The story
In a red brick house on the edge of a neighborhood in Medellín, Mateo lived, an eight-year-old boy whose imagination used to soar through the stories of his great-grandmother, Doña Elena. One Sunday, while the sky turned gray and the rain tapped timidly on the roof, Doña Elena handed him a package wrapped in yellowish paper. Inside was a plastic doll about Mateo's height, with a chubby face, curly hair, and a red dress covered in little polka dots—the very same one that had belonged to the old woman's childhood.
"Keep her close, she'll take care of you," the great-grandmother murmured with a smile that trembled between tenderness and memory. Mateo placed her at the edge of his bed, right beneath the window that let in the faint light of the night lamp. That very night, as sleep began to envelop him, he noticed that the doll's right arm had slowly lowered, as if an invisible hand had pushed it.
At first, he thought it had been his own hand that moved it in the dim light, but the next day the scene repeated itself. Every dawn the doll lowered her arm, and every morning the boy found her in the same position, with a blank gaze and an immobile body. Fear settled in like a shadow that lengthened with the moonlight.
One afternoon, tired of the unease, Mateo moved the doll to the closet and went out to play in the patio. Upon returning, he found her right back beside the bed, with her arm still dropped, as if he had never moved her. His heart was pounding hard; the house's silence grew dense, and the creak of the wood beneath his feet seemed to announce a presence.
That night, the dreams arrived with the force of a storm. Mateo saw himself in his bedroom, but the light was red and the doll had taken a kitchen knife, sharp and gleaming. With a crooked smile, the toy figure lunged at his mother, his sister, and his father, leaving stains of imaginary blood that mixed with the cold sweat running down his forehead. He woke up with a muffled cry, his breathing ragged, and when he opened his eyes, he saw that the doll had turned her head, fixed her plastic eyes on his, and blinked, as if the movement were deliberate.
Terror paralyzed him. His mother, upon hearing the scream, ran in, grabbed the doll, and threw her out into the patio, into the rain that was now falling violently. But the next day, the doll was back in the room, leaning against the wall, as if the wind had carried her back.
Desperate, Mateo told Doña Elena what had happened, who, with a trembling voice, advised him to return the doll to the place she had come from. With his mother's help, he placed her in a box and took her to the town cemetery, leaving her among the old headstones. Nevertheless, upon returning home, he found her on the bedside table once again, like a shadow that refuses to be buried.
The anguish led him to consult a psychologist, Dr. Ramírez, who tried to alleviate the guilt and fear that gripped him. A few months later, the doll disappeared from the bedroom, but not from memory. Each night, when the darkness grows dense, Mateo dreams of the red figure wielding the knife, stalking his loved ones. The dreams repeat, like an unceasing echo, and the trembling of his hands when he closes his eyes recalls the cold gaze of the doll that never wanted to rest.
Years later, now an adult, Mateo still holds onto the image of that plastic face and the sound of the arm collapsing. His childhood house is still standing, and the bedroom, now empty, preserves the scent of time and the shadow of a toy that, in the gloom, keeps moving on its own.
