Dollhouses

I waited and waited until he finally came back out shaking his head. “Are you sure someone was here?” he asked, sounding defeated. Staring up at him, wide eyed, I nodded a frantic, ‘yes.’ Talbot sighed, sitting beside me.

“Why do you have all those dolls?” he questioned, resting his elbows on his knees and his head, in turn, on his overturned hands. He turned his head a little to face me, looking tiredly in my eyes.

“To be honest, I never really liked them all that much,” I stated, laughing just a little bit. “My mom gave them to me, though, and she thought I loved them, so I kept them around.”

Talbot nodded silently, turning to face the empty street. There were marks on the asphalt and if you asked I could tell you about every single one of them. Most were made by Jacob, when he was going through that rebellious teen stage. Fireworks had been one of his specialties and explained some of the larger burn like marks that littered our driveway. “That’s kind of sweet, really,” he murmured.

“Why would you say that?” I asked, looking over at him, distantly paying attention to our conversation.

He hesitated for a moment. “Who bought you that Talky Tina doll?”

I turned to stare at him. “How’d you know her name?” I asked seriously.

He shook his head, slight grin gracing his features. “She talks,” he said, as if it was the most obvious thing ever, and thinking about it, it was. He turned to look at the starry sky. “Something like ‘My name is Talky Tina, and I don’t think I like you.’” he joked, imitating the dolls voice, “not a good children’s toy.”

“She never said that,” I laughed, turning to the stars also. The streetlights around here were dim, allowing a narrow view at equally dim stars. On good night you could pick out constellations, but tonight the stars seemed too far away. “She’s always said, ‘My name is Talky Tina, and I love you very much.’ I don’t remember where mom got her, probably some yard sale,” I said, a slight giggle hiding in my throat.

Talbot turned to me, face serious, “No, it’s not funny, Ally. That thing scares me and I’m that easy to scare.”

He had to be joking. “Mr. Tough Guy, defeated by a doll,” I murmured, not trying to sound offensive, but not understanding the irrational fear. “But seriously, Talbot, it’s just a doll. It’s not alive.”

“I know that,” he sighed. We sat in a comfortable silence, staring up at the sky, just thinking. It must have been at least five minutes of just the cool wind brushing past us before he opened his mouth again, “What made you think someone was in the house?”

I shrugged, not wanting to tell him that it was probably just an overactive imagination and a paranoid mind that woke him up in the middle of the night. “Sorry,” I muttered. “I went to get a glass of water and when I got back to my room things had moved.”

“What things?” he asked, turning to look at me as I narrowed my eyes back at him. He held up his hands in a surrender-like pose, “Just curious, honestly.”

“That stupid doll, I guess,” the words came out low and ashamed. It couldn’t have been more than my eyes playing tricks on me. The house was empty and dolls couldn’t move themselves. I shuddered, the cold finally getting the best of me. “Can we go inside?”

Talbot shrugged, standing up with me and following into the house. I walked into the living room, enough to turn on the lights, before telling him I’d be right back and to make himself comfortable. The kitchen was only feet away, but just that short distance alone felt like too much and fear started gripping at my chest again. I switched on the light to get to the fridge and nearly screamed.

There on the counter sat Talky Tina, looking lonely as ever. I groaned with a hand pressed tightly to my erratically beating chest, I’d let a silly doll get the best of me, again. I pulled two bottles out of the fridge and made my way back into the living room. “Why’d you bring her down here? Scared the crap out of me,” I laughed as I handed Talbot one of the bottles and kept the other for myself, sitting on the couch beside him.

“What are you talking about?” he asked, opening his and taking a drink. “I didn’t bring anything down here.”

“That’s not funny,” I said, frozen.

Talbot looked at me like I was crazy, I wasn’t so sure if he was wrong any more. “Seriously,” he said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“But, the doll, it was in the kitchen!” I sounded crazed, but I didn’t stop. “You must have brought it down when you came down,” I reasoned, not seeing any other rational explanation.

Talbot opened his mouth, a look of denial exuding from his features. He shook his head, but before any words came out a voice from behind us seemed to steal them. “I’m Talking Tina, and I’m going to kill you!”

