Chapter 1(end) – The Doll in the Dust
Part IV: Whispers from the Wallpaper
The doll remained perfectly still.
Morrigan, breath shallow and tight, took one step back from the window. Her eyes flicked between the dead raven on the other side of the glass and the doll's unmoving form. Her brain catalogued both with a slow, clinical detachment—trauma had taught her to go cold when fear got too large.
The raven's feathers clung to the crack it had left. A thin line now veined across the window like a hairline fracture in bone. Blood had already begun to freeze in the corners of the frame, darkening from black to rust-red as the frost took it.
Something had sent the raven.
Or something had called it.
Morrigan's fingers curled tighter around the head of her cane. She'd read stories of omens—of crows and ravens delivering death, not just as signs but as scouts. What unsettled her wasn't the bird. It was the doll. Its positioning. Its stillness. The sense that it had seen something—and chosen not to tell her.
She crouched, slowly, carefully, until her face was level with it.
Up close, the details were worse.
The embroidery on the dress—now more visible in the moonlight—was stitched in spirals that repeated obsessively, almost maddening in their precision. The lace around its sleeves was torn and mended in the exact same place on each arm. The mouth, though closed, was ever so slightly off-center, like it had once smiled wider and had been forcibly re-set.
And those eyes.
Black glass, yes. But behind the glass—layers.
It gave the unsettling illusion of depth, as if one could fall into them.
"You're not just porcelain," Morrigan whispered.
Her breath fogged the doll's face. She didn't dare touch it again. Instead, she leaned back on her heels, wincing as her spine protested, and sat on the edge of her bed.
Her heart hadn't stopped pounding. That dream—no, vision—wasn't a dream at all. It had left residue, a film of dread under her skin, like oil that wouldn't wash away.
The woman with her face.
The stitched mouths.
"No more names," the woman had said. "No more voices."
She thought of the letter again. Her mother's panic, hidden under layers of resolve. Do not let her speak again.
Was she too late?
The sound of the creaking door returned to her, and she turned sharply. It was still ajar. Just slightly. Like a breath had pushed it, not a hand.
Morrigan rose to her feet, using the cane more for certainty than balance. Her hand hovered near the doorknob, but she didn't touch it. Not yet. The hallway beyond was dark, even though she always left the wall-lamp burning. Something had snuffed it.
She reached for her matches on the bedside table, struck one, and lit the stub of candle she kept in a brass saucer. The light flickered weakly, casting uncertain shadows along the walls. The wallpaper—roses and thorns, faded and peeling—seemed to twist slightly as the flame moved.
Whispers slid under the doorframe.
She froze.
Not words, not clearly. Just the impression of them. Like hearing someone speak behind a wall in another room, their voice made of breath and rhythm rather than meaning.
The wallpaper pulsed slightly in her peripheral vision. Her skin prickled.
She remembered something from one of her mother's books—an obscure tale about spirits that wove themselves into walls. If left long enough, and fed enough grief, they became permanent fixtures. Hauntings made solid. She remembered the illustration—roses opening to reveal eyes. Thorns curling into letters.
Her gaze returned to the wall nearest her bed.
There, in the peeling corner near the floor, she saw it.
A single rosebud printed into the design had been scratched out—by nails, by something sharp. The shape beneath it had changed. A letter.
M.
She took a step back.
The doll, still perched on the windowsill, now faced inward.
Her candle guttered as the whispering stopped.
Morrigan turned slowly toward the sound of flapping wings.
The dead raven had disappeared from the glass.
Its smear remained. A greasy shadow of its form. But the bird itself was gone.
She crossed to the window and opened it, just enough to look outside. The air was glacial, biting into her skin instantly. The trees were still again. The wind had died. But the smell—earth, rot, and iron—had thickened.
Something had come through.
Not physically. But something had arrived.
She closed the window, locked the latch, and returned to the doll.
"You moved," she whispered. "You see things."
She wanted to throw it. Shatter it. Burn it.
But she didn't.
Instead, she picked it up—gingerly—and carried it back to the desk. She didn't place it with reverence, but she didn't toss it either. She set it down, facing the corner.
The doll leaned ever so slightly to the left.
She turned it to the right.
It leaned left again.
Morrigan said nothing.
Instead, she returned to bed, pulled the quilt up to her chin, and watched the doll until her eyes burned.
She didn't sleep again that night.
When dawn broke, faint and grey, the whispering had ceased.
But the wallpaper had curled back further.
Three more letters had appeared.
O. R. R.