Mystery Plant
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I was in the middle of a project when the phone rang. It was my husband calling from his office to ask me if I’d found our cat, which had been missing for three days. At that time it had not returned home and we were worried about how she would be fed as we did not want her to eat dog food.
I told him that I hadn’t seen her since the day before yesterday when he left on business, but that I thought perhaps she might have followed us to the grocery store where I bought dog food, so I’d looked around there first.
When I hung up the phone, I felt a wave of despair wash over me because I couldn’t imagine what could have happened to the little creature; then suddenly I remembered that I’d also visited the pet store in town where I bought some cat toys.
The next morning after breakfast, I took off immediately with the car to search for the cat. After driving aimlessly all around town, I finally parked on a side street near the pet store and began walking back toward the house. As I walked along, I noticed something strange growing on the sidewalk.
At first, I thought it might be some sort of plant, but it soon became obvious that this was no ordinary garden flower or weed—it was a living thing. And although at first glance it didn’t seem too unusual, upon closer examination you could see the peculiar shape of its mouth and face, which reminded me of a human being. The eyes were wide open, staring straight ahead.
It’s like those dolls you buy in toy stores,” said my husband, who happened to come out onto the porch just as I returned from the pet store. “They’re not toys though, are they? They’re alive.” He stared down at the object in front of us.
“Yes, I think the same is true here—this might be a doll, too”—I answered, bending down to get a better look—” but it doesn’t move, does it?” We both stood looking at the doll-like figure for several minutes, unable to believe our own eyes.
Finally, I called a friend whose son worked at the pet store and asked him to call around and find out if anyone had reported a lost cat matching our description of ours. Our cat was wearing a collar that emitted an electronic signal so that if someone picked up our cat at any vet or animal hospital, the doctor would receive a message alerting them to the fact.
When I hung up the phone, my friend’s voice came into the receiver.
“The pet store has received a message regarding your cat, Mrs. Brody. A lady in town found the cat wandering alone on the highway late last night. She brought it in and the veterinarian examined it and said it appeared to be suffering from heat exhaustion, so she gave it a shot of water and put it to sleep.”
“Thank goodness!” I said, feeling great relief. Then I heard the words of my husband: “But what about the other one?”
We went back inside and got another good look at the mysterious object in front of us. My husband said, “You know, this might be some kind of alien life form.” I agreed with him, wondering why such a thing should have been growing right on the sidewalk. Later, when we decided to take the doll apart, I discovered that it was made of a soft, pliant material.
There were folds and creases in it, and the mouth and eyes appeared to be separate pieces. You could even see the seams where they met. There was also a tiny hole in each eye socket, through which light shone. When you pressed down on the left eye, the right one opened, too.
As we studied the doll, my husband pointed out that the coloration of the skin and hair seemed quite real. “When we pick it up and examine it closely, it seems almost alive,” he said.
On a whim, we took the doll with us to show to our neighbor, who was a local police officer. He took one look at it and said, “That’s a very realistic doll, isn’t it?”
“What do you mean by real?” asked my husband. “Could it be a special type of toy?”
“No, I’m sure it’s not that,” replied our neighbor. “It looks like one of the kids’ toys that are made from rubber, but it’s much more lifelike than anything that’s ever been sold.”
Then I recalled that I once read somewhere that the military was working on a project involving a new type of rubber-like substance that could serve the purpose of body armor, and if you crumpled it up into a ball, it wouldn’t return to its original shape; instead, it would stretch and reshape itself, returning to the same size and shape as before.
It was reported that this substance was being used in some of their training exercises for new recruits, who needed to learn how to fight without causing physical damage to themselves or others. If I remember correctly, the stuff was going to be mass-produced, possibly as early as the following year.
“But I don’t understand,” said my husband. “Do you mean that there’s a chance it really is some sort of alien life form?”
Our neighbor shook his head. “I’m afraid not, Mr. and Mrs. Brody. This thing is definitely a toy.”
He handed it back to us, saying, “I wish you luck in finding your cat. If you need me to search for it, I’ll put in some extra hours.”
We thanked him, but told him we didn’t expect to find our cat anyway. In fact, we hadn’t seen her since that day we’d gone away. “Well, I hope you do find your cat,” he said. “And I’ve also heard of missing dogs turning up after a while, so you never know…”
My husband and I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to decide whether we should take our neighbor’s advice and hire a private detective to conduct a thorough search for our cat. But my heart wasn’t in it, and we decided to give up and go to bed. The house was quiet except for the sound of rain hitting the window.
