Haunted Doll Quotes

Dearest creature in creation, Study English pronunciation. I will teach you in my verse Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse. I will keep you, Suzy, busy, Make your head with heat grow dizzy. Tear in eye, your dress will tear. So shall I! Oh hear my prayer. Just compare heart, beard, and heard, Dies and diet, lord and word, Sword and sward, retain and Britain. (Mind the latter, how it’s written.) Now I surely will not plague you With such words as plaque and ague. But be careful how you speak: Say break and steak, but bleak and streak; Cloven, oven, how and low, Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe. Hear me say, devoid of trickery, Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore, Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles, Exiles, similes, and reviles; Scholar, vicar, and cigar, Solar, mica, war and far; One, anemone, Balmoral, Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel; Gertrude, German, wind and mind, Scene, Melpomene, mankind. Billet does not rhyme with ballet, Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet. Blood and flood are not like food, Nor is mould like should and would. Viscous, viscount, load and broad, Toward, to forward, to reward. And your pronunciation’s OK When you correctly say croquet, Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve, Friend and fiend, alive and live. Ivy, privy, famous; clamour And enamour rhyme with hammer. River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb, Doll and roll and some and home. Stranger does not rhyme with anger, Neither does devour with clangour. Souls but foul, haunt but aunt, Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant, Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger, And then singer, ginger, linger, Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge, Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age. Query does not rhyme with very, Nor does fury sound like bury. Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth. Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath. Though the differences seem little, We say actual but victual. Refer does not rhyme with deafer. Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer. Mint, pint, senate and sedate; Dull, bull, and George ate late. Scenic, Arabic, Pacific, Science, conscience, scientific. Liberty, library, heave and heaven, Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven. We say hallowed, but allowed, People, leopard, towed, but vowed. Mark the differences, moreover, Between mover, cover, clover; Leeches, breeches, wise, precise, Chalice, but police and lice; Camel, constable, unstable, Principle, disciple, label. Petal, panel, and canal, Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal. Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair, Senator, spectator, mayor. Tour, but our and succour, four. Gas, alas, and Arkansas. Sea, idea, Korea, area, Psalm, Maria, but malaria. Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean. Doctrine, turpentine, marine. Compare alien with Italian, Dandelion and battalion. Sally with ally, yea, ye, Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key. Say aver, but ever, fever, Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver. Heron, granary, canary. Crevice and device and aerie. Face, but preface, not efface. Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass. Large, but target, gin, give, verging, Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging. Ear, but earn and wear and tear Do not rhyme with here but ere. Seven is right, but so is even, Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen, Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk, Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work. Pronunciation (think of Psyche!) Is a paling stout and spikey? Won’t it make you lose your wits, Writing groats and saying grits? It’s a dark abyss or tunnel: Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale, Islington and Isle of Wight, Housewife, verdict and indict. Finally, which rhymes with enough, Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough? Hiccough has the sound of cup. My advice is to give up!!!

The door was opening again. The seer does not like to dwell upon what he saw entering the room: he says it might be described as a frog - the size of a man - but it had scanty white hair about its head. It was busy about the truckle-beds, but not for long. The sound of cries - faint, as if coming out of a vast distance - but, even so, infinitely appalling, reached the ear. ("The Haunted Doll's House")

And so the house came to be haunted by the unspoken phrase: There must be more money! There must be more money! The children could hear it all the time though nobody said it aloud. They heard it at Christmas, when the expensive and splendid toys filled the nursery. Behind the shining modern rocking-horse, behind the smart doll's house, a voice would start whispering: "There must be more money! There must be more money!" And the children would stop playing, to listen for a moment. They would look into each other's eyes, to see if they had all heard. And each one saw in the eyes of the other two that they too had heard. "There must be more money! There must be more money!

There were so many dolls in there, waiting for her. Somewhere, in a less rational part of her brain, Louise felt that nothing could look so human and exist for so long without starting to develop thoughts on its own. What did the dolls think about?

I’m not as smart as you, but what I do know is that when spooky fucking haunted dolls start writing messages on the wall, you should get the fuck out.

The shadow self is what lies beneath the makeup. It’s those ugly parts that you haven’t accepted about yourself. You hide those parts in the shadows until you’re ready.” Her face remained a haunting calm. “When you realize the scars are who you are, that there was nothing wrong with you and that you were beautiful all along - that’s when you decide to take the makeup off.

