The next
morning, Ruby’s room felt different—colder, somehow. She wrapped herself
tightly in her blanket and glanced nervously at the rocking chair. The doll sat
there, as it always did, but something about it seemed… off. She couldn’t put
her finger on it, but its glassy eyes seemed sharper, more focused, as if they
were seeing her in a way they hadn’t before.
She shook
off the feeling and got ready for school. But as she slipped her backpack over
her shoulder, she noticed something that made her freeze. The tiny crack on the
doll’s face had grown. What had been a faint line was now a jagged fissure,
stretching from the corner of its eye to the edge of its chin. Ruby’s breath
caught, and for a moment, she thought she saw something moving beneath the
porcelain, something dark and shadowy that wriggled just under the surface.
She
blinked, and it was gone.
Trying to
calm herself, she told the doll she’d be back after school and hurried out of
the room. Her footsteps echoed through the quiet house, and she couldn’t shake
the feeling that she was being watched.
School
that day was a blur. Ruby’s thoughts kept drifting back to the doll, to the
crack that seemed to be growing wider each day. She wanted to talk to someone
about it, but who would believe her? Her friends wouldn’t understand, and her
parents would probably just take the doll away. It was her secret, and she
wasn’t ready to let it go.
When the
final bell rang, she bolted out of class and ran all the way home, her heart
racing with a strange mixture of dread and excitement. She needed to see the
doll, to make sure it was still there.
She threw
open her bedroom door and stopped dead in her tracks.
The doll
was no longer on the rocking chair.
Instead,
it was sitting on the edge of her bed, facing the door as if it had been
waiting for her. Ruby’s breath caught in her throat, her fingers tightening
around the strap of her backpack. She knew she hadn’t moved it there. No one
had been in her room. It was impossible.
Slowly,
she walked over to the bed and picked up the doll, holding it carefully. The
crack was wider now, deep enough that she could slip the tip of her fingernail
inside. The feeling of something shifting behind the porcelain returned, a
faint, crawling sensation that made her shudder.
She
quickly put the doll back on the rocking chair, arranging it just so, and
backed away. That night, she left the lamp on when she went to bed. She didn’t
care if it made it hard to sleep. She just couldn’t bear to be alone in the
dark with that doll.
The
whispers didn’t come that night, but she had the strangest dream—a dream of a
little girl with long, dark hair, wearing a dress that looked just like the one
her doll wore. The girl’s face was hidden in shadows, and she was crying,
holding the cracked doll in her arms as if it were a living thing.
Ruby woke up with tears streaming down her cheeks.
