The Geisha Doll
"I don't want you to go," Caitlin McGowan cried, clinging tightly to her mother's legs.
As Julianne scooped her child up and cradled the girl in her arms, guilt tugged at her heart. Normally, she didn't have any difficulty juggling motherhood and a career, but she always knew she would be faced with a conflict of roles one day. What she hadn't expected was that it would be so hard to look at her daughter's tear-stained face.
"It's only for a week, honey. Mommy will be back before you know it. You be a good girl for Grandma and Daddy, and I'll bring you back a present."
"What kind of present?" the little girl asked, wiping the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand.
"What do you want?"
"A doll."
"Okay. Let's make a deal: you be a good girl, and I'll bring you home a new doll."
Moments later the airport limousine pulled into the driveway, and Adam McGowan took his daughter from his wife.
"Mommy has to go now," he lovingly explained. "If she doesn't get to the airport on time, she'll miss her plane."
As the child wept on his shoulder, Adam leaned forward and kissed his wife goodbye.
"Have a safe trip, and call me when you arrive in Tokyo."
Julianne wanted to hold her daughter one last time, to delay her departure just a few minutes more, but she knew the sooner she left, the sooner her daughter would adjust to her absence.
Ironically, it was the mother, not the child, who fared worse during the separation. Caitlin had her grandmother to spoil her with homemade cookies, bedtime stories and walks to the playground. She also had her father to watch cartoons with her when he came home from work. Julianne, on the other hand, was without her family in a crowded city far from Puritan Falls.
On her third day in Japan, when her meeting ended early, Julianne walked around Tokyo looking for a doll for her daughter. Ironically, most of those she saw were available at any American toy store. Just when she was about to give up her quest and settle for buying another Barbie, she came across the Japanese equivalent of an antique store.
"This is perfect!" she exclaimed when she saw a geisha doll in pristine condition on display in the shop's window.
The storekeeper noticed her interest and hoped to get top dollar on the sale.
"You like?" he asked in English.
"Yes, very much," replied Julianne, who had never learned the first rule of haggling: don't appear too eager in front of the seller. "How much is it?"
"This is not just any ordinary doll," the shopkeeper informed her. "It is an antique, handmade, one of a kind item. The kimono is of the highest quality silk. The wig is made of human hair, and look at the tiny eyelashes. They are also made of human hair. Even the ...."
"Yes," Julianne said, interrupting his sales pitch. "I'm impressed, but how much does it cost?"
"In American money?"
The shopkeeper hesitated, wanting to name a high price, but not one so high that the woman would lose interest.
"Thirty-five dollars."
Julianne took out her wallet and handed the man her Visa card, willing to pay full price even though he would have let the doll go for half that amount. Thus she broke the second rule of haggling: never agree to the seller's first price. As the shopkeeper rang up the sale, he wished he had asked fifty dollars for the doll instead of thirty-five.
* * *
When the airport limousine pulled into the driveway at the end of the week, the front door of the McGowan house opened, and out ran Caitlin with her father and grandmother on her heels.
"Mommy! Mommy!" the child cried. "I missed you so much!"
"I missed you, too," Julianne cried, scooping her daughter up into her arms and kissing her on both cheeks.
Adam helped the limo driver bring the luggage into the house, while Julianne carried in a shopping bag full of souvenirs.
"Are those all for me?" Caitlin asked her mother excitedly.
"No, sweetheart. I bought gifts for Grandma, Grandpa and Daddy, too. But this one," she said, taking out a box wrapped in pink flowered paper, "is for you."
With help from her grandmother, the little girl unwrapped the doll and took it out of its box.
"It's so pretty!" she exclaimed, looking at the lavender flowered kimono with the dark purple obi, which she assumed was a fancy bathrobe. "What are these things sticking in her head?"
"They're decorations for her hair. They're called kanzashi."
"Is that the doll your mother brought you from Japan?" Adam asked, after tipping the driver and joining his family in the kitchen.
The little girl nodded her head and asked, "Isn't she beautiful?"
"She sure is," her father agreed. "She's almost as beautiful as you are, but not quite. What do you say we take Grandma and your doll out to dinner to celebrate Mommy's homecoming?"
"Can we go to McDonalds?"