I’m not sure if puppets and dolls are the same, theologically speaking, but eBay is rife with them.

All the dolls have to go,” Louise said. “Just to be safe.” “Shit,” Mark said. “There’s a lot of dolls.

Poppy used to share the room with her older sister, and piles of he sister's outgrown clothes still remained spread out in drifts, along with a collection of used makeup and notebooks covered in stickers and scrawled with lyrics. A jumbled of her sister's old Barbies were on top of a bookshelf, waiting for Poppy to try and fix their melted arms and chopped hair. The bookshelves were overflowing with fantasy paperbacks and overdue library books, some of them on Greek myths, some on mermaids, and a few on local hauntings. The walls were covered in posters-Doctor Who, a cat in a bowler hat, and a giant map of Narnia.

Dearest Reece, I know you think it improper, or at the very least imprudent, for us to write to one another, but I don't care.There are too many rules as it is and they would choke me if I let them. Between corsets and lessons and curtsies and etiquette, I am hardly myself, and that is how they want it. They would prefer we all dress and talk and think (or not think) alike, like paper dolls. I do not wish to be a paper doll. Surely you can see that I am stronger than that.I don't give a fig for the scandalbroth or the gossipmongers. Let us remove to Paris, where no one knows us to care and where they dine on scandal with eclairs every morning. You will say again that it is impossible but I refuse to believe it. I know with every touch of your hand on mine, with every stolen kiss, that nothing is impossible. Perhaps love isn't meant to be simple. Perhaps this is merely a test, such as Psyche went through to prove herself to Cupid. Would you have me count lentils, beloved? And as you claim I have the most to lose, I pray you will let me decide for myself what it is I want and need. Which is you. Not silks or lobster soup in crystal bowls or diamonds around my neck. Just you. You say again and again that you love me. Prove it.

I realize it has everything to do with Pupkin. I saw him move. He tried to kill you. Those dolls in the bathroom wrote that note on the wall, but the one who’s behind everything is that creepy little puppet.” It suddenly sounded

Tonight, no one will rage and cry: "My Kingdom for a horse!" No ghost will come to haunt the battlements of a castle in the kingdom of Denmark where, apparently something is rotten. Nor will anyone wring her hands and murmur: "Leave, I do not despise you." Three still young women will not retreat to a dacha whispering the name of Moscow, their beloved, their lost hope. No sister will await the return of her brother to avenge the death of their father, no son will be forced to avenge an affront to his father, no mother will kill her three children to take revenge on their father. And no husband will see his doll-like wife leave him out of contempt. No one will turn into a rhinoceros. Maids will not plot to assassinate their mistress, after denouncing her lover and having him jailed. No one will fret about "the rain in Spain!" No one will emerge from a garbage pail to tell an absurd story. Italian families will not leave for the seashore. No soldier will return from World War II and bang on his father's bedroom dor protesting the presence of a new wife in his mother's bed. No evanescent blode will drown. No Spanish nobleman will seduce a thousand and three women, nor will an entire family of Spanish women writhe beneath the heel of the fierce Bernarda Alba. You won't see a brute of a man rip his sweat-drenched T-shirt, shouting: "Stella! Stella!" and his sister-in-law will not be doomed the minute she steps off the streetcar named Desire. Nor will you see a stepmother pine away for her new husband's youngest son. The plague will not descend upon the city of Thebes, and the Trojan War will not take place. No king will be betrayed by his ungrateful daughters. There will be no duels, no poisonings, no wracking coughs. No one will die, or, if someone must die, it will become a comic scene. No, there will be none of the usual theatrics. What you will see tonight is a very simple woman, a woman who will simply talk...

From every enjoyment I was, of course, excluded: my share of the gaiety consisted […] in listening to the sound of the piano or the harp played below, to the passing to and fro of the butler and footman, to the jingling of glass and china as refreshments were handed, to the broken hum of conversation as the drawing-room door opened and closed.  When tired of this occupation, I would retire from the stairhead to the solitary and silent nursery […]. I then sat with my doll on my knee, till the fire got low, glancing round occasionally to make sure that nothing worse than myself haunted the shadowy room; and when the embers sank to a dull red, I undressed hastily, tugging at knots and strings as I best might, and sought shelter from cold and darkness in my crib.

