The Mannequin

“My father always had a vision,” Julia (Julie) Stuart looked up from her textbook to her grandmother, Evelyn, who was laying in bed, oxygen canisters ready to use, but at this point would do little good. The cancer had spread all through her body and was now in a malignant state, any operation or chemo wasn’t even in the cards at this point. All that could be done was to give medication to dull the pain that she felt.

She was already on death’s door, it just was a waiting game until he finally opened it and accepted her inside to the afterlife, if it existed that is.

Evelyn seemed to know that she only had a few days left, and seemed rather contented with that.

Julia set her book aside and went to sit on the edge of the bed, her grandmother’s hand, which normally could have been described as feeble with how shaky it’d been the past few months, grasped Julia’s with a surprising amount of strength. Like a vice, she refused to let go.

“Grandma?”

Her grandmother still hadn’t moved, her blue gaze remained transfixed on the window, as if she was looking at something far off in the distance that only she could see.

“He wished to make those he knew smile forever,” she continued as though her granddaughter hadn’t spoken. “Even if they were no longer here. That was his dream, ever since Mum died… he never blamed me. Just being born, but he always said it wasn’t my fault. Even though others thought the opposite, often say such horrid things. Rotten children, all of them, don’t be like them Julie, be better than those kids.”

Julia merely rested her head lightly on her grandmother’s thin shoulder, her hand, thin and frail had yet to let go. “I won’t,” she tells her. “I promise grandma.” Julia’s gaze went to the oxygen tanks, sent by the hospital the moment the doctors and nurses realized that being in the hospital would do no good. It’d take up another bed. A bed that someone who had the chance of living needed far more.

It might have sounded cruel, but Julia felt that Evelyn being home in her final days was best given the current state of the world from the rampant onslaught of Covid 19. To make things worse, Julia’s parents were stuck in another country unable to leave because of grounded flights. And as much as they wanted to be home, Julia was stuck manning this alone. They had no other family here, just her and her grandma. Other family members had either died or moved somewhere far away.

But in a weird way, she was glad, that she was at least with her grandmother. That Evelyn wasn’t stuck in a nursing home or hospital with a bunch of strangers where the height of infection could make her grandmother worse.

“Do you want me to call Rebecca, grandma?” she said using her mother’s first name, something that would register far better than saying ‘mom’ as it would make her think of her own mother.

Irene McClelland-Stuart.

Evelyn in her last few days would talk and talk and talk, going into stories about her father, Julia’s great-grandfather and mother. About how they met, how her father fell head over heels in love with her, and that it was love at first sight.

About Irene’s beauty and how she had been a model for many top-of-the-line clothes back in the early 1920s, and how she had raven black hair, pale skin and blue eyes, just like her own and Julia’s. Though strangely, there were practically no pictures of Irene.

Once when Julia was much younger, she asked her grandmother about it, and all she said was this.

“It made him sad, thinking of what could never be. So, he got rid of them all.”

Hearing that made Julia sad, as it did her grandmother. She never brought it up again.

“Becca? Oh, yes, I want to see Becca and Tom, they look so good together…”

Her grandmother let go of Julia’s hand to allow her to get the iPad in order to give her parents a call.

But Julia could see that her mom was trying her best not to show how sad or worried she was, something that Julia mirrored, it was hard. This became almost a regular event, speaking to Julia’s mother and her father through video calls and regular phone calls and texting her parents after it was over to see how she was holding up on her own.

I’m fine. She would text them, even though that was far from the truth. She had moments where she would have to cry in the bathroom and collect herself as Evelyn and Julia’s mother talked to each other, or more accurately, Evelyn talked while Julia’s mother listened. Even if it was the same story she told before.

But soon, her grandma became too sick for long talks and started sleeping more and more, until, she no longer woke up.

When Julia found her the following morning, she couldn’t describe the feeling she had when she found her the following day.

