It’s October and my mind is firmly in scary story mode. What do you think of this?
The Doll
Bert reached over and hit the blaring alarm. He had to have it loud so it would wake him but the noise was too much to bear first thing in the morning. “Hun,” he reached behind him to touch his wife. “Honey, time to get up.” He felt around behind him. Nothing. He rolled over, Madge was gone. He felt around in the blankets, the bed was cold. Must be she got up early, he thought. Just under the edge of the blankets, he felt a lump. He pulled it out.
It was a little doll, no more than a foot high, dressed in a nightgown that looked a lot like his wife’s. She must be in the bathroom. He chuckled. “Hey, pretty funny!” he called out to her.
There was no response. “She’s downstairs getting coffee,” he mumbled to himself as he pulled his legs out from under the covers. He pulled on his tatty robe and doll in hand stumbled down to the kitchen. “Hey,” he held the doll up and rubbed his eyes. “Pretty funny joke.”
He stopped at the kitchen island, the coffee wasn’t on. Madge wasn’t in the kitchen. “Madge?” He wandered into the living room. He checked the downstairs bath. She wasn’t in either place. “Madge!” He scratched his head. “Not funny now, Madge. Where are you?” He checked the garage, the garden, the front yard. She wasn’t anywhere in the house or yard.
“What the…” He looked at the calendar, maybe he forgot about an early appointment. No, nothing on the calendar. Bert started to panic.
An hour later, the cops were at the house. “Mr. Blake, when was the last time you saw your wife?”
Bert was at the kitchen table, an untouched cup of coffee in front of him. The doll lay in the center of the table. “Last night. We went to bed about 10:30pm. She mentioned she had to stop for gas first thing or she’d run out on the way to work. Then we went to sleep.”
The detective jotted a note in his pad. “You sure she went to sleep?”
Bert rubbed his face with both hands. “Yeah, I mean, what else would she do at 10:30. We get up at 6am.”
“Hmm,” the officer acknowledged and jotted another note. “What about the doll?”
“I don’t know.” Bert reached out to pick it up.
“Please don’t touch it any more, Mr. Blake.”
Bert jerked his hand back. “Oh, yeah. Finger prints.” He sighed. “It was on her side of the bed this morning. I thought it was a joke she was playing.”
The detective nodded as he wrote. “She play a lot of jokes?”
“No, never before. That’s why I thought it was funny.” He started to reach for the doll but stopped himself. He clasped his hands in his lap, eyes on the table. After a moment he looked up at the Detective. “Where is she?”
The Detective flipped through his notes. “There was no sign of forced entry. You’ve told us nothing is missing except Mrs. Blake. There’s no sign of a struggle.” He tapped his pen on the notebook. “You have an argument last night?”
Bert shook his head. “No. We watched TV, some spook show. It’s October, so all the shows are about Halloween.”
“And then?”
Bert shrugged. “And then nothing. Madge doesn’t like creepy shows. When we went to bed she said she wouldn’t be able to get to sleep the last show was so scary.”
The Detective sighed. “What was it about?”
“A voodoo movie. Some crazy witch woman in Louisiana, turning people to dolls for not believing. Madge said she’d have bad dreams all night.”
“Did she?”
Bert pulled at his hair, tears forming. “I don’t know. I went right to sleep and I sleep sound,” he looked up at the Detective, “ya know? I always have. It’s a joke with us about how hard it is to get me to wake up.”
The Detective motioned a nearby police officer to bring a box of tissues over from the kitchen counter. Bert took one and wiped his eyes and blew his nose. “I didn’t hear a thing.”
“So what did you say to her when she said she’d have a hard time sleeping.” He pointed at the doll and an office came over and put it in an evidence bag.
Bert played with his coffee cup, still full of now cold coffee, twisting it back and forth on the table. “I told her there’s no such thing as witches and voodoo was a religion. No one was going to turn into a doll.”
The Detective nodded and took a last note. “We’ll check the doll for finger prints, Mr. Blake. We’ll also put out a Missing Person’s alert.”
Bert nodded. “What should I do?”
The Detective tucked his little pad and pen in his inner suit jacket pocket. “Stay home today, Mr. Blake. She may come home or call. We’ll be in touch.”
Bert nodded. He didn’t get up to show the police out. He waited for her for months; lost his job, then the house. She never turned up. The doll remains in the police evidence locker.
The witch, she still cackles about it.
The End
875 Words
Find more of the Forward Motion Flash Friday Group here: http://www.fmwriters.com/flash.html
If you enjoyed this story, perhaps you’ll also like Halloween Tales: A Collection of Stories. Available now at most on line retailers.
Kobo: http://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/halloween-tales-a-collection-of-stories
Barnes and Noble: Not showing when I looked but search on Connie Cockrell
Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/359689
Apple: Not found when I looked.
“Like” your story…as I’m finishing my coffee… 🙂
Thanks, Julie.