Goblin Bites: Scary Stories 7

When Harold's daughter, Alice, turned eight, she only asked for one present. All she wanted - all she ever wanted - was a dollhouse of her very own. Harold was a single father though, and didn't have much money to spend on something as extravagant as a dollhouse. He had to work two jobs just to make ends meet, and even then he and Alice were practically living hand to mouth. Still, he couldn't bear to disappoint her again. So began his search to find his beloved daughter the dollhouse of her dreams.

As expected, the dollhouses sold by his local toy shop were much too expensive for Harold to even consider buying. He broadened his search parameters to secondhand stores and online forums, hoping the solution would present itself soon. After weeks of searching, he finally found a dollhouse at a yard sale, tucked away in the corner of the garage where no one could see it. When he asked the homeowner how much she wanted for it, the elderly woman shook her head. "You don't want that dollhouse," she'd said, "It's not for sale."

After almost an hour of begging, the elderly woman finally relented. She offered the dollhouse to him for a paltry fifteen dollars, which seemed like an absolute steal to Harold. He tried to give her more, considering the item was an antique and in great condition. Fifteen dollars didn't seem like a fair price as the toy house was most certainly worth more than that, and Harold didn't want to cheat the old woman. She wouldn't accept a penny more from him though, despite his insistence. He gave her the money somewhat reluctantly and began loading up the dollhouse into his car, but before he left the old woman pulled him aside. "Whatever you do," she'd said, "don't open it. If you do, don't move the dolls inside. They don't like to be disturbed." Harold was unsettled by the old woman's warning, convinced by now that she was a bit addled, but promised he would do as she said. He then left the yard sale with his prize, anxious and excited to see his daughter's reaction to her new present.

Before giving it to her though, Harold thought he would spruce it up a little. The dollhouse really was in beautiful condition, made of the most ornate hand-carved cherry wood he had ever seen, and had real glass panes in the windows. If he had to guess, it must have been almost a hundred years old, and had been well taken care of by the previous owner. The paint didn't have so much as a single chip and the brass hinges showed not a hint of rust, however it was rather dusty from being in storage. Harold cleaned up the outside to the best of his ability, but paused before checking the inside. In the back of his mind he thought of the old woman's warning, but quickly dismissed it. After all, the inside had to be just as dusty as the outside, and it wouldn't do to give Alice a dollhouse that wasn't ready to be played with.

To his surprise, the door on the side of the dollhouse was very difficult to open. In fact, it had been tacked shut with tiny finishing nails. Undeterred, Harold managed to pry the nails out without damaging the wood and opened the panel wide, then took a good look at the inside of the dollhouse. The inside was decorated to resemble an old Victorian mansion, complete with floral wallpaper, working lights wired into the tiny brass chandeliers, and teensy tufted replicas of vintage furniture in every room. As the old woman had said, there were already dolls inside it too. They were simple wooden figurines, small enough to fit in the palm of his hand, with painted faces, real hair and clothing that matched the Victorian style of the rest of the house. They had been posed in their rooms like they were real people; sipping tea at the dining room table, lounging on the furniture, standing at the kitchen stove, etcetera.

Harold was amazed that the dolls hadn't moved or shifted position in transport to his home, particularly the dolls that were standing upright. He examined the feet of the doll dressed like a maid on the second floor out of curiosity, thinking they must have come with a kind of stand. To his extreme befuddlement, the maid doll had no stand, and neither did either of the other upright dolls dressed like a cook and a butler. They seemed cemented in place as well, leading Harold to think that they must have been glued. This disappointed him a little, but he figured his daughter would have plenty of fun with the six other dolls that came with the house, hoping that she wouldn't mind the three that were stuck down.

The dollhouse was an immediate hit with Alice. From the minute Harold presented it to her she started playing with it, and didn't stop until he made her go to bed that night. She named her dolls "The Pinkerton Family", and the maid, cook and butler she dubbed Constance, Mrs. Tate and Archibald respectively. Harold was amused by the names Alice came up with, and asked her how she'd thought of them. Her answer was one that caught him off guard: she looked at him blankly and said, "They told me their names, Daddy. I thought you knew that?" Harold was unnerved by his daughter's answer, and his uneasy feelings only grew as time wore on. All Alice wanted to do, every minute of the day, was play with her dollhouse. She would talk to her dolls, which was normal for a girl her age, but the conversations they would have were certainly not normal. Alice treated the Pinkertons and their servants like they were actual living people, and spoke to them like they could understand what she was saying. More concerningly, Alice would pause to listen to the dolls, as if she believed they were talking back to her.

One night, Harold woke up at three o'clock in the morning to hear voices coming from his daughter's room. Their apartment walls were very thin, and sound traveled easily between them. As such, he could clearly hear nine distinct voices, whispering to each other on the other side of the wall. They sounded angry and vindictive, but he couldn't quite make out what they were saying. What startled him most was that the majority of the voices were definitely adult, and at least two were male. He heard his daughter cry out, which made him sit straight up in bed. "No," she was whimpering, "I'll be good! Don't hurt him, please! Please, he didn't know!"

Worried for Alice's safety, Harold grabbed up the baseball bat behind his door and hurried to her side. Alice was huddled on the floor in the corner between the wall and her bed, curled up in a tight ball and weeping. He ran to her to comfort her, asking her what was wrong. Alice said nothing, as she was too petrified to speak. Instead, she raised her arm shakily to point at her dollhouse. When Harold turned to look, he too became paralyzed in shock and fear. All nine dolls stood in a line on the second floor, looking straight at him. In the middle was the doll Alice had named Mother Pinkerton, but her painted face was much more stern than Harold remembered it being before. Harold shuddered as a rage-filled, older female voice suddenly began echoing all around him: "We are NOT your playthings! Leave my house and my family alone!!"

All of a sudden, Alice's other toys began flying around the room, hurling themselves directly at Harold and Alice. He shielded his daughter protectively, grunting as the blocks and stuffed animals bounced against his head and arms, then scooped up his daughter and bolted from the apartment. They spent the rest of the night in his car, but neither of them slept. In the morning, when Harold braved to enter the apartment again, everything was quiet. Alice's toys had arranged themselves neatly on the shelves and her bed again, leaving no trace that they had seemingly come to life the night before. The dollhouse - which was open when they left - was sitting closed against the wall. With a gulp, Harold cracked the door open and took a peek inside. The Pinkerton Family and their servants were arranged exactly as he had seen them the first time. He shakily tried to reach for Mother Pinkerton, who was seated at the table with a tea cup, but when his fingers came within inches of her, the doll suddenly turned its head toward him. Harold let out a startled little yelp and yanked his hand back, slamming the dollhouse closed again.

Later that morning, he stopped by the hardware store and bought a brand new box of steel nails. Alice watched as he nailed the dollhouse shut for good, then volunteered to help him carry it outside to the curb. Before leaving it there for the trash collectors, Harold tacked a sign to the front of it: "Do not open under ANY circumstances!"

When the garbage men came by the next morning, they stopped to examine the dollhouse. "Boy, the things people throw away," one of them tusked, rubbing the painted trim of the house, "Say, Ralph, you got kids, right? I mean, it seems a shame to just toss this beauty in the dump, no?"

Ralph grinned and nodded, "Yeah; my girls would love this thing! Here, Joe, help me load it up. Boy, I can't wait to see the looks on their faces when they see it! They'll go bonkers!"