[Abandoned House/Winter/2007]

Misty evenings among a small gated community shouldn’t be creepy, but damn. Doesn’t nostalgia bring in so many feelings: warmth, sadness, longing and fear, a wild array of emotions all colliding perfectly with each other to create atmosphere.

This house has been abandoned for a couple of years and rumors been circling around about it. Despite its owners’ disappearance—which has been presumed as death—you’d think the house would fall into ruin, especially for such a vintage one, but despite that, this house has never gotten dirty from outside or inside. People have rumored it’s the ghosts of the old owners keeping it clean and many more.

Problem is that no one’s willing to investigate the house due to respect for the house, except you because curiosity eats you whole and for good reason. Haunted houses sound cool. Entering through the front door, you’re greeted to the scent of hardwood and old, clean furniture, walls and decoration. It’s true, this house really is clean despite its vacancy.

Moving around the house, the feeling is serene. It doesn’t feel haunted and likely isn’t as you check the rooms. The master bedroom houses a mature and peaceful environment that gives no clue to the origin of the cleanness, apart from a particularly small broom and dustpan in the corner.

You head to the other room in the house and find it’s the room of a girl. It’s pink, soft and innocent to describe in easy words. It seems tidy and clean with its bedside table lamp powered on and bringing dim light around. Something curious is that one of its wall is lined up with dozens of crayon drawings, some recent while some old.

You pick one that hasn’t been taped to the wall and look at it. It depicts a short curly blonde girl holding arms with her big sister and parents. There’s arrows labeling each character in the drawing: the girl with the blonde hair is called Stacy while the sister: Stephanie, the parents being Thomas and Jennifer. Other drawings showcase this family doing a variety of activities although most depict the relationship between Stacy and Stephanie.

Still, why in most pictures is Stacy being carried by Stephanie, and the recent ones only depict Stacy alone?

[Crack.]

A small crack takes your attention as it originates from upstairs. Getting up to investigate, you’re led upstairs to the second floor where you find that the stairs to the attic opened. Climbing up, you enter a slightly dusty attic, nothing but boxes filled with old—

Your train of thought is stopped when you see a strange sight: small footsteps go through the attic, hiding out of view by going down the stairs and peeking in. From a pile of boxes, what seems like a 3FT vintage doll with blonde curly hair and emerald eyes walks slowly across the attic to the other end. She takes slow robotic clumsy steps as she makes her way, her body clicking and whirring with her face remaining in the same still monotone expression.

She stops and slowly extends her hand, dropping a broken red crayon and dropping it in a nearby bin before getting a new one, afterward slowly turning around and walking back to where she was before. You enter the attic and follow silently the doll through until you stop, peeking over to see the doll stop at the attic window. Her body stops whirring before she falls on her butt, sitting and holding the new red crayon in her hand. She processes this before she looks down and begins to slowly and precisely draw.

This is Stacy? A vintage robot doll? This is the one who has been cleaning the home for all this time. It’s a bigger surprise how this doll alone kept everything tidy. She silently draws on the floor of the attic due to lacking a voice box, without realizing your presence behind her. She’s drawing herself holding hands with a stickman labeled as “friend” outside the house, probably having not gone outside with anyone in a while since she was abandoned here, for a old doll, don’t expect intelligence, she has a oblivious programmed routine without much diversity.