When eight-year-old Clara received the antique porcelain doll from her great-aunt Lydia, she was enchanted. The doll, dressed in a lace-trimmed Victorian gown, had glassy blue eyes and auburn curls that shimmered in the light. Its painted smile seemed frozen in polite amusement.
"Her name is Annalise," Lydia said with a strange tightness in her voice. "She’s been in our family a very long time. Just… don’t let her out of your sight."
Clara nodded, thrilled. But that first night, something felt off. She placed Annalise on the rocking chair in the corner of her bedroom and tucked herself into bed. Sometime after midnight, Clara awoke to the faint creak of the chair moving.
Squinting in the dark, she saw it—rocking slowly. Annalise’s head tilted just slightly toward her. Clara pulled the covers over her face and whispered, "It’s just a draft… just a draft..."
In the days that followed, odd things began to happen. Her toys rearranged themselves. Lights flickered. Her cat, Muffin, refused to enter the room. And always, Annalise was watching.
One afternoon, Clara’s mother found her crying in the hallway.
"She locked me in the closet!" Clara sobbed. "Annalise did it!"
Her mother sighed, brushing back her hair. "You probably locked it by accident, sweetie. Dolls can’t move."
But Clara wasn’t convinced. She started keeping a notebook of what Annalise did each night—the times she disappeared from her chair, where she turned up, the whispers Clara thought she heard when no one else was around.
Then came the night of the storm.
Thunder shook the house. Lightning flashed across the bedroom, and Clara sat bolt upright in bed. The chair was empty. Her eyes scanned the room—and froze.
Annalise stood on the windowsill.
Before Clara could scream, the doll turned her head slowly, those cold glass eyes catching the lightning’s gleam.
"You belong to me now," the doll whispered in a voice like a creaking floorboard.
Clara ran.
Her parents found her hiding under the kitchen table, shaking. They went upstairs together, only to find Annalise sitting calmly in her chair, exactly where she’d always been.
"Enough is enough," her mother said. "We’re putting that thing in the attic."
Clara watched as her father carried the doll up the creaky stairs, sealed her in a wooden trunk, and locked it shut.
That night, Clara slept soundly for the first time in weeks.
But in the attic, the trunk shifted.
And from inside came a faint creaking... followed by a whisper:
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