"I was thinking of something a little fancier, someplace where we can sit at a table and have a waitress bring us our food."
Caitlin readily agreed to go, once her father promised she could get ice cream for dessert.
After leaving the restaurant, Adam dropped Grandma off at her house. As much as Julianne loved her mother, she was looking forward to a quiet evening with her husband and daughter.
"There's nothing like a business trip to make you appreciate how good it is to be home," Julianne said, sipping a glass of wine and relaxing in front of the fireplace with her husband.
Caitlin was sitting on the floor, coloring. Beside her was a Dora the Explorer doll.
"Why aren't you playing with your new doll?" Adam asked.
"I don't want to break it, so I put it on top of my dresser."
Julianne was touched that her daughter thought so highly of the gift she had brought back from Japan. Caitlin, however, had not been entirely honest in her reply. True, she didn't want to break the doll, but the real reason she wasn't playing with it was that the white, emotionless face of the geisha doll frightened her.
* * *
After a hot, relaxing bath in her jetted tub and a second glass of wine, Julianne headed upstairs, looking forward to sleeping in her own bed. She drifted off shortly after placing her head on the pillow, but her peaceful slumber was cut short by a scream from her daughter's bedroom.
"What is it?" she asked Caitlin, who was sitting up in her bed crying.
"She wanted to hurt me," the child sobbed, pointing to the geisha doll. "She tried to stab me with those sticks in her hair."
"Oh, don't cry, darling. You were just having a nightmare," her mother said soothingly.
"It wasn't a dream," the little girl argued. "The doll came alive. She grew as tall as you and tried to hurt me."
"You know better than that. It can't come to life. It's just a doll. Look."
But when Julianne took the antique toy from the dresser and tried to show it to her daughter, Caitlin let out another scream.
"All right. If you're afraid of the doll, I'll take it away. Okay? Is that what you want?"
"Y-yes."
The girl's shrill cries faded to a soft sob.
Julianne waited until her daughter was sound asleep before returning to the master bedroom.
"Is Caitlin all right?" her husband asked, half asleep.
"Yes. She had a nightmare about the geisha doll. She dreamed it had come to life and tried to hurt her."
Julianne placed the doll on top of her own armoire, high enough that the little girl wouldn't see it when she came into the room.
"I thought she would really like it, and it turns out to give her nightmares."
"She's probably just overwrought, what with your going away and all. Give her a few days; I'm sure she'll realize the doll is harmless."
"I hope so."
* * *
Caitlin was at the kitchen table early the following morning, smiling and chattering as though she didn't have a bad dream the previous night.
"Where's Daddy?" she asked before thrusting her spoon into a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios.
"He's still sleeping," Julianne replied, pouring herself a large cup of coffee. "It's Sunday."
It was nearly an hour before Adam came down for breakfast.
"Good morning, sleepyhead," his wife said, kissing him on the cheek. "Coffee?"
"Yeah, a whole pot. I thought you were the one who was supposed to have jetlag."
"Nothing Melatonin can't cure. Why are you so tired?"
Before answering, Adam looked over his shoulder to make sure his daughter was playing on the swing set in the back yard.
"I had a dream about that doll."
"You mean the geisha doll? Aren't you a little old for childish nightmares."
"My dream wasn't exactly a nightmare, and it was definitely not for children."
"Funny. I always knew deep down you liked the submissive type," his wife laughed. "But a geisha? Really?"
Mother and father turned and saw their little girl in the doorway. Her face was as white as the Japanese doll's, and her eyes were wide with fear.
"The d-doll .... It wanted to h-hurt me."
"It's all right, darling," her father assured her. "We won't let anything happen to you. Mommy will get rid of the doll today. I promise."
Julianne nodded in agreement. If it was going to cause the child such distress, she didn't want it in her house.
Later that evening, after her daughter had gone to bed, she took the doll down from the armoire, brought it out to the garage and tossed it in the trash. The following morning, the sanitation men arrived before seven and emptied the plastic receptacles. Julianne felt a pang of sadness knowing the beautiful antique doll would wind up in a landfill under a mountain of garbage. In retrospect, she thought she should have donated it to a Good Will or Salvation Army thrift store.
