Buried Fears
Present
My mother was never one to protect her children from anything they might scar, or scare, them. Life is tough, the sooner you get used to it, the better.
While most children watched cartoons and read fairy tales, I grew up with her black and white horror tapes. Darkness, spirits, and cults became my playmates. I remember watching her as she played these films, laughter erupting to match every actor’s scream. Sometimes she would let me watch them with her, but she would warn me that at my first scream, she would turn it off.
‘Remember what we talked about.’ She would tell me right at the beginning of each film.
‘Expect it. Know it will happen, and then it won’t catch you off guard.’ We would say together.
I stupidly grew to think I was afraid of nothing. Fear isn’t innate and it isn’t irrational, we are afraid because we don’t know. I spent my whole life expecting the worst and nothing ever caught me off guard.
I live in the countryside, there’s insects everywhere. As I get into bed, I tell myself it’s filled with wolf spiders, I imagine them crawling in my pillowcase, climbing up my duvet cover, making chains of webs around my neck, so when I do see one, I don’t scream. I knew it, I am not surprised. I am not scared.
I applied this method to everything. A plate being thrown at me could not make me flinch. My friend betraying me did not hurt. I felt nothing. I wasn’t afraid.
Or so I thought.
***
Past
Rain woke me up on my twelfth birthday. It rolled onto my forehead, slowly but consistently, matching the rhythm of my every breath. It had been dripping on my head for the entire night.
A series of storms were passing through this area, and our roof had seen better times, so I was not surprised. I logically knew it was water, but in the dark, my mind twisted it.
It was blood. Leaking from a dead dove, that had been shot and fell right on top of our home. A perverse baptism of slaughter, destining me to that same fate.
It was an erosive liquid, leaking from a faulty pipe, somewhere in our rain gutters. I would get up to look at my reflection and find my skull shedding my skin. My other self would reach out from behind the mirror, to peel the rest of it away.
The night went on and I thought more and more, until my mind gave out form exhaustion, but didn’t forget. I woke up to that steady dripping at first light and wiped my brow as my heart shook.
Clear rainwater coated my blue fingertips.
***
Twelve. Not quite a child but not quite an adolescent either. I walked downstairs and smelled burnt bacon, which I had grown used to. I ate a chocolate chip muffin, half-expecting it to really be blueberries, and to break out in hives due to my mistake.
‘No post today.’ My mother said, reading her newspaper. ‘So no gifts. Monarch Mail is striking, but that’s to be expected.’
‘That’s fine.’ I replied. ‘I knew it was going to happen anyway.’
We ate silently. Once done, my mother left for work, a good half-an hour early in case of traffic, accidents on the motorway, or our car not starting, while I cleared up and waited for the school bus.
I shouted a goodbye as she left, telling me she might see me later, and locked the front door behind her, just in case.
Back in my room, to get my school bag, where my bedsheets had become soaked by the rainwater. I grabbed the bucket I kept in my wardrobe for these kind of emergencies, but when I turned around, my covers were magically dry, and the hole in my roof sealed shut.
And there was a gift, covered in translucent wrapping paper, tied together with a dark green ribbon, and on it, a small note.
Silver ink on black paper, spelling out my full name and a ‘happy birthday!’ underlined three times. The present sat at the end of my bed, right before my mirror. Even my reflection gazed at it curiously.
‘This wasn’t your doing?’ I asked her. We shook our heads simultaneously.
I reached to undo the ribbon, and as I tugged on it, my mind raced with every single possible object that could be found inside this present.
A bomb that will explode the moment I open the gift.
A swarm of wasps. They will sting me until I die from their venom.
But no, it was a porcelain doll, in a cardboard box. With eyes of amber and wisteria ringlets, snow white skin and a cream Victorian dress with ruffles, matching her bonnet.
I slowly held her up to examine her further. She wore white pumps with scarlet heels, and a tag at the back of her dress said her name: it was mine, but backwards. A cute little detail, I thought, from whoever had gifted her to me.
Off in the distance I heard five clocks screech at the new hour. My mother had bought them together, in case one would break, one wouldn’t work at all, one was late, and one was early.
