Doll Collector

Even with those glasses hiding her eyes, I could feel how much she did not appreciate what I’d said.

Originally posted on Personal Experiences and Encounters discussion board of TheCampfireCollective.com forum by user [REDACTED], 08/16/2012 09:17:29 UTC

Did your grandma collect dolls? Because mine did. I’ve been told that it’s not as common as I seem to think it is, but for most of my life I was almost convinced that the moment a woman became a grandmother, she was obligated by some unwritten law of the universe to start collecting dolls. It was just something I saw pretty much every elderly woman I knew do. My grandma? Dolls. Her friends? Well, every time I picked her up from bridge night, her friends had a wall of dolls, too. The old lady who lived next door? When I’d finish up her yard work, she’d invite me in for drinks and snacks, and sure enough - dolls, dolls, and more dolls.

These weren’t Barbie dolls or baby dolls or anything like that, either. I’m talking about those big ones that are the size of an actual toddler. Some were plastic. Some were porcelain. Others? I don’t know what the hell they were made out of, but I know they all had their own little wardrobes of colorful dresses with lace and ribbon and hair that was done up in curls and waves. Some of those things had better clothes than I did.

I never understood the fascination with dolls of any kind. Probably because I’m a guy. But even then, I think that if I was a girl, I still wouldn’t get it. I mean, I guess it’s a hobby, and everybody needs one, but… why dolls, of all things? You can knit, you can play instrument, you can ride a horse or collect stuffed animals that don’t look like they’re plotting your murder. Maybe I’m an outlier, but I never did like those dolls. Now, Barbie dolls or whatever? Don’t get the appeal of those, either, but they don’t creep me out like the ones my grandma had. They always unnerved me, you know? Those little eyes of glass or plastic, always staring at you, never blinking. Never looking away. The weird faces that had human features with proportions you’d never see on a real person. You know - fat cheeks, pouty lips, big ass lashes. They just didn’t look right. Human, but… not human enough.

There was this one my grandma had - she called it Elizabeth. I swear that thing was as tall as I was when I was four and five, and I’d have nightmares of it chasing me down the hall. No knife or nothing. It didn’t need a knife to be scary.

Like I said, every old lady I ever knew seemed to have at least a few dolls like that laying around their house. But my grandma? Man, she had a problem. She didn’t just have a display case in the den or a few poses on a bookshelf, or something. She had a whole damn room for her collection. Me and my sister called it “the doll room”. There was a bed in it that one of us was supposed to sleep in when we’d stay the night, but neither of us ever did. We’d play rock-paper-scissors to see who was gonna “sleep” in it, but after everyone else went to bed, whoever lost would sneak out and sleep with whoever won in the other guest room. If you saw how me and my sister got along some days, you’d know that we had to hate the doll room a whole lot, because we’d never share a bed otherwise.

I can close my eyes and see the whole room, right now. Dozens and dozens and dozens of the creepy little things of all sizes, shapes, colors, age, and quality, lined on shelves or locked behind glass windows in display cases. I’d lay in that bed while I waited for my folks to go to sleep so I could make my escape, eyes open and staring at the case closest to the bed, just waiting to see one of those awful things blink their glass eyes or twitch a finger. Worst of all, the big doll, Elizabeth, was set up on a table that was directly across the room from the bed. You’d swear that bitch was watching you like a hungry cat, just waiting for you to nod off so she could pounce on you.

I know it sounds goofy. In hindsight, it was a stupid, irrational fear, but I was also just a kid. Even when I got older, though, I still didn’t like to go into the doll room. Can’t tell you why they gave me the creeps like they did. They just did, they just do, and that was enough for me to avoid that room whenever I could.

I remember one time, when I was sixteen, maybe seventeen, I was over at my grandma’s house doing… something. I don’t remember. Probably housework, since she’d pay me twenty bucks to vacuum the house or do her laundry. Anyways, when I got there, there was this big ass box on her porch, just waiting to be brought inside.

You can guess what was inside.

I probably asked my grandma this question before, but I couldn’t help but ask it again.

“Grandma, what is with you and the dolls?”

Her answer was pretty unsatisfying. “I just like them.”

Like, yeah, I got that much, but WHY do you like them?

