Ghost Stories

"Can you help me find something in the attic, little Maricela?"

Mari looked up from her dolls. "Sure, Gramma."

Old and young, they contrasted each other sharply as they struggled up the attic ladder -- but once in the dusty treasure trove of old wonders, their ages didn't matter. Mari helped her grandmother search through boxes for a while, but at last got distracted by a pale white hand protruding from between a black wooden chest and a draped mirror.

It was a doll. Dressed in a faded nightgown, the doll was very white, with blood-red lips. Her eyes were made to close, but were stuck open. Mari clutched it to her chest and ran to her grandmother's side. "Gramma! Can I keep her?"

Without turning, the older woman said, "Of course, Maricela. You can keep anything you like."

"This is all I want," Mari said, hugging the doll tighter.

She kept the doll with her wherever she went, even as the year passed and she became a teenager. Her mother, with a chastising shake of her finger, said Mari was too old to be carrying a doll around like a teddy bear -- but Mari didn't care. The doll was her new best friend.

One day, one of her school friends, Serena, came over for a sleepover. Mari's mother put the doll on a high shelf, frustratingly out of reach, and as she and her friend talked and braided each other's hair, her eyes kept straying longingly to the doll.

"That thing's creepy," Serena said, catching Mari looking at the doll. "How do you sleep with it up there?"

"She's my friend," Mari insisted, and pulled Serena's hair just a bit too tightly.

When they were finally ushered into bed and Mari drifted into sleep, she found herself in a vivid dream. She was standing at the bottom of the stairs in her house, looking up into the darkness. All at once, a pale little hand appeared, floating without assistance. One of its tiny fingers pointed slowly at the top stairs.

A scream jolted Mari out of her dream, and she threw off her covers to run into the hallway. Serena was halfway to the bathroom, sprawled across the floor, holding her knee. There was blood on the carpet.

Mari's mother came running. "What happened? Are you hurt?"

"I -- I tripped on something," Serena sniffled.

Mari's mother frowned. "There's nothing to trip on here."

Mari let out a gasp, but stifled it when her mother looked up sharply. She remembered her dream so vividly. Maybe the hand had been trying to warn her about what would happen.

The next day, Serena and two of her other friends, Katy and Avis, came over to study for a test. They all seated themselves at the kitchen table, chattering about boys and clothes and everything except math. Above them, the kitchen lamp hung on a chain, enveloping them in a warm glow.

Mari leaned away from Avis to see what Katy was writing on her paper. Little bits of white material crumbled onto her paper, and she glanced up just in time to see the ceiling give way and the lamp crash down onto where Avis was sitting. The lamp glanced sharply off the girl's forehead and shattered on the floor.

Amidst the screams, Mari was very calm. She remembered, in a blue haze of memory, her dream from the night before. The same pale little hand had floated above her during breakfast, pointing at the lamp. It drew closer until it touched the lamp, which began to spin at a blinding speed. Each twirl weakened the ceiling until Mari had been afraid it would fall, but then it stopped suddenly, and there came a little sigh of satisfaction. She'd awoken with no memory of the dream, only a feeling of dread.

She wondered if the dreams were over.

But she did not dream for a few more nights, and when Darren Staggers -- the most popular boy in school -- invited her to go to the movies, she accepted without a worry. She dolled herself up, blew the porcelain toy on her shelf a kiss, and went to sit on the front porch to wait for Darren.

An explosion rocked the ground, and she stood up. Dread rushed through her, and Mari flew down the long driveway to the road.

Darren's car lay crumpled in a heap of steaming metal. Mari could only stand, frozen with horror, as the police cars and ambulances began to arrive. Only when the red and blue lights showed the emergency team pulling Darren out of the wreckage did she run forward and clasp his bloody hand.

"Little girl...on the...road..." He passed out as they placed him on a stretcher.

Mari waited breathlessly for news of Darren's condition. He was stable, but it was serious. The police also mentioned that they found no sign of a little girl on the road, which allegedly was the cause of Darren's swerving.

It hit Mari as she sat curled on the couch, trying to drown out the news report. The dream. In this vision, she had seen a fast-approaching car speeding down the road towards her house. Then the air was filled with a dreadful laugh, a pure evil giggle that grew louder and more violent. Her eyes had widened as the headlights illuminated a little person in the road, exactly the size of the doll she'd found in her grandmother's attic.

Mari jolted awake, bumping her head on the coffee table. She stood shakily and climbed the stairs to her room. Now she was afraid to touch the doll, which looked demonically happy on its shelf. Tearing the pillowcase off her pillow, she wrapped it around the doll and raced down the stairs to throw the whole bundle into a box in the basement. When Mari closed the door to the basement, she closed the door of her mind.

"I'll never think about it again," she whispered to herself.

Another year passed. She and her brother built a treehouse in the backyard, and it became the location of many summer evening slumber parties. One afternoon, Mari awoke from a nap with that same eerie feeling of dread -- but she ignored it; she had a slumber party to think about.

The girls arrived and filed up the ladder to the treehouse. Mari had a feeling of déjà vu as she scaled the rungs, but shook it off and reminded herself she'd often climbed into her grandmother's attic the very same way.

They curled into their sleeping bags, and as the stars winked to life, they drifted off one by one. Mari was the last to sleep. She couldn't escape the lurking premonition that something was going to happen.

Heat on her face woke her. Her eyes snapped open to see nothing but smoke filling the treehouse. She gasped, and her lungs filled with it, making her choke and gag. Mari slapped at the floor, keeping low, until she found the top of the ladder. She quickly climbed down and ran, screaming, to the house.

When the flames died down and the fire department put their ladders up against the tree, Mari stood squeezed against her mother's side. There were no dry eyes. The bodies of the other four girls were lowered in stretchers and carted into the ambulances before Mari could see their charred remains.

Then she remembered the dream.

She'd been standing under the treehouse in the bright moonlight when the dreaded hand had appeared. In its hand was something small and metal, which flipped open and flickered to life. A lighter! Mari recalled screaming and running to grab the hand, but suddenly it was connected to the doll, which loomed over her, cackling its maniacal threats...

Mari broke away from her mother's embrace and sprinted to the basement. She pawed through boxes until her hand found the cool smoothness beneath a dusty pillowcase.

There were still flames from the treehouse fire. Mari pushed past bewildered firemen and hurled the bundle onto the fire. She fell to her knees, sobbing.

Tongues of fire licked around the edges of the pillowcase, then exploded into a searing blaze, until nothing was left but a pair of staring marble eyes.