March 1898 What a strange dream I had last night! I wandered in the warm streets of a port, in the low quarter of some Barcelona or Marseille. The streets were noisome, with their freshly-heaped piles of ordure outside the doors, in the blue shadows of their high roofs. They all led down towards the sea. The gold-spangled sea, seeming as if it had been polished by the sun, could be seen at the end of each thoroughfare, bristling with yard-arms and luminous masts. The implacable blue of the sky shone brilliantly overhead as I wandered through the long, cool and sombre corridors in the emptiness of a deserted district: a quarter which might almost have been dead, abruptly abandoned by seamen and foreigners. I was alone, subjected to the stares of prostitutes seated at their windows or in the doorways, whose eyes seemed to ransack my very soul. They did not speak to me. Leaning on the sides of tall bay-windows or huddled in doorways, they were silent. Their breasts and arms were bare, bizarrely made up in pink, their eyebrows were darkened, they wore their hair in corkscrew-curls, decorated with paper flowers and metal birds. And they were all exactly alike! They might have been huge marionettes, or tall mannequin dolls left behind in panic - for I divined that some plague, some frightful epidemic brought from the Orient by sailors, had swept through the town and emptied it of its inhabitants. I was alone with these simulacra of love, abandoned by the men on the doorsteps of the brothels. I had already been wandering for hours without being able to find a way out of that miserable quarter, obsessed by the fixed and varnished eyes of all those automata, when I was seized by the sudden thought that all these girls were dead, plague-stricken and putrefied by cholera where they stood, in the solitude, beneath their carmine plaster masks... and my entrails were liquefied by cold. In spite of that harrowing chill, I was drawn closer to a motionless girl. I saw that she was indeed wearing a mask... and the girl in the next doorway was also masked... and all of them were horribly alike under their identical crude colouring... I was alone with the masks, with the masked corpses, worse than the masks... when, all of a sudden, I perceived that beneath the false faces of plaster and cardboard, the eyes of these dead women were alive. Their vitreous eyes were looking at me... I woke up with a cry, for in that moment I had recognised all the women. They all had the eyes of Kranile and Willie, of Willie the mime and Kranile the dancer. Every one of the dead women had Kranile's left eye and Willie's right eye... so that every one of them appeared to be squinting. Am I to be haunted by masks now?

He caught my hand and drew me closer to his side. “Well, should I begin to list them one by one, and by name? If I did it would take several hours. If there had been someone special, all I would do is name one—and I can’t do that. I liked them all . . . but I didn’t like any well enough to love, if that’s what you want to know.” Yes, that was exactly what I wanted to know. “I’m sure you didn’t live a celibate life, even though you didn’t fall in love . . . ?” “That’s none of your business,” he said lightly. “I think it is. It would give me peace to know you had a girl you loved.” “I do have a girl I love,” he answered. “I’ve known her all my life. When I go to sleep at night, I dream of her, dancing overhead, calling my name, kissing my cheek, screaming when she has nightmares, and I wake up to take the tar from her hair. There are times when I wake up to ache all over, as she aches all over, and I dream I kiss the marks the whip made . . . and I dream of a certain night when she and I went out on the cold slate roof and stared up at the sky, and she said the moon was the eye of God looking down and condemning us for what we were. So there, Cathy, is the girl who haunts me and rules me, and fills me with frustrations, and darkens all the hours I spend with other girls who just can’t live up to the standards she set. And I hope to God you’re satisfied.” I turned to move as in a dream, and in that dream I put my arms about him and stared up into his face, his beautiful face that haunted me too. “Don’t love me, Chris. Forget about me. Do as I do, take whomever knocks first on your door, and let her in.” He smiled ironically and put me quickly from him. “I did exactly what you did, Catherine Doll, the first who knocked on my door was let in—and now I can’t drive her out. But that’s my problem—not yours.” “I don’t deserve to be there. I’m not an angel, not a saint . . . you should know that.” “Angel, saint, Devil’s spawn, good or evil, you’ve got me pinned to the wall and labeled as yours until the day I die. And if you die first, then it won’t be long before I follow.

