That’s all the ad on Instagram said. There was a little profile picture of a guy in a black hoody posing with ninja stars. The ad itself was a black and white image of what I took to be the ninja guy’s evil doll, with that text written over it, all in caps, just like above. It was one of those creepily specific, localised ads that make you think your phone’s mic is listening to your conversations. I only ever had conversations with my grandma, a 100-year-old motormouth. Which explains the ad because she was flapping her gums about her old childhood doll and how she swore it held an evil spirit when it popped up. I was lying on the sofa, doomscrolling, trying my best to ignore the old bat. But she kept yabbing on. I felt bad because she was very, very old and completely see-through. So I finally gave in and asked what evil this doll had done.
Apparently, on more than one occasion, during tea parties my grandma held as a child, the doll looked like it didn’t care for the little sandwiches my grandma was serving. It didn’t change its facial expression or move or anything. It was more the unappreciative vibe it gave off. ‘Evil!’ my grandma shrieked in her shrill voice and shivered like a little girl all alone in a cold, dark forest at night.
The doll also called her mother a stinkin’ whore.
It was the first interesting thing I’d heard since I was 12.
I am 33.
Not long after, her father locked the doll in a big wooden chest and stuffed it at the back of the attic; the attic of her childhood home which she inherited when her father and whore mother passed away. The home my grandma and I lived in alone, many years later, just us two rattling about inside like two unspeakable words in a big, hollow head. The fact her father didn’t throw the doll into the nearest fire or at least donate it to charity so it could become some other schmuck’s problem just shows the level of intelligence that runs in our blood.
My grandma soon moved the topic of conversation on to some other crap that happened many years ago, and I forgot about the whole thing. But not before an unfamiliar feeling of restlessness forced my thumb to save the ad. After a whole day of luminous conversation, my subconscious finally pieced the two things together: the guy’s ad and my grandma’s evil doll. The switch must’ve been flipped a good fifty to sixty times before the light bulb finally shone on this brilliant idea like a newborn beneath fluorescent hospital lights: I should find this doll of hers and take it to meet this other guy’s doll! The fact it took a whole day for this idea to form just goes to show how much I take after my great grandfather.
I twiddled the thought around like a pair of thumbs, weighing up the pros and cons.
Pro: get out of house.
Con: have to leave house.
Pro: talk to someone other than my Grandma.
Con: risk of new friend thinking I smell bad.
Pro: a good, solid reason to shower.
The list went on and on. I agonised over every possible outcome. I won’t list them all here or else I’ll look crazy. But I agonised for so long that my shadow seeped into the sofa and refused to move when I got up. I added up the points as best I could. There were 456 pros to 452 cons on my count. The decision was out of my hands.
The upshot of having to do all that maths was that it was 8:45pm by the time I finished. My grandma was fast asleep or maybe stone dead in her bed. So she wouldn’t pester me with questions like: ‘Why are you going up into the attic?’ or ‘Why are you going up into the attic?’ Her short-term memory had long since left her just like everything does. So I went up into the attic, unburdened and feeling a strange freedom.
It smelled like the bottom of a deep lake with just as much crap lying around. I crawled over boxes of once fashionable clothes and VHS tapes with labels like: BIRTHDAY 1974. I crawled over musical instruments, old school textbooks, and baby stuff, towards the blackest corner in which I rightly assumed the chest would lie. But when I reached it, it wasn’t an ominous old wooden chest like my grandma remembered. It was just a metal piece of crap box. A glorified sardine tin. I questioned whether it was the right piece of crap box at all but after a bit of dusting a label appeared: EVIL DOLL. My heart sank. Surely this box couldn’t hold true evil, I thought. The whole adventure seemed destined to lie rotting like everything else up there. The fact my great grandfather at least had the brains to label things well was no consolation. The crap piled around me looked like artefacts from countless other abandoned adventures. So much life given up by weak hearts. The sight stirred a deep sense of loss which stirred a deeper sense of refusal.
I crossed through the hatch with the evil doll tin under my arm. But I nearly fell off the ladder when my grandma croaked from the bottom: ‘Why were you up in the attic?’ She should’ve been asleep or tending to visions of long dead relatives like others her age. But there she was, up and about, like someone really alive. I admired that. So much so, I ended up telling her about the whole thing. How her yabbing on led me to a strange Instagram ad. How the ad made unspoken promises. How I’d found her evil doll and was planning to take it to meet up with this other evil doll to see if I couldn’t make a friend. She looked confused, almost scared, and said: ‘When’d the hell I tell you about my evil doll?’ I rolled my eyes at the old bat. ‘Don’t roll your eyes at me,’ she said, and out of what I can only assume was spite, added: ‘And don’t think I’m not coming with you.’
