The Doll Room

And Other Stories

Claire L. Fishback

Copyright © 2020 Claire L. Fishback.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed Attention: Permissions Coordinator, at the email address below.

ISBN: 978-1-970121-09-4 (eBook)

ISBN: 978-1-970121-10-0 (eBook)

ISBN: 978-1-970121-11-7 (Paperback)

ISBN: 978-1-970121-14-8 (Paperback)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020918527

This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Names, characters, and places are products of the author’s imagination.

Cover image by Amanda Keil

Cover Design by Claire L. Fishback

Cover Layout by Steven Novak

Printed in the United States of America.

First edition. October 1, 2020.

Dark Doorways Press, LLC

PO Box 620514

Littleon, CO 80162

info@darkdoorwayspress.com

DarkDoorwaysPress.com

Also by Claire L. Fishback:

Short Story Collections:

LUMP: A Collection of Short Stories

Novels:

The Blood of Seven

Head over to ClaireLFishback.com and sign up to keep informed of upcoming releases, periodic freebies, and more!

For you, dear reader. This one’s for you.

Contents

Introduction

The Doll Room

Broken/Beautiful

A Year After Your Death

Changing the Shapes

Ear Bleed

Chrysalis

Sunday Afternoon

Child Like Me

Day Moon

Box

Box of Hair

The Smell

You Look Like an Emma

The Wind

You Open the Door

Her Eyes

My Little Pet

Mine

Life After Life

The Cleaner

Dream Hitchhiker

A New Set of Ears

Organ Library

The Black Dog Comes Out of the Corn

The Other Daughter

Soul Eater

Tomoeba

Sometimes He Laughs

The Doll in the Corner

Lucky, Magic, and Cotton Balls

Too Far Gone

The Night the Furniture Moved By Itself

Acknowledgments

About the Author

FREE AUDIO!

One last thing…

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Introduction

We can all agree that 2020 massively affected everyone in the entire world. Some more than others. My 2020 started out with a bang—literally. On January 9th, I hit my head, suffering my fourth concussion. We wouldn’t know how much damage my brain had suffered until August. It took a bad neural stimulation treatment to lift the proverbial veil.

The compounding damage from four concussions had affected deep regions of my brain. My flight/fight region was active all the time, leaving me in a constant state of high stress, with little ability to control my anger. My reward/pleasure zone was inactive, making it difficult to do much, because what was the point? I felt no sense of accomplishment. Areas of my brain responsible for regulating my mood were damaged. I could only feel melancholy and an overpowering sense of ennui. I was drowning in sadness.

My prefrontal cortex had to seek help from other, under-qualified regions of my brain to perform most functions. This slowed processing speeds, made it difficult to find words and make decisions, let alone switching quickly between tasks.

As I write this, I am having what I refer to as a Good Brain Day. Nothing has set me off in a Hulk-Smash kind of way, and nothing has overwhelmed me to the point of paralysis and tears.

Finishing this book, as you can probably discern, was a feat of miracles.

It was originally inspired by a conversation I had with my twin sister, Melissa (whom I call Wissa), in 2019. The original title was The Room with All the Doors. I wanted to show one story premise presented in different ways. I wrote a failure of a story first, followed by Changing the Shapes. Then I took a break and worked on something else. Then I hit my head.

Since I had limited screen time during the first couple of months of recovery, I wrote by hand. The first story I wrote with my concussed brain was The Doll Room, and thus, the title of this collection changed.

But I still wanted to prove that one story premise can have many outcomes. An actual room in a creepy little house my husband and I stayed in for my birthday in 2018 inspired the stories.

The little house was red with white trim, like a barn. It had a small kitchen, a living room, two bedrooms, and a bathroom. The best part was a set of stairs leading to a second-floor attic area. The steps were decoupaged in old yellowed newspapers. Sadly, they were advertisements, not articles about murders.

Tiny doors lined the walls of that weird room at the top of the stairs. Latches or hooks kept a few of them closed. Others had little beds blocking them. I regret not taking more pictures.

