by Ania Ahlborn
But Brynn’s smile shifted to something far more serious—stern enough to give Maggie pause. “I’m not lyin’, Mags. She killed her little sister. Poisoned her dead.”
“With what?” If Maggie was going to be forced to listen to this dumb story, she wasn’t going to make it easy to tell.
“With old-timey stuff in a bottle, like a potion.”
“A potion.” Maggie rolled her eyes. “That’s the dumbest.”
“Yeah, dummy, like cyanide. Betcha never heard of that stuff before.”
Maggie shrugged. What did it matter if she had or hadn’t? Brynn was still making it up. But Brynn wasn’t swayed by her kid sister’s skepticism. She never was.
“So, she poisoned her little sister, and then her mom found out about it, and you know what she did?”
“Probably called the cops? Duh!” Maggie was trying her damnedest to play it off. She wasn’t scared of some stupid story. Brynn was full of them, every day something new. But that doll? Maggie couldn’t keep her eyes off it.
“Cops?” Brynn snorted. “There weren’t any cops back then, dork. This was olden days, remember? They had, like, a sheriff and that was it. Nah, her mom found out, and she snuck into the little girl’s room late at night, and then do you know what she did?”
Maggie’s mouth was starting to go dry. She shook her head again, her eyes still fixed upon the porcelain doll’s face.
“She tied the girl to her bed and lit the sheets on fire. She left her daughter there, screaming.” Brynn widened her eyes for effect. “Crying.” She bleated out a wail, like one that could have possibly eked out of a dying girl. “Burning up!” She lurched at Maggie, her arms extended, her fingers twisted up like spooky five-legged spiders. Maggie squeaked and shuffled back. “And because the girl was so evil, the adults put her in a big limestone box so she’d be trapped forever. Except she wasn’t trapped forever. She was way too powerful for that.”
Maggie glanced back to her bike, suddenly sure it wouldn’t be there anymore—magically vanished, made invisible by the demon child of Brynn’s own making.
“One day, a girl came here to visit her gram at the cemetery all by herself. I can show you the grave if you want, since you probably don’t believe me. It’s just down there.” Brynn motioned to some faraway plot, waiting to be challenged, but Maggie didn’t dare. She knew it would be there. Brynn was meticulous about details, always prepared to be called out, to prove that what she was saying was true.
Once, at the dinner table, Brynn had muttered something about having a dream about their great-grandmother writhing in pain in a large canopy bed. Their mother had gone positively white, but had said nothing to prove or disprove her middle child’s claims. Another time, Brynn had pointed to a spot along the highway while she and Maggie rode in the backseat to do some shopping in Savannah’s downtown. A boy and his family died there, Brynn had said, only to be chastised for making up such a gruesome thing. Not a week later, a small cross had been erected in that very place, prompting their mom to pull the car over and demand the girls stay in the backseat. They watched her march up the soft shoulder, then stoop over the marker for what seemed like an awfully long time. She came back pale and silent. Maggie didn’t know how Brynn did it, but there was truth to her stories. And this one right now, she could only assume, was no different.
“So, this girl who was visiting her gram, she heard weeping coming from this corner, right where we’re standing now.” Brynn whimpered, pulling her face into a mask of despair. “And the kid, feeling sorry for the weeping ghost, brought the dead girl a gift. A doll.” Brynn looked back to the tomb, as did Maggie. “And now, that doll is the dead girl’s only friend. And anyone who touches it is doomed to be cursed.”
Maggie peeked back at the creepy glass-faced toy. The more she looked at it, the more that doll seemed strangely familiar—like maybe she’d seen it somewhere before. But Brynn wasn’t done. Reaching out to grab Maggie’s hand, she tightened her grip and took a few forward steps, forcing Maggie to creep closer to the crypt despite having backpedaled from that blank glass-eyed stare.
“Hey, cut it out, Bee!” Maggie tried to free herself from her sister’s grasp, but she didn’t have a chance, especially when Brynn used her free hand to give Maggie a forward shove. Maggie’s bare knees hit the side of the tomb. The tips of her sneakers kicked its rough stone side. The doll stared ahead.