When Bindi, Robert, and I got home on the evening of Steve’s death, we encountered a strange scene that we ourselves had created. The plan had been that Steve would get back from his Ocean’s Deadlist film shoot before we got back from Tasmania. So we’d left the house with a funny surprise for him. We got large plush toys and arranged them in a grouping to look like the family. We sat one that represented me on the sofa, a teddy bear about her size for Bindi, and a plush orangutan for Robert. We dressed the smaller toys in the kids’ clothes, and the big doll in my clothes. I went to the zoo photographer and got close-up photographs of our faces that we taped onto the heads of the dolls. We posed them as if we were having dinner, and I wrote a note for Steve. “Surprise,” the note said. “We didn’t go to Tasmania! We are here waiting for you and we love you and miss you so much! We will see you soon. Love, Terri, Bindi, and Robert.” The surprise was meant for Steve when he returned and we weren’t there. Instead the dolls silently waited for us, our plush-toy doubles, ghostly reminders of a happier life. Wes, Joy, and Frank came into the house with me and the kids. We never entertained, we never had anyone over, and now suddenly our living room seemed full. Unaccustomed to company, Robert greeted each one at the door. “Take your shoes off before you come in,” he said seriously. I looked over at him. He was clearly bewildered but trying so hard to be a little man. We had to make arrangements to bring Steve home. I tried to keep things as private as possible. One of Steve’s former classmates at school ran the funeral home in Caloundra that would be handling the arrangements. He had known the Irwin family for years, and I recall thinking how hard this was going to be for him as well. Bindi approached me. “I want to say good-bye to Daddy,” she said. “You are welcome to, honey,” I said. “But you need to remember when Daddy said good-bye to his mother, that last image of her haunted him while he was awake and asleep for the rest of his life.” I suggested that perhaps Bindi would like to remember her daddy as she last saw him, standing on top of the truck next to that outback airstrip, waving good-bye with both arms and holding the note that she had given him. Bindi agreed, and I knew it was the right decision, a small step in the right direction. I knew the one thing that I had wanted to do all along was to get to Steve. I felt an urgency to continue on from the zoo and travel up to the Cape to be with him. But I knew what Steve would have said. His concern would have been getting the kids settled and in bed, not getting all tangled up in the media turmoil. Our guests decided on their own to get going and let us get on with our night. I gave the kids a bath and fixed them something to eat. I got Robert settled in bed and stayed with him until he fell asleep. Bindi looked worried. Usually I curled up with Robert in the evening, while Steve curled up with Bindi. “Don’t worry,” I said to her. “Robert’s already asleep. You can sleep in my bed with me.” Little Bindi soon dropped off to sleep, but I lay awake. It felt as though I had died and was starting over with a new life. I mentally reviewed my years as a child growing up in Oregon, as an adult running my own business, then meeting Steve, becoming his wife and the mother of our children. Now, at age forty-two, I was starting again.

When he would steal a kiss from her, it always took her breath away. No one kissed like Rick. No other man was able to make her lose all conception of time when he kissed her. That was not all. Rick was fun to work with and made her laugh. As a partner, he had talents that she desperately needed in her business. He was a cunning and crafty man, and his talents helped in solving many cases.

Amelia laughed and then teased him with a kiss on the cheek. He shook his head. "Nah! Not good enough." Knowing what he really wanted, she kissed him lightly on the lips. Rick smiled. "Now that's more like it." Without hesitation, he pulled her into his arms and pressed his lips to hers, giving her a kiss to remember... a kiss that took her breath away... a kiss that made her lips tingle. As his hands did their magic, caressing her back with tenderness, Amelia sighed. When he finally released her lips, Rick tenderly cradled her face in his hands and said, "Now that's what I call the perfect thank you." He kissed her sweet lips again. "Just remember that next time." Amelia blinked and said breathlessly, "I'll try to remember that.

Rick gave a mischievous grin. "We're going to add a few things to that bucket list of yours, Amelia. You're going to have a snowball fight, make a snow angel, and go sleigh riding.

