Glass Eyes

Growing up in a house with three floors was weird. Growing up in a house where the third floor was covered in old porcelain dolls that stare at you, is just creepy. This was my grandparents house. I was supposed to sleep on the third floor on a bed built like a wooden tent. I often played video games up there, but when it got dark I would go downstairs to sleep with my grandparents, I was always afraid of the dolls.

One night my grandparents got tired of me staying in bed with them and told me to go sleep in my room like a big girl should. It was nine at night and I had to creep up the stairs, alone, past all their dolls, there was no way around them, they were on the landing right before the final four steps. I ran past the dolls and almost slammed my door shut. I ran to my bed and got under my covers.

I stayed there and tried to go to sleep but I couldn't. At about one I heard a noise outside my room,  like something fell down the stairs, something glass, or at least fragile.

I slowly got up out of my bed, grabbed my small scaled bat. I opened my door slowly and looked out. I saw one of the dolls stands was empty, a small puff of white powder on the floor going toward the stairs. Looking around the corner of the stairs I saw pieces and eventually the rest of the mangled bits of the doll at the end. Next to the door the dolls eye looked up at me, stared accusingly at me.

My grandmother rushed out of her room to see what happened, she saw me with the bat and the doll lying on the second floor. She shouted at me to pick it up. I tried to explain that I hadn't done it, that I had been in my room, but she didn't believe me, she told me to put as much of  it as I could in the corner and we will clean it up in the morning. I did so, trying not to step on any of its pieces and trying to avoid its eye.

The next morning I woke up at around six like always, I went to the landing and looked in the corner, the doll had already been picked up...in fact, it was back on it's stand, fixed as if it had never been broken. I went down stairs and asked my grandmother about it and she looked at me as if I was crazy. The doll hadn't been broken, it sat on its stand all night like it always did.

I left the house for school and tried not to think about the doll and what had happened the night before. It was a normal day or normal enough for the thoughts I was having. I came home planning on doing nothing but ignore my homework and play more video games. I threw my backpack in the corner and sat on my bed sighing heavily. I lay back and closed my eyes closed for a while. I think it was about an hour later I got up and looked around my room.

Dolls...All around my room the dolls were looking at me, sitting where my other things used to be, replacing everything and leaving no part of the wall uncovered.

"One...two"

Did someone just talk? I didn't know what was happening I just wanted to wake up, or go to sleep, whichever made them go away.

"Three...four"

They were chanting, counting, but to what? I wasn't sure and I couldn't think, I ran to my door, stomping hard as I could trying to get someones attention downstairs, I yanked open my door but they surrounded the entrence outside.

"Five...six"

They just kept counting, they wouldn't stop, I kicked them out of the way as best I could and ran into the kitchen on the bottom floor. I tried to leave, I tried I-jiggled the door but no matter how many times I locked and unlocked the door it wouldn't open. I couldn't force it, I couldn't even break the glass that was on it. So I grabbed a knife If I can't leave at least they're not going to stare at me anymore I won't-I can't have them chanting and staring at me for the rest of my life.

"Seven...EIGHT"

I was getting scared very, very scared. I reached the dolls and started slashing, I cutting, stabbing, anything I could. I broke all of them and as I did, instead of dust and porceilin they started oozing blood. More blood than I think even a fully grown person does. and broke everyone of them, blood came out instead of dust and porcilin. I kept stabbing them until my walls, floor, bed, every part of the third floor, and the banister leading down to the second, was shredded into unrecognizable bits.

"NINE........."

I killed them all, I killed them all. They weren't staring at me anymore but they were still counting, why were they counting what were they counting to? and it sounded like they were almost done. The blood, the blood that came from the dolls started pooling downstairs. There was no incline toward the stairs why was it pooling that way it sho- it was carpet, it should have have just stayed. I followed it, i-it was leading me, of course it was leading me.

"Ten." It was barely a whisper. I was standing in the blood and suddenly it congealed around my feet quickly. Too quickly for me to leave too quickly for me to even react. It held me in place, I tried to pull my feet up but it tugged at my skin and I knew what was gonna happen. If I did pull my feet up the bottoms of my feet would come out and I would be bleeding, and I couldn't run. I wouldn't be able to get out, just like I wouldn't now. I fell to my knees, trying not to rip my heels out of the blood wanting to scream but the silence had taken my voice.

I heard something rolling behind me and slowly turned, my feet in pain from the twist almost coming loose. I looked at the top of the stairs and the dolls I had stabbed, the destroyed mangled bloody bodies were looking at me through the banister supports, one in particular, was moving toward the stairs, the dolls were rolling to the banister to get a view of what was happening. I could barely see the one walkings movements at first, but it began to speed up, it got faster and faster, and when it hit the stairs it was racing at an inhuman speed, it tripped, and slammed into the corner of the hallway jumping the entire flight. Right where it was when it was first broken.

The shattered eye was no longer looking at the top of the banister though. It was again looking straight at me, it was turned upwards on its piece. As I stared at it my grandmother ran out of her room and saw the doll, but she completely ignored me it was as if I wasn't even there. She looked up at where I stood the night before, she shouted at the nothing to come out, as if something had been up there, in my room or something.

I heard the door upstairs open. But no one else had been upstairs with me. I wasn't having a sleep over and my sister was, she was gone. No one else slept up there but me that night, but then I heard footsteps they came down the first set of stairs, then they came down the landing, then they came to the top of the second flight of stairs. She said in my voice "Yes?". It was- it was weird hearing my voice come out of someone else's mouth. I turned away from my grandmother to the girl, it- she was almost like a twin. I didn't have a twin. I've always dreamed of it but, but I've never...me and my sister don't even look alike. The girl sh-she was my height and she looked exactly like me except...except. her eyes...Except her eyes. she- there was no mistaking it anymore.

The next morning all I could see were the stairs, and the floor. Early in the morning a strange woman came toward me with a small dustpan set, she picked me up with it and walked me outside. She threw me into what I assumed was a plastic bin, then darkness.