The Doll Read online



  THE DOLL

  by

  J.C. Martin

  *****

  The Doll

  Copyright © 2011 by J.C. Martin

  *****

  THE DOLL

  By J.C. Martin

  The disembodied head dangled from the overhanging branch, staring at Joyce Parker with one glass eye.

  “Look, Mommy!” Taylor squealed, tugging at her hand and pointing in all directions at once. “There’s another one! And another! They’re everywhere!”

  Joyce suppressed a shudder. Dolls of all sizes, in various states of decay, hung from trees like grisly Christmas ornaments. Most have lost limbs, eyes, or entire torsos to the passage of time. With their still-plump cherub cheeks, they would have been pretty once upon a time, looking at home in a little girl’s bedroom – a little girl like Taylor. Now, their grimy, cracked complexions and missing eyes made them look more like mutant Chucky dolls.

  Despite the muggy heat from the blazing sun, goose bumps pricked at Joyce’s skin. She watched their guide, Pablo, lay down his barge pole as he docked the trajineras – an oversized, covered gondola bedecked with psychedelic flowers. “Welcome to la Isla de la Munecas,” he announced in accented English. “The Island of the Dolls.”

  “What a god-awful place,” one of the other tourists remarked in a deep Southern drawl. He heaved his sunburnt bulk onto the rotting pier, the arthritic planks groaning and shivering in protest of his weight. “Those hangin’ dolls gimme the creeps!”

  “Si,” Pablo smiled. “That is everyone’s initial reaction when they first come here.”

  Creepy doesn’t even begin to describe this...Joyce thought, accepting Pablo’s outreached hand as she reluctantly climbed out of the boat. She had been enjoying their leisurely meander through the waterways of Xochimilco, admiring the peaceful scenery of the ancient Aztec wetlands. Setting foot on this tiny islet, in the middle of a glassy lake, was like stepping into a completely different realm, a realm where evil lurked behind the blistered faces of long-forgotten toys.

  Get a grip, Joyce. They’re just dolls...

  Taylor insisted on clambering off the boat without assistance, landing on the wooden dock with a triumphant thud. “What are all the dolls for?” she asked their guide, seeming more fascinated than spooked, bold in the way only an inquisitive six-year-old can be.

  With an enigmatic wink, Pablo’s voice dropped to a hush. “It’s for Salvadora,” he whispered.

  “Who’s Salvadora?” the fat Southerner butted in loudly. “Some crack-headed voodoo witch?” He chugged a bottle of Diet Coke, the underarms of his T-shirt stained dark with perspiration.

  “Salvadora was a young girl who drowned in the canal here, many, many years ago,” their guide explained. “It is believed her restless spirit still wanders the island, which is why nobody lives here. Nobody, that is, except a man named Julian Santana.

  “Don Santana believed that the ghost of Salvadora haunted him, so he left his family to live on this island alone, in that hut there.” Pablo pointed to a dilapidated wooden shed, almost hidden from view by the dense vegetation. Pock-marked with gaping holes, it stood at the end of a primitive footpath leading from the dock. Vines and weeds strangled the decomposing structure, dragging it into the earth, returning its elements back to nature. “It was Santana who started putting all these dolls up, to appease the spirit of the dead little girl. So that Salvadora would never get bored, he started hanging up more and more dolls, finding them in rubbish dumps, or trading for them, with whatever he could afford.”

  “So this Santana guy was the crack-headed voodoo witch?” Southern blob asked again, laughing at his self-perceived wit. A grey-haired woman beside him, no doubt his long-suffering wife, hushed him with an elbow and an embarrassed “Harold!”

  Pablo shrugged. “There are rumours he was a drug addict, that he dabbled in some form of black magic, but nobody knows for sure.” The fat man smirked at his wife, looking vindicated.

  “Does Don Santa still live here?” Taylor asked again.

  Pablo laughed, but he didn’t correct her. “That is the strangest thing, niña,” he said. “Just a few years ago, they found his body floating in one of the canals. Just over there.” The guide pointed to a spot in the distance, obscured by a carpet of reeds. “He had died at the very spot where Salvadora was thought to have drowned.”