Estes Park was set in a valley surrounded by the Rocky Mountain National Park.... When I visited a few years ago, there were actually elk grazing on the golf course." "Are you serious?" "Hey, every year in October they have an Elk Festival. That's why I came here. I wanted to see it 'cause it was on my bucket list." "An Elk Festival?" Amelia laughed. "You have the most awesome things on your bucket list. Mine seem boring compared to yours." Amelia raised her brow curiously. "What was the festival like?" "It was awesome. They had an elk bugling contest, elk seminars, Native American music, dancing and storytelling. They even had bus tours that took you to see the elk grazing in the fields. It was great. I loved it." "Wait a minute," said Amelia as she tilted her head to one side. "What's an elk bugling contest?" Rick grinned. "It's the call of the elk. Anyone can compete. Whoever sounds the most like an elk wins. You can use a horn or just your own voice. When I was there, the man who won used his voice. It was really something." Amelia's eyes widened with curiosity. "How did he do it? What does it sounds like?" Rick chuckled. "Well... the call starts out with deep rich tones. Then it quickly rises to a high-pitched squealing sound and immediately drops down to a bunch of grunts.

Maybe we should stay another night," said Amelia... Rick nodded. "You're right. Sounds good to me." He then winked at her and said with a teasing glint in his eyes, "We can both sleep in this bed to save money." He then patted the space beside him. Amelia laughed and shook her head. "In your dreams!" Rick chuckled. "Yeah. In my dreams is right.

As they passed the giant saguaro cacti, Amelia knew they were getting close to home. They were magnificent, standing like humungous pitchforks in the middle of the desert. To her, it represented the American West... Amelia noticed Sam in the distance. He seemed intrigued by the Teddy Bear Chollas. Sam was not originally from Arizona, so he seemed enchanted by the fuzzy little cactus. As he reached toward it, Amelia yelled, "Stop! No! Don't touch that, Sam!" But it was too late. The little razor sharp needles seemed to jump toward his finger...

So next time you are browsing through an antique store, or next time you see an old chair or doll or book sitting on a shelf, consider the possibility that that item could be the final thing that ties an entity to this world. Think twice

Nope. You’ll still be mine, even in death, doll. Remember what I said.” Hell slid the ring onto my ring finger, caging the digit in white gold. “I will haunt you until your heart stops beating. Possess you more than I do now. And then, you’ll be mine again. There’s no escaping now.

Mark says “our whole family functions on secrets.” How do the family stories we choose to tell and those we choose to keep secret shape our lives? Puppets and dolls are children’s toys—but they can also terrify people. How does this book explore what makes them scary? What did you find most frightening in the book: the puppets or the dolls? Is there any difference?

My eye snags on a girl dressed up as a broken doll, sitting on the bench and happily eating a philly cheesesteak sandwich.

When he pulled in, Melissa was in the yard, playing with some dolls. She looked up and held them to her chest. Jacob was sure to emphasize his beaming smile when he stepped out of the car, nodding softly to her.

Odd, how sometimes the mountains and wilderness offered solace, while other times sinister shadows floated through the dense mass of rocking trees as if they were haunted.

To first understand the concept of a haunted doll, one must realize that the doll itself does not posses life. In other words, the doll is not alive. In theory, the doll is haunted by the soul of a person who has passed on. A haunted doll is a spiritual attachment, a haunted item.

The soulless eyes of the island’s many dolls were haunting enough before, but after Pablo’s story they’ve attained an otherworldly mantle of dark malevolence.

Get out all evil, get out all fear, get out all negative entities meaning to harm us that are here. Get out and be gone so says I and leave nothing behind as you fly. Nothing is allowed to remain in spirit or flesh that is meant to be cruel, evil or cause distress. God protect us, please keep us safe and let our home remain in peace.*

Pediophobia, as this fear is scientifically named, can range from modern Barbie and Bratz dolls all the way to porcelain and antique dolls. Some only have a fear of one kind of doll, others

in the canal here, many, many years ago,” their guide explained. “It is believed her restless spirit still wanders the island, which is why nobody lives here. Nobody, that is, except a man named Julian Santana. “Don Santana believed that the ghost of Salvadora haunted him, so he left his family to live on this island alone, in that hut there.” Pablo pointed

