Stuff of Nightmares: A Collection of Short Horror Stories

The Clown Doll from Beijing

I bought my daughter a beautiful doll when I worked in Beijing for two weeks. I spotted it in the street market. A wrinkled old woman, her back bent from age and hair wispy like cotton, gestured at me. I glanced over my shoulder; no, she meant me. With it only weeks from Halloween, the street markets attempted to mirror the western world's -- fake carved pumpkins, witches on broomsticks, and little toy zombies hung from the top of the makeshift roofs of nylon canvas stretched across bamboo skeletons. But this woman sold intricate dolls that stare with glassy eyes.

After an exchange of some garbled Mandarin – she evidently came from a villager background, for her accent was hard to understand – and a few notes, I gently placed the doll into my backpack and returned to the hotel. Kara, my daughter, would love this. She wasn't a dolly girl, but this was delicate and beautiful, with rosy cheeks and pink lips, large eyes that blink and close when you lay it flat. A jester's hat sat on its head, red on one side, black on the other, covered in white polka dots, with a matching outfit and tiny shoes. Little fixed hands had carefully-painted white nails.

Perhaps it was too perfect. As I lay in the dark, I almost felt like it stared at me. Its glassy eyes reflected some of the lights from the outside. A permanent smile stretched from ear to ear, innocently enough, but still made me uneasy. Turning over, I put it down to overthinking and soon settled.

"I don't like it, Daddy."

My heart sank at those words. At the sound of the flat door opening, my little girl shrieked and threw herself into my arms. Her five-year-old body was light, but the momentum sent me toppling. Chuckling, I dropped my baggage and hugged her before presenting her the pretty doll. Kara's dark eyes widened, and then her lips turned down at the corners.

"Why not, honey?"

She'd never complained before.

"It... it's scary."

I glanced at it. Blank glassy eyes stared straight ahead. A friendly smile curved on its lips. It stood at one head shorter than Kara, standing.

"It's just a doll, sweetheart."

"It's a clown doll."

"Clowns are funny things. They're meant to make you laugh!"

But she only took another look at it, shuddered, and turned away.

I left the doll in Kara's room, thinking eventually she'd get over it and maybe even play with it. She didn't. It stood in the corner, smiling at nothing, facing her bed beside the door. After five days, I came home from work to find the doll on the floor of the living room, one of its arms bent crooked. Kara curled on the sofa at the far side of the room, staring resolutely ahead.

"Honey, what did you do?" I picked up the doll.

Kara didn't say anything, her cheeks puffed out, a scowl on her little face.

"Why did you break the doll?"

"I don't like it," was her reply. She didn't answer any of my other questions. Dinner was silent. She went to her room after and studied. I played orthopaedic surgeon, fixing the doll's arm at an angle so at least it didn't look so obviously broken. I peeped in on Kara when she was asleep. Her face was half-buried in the sheets, but she seemed relaxed. I replaced the doll in the corner and crept out; I felt those bitter eyes bearing into my neck as I shut the door.

Kara's destruction of the doll continued. I'd hoped it would improve over time but, if anything, it got worse. Nothing I said would stop her. When I came home, it would be on the floor again, another limb broken, or its porcelain face scribbled on. My stern words were met with sullen silences. My punishments -- sending her to bed without dinner, no TV time -- were met without resistance. And yet every time I fix up the doll and put it back in her room, when I return the day after, it would be broken once more on the floor.

"We need to do something about Kara," I said to my wife, Ella, one day. "I've never seen her so destructive. What's gotten into her?"

"She hasn't said anything to me. School's going well. I'm hearing good things. It's certainly not a social stressor. Maybe the doll really does creep her out."

"It's a doll." I rolled my eyes. "My sisters had tons growing up. They had tea parties and had a great time."

"Maybe Kara isn't like that. Maybe you should take the doll away. She's not sleeping that well. I see her bedroom light beneath her door sometimes when I get up at night."

"Really?" I didn't recall seeing anything like that when I got up at night. "I think it's just her wild imagination. Halloween's tomorrow. Maybe she's just seeing one too many decorative skeletons--"

At that moment, there was a crash. Ella and I leapt up from the table. Kara had disappeared from her spot on the windowsill. We raced to her bedroom and threw the door open. Kara pressed against the wall, standing atop her bed. On the ground was the doll, this time its head snapped at an unnatural angle, those already-broken arms and leg also pointing at different directions.

"Kara!"

"Get it away!" she shrieked, red in the face. I'd never seen my calm, collected girl like this before. I reached out and she only screamed louder, throwing her arms out. There were tiny scratches running up her forearms. Ella scooped her up as I collected the doll. It was now floppy, like someone had smashed it down, its limbs dangling uselessly beneath the polka dot outfit and its head lolling. One eye was shut and wouldn't open even when I tipped it up again. It was not an inexpensive doll, but Kara had destroyed it without rhyme or reason.

"What's wrong with you?" I burst out, shoving the doll in Kara's face. Her eyes widened, tears still pouring down her face. She scuttled backwards into her mother, her cries rising by a hysterical octave. "Why would you do this? I bought this specially for you and this is how you treat it? How would you like it if the doll treated you this way?!"

"Sweetheart," said Ella in a warning voice. I sucked in my breath. My tone was too harsh. I'd never lost my temper at Kara before. With a sigh, I stood up and ran a hand through my hair. I exchanged a glance with Ella and left. She would console Kara. I looked at the doll. Kara'd not only snapped its neck, but she'd poked an eye out, too. It now resembled a haunted doll from some horror film, a far cry from the pristine, beautiful creation I'd picked up.

The rest of the day I spent fixing it. It was tough replacing that eyeball. I was an accountant, not an engineer, but I tried. The limbs slotted back -- mostly. The eyelid didn't close over the broken left eye. It was permanently open despite being laid down, the dented glassy eye staring balefully back at me as if blaming me for my daughter's actions. I rubbed my eyes and yawned, glancing at the clock. It was already three a.m. Ella hadn't come to get me since Kara's outburst. With a sigh, I got up, and then hesitated, looking at the bereft doll on my work desk. I picked it up. Its glassy eyes made it seem alive, those smiling lips turned down in a frown, as if resenting its predicaments recently. I shook my head. It was just a doll. Perhaps Kara was going through a phase. I returned it to the corner of her bedroom and shut the door.

Several hours later, I was woken up by a soul-wrenching scream. Ella and I shot up in bed and sprinted to Kara. Her door was shut and, surprisingly, locked. Kara never locked her door. There was only one key in the flat. Ella slammed the lights on and threw the drawers open for the master key. I rammed my shoulder at door. The scream had long dissipated. The impact sent pain shooting down my arm, but I rammed again. It burst open on the third go, wooden shards spraying everywhere. I turned the bedroom light on. Ella gasped and immediately vomited, behind me.

Kara lay on her front on the ground, still, her head twisted to face upwards at an impossible angle. Her left eye was gone, replaced by a gaping hole. Blood pooled around, staining her hair black. Her intact right eye stared blankly at the ceiling. Crimson scores covered her face and neck. Her arms and legs were all bent at the wrong angle beneath her checkered pyjamas.

And sitting upright in her bed, smiling benignly at me, was the clown doll from Beijing.

Word count: 1475

A/N: Written as prompt by _ShortStory_. This story is inspired by my own clown and doll phobias and my father's clever decision to actually buy me a clown doll from Beijing that stared at me all night. The injuries five-year-old me inflicted on the doll were true. Luckily the doll did not exact its revenge on me and currently resides in my parents' house's attic.