Flash Fiction Story - The China Doll

The China Doll

‘You need to tell us what you can remember’. Those intimidating words haunted me like a continuous nightmare, a mosquito whose sound grew stronger, it would never leave. Did I have an answer? No. No I didn’t.

It was October, Halloween of course. I was asked to babysit a girl named Amelia, barely 6 months of age. I set off late afternoon, down the eerie pebble stoned road leading to the house I would be staying at for the night. I was greeted at the door by a tall man and his wife. They showed me around and lead me upstairs to Amelia’s room. There she lay fragile, her little hands tightly curled as she lay over the top of a velvet blanket. ‘Thank you very much for doing this, we should be back for around half twelve, take care' I was told. With that they left without hesitation, I watched them through the window drive off into the foggy distance.

A few hours had passed. I went downstairs to the lounge and sat down keeping the baby monitor close to me on the kitchen side. It was at that very moment when I heard the blood curdling cry from the speaker beside me, it pierced through my ears and panic then hit me.  I rushed upstairs to the baby’s room, she has tears streaming down her cheeks, without haste I picked her up gently and cradled her in my arms, she calmed down and I laid her back down. What had upset her? I looked around the room and I discovered a mound of soft toys on the floor just opposite her cot. In the very middle hidden beneath the other toys was a rather odd looking toy, it appeared to be a sinister-looking china doll. I stepped slightly closer and examined the peculiar looking toy; I couldn’t think why it gave me that uneasy feeling. I turned off the light and returned downstairs.

It was now midnight. I then heard the sound again, this time it was much worse. I ran upstairs straight into Amelia’s room, she was screaming in terror. I looked to the china doll, it looked different this time, something was wrong. Rushing downstairs I grabbed my phone and rung up her parents, ‘I’m sorry to bother you but Amelia seems to keep crying, I don’t know what could be wrong. I feel it may have something to do with that creepy looking china doll in her room’’. There was a long pause before I got a reply. ‘What china doll?’ he replied. Then I realised. Amelia let out a shrill scream but when I looked she was nowhere to be found. I ran to the open window, I could see a figure running in the distance, it was the china doll. It had stolen Amelia, at that point I realised it was not a toy at all but something far more evil.

‘That’s all I can remember, the rest was a blur’ I replied.