Well, I don’t know for sure if it’s still there, but when we lived in Minnesota, we would drive through Janesville to get to our place. If you took the old Highway 14 through town, as you’re heading west, just as you cross Main Street, there’s this old two-story house on the right-hand side of the road.” “What happened?” Daniel anticipated where this was going: “Was someone killed there?” “No. But if you looked up at the attic window you’d see a doll hanging there. It was one of those old-fashioned dolls made of wood and it was hanging from a rafter with a noose around its neck.” “Okay, that’s disturbing.” “No kidding. Well, there are all these stories about the doll and why it’s there. Some people say it moves; others say someone died in the house and the place is haunted. The way I heard it, there was a girl who lived there and the other kids made fun of her because she was the sort of kid that adults call ‘special,’ and kids call all kinds of other things. You know what I mean.” “Sure,” Daniel said quietly. “Anyway, the other kids in the town were relentless, making fun of her, calling her names, all that. The story goes that even when she was a teenager she carried that doll with her everywhere—which only made them make fun of her more. One day her mom was looking for her and couldn’t find her anywhere.” He paused, as if to accentuate how long the girl’s mom searched. “Eventually she went outside to look for her and when she turned around toward the house, she saw her daughter hanging in the attic window where she’d killed herself—hung herself off one of the rafters. And they say that after the funeral, her parents took the same rope that their daughter had used and they hung that doll up there in the window as a constant reminder to the townspeople of what they’d driven their daughter to do.” Daniel was silent. “So, last month I was doing this contemporary-issues assignment and I thought I’d try to find out what really happened. I came across this newspaper article from 1975 that said that one time, years ago, the guy who lived in the house was looking through a National Geographic magazine and saw a picture of a house in Pennsylvania that had a doll hanging in the window and he basically said, ‘Huh. Wouldn’t it be cool if we had a doll hanging in our window too?’ So he hung it up there.

Dear Mrs. Winslow, How well I remember the summer of your honeymoon. It was a wonderful summer, so refreshingly pleasant in the mountains in a locked room with windows that were never opened. Congratulations and my very best wishes, Mrs. Winslow, and I do hope all your future summers, winters, springs and falls will be haunted by the memory of the kind of summers, winters, springs and falls your Dresden dolls used to have. Not yours anymore, The doctor doll, The ballerina doll, The praying-to-grow-taller doll, And the dead doll.

The bow still appears stately and upright. The stern lies in a shattered heap, mangled, we believe, by its violent break with the bow, by it's impact with the bottom, and perhaps by damage caused when air-filled pockets in the sinking hulk met deep-ocean pressures that near 6,000 pounds per square inch. Moist poignant was the debris field, where the effects of a floating city of 2,228 men, women, and children had drifted down for hours after Titanic broke apart. There, amidst huge chunks of twisted metal, fragile china cups appeared untouched. Peering through Alvin's small porthole, I saw the hollow eyes of a doll's head staring back, a haunting reminder of loss. Most wrenching for me was the sight of a pair of splayed boots, the body of the owner long ago consumed in the deep.

But ghosts aren’t real. The living is what haunts the living.

I arrived here just in time to see Mark eyeing up a doll eating a sandwich while his wife, Claire, sits right next to him and watches him eye-fuck a young girl.

My eye snags on a girl dressed up as a broken doll, sitting on the bench and happily eating a philly cheesesteak sandwich. I nearly groan, the scent of grilled meat making my mouth water. I nudge Daya and point her out. “She’s dressed as a doll.

Dean bought him a couple years ago at some antique auction,” I explain. “The listing said he was haunted, so Dean thought it would be hilarious to get the doll for Tuck’s daughter, who was, like, a baby at the time. Sabrina lost her shit, so she waited till Dean and Allie were in town a couple months later and paid off someone at their hotel to leave the doll on Dean’s pillow.” Grace giggles. “Allie said he screamed like a little girl when he turned on the light and saw Alexander there.

Try as I did to argue and escape, it was no use. Heather gave me all the dirty details and used her dolls as props. And I thought those dolls couldn't get any creepier.

Next to the sale of their children or spouse, rape was perhaps the worst nightmare of slavery. We have no way of knowing how often it happened... We do know that white women were haunted by the fear that their husbands, fathers, or sons were having sex with their slaves. And we know that black mothers nervously watched their daughters to protect them from dangers they could not understand.

