“So, you cut yourself on an old, mysterious doll, and now your blood is on the doll, and we’re wondering if that’s a problem,” Caitlin repeated into the phone, sounding significantly more bored than the occasion deserved. As soon as I’d realized what happened, Liam ran to grab Luke and Caitlin, and as a group, they decided that the best thing to do would be to run this by Circe, because at best, it was all a weird accident, and at worst, that’s apparently how you curse someone.


    “I didn’t cut myself on the doll itself,” I corrected her. “I cut myself on the needle that was sticking out from the doll.”


    “Whatever, close enough,” she answered. “What do you think, Circe?” There was some muted conversation on the other side of the phone while Circe asked questions. “No, I don’t think any of us have seen the doll before,” Caitlin answered, holding the doll up for a closer look. I’d removed the needle after I had been poked, but the small drop of blood that had transferred to the fabric was a start red in comparison to the muted yellow fabric. “I’ll ask,” Caitlin said after another moment. She turned the doll to face me and held it out, as though I wouldn’t have been able to draw the doll with my eyes closed at this point. “Does she look familiar at all?”


    “I already said that I didn’t bring her,” I answered, mildly annoyed. It’s not like I’d not bled other places with hauntings before - hell, I’d had a huge head wound in the middle of an exorcism. The fact that we were treating this with some sort of reverence just because the doll was creepy seemed a bit much to me.


    “No, I know,” Caitlin said. “I mean, is she styled after anyone you’ve seen before?”


    I narrowed my eyes, looking more closely at the doll’s face. “No,” I answered after a second. “I don’t think it’s modeled after anybody. It looks pretty generic.”


    “So you’re sure it doesn’t look like the little girl you keep seeing?”


    I raised my eyebrows. “She thinks it’s related to her?”


    “She floated it as a possibility,” Caitlin answered. “So?”


    I looked at the face again. “Nah, this is definitely supposed to be an adult,” I said. “Just look at the eyelashes on that thing.” I pointed to the eyes with my non-bloody hand. They were one of the only places where the stitching was perfectly intact.


    “Yeah, you’re right,” Caitlin said, turning the doll back around to look at her. “Definitely not a stand in for the little girl.”


    Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.


    Circe apparently asked a couple more questions before Caitlin finally hung up the phone. “On the plus side,” she said, “Circe doesn’t think you’re going to be haunted by this, although she made sure to tell me to tell you to avoid bleeding on antiques from now on.”


    “I really wasn’t planning on it,” I said a little too snippily, but Caitlin didn’t seem to notice.


    “She did still suggest we burn it at our earliest convenience, however. Which will probably not be while we’re on this ship,” she said, eyeing the sprinklers in the ceiling.


    “We can throw it in the burn pit when we get home,” suggested Luke. “Hopefully it won’t pick up any spirits before then.”


    “Well, thank fuck we’re not on the world’s most haunted ship or anything,” Liam said, grabbing the doll from Circe and putting it in his bag. “Soldier boy hasn’t been eyeing it or anything, right?”


    “Solider boy?” Luke asked.


    “There’s a ghost in the corner,” I said, and Luke immediately started fumbling the camera, quickly trying to get it on and filming. “And no, he didn’t seem particularly interested in it.”


    “Well good. And now, it’s tucked beneath my boxers, so the only way a ghost will get to it is if they’re a perverted ghost.” I rolled my eyes at him and Liam grinned back at me for a second before turning to the others. “Should we get started? It’s got to be late enough by now that most of the guests are asleep.”


    “Yeah, I suppose we should,” Luke said, still filming the corner where the young man stood. The young man looked at the camera with curiosity, but didn’t move from his spot. “Are you going to be alright sitting here by yourself for a while? Cait and I were talking, and we thought the best case scenario would be to get all of the active parts of the investigation done first, and then we can pull you in when we do the spirit box sessions and stuff like that.”


    “That sounds heavenly,” I said. With all the excitement, I hadn’t really had much of a chance to rest, and the weight of the day was already pressing down on me. I was really glad that I wasn’t alone in their house at the moment, but going on a ghost hunt was also a lot more effort than I thought I was ready to give. Sitting somewhere and pretending to talk to ghosts while we listened to a broken radio, however, seemed right up my speed.


    “Excellent,” Liam said, crossing over and giving me a chaste peck on the lips. He held my gaze for a second, his thumb slowly running down my jawbone for a moment before he stood up. “IF you need anything, please feel free to call us - there’s nowhere on this ship that’s too far, and we can be back here in a few.”


    “I’m sure I won’t need anything,” I said, waving them off