She said something about how they made her feel less alone, which I think was just about the saddest damn thing I’d ever heard. Especially because my family was always going in and out of her house on a daily basis. My parents would bring her food or cook and eat dinner with her. My sister would come over and just watch TV with her. I would help keep the house up. It wasn’t like she didn’t have friends, either. I think she had more friends than me when I was in high school.

Between my family and her friends, that woman was almost never alone. Never.

But I guess just because people are around doesn’t mean you don’t get lonely, sometimes.

Well, fast forward a couple years after high school, and my grandma, God rest her soul, did what grandma’s tend to do and passed on. It was a surprise to all of us. She was pretty old, but she wasn’t suffering from some terminal disease or chronic condition. I’d seen her a day or two before and she’d seemed perfectly alright to me. The lady she paid to clean her house said she let herself to work and found grandma laying in bed, already gone. She laid down to sleep and never woke up. About the best way one could hope to go, if you ask me.

By that point in my life, I was two years and some change out of college. I’d just moved back home and all those long years I spent to get a piece of paper with my name on it that said I was qualified in business management had managed to get me was a shit job at a warehouse I couldn’t stand, and I was the only one in town when she died.

My parents were jet-setting across Europe, burning through the fat year-end bonus my dad had gotten, and they wouldn’t be back for another week or so (they said grandma wouldn’t have wanted them to stop their vacation on her account, even if it was her death… dunno about that one). My sister was half-way across the country working towards her own pointless piece of paper at a small liberal arts school. I was the only one around in a position to start cleaning out grandma’s house. It wasn’t something I’d say I enjoyed doing, but it was a convenient excuse to get a two week leave of absence from work. The only other person who was able to lend a hand was my uncle and his family, but they didn’t have much time to help beyond moving the big things. Furniture, beds, all that kind of stuff. He handled closing down her accounts and settling her finances and left the rest for me to box up.

Now, Grandma’s will wasn’t very detailed. It was basically a paper that said, You all figure out what you want and take it, and not much else. Most of her earthly possessions weren’t worth taking. I set aside all her valuables and anything sentimental for my parents to pick over and everything else went to the thrift store. Except for the dolls.

I asked my sister if she wanted them, and her answer was an emphatic no. My uncle suggested we sell them. Thought some of them might be worth some money. He didn’t care one way or another since he was a big shot corporate lawyer in Charlotte and whatever extra cheddar hawking the dolls on eBay might bring wasn’t worth his time. Me, on the other hand? I was looking to finally make a break from my folk’s house, and I could use whatever money I could get to pad my savings.

I’ll admit that selling my grandma’s prized possessions left me feeling a certain kind of guilty, but… well, she didn’t leave much in the way of an inheritance, so I figured she’d want me to have something. Besides - wasn’t like she had any use for the dolls, being dead and all. I didn’t, either.

My mom had an eBay account that she liked to dabble with at the time, so I had her give me the log-in information so I could begin selling them. I spent damn near a whole day taking pictures of those things from every angle, trying to make them look as good as they possibly could. I did a lot of research, too, looking up different companies, comparing and contrasting other similar dolls for sale, all so I could make sure I wasn’t selling them at a steal. Turns out my grandma had a good eye for dolls. There were more than a few that were worth a few hundred bucks.

Was it fun? Hell no. But I did the math and found out that if even a few of the dolls sold for what they were worth? I’d be sitting quite pretty for a bit.

Didn’t take long to start getting offers. I think people started bidding on some of the dolls before I even got all of them listed on the page. I dunno if more people like these types of porcelain dolls than I originally thought, or if the people who do just shop a lot on eBay. Frankly, I didn’t really care, either. If they were buying, I was selling.

The last one I put up was the big girl herself. Elizabeth. Grandma’s favorite and the one that had terrorized me both when I was awake and asleep. I think taking her off the dresser in the doll room was the first time I’d ever actually touched her.

It was funny - if you’d asked me if I wanted to be rid of her when I was a kid, I’d have told you I’d smash the damn thing on the sidewalk myself and pay you for the privilege. All those years later, though, the time had finally come for me to send her on her way and never have to see her again. And would you believe it? I felt bad about it.

Out of all the damn dolls my grandma had, Elizabeth, the one I liked the least, was the one I felt more than a moment’s hesitation about selling. Hell, I actually slept on it. Whether or not I would sell her, I mean.

