Adelaide's Doll

Fog creeps in heavy swaths across the Graveyard’s grounds, nearly obscuring stone monuments to the deceased; each headstone protruding like monstrous teeth. Sybil, a decade old widow, meanders between these rows of those long since left to rest, a bouquet tucked in one elbow. It seems only yesterday since the passing of her dearest departed husband, and the ten year ache remained ever present in his absence. Their wild youths of biting necks and collecting spines had never quite settled in this new age - and while Sybil never regretted a single clamp of fangs, she cursed those pesky humans and their plasma launchers. It had been they and their anti-undead weapons that had taken her perfect Giacamo away, his ashes dispersed in the wind. Oh, how she had wept and slaughtered in her distraught state. But vengeance did not bring back darling Giacamo.

While there was no body to bury, Sybil had done the sensible thing and gotten a headstone to visit periodically to remember the glory days and to grieve the loss. But… where had it been? Drat! She should have made a map after one of the first nine times this had happened. Stubbornly, the black-veiled vampiress stalks between rows of graves, tearful ruby eyes flicking over inscriptions and dates with growing frustration. Where could it be!? Oh, poor, poor Giacamo.

The miasma of fog seems to grow thicker and thicker still - downright soupy in fact. Sybil swishes and stumbles her way through until… a break at last! However, it is not her beloved husband’s grave that sits before her, deeply surrounded by dripping wax candles. It bears no name or date whatsoever, only inscribed bold cuts:

INSERT COIN.

PULL.

WIN & LOSE.

Just as promised, there is a coin-sized slot embedded in the carved stone. Sybil peeks around the side slightly, blinking curiously at a wooden-handle lever. Well, curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back Sybil ponders to herself, fishing out a coin from her dainty black bag. Pushing in the coin, she pulls the lever with an earthy grating. From the base there comes a soft thud, and upon examination there is a dish within a large, carved gargoyles’ mouth. Reaching in tentatively, Sybil withdraws a small parchment parcel. Slitting it open with one sharp nail, she dumps the contents into her palm. A ring! How lovely. And such a gorgeous shade of red - like her eyes, like Giacamo’s favorite color. It would match her necklace quite well, she considers, as she slips the ring on one pale finger. As she goes to touch her throat where her necklace sits, all she feels is skin. Pawing more frantically, Sybil looks around on the ground, spinning in bewilderment. Where was it!?

Then, those ruddy eyes land on the tombstone. Win and lose? What was this… this grift! This petty con! Sybil begins to screech obscenities and beat the slot machine with her bouquet, bruised petals and verdant leaves showering down. Tossing the bent and broken stems remaining at the inscription, she stamps away while plaintively calling out for her precious Giacamo.

Every year on Halloween, a strange specimen crops up in the Ghost Town Graveyard - a slot-machine headstone. No one knows how, or even why, this tricky thing appears. For the spooky, spine-tingling, hair-raising month of October, you’re presented with two ghoulish tasks: in prose, describe your character discovering the slot machine, pulling the mystical lever, and getting a mystery item. To keep the chain going, your character loses an item in return for the next poster to discover. But wait, there’s more! You also have the opportunity to write a history for this deceptive, grifting gravestone. How did it come to be, and what possible purpose could it have? Be creative and have a spooktacular time!

Credit to: Lady Riot

It had been a year since the last time he had been in search of this elusive slot machine headstone. He looked down at the piece of paper telling him where, when and how to find it. He had finally gotten a chance to see how this thing worked.

Hearing how this slot machine headstone came to be, well he couldn't believe it.

“I’m telling you, aliens put it there and put some kind of cloaking device around it, so it would only appear on Halloween.” The elder gentleman man was saying as he told the story to all who listened, he had been wandering around looking for a friend when he began talking.

He shook his head as he went back on his way thinking to himself ‘why would aliens want to interfere with supernatural beings graveyards?’ Shrugging off the thought he went back to looking for his friend.

