Charlie

"So did you get back what you had given there?" Mom asked. Right, she must have been talking about the necklace.

"Yeah," I told her.

"They called me about it yesterday, you know," she said. With a jolt, I remembered that I had left my mother's phone number and address as the contact information, the reason being was that she lived close by and wasn't working graveyard hours. I didn’t want to be called in the middle of the day in case they had an update, but it looked like that had backfired on me. In other words, she already knew about the necklace’s value. "They told me how much it was worth. Did you take the money by any chance?"

"No, of course not," I told her. "It's hers, it belongs to her family."

"If she isn't already stinking rich she should sell it and use it to help the two of you start a life together," my mother said flatly. “Rather than keep something like that as an empty trinket.”

"We... haven't really reached that point yet, Mom," I told her.

"I know," she said. "I know." She bit her lower lip. "I just... look... your father and I met when the two of us were working at the factory. Both of us grew up in similar parts of town, and it was so… easy for us to talk to each other, though it didn’t always feel like that. If she's some sort of rich heiress, I don't know if that's good for you... do you see what I'm saying?"

"Well, she kind of isn't," I told her. Charlotte technically didn't have a penny to her name, though it could be said the house was hers, I had already bought it so she wasn't really doing me a favor there. And my mother wasn’t that off the mark, Charlotte was a rich heiress - though emphasis had to be placed on the ‘was’ given her wealth was entirely in the past tense. Well, Charlotte could at least say that she was richer than Suzy, who currently had a negative net worth, so Charlotte had that going for her.

"Well, I just hope you know what you're getting into," she said with a shrug.

I did take a nap after that, and when I woke up I told my folks I was heading out to go back home.

"So soon? I mean, you just barely got here," my father said. "C'mon, you can stay the night, can't you?"

"I actually can't," I told him. "I work night shift, and it really messes with my internal rhythm to be out like this, and I'll be awake till like three in the morning if I stay and I don't want to bother you guys wandering around the house in the middle of the night. Then, once all of that’s done, I'll be too tired for work."

"Can't you take a day off?" my mother asked. "They can't miss you that badly."

"I already took a few days off when I was sick, I don't want to take more," I said, only realizing my mistake when the words had left my mouth.

"You were sick? When?"

"It was just a bad case of the flu, Ma, nothing serious," I told them.

"But if you were missing work, well, knowing you you really were sick, weren't you? Why didn't you call- I could've dropped by," my mother said.

"I wouldn't want to bother you guys."

"Or we could've had Suzy come visit you- I mean, she can freelance from your house if that's what she wants to do for a few days so at least you’d have someone with you."

"You know, son, you spent your life taking care of sick people, it isn't right that you're all alone when you're sick."

Suzy being there would've added to my stress, not relieved it, though I didn’t want to voice such a sentiment out loud. "It was nothing major, all I had to do was sleep and take the occasional painkiller. It was just a few days I was mildly down. I'm fine now. Look, I wish I could stay another night, but I really can't right now- I'll definitely drop by during Thanksgiving though, alright?"

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With that promise and some more goodbyes, I left, though not before making sure I had that necklace in my glove box. Only once I had opened up its case and verified that it was inside that I drove off.

I did feel a bit guilty leaving like that, but the point still stood - I did have work, and I was going to be very miserable at work if I didn't get my shut-eye in time. Not to mention I would be leaving Charlotte alone for another day - not that I thought she minded that very much. At least, she hadn't minded being apart too much when we hadn't been... was dating the right word for it? Things had changed since then, and even if she didn't say it, she would surely begin to resent it if I wasn't there with her on the weekends repeatedly.

I did drop by a local store to get something I had my eye on for Charlotte.

I then checked the website where I had made the post earlier to see if I had a response. Well, I had a few, most of them calling out the post for being a work of fiction and a terrible one at that. However, I had received a private message from someone who seemed to have taken it seriously:

'I don't know if what you posted was really real or not, but here's what you need to do - you need to get out of that house ASAP. People do not come back as ghosts and possess dolls - that is not how things work! Whatever is making that doll move is NOT the spirit of a young girl, even if it pretends to be. That’s just a façade to get you to let your guard down. This is clearly the work of some kind of demon or other malevolent entity that only wants to possess your body as a vessel because it doesn't want to remain confined in a doll. It is tricking you and lying to you - do not believe it. You made a mistake in so much as speaking to it, let alone acknowledging its existence. Get out of there and call an exorcist first thing you can! Your life is very well in danger, if not your soul.'

I sighed. Yeah, this was about exactly what I was expecting when I had posted something like this online. I wondered if I even wanted to bother replying and then figured that I had very little to lose other than a few minutes of time by replying.

'I’m certain that it's not demonic - I haven't had anything bad happen to me yet. If you have any other advice, I'll listen to it, but you're wrong and have probably watched far too many horror movies.'

Then again, with the way that I was describing Charlotte in my post, I couldn't help but think that if people didn't reach the conclusion that I was delusional, they would likely reach the other conclusion. But I couldn’t help but try to frame Charlotte’s situation in a way that didn’t make it seem either crazy or some sort of weird romantic fantasy.

Oh well, there was little I could do to help that, and I hadn't expected anything to come out of the whole thing anyway.

On the way back home, I stopped by a rest stop, and found that I had gotten a different private message from someone else that went like this:

‘Hello, I don’t know if that post of yours was real or not, but in case it was, I wanted to make an offer to you. I have collected dolls for over ten years, and I would be quite interested in seeing this doll that can speak and walk around at night. It seems that you are quite distressed by having her within your house, and I can imagine you probably want to get rid of her. If she is real, I would like to add her to my collection - I can guarantee you a good price for her, that I promise, and I’ll take her off your hands. If you’re interested in selling her, do please contact me and we can discuss this matter further. Additionally, if possible, could you send me a picture of her?’

Once my initial disgust had worn off after I had read the message, I immediately blocked the user.

It wasn’t just the fact that Charlotte could not be taken outside the house or she would be nothing more than a regular doll. What concerned me more was that I that after I had mentioned the fact that Charlotte was possessed by the spirit of an actual girl that someone would want to buy her like she was some piece of exotic furniture that had just happened to catch their eye. It seemed little better than human trafficking - no, in my mind, it was exactly the same, because I did not think of Charlotte as anything less than a full person.

It was an unfortunate reminder that I had to be careful who I revealed Charlotte’s secret to. There would be people like this user who would want to either ‘collect her’ for the oddity of her very existence, or would want to experiment on her.

I had spoken to Vanessa too freely, it was good that she hadn’t taken me seriously, otherwise it would’ve caused a host of problems. But the more people I reached out to, the more likely it was that I would eventually find someone who would believe what I was saying.

I felt more protective of Charlotte than I would anyone else - because she couldn’t do anything to defend herself for about half of the day, and that she was also completely helpless when she was outside the house. Not to mention she was physically weaker than a normal woman would be, fear had been the only thing that had let her chase so many people away from the house. If someone knew everything about her and her capabilities, and if that someone had ill intent, there was little she could do to resist.

As such, I realized the severity of my earlier mistake now, and would be more careful when talking about her in the future.