Dolls With Blinking Eyes

A cold dread settled over me the moment I knew a daughter was coming. Not because of the life itself, but because of the inevitable intrusion of them. Not Barbies, which were plastic and safe, but the others. The lifelike ones. The blinkers. The talkers. A visceral revulsion ran through my veins, an inexplicable, deep-seated terror I couldn't articulate, only obey.

The invitations were a declaration of war. "No toys," the text explicitly warned, a gauntlet thrown down against the inevitable. "Especially not dolls. They will be returned to sender." My mother called me ungrateful, but gratitude had no place in the face of this crawling horror.

Then came the RSVP from Abuela. Excitement curdled into a familiar, icy fear. That night, the dreams began again. I was back in the cold room, the air stagnant and thick with the scent of old wax and dust. In the corner, a presence. The thing. A three-foot effigy with blinking eyes that tracked my every move. Sleep paralysis held me captive, a silent scream clawing at my throat as I knew, with a primal certainty, that the doll was coming for my baby. I knew that doll. I had seen her before, but the memory remained just out of reach.

The day before the shower, my Abuelos arrived. Opening the door was a plunge into deja vu, and the memory snapped into place with a chilling clarity. The "cucuy room." The punishment room in Abuela's house. Always cold. The altar covered in a white sheet, photographs of the dead and the imprisoned. The unsettling 3-D picture of Jesus knocking on a Heaven's door and would shift with my gaze.

And the dolls. Two of them. Three feet tall, encased in clear plastic, facing each other in the corner. Their eyes, designed to blink, seemed to hold a silent, malevolent watch. I was always in trouble, always banished to that room to "reflect with Jesus." I would beg for the belt, for physical pain, anything to avoid the icy surveillance of those painted eyes.

The dolls, it turned out, were relics from my mother and aunt's childhood, abandoned and kept by Abuela. I always felt their gaze, waiting to punish me, to scare me. And they always succeeded. The room got colder when they were near, a fact my cousins confirmed, their shared fear a testament to the dolls' power.

On a stormy afternoon, trapped indoors, we told ghost stories. My turn unleashed a tale that made my sister cry, earning me another banishment to the cucuy room. Rage consumed me. I would destroy them. I blew out the protective candles on the altar, plunging the room into near darkness save for the glow of the 3-D Jesus picture and the pale faces of the dolls.

I approached them, my heart a drum solo against my ribs. A tentative kick nudged the pedestal. Both dolls wavered, but what truly froze the blood in my veins was the sound—tiny, high-pitched giggling that filled the room. Their eyes began to blink, slow at first, then faster, a hypnotic, nauseating rhythm. The room temperature plummeted; I could see my breath. I pushed them, the giggling turned more into a mocking tone, but they remained standing, just swaying back and forth.

A sudden, violent shove from behind sent me flying into the pedestals. The dolls and I crashed to the floor in a tangle of plastic and porcelain. Abuela burst in, her eyes falling on the broken stands and the extinguished candles. She didn't yell. Instead, she helped me up, pulled me into a fierce embrace, and whispered a chilling truth: "The candles were to protect you. If you hadn't blown them out, the dolls wouldn't have pushed you."

She knew. She knew exactly what had happened. Her silence saved me from my parents' wrath, but the horror had just begun.

Weeks later, a "bring your favorite relative to school" day became a waking nightmare. A girl's aunt made dolls. Blinking-eye dolls. As she demonstrated the mechanism, measuring the distance between eyes and nose with a protractor, the world closed in. My first panic attack.

I was punished for "bad behavior." But for weeks, every time I closed my eyes, those blinking eyes were there, a silent promise of the terror I had experienced.

So, call me rude. Call me ungrateful. I don't care. There will be no dolls in my house. No blinking eyes. Not ever.