I only looked behind two of the doors. Inside was pure darkness. Having a healthy fear of the unknown, I promptly slammed the cupboards and relatched them.

What else could be behind those doors? What could come of those who dare explore them more than I had the guts to? What madness lies within? Read on to find out.

Claire L. Fishback

Morrison, CO

August 2020, in the time of COVID-19

P.S. Be sure to click all the way to the end for FREE audio narrations of two of the stories herein!

The Doll Room

My grandma had a huge doll collection. Dolls of various sizes, ages, and materials. Porcelain, cloth, plastic. She even had a few vintage Barbie Dolls on stands with their cat-eye makeup and coiffed hair, a collection of Kewpie dolls grinning from one corner of the room, and an array of Cabbage Patch dolls old enough to have yarn hair from another. The dolls wore a broad array of clothing, too. Victorian dresses, modern skirts and blouses, nighties, clothing for every era or occasion. They were all arranged on shelves in one room of her expansive house where she and my grandpa raised my mom and my four uncles.

My uncles had no interest in the doll room. Living on the acreage they did, the boys were always outside playing in the woods. Since my mom was four, she always wanted to play with her older brothers. They always said no, so she stopped asking and found interest in the dolls. She wanted to play with them, but Grandma wouldn’t let her.

And you know how that goes for kids—and most adults, really—say, no, you can’t, and the thing the kid can’t do instantly becomes the most coveted and desirable. 

There was one doll in particular. It was a baby with an over-sized head. A bonnet covered its porcelain skull.

The baby had big blue eyes that remained open in a fixed stare. It wasn’t like a usual baby doll. Instead of a soft body with plastic appendages attached, a cold hard material made up her body. Ceramic or porcelain.

The baby wore a nightgown closed at the neck with two snaps. The sleeves were short and puffed at the shoulders. She didn’t have hair, but there was the suggestion of hair, like a Kewpie doll. Light brown paint, airbrushed on, peeked out from under the edge of the bonnet’s lace and curled down onto her forehead.

She had big cheeks and a little pink mouth. I think she was supposed to look like a real baby, but the material forming her head and body was too rigid to provide necessary details, like a nose with nostrils. Her nose was a bump in the middle of her face. The bonnet hid most of her head. I didn’t know if she had ears and, by the time I saw what was under that bonnet, I was too horrified to pay attention to whether or not she did.

It happened a few years ago, and to this day I can’t stand the sight of dolls. Heaven forbid I ever have any daughters of my own.

It was mid-summer. Grandma had passed away. She’d been sick for a while, so it wasn’t a surprise or anything. My mom asked me to help her out at the house. Her plan was to clean it out, clean it up, and move in, even though it was far too big for a single person. I’ve always been close to my mom. I know the real reason she wanted me there was for support. Because of the doll room.

Mom told me about the times she tried to play with the dolls, and the one time grandma caught her with the baby, about to take her bonnet off. Grandma had rushed in and removed the baby from Mom’s hands with slow movements reserved for catching small animals.

What have I told you about being in this room? Grandma asked with the baby safely in her arms. Mom said she had fire in her eyes that did not match her gentle tone. 

What have I told you?

Mom said the low calmness of her words coupled with the look in her eyes made Grandma that much scarier. Mom backed out of the room, and as she went, she heard Grandma mutter, Never take the bonnet off. Never take it off. She hummed an unfamiliar lullaby and settled the doll back in her bassinet.

When Mom was ten, she developed an aversion to that room. She told me what had happened on the fourth day in that house.

We made excellent progress in the other bedrooms leading up to that day. I could tell Mom was avoiding the doll room at all costs. She kept her eyes averted whenever she walked past with another bag full of donations or trash.

Mom came back to her brother Bobby’s room—not sure why they couldn’t help clean out their own crap—and I asked her.

Mom ... why do you avoid the doll room?

What? Avoid? She laughed. I don’t avoid it. She brushed my question off with a wave of her hand.