After clearing the kitchen table and washing the breakfast dishes, Julianne headed upstairs toward the master bedroom to make the bed and gather the dirty laundry. As she crossed the threshold, she was stunned to see the geisha doll atop the armoire. Had her husband taken it out of the trash and returned it to the bedroom?
Why would he? she thought. He was the one who promised Caitlin that I would get rid of it.
When Adam came home from work that evening, his wife questioned him about the doll.
"No," he said, "I didn't take it out of the garbage. Are you sure you didn't? You might have been tired after the long flight and not realized what you were doing."
Although Julianne had absolutely no recollection of rescuing the doll from the trash, it seemed like the only possible explanation at the time. Adam didn't do it, and even if Caitlin had changed her mind about keeping the doll, she would not have been able to reach the top of the tall armoire, not even if she stood on a chair.
* * *
On Tuesday morning, after dropping Caitlin off at her grandmother's house, Julianne drove to her office. She pulled into the parking lot, stopped in front of the dumpster, opened her briefcase and took out the geisha doll. Then she lifted the lid of the large metal waste bin and threw the doll inside.
"Now things can get back to normal," she said, believing that the doll was finally out of her life.
The following morning, however, Adam came downstairs looking pale and haggard.
"You look terrible. Are you coming down with something?" his wife asked with concern.
"I don't think so. It was that damned doll! I had the most disturbing dreams. I know I sound like Caitlin, but they were so real. Look, we have to get rid of it. I'll take ...."
"No need. It's gone. I put it in the dumpster at work yesterday."
Adam turned to his wife.
"You what?"
"I threw it in the dumpster behind my office."
"That's impossible. It's still on our armoire. I just saw it."
Julianne headed up to the bedroom, taking the steps two at a time. She gasped when she saw the lavender flowered silk kimono.
"How did it get back here?" she cried.
Adam didn't know if his wife was playing an elaborate practical joke on him or if she was genuinely unaware of her actions. Either way, he was going to get rid of the doll himself.
He grabbed the geisha off the armoire, took it out to the back yard and placed it in the burn barrel on top of a pile of dry leaves. Then he squirted it with lighter fluid and tossed in a lit match. The resultant blaze lasted less than ten minutes. When it was over, nothing remained but ashes.
* * *
Just after eleven o'clock, Adam kissed his wife goodnight and rolled over onto his side. He was exhausted and wanted a good night's sleep.
The dream began like the previous ones: the doll jumped down from the armoire and walked toward the bed. With each step it took, it grew in size, reaching a height of more than five feet by the time it climbed onto the bed. Again, Julianne was nowhere to be found. Adam tried to call for his wife, but the words would not come to his lips. The alluring geisha then reached up her arms and removed the kanzashi sticks from her bun-like coiffure, releasing the long black hair, which cascaded down her back and across her shoulders.
No, Adam thought, feeling fear coupled with desire.
The smile widened on the geisha's painted scarlet lips, as she took off the purple obi and opened her lavender flowered kimono.
"No!"
"Adam, wake up!" Julianne said, gently shaking her husband from his fitful slumber.
"What?" he said sleepily.
"You were having a nightmare. Was it about the doll?"
"Yes. I had hoped that once we got rid of that damned thing the dreams would stop."
"They will," his wife assured him. "Give it some time."
"All right," he agreed. "But if these dreams don't go away, I'm going to ask the doctor to write me a prescription for sleeping ...."
Adam's words died on his lips when the geisha doll fell from the top of the armoire onto the carpeted floor.
* * *
Both Adam and Julianne called off from work the following day, although Julianne drove Caitlin to her grandmother's house as usual. When she returned home, she learned that Adam had cut the doll into four pieces with a hacksaw and covered the pieces with quick-dry concrete.
"Has the concrete set yet?" Julianne asked anxiously.
"Hard as a rock!"
Not wanting to take any chances, the couple put the bucket of concrete in the trunk of the car and drove to a boat rental shop.
"This ought to be far enough out," Adam said when they could barely see land.
He then turned the motor on the boat to idle, threw the bucket overboard and watched it vanish beneath the surface of the Atlantic.
When she returned to her home, Julianne raced into the house while her husband pulled the car into the garage. Moments later, her piercing scream confirmed Adam's worst fear: the geisha doll was back on top of the armoire.
