All Dolled Up!

Charlie

Turns out that Charlotte hadn't wanted the training wheels removed after she gave it some thought, which kind of disappointed me now. Yes, I was the one who had advised against it in the first place - but even if she couldn't ride it indoors properly it would give her a bigger sense of.... freedom, for lack of a better word? Or maybe I was thinking about it all wrong and thinking more of what I would've wanted in her shoes instead of what she wanted.

Regardless, by the time I had woken up, Charlotte was out. She was sitting in front of the television, and had not remembered to turn it off before she was shut down. She had a habit of doing that and I had often come back home to hear the television blaring, but I couldn't really blame her given she never knew exactly when the sun was going to set.

Still, she could hear me. I turned the television off and said to her, "Alright, Charlotte, I'm going, I'll see you later tomorrow night. I stocked the fridge with lemonade like you had wanted." She remained as motionless as ever, but I hoped she wasn’t too mad about me leaving.

I still felt self-conscious while doing this, no doubt if anyone saw what I was doing they'd have thought I really was schizophrenic.

I decided to swing by Vanessa's shop first. I figured getting the necklace back would be a quick thing, so I might've as well done what was probably going to need some time first.

The shop was as adorably wacky as when I had seen it last, and the shopkeeper was just as contrastingly plain with her surroundings as before.

"Hello, welcome again. How can I help you?" she asked.

"Well, I had come here earlier with my sister asking about a book," I told her. I had had a lot of time to think over how I was going to approach this conversation, but there was only so much I could come up with. In horror movies, whenever the protagonist needed a question answered, there was always a superstitious neighbor or the like who they'd turn to and who'd give them advice. That or a passing gypsy who would know exactly what was going on conveniently. A shop like this would've been perfect for that kind of scene.

Granted, thankfully Charlotte was not a real cursed doll like in those movies, but on the flip side getting information was hard. "Um, I haven't gotten any further with figuring it out, but I wanted to ask you... do you know anything about cursed dolls?"

In response to this she disappeared behind a shelf and pulled out several creepy-looking dolls no bigger than the palm of my hand. They were stuffed dolls and seemed somewhat crudely made with macabre facial expressions, though that just added to their unsettling nature. "These are some of the ones sold to me by another customer, they're said to bring bad luck to whoever keeps them."

Wouldn't that mean that she was cursed keeping them in her shop? And why would anyone buy them then? "Uh, no, I mean something slightly bigger..."

"Oh, I don't have anything bigger, I'm afraid that Freddie over there is not for sale," she said, pointing to a doll about the size of a child kept in a display case.

"Yeah, but, has anyone ever sold you something like... a doll that came to..." I paused, unsure of how to continue. I really was going nowhere with this.

"You don't actually look like you're here to purchase anything," she said, keeping her hands on the counter. "So, why don't you stop beating around the bush, and just ask me what you are here for?"

"The thing is, uh, I..." I began. "Well, earlier I was here with my sister, and I didn't want to say anything in front of her, but... I have no other way to say this, I've been experiencing something… odd."

"Something odd?"

"What I mean to say is that, well... something... inexplicable happened to me. Something I can't explain. Something supernatural, which I really can't explain otherwise," I told her.

She scanned me up and down and sighed. She then said, "Oh, so you're one of those people."

Wow. I was actually being judged as being abnormal by a person who ran a shop like this. "Sorry to tell you Hon, but I don't have any answers. I have seen some pretty weird things in my time, but nothing too out of the ordinary. I do get people like you now and then though, who saw something spooky at one point and think for some reason that I have the answers - I usually tell them to go see a shrink." She then paused. "But, if you really think that what you saw was real, you can ask the people here." She wrote the name of a website on a napkin before handing it to me.

"Really? The Internet?"

"Well, if you want to meet with someone in person, there's this convention that meets every other two months," she began, before writing the address on the napkin in addition to their next date.

Meeting with actual people in person? Nah, it was a good thing the Internet was invented just so humanity could avoid that. I took the napkin, unsure if I was going to use it for anything other than blowing my nose, and asked if she had seen anything like the book I had shown her earlier.

"The answer's still no," she said. "But again, someone out there on the web, they might've seen something like that."

I left the shop feeling more confused than when I had first walked in.

I opened up the site in my car and went through it - while a part of it seemed to be people discussing paranormal events, a good portion of it seemed to just be horror stories.

Well, after ten minutes of deliberation I realized that I didn't really have anything to lose and this was still better than possibly outing myself in person, so I made a burner account and posted the following:

Need Help With A Haunted Doll

I moved into a new house a few weeks back, and there was this porcelain doll in it which was almost the size of a real person. I didn't think much of it, but weird things started happening. Whenever it's nighttime, the doll starts moving and it turns out that she is actually the ghost of a girl who used to live inside the house but died over a century ago. Every night, she's able to possess the doll and come to life, even talking to me occasionally. Thing is, she seems really distressed by this, and I was wondering how the whole thing even happened or if it could be reversed?

This is not a joke or story- serious replies only please!

I took one look at it, realized how dumb it sounded, and posted it anyway. I was yet to see if it would yield anything of value.