As I turned off the light in the bedroom, I thought about the doll on the floor. I suddenly remembered what the newspaper article had said. It described a strange creature found in the woods, that looked like a cross between a fish and a spider, which was supposedly responsible for biting people, causing them to lose consciousness and then die.
At first, we believed it to be a hoax, but now I began to wonder if perhaps we’d actually found something like that.
“Maybe we’re just imagining things,” said my husband. “In any case, it’s probably nothing dangerous, and I think we should forget about it.”
Even though he didn’t seem convinced, I nodded in agreement. We reached across the bed for the remote control. On the television screen, there was a weather report, with predictions of heavy rains, which were expected to continue throughout the evening.
“You know, I wish we’d paid more attention to the news reports,” said my husband. “If we had, we might have known that this storm was coming.”
On Sunday morning, my husband noticed that the doll was still lying on the floor of the hallway. We both felt uneasy and wondered if we should move it, but we couldn’t bring ourselves to touch the thing. All day long, my husband kept going outside in order to make sure that all doors and windows were tightly shut.
Our daughter was home, and she wanted to play with the doll. My husband told her not to, but she persisted in her efforts. Finally, when she managed to get the doll to stand up, he threatened to take it away, but that only made her cry even harder.
By late afternoon, the sun had finally returned. We’d promised our daughter that we’d go out to dinner, and as soon as we got her ready, we set off for the nearby restaurant. Once inside, we ordered a hamburger for her, as well as some chicken fingers.
As soon as she finished eating, she wanted to go to the bathroom, so we went along with her. When we came back to the table, we found that our food had arrived. My husband dug in, and our daughter ate almost everything on her plate, but I stopped myself from taking more than a few bites.
After the meal, we took our daughter to the park, where we played on the swings and slides. She was getting tired, but she didn’t want to return home yet, so we stayed until dusk. By then, she was completely exhausted, and my husband carried her back to the car.
As we drove back home, my husband asked me if we should call the police. “Do you think they’ll come out and take a look at that doll, and maybe tell us whether it’s safe to keep it around?”
The answer seemed obvious: certainly not. I knew that my husband didn’t want to admit it, but if the doll wasn’t harmful, we could live with it; however, if it was capable of doing something terrible, we’d obviously have to do whatever was necessary to protect our child.
“I guess we’ll see what happens,” I said, and then I changed the subject by asking, “How are you feeling? You haven’t been sick again, have you?” I knew that he was prone to bouts of dizziness, and I was worried that he might pass out once or twice every year.
“No, not this time,” he replied. He sighed, and said, “I guess I’ll be fine.”
My husband fell asleep in the passenger seat. As I drove, I tried to figure out exactly how I was supposed to explain the doll to the police. If we called them, would they send a uniformed officer to our house, or would there be a full investigation, with experts sent out to examine the doll?
Maybe I should ask my husband’s doctor to write a letter stating that he wasn’t really ill, but instead suffering from a recurring nightmare. Then, when the authorities saw that he was perfectly healthy, they’d leave us alone, and we could simply pretend that nothing unusual had occurred. That way, no one would ever be the wiser.
When we got home, I put my daughter to bed right away, and then I started preparing some tea. While the water boiled, I thought about the doll. There was a possibility that it was harmless, but I also suspected that it might be doing something terrible to us.
The doll might have been responsible for the rain that was pouring down, and it might have caused the electrical failure, too. Was it possible that the doll had somehow managed to get into our house through a crack in the window? That was why it had appeared on the staircase.
While my husband was asleep, I looked out the front door. It was raining heavily, but the street hadn’t flooded. In fact, there seemed to be hardly any flooding at all. When we first moved in, we lived close to a river, and during the winter months, when the snow melted, we often had to deal with serious floods.
During these times, the water rose high enough that we couldn’t cross over onto the other side of the road.
In the past, I’d watched the news reports on television, and I was always shocked to learn that the town had been evacuated and that many people lost their homes. To be honest, though, I never felt afraid—not even when the flood reached the height of the second-floor windows of our house.
On those occasions, we closed all the doors and windows, and then we sat in the basement while the water crept along the bottom of the walls. After the worst of it was over, my father would go out and start clearing the debris as soon as he could.
My mother, who hated the mud, stayed indoors and cleaned up around the house. Our family lived on a hillside, which meant that we were spared the worst of it, as far as flooding went, but that didn’t mean that we weren’t affected.
Now, though, the area was dry and dusty, and there was hardly a drop of water left anywhere. This wasn’t normal. Something must have happened. Perhaps some kind of freak weather pattern had developed, and now, after thousands of years, the climate had changed.