Chuckling about the story he had heard he shook his head “yeah, aliens.” He finally found the slot machine headstone. Walking up to it, sure enough it was asking him to insert a coin. Which he did. As he waited he began to look through his backpack, wanting to make room for the item he got, that's when he noticed he was missing his pencil case, it was brand new no pencils in it whatsoever, it had a skull in the center and was red, black and a little bit of yell for the eyes of the skull.

Hearing that the slot machine headstone was finished he looked up and pulled hos prize from the opening. What he had gotten was a ring, looked real but the feel of it was plastic. Kinda like one of those rings you get from a toy vending machines at a superstore. Shrugging he placed the ring into his left pocket of his jeans, closed his backpack and left the graveyard. Maybe next year it would be better

Last Item lost: A vial of moonlit water; this liquid shimmered like liquid silver and held the essence of the moon’s radiant glow known to possess healing properties and amplify magical abilities.

Garden near ghost town graveyard

“What’’re you posing for? You look silly.” I nagged, looking at the little doll dressed in yellow silks with a brides vermillion mark on her forehead. My friend in her gardens in India seemed to be giving back soft sass as of late; especially, ever since I brought the doll with me to Dead City that was.

“So pose me differently then! You have my doll,” Ruth sighed and went on,”Listen, we’ve spent centuries hearing about this thing and never actually seeing it; I don’t know about you, but I was beginning to think it was just another urban legend.”

“Stories had to have some type of truth to them to become legend, you would know that more than anyone else with your… long, life experience.”

“I cannot believe you really aren’t that excited over finding this here!” She paused and gave a pleading glance, “Let’s put a coin in! Do you have any?”I rolled my eyes and rustled through my bag looking for spare change, “Firstly, this is a graveyard, I am not sure if you noticed but headstones are kind of a big thing.” I grinned and continued rustling as I sat leaning against a different headstone across from the strangely shaped slot-machine one.

This bag was always glued to my body and had been through my darkest experiences with me; It is made of raven feathers and my coven leader Vladina had gifted it to me upon my return from my first punishment in the French Catacombs back in 1817 A.D.

Anyway, I found a coin - what harm could this do anyway? It’s just a headstone, games are fun. We like games. No harm, right? Besides, Ruth ’s right, I could learn to lighten up every now and again; Ruth loved to live on the edge but never go over the edge while I was always overly cautious and she always swore my gut feelings were anxiety. I suppose this one time, I could ignore my gut telling me not to put a coin into a stone slot machine - I know, that doesn’t sound normal but considering we’re an immortal species that have seen plenty of strange and unusual events, wars, and other non-normal species, then what exactly is the term, ‘normal,’ supposed to fit under?

I placed my little cloth doll on the ground against my bag and stood up from the ground with a quick stretch; making my way over to the headstone and slightly bending over to insert the coin. It was incredibly anti-climatic;I chuckled and stood up, turning around to face Ruth, “See? Literally, nothing,”(Or so I thought) I looked around, the sun had disappeared and it looked as if it was night time? So suddenly and it was as if it was the middle of the night at the darkest hour; we really hadn’t been out so long though? Or were we? I felt so tired and that’s not possible, my brain had felt foggy and I had a memory of the machine’s gargoyle like mouth opening and then the memory is hard to remember… and where ws Ruth ? I cupped my hands around my mouth so my voice echoed,“Ugh, okay Ruth - so not funny; You can come out now.”

Still nothing. I walked back over to my bag and my doll was missing. I felt a small whisper of a gasp escape my lips, “Ruth ’s missing?”

I should explain a bit here, Ruth isn’t really here, I mean, she is my best friend and like a sister but she resides elsewhere but this doll was created by the Original witch that existed and started it all. It was a way for Ruth to traverse the world, stay by my side, and have experiences with me while having to tend to her own life responsibilities in her home in India. She also has this incredibly beautiful, massive garden which she had owned since the time she was human; It was truly her pride and joy.

