Money had been tight for months, and Eve’s birthday was coming up faster than I could afford. I wanted to get her something special, something that felt like a real present, so I went to the flea market hoping to find a hidden treasure at a price I could manage. After searching through dusty boxes and tables of old toys, I found it: an old doll with a faded blue dress and a tiny crack beneath one painted eye. She wasn’t new, but she had a soft, vintage charm—like she had been loved before and was ready to be loved again. It felt right. It felt like something Eve would adore.

When I got home, Eve ran to me immediately, practically shaking with excitement. I pulled out the doll, ready to hand it to her, when I heard a strange sound coming from inside it. A soft crackling. Not like plastic breaking or stuffing shifting—something else. Something that made me freeze. I lifted the doll to my ear. The crackling came again, faint but definitely there. Eve reached for it, but something in me hesitated. I told her I needed to check something first and carried the doll to the kitchen table.

Under the bright kitchen light, I gently pressed and shook the doll, trying to recreate the sound. When I tilted it forward, the crackling returned, a whispery static-like noise that sent chills through me. That’s when I noticed a thin, almost invisible seam along the back of the doll’s porcelain neck. Carefully, using a small screwdriver, I pried it open. The back plate popped off, and inside the hollow body, I found several tightly rolled pieces of brittle, yellowed paper. The crackling had been the old paper shifting.

I unrolled them slowly. The handwriting was shaky, rushed. The first note read: “If you found this, please help. They put her inside the doll. She keeps whispering.” My stomach tightened. The second note said: “Don’t let a child keep it.” The third: “She talks when the lights are off.” Eve stepped away from the table, fear growing in her eyes. She whispered that she didn’t want the doll anymore. I couldn’t blame her.

I put the doll in the back of a cupboard and sealed the notes in a plastic bag, planning to throw everything out with the morning trash. But around 2 A.M., I woke to a faint sound—crackling. The same sound. It was coming from the hallway. Heart pounding, I opened my bedroom door and saw the cupboard slightly open. And the doll was sitting on the floor, facing Eve’s room. Her cracked porcelain eye reflected the darkness. The crackling shifted, turning into a faint static hiss, like someone trying to whisper through a radio.

I didn’t wait to hear more. I grabbed the doll, stuffed it into a garbage bag, and rushed outside barefoot to throw it into the trash bin. When I came back inside, Eve stood at her doorway, sleepy and frightened. “Mom… was the doll walking?” she asked. I hugged her tightly and told her no, that I had taken care of it. But as I stood there holding her, I swore I heard it again—the faint crackling sound drifting in from outside, from the trash bin, as if the doll wasn’t done yet.