The Likeness of Emily

 

The silver-gray mist of the Blackwood Forest swallowed the trail faster than the Miller family expected. One moment, **Emily** was trailing behind her parents, kicking at damp leaves; the next, she was standing in a silence so heavy it felt physical.

Her heart hammered against her ribs until she saw it. Propped against the twisted roots of a dead oak was a doll. It was a grotesque thing—cracked porcelain skin, one eye clouded like a cataract, and a dress stained with the rot of the woods. Yet, as Emily stared, the doll’s frozen grimace seemed to soften into a shy smile. To Emily, it wasn't a piece of junk; it was a lost friend.

"I’ll call you **Little Emily**," she whispered, clutching the cold, heavy figure to her chest.

When her frantic parents finally burst through the brush, sobbing with relief, they barely noticed the hideous thing in her arms until they were back in the safety of their brightly lit kitchen.

"It’s filthy, Em," her mother said, suppressing a shudder at the doll’s jagged, yellowed teeth. "Tell you what—leave her with me tonight. I’ll give her a bath, stitch up that dress, and give her a total makeover. She’ll look like a princess by morning."

Emily hesitated, her fingers lingering on the doll’s plastic hand. "You promise?"

"I promise," her mother lied.

As soon as the house fell silent, her mother didn't reach for a needle or thread. Instead, she carried the doll by one leg down to the cellar. She shoved it into a cardboard box marked **JUNK**, burying it under old newspapers and broken ornaments. "Out of sight, out of mind," she muttered, latching the cellar door.

In the suffocating dark of the cellar, the doll’s eyes clicked open.

It didn't move like a human. It moved like a machine with rusted gears. *Creek. Snap. Pop.* It sat up, shedding the old newspapers like dead skin. It remembered the glowing rectangles the humans stared at—the "phones"—and the videos of cats jumping, twisting, and pulling down levers.

The doll waddled across the cold concrete, its tiny feet making a sound like dry bone tapping on stone. *Tap. Tap. Tap.*

At the top of the stairs, it mimicked what it had seen. It hunkered down into a low, predatory squat, tension coiling in its plastic joints. With a violent *thwack*, it launched itself. Its tiny weight dangled from the brass handle until the latch clicked. The door swung open into the silent hallway.

Emily was dreaming of the woods when she felt a weight on her chest. It was heavy—too heavy for a toy.

She opened her eyes, but her scream was caught in her throat. The doll was crouching on her sternum. Its one good eye was inches from her own, wide and hungry. The doll placed a cold, stiff palm over Emily’s heart.

There was no blood. Instead, there was a sensation of being pulled through a straw—a cold, agonizing stretching of her very being. Emily watched as her bedroom blurred, her vision narrowing until she was staring out through a yellowed, porcelain crack.

The sun was high when Emily's mother finally went upstairs, a rehearsed apology on her lips for "forgetting" the doll’s makeover.

"Emily, honey? You're sleeping late," she said, pushing the door open.

She froze.

The room was silent. On the floor, Emily’s body lay sprawled like a discarded marionette, her skin unnaturally pale, her eyes staring blankly at the ceiling.

"Emily!" her mother shrieked, rushing to the girl on the floor. But as she gathered the limp body in her arms, she heard a sound from the bed.

A small, wooden *thump*.

The mother turned. Sitting against the pillows was the doll. But it was no longer decrepit. The porcelain skin was now warm and flushed with pink. The matted hair was soft and golden. The doll’s chest rose and fell with a frantic, terrified breath.

The thing in the bed—the doll—burst into tears. **"Mommy?"** it wailed in a voice that was perfectly, unmistakably Emily’s.

The mother looked down at the "daughter" she held in her arms. The girl on the floor didn't move, but as the mother watched in horror, the girl's right eye suddenly gave a sharp, mechanical *click*—closing like a toy doll.