The night before Julia was with her, Evelyn was awake, aware of her surroundings and telling her granddaughter more about her childhood, and just random things about her life with her dad, Julia’s great-grandfather and how he always talked about her mom, like she was still alive. When her grandmother began to drift to sleep Julia said good night to her, that she would see Evelyn in the morning, and that she loved her.

Her grandma said she loved her too and to sleep well.

It took Julia at least an hour to gather myself to call her mom and let her know about her mother’s death. That was the hardest phone call Julia ever had to make in the twenty-eight years of her life. And the sobs of her mother that followed would never leave her head.

Julia’s Dad then took the phone and helped Julia with what she needed to do. Shortly after she called the hospital, to report her grandmother’s passing.

Her mom thanked Julia for being there with her mother in the end, she just wished her mother was there too.

A month had gone by since then.

Her parents were still stuck across the ocean in Canada. Thankfully, they were with her dad’s family, but because of the virus, air travel was still grounded, meaning she was now alone in an empty home where her grandmother had passed.

Her grandmother’s body was put on ice, so to speak, while she went through the process of trying to find her grandmother’s will, and sifting through items that other relatives might have wanted for sentimental reasons, or things that they could either pass to Evelyn’s living friends or even to possible museums, given some of the items that her grandmother kept.

But it was a lot to go through as one person.

“Sweetie, you don’t have to do this on your own.” Her mother told her over the phone a week after her grandmother’s body was removed from the home.

“Mom if I don’t I feel like I’m going to lose my mind,” she tells her. “There’s only so much streaming TV shows or channel surfing I can do. And besides, I’m all right going through the places Grandma kept, it’ll be like a treasure hunt. Being busy will be good for me and who knows, I might find something really special.”

“…if you’re sure,” she said then sighed. “If it wasn’t for this blasted pandemic, we’d be there with you.”

“Yeah, I know mom. How are you and dad holding up?”

“As well as we can be while being locked in your father’s parents’ home, driving them crazy.” Her mother sighed again. “The only bright side to this is that there aren’t any rowdy neighbours.” A pause. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

No, I’m not okay. But she couldn’t say that on the phone. “I wish you were here Mom…”

“I do too.”

This time it was Julia who let out a short sigh. “Anyway, I should go. I still need to look through Gran’s office. That’s the last place I’ve yet to look through for any documents that the lawyers need.” She already checked with the bank and the law firm her grandmother had worked with in the last few years when her husband passed five years ago. Strangely, her grandma’s will wasn’t at the bank in her safety deposit box, meaning it had to be here since she had one drawn up. Julia’s job was just to confirm that it was here and contact the law firm about it and they would go from there.

“Not the basement?” her mother questioned.

“Two places…” she completely forgot about the basement.

She heard her mother laugh, it felt like ages since her mother laughed.

“To be fair Sweetie, I don’t like going down there either, some of my grandpa’s work is still down there. Lord knows why he kept it.”

Julia frowned. “Kept what?”

“What he used to do for his job, don’t you remember?”

“Uh…” was Julia’s response. “Not off the top of my head?”

Her mother gave another short laugh. “Not surprising, we didn’t talk about it much. He made Mannequins. For stores and displays before the Great War and after it ended. It’s how he met my grandmother, your great-grandmother.”

“Oh right, how’d I forget that?”

“Well, those mannequins were rather… strange.”

“They can’t be as creepy as the ones we have now, right?” her mother didn’t answer. “Mom?”

“I… wouldn’t say that. You’ll know when you see it.”

“Okay,” was all she could answer with. “Well, I’ll let you know what I find when I finish searching. I love you, mom.”

“I love you too, good luck with the hunt sweetie.”

Julia ended the call before glancing at the clock in the living room, it was one in the afternoon meaning she would at least try to look through one room for at least a few hours.

Her gaze went to the stairs, stairs that had a door which would lead to the basement, a door that had a latch lock on it. One that she never opened. She recalled looking down the stairs of the basement as a kid without the lights and it creeped her out.