Perhaps we shouldn’t see each other for a few days. I’ve never been so tired in my life.” She tried to give him a gracious way out. Raven looked down at her hands. She wanted to give herself an out, too. She had never felt so close to anyone, so comfortable, as if she had known him forever, yet was terrified that he would take her over. “And I don’t think your family was thrilled to see an American with you. We’re too…explosive together,” she finished ruefully. “Do not try to leave me, Raven.” The car drew up in front of the inn. “I hold what is mine, and make no mistake, you are mine.” It was both a warning and a plea. He had no time for soft words. He wanted to give pretty words to her--God knew she deserved them--but the others were waiting, and his responsibilities weighed heavily on him. She raised her hand to the line of his jaw, rubbing gently. “You’re so used to having your own way.” There was a smile in her voice. “I can go to sleep all by myself, Mikhail. I’ve been doing it for years.” “You need to sleep untroubled, undisturbed, deeply. What you saw tonight will haunt you if I do not help you.” His thumb stroked across her lower lip. “I could remove the memory if you wished.” Raven could see he wanted to do it, believed that it would be best for her. She could see it was difficult to ask her to make a decision. “No thank you, Mikhail,” she murmured demurely. “I think I’ll keep all my memories, good and bad.” She kissed his chin, slid across the seat to the door. “You know, I’m not a porcelain doll. I won’t break because I see something I shouldn’t. I’ve chased serial killers before.” She smiled at him, her eyes sad. He shackled her wrist in an unbreakable grip. “And it almost destroyed you. Not this time.” Her lashes swept down, hiding her expression. “That’s not your decision.” If others persuaded him to use his talents to chase the insane, evil killers in the world, she would not leave him alone. How could she? “You are not nearly as afraid of me as you should be,” he growled. She flashed him another smile, tugging at her wrist to remind him to release her. “I think you know what’s between us would be worth nothing if you forced me to do your will in everything.

You need to sleep untroubled, undisturbed, deeply. What you saw tonight will haunt you if I do not help you.” His thumb stroked across her lower lip. “I could remove the memory if you wished.” Raven could see he wanted to do it, believed that it would be best for her. She could see it was difficult to ask her to make a decision. “No thank you, Mikhail,” she murmured demurely. “I think I’ll keep all my memories, good and bad.” She kissed his chin, slid across the seat to the door. “You know, I’m not a porcelain doll. I won’t break because I see something I shouldn’t. I’ve chased serial killers before.” She smiled at him, her eyes sad. He shackled her wrist in an unbreakable grip. “And it almost destroyed you. Not this time.” Her lashes swept down, hiding her expression. “That’s not your decision.” If others persuaded him to use his talents to chase the insane, evil killers in the world, she would not leave him alone. How could she? “You are not nearly as afraid of me as you should be,” he growled.

A formless blob begins to morph and then evolves into a humanoid shape. A male body is revealed to her. A twenty-year-old man that looks a bit older than her, but no more than a few years at most. He has pale skin but a tan pigmentation to his dermal membrane, similarly to those who have descended from Hispanic or Spanish heritage. His eyes are heterochromatic, gleaming like gems in this uncanny realm. Identical to the eyes of her beloved cat: one shines with the radiance of a sapphire, while the other glows with a fiery dissimilarity, resembling a diametrical ruby. Somehow, though different in color, the blankness of his eyes are far from antithetical to the pair that were painted in the picture of her dream from days ago, that seemed to have come right out of a Dalí painting. Invoking the memory of the dead-eyed stare that continually to haunts her. He is very handsome with a large forehead, and slick ebony hair. His eyebrows are incredibly expressive, as if they were sketched on with a pencil. And he had a teardrop mole underneath his right eye. He had long eyelashes and a porcelain doll mouth. He is adorned in all white: a long-sleeved white sweater with white pants and a pair of white combat boots. Although he has manifested himself in such a beautiful form, Juniper doesn't feel any attraction towards him. When she blushes, it is only from humiliation. Their eyes are locked together in an encumbrance of space-time.

Louise felt like they'd burrowed into an enormous mountain of dolls. Shelf after shelf of them, up the walls, reaching the ceiling, a wall of tiny bonnets and straw hats and puckered red lips and shiny porcelain faces and clown faces and baby-doll faces, all staring straight ahead with empty, glass eyes. They were lined up along the base of the wall. They were piled up in corners.... old country dolls with dried-apple faces, sock monkeys, one-eyed teddy bears, grimy old dolls and crisp new dolls and charred, burned, and scarred dolls... Barb tiptoed nimbly between everyone... I know what you're thinking, she said. I've got a storage unit where I keep the cursed ones. I'm not going to sleep in a house surrounded by cursed dolls. That's crazy!....