Doll Face

In the remote village of Raven’s Roost lived an infamous figure known as Doll Face. She was a ghost of an old woman who had her frontal flesh boiled for being a witch hundreds of years prior. She haunted the descendants of those who ruined her image.

Doll Face stole the faces of the prettiest girls in the region as they slumbered. Her victims would wake up one day with their beautiful visages replaced by something grotesque. The mystical specter would make lovely eternal masks out of her trophies and wear them. She transformed into the person she stole the face from as if to mock her victims.

Throughout the years, the villagers seemed helpless, watching their town rot physically and spiritually. So they formed a small group to dispel the creature, but they didn’t know what to do. The only hint they got from years of research was to cause Doll Face fear. There was an old man who had something that just might work.

On Halloween, the night that blurs normal and paranormal, every girl in the town was gathered in the tattered school gymnasium to sleep. They were bitter about the whole idea, but they were told that the nightmare would be over if they did.

As night fell, the moon cast its silvery light over the revelry, the gym chilled, and darkness whisked into the form of a woman with a large knife. She hovered over a girl, breathing a fowl breath into her ear. She grabbed the girl’s face, becoming a tangible creature, and drew her knife to a horrified girl’s chin. She held her lids, fearful of the mask she may see.

Suddenly, a fire ignited in the center of the room, heating a black cauldron. Doll Face turned to face the man who had lit the planks of wood. The mask she wore made the man sick, as it was the face of his own late daughter. The daughter taken from him decades ago.

“You remember this?” he asked, referring to the quickly boiling cauldron.

Doll Face screeched, and the whole gym rumbled as the masks of many girls’ faces formed and flew around the room, laughing.

Despite the crippling terror, two people grabbed Doll Face and rushed her to the cauldron, forcing her head into the boiling water. The masks were now screaming, and the room vibrated with a desperate evil. The man watched as his daughter flailed about, knowing it wasn’t his child but still chilled by the image.

Doll Face took her original shape, becoming a twisted, morbid old woman who lashed with her claws, contorting her arms and cutting the two holding her head into the cauldron, slashing deep into their innards. Doll Face raised herself and charged at the man, and he retaliated, shoving her back into the cauldron and getting his arms scorched as he held her down until the evil spirit dissolved into nothing.

He removed himself, his hands and arms completely destroyed, but had a smile, knowing his little girl was avenged and her visage that was tarnished for decades would be tarnished no more.