At the time, India was under reign of Queen Rani Velu Nachiyar and the queen treated Ruth like a daughter; they were each other’s confidantes, so much so, the queen always consulted Ruth for a second opinion and advice for everything.

Dark days had fallen and long story short - the queen had gone to the first ever witch for protection, just not for her own. According to Ruth , the queen always spoke of how she wasn’t afraid and she had fought hard against enemies she had known of and made, she was already ready and prepared to fight and for whatever outcome may be. The queen had requested Ruth be immortal, a child of the moon that could hide in shadows when needed, run at the fastest speeds if she had to, and kill with the greatest strength when necessary.

Of course, with this is born a new Ruth , the first immortal but everything comes with a price. The sun brings pain to children of the night and to be stuck in getting old but never growing old. Blood is what created us and blood is what we crave; I am not as old as Ruth , nor have I been around as long as she has. The worst of it? This very old garden could also be her undoing. Ruth's life force is tied to the garden and the location of it died with the queen and remains solely in Ruth ’s own thoughts; I have never even seen it myself. She remains physically there to protect it and herself, we met when she had left it to explore and the farther she got, the more the plants started to wilt since nobody knows about it to care for it.

Ruth went back to the witch and cried out about how she felt like a prisoner of a sort, confined to the very place she loved but with no ability to ever see the world again; she was given a doll, a fragment of her soul instilled in the doll; as long as the doll was here, she was also technically here and not.

Looking up, I didn’t realize that I had been so lost in thought that I was actually walking the whole time, dragging my bag along the ground completely unaware of my own senses or environment around me.

“Damn it! My bag is dirty.” I groaned, it was strange, I felt… somehow physically drained and I can’t recall ever leaving Ghost Town’s graveyard? What time was it? How long was I walking for? How could I have been so… lost? How could I feel physically drained as a vampire? I have so many questions and absolutely no answers, “Ruth !” I screamed out.

I immediately opened my bag and started frantically scrambling everything around, no Ruth doll… but what was this? My foggy memory held little details of anything that happened today, the slot machine headstone had dispensed a strange compass that seemed to move on it’s own; I am at least sure of that when I tried to recall events of my day leading up to the headstone. Out of my own curiosity, I swung my bag back over my shoulder and I felt like I had spun in several circles before the compass had come to a dead stop and pointed to a path illuminated by the moon. My hopes would be that this would lead me to my lost doll that held the fragment of my friend’s soul.

Again, I felt like I was walking for hours with a midnight hour that never ended and underneath the canopy of bare trees, still seemed dark and the moonlight didn’t seem to make a difference. I could not tell if there was faint whispering or my mind was running wild with my own imagination. Was it anxiety that made me feel as if I was being watched with every step that I took? Or was I actually being watched? Throughout this seemingly endless walk, I called out Ruth 's name time after time to no avail. I could only keep moving forward but because I felt there were eyes everywhere and I was too terrified to look behind me, I held my bag so close to my chest with the constant compulsive feeling of checking to see if Ruth ’s doll could somehow just appear in my bag. Instead, realistically knowing that wouldn’t happen and that this was real, my bag remained tight against my chest in my arms and the compass gripped in my hand. It was so much easier to keep my eyes on the compass rather than look toward the darkness ahead.

Suddenly, the dark wasn’t so dark and I saw an opening between two trees illuminated by two pedestals merlot toned fire; these pedestals of fire lit the trees next to it that revealed runes carved noticeably deep spanning from the ground the top of the trunks. What was this? How old are these runes? I didn’t recognize any of them from any of my studies with Ruth . I threw my purse over my shoulder and traced my finger over one of the runes embedded in the trunk; the tree was actually wet but the water didn’t transfer with my skin after removing my finger.

In front of me was a large football field sized clearing that, next to the dead and bare forest, bloomed a variety of lucious florals - the difference was that these flowers all glowed in bioluminescence of various colors, I have never seen anything like it before. It didn’t take me long to click it together, ancient rune carvings in an entrance, wet trunks for water, and fire pedestals, big clearing. Who was strong enough to create this and what did they want to keep from getting out? This was a sealed area but I had to find out how that headstone relates to all of this and Ruth ’s disappearance.