“See that thing?” Brynn asked.
“I’m gonna tell Mom,” Maggie whined, trying to wriggle away.
“It’s evil, too,” Brynn hissed into her ear. “Just like the dead girl.”
Evil. The word twisted around inside Maggie’s head like a snake.
“I came here by myself yesterday,” Brynn said. “And she threatened me . . . so I made her a promise.”
Maggie stood frozen. Speechless. Her muscles tensed. The thudding of her heart insisted she look somewhere else, anywhere else but into that wicked marionette’s eyes.
“I promised her that I’d bring her a friend, so she’d never be lonely again. I hope you both like one another.” And then, all at once, Brynn spun around and fell into a full sprint across a headstone-dotted lawn with a gleeful laugh.
Maggie’s mind screamed, Turn around, stupid! You’re being abandoned! She could hear Brynn running toward her bike. But she couldn’t stop staring at the effigy poised atop that box. The idea of that doll being wicked had her mind reeling at the possibilities.
The doll sliding off that tomb.
Finding its way out of Friendship Park, down the street, into the house through a window or unlocked door.
Climbing the stairs in the dead of night, its fluttery dress whispering across each riser.
Little laced-up boots tap-tap-tapping across the hardwood floor.
The fingers of a tiny hand slipping through the crack of Maggie’s door.
“Mags!”
Maggie started when Brynn yelled her name. She veered around, spotted her big sister on her bike, already a good distance away. Twelve-year-old Brynn’s sandy-brown hair shone in the sunshine, Jack Skellington smiling out from the center of her T-shirt, her stripy socks and heavy boots looking ridiculous with the purple shorts she wore.
“It’s gonna get you!” Brynn bellowed. “Stand there long enough and it’s gonna follow you home!” Her sister laughed and pedaled toward the front of the cemetery.
It was then that Maggie bolted toward her own bike, unable to help glancing over her shoulder . . . just once, to make sure she wasn’t being chased.
. . .
And yet, despite being thoroughly spooked by her sister’s story, Maggie followed Brynn back to Friendship Park only days later. They wandered the stones, read the names, and tried to calculate how old the skeletons beneath their feet were by counting on their fingers rather than inside their heads. Sometimes, Brynn would purposefully walk right on the graves, as if daring the dead to punch their hands through the soil and chase her away. She’d crawl up onto the headstones in her clomping boots, then leap off them and onto the grass. Maggie wasn’t brave enough to do those things. Their dad said that stepping on a grave meant upsetting the person who owned it, and the last thing Maggie wanted was to draw attention to herself, especially with the promise Brynn had supposedly made to the girl in the limestone tomb.
That summer was boring, and so they continued to visit Friendship Park for a couple of weeks, Brynn’s story refusing to fade from the forefront of Maggie’s thoughts. She hated the idea of her loyalty being promised to that evil girl, but she was pretty sure that part of Brynn’s story was a load of bull. That, however, didn’t negate the idea of dead kids being lonely and abandoned—it was the one detail Maggie couldn’t manage to shake. And so, while Brynn hopscotched across grave sites, Maggie collected bouquets of fading silk flowers from the grown-up plots and arranged them on the burial sites of those sad, forsaken kids. Maggi
e even went so far as to create such a bouquet for her mother, which, to Brynn’s glee, had sent their mom reeling. Oh my God, Brynn! Their mother positively glowered at her middle daughter. You take your sister to that cemetery one more time, and you’ll find yourself spending a heck of a lot more time there yourself, and not because you want to, you understand?
Oddly, their mother’s threat was enough to persuade Brynn to lose interest; there was only so much fun you could have in a graveyard, after all, even for a girl like her. Soon enough, Brynn was sucked into some TV show. Unable to shake the routine so easily, Maggie was left to sneak into the garage, climb onto her bike, and ride to Friendship Park alone. And the more she visited, the more that doll beckoned her. Eventually, all of Maggie’s gathered flowers were for the stone mausoleum and what sat upon its top.
It was an offering: Please don’t be sad or angry.
It was also, in a sense, a proposal, despite Maggie thinking better of it. Sitting next to the tomb, hiding from the sun, she picked dandelions from the grass and murmured an impromptu promise. “I don’t care what Brynn says. As long as you promise to be nice, I can be your friend.”
