“Youuu ffffffirst.”
The words trembled on my tongue, shaking my jaw so violently that I had to clench my teeth together to hold still.
My cousin Grace whipped her head back and muttered, “You owe me one” before reaching out a white hand, weakly twisting open the rusted doorknob as the idle wood groaned under layers of dust. We squeezed each other’s wrists, leaping backward as the black sliver between the closet doors widened to release a suffocating cloud of stale mustiness.
Two years ago, in the middle of the pandemic, we had been staying at our summer house at the Jersey Shore. For weeks, we had both feared and wondered about the contents of the dark closet in the corner of our shared bedroom, finally resolving to overcome our wicked curiosity one fateful Friday night.
Grace was four years younger than me, yet she was as resolute as a diver plunging into the frigid depths while I gingerly poked my head inside the closet. Instantly I rippled with shivers as my whole body recoiled into its skeleton.
The darkness slithered down our backs, dotting our bare limbs with light bumps as it warped the towers of books, shoe boxes and heavy fur coats into shapeless monsters hovering by our heads. I began treading on tiptoe when suddenly my foot prickled as if walking on shells. It was then that I caught sight of the small, delicate hand, trapped between a pile of yellowing photo albums as if imploring us to free it from years of imprisonment. Its palm was hardly a quarter the size of my own, and I could tell from the narrow light reflecting off of it that it was perfectly smooth.
Though my lips were curled back as if to let out a scream, my throat felt tight, as if someone were wrenching out all the air. Was I really seeing this? I questioned all my senses that were screaming “yes.”
I wasn’t alone. Grace’s already large hazel eyes now popped out of their sockets, and her restless, leporine nostrils were the only source of movement on a face frozen with fear. That’s when the sound came, a primal shrill flaring up from some hidden part of me I didn’t even know existed.
In a panicky burst of movement, we shoved past each other, scrambling for the bright crack of light and fresh air beyond the closet door. Our feet barely touched the ground as we darted out of the room, down the hallway and around the corner into my mother’s bedroom.
With my heart beating in my throat, I uttered a gasping, nearly incomprehensible plea to my mother, who sat by the window reading with a calm expression painted on her face. When she saw our bulging pupils, my mother flung aside her book along with all hopes of a relaxing afternoon as she stormed down the hall, our footsteps stumbling after hers. As she barreled past the bedroom door, nearly knocking it off its hinges, we crept close behind at her back. In the corner stood the closet, its doors ever-so-slightly parted like a pair of sneering lips.
My mother inched forward, feeling the walls as a stupefied haze spread across her features. Deep within the closet, we saw it: the hand curled upward like a pale plant shoot aching for sunlight.
The silence was palpable; everything seemed steeped in a velvety blanket that masked all sound. We expected my mother’s face to mirror our paleness, but instead she had warmed with relief.
“Oh, this?” she lilted in a mocking tone. Heavy, shuddering laughter shook the room, bouncing off the walls so that it left her heaving for breath.
Grace and I exchanged muddled glances, our eyes shrinking in disbelief. Had my mother gone mad? Was it some curse of the mysterious hand, twitching with an evil spell?
We turned back just in time to see my mother doing the unthinkable. She was reaching past the pungent old layers… toward the hand! Unconsciously Grace and I hugged each other tightly.
Our faces bled white as we watched the books topple and crash to the ground, the sheafs of paper falling away to unveil an antique doll coated in a thin layer of dust. Her porcelain face was plastered in clown makeup; atop a slightly pointed chin, red lips curled devilishly upwards. Her cheeks were doused in blue paint, and a pair of buttony eyes were rimmed in a faded red—as if for a lack of sleep—that clashed horribly with two pupils gleaming mischievously green. Bristly chestnut locks crawled across her scalp like worms.
My mother began turning over the doll’s frumpled dress, fingering a small white tag. We inched closer, our breath stunted as we absorbed the sharp black letters:
1901
Ms. Irene Katz
207 Bayshore Drive
The name meant nothing to me. But the date, 1901—that was well over a century ago. Grace shared in amazement with my mother, her eyes widening before crinkling with delight.
Words seemed to evade her a moment before she breathed, “Do you know what this means?”
Once again Grace and I met each other’s eyes, but this time it was less with horror than with terrified awe.
“Would you look at that. It all makes sense now. This doll was aunt Irene’s… she must be worth thousands, at least. What should we name her, girls?”
Within a soft pool of sheets the doll sat carelessly, her frilly white frock swirling around two small porcelain feet nearly as delicate as her hands. She sat as if an entire century hadn’t already passed—well, I guess for her it really hadn’t.
I knew without thinking. Almost supernaturally, the words left my mouth before I could taste them, piercing the silence like a pricked balloon: “Lester-Edith.”
Image courtesy of Lauri Heikkinen/Flickr
