Chapter 97: The Doll and the Peculiar Neighbor

Chapter 97 -98: The Doll and the Peculiar Neighbor

Chapter 98: The Doll and the Peculiar Neighbor

Dr. Seth Brundle had absolutely no interest in the dolls, bones, preserved tissue, or any of the other disturbing junk they had uncovered in the basement. The moment Carrie White finished clearing enough floor space, he pulled out a measuring tape and began pacing from wall to wall with the focused expression of a man already designing his private kingdom. “Workbench over there, upgraded electrical service somewhere along that wall, and I’ll need enough shielding and isolation that nobody monitoring scientific equipment from outside can tell what I’m doing down here.”

Axel Vance glanced toward him but decided not to interrupt yet. Seth was already muttering about replacing the ancient wiring, bringing in used laboratory equipment, and dividing the basement between fabrication, research, and storage areas without apparently noticing the pile of preserved organs beside his foot. To the physicist, the only important thing about the basement’s previous contents was how much floor space they occupied.

Seth pushed several wooden boxes toward the rear exit and added the damaged dolls to the same disposal pile. “Anything that isn’t useful goes outside. I need room before I can start building anything.” Lionel Cosgrove watched him drag a crate of bones across the floor and remarked, “Most people would at least hesitate before throwing out a box full of mystery skeletons.”

“I’m a scientist, not an antique collector,” Seth replied. “If one of them starts talking, then I’ll reconsider.”

Neither man noticed one of the cloth dolls near the basement door.

It wore a faded blue lace dress that had once been carefully made but was now stained with dust and age. Its black button eyes remained fixed on Seth as he turned toward the wall and started measuring another section of the basement. For only a fraction of a second, the doll’s head rotated slightly.

Then it became still again.

Carrie returned after resting upstairs for a while. She had recovered from cleaning the mansion with telekinesis, although she still looked tired from spending so much psychic strength in a single day. When she saw the dolls piled beside the exit, her attention immediately moved across them.

Most were ugly enough to deserve the trash.

One was different.

Carrie stopped in front of the blue-dressed doll and stared at it. The black button eyes and stitched mouth should have made it just as disturbing as the others, but the faded lace dress gave it an oddly old-fashioned charm. Compared with the mutilated dolls surrounding it, Carrie thought it almost looked cute.

She slowly bent down and picked it up.

Dust covered the fabric.

Carrie gently brushed it away and straightened the doll’s wrinkled skirt with both hands.

Axel noticed her from across the basement. “You like that one?”

Carrie looked embarrassed at being caught.

“A little.”

She held the doll closer to her chest and quietly added, “I’ve never had one before.”

Axel’s expression softened.

Under Margaret White’s roof, Carrie had grown up with almost none of the ordinary possessions other children took for granted. Anything her mother considered worldly, distracting, or inappropriate had been rejected before Carrie ever had the chance to want it. A simple secondhand doll was somehow becoming one of the first things she had ever chosen entirely for herself.

“If you want it, keep it,” Axel said.

Carrie’s eyes immediately brightened.

Then Axel remembered exactly where they had found it.

“After one precaution.”

Carrie looked down at the doll.

Axel walked upstairs, returned with a bottle of Holy Water, and handed it to her. “Give it a wash before you take it to your room. Considering what we’ve found in this house, I’d rather make sure nothing supernatural is hitching a ride.”

Carrie nodded seriously.

By the time they finished clearing most of the basement, evening had settled across the property. Seth announced that his next project was making the house’s electrical system reliable enough to support future laboratory equipment, then disappeared into the basement with a heavy toolbox. The occasional clatter from downstairs suggested he intended to work until either the house cooperated or something broke.

Carrie carried the doll into the kitchen.

She filled a basin with water and added some of Axel’s Holy Water as a supernatural precaution. Then she carefully lowered the doll into the basin and began washing years of grime from its faded blue dress.

The moment the doll touched the treated water, something changed.

A thread-thin wisp of black vapor slipped from beneath the cloth body.

It curled across the surface of the water like smoke searching for somewhere to escape.

Then it vanished.

Carrie merely frowned at the suddenly murkier water and continued cleaning.

Axel, leaning against the kitchen doorway, saw everything.

So there had been something inside the doll.

Whatever it was had been weak enough that ordinary Holy Water removed it almost instantly.

Axel said nothing.

After the supernatural residue disappeared, the doll itself seemed different. Its dress lost the strangely rigid shape it had held before and settled naturally around the cotton body, while the stuffing appeared to sag slightly as though an invisible tension had left it. Even the exaggerated red-stitched smile stopped looking threatening and became almost ridiculous.

The button eyes changed most of all.

Before purification, Axel had felt an uncomfortable illusion that they were following movement around the room. Now they were exactly what they should have been: two mismatched pieces of black plastic sewn onto old fabric. Whatever awareness had hidden behind them was gone.

Carrie noticed none of that.

She carefully dried the doll with a clean towel and smoothed the blue lace again. The quiet satisfaction on her face made it obvious that, supernatural history or not, the toy already mattered to her.