  Joyce cringed, worried about her daughter hearing a horror story out here among the hanging dolls, but Taylor’s mouth was wide, her eyes twinkling with wonder.

  “Some people say that after so many years alone, little Salvadora longs for human company. They say that she lured Don Santana to his death, so his spirit will join hers. Even today, nobody comes near the island after sundown, for they believe that when night falls, the dolls come alive, and anybody stuck on the island will join Salvadora and Don Santana in the afterlife.”

  A veil of silence descended over the entire tour party as the guide’s words sank in. Even the obnoxious Southerner, Harold, seemed enthralled by Pablo’s tale, as he threw nervous glances over his sasquatch shoulders at the decomposing dolls. Joyce’s skin at the nape of her neck prickled, but it wasn’t from the heat. The soulless eyes of the island’s many dolls were haunting enough before, but after Pablo’s story they’ve attained an otherworldly mantle of dark malevolence.

  Pablo broke the spell with a gap-toothed grin. “Now, you are free to explore the island on your own. We shall meet back here in half an hour, at...” he checked his imitation Rolex watch. “Shall we say...half past one?”

  Half an hour in this infernal place? I want to leave now!

  But Taylor was already rushing down a narrow path, hollering “Come on, Mommy!” in her dusty wake.

  The rest of the tourists had also started dispersing when Pablo shouted out again.

  “Wait! One more thing! Remember, you must not touch any of the dolls on this island! It is prohibido...bad luck. You do not want to anger the spirits.”

  “Ooh no...” Having shaken off his earlier jitters, Harold the blob was all bravado again. “Won’t want any voodoo hexes sticking pins into me, would I?” He stomped his way through the waist-high vegetation, his wife following in his wake, eyes rolling.

  Joyce hurried down the leaf-strewn path, not wanting Taylor out of her sight in this ghastly place. She found the girl in front of the rickety shack, giggling at Harold as the Southern man posed for a photograph under a tree full of dolls. As his wife focused the camera, he held two disintegrating specimens to both sides of his face, his red face contorted in a look of mock terror.

  So much for “do not touch the dolls”...

  “Mommy, look!” Taylor gasped, pointing into the inky blackness of the shed’s interior. “There are more dolls in there! Let’s take a closer look!”

  “Honey, are you sure it’s safe to go in...?” But Taylor had already disappeared into the crumbling structure. With a sigh, she followed her daughter into the relative coolness of the wooden hut.

  The air inside the shed was musty, permeated with the heavy, cloying odour of incense and candle wax. Joyce stood in the centre of the room, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the dimmer light. A strange shape materialised from the shadows. Once her eyes had fully adapted, she stared at the structure in revulsion. For the first time in her life, Joyce Parker wished she wore a cross, or a star of David, or any other religious item, one she could clutch in her hands for divine protection.

  A wooden platform, laden down with more grimy dolls, took up an entire wall of the small shed. Strange symbols had been carved into the planks, with yet more cryptic drawings etched in chalk. Dark, amorphous globs of what used to be candles – black candles – oozed down the sides of the altar, forming hardened puddles on the dirt floor below.


  A shrine.

  What kind of sick psycho would build a shrine for a dead girl? Icy ribbons of dread twisted up Joyce’s spine. The simple wooden altar had a dark aura about it, an unholy aura.

  “Mommy, aren’t you gonna take any pictures?”

  Joyce stared dumbly at the point-and-shoot compact clenched in her bone-white fingers. She wanted to grab her daughter’s arm and run, far away from this altar, far away from this wretched island. The ominous cloak of dread blanketing her senses was almost suffocating. She forced herself to take deep breaths, ignoring the sickly sweet smell of burnt candles hanging in the stuffy air.

  She felt her fingers being pried apart.

  “If you’re not gonna do it, I will,” Taylor said. Tearing the camera out of Joyce’s hands, she began snapping away. “The dollies here are much prettier than the ones outside,” she remarked, admiring the collection atop the altar. Protected from the elements, these dolls were definitely in much better shape than the sorry-looking ones scattered throughout the rest of the island. Despite being covered in layers of dust and cobwebs, these dolls were not missing any limbs, eyes or other body parts. They were whole, and for some reason that unsettled Joyce all the more.