* * *
"I feel like such a fool," Julianne said, as she stood outside the door to the Bell, Book and Candle New Age shop on Essex Street. "Are we really going to tell the owner of this store that we're being harassed by an evil doll?"
"Aren't we?" her husband countered. "Look, we're not imagining this; it's really happening. And if it happened to us, then chances are something similar has happened to other people. Now, I don't know if anyone here can help us, but it's a place to start."
Julianne followed Adam inside, hoping there were no customers in the store to witness her humiliation. Thankfully, there weren't.
"Can I help you?" asked Abigail Cantwell, a middle-aged woman with short, salt-and-pepper hair.
Julianne wanted to turn and run, to return to the "normal" world, the one she knew before she went to Japan.
"I hope so," Adam replied. "My wife and I have been experiencing what we believe are paranormal events. We don't know what to do, where to go or who to talk to."
"Tell me what's wrong," the older woman said. "If I don't have anything to help you here, perhaps I can refer you to someone else."
Adam took a deep breath and quickly and unemotionally detailed for the shop owner the events that had transpired since his wife returned from Japan with the antique geisha doll.
"We're not crazy!" Julianne cried when her husband finished his tale. "I'm a computer programmer, and my husband is an accountant. We're about as unimaginative a couple as you can get. We have ...."
"Please, Mrs. McGowan," Abigail interrupted, "I have no doubt what you've experienced is real. Most people discount the supernatural until they experience it firsthand, but I assure you paranormal occurrences happen all the time. Why, right here in Puritan Falls, there have been cases of haunting, demon possessions, reincarnation ...."
Adam's demeanor abruptly changed because he believed the woman was ridiculing him.
"I'm not mocking you. Our quaint little town has had more than its share of unearthly activity. I know; I've witnessed some of it myself."
"Has anyone ever had a haunted or possessed doll?" Julianne asked.
"As a matter of fact, there is a legend that in the late 1800s, Emile Humphries, a local artist and son of a sea captain, claimed a doll murdered his father, his wife and his Jamaican housekeeper. Naturally, the police thought otherwise, and Emile was committed to an asylum."
"A short time ago, I would have sided with the police wholeheartedly," Adam said. "Now I'm not so certain."
"Considering you purchased the doll from an antique store in Japan," the shopkeeper said, "I'd say you're dealing with a tsukumogami."
"What exactly is that?" Adam asked.
"The tsukumogami are Japanese spirits that inhabit objects that reach a century in age. They can possess anything: swords, lanterns, ...."
"Toyotas?" Julianne said, seeking emotional release in black humor.
"No. You won't find tsukumogami in cell phones, televisions or any of our modern gadgets."
"Thank God for that!" Adam declared.
"My daughter claims the doll wants to hurt her. Are tsukumogami dangerous?"
"Normally, no. My guess is that when the spirit entered the doll, it assumed the role of a geisha. The spirit doesn't want to harm your daughter; it wants to please your husband."
"If a tsukumogami has taken up residence in this doll, how do we evict it?" Julianne asked.
"I'm afraid I can't help you with that," Abigail said, reaching for one of the store's business cards and jotting a telephone number on the back. "But I know someone who might be able to. He lives in Quincy, if you want to give him a call."
* * *
"Arriving at destination on left," the McGowans' navigator announced in its electronic voice.
"This can't be it!" Adam exclaimed, believing the trip had been nothing more than a wild goose chase. "We're at a Subaru dealership."
"Well, we've driven all this way," his wife reasoned. "Let's go in."
An eager salesman spied them coming through the door and headed in their direction.
"Good afternoon," he said cheerfully. "Are you in the market for a new four wheel drive vehicle?"
"No," Adam replied. "We're here to see Mr. Taka."
"Do you have an appointment with him?"
"We just spoke to him on the phone."
Although disappointed that he would not be making a commission, the salesman led them to the owner's office.
"Are you the McGowans?" the distinguished, white-haired Japanese man asked.
"Yes. Mr. Taka?" Adam replied.
"I'm William Taka. It's my grandfather you want to talk to. Come, I'll take you to see him."
The younger Mr. Taka, who was himself past sixty, drove the couple five miles down the road to a fairly new development of townhomes.
"My grandfather is expecting you," he announced as he unlocked the front door and let his guests inside.