The next thing was to get the necklace back, and at least this was likely to prove to be fruitful in some way. Maybe it would've made more sense for me to visit my parents first and then the shop, so that my mother could accompany me, but I didn't want to bother her anymore so I went there by myself, planning to drop by to visit them later. Not to mention my mother might have some more questions when she saw the necklace once it was cleaned, questions I would rather she not ask.

The store had just opened up for the morning and nothing seemed out of the ordinary as I handed the receipt I had gotten earlier to them, asking if it had been done. I was asked simply to wait, and I expected to get it back and then walk out, but instead someone who introduced himself as the manager of the place walked out and asked if he could have a word inside his office.

"Ah, is there a problem with the order?"

"No, no, the item has been cleaned as you requested, there was just ah, something else I wanted to ask about it," he said. He was a well-dressed gentleman who could've easily passed off as a banker in any other circumstance, though from his tone there were hints that something was amiss. I mean, if everything was right, why couldn't I just pick up what I had dropped off and taken it home?

Regardless, I followed him to his office. It was decorated extravagantly and was a bit gaudy with all the pieces on display, though I guess you would expect that from a high-class jeweler. "Any of these pieces catch your eye, sir?" he asked as my eyes drifted to a collection of earrings.

"No, I was just wondering what this was about is all," I told him.

"Right, right, let's get to business- anything I can get you though to eat or drink? No, well, here is your item," he said, taking out a case and flipping it open with ease. The necklace was practically unrecognizable given how it shone now, and I could see why Charlotte had been ecstatic to find it. "As you can see, it is clean and no damage has occurred to it - let me reassure you of that in case that was what you were worried about. What I wanted to ask was if you were aware of where this necklace originated from?"

"Ah, a friend gave it to me," I told him. It was not a lie. "They found it while cleaning up their house, and it was quite dirty, but it looks like it belonged to someone in their family who had passed away."

"Ah, sorry to hear of their loss," he said. "Well, if you look carefully here, can you see those engravings? I think the dust that coated it hid it initially." I took a closer look and noted what looked like a rose petal inscribed into the biggest emerald, with some lettering in what looked like Latin that I couldn't figure out.

"Yeah," I said. "I see them."

"Well, we weren't sure about this initially, but it seems that this necklace was a part of the Queen of Roses collection initially commissioned by the wife of the Viceroy of Spain sometime in the late 1780s. The gem itself, I believe, seems to come from South Africa," he said. He went into some more history regarding the piece, and I nodded along, still clueless as to what the whole point of the thing was. "It was only two days ago though that one of my employees was able to find the origin of that mark and confirm this piece’s authenticity.”

"Okay, I see," I told him. "I'm afraid I still don't follow as to what the issue is?"

"Issue? Oh, no, there's no issue, it's just that this necklace is far more valuable than what I'm guessing you would've initially thought," he said. "Far more valuable indeed - I'd be willing to say that the right customer would be willing to pay upwards of possibly five million dollars for this piece."

I tried to hide the shock on my face. I still think it shone through though. "It was by chance, honestly, that our jeweler picked it up, and I am a bit of a connoisseur of antique pieces myself, which is how I recognized it. Which is, why, getting to the meat of the matter, I wanted to know if you were interested in selling it to me? It would take time to find a buyer for the right price, though I think a price of four and a half million dollars is the best I can offer."

I knew I was supposed to answer 'no' reflexively. After all, it was Charlotte's and not mine to keep. Still, I guess the number was so high that my brain stopped functioning for a moment, and after that, vile thoughts began to pour in. I could sell it, and give Charlotte an excuse about it. That I had lost it. Or better yet, use the money to actually start a new life somewhere... I could leave that house and never go back. Charlotte wouldn't even be able to do anything about it...

"I'm afraid I can't sell it," I told him. For the first time since I had met him, he seemed to lose a bit of his cool, and his lip seemed to twitch in annoyance at what I had told him. But he regained his composure nearly instantly, I guess that could only have been expected of the manager of a high-quality shop like this one.

"If this is an issue about price... I don't think anyone will give you anything higher than what I've offered you," he said. "I know I said we could find a buyer for higher, but there's a risk that that might not be the case, not to mention that the piece would need to be officially appraised, and the auction house fees if applicable - four and a half is still extremely generous, I assure you."

"It's not about that, it's that this necklace holds a deep sentimental value to the person who owns it," I told him. "And they would not sell it for the world, if you catch my drift." Plus, even if I was planning to sell it, given what he had just told me, I was definitely going to shop around first.

There was something about the way he was acting that told me he wasn't giving me everything I would've wanted to know. Maybe it was just because I wasn't that kind of person - but I was rather wary of people who were too warm and approachable when you'd just met them.

Granted, I guessed as someone who had to work with customers a good portion of the time he would've naturally developed such a demeanor, and my sister and mother would've likely warmed up to him easily, but I just thought there was something underhanded about the way he was going about things for lack of a better word.

He nodded. "Oh, I see if that's the issue then- well, I can very well see given its value how you would like to keep it. That said, if you ever change your mind, here's my card." He handed me a business card. "Again, would you perhaps like something to eat or to drink? I have this fine bottle I keep for special occasions and-"

"Ah, thank you, but I uh, have somewhere to be after this," I told him. "If I could just have it back, I'll be on my way, thank you!"