My Childhood Doll Started Breathing

I never planned to open the box.

It had been sitting in my parents’ attic for over twenty years, wedged between old Christmas decorations and stacks of yellowing magazines. Inside was my childhood doll—Lily. I’d forgotten most of the details until recently: porcelain face, glass eyes, strawberry-blonde curls, and a little blue dress. She’d been my favorite, but also the source of nightmares I could never explain.

When I was nine, I told my parents Lily was “watching me.” Not in the usual, cute, imaginary-friend way—she watched. Her glass eyes would shift slightly when I wasn’t looking. Sometimes I’d wake up and she’d be sitting in a different spot. I begged them to throw her away, but my mother said she was too expensive. So we put her in the attic.

And I never touched her again.

Until tonight.

It started with a sound—faint, muffled. I thought maybe a squirrel had gotten in, so I went up to check. The attic was cold, smelling of dust and old wood. My flashlight beam swept over boxes, old suitcases, and spiderwebs. Then I heard it again.

Rattle… rattle…

It was coming from the corner. From Lily’s box.

I froze, my breath puffing white in the chill air. My skin prickled. Twenty years sealed away, and now she was moving? I told myself it was probably just something shifting inside—loose buttons, maybe.

I knelt and touched the lid. It was ice cold. My fingers hesitated on the latch.

The rattle stopped.

For a moment, the attic was silent except for my own heartbeat. Then, slowly—so slowly—I heard another sound. A faint, steady inhale… exhale…

Breathing.

My stomach lurched.

I should’ve left. I should’ve gone back downstairs, locked the attic, and never looked back. But something deeper—a mix of dread and curiosity—forced me to lift the lid.

The smell hit me first. Not the musty scent of stored clothes, but something sour, like old breath trapped for too long. My flashlight caught Lily’s porcelain face. The same painted lips. The same curls, though now tangled and dull.

Her glass eyes stared straight ahead—until they moved.

I felt my knees weaken.

Her head turned, slow and deliberate, until her eyes locked on mine. A faint puff of air escaped her mouth, fogging the cold air between us.

I dropped the flashlight. Darkness swallowed the room except for the pale moonlight filtering through the attic window. I scrambled for the stairs, but a tiny voice stopped me.

“Don’t leave me again.”

I froze.

The voice was high-pitched, brittle, but it came from behind me—from her.

I turned slowly. She was standing now. Not sitting in her box—standing, though her porcelain legs shouldn’t have been able to hold her weight. Her dress rustled as she took one stiff step toward me.

My voice came out shaky. “How… how are you moving?”

She tilted her head. The sound of tiny joints clicking filled the silence. “You promised we’d be together forever.”

I tried to back away, but the attic seemed longer than before. My feet slipped on the wooden floor. She kept coming, her glass eyes glinting in the moonlight.

Click… click… click…

Her porcelain hands reached out. I saw small cracks spiderwebbing across her cheeks, like she’d been straining against the box for years.

Then, without warning, she moved faster. One moment she was three steps away, the next she was inches from my face. Her breath—warm now—hit my skin.

“Breathe with me,” she whispered.

Something sharp jabbed my ribs. My vision blurred. The room tilted. It felt like the air was being pulled out of my lungs in perfect rhythm with hers—inhale, exhale—only I wasn’t the one in control anymore.

When I woke up, I was lying on the attic floor. The box was closed again, latch shut. For a moment, I convinced myself it had all been a nightmare.

But when I stood, I felt it—a weight in my chest, like something small was inside me, breathing. Matching my every breath.

And now, at night, I sometimes hear it. A faint whisper in the dark:

“We’re together forever.”