I did a test and tried to hold up my hand toward the threshold, nothing happened so I stepped forward and relaxed my body once nothing happened. I looked down at the compass and the arrow that pointed me here seemed to no longer exist on the compass face itself. My gut feeling had intensified and my vampiric senses were useless since strange happenings; I started to panic when I thought I was seeing shadow figures appearing in my peripherals and when I looked, nothing was there.

I turned around to go back onto the forest path but I couldn’t leave; this is when my panic started to really set in and the realization had hit me that this witches circle was meant to keep vampires in and what did these vampires do to be forever entombed in a sealed off area with what seemed like no access to any blood source? I myself had suffered my own madness in my punishments without blood in the dark lifeless catacombs. Even a matter of 16 years could drive me into delusion and madness until I got blood. What did an endless time cycle do to one’s mind? Or were there walking humans in this garden meant to be living donors?

I turned to face the area, my back pressed against a forcefield that felt like a solid wall, still nothing. No shadow figures, just me and this supposedly empty space with my eyes only seeing shadows. I closed my eyes to recenter myself and my racing thoughts, once I reopened them and that is when I saw a significant shine separate from the bioluminescent flowers; it almost seemed blinding.

I cautiously walked toward it and realized the moon was directly on this sole vial compared to the field and even when I had crouched down to pick up the vial, the liquid shimmered metallic silver and even being held in my hand had continued to radiate as I could’ve been holding the moon itself in it’s bright glory. Right there, in my hand, “Maintenant, qu’est-ce que tu es?” I pondered softly under my breath in my native tongue . I had put the vial in a small hidden, zippered compartment inside my bag, “Safe and sound, I suppose.”

Within seconds, I was surrounded by a full circle of six, decrepit looking cryptid creatures with a humanoid form. They’re bodies were so thin, so frail looking that they seemed like deformed walking skeletons with flesh that were various hues of muddy greens, ashy blacks and gray, and white beige… the ashy black and beige colors are what start to become of us after extended periods of time without blood. Did we also become these horrifying cryptid looking things? Are the muddy green part of the skin from being entombed in an outside field? It had to be; as the moonlight reflected on their skin, it shown specs of various glowing colors and when I looked to my fingers that touched the flowers and my boots, the bioluminescence had transferred almost as if flowers.

These were vampires and these vampires had not been starved for 15 years as punishment or even centuries; they were starved for multiple millenia even…my feet remained glued to the ground and I felt terrified and shocked. My stomach turned to knots and it was as if my body had turned into its own paperweight against itself. They started to take a step closer and even then, I couldn’t move.

There was the loudest screeching noise that remained inside the dome, the vampires had seemed to curdle over in pain holding their heads before disappearing. I fell to the ground and the screech was so loud, I felt as if I was going to black out but WHO had this kind of power over us? My eyes squeezed shut and all of a sudden, the unbearable noise stopped; when I opened my eyes, I was no longer in the same clearing and was on my knees in front of a large wooden door, I felt the compass vibrate and the arrow re-appeared pointing exactly to it.

I heard an old, high pitched, hoarse voice, “Only vampires are affected by those spells. Come in, come in, I have been waiting for you since you pulled the stone lever of my beloved’s grave and popped out that compass.”

I recuperated and stood up, walking into a large wooden kitchen with a round wooden table; it all looked so old… and not? At the same time, there was an elderly woman in a cloak with her back turned to me, though I sniffed fresh blood and I felt my natural primal instincts kicking in that I was trying so hard to suppress. This is not the time to lose yourself.

“So… this is all because of you?” I questioned.

“I am aware of all that has happened today.” She confidently mentioned, “That field is the only access anyone has to finding me and no one has ever made it this far after touching that headstone, you can imagine how surprised I am.”

