All Dolled Up!

Charlotte

The knowledge that it was his sister relieved me a bit - though I wasn't entirely sure why that was. Still, I had a message to give him, and on second thought, I probably should've told him about the can of beer I took if only to keep my own conscience clear.

The issue was that I didn't know if he'd wake up or not - the sun would be up at around four or five this early in the summer, and I wouldn't be able to do anything then. So, I scribbled a note for him-

Good Morning,

If you're reading this the sun is probably out so I can't talk to you, but your sister called on that phone you have and asked you to call her later. I didn't want to wake you up so I didn't- she also wanted to know if you'd be joining her for the Fourth of July.

I hope you don't mind, but I took a can of beer from your fridge.

Thank You,

Charlotte Evergreen

Having written that, I placed it above his phone and then went upstairs, deciding to spend time reading the rest of the book he had given me. I finished the can of beer, and I had to rate it as a middling experience. It wasn't as awful as trying that cigarette had been, but it wasn't nearly as good as I thought it'd be either. It didn't taste particularly pleasant and the best part of it was the coolness, though I could have just drank cold lemonade for the same effect. I was acutely aware of how it was in my stomach whenever I moved- ah, yes, I didn't think I had absorbed or assimilated a drop of it.

That said, it was fine in the sense that at least I now knew what it was like to try one. With that, thoughts turned to whether or not there was anything else that I had wanted to do that was blocked off from me before.

Sure enough, the sun came up without me hearing the sound of his footsteps, and I was left to ponder things.

Charlie

I woke up with that strange feeling you get when you're sure that you overslept. I turned to see the sunlight coming from the window- so Charlotte would be out of commission for now.

I thought I had set my alarm to wake me up though- my arm reached for my phone, but couldn't find it. I got up - no, my phone wasn't here, which explained the lack of an alarm.

Shaking the sleep from my mind, I got up and saw that my phone was in the kitchen, along with a note from Charlotte.

Oh- looks like my sister had called. I'd give her a callback, but first things first, I need to call someone about the roof.

A few conversations later, and I had someone penciled in for Thursday, so I had to make a note to stay up for when they would be coming by. It was an unfortunate issue with the night shift that everyone else- or nearly everyone else, worked the day shift so getting appointments done was a nightmare.

I got ready and picked up the lilies I had gotten for May - I didn't want to cheap out, but honestly with everything else going on I couldn't justify paying for real flowers. Charlotte said that she didn't mind - but I wasn't sure if that was just something she was saying to make me feel better.

I went back to the cemetery - though I visited Charlotte's grave first.

The question as to how it was that she was still in this world, and how she had ended up as a doll, continued to perplex me. Was she really dead? Had her body somehow been used for her transformation? She had told me that her appearance as a doll closely matched how she had looked like in real life, so either the doll had been made with that in mind, or there was a more macabre explanation - that her corpse had been transformed into the doll.

But, how would I know? She had died so far back ago that there were no photographs of the funeral for me to be able to confirm if there had been a body in the casket.

The only way I could think of to confirm that would be to exhume her remains - but that was a laughable concept. The idea that I could get away with digging up a grave in this place at any time of the day or night was ridiculous. I couldn't even think of finding a way to do it legally- how was I going to convince anyone that it was necessary to dig a girl who had died over a hundred years ago out of the ground?

And say that I did it and her body was still in the coffin - would that prove anything? Not really, unless she had had to be buried with something in order to make the thing work. Not to mention the thought of seeing her actual corpse, if it really was there underground, freaked me out.

Realizing that I wasn't going to get any further thinking about this, I turned to May's grave. I kept the flowers on the gravesite - but I wasn't sure what else to do.

Should I say something to her? Could her spirit even hear me? If you had asked me before if I believed in spirits or an afterlife, I would've said either 'no', which was how I really felt, or 'I'm not sure' if I didn't want to risk offending someone who had already expressed an alternative viewpoint.

But... how could that be true? I had evidence of an afterlife right here - Charlotte had persisted beyond the time of her death in this world somehow. Strangely enough, she was the closest thing I think we'd ever have to proving there was a world beyond ours - though there was no way that I'd be able to prove that definitively. I did not want camera crews knocking down our door and her being taken away by some government scientists to be experimented on.

So, I thought of something that seemed appropriate, "May, I don't know if you can hear me, but, I've met your cousin Charlotte. It's been a while, almost a century, but she is still here, and she still thinks about you. She seems to think very highly of you- as a matter of fact. I never met you in person, but you must've been quite someone for her to remember you above anyone else. I don't know where you are, or what the afterlife is like... but I hope you're at peace."

There was no response - I hadn't expected one, though there had been the tiniest doubt in my mind whether Charlotte's abilities were somehow inherited and that May may somehow manifest something similar to them. Nothing of the sort happened though- no sign or signal from the afterlife greeted me.

I then cleaned up the site a bit, and took a photo of it on my phone, to show Charlotte that I had done what she had wanted. And as I did that, it occurred to me that there might be a way for Charlotte to see this place - even if she couldn't be here in person.

I dialed up my mother’s phone number. "Hey!" I said, and after the usual pleasantries I got to the meat of the matter. "Listen, I think Suzy wanted to know if I was coming for the Fourth Of July, which I will be, don't worry. Also, could you do me a favor- and mail me my old box that has my old phones in it? If you can't find it Dad should know where it is. Yeah, it is that one."

I had a drawer filled with old phones - one of them was a flip phone - but then again, it wasn't as if Charlotte needed anything fancy. My old model would've worked fine for what I had planned for her well enough.

"Thanks Mom, love you!"

With that, I made a quick stop at the local library before going home and falling asleep.

Charlotte

I sprung to life and went downstairs- Charlie seemed to still be asleep though, which was fine with me. The phone and my message weren't there anymore, so I assumed he had seen both of them.

For a moment- I considered something. He usually ate that strange, too-sweet thing from that box, right? What if I made him a bowl before he woke up? It was hardly high cuisine, but given what he had done for me, it only seemed right that I do something in return.

The only thing was that though the steps seemed simple- I had also only seen them done once. I also wasn't entirely sure how the microwave worked.

As I set out to try though- other questions began to pop up in my mind. How much of the sweet stuff did he eat? And exactly how much milk did he put in? I could get a rough estimate of this stuff, but I was constantly worried I was either putting too much in or too little.

As this was done, it occurred to me that even if I did end up heating it up, it might get cold by the time he came. Honestly at this point I felt rather defeated, and thought about giving up and that it had been a useless idea to think of in the first place, but then I started to hear something- his footsteps.

So, I decided to go ahead with it and I put the bowl in the microwave. How long should I heat it for? I pressed 'one' but then it started for but a moment- wait, was that one second? I turned it to one minute, which seemed like it was a reasonable place to start.

Once it was done, I took it out. I could see the steam coming from the bowl, and assumed that that meant that it was done.

Carefully, I kept it on the table, and then waited.