In the end, I decided that the only real value Elizabeth had to me was as a sentimental connection to my grandma. I had no real use for her otherwise. I didn’t really have any place to put her, either. Except for my room. And while I guess I was experiencing some sort of new found affection for the doll, I still didn’t want her watching me sleep anymore than I did when I was a kid.

In the end, I told myself that Elizabeth would be better off in the possession of someone who’d appreciate her, and I’d be better off with whatever they paid me for her.

Finding information on most of these dolls and the companies they came from wasn’t easy. Keep in mind that this was back in 2004, and the internet was a lot smaller back then. The best I could find in most cases were forum posts and little personal geocities sites. Elizabeth was a particularly tough case. I managed to find out what company made her by an engraving on the bottom of one of her feet, but that company was tough to find any information about. It was some small, obscure, and very old Austrian company. Can’t remember the name to save my life. Something like Drosselmayer, I think.

I couldn’t find any information on Elizabeth’s exact make or model or anything like that, either, but if she was worth what the other dolls this company made were worth? She’d fetch a pretty penny.

I posted her auction at a reasonable starting price. I figured that the potential customers might know her worth better than me, and bump that number up as they fought for the right to have her. Sure enough, the bidding price had gone up by three hundred dollars in over a day. But I also noticed that someone had messaged me.

The username was one I’d seen place bids on some other dolls since I’d started listing them. They were inquiring about Elizabeth in particular. They said that if I took down the auction, she’d buy the doll outright. Because I wasn’t sure how much Elizabeth was really worth, I hadn’t included an option to just “buy now”. It’s a good thing I didn’t, too, because the offer this person was making was way more than I would have thought to ask for a doll. Even a nice one.

I didn’t think anyone was going to come close to matching their price, so I told them it was theirs if they wanted it.

This made them happy. There was just one condition - they wanted to see the doll for themselves before they committed to the purchase. Make sure it was in as good a condition as it looked in the photos, because something about photographs hiding blemishes. They also said that I shouldn’t worry about them getting to me. They said that travel was no object. All I needed to do was pick a place and a time to meet them and they’d be there.

Now, I was born at night, but I wasn’t born last night. Everything about this offer seemed… not right. Either Elizabeth was worth a whole lot more money and trouble than I originally thought, or this person was planning on shooting me and making a run with the doll. Nowadays some towns have set places for people to buy and sell things to people they meet online. Somewhere public and visible, so no one does anything stupid or dangerous. We have one in my town in front of the police station. But this was before e-commerce was as big as it is now. I didn’t have that option.

I didn’t really want this total stranger coming to my house, or my grandma’s house, either. But they were offering me a sum of money I just couldn’t turn down.

After a little bit of thought, I told them that if they could meet me in a week’s time at my town’s recreation center, they could see the doll there and pay me for it. They agreed.

That week came and went and I spent every day waffling on whether or not meeting this person was a good idea. Sure, I was going to make the sale in a public place with other people around, but I still couldn’t shake the weirdness of it all. Just how much was Elizabeth worth that this person was willing to drive or fly from wherever to see it in person? I kept telling myself that it didn’t matter. If everything went right, I’d have enough cash for a down payment on an apartment and a month’s rent (with a little leftover). Didn’t stop my guts from twisting into knots the day we finally met.

I packed up Elizabeth in a cardboard box, carefully nestled in with a bunch of packing peanuts, crumpled newspaper, and bits of foam. When I got to the rec center, I was disappointed to find it empty. There wasn’t even anyone behind the front desk. No one in the pool or ping-pong tables. There was this big, glass wall that looked in on the indoor basketball court, and there wasn’t a soul to be seen. The place was so quiet you could hear the fluorescent lights buzzing. It was cold, too. I know that the place was half a gym, so the air conditioning was always running full blast, especially in the summer, but I remember standing there and shivering a bit.

I sat down at one of the tables with the box and waited. I didn’t have to wait long. I swear, I must have jumped a good few inches out of the chair when I heard a voice behind me.

I didn’t hear anyone coming up behind me. I hadn’t even heard anything that would suggest I wasn’t the only warm body in the whole damn building, but someone had managed to creep up right behind me.

I knew they had to be the buyer. Not just because they said the fake name I’d given them, but… well, I just knew.