I stood there shocked and with the release of the blood scent, my emotions were getting amplified; it was hard not to get aggressive, “Do you know what I’ve actually been through though? I’ve lost something of high value to me and I’ve been wandering for Gods know how long! What have you done?” I exploded, snarling.

“Oh, everybody loses something for another to discover, my name is Sybil and you must be hungry.” Sybil turned around and placed a large bowl of fresh blood on the round table, “Peace offering, drink up.”

Before Sybil could even finish the sentence, my hands were already holding the large bowl to my mouth and there was only so much my mouth could swallow as the blood also trickled down my jawline, onto my neck, and started onto my clothes. I was starting to feel myself come back again and the primal animal underneath that had the urge for a killing spree was repressed for now.

Without even a thought, the empty bowl slipped from my hands as I fell into the kitchen chair, my body felt tired and I wanted to break down with all I had just gone through, not to mention that without Ruth … I felt lost.

Sybil sat at the table, across from me and parted her lips to speak.

“The purpose of the headstone was meant as a double punishment, as well as a trail of passage.” She explained in her raspy voice as she played with a ring on her finger and her eyes never leaving mine. They looked cold with no tones of love in it. This woman looked like she had forgotten emotions long ago and maybe that’s why I felt so many. Was I feeling what she could not? The woman behind the hood began to explain.

“My poor Giacomo’s faux headstone comes out once a year to those who truly seek it. Most who try and fail give an item and then receive. In my case, I lost my husband before I even pulled the lever, I suppose. A cruel trick by an old witch with a connection that didn’t fare well.” She held out both her hands then showed me her palms. “You my Dear Coraline, are not most. You gave something that is so irreplaceable that you have eternally punished yourself. Just as it is my eternal punishment to be here and live a life without my most precious value, where I cannot die by any means.“ She set her hands down and for the first time looked sympathetic.

“I did some bad things in my time in the mortal world as a vampire and my atonement is a gift for a sacrifice. Needless, to say, this all started as revenge from another for my selfishness of not realizing what I had until I lost it.” She raised her well groomed silver brow at me. “Can’t you think of just one thing you’d like as that kind of gift? The gift for a sacrifice that cannot be replaced?’

I could feel myself compulsively sucking in air. Both sides of my cheeks caving in and being bitten down inside my mouth until I drew blood. There was one person I could think of- only. Ruth . I could feel a silver mist shrouded around us both. It was as if Sybil knew what my heart was yearning for though I had not spoken the words out loud. Her voice was now venomous as she spoke. “You have to say it outloud!” She demand in a low toned growl. I looked deep into her eyes and could swear they had a hard little tone of red just around the iris forming.

“ I want Ruth back , you can keep the doll but I want her physically free with a free life and her own will!” I demanded back.

“Oh, you’re so naive little girl.” My upper lip twitched in frustration, “You’re deepest desires weren’t thought up when you were with what you valued most but to enjoy it with and the fact is, all things come with a price.” I went to lunge my claws at her but in that moment, the silver mist grew completely opaque between us and I fell to a marbled floor. It was like falling into an alternate reality; I was in my dream house, in my dream kitchen, with various herbs and plants hanging over and sitting by a beautiful stained glass window. When I turned around, on top of a small glass coffee table was paperwork and documents for property, statements of various things in my name that Ruth and I always spoke about. An approved permit for a vastly large green house with a natural pool on the property which could be seen from two glass porch doors the little table sat in front of.

Ruth and I always spoke about having our own peace, our own space, I had wanted a life and stability more than anything; even though I had loved traveling, I wanted more than anything, a roof that was always there with no other immortals of any species causing issues and peaceful mornings. I recalled what Sybil said, mentioning my deepest desire which would’ve been for a normal life with Ruth but Ruth wasn’t the one who put the coin in the headstone, maybe it could’ve been different if we both held the coin and put it in. However, the old lady did mention Ruth is to be found again and it was her doll lost but not her. I solemnly swear that I will be the one to find her, break her curse, and bring her home.