The sun shone bright and warm, but the atmosphere seemed charged with energy, and the wind swept across the land in gusts.
My husband woke up and told me that he wanted to take a nap. He was feeling better, and his heart rate had returned to its normal rhythm. I made him some tea, and then I went upstairs to prepare dinner. The doll hadn’t done anything else since it had appeared on the stairs.
We’d found two more dolls in the attic, and they were piled up together in a corner of the room. They seemed to be trying to climb out of the pile, and my husband said, “They’re climbing out, and going off to find new places to hide.”
That night, when my husband turned out the light in the bedroom, I noticed that the doll was nowhere to be seen. I assumed it was still somewhere in the house because otherwise, it would have been visible outside.
I wasn’t sure how long we’d be able to sleep without being afraid, but at least the doll seemed capable of doing nothing more than appearing in different locations throughout the house.
I lay awake in bed for a while. The doll was quiet, but if my husband stirred in his sleep, I’d be startled. I wondered how we were supposed to keep an eye on the doll. We didn’t want to sit there and watch it every minute of the day.
It might do something dangerous. And then what would happen? What would I tell the authorities—that there was a doll in my house that had killed my husband? I pictured myself standing before a judge, and I almost laughed out loud.
The next morning, the doll was waiting for us in the same place that it had been the previous evening. I made coffee, and then I prepared breakfast. The doll was sitting on the back of the sofa, staring into space. It seemed to be watching me. It wasn’t moving; not even its eyes seemed alive.
We ate breakfast, and then I took my daughter out to buy some groceries. She asked where we were going. “There’s a doll in the house,” I told her.
“A doll?”
“Yes. A doll is in the house, so we’ll go shopping.”
She looked at me curiously, and she said, “Can I come, Mommy?”
After I finished buying the food, I drove to the supermarket. As we walked around the store, my daughter kept asking questions.
“What does the doll look like?”
“It looks just like you. It’s wearing your clothes, and it has your hair.”
“No way!”
And then: “Mommy, can I have one of those toys with the string attached?”
When we arrived home, we put away the groceries, and then we all started preparing lunch. While I washed vegetables, my daughter played with the doll, talking loudly about everything from school to her favorite food. “You know what, Mommy? I’m going to play school today. Can I invite the doll, too?”
“Sure.”
As we sat down to eat, the doll suddenly stood up. At first, it seemed to be trying to escape, but then it froze in midair as if it were frozen by some kind of power. My daughter shrieked and ran out of the kitchen. The doll moved toward the door, but I grabbed it by its arm and pulled it back inside. When my daughter came running into the room, the doll was sitting on the back of the sofa again.
“Why did you make that noise?” my daughter asked in surprise. “I was telling it a story.”
“Don’t talk to it. You could upset it.”
Later, when my daughter was asleep, we heard her making weird noises and yelling, “Mama! Mama!” We couldn’t get her to stop. But finally, she calmed down, and when we checked on her, the doll was gone.
The doll started to appear everywhere in the house. Now, whenever I opened the refrigerator, it was in there. If I turned on the TV, it was on the screen. When I went to the bathroom, the doll was in the bathtub. And when I poured milk into my coffee cup, the doll was in the glass. Each time we saw it, we’d yell out, and then I’d grab it and pull it back to wherever we’d last seen it.
My daughter became increasingly frightened of the doll. She said things like, “I don’t want to see it anymore. It scares me.”
But I said, “You need to learn to deal with it.”
One afternoon, after we’d already seen the doll four times, my daughter was sitting on the sofa watching television. Suddenly, she jumped off the couch and said, “If you’re looking for me, you can find me right here.”
So we waited. After a few minutes, we got bored, and we went upstairs. When we returned downstairs, the doll was standing behind the sofa. My daughter screamed.
I was disturbed enough to take a closer look at the doll. Its face had changed; it looked younger. I touched it, and its body felt warm.
“Do you think the doll is alive?” my daughter asked.
“Probably not,” I answered. “Though it could be.”
“How do you know?”
“Well…when I touch it, it feels like it’s getting warmer.”
“Is it a boy or a girl?”
“Both,” I said. “It’s both.”
We spent most of our days playing with the doll, always keeping an eye on it. The doll didn’t leave the house. It never left the sofa. Every time we saw it, I thought it looked different. Sometimes it was smiling, and sometimes it was crying. Once, we saw it on the stairs. Another time, on the balcony.
There were no trees anywhere near the house, but I swore we’d seen the doll lying under a tree. Other times, we saw it in the garage. Or on the lawn. One evening, my daughter insisted that we hadn’t seen the doll anywhere, and she cried.
The End