Every time you walk past it, you look down at the floor or at the blank wall across from the doorway. I felt a little bad calling her out like that.

Her lips pulled into a tight line, and she touched my arm. Let’s go outside for some air, she said in a quiet voice.

We went out onto the wide front porch and sat on the bottom step.

Remember how I told you the story about the baby in there? Mom asked.

Yeah. Grandma told you to never take her bonnet off, I said.

Mom shook her head and let out a long sigh. She didn’t tell me that. Not directly anyway. Mom looked out over the circular driveway to a stand of aspens clustered at the center. Tears filled her eyes. I took her bonnet off. She blinked and a tear fell. Grandma caught me with the doll after I already put it back on. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth before.

What was under it? I asked. There had to be a reason she couldn’t take it off, right?

Mom shook her head. That doesn’t matter, she said. "But after I took it off … from that day on … I could hear—can hear—the baby crying. Even now." She whispered the last two words. Tears slid down both cheeks. She stared forward, still for a few seconds before visibly shaking herself and smiling at me. She didn’t wipe away the tears almost like she didn’t realize they were there.

Why don’t you go finish up in Uncle Bobby’s room for me? she asked. I’ll be up in a sec. She brushed her hand down my arm and squeezed my hand.

I nodded. Okay. Sure.

Back upstairs, I paused in the doorway to the doll room and surveyed the shelves and floor where dolls stood, packed shoulder to shoulder. I half expected them to all turn their heads at the same time to look back at me. In the center of the back wall was the white bassinet, grayed with age and dust.

I crept forward, as if there was a live baby in there I didn’t want to awaken, and peered down into the lacy bunting.

Her glossy face peered up at me. I reached down and pulled the silk ribbon at her throat. The lace around her face loosened. I slid the bonnet off over her forehead and down the crown of her head.

Mom’s story had me freaked a little. Instead of just rolling her over, face down on the tiny mattress and light pink blankets, I lifted her.

Her body was hard and cold. I turned her over when mom gasped behind me.

I dropped the baby as I whirled around, eyes wide. My mom’s eyes seemed to watch the baby fall. She reached out a hand but snatched it back to cover her face when the porcelain hit the hardwood floor and shattered. I closed my eyes. A musty smell rose from the floor.

Don’t look, she said in a horrified and shrieky voice. Don’t look.

I had to look.

A strange wheezing sound came from my mom. But I had to look.

Among the shards of broken porcelain and dust was a shriveled brown form with an oversized head. It curled in on itself, tiny limbs held tight against its malformed body. I backed away and hit a shelf with my shoulder. A few dolls tumbled down around me. I screamed and ran to my mom, leaping over the busted figure. She held onto me, then hauled me down the hallway by the hand, gasping and spluttering.

At the bottom of the porch steps, she kept going until we reached her car. We got inside.

What the hell was that? I asked.

Mom looked up at the window to the doll room through the windshield and back at me.

My sister, she said with a sob. It’s my sister.

That was when the crying started.

Broken/Beautiful

For Belle, October 2005–June 2019

The air for the past few days has been thick and unable to fill my lungs completely. She notices. We lay together every morning and breathe together. She takes me to the doctor twice, and after the second time, she is so sad. She cries from her heart. Throwing herself on me and promising me things. Promising to not let me suffer. Promising to love me forever.

The air grows thicker. She holds me tight against her, telling me it’ll be okay, crying heart’s tears. They drip onto me. I press my head against her belly, trying to breathe the thick air and her scent. My body is rigid. I can’t relax into her like I used to.

She holds my head. She holds my paws. I’m reminded of those moments when we napped together. Me in her arms, holding hands. My paws in hers.

The pain slips away. The air loses its thickness. I can still hear her whispering how much she loves me. How much she’ll miss me. I feel her hands stroking my ears. Her lips kissing my face. I smell her hands by my snout. She wants me to know she’s still there, and I do. I know.

I’m