  “That one is sooo pretty!” Taylor cooed, pointing to the centremost doll, a two foot tall model dressed in a traditional, off the shoulder Mexican dress. Beneath the grey dust, the doll’s thick braided hair may be a rich chestnut, and its floral dress might have once been fetching shades of black, white and crimson.

  Taylor reached out to finger the hem of the doll’s skirt.

  “Don’t touch it!” Joyce snapped, her tone a bit too harsh. “You heard what Pablo said.”

  “Do you think Salvadora would mind if I borrowed her?”

  Joyce was mortified. Why would her daughter want that thing? OK, so it was kind of pretty, and she’d probably have bought it for Taylor had she seen it in a shop window display, but this is some dead girl’s doll, for Christ’s sake!

  “Honey,” she ventured, “You already have two Barbies and three Bratz dolls.”

  Please, stick to your commercial, mass-produced Mattel dolls with no sinister history...

  “But I don’t have her.” Taylor gazed up at the forbidden doll with longing. “She’s so much prettier. She looks like a Mexican princess.”

  As much as she hated to, Joyce had to agree. The doll’s porcelain features were finely sculpted, with high cheekbones painted a dainty pink to give its complexion a healthy, almost lifelike glow. The lips were a deep scarlet, curled up in a shy, come-hither kind of smile, and its emerald eyes sparkled in spite of the gloom within the shack. The fine craftsmanship hinted at the possibility it could be some sort of collectable of no small value.

  Whoever threw this doll out was a fool.

  Whoever made it the centrepiece of this altar must have been completely insane.

  “And Tinkerbell likes her too.”

  Joyce’s brow furrowed even more. “I thought Tinkerbell stayed home,” she said.

  “Yeah, but she flew over. She has wings, you know.”

  Joyce sighed but said nothing. Standing before the foreboding altar, disapproval of her daughter’s imaginary friend seemed the least of her worries.

  Taylor was trying to touch the doll again. Steering her by the shoulders, Joyce guided her away from the shrine and out of the hut.

  “The doll belongs to...someone else,” she said, unwilling to mention the dead girl’s name, as if the very act would make the legend real. Worse, it would be an admission that despite her logical stand and atheistic values, Joyce Florence Parker was spooked by a simple ghost story. “You won’t like it if someone came to your room and took one of your toys, would you?”

  Taylor rolled her big brown eyes. “Mooom,” she whined. “There are hundreds and hundreds of dolls here. Salvadora won’t notice!”

  “No,” Joyce said, her firm tone signalling the end of the discussion, but Taylor’s trademark pout, complete with jutted, quivering bottom lip, cracked her resolve.

  “Listen, I’m sure we’ll find a doll just like that when we go shopping later, and when we do, I’ll buy you one, a brand new one. Deal?”

  “I guess...” Taylor murmured, scrunching up her freckled nose. “But I bet we won’t find one exactly like her...”

  “We may even find a prettier one,” Joyce replied. “Now let’s have a look at those pictures you took.” Taylor returned her digital camera, and Joyce turned it on to view the saved images. Dolls...dolls...headless doll...eyeless doll...creepy altar...strange symbols on creepy altar...more dolls...

  With a grimace, Joyce sifted through the shots, deleting most of them as she went along. She needed to free up disk space for the remainder of their holiday.

  Or maybe I just don’t want to be carrying around any pictures of these damned dolls.

  Joyce looked up from the image cull to find Pablo sauntering back towards their trajineras.

  “Taylor!” she called, “it’s time to go. Hurry up!”

  The sooner they got off this spooky island, the better.

  *****

  MAN FOUND DEAD IN OWN POOL

  DALLAS – A local businessman was found dead in his own swimming pool yesterday.

  The body of Harold Joseph Wainwright, 53, was discovered by his wife when she returned home at 5.30 p.m. Although Mr Wainwright was found fully clothed, initial forensic investigation revealed nothing suspicious. The case is being treated as an accidental drowning.