Mother Ghost Grimm by Melody Grace

Author:Melody Grace [Grace, Melody]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781676460640
Publisher: NBH Publishing
Published: 2019-12-20T22:00:00+00:00

Grandma’s Doll

Story & Illustration // L.P. Hernandez

* * *

Maggie could barely make out the shape of the doll in her dark room. She knew it was there, seated in the rocking chair in the far corner. It had been there when she turned the lights out a minute before. But there was something funny about that doll, which she had not named. Something strange.

When she woke the doll was often in a new place in the room, usually near the rocking chair, as if the chair moved at some point in the night and dumped the little doll onto the carpet. But sometimes the doll was a few feet away from the rocking chair. Close to Maggie’s bed.

She watched the ghostly shape in her dark room. Did an arm twitch? It was difficult to tell. She pulled the covers over her head, but her breath made it hot under there. Within a minute she peeked her head out and squinted at the rocking chair.

The doll was gone.

* * *

Maggie found the doll on the floor the next morning. She searched its plastic face for a clue. The blue-gray eyes were painted on. The mouth curled into the slightest smile. Two baby teeth were visible behind its pink lips.

Maggie coughed.

She pressed her nose to the doll’s cloth body and found that it stank. It was a smell she did not recognize, but not a good one. Maggie hefted it onto the chair, finding the doll to be heavier than she would have guessed.

“Coming!” she yelled when her mother called her to breakfast.

As she walked out of the room, she reached her hand to turn the light switch off. She gasped. There were marks on the back of her hand. Little marks in her skin. Only then did she feel the pain from the wound.

She looked at her hand and then back at the doll.

The cuts were small. As if they’d been made by little teeth.

* * *

Maggie wanted to tell her mom about the doll, about how it moved in the night, but she was nine years old now. She knew dolls couldn’t move unless they were designed to do so. This was an old doll, originally belonging to Maggie’s grandmother, as did the house.

“Mom, is it okay if I leave the door open at night? I had a bad dream.”

Her mother placed a plate of steaming pancakes in front of her.

“Of course, Maggie. Anything you want to talk about?” she asked.

Maggie rubbed the back of her hand.

“No, just a bad dream. I don’t really remember it.”

“Okay, sweetie.”

Maggie cut her pancakes into strips and dunked them into a small cup of maple syrup. She said nothing and only nibbled at the pancakes.

“You sure you’re okay?” her mother asked, tucking Maggie’s hair behind her ear.

Maggie smiled, “Yes, just didn’t sleep well.”

That part was true.

* * *

Maggie cracked the door open so that light spilled onto the rocking chair and the doll. Its straw hat cast the doll’s face in shadows, but the rest of it was visible.

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