All Dolled Up!

Charlie

Not much had come out of searching things on the Internet. Then again, after my experiences after I had posted about Charlotte and the inherent dangers of doing so, which I discovered, I was not eager to pursue that avenue of discovery anyway.

I had also gotten no further with finding out the origins of the book. I posted about it on many sites where people were looking for books to see if I could find someone who knew something about it, but that had been entirely unfruitful. No one had another copy conveniently stashed in their grandmother’s attic somewhere it seemed.

As for the weird string collection that even now, Charlotte insisted was a doll, I couldn’t get anything there either.

Speaking of, I couldn’t help but get the feeling that there was something… off about Charlotte for the past week. She seemed slightly distant, though whenever I asked her what was wrong, she would always say that everything was fine, meaning there was definitely something wrong. I just couldn’t put my finger on what it was.

Had it been a mistake to come here, to George’s party? Should I have been back at home, with her? It was a bit too late to walk out of this right now, and I’d have been dragged along at some point in the future to one of them whether I wanted to attend or not so I had accepted it with a sort of ‘let’s get it over with’ mentality. Plus, I didn’t want to appear too reserved at work either. They were easygoing at my new job, but I didn’t want to be branded an outsider or someone who thought he was too good to hang out with the rest of them. I was sure there were some people who would reach the latter conclusion if I had continued to decline their invitations.

Charlotte had not objected explicitly when I had mentioned the idea, though I didn’t think she was secretly against it either. Something told me that it wasn’t this party that was putting a bee in her bonnet, but the thing was that I couldn’t think of anything else.

George’s house was nothing remarkable except for his backyard which had two apple trees, which I knew about because he wouldn’t stop talking about them at work every chance he got. He would also offer freshly picked apples to us on occasion, and I had had a few bites to appear polite, although I wasn’t such a big fan of apples. They certainly did taste fresh though, and Charlotte liked them better than I had when I had saved one or two for her.

I saw several people there who I recognized -Dylan waved at me, while Stuart was showing people new pictures of his daughter, who had started to learn how to run. I also saw several people who I had only seen in passing- the day shift people.

“Oh, hey, so you’re Charlie, right? You’re one of the specters, huh?” someone asked as I went to go grab a drink.

“Huh?”

“I mean one of the night shift people,” he said with a laugh.

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “That’s how night shift is I guess, you’re kind of in the shadows, literally and figuratively.”

“Right, I used to do night shift before I switched just two weeks into it, I honestly don’t know how you guys handle it,” he said.

“It’s okay I guess, for now - um, you’re Nathan, right?” I asked, thinking I had overheard his name once.

“Right you are,” he said, shaking my hand. He then asked me something nearly everyone has asked since I moved here. “So how are you liking Pine Grove?”

“It’s pretty good,” I said. “I saw a lot of things here that I wouldn’t have expected.”

“Really? Like what?”

“Just a lot of things you wouldn’t see back where I came from.”

“I honestly thought you’d say it was boring. It’s a pretty quiet place, and don’t get me wrong, I’m fine with that - but I guess I would prefer if something…. exciting would happen once in a while, y’know.”

“Oh, I had come here hoping it’d be boring - but that’s the last thing it turned out to be. I got my fair share of ‘exciting things’ I guess. I’m pretty okay with it though,” I told him.

The party, by office party standards, at least from what I was used to, was rather underwhelming. Maybe that was because, despite how awful I felt my last job was, the awfulness created a sense of camaraderie with my co-workers and we would talk a lot more freely when it was after-hours.

Here, it seemed that people were just standing around doing whatever. I guess that could be said about most parties, but it also seemed… unexciting in a way? Then again, maybe my expectations were too high. Not to mention it might’ve just been my experience that was like that given I didn’t know most of the people there.

A few notable things did happen. George tried to grab some fresh apples off the top of a tree with a ladder - given his age, I was pretty freaked out for a moment that he might fall, though to the others this seemed to be a normal occurrence. He got them down no problem too. I had assumed he had someone to help him with the process of picking them, or that he picked them off the ground after they fell or something, but no, he really did grab them ripe from the tree.

Stuart offered me a cigarette at one point, and I had to tell him that I had finally gone cold turkey. He slapped me on the shoulder and said, “Great job! I’ve been tryin’ to quit too, though I fell off the wagon last month. And, I had these extra, so I thought you might like one, but if not…” He then dumped them in the trash.

Needless to say I was still rather annoyed at Charlotte for that.

What was less silly was the fact that Matt was there - and nothing against him, he’s a great guy. The issue was that he had brought his cousin over with him. The same cousin that had come over on that night that I called the police.

“Hey!” he said. “So, how’ve you been?”

“I’m good,” I said.

“Nothing wrong with the house since, right?” he asked in a low whisper. Matt glanced over at me, and felt the need to add something.

“I mean, I told you, I think it’s haunted.”

“Nah, that’s just rumors and stuff. You don’t really think it’s haunted, do you?”

“I mean, I’ve lived there over a month, haven’t seen a ghost, haven’t seen anyone else break it,” I said. “I think a homeless man or drifter or whatever just accidentally might’ve come by that time. That’s it.”

Matt seemed to not take that for an answer and started drilling me - seemingly wanting to prove to his cousin that there had to be something in the house that was haunted. Matt was correct, but there was no way I was going to let anyone know that.

I managed to get out of this conversation by waving over to Nathan, who waved back to me, and I told the two of them that I had some business with him. Which I didn’t, but I was grateful for the save.

Once people began to slowly trickle out, I considered it a signal that it was socially acceptable to also bow out.

While you could say that this whole thing was a waste of time (as I thought most parties were), I did get an idea when I had overheard someone talking about something they liked to do on the weekend.

“You want to take me… outside?” Charlotte asked, a bit confused when I propositioned her later that night.

“Not in the traditional sense, but I think there’s something that we could do together,” I told her. “It took a bit of workaround for the timings, but, how would you like to go on a boat ride with me?”

“A boat ride?”

“Yes, a small rowboat, in the nearby lake.”

“Oh, that one? It’s still there? And can you do that?”

“I mean, so, Dylan has this cousin who works by the lakeside, and he, on the weekend, offers boat rides to people who want them. I mean, most of them, not all of them are couples, and he only operates from nine to five, but I convinced him to let me have a whirl at it at around ten in the evening.” I told her.

“Ah… so…”

“Well, I told him that the reason I wanted it was to take some nocturnal photography, and he charged me extra, but did agree to the whole thing,” I told her.

“I see,” she said. She gave me a blank expression. Honestly, I was expecting her to be a bit more excited, but maybe she would be once we actually were on the water together - or at least as ‘together’ as we currently could be outside the confines of the house? Then again, how would I feel about watching a boat ride through a camera? It didn’t sound too appealing in my head, though maybe I would be more excited about it if I was stuck at home all the time like Charlotte?

Again though, I didn’t want to act as if I was doing what I thought was best for her and that she should just go along with whatever I said… but she still seemed to be behaving somewhat strangely, and I thought that maybe she would open up or at least cheer up if we did this.

“Then it’s a date for tomorrow,” I said when she didn’t openly object.