I placed my doll down and left for school.
***
A normal day. I returned home accompanied by snowfall. I imagined finding a pile of melting flakes on my bed, fallen through the hole in our roof that had magically patched itself up, only for it to tear itself apart once again after I’d left, making me think I had imagined it all.
But no. The bed was intact. No snow, no rainwater, and no doll. Only lilac pillows and covers, with white chrysanthemums that had been carefully hand painted over them years ago, by some distant relative.
They represented truth, or at least that was what my mother had told me.
Where had I put the doll? Had I really lost a gift already, with so little effort?
I looked for her on the floor and saw something move behind me. Maybe a flickering light as the sun set, maybe a doll moving on her own.
I found her sitting on my desk, a pile of birthday cards before her.
I stared and stared, not daring to move. Lifted my gaze slowly to my mirror, where my reflection shook her head. She didn’t do anything, not this time. Even she knew something was wrong, she who had been haunting me since my birth.
Someone must have moved her, I thought, the first time in years my brain had come up with something plausible. But who? We had no cleaners, my mother didn’t trust them, and she returned home only the evening. But it was better than the alternative.
The possibility of her being possessed and having moved by herself crossed my mind for a fleeting moment, but I chose to ignore it.
I felt afraid for the first time. Despite possessed and murderous porcelain dolls being a common theme in my mother’s films.
***
I didn’t touch her for the next two days, but marked where I had left her, both with tape, and by taking a photo of her with my phone.
She moved each time, but only slightly, no more drastic movements across the room like she had done on my birthday. A few centimetres to the left, every time she thought I wasn’t looking.
Towards the door.
I started locking my room whenever I left, and wearing the key on my bracelet, right next to my lucky charm. I slept with the light on, and even told my reflection to keep an eye on the doll as I slept. She was moving on her own, I was certain, but for my safety, I had to make sure she didn’t know I knew, and that I kept an eye on her at all times.
In the meantime, I didn’t tell my mother, I had even forgotten to tell her I had received it at all. I could hear her asking me if I was scared, and frankly, I was.
***
Present
That night as I was falling asleep, I heard my door creak open. My mind raced as always: thieves, murderers, kidnappers, squatters…
I couldn’t move, paralysed both by fear and drowsiness.
I think it was in that moment that I understood. Fear is justified. All those years of expecting the worst only isolated me from the world, it didn’t make me fearless. If I heard a noise in the middle of the night, I knew it was more likely to be a filed mouse rather than one of the Temporary Monarch spies sent to kidnap me and torture me for information. Faced with real fear, I was still as terrified as I had been as a child while watching a Shirley Jackson adaptation.
The doll was still on my desk, back to the door, looking at me, but her shadow moved. She walked in and shut the door behind her, to then walk towards me and sit on my pillow, next to my head.
Pale hands of mist brushed my hair away from my eyes. She was everything I feared, everything I had tried to protect myself from, to expect.
She didn’t harm me, only sung me to sleep. Not a lullaby, but an ancient song, about a girl escaping her home, only to die on a frozen river, a girl with the same name as me.
And fall asleep I did. When I awoke, the shadow was gone, but its owner was still there, looking at me.
***
Left my room, only to enter it again. I lifted the doll, with her back to me, so she wouldn’t know who was doing this to her.
I carried her downstairs and outside, to my back garden, now overgrown with a sea of grass that reached my navel, and so many plants I could only name a dozen.
I had dug her grave the moment I had woken up, deep in the garden. I placed her face down, and begun covering her up, to then spray her gravesite with holy water and adorn it with iron chains.
I went to bed with my light off for the first time in weeks, sure that I was safe.
But just like the night before, my door creaked open, and the snowy shadow walked in.
Was she angry?
Was she going to kill me?
Was-
I stopped myself when she sat on my pillow again, tucked me in, and began singing the melody form the night before.
***
It’s been years, and the shadow still visits me. We began talking, she told me she didn’t blame me for burying her body in my garden. Fear is natural, feeling is natural.
I started waiting for her. To this day I don’t fall asleep until she comes to my room and sings me the song, that I now know off by heart.