Glass Dolls Don’t Bleed

Part I: The Girl Behind the Mirror

The first time Julian saw her, she was standing behind the antique shop window, touching the glass like she was trying to remember what it felt like.

The shop was supposed to be closed — condemned after the fire last fall — but there she was: pale skin, silver-blonde hair like frost, and eyes that flickered too quickly. She didn't look at him, but through him.

Julian blinked.

When he looked again, she was gone.

That should’ve been the end of it. A trick of the light. But Julian DeWitt had a habit of chasing ghosts — the literal and psychological kind. It came with being a forensic psychologist with a past full of blank pages.

That night, he returned.

Inside the ash-covered shop, only two things stood untouched: a cracked hand mirror… and a porcelain doll missing its eyes.

Part II: Patient 313

Julian’s work at Briar Ridge Mental Health Institute wasn't glamorous. Criminal evaluations, neuropsych assessments, and every so often, patients whose minds were so fragmented that he could feel the splinters just by sitting near them.

Patient 313 was one of them.

She arrived two days after the antique shop incident. No name. No ID. Just a bruised wrist and blood under her fingernails.

The first time she spoke, it wasn’t to him.

“I didn’t kill her,” she whispered to the wall. “She asked me to. That’s different.”

“Who asked you to?” Julian asked, pen still.

She looked at him like she hadn’t realized he was there. “The girl in the mirror.”

Part III: Dolls with Names

He began to visit her daily. At first, she didn’t respond. Then she started calling him "Jude."

“My name’s Julian,” he corrected once.

She blinked, confused. “No… you’re Jude. You were in the woods with me. You said the dolls don’t bleed.”

“Which dolls?”

Her voice dropped to a childlike lilt. “The ones Mother made from girls like me.”

Julian took notes. Dissociative identity disorder? Trauma-induced delusions? Maybe. But something about her stories rang too detailed, too visceral to be a hallucination.

She spoke of a place called Thornwell House, of other girls who “forgot their names,” and of a woman with hands like wire.

Julian searched Thornwell House. No records. But deep in an archived file, he found a missing person report from 2009 — a girl named Evie Carrington, last seen near Briar Hollow, an old estate burned down after a fire.

The girl in the photo had silver-blonde hair and the same winter eyes.

Part IV: Fragments

“Evie?” he said in their next session.

She froze.

“Your name is Evie Carrington.”

Her pupils dilated. “No. I’m not her. She stayed behind. I left.”

“Left where?”

Her nails dug into her arm. “Through the mirror.”

In his apartment that night, Julian stared into his bathroom mirror. A stupid impulse. But he stared anyway. And then — just for a second — he swore he saw her reflection blink before he did.

Part V: Jude

Julian couldn’t explain the dreams that followed. Cold corridors. A child’s music box is playing underwater. And the name Jude, whispered again and again until it didn’t sound like a name anymore — just a scream stretched too long.

In one dream, he stood in front of a mirror. Evie is behind him. A girl in a red dress banged from the other side, blood streaking down the glass.

“Jude,” Evie whispered. “You promised you wouldn’t let her out.”

Part VI: The Case Reopens

A news report changed everything.

Local authorities discovered human remains buried near the foundation of Briar Hollow — the estate once owned by the Ashcombe family, long suspected of underground child trafficking. The property burned down in 2009 under mysterious circumstances.

Evie had told Julian about the Ashcombes.

She had called them the “Dollmakers.”

Julian brought this to his superior at Briar Ridge, but was dismissed as too invested. “Patient 313 has a long history of suggestibility. Don’t confuse fiction with memory,” they warned.

But Julian couldn’t stop.

Especially after she whispered, “She’s waking up. The one who remembers the fire.”

Part VII: Room 9

Evie went silent for three days. On the fourth, Julian came to her room and found it empty — no signs of struggle.

Only the mirror remained, shattered.

The CCTV footage showed nothing. But one frame flickered — Room 9’s hallway — showing a young girl in a red dress standing behind Julian as he entered Evie’s room. The same girl from his dream.

He hadn’t seen her in real life.

Part VIII: The Thornwell Files

Julian found the files buried in an unused locker room at Briar Ridge.

They weren’t supposed to exist.

Photographs of children in restraint. Reports of “behavioral modification.” A facility once known as Thornwell House was renamed and rebuilt after the fire.

His fingers trembled as he flipped through the pages.

Jude Ashcombe – Age 8 – Admitted voluntarily. Son of Dr. Lucille Ashcombe.

A picture clipped to the file: a boy with dark hair and cautious eyes.

Julian dropped the file.

It was him.

Part IX: Evie Remembers

That night, Julian followed the dream again.

Only this time, he didn’t wake up in his bed.

He woke up standing in the ruins of a burned-down house.

Evie stood across from him, holding the doll with missing eyes.

“You don’t remember, do you?” she said.

“I… I’m not Jude. I’m not.”

She stepped closer. “You helped us. You opened the door. You gave us the keys. But when it burned… You forgot. You rewrote yourself.”

The world twisted. He saw flashes — children crying behind mirrored glass. Needles. Fire. The scream of a girl in red.

“She’s still there,” Evie whispered. “The last one. You promised to come back.”

Part X: The Girl in Red

Julian returned to Briar Ridge the next morning and demanded access to the sealed basement. The director refused.

But he found the blueprints.

And the door.

Room B9.

Inside, a mirrored chamber. Dust. Blood on the floor is long dried. And a dollhouse. A perfect replica of the estate. Each room is filled with porcelain figures.

All but one.

The attic was empty.

A voice from behind him: “She waited for you.”

Julian turned — Evie stood in the doorway. Pale. Crying.

“She wouldn’t leave. Not until you remembered.”

From the mirror, the girl in the red dress emerged. She looked just like Evie. Younger. Bloody. Eyes wide with hope and hate.

“Jude…” she smiled.

He remembered.

Part XI: Fire, Again

The fire started in the basement.

No one knew how.

By the time responders arrived, the old wings of Briar Ridge were gone. But Julian and Patient 313 were found safe — barely — sitting in the garden, holding hands like children lost at a fair.

Evie was admitted to a trauma recovery center.

Julian never returned to Briar Ridge.

He moved to a seaside town and started teaching. Some nights, he still woke screaming, but the girl in red didn’t haunt him anymore.

One day, Evie visited.

“You kept your promise,” she said.

“I tried.”

They walked the shore until dusk, neither speaking.

Then she turned to him and asked softly, “Do you think we were in love, once? Before all that?”

He hesitated. “Maybe not love… but something real.”

“Good enough,” she smiled.

And for the first time, Julian felt warm again.

Epilogue: The Dollhouse

In a forgotten archive, buried under soot and silence, a porcelain doll sits inside a miniature attic room.

It has no eyes.

But if you listen closely, you can still hear it whisper:

“Don’t forget again. Dolls don’t bleed. But you do.”