Thinking back, it was a good year.
Me and the boys were at our aunt’s property somewhere out in PA. An eerie sensation weighed heavily in the air. We don’t come here often just occasionally to cut the grass. Us kids though we don’t cut no grass. We run around and snoop and scour the place each time checking if our tracks remain. Little Reba left her doll here. I can see that by looking in the window of the door to the house. The doll is perched up against the wall sitting with its leg out straight, not sitting upright but more like copying a lean. It’s eyes appearing as buttons. Yarn for hair, soft bodied with a cute little blue gingham dress, dirty from years of abuse.
Big Reba called us on over and I snapped out of the zone I was falling into. We had to move some sticks off the lawn so she could cut the other side of the yard.
We had left our bags at the door, so we ran back to get them and when I peered back into that window the doll appeared to be missing a button. Instead, there was a sewn-in X for her eye.
I grabbed Matt’s arm. “Th-Th-The doll is missing an eye!”
“You’re crazy it’s always been that way,” he said.
“No. The button is sitting in a pile of blood under the dolls hand. Are you looking or not!
“Not.”
He was too busy sharpening a stick
Where could the blood have come from? Why? Who’s in that house! I think to myself just as Big Reba comes towards us with the keys.
I start to protest as she turned the key inside the lock. “Someone’s in there!” I manage to scream.
Oh nonsense. You kids go play. I’ll put a snack out in a few minutes.
And she shooed us out the door.
We went down the small hill to the tall weeds always with the hopes of finding a snake. Settling for a bunch of wart toads. We kicked around the dirt and wacked down some weeds with our sticks before getting bored and hungry.
We ran into the house heading to the table where there were PB&J sandwiches and a bag of chips waiting for us. It hit the spot. And then I was full, and it was back to the doll.
I pushed in my chair and quickly moved to the front room and the damn thing had moved AGAIN (the doll.)
This time, it was clear something fishy was going on.
I yelled for Big Reba. She was nowhere to be found. I yelled more.
Nothing.
I had considered maybe she moved the doll but the doll had a checkmark no longer an X on its eye and a bloody knife was resting on the floor beneath its hand.
Could this mean? Is Big Reba…dead?
I call to the other kids.
As usual the storyteller isn’t believed. And they don’t come to see for themselves. My dad had watched enough mysteries on television that I knew better than to pick up any of the evidence or else I would have grabbed the knife and took it to them. Then, they’d believe me. But you know then I’d go to prison for murder…
OMG is Big Reba dead!
I run through the house looking for her.
I find my phone and take some pictures of the doll and the situation at hand.
We’re sitting around the table playing a game of Jenga. It’s my turn and as I pull the unluckily unmovable tile- the front door opens. It’s Big Reba. Hallelujah.
Unfortunately, the tower fell, and I lost the game. But it was time to go so we gathered our things and were on our way back home.
Sitting in the back seat of the car, I pull out my phone and begin examining my photographic evidence.
“This doesn’t make any sense. The doll is sitting on the table perched up against a box of cereal…not against the wall. The knife is now a spoon, and the blood is a cup of spilt Jello. How in the hell.”
“You’re getting so good at this story telling thing you’re doing, that you believed your own damn story.”