The Doll Room

INTRO:

Horror is when bad things happen, suspense is waiting for bad things to happen. Suspense is the swinging pendulum in the dark, it’s hiding under the bed listening to the killers boot steps walking in the hallway, then turning the handle to your room, it’s the moment of truth of how we can survive! Stephen King once wisely advised his three levels of audience terror.

The first: nicknamed “The Gross Out”, the sight of a severed head tumbling down the stairwell. Lights go out and something slimy and green splats on your arm.

The Second called: “The Horror”: The unnatural, oversized spiders, the dead up waking up and walking around, the lights go out and something grabs your arm.

The last and worst one, according to Mr. King, “The Terror”. When you come home and realize everything you own has been taken away and replaced with an exact substitute. When the lights go out here, you feel something behind you, you hear it, you feel it’s breath against your ear, but when you turn around…. Nothing is there.

I’m Tasha Wheelhouse and this is Coppershock.

The story that follow had been submitted by a subscriber who claims it to be true.

BODY:

When I was about 12 we went to go visit my grandparents. My grandmother likes to ‘theme’ her guest rooms. There were two guest rooms. The first we called the “Golf” room, because it had all sorts of Norman Rockwell paraphernalia, and all of it about golfing. The second was what I called the “doll” room. I suppose you can guess what was already in there. Porcelain dolls. Lots of them all propped up on white wire stands upon multiple shelves to one side of the room.

Really, there were rows and rows of them all in little victorian dresses. They were the collection from my aunts youth when she was about my age in the 80’s. I had some of my own pretty dolls at home that were on display, so they didn’t freak me out too badly. However, I will say that each night after I turned out the light I did immediately turn my back to the wall full of them. I don’t know, the glass in the eye sockets would catch the light funny in the dark. Even if I knew that they were all in the same place when I turned out the lights, I don’t know, you just, you don’t convince yourself. When  you’re a kid dealing with stuff that scares you, and you’re not sure, you sort of learn that you may as well not to risk it.

On the third night visiting my Grandmother, I had a really trippy dream that has repeated itself over and over again since that night.

I was in a space, crouching down and it was totally dark. but the door was by my face and open just ajar. Just a crack, just enough that I could peek out of it. The only source of light in the room outside my door was a television broadcasting static in front of a lazyboy chair. The chair was facing the TV and had it’s back toward me. The silhouette of the chair was a little off. It took me a moment to realize. A big hairy grown man’s arm resting peacefully on it. After noticing the arm I began to hear snoring noises from the chair. I was terrified, I didn’t know if I was supposed to leave the closet and sneak away past this man who was asleep.

Just then, I hear scratches and rapping against the wood floor with me inside the closet. Something warm and fuzzy brushes past my calf. I look down toward my feet squinting my eyes trying very hard to see better in the dark of what it is, and it’s no use. The glow from the TV isn’t that great especially since i’m in the closet with the door mostly shut. A rush of panic goes through me as I see the crack in my closet door press open from inside making it squeak. I worry the man in the chair is going to wake up from the noise. The rapping I heard before turns into a skitter of scratches and that’s when I saw… IT. Lumbering toward the man in the lazy boy, A black spider as big as a cocker spaniel edges closer and closer toward the man! It’s terrifying to look at and even more sickening when I think about how it was in the closet with me. It had hair like a black muppet that wafted back and forth as it walked, It’s eyes had a hazy orange glow to them. I feel my throat close up as i’m unsure whether to warn the man in the chair or not. I want to scream but can’t. It was too late. The spider reached the chair, disappear around the corner. A moment of silence as the TV with no broadcast continues to crackle with static…….

The arm flails around convulsing, jerking back and forth as the man screams. I shriek in surprise and cover my mouth again to stay quiet. I don’t want to attract the attention of the spider. The man is still thrashing around in his seat as I look on in horror. There is no door handle on the inside of the closet; I can’t shut the door all the way to protect myself from either the man and the spider. At last, his arm goes limp over the edge of the arm rest. The static continues on the television screen..

I wake up in my grandparents house sweating and breathing heavily, my 12 year old mind trying to push the images away. Each time I blink, I see the chair, and the dancing static on the TV behind my eyelids. Looking at the dark ceiling of my grandparents home, I concentrate on slowing my breathing. As I lay in stillness, I notice that I hear two women talking outside my door. I hope against hope that my Grandmother and Mother are still up. But I felt severe confusion as to why they’d be talking in the upstairs hallway next to my door, instead of the living room downstairs where they’d normally talk.

I go to prop myself up on the bed. But my arm won’t move. I initially think it’s gone to sleep from sleeping on it funny. Then I try to move my neck. I find I can’t move anything. With more wonder than panic, I take inventory of my body. A slow process from my shoulder and work down to my knees, then feet. I physically can’t move anything. I suddenly realize I woke up on my back, and that the dolls were in my peripheral vision. The women talking seems to get louder, and the louder they get the less familiar their voices become. It doesn’t sound like my mother at all. Wildly my imagination jumps to….. the dolls? What if… are they moving closer?! I hear a squeak of plastic, and the rusting of wire bending.

This is where I start to panic. Why can’t I move? I know for a fact i’m awake. The nightmare I had was too vivid to still be dreaming. Another squeak. I want to look at the dolls but can’t move and reach up for the lamp. Not for the comfort of light! Was that a shoe tap? I noticed that the women stop talking, and I close my eye’s.

Squeak. That squeak was closer to my bed. Oh! Breathe, breathe, think, think, what do I do?

Squeak. This one above the headboard of my bed. No no no no, please don’t come any closer! I felt myself slip under, into a trance state. I somehow knew that if I fell asleep, it was the only way out of this paralysis. Almost like re-booting a computer.

The second time I woke up I felt all my muscles tense in response to my panic. I reached over to the light half expecting a doll’s hand to grab my wrist.

None do and I successfully turned on the lamp. Stillness. Everything was sitting where it was supposed too. Every doll in it’s exact position. I inched myself toward the door to my room, and pressed my ear against it to hear the women’s voices. I didn’t hear the women. Opening the door I looked out into the darkened hallway. Everyone in the house had gone to bed. I was still really freaked out, I couldn’t bear the idea of going back to bed in that room again. So I grabbed my blanket from the bed and slept on the livingroom couch till morning.

My mom found me and asked me what I was doing down there. I started to explain the weird spider dream, the paralyzation, the hearing the voices outside the door, I didn’t even want to go into the dolls. She smiled, and said

“Oh.”

I remember  being really mad at her. I was trying to express to her something really terrifying that had happened to me.

“Come with me.” She said.

I followed her to the kitchen and she handed me a Banana. I looked at her like she was nuts. She then sat down and asked me to eat it. As I sat there munching on my banana, she went on to explain a family medical trait I’d never heard of. Very very low levels of schizophrenia and sleep paralysis if I have a Potassium deficiency. It can be very scary when you experience it, but to just eat a banana every now and again and it will be fine. It explains the voices outside my door, the squeaking of the dolls, and even the paralysis. I still consistently keep a bunch of banana’s in my house even if they go bad before I eat them. I’m 28 and still remember how horrible that experience was.

OUTRO:

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