Haruki Taka was sitting in a La-Z-Boy recliner watching the Game Show Network on a forty-seven-inch high-definition television. Julianne had expected a cadaverous-looking old man; but the grandfather looked not much older than his grandson.
"Ah, you missed a good show!" the old man told the younger Mr. Taka with a mischievous wink. "The grand prize was a new Honda."
After the McGowans were seated and William, at his grandfather's request, went to the kitchen to make a pot of tea, Haruki Taka immediately got to the point of the visit.
"Where is the tsukumogami?"
"We have it right here," Adam replied and took the geisha doll out of a shopping bag.
When Haruki saw the doll, a wide smile formed on his lips.
"Ah, it is you, my old friend," he said.
"You've seen this doll before?" Julianne asked.
"No, but the tsukumogami and I go way back. Come, my friend, I have the perfect home for you."
The old man stood up without any difficulty. His posture was straight, and he walked without any sign of old age.
"You may come if you like," he told his guests.
Haruki walked down a long hallway and opened a door at the back of the townhouse. Adam whistled and his wife's brown, doe-like eyes grew even wider when they crossed the threshold.
"This place is like a museum," Julianne said.
"Like stepping back in time," her husband added.
The walls were lined with wooden shelves filled with antiques and ancient artifacts, dating as far back as the Jomon period, which began some 10,000 years B.C. The "newest" objects were from the Meiji period, which ended in 1912.
"Welcome to my world," Haruki said. "My oasis in the modern home my grandson provided for me."
"These items must be extremely valuable," Adam noted.
"My husband, the accountant," Julianne laughed. "He sees dollar signs everywhere."
The McGowans' good humor abruptly vanished when they saw the geisha doll jump from the old man's hands and land gracefully on one of the shelves, next to an ivory statue of Hotei, the Shinto god of happiness.
"I'm sure those two have much to catch up on," Haruki whispered.
"You mean that statue is possessed by a tsukumogami, too?" Julianne asked.
The old man nodded.
"These spirits know one another and can communicate, can't they?"
"Naturally. These two, in particular, have been good friends for several thousand years. Now, why don't we leave them alone to get reacquainted? I'm sure my grandson is waiting in the living room with the tea."
* * *
"Your grandfather seems to be in remarkably good health for a man of such advanced years," Julianne noted as William was driving them back to his Subaru dealership.
"It's amazing, isn't it?" William agreed. "And to think that until a few years ago, he was wasting away in a nursing home."
"Really?"
"Yes. I got a call from his doctor one day, saying my grandfather wouldn't make it through the night. The entire family gathered around his bed. We were all praying he would last until midnight."
"Why is that?" Julianne asked.
"It was his birthday the next day. After eleven o'clock, his breathing became labored, and then ... I tell you it was like a miracle! His respiration returned to normal, his heartbeat grew stronger and he opened his eyes. A hundred years old, and he came out of the nursing home and moved into his own place. He developed an interest in collecting antiques, which I believe filled him with new purpose and gave him something to live for."
Julianne turned her head and looked out the window but not seeing the houses that seemed to pass by them in a blur on the highway.
Poor William, she thought.
He had no clue that the old man watching game shows on the high definition television was not his grandfather, that a tsukumogami had stepped into the old man's body when he reached the magical one hundred year mark.
Who could blame him? she thought.
William lived in a world of four wheel drive vehicles, personal computers, the Internet and smartphones. He was not likely to believe that the being he knew as Haruki Taka was amassing a collection of tsukumogami-inhabited antiques in his three-bedroom Quincy townhouse.
Whether he was simply providing a safe refuge for his fellow spirits or there was a more sinister motive behind his actions, Julianne couldn't fathom. She only hoped a tsukumogami would never cross her path again.
"There's my car over there," Adam said, as they turned into the dealer's parking lot.
"The Ford Taurus wagon? I don't suppose I can interest you in a new Subaru?"
"Not today, William. We've got to pick up our little girl from her grandmother's house."
After the long drive back to Puritan Falls, Adam planned on eating a light supper and turning in for the night. He looked forward to a good night's sleep, one not tormented by dreams of a possessed geisha doll.
Salem once had a tsukumogami-inhabited geisha doll, but it went back to Japan when it discovered there was just no pleasing him!