The both of us jolted to our feet, spinning around to face the doll. She was only around a foot tall, but the menacing look on her impossibly plastic face said it all. She would take us down if it was the last thing she did. “Woah!” I yelled, jumping backwards as the doll moved forwards toward us, the biggest knife you could find in my kitchen in her hand.

She vaulted herself towards us, nicking my arm in the process. I was bleeding, but it didn’t matter, because there was a rabid doll out to kill us. The impossibilities alone of the situation had my head spinning. How many years had I kept that doll on the shelf in my room? Talbot grabbed my arm, barely missing the cut, and drug me out of the room and towards the top of the stairs. He put a door between us and the villain, but we could still hear her on the other side of the door. “My name is Talky Tina, and I don’t think I like you,” the childlike voice sent fear shuddering through me, poisoning me. I was paralyzed, goosebumps littering my flesh.

“Allison,” Talbot sounded farther away than he was as he pushed me towards the wall. The walls seemed to have a blue feel to them and the room were bare, this would be Jacob’s room.

The door came flying open, obstructing my thoughts. “My name is Talky Tina,” she managed to get out before Talbot drew his gun and shot at her. He hit the little plastic body at least two times before even chancing another step towards her. Every time she twitched, he’d shoot again.

When he got close enough he stole the knife, wordlessly handing it back to me, before picking up the doll. “Go grab a pillowcase,” he ordered, and I quickly ran to retrieve one from my room.

“There’s a fire pit in the backyard,” I stated, coming back into the room and handing the pillowcase to Talbot. He nodded, following me as I lead the way down the staircase and he shoved the dead doll into her fabric confines. The pit was wedged into the far corner of my backyard and technically wasn’t even supposed to be there, but my parents had always felt that you couldn’t celebrate the Fourth of July without a family bonfire. As we made our way towards it, the doll started to struggle inside of the bag. “I’ll go get matches,” I murmured, remembering that I hadn’t left them out the last time I had had a fire.

The kitchen seemed eerie and quiet when I entered it, my footsteps echoing off of the cupboards and the ceiling. I scrambled to find the matches in the drawer, knowing they couldn’t be so far beneath everything else. Finally, the little black book became apparent and I snatched it up before sprinting out of the house and back to Talbot, who was waiting with a watchful eye resting on the fire pit before him. I struck the match and started the fire as I had so many other times and stood back as the flames grew faster than I expected. “Has that ever happened before?” Talbot asked, eyes wide and obviously freaked out.

I shook my head, eyes also wide, “Nope.” Sometimes you’d have to even hunt out some fuel, because the wind would swipe out the flames and cool the night.

Between the hissing of the flame biting into the toxic plastic and our own voices we could hear her screaming. She kept repeating the same phrase over and over again: “My name is Talky Tina, and you’ll be sorry!” A trembling ran constantly up and down my spine, a never ending tightening in my chest. I’d probably never look at a doll the same way again. I’d probably always have nightmares of living toys. One look at Talbot could say the same for him, but we didn’t mention it.

Instead we spoke about normal things; his job, what tomorrow could bring, how the hell anything like this could happen. At least they were semi-normal conversations. Our voices constantly died, as Talky Tina’s seemed to grow stronger in her cries of our imminent doom, but by the time the morning sun was rising and the flames were going out she had finally stopped, giving the both of us a little piece of mind.

“You think it’s safe?” I whispered, clinging to his arm as we carefully made our way back to the front of the house. Neither of us wanted to face the horror that surely waited inside, so walking around the building seemed to be the best decision.

We looked ahead of each other, wishing we could both avoid the important questions. “I don’t know what to think anymore,” he murmured, shivering slightly beside me.

As we neared the front, a thought came to me. “I guess that explains my ‘curse,’” I laughed, though it sounded more hysterical than I’d initially intended.

Talbot let out a breathy half-laugh, “I guess it does.” We spoke for minutes as the sun rose into our tired eyes. A car passed on the street before Talbot murmured an unneeded goodbye and drove back towards a bed, or a hot cup of coffee.

Alone, I turned to face the house. The lonely sound of, “My name is Talky Tina, and I’m gonna get you,” whispering gently on the wind.