Missing Dolls Around the World The Dark Magazine

They found the first coffin in North America, in Vancouver, BC, at a graveyard. The slender mahogany box was no larger than the forearm of a child of ten. The workers were digging up a slot for an upcoming burial of an important political figure that I were hired to document. This was meant to be a historical moment, among the others I documented, but this one didn’t seem as important in comparison, and only perceived as more important because of the politician’s wealth and power, making his voice louder, more heard than others who lay voiceless in their graves around us. I wasn’t there for the voiceless, but I should have been. Both the diggers and me were surprised when they unearthed the miniature coffin instead.

Within the coffin lay a molding doll dressed in plain black cotton smeared with specks of dirt and one eye missing. Where there should have been a black, plastic, void, there was instead a deep speckled green that spread across the rubber face like disease. Her raven hair which resembled the colour of my own was tangled, lank, clumped, and greasy—singed and split at the ends. She had blackened, charred, toes with darkness crawling up her legs like a living, growing shadow, though the doll herself was dead, as was the owner she resembled.

A cruel joke, was what I hoped this was, as heavy droplets of sweat rolled down my back, catching at the waist band of my high waist jeans. The handle of a thin blade—sheathed—tucked at my side tremored against my skin as I shook. It was probably unnecessary, but I could never be too safe. It would be a risk being unarmed since the first time my ex breached my restraining order against him. It was lucky I only came away with a minor concussion. Staying in the dark for a week wasn’t too bad, but missing the jobs I could’ve taken on, like this one, made a dent in my savings—a dent I couldn’t afford.

I stood next to the workers as they continued to dust off the small coffin. My face scrunched up in a confusion that matched theirs.

“What is that?” I asked.

A young boy ran forth and snatched the coffin from the digger’s hand—one of their sons perhaps, maybe take-your-kids-to-work day. What a great place for the boy to frolic—and clutched it with a grip so tight his bones showed through stretched translucent skin. If the doll were alive, it wouldn’t be able to breathe between his fingers.

“Broken,” the boy whispered with bulging eyes and a smile so wide it looked as though his face would rip apart.

I wondered where else might similar dolls be unearthed.

The second coffin was found in the basement of a condo set for demolition in Manhattan. Its wood—waterlogged—was consumed by murky mold from prolonged exposure to moisture and lacking sun. The second doll was missing her legs. Her ginger hair sat in a messy top-knot with her yellow cotton dress, embroidered with sunflowers, soiled beneath the hips. The doll’s eyes were intact, but they looked tired, weary, defeated with oval indents of purple weighing down the lower lids.

Second Doll’s husband was a joy, on the outside, with a cigarette in one hand and the palm of his other digging into the small of her back at his company annual party. Her bright gold dress cost more than half her salary working part-time at the grocers as a cashier, but her husband forced her to buy it anyhow—a new one each year. The husband didn’t want Second Doll to work full time and certainly didn’t allow her to wear the makeup she had on now to work.

“There’s no need . . . especially for a job like that,” he had said.

Second Doll stayed. And she smiled. And she blinked back liquid pain that burnt the lower lids of her eyes, lined them red. What else could she have done? Her parents loved him, her friends loved him, she… loved him? Didn’t she? Yes, of course she did—does. There would be no one else more suitable, her parents had said, And she was running out of time.