FIVE
* * *
MAGGIE CONTINUED TO visit Friendship Park despite Brynn’s loss of interest, because not visiting made her feel guilty. That, and she had never been one for hours in front of the TV. Beyond splashing around in her father’s backyard pool and reading books about dolphins and sharks, she resolved to keep up her fake-flower ritual—gathering plastic blooms from the adult graves and passing them on to the kids, equally distributed, with one extra for the dolly that sat upon that ill-boding tomb.
After a few weeks, the effectiveness of Brynn’s story had started to dissipate, and Maggie was no longer afraid, especially after she had put two and two together. That doll didn’t look like an antique because it wasn’t old. With Brynn downstairs, Maggie had snuck into her big sister’s room to snoop around, and there they were at the back of her closet: a trio of porcelain dolls nearly identical to the one in Friendship Park, all of them propped up on their metal doll stands. Brynn had put the doll in the cemetery herself: merely a prop for her ghost story. She’d left it there because—not one for girly things—she had never liked the dolls Gram kept giving her for Christmas. At least one of them could be put to a good and creepy use.
And yet, despite the story losing its resonance, Maggie didn’t dare tell her sister about her secret sojourns. She stopped by the grave site every day except for when the weather was bad, and those were the days when Maggie felt the worst. Because, even though she knew the doll was Brynn’s, Maggie associated it with the little girl locked away in that ominous box. Two blocks from home, Dolly was sitting out in the wind and rain. Something about that felt wrong, especially when Maggie was safely tucked inside her home. Friends took care of one another, and Dolly deserved better. Leaving her out there like that—it just wasn’t right.
It was during one of those very storms that Maggie’s dad paused his channel surfing on the forecast, and Maggie overhead the newscaster talking about a storm called Katrina. A hurricane was coming, and while it was predicted to miss Georgia, the newscaster urged caution.
Always one for blowing things out of proportion, Maggie’s mom was already freaking out, squawking about how they needed to go to the grocery store, how it was probably already being ransacked, how she needed bread and milk and eggs, and what if the electricity went out? They should have bought that generator they’d been talking about, regardless of its cost. What about her freshly cleaned windows? She’d just spent a fortune on a cleaning service, not to mention all the landscaping she had done. What about the oak trees in the yard? They were ancient. They’d never make it. She had to call Gram and Gramps, who lived out in Florida. They were still reeling from the effects of Hurricane Dennis. “They should have never moved out there,” Maggie’s mother exclaimed, all but weeping at the thought of her parents sitting out in their mega-fancy mobile home park. Maggie loved it out in Pensacola. Gramps let her drive his golf cart. They had a tennis court and everything.
Brynn, who was lazily curled up in an armchair with a Neil Gaiman novel in her hands, frowned at their mother’s growing panic while Maggie stood frozen in the center of the living room, too young to decipher whether abject terror was the correct response.
“Time to batten down the hatches!” Maggie’s dad announced. “Brynn, honey, get the shutters. I have to close up the pool.”
“Peter, please, you need to come with me.” Maggie’s mother exhaled an exasperated sigh. “I have to call my mother!”
“You go, Stella,” he said. “The sooner the better. I’ll call.”
“Go alone?” Maggie couldn’t decide whether the suggestion to go to the supermarket had left her mom stunned or just plain annoyed. “You heard Chuck.” Chuck was the weatherman; their mother was on a first-name basis with the guy, as though he came over for cookouts and beer rather than predicted the weather for the entire Georgia coast. “The parking lot will be a nightmare.”
“You’ll be fine.” Dad.
“The lines are going to be backed up to the milk coolers. God, I need to call Arlen.” She stomped off toward the foyer to gather her purse. “She and Howie should come over. They have Harrison to worry about. If their power goes out . . .”
“Dad?” Maggie frowned, tugging on her father’s pants pocket as she watched her mother shuffle toward the door that led out to the garage. Peter Olsen turned his attention to his youngest. “What about me?” she asked. “What should I do?”
