By the
time Ruby made it home, the rain had started to fall in heavy sheets, drenching
her clothes and soaking the broken doll inside her bag. She slammed the front
door behind her, leaning against it as she tried to catch her breath. Her
parents weren’t home yet, and the house was empty and quiet—too quiet.
She
climbed the stairs to her room, heart pounding, and pulled the broken doll and
letters from her bag. She spread them out on her bed, staring at the fragmented
porcelain face, and felt a surge of anger. The doll had taken Elizabeth, and it
wasn’t going to take her. She grabbed the flashlight and the journal and went
back to the garden, determined to end it once and for all.
The rain
had turned the garden into a muddy mess, but she didn’t care. She dug until her
fingers were raw, until the wooden box was exposed once again. She yanked it
out of the ground and threw it open, grabbing the doll she had buried there.
“I’m not
afraid of you!” she screamed, holding the broken doll in one hand and her own
in the other. “You can’t have me!”
A sudden
crack of thunder split the air, and the ground seemed to tremble beneath her
feet. The dolls, as if sensing each other’s presence, began to change. The
cracks widened, the porcelain flaking away to reveal something dark and moving
beneath the surface. Ruby’s hands shook, and she knew she couldn’t stop now.
With a
cry of rage and fear, she slammed the two dolls together.
They
shattered, exploding into shards of porcelain and fragments of cloth. The air
grew icy, and a scream—loud and piercing—filled the night, a sound that seemed
to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. Ruby fell back, her ears ringing,
as a swirling, shadowy figure rose from the fragments, twisting and writhing in
the air.
It was
the girl, the one from her dreams. But now, Ruby could see her face—pale and
hollow, with eyes that were empty and endless.
“Help
me,” the girl’s voice echoed, reverberating through Ruby’s mind. “Free me…”
Ruby
didn’t know what to do. She reached for the journal, flipping frantically
through the pages, and found the last, half-torn entry. Munin had written about
a final ritual, a way to break the curse that bound the doll’s spirit—a ritual
that involved burning the remains and speaking a name that had been scratched
out, barely legible: Annabelle.
She scrambled to her feet, gathering the shattered
pieces of the doll, and ran back to the house.