For the first time in her life, Carrie had something that belonged to her because she wanted it.

She hugged the cleaned doll against her chest. “Goodnight, Mr. Vance.”

“Goodnight, Carrie.”

She climbed the stairs toward her room.

The heavy use of telekinesis throughout the day had finally caught up with her, and within minutes the second floor became quiet.

Axel remained in the kitchen for another moment before hearing a cabinet door open in the living room.

“I’m starving.”

Lionel’s voice carried through the house.

Axel walked out and found him searching through their barely unpacked food supplies.

“What do we actually have to eat?” Lionel asked. “Please tell me the answer isn’t dust.”

Axel found the last unopened package of crackers and tossed it toward him. “Eat those for now. I’m going out to see if there’s a store anywhere nearby.”

Lionel caught the package and tore it open immediately. “A store? Out here?”

He stuffed several crackers into his mouth.

“You’d better come back carrying an entire hot-dog stand. If you don’t, tomorrow morning you’re going to find a perfectly preserved Lionel corpse on the couch.”

Axel grabbed the keys to the old box truck. “Try not to decompose before breakfast.”

He left before Lionel could answer.

The road outside confirmed how isolated their new property really was. The old truck bounced along the narrow dirt path while every loose panel rattled loudly enough to make Axel wonder whether Seth’s planned modifications should begin with simply keeping the vehicle in one piece. Dense woods closed in on both sides of the road, and the farther Axel drove, the more unnaturally quiet the night became.

There were no houses.

No streetlights.

Almost no signs of civilization.

Even the usual insect noise seemed strangely absent.

The truck’s headlights swept across something pale beside the road.

Axel slowed.

A row of crooked tombstones appeared behind an aging chain-link fence.

It was an old cemetery.

Several markers leaned sideways beneath weeds and vines, while others had partially collapsed into the earth. The place looked abandoned enough that Axel doubted anyone had maintained it in years.

“Of course there’s a graveyard,” he muttered.

He continued driving.

Several minutes later, just when Axel began wondering whether the road eventually disappeared completely into the forest, an enormous silhouette emerged between the trees.

He stepped on the brakes.

The old box truck groaned to a stop.

Axel stared through the windshield.

Another mansion stood beside the road.

Unlike his own neglected Victorian house, this property looked deliberately gloomy rather than merely abandoned. The structure had the ornate, looming appearance of an old Second Empire-style mansion, with steep rooflines, narrow windows, tall architectural details, and an iron fence enclosing the grounds.

The landscaping did nothing to make it friendlier.

Most of the plants appeared dead.

Bare branches twisted toward the dark windows.

The entire property looked less like somebody’s home and more like the kind of place where a horror movie would begin immediately after the audience screamed at the protagonist not to enter.

Axel shut off the engine.

He got out.

The mansion remained silent.

Axel walked toward the iron gate.

Before his hand touched it, the hinges gave a long metallic creak.

The gate slowly opened by itself.

Axel stopped.

No one stood nearby.

No mechanism was visible.

The opening widened until there was enough room for him to enter.

It felt almost polite.

An ordinary traveler would probably have returned to the truck and driven back toward Miami without looking behind him. Axel merely raised one eyebrow.

“Well, that’s welcoming.”

He turned around.

Then walked back to the truck.

Axel opened the passenger door, picked up his enchanted chainsaw, and slipped a bottle of Holy Water into his coat. If the people inside wanted to invite strangers through gates that opened by themselves, Axel believed in respecting local customs.

He returned to the entrance.

The gate remained open.

Axel stepped through.

The instant he crossed onto the property, the iron gate began closing behind him.

Creeeeak.

It shut completely.

Axel glanced over one shoulder.

His expression did not change.

“Definitely something going on here.”

The path leading toward the mansion was made from old stone slabs. Withered plants and skeletal shrubs bordered both sides, arranged carefully enough that Axel suspected the dead appearance might actually be intentional. The closer he came to the house, the more convinced he became that whoever lived there had an extremely specific sense of style.

At the front stood a heavy carved oak door.

Beside it was an antique brass doorbell.

Axel leaned closer.

The button appeared to be designed like an open mouth.

“That’s subtle.”

He pressed it.

“AAAAAH!”

A piercing human scream exploded from somewhere inside the mansion.

Axel immediately removed his finger.

Silence returned.

He stared at the doorbell.

Then pressed it again.

“AAAAAH!”

Exactly the same scream.

Same pitch.

Same duration.

Same terrified emotion.

Axel slowly nodded to himself.

“Interesting.”

Apparently the residents had replaced the traditional bell with somebody screaming in agony.

He waited.

Several seconds later, the front door silently opened a few inches.

Someone stood behind it.

A little girl.

She looked roughly ten years old and had two perfectly straight black braids hanging over her shoulders. Her dress was entirely black except for the crisp white collar and cuffs, making her resemble a child from an old black-and-white family photograph.

Her skin was extremely pale.

Her expression showed absolutely nothing.

The girl looked up at Axel.

Axel looked down at her.

For several silent seconds, neither moved.