It was a woman, but one unlike any I’d ever seen before or since in my whole life. She was dressed in this long, fancy dark blue dress, with all these ruffles and lace that looked like it probably cost more than I made in a year. She even had skin-tight, white gloves on, the long ones than run under the sleeves and up to the elbows. Not the kind of clothes you’d expect anyone to be wearing, let alone on a hot Southern summer day.

Her hair was gold as gold could be, styled in these long, trailing ringlets. I’m no history buff, but it made me think of pictures I’d seen of rich French people from a time where a lot of them were losing their heads.

Corny as it sounds, I thought she looked like a fairy tale princess without a crown.

But if you can believe it, it wasn’t her hair or her clothes that weirded me out the most. I mean, sure, it wasn’t normal, but I’ve seen grown ass men wear cartoon animal costumes before and people always get all dressed up in medieval gear for Renaissance festivals, so I guess someone who collects dolls dressing like one isn’t too crazy.

What got me was the fact that she had her face covered up. Her mouth and nose were covered with one of those masks dentists wear when they’re poking around your mouth. She had her eyes hidden behind a big pair of sunglasses with lenses shaped like circles. Think those specs John Lennon was famous for wearing, but with the lenses being tinted so dark you can’t see their eyes.

I desperately wanted to know what the fuck she was wearing those for, but I knew better than to ask. I figured she might have some sort of medical condition. What little of her skin I could see was white. Paper white. I remembered this girl who went to school with me who was an albino who had to wear sunglasses when she went outside and figured maybe this chick was one too.

Either that, or she was a vampire.

When she started talking, I began to lean towards that idea. She had a foreign accent. All these years later and I still couldn’t tell you what it was. Though, I do think it kinda reminds me now of a Dutch guy I met when I was in vacation in Mexico. So, maybe she was Dutch? I dunno.

She introduced herself as Beatrice, which seemed like a fittingly rich name for someone like her. She asked me how I was doing, made a comment about the heat, that sort of stuff. I thought she was nice enough, but I still got this weird feeling from her I can’t really describe in a way that makes sense. You ever been talking to someone who’s polite and nice and seems perfectly fine, but you just know in your gut that they’re bullshitting you? Like the moment they turn around, you know they’re gonna let that smile drop and look like they were one more word away from killing you.

It was like that.

I wanted to get my money and go, so I asked her if she wanted to see the doll. Of course, she said yes. Very, very carefully, I took Elizabeth out. Beatrice said something about the way I was holding her being wrong, and she held out her hands like she wanted to handle her. I was afraid she’d bolt like a spooked horse, but I also figured that if she did, she wasn’t going to get very far in that dress or the heels I could see poking out beneath them.

For a long, long while, she held looked the doll over. She teased its hair. She lifted her skirt up and checked underneath. I kept expecting her to whip out a magnifying glass from somewhere under all fabric and study her down to the smallest detail. She didn’t say much, but she did mutter somethings under her breath. Little things about the eyes, the hair, the quality.

I was curious (and a bit nervous), so I said something about how she looked like she knew what she was looking at.

It started a little conversation between us. I asked where she was from. She said that she’d come from New York, and didn’t say if she meant the state or city. I asked how long she’d been collecting. She said that she’d done it most of her life. I asked how many dolls she had in her collection. She answered that they were all hers, in one way or another, just waiting to get to her.

I decided then that I wasn’t going to ask her any more questions about herself. I did ask if she wanted to take more dolls off my hands, but she just shook her head and said something about how this was the only one she wanted at the moment.

Then, I went and made some off-handed comment about how I was eager to get rid of all those “creepy toys”, and no sooner had the words left my mouth did I know I’d said the wrong thing.

The way that lady looked at me? Even with those glasses hiding her eyes, I could feel how much she did not appreciate what I’d said. I got the sense that if she wanted to say something and was only biting her tongue because she didn’t want the deal to fall through.

Without a word, she turned back to keep looking at Elizabeth. That’s when I noticed it. Her head was at just the right angle that I could see what her glasses had been hiding. Not her eyes, but the skin around them. Thin, black lines, neat and straight. All angles. No curves. Little cracks, like a broken ceramic plate. Or porcelain. They were so faint you could barely see them, but if you focused your eyes, they were impossible to miss.