“Right,” she tells herself. “Let’s just get the basement out of the way first.” But still, she hesitated. It took her a solid ten seconds to just remove the latch from the door and open it to reveal the same creepy stairs to the basement. “Why are basements always so creepy?” she asked herself aloud, knowing no one would answer her question.

Her grandma’s house was a bit peculiar, as it was one of the few houses on this block that even had a basement, since basements in more post-modern houses were more common in the west, like the USA or Canada, rather than in Europe, since that would be more for department stores, at least in the large cities.

Turning on the light for the basement, while making it much easier to see, made her discomfort still remain on high alert.

At least the lights still work. She thought as she went down the stairs where Julia saw an assortment of boxes, shelves and items covered in dust as a veritable chill crept up her bare arms. It was the summer, but down here made her feel cold like it was the middle of autumn. But seeing all that was here would mean she would inevitably work up a sweat.

This was going to take a while.

In the next several hours, Julia had gone through a number of boxes, but they either had old toys, clothes or appliances that no longer worked. She did have the foresight to bring a marker with her to label these boxes so she wouldn’t end up searching them again on accident. Something her parents taught her and it reinforced how she’d go about looking for things without making needless backtracking.

She did find some old fancy China tea cups and saucers, but nothing all that significant. Except for one thing.

Tucked away on an old bookshelf was a binder, at first, Julia thought she finally came across her grandmother’s will, but instead it was filled with old newspaper clippings. Of times during the war, the Great Depression, and a fire in one factory. She was only skimming through it, but there looked to be in some type of order. What that order was Julia wasn’t entirely sure as the dates were all over the place.

Did her grandmother do this when she was younger? For a brief second, she thought to go ask her grandmother only for that thought to come to a halt when the reality of what happened a week ago came back swinging.

What am I doing? She thought chastising herself, she was here looking for her grandmother’s will how could she have forgotten that her grandmother had just passed?

Taking the binder, she placed it on the stairs to take it up with her when she was done before looking back at the bookshelf to see if there was anything else.

And beside some knickknacks and old books covered in dust, there wasn’t anything of note, no legal documents or anything of the sort. So she kept going, now almost at the back of the basement she was almost done looking through things when she noticed something in her peripheral vision.

It looked like a person.

“Jesus Christ!” Julia nearly shouted when she had seen what was behind the bookshelf and saw a mannequin tucked away in the corner with its hand posed up, palm up and flat as if it were to be holding something. Like it was missing something. Something that needed to be placed in its open hand. “Mom you really underplayed what the mannequin looked like… Jesus.”

The mannequin was styled in the look of the 1920s, with a crimped bobbed haircut, that was made of brown human hair, and large brown porcelain eyes surrounded by long lashes and pursed red lips. It really made Julia think of the uncanny valley and how… off, it made her feel.

Is this made of wax? she thought to herself as she looked at it, and its loose-fitting dress and flats in the Flapper style of clothing. “Why is this even here?” And how’d it not end up melting if it’s made of wax? “Ugh, no, nope. Not thinking about it.” She said before planning to turn away, only to stop and notice a tag hanging from the mannequin’s wrist. It had a name written on it in an impressive scrawl.

“Dorothy,” she looked back at the face that was covered in dust and cobwebs. “Well Dorothy you’re far from Kansas, that’s for sure. I’ll let you know if I come across your little black dog or your red slippers…” she paused and sighed. “Why am I talking to it, like it’s a person?” she shook her head. “Nope, been down here too long. I think I’m done for tonight.” She cast one more look at the mannequin before going and picking up the binder and heading back upstairs. Closing the basement door and then placing the latch back where it was before.

The basement was a bust, other than odds and ends, and Dorothy, there were no documents to be found so her grandma’s office was the last place. She had looked in there before, three days after her death, but stopped as it began to become too much.

Even now it felt like it was too much.

She glanced at the time, it was getting late and she needed to eat and all this anxiety wasn’t doing her any good. She’d put looking for the will off until tomorrow, with a clear mind and no basements, hopefully with any luck she’d find what she was looking for.