On purchasing the bloom I found that near the bottom there was a small doll of blazing red hair and a priceless china face. It was very worn, it’s flaming locks were grubby and singed. The tattered clothes marked the ancient age of the doll. I should have returned it, but on gazing at it’s child like eyes, one of which was loose and rolled about in the socket when the other was fixed, I fell victim to it’s hypnotic innocence and felt that I had to keep it.
I came home to my loving family and spent the rest of the evening in the company of my wife after cleaning and giving the doll to my son as a toy. The best news of the day was that there had been no more reported suicides. Had the curse come to a cease?
The day after shall be a day that will never leave my recollection. The same one that haunts my thoughts at day and my dreams at night, and will do so forevermore.
It had been another tiresome day at work and I desired a mellow house to come home to. The house was silent. I called for my wife but was unanswered. ‘Maybe she is taking a siesta,’ I thought, so I went upstairs. At the top of the stairs I was greeted by my wife’s body turned almost inside out, her innards hung pathetically from the banister. Her face wore a distorted look and her hand was clutched tightly to the long, bloody carving knife that lay by her side. My breathing was non-existent and my eyes burned like a blazing furnace. As I pen this horrific sighting, I am filled with total grief and disgust. At that moment my son sprang to my thoughts and I tore down the corridor to his chamber. A sight there was more terrible than the first. His bedroom was vandalised, everything torn, smashed or burnt. Blood was smeared over the walls and stained the carpet. And there was my son’s head. It lay apart from his body and an iron fire poker impaled it from the top of his crown to the back of his throat and out through his mouth. Absolute shock overcame me; I fell back onto the landing, crying like a new-born baby. But then my eyes came to rest on something lying by my wife, and then my crying stopped. It was the china-faced doll. Even in the midst of my sorrow and suffering, I became mesmerised by its loose, rolling eye that now glowed a bright red colour. My mind lost control over my body. I brought myself to my feet and snatched the knife from my wife’s hand. Unwillingly but still in a hypnotic trance, I started to press the machete into my chest. At the moment that it began to pierce my skin, the police came bursting through the front door, and the feeling came back to my body and my arms fell to my side. I glanced at the doll whose smile was now an apparent frown. It only took one look at me, from the police’s perspective, knife in hand standing over my wife’s slaughtered body before I was handcuffed and knocked unconscious.
And so it was inevitable that I would be sitting here, in my prison cell, formulating my nightmares into words of terrific horror. After all who would believe that a doll was responsible for over twenty consecutive deaths. But be merciful. Deal me death, not isolation where for every minute of every day I am to mourn my losses and live in misery. Maybe I am mad and I did just think the whole thing up. But I think not. I think that I am right and other people must now face the consequences of a detective’s disbelief. The doll has been passed on and somewhere, somehow, someone is always dying.