I protested. I told her the meeting of two evil dolls is no kind of gathering for a woman of her age. She’d be better off at a lentil broth cooking class. But she laid the old one-hundred-year-old-puppy-dog-eyes trick on me and I couldn’t refuse. Because somewhere, deep down, those frail, sort of annoyingly watery eyes dusted off a thought: that this old bat who I lived with, this old loony who took me in after my mother split, child-free, into the night, this old crone who raised me with loving tonguefuls of sweethearts and punishments, this old woman, she was dying. A trip out might just do her some good.
It took us four days to get to the guy’s house. His house was thirty-four miles from our house. It took so long because every time we changed transportation my grandma grew too tired to go on and demanded we find a reasonably priced hotel room. We changed trains twice and caught one bus.
I might’ve enjoyed the hotels, but I didn’t. Instead, I spent each night explaining to my grandma why the hell we were in a hotel room in the first place, retelling the whole story in great detail until her face resembled a person from this era. Finally! I’d think, and lower my head to the pillow. But soon, in the darkness of our room, I’d hear: ‘Are we off to the town fair, father?’ And we’d be back to square one. The darkness made her memories fault and flicker just like it does to us all.
I DM’d the guy the night before we were due to arrive: hi Hey! Hey!!! hello there! nearly there! at your place soon. Cant wait goin’ going to be great! weird! Looking forward to the spooky! Grandma coming haha. Sorry!!
He didn’t reply.
We showed up anyway, having passed the point of no return two days and twenty miles ago. It went just how you’d expect. We were down in the guy’s basement. My grandma was as confused as ever. The guy pretended not to notice. But it was clear he was pissed off about me bringing her. I probably could’ve showered better, too.
We set the dolls up facing each other on old wooden chairs. We hid behind a fake wall the guy had built specifically for this moment and watched.
The evil tension mounted.
My grandma’s doll came to life first with a violent jerk. Thanks to the fake wall, it could see nothing to terrorise other than the doll in front, so it terrorised that. In a voice I can only describe as Kermit the Frog with mouth herpes, it shouted: ‘Rotten whore!’
This pissed the other doll off, which had come to life now too.
The other doll screeched: ‘Fat piece of shit!’
These insults made no sense. They were dolls, both virginal and slim. But evil isn’t rational, I guess. Meanwhile my grandma was calling me father and asking to be lifted up onto my shoulders. She was at the town fair, peacefully lost in her memories. The dolls called each other more horrific names which I won’t repeat and which made even less sense.
Then came the bile.
Litres and litres of stinking black liquid shot out of their stiff mouths. The guy pretended to be enjoying the show, I mean what more could he have asked for? But I could tell we were ruining his experience. He looked out of the corner of his eye as my grandma rode a unicorn on the merry-go-round. Once there was no more bile, the dolls dropped to the floor and used the power of their evil spirits to bash each other with their chairs. I smiled at the guy but I could tell he was pissed. And it takes a certain intensity of pissed to ruin two solid chairs floating mid-air, bashing possessed evil dolls. So, yeah, this guy was very pissed.
‘Control her, please,’ the guy said.
I wished I could.
After an hour of chair bashing the evil dolls were panting on the floor, exhausted. My grandma’s doll raised its little stuffed hand like it needed a breather. Then chair-bashed the other doll one final time. Tricksy little thing, just like my mother. The tricked doll found the strength to raise its head off the floor just enough to say, ‘Ah, to Hell with ye!’ and fell into a deep sleep or maybe died.
Satisfied with its victory, my grandma’s doll did the same.
So, yeah, just like how you’d expect.
The guy packed up in silence. I nearly asked him if he wanted to meet up again, see if the dolls would fight some more, but he was staring at my grandma. She was eating invisible candy floss. He’d dropped the whole side-eye act a while ago and was staring straight at her. I changed my mind about asking and watched my grandma too. For a moment, this guy and I were just watching my grandma eat invisible candy floss. ‘What?’ she said. Then, seeing her doll: ‘You boys have a nice little tea party?’ The guy recoiled into his black hoody. I just buried my head into that sugary candy floss cloud and took a big bite. It was delicious and completely empty. I led my grandma out the house and wondered how many days it would take us to get home.