He smiled. “You? How about making sure you and your sister’s bikes are safe and sound? You don’t want to lose your wheels, do you?”
Lose her bike? That would have been a nightmare. Maggie shook her head in the negative, only to receive a get-going swat on the back from her father. A moment later, he was making a beeline for the backyard.
Maggie remained still for a moment, listening to Brynn hop up the stairs, taking them two by two in those clunky boots while Chuck continued on about the danger. Severe threat. Possible category five. Unpredictable path. Only when Maggie was sure that Brynn was out of sight did she skitter off to the garage.
The garage door was wide-open—Mom had a bad habit of leaving it gaping whenever she left the house. The oaks in the front yard were already groaning and bending against the growing wind. Leaves were tearing free of their branches. Sometimes, the storms were bad enough to strip those trees half-naked. This time, Maggie wondered if all their foliage would be gone, like an old man losing his hair. Twisting where she stood, she located her bicycle, safe and sound, propped against the wall next to Brynn’s.
Brynn didn’t ride much anymore. Sometimes she’d pedal a few blocks with Maggie to get a snowball covered in electric-green sour apple syrup. Maggie liked blue raspberry, because it reminded her of the ocean. Every now and again, their mom would send Brynn to the little convenience store a mile away, or to the garden center down the road to grab bottles of magic pellets that turned her blue hydrangeas pink. Sometimes, Maggie would tag along, especially to the store. York Peppermint Patties were her favorite, and that place sold them two for a buck. But otherwise, Brynn’s bike sat around unused, collecting dust.
Maggie, on the other hand, rode almost every day despite Brynn’s homebody ways, and she’d gotten fast. She could do a loop from here to Friendship Park in less than a few minutes, no joke. She’d timed herself on her dad’s stopwatch one day. One minute, forty-five seconds. She’d almost collapsed from the effort, but it was a new record. Taking that into consideration, if it was safe enough for her mom to go to Publix on her own, it was certainly safe enough for a ride. She’d make it quick.
She shot a look over her shoulder, as if to ask the old oaks their opinion. The leaves kept tearing free, but most of them were holding fast. It’s not so bad. Before Maggie could change her mind, she grabbed her bike by the handlebars and
threw her leg over the frame.
Because friends didn’t let friends suffer through hurricanes alone. Friends didn’t let big sisters spook them out of lending a little kindness. Dolly had no one—all alone out there, abandoned and scared. There was nothing evil about that girl, and nothing wicked about that doll. It couldn’t do anything to her because it was just a toy. And even if there had been an inkling of truth to Brynn’s tale, even if by some chance Maggie was wrong and Brynn hadn’t left that doll out there to creep her out, why would it hurt her? Maggie was being a friend. She was just being nice.
. . .
By the time Maggie returned from Friendship Park, the wind was so fierce she was hardly able to pedal against it. She careened into the garage, for once letting her bicycle carelessly fall against the floor rather than leaning it up against the wall. Her mother’s car was still gone—she was still at the Publix, probably fighting local neighborhood ladies for the last gallon of sweet tea. That was good. It meant Maggie only had to dodge two people rather than three. She tucked the doll beneath her arm, then reconsidered, cramming the toy beneath the thin cotton of her Georgia Aquarium T-shirt.
With half the doll’s skirt and booted feet hanging out from beneath her shirt, she dashed through the kitchen and into the hall, throwing herself onto the stairs that would lead her up to her room. She took them two by two, her anxiety growing sevenfold as she neared Brynn’s room. If Brynn spotted what Maggie was doing, she’d be pissed. Not only was Maggie screwing up her spooky story, but she was taking possession of something that didn’t belong to her. It was Brynn’s doll—a gift from Gram. If Brynn wanted to leave it out in the cemetery to get destroyed by the rain, that was none of her kid sister’s business. Those were the rules.
But the thing was, that doll was no longer Brynn’s. Her sister had given it to the dead girl in Friendship Park, and it was up to Maggie to keep it from getting ruined by the storm. The doll went beneath Maggie’s bed. Maggie’s guilt was filed away under what Brynn doesn’t know won’t hurt her. Besides, what difference did it make? Honestly, why would Brynn care?