I knew right then and there that this Beatrice lady was not she looked like. All at once, I noticed more. Things I had and would have continued to overlook if not for that tiny little slip. The faint outline of ball-joints where her knuckles should have been outlined beneath the fabric of her gloves. The slight luster to what little skin was exposed when it caught the light.

It was like one of those optical illusions where you don’t see the picture until someone points it out to you. Then, you can’t unsee it, and you can’t believe you missed it the first time.

She asked me to move the box over so she could put Elizabeth in it. I didn’t argue. I didn’t say anything, either. I just did as she told me. Once the doll was in its box, she took a small, expensive looking bag slung over her shoulder and slipped out a stack of cash so crisp and straight that I thought it must have been printed that day.

She told me in a clipped tone it was all there and I could count it if I didn’t trust her.

I pretended to count the cash but I didn’t really. I just wanted to get out of there and put as much distance between whatever she was and myself as I could. I sputtered out some bullshit about how I appreciated her business like I was some sort of cashier talking to a customer, which she waved away with her hand and said something like, “Of course.”

I turned to leave, measuring my steps so it wouldn’t look like I was in too much of a hurry. I was less concerned about being rude, and more concerned with what she might do if she thought I was rude. Now, the rec center was pretty big, and no, no one had come in or out while we’d done our little transaction. There were these big, square windows that lined the top, and sun filtered in and made this big blocks of light on the carpet. It created these wild beams that looked so cool when the sun was at just the right point in the sky. I just remember because I was standing in one, about halfway to the exit, when I stopped.

She said my name. Not the fake name I’d given her on eBay. My legal, God-given name she should not have known. She said it loud and clear and it echoed in the wide, open, and empty lobby. I stopped dead in my tracks. I was a damn fool for it too because that should have only made me start running. But, for whatever reason - fear, shock, whatever - I turned around.

Whatever was calling itself Beatrice was standing right where I’d left her. She’d taken Elizabeth out of the box and was holding it upright, delicately. She had turned it so it was looking at me. But I think she mostly wanted me to see her without without the glasses. She’d laid them on the table. At a distance, all those little tells I’d overlook up close, you couldn’t see them. But it didn’t make her face look any more real. I can’t describe it any other way than she just looked perfect. Too perfect. Skin too clear, too shiny, no hint of wrinkles or musculature or any sign that it had ever moved once in her entire life. Eyes just a little too wide, a little too blue, a little too hard.

She looked like some sort of attempt to make the perfect person that had gone too well for its own good.

I reckon I’ll forget my name before I forget what she said to me.

“It would behoove you to be more mindful of your words,” she said, speaking like she knew no one was going to hear us. She tilted her head towards the doll in her hands, and added, “Dear Elizabeth here isn’t a toy, nor creepy, as you said. What she is is a precious and beautiful work of art.”

I watched as she pulled down her mask with a single finger.

“She requested that I politely remind you. And bid you a fond farewell.”

I’d say that she was just trying to freak me out by saying weird shit, but it wasn’t what she said that sent me in a full tilt sprint for the door - that was because those perfectly shaped, glossy pink lips of hers didn’t move at all.

I don’t think I slept or ate for a good two days after that. I deleted my mom’s eBay account because I was scared shitless she’d use it to find me somehow. I didn’t go back to my grandma’s house and I sure as hell wasn’t going to mess with any more of her dolls. That just wasn’t happening.

The next day, I worked up the courage to go back to the rec center. It was crowded, but I still couldn’t shake the feeling that something was going to be waiting for me, and I’d catch of glimpse of blue fabric turning a corner or honey blonde hair though the crowd. I went up to the front desk and asked if there was any chance that I could see the security footage from the day before, making up some bullshit excuse about how I’d lost my wallet there and I wanted to see where I’d been or something like that. It was stupid, sure, but I just wanted to see if what I thought happened really happened or if I had some sort of psychotic break, because the more I thought about it, the less convinced I was that I wasn’t misremembering the whole ordeal. The receptionist told me she couldn’t show the footage to me, and even if she could, their CCTV circuit was down yesterday with some sort of glitch. She did offer to take me to the lost and found.

“I’m sure someone must have found it,” she told me. “The place was packed yesterday.”

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Like I said in my Stranger Things articles; grandma’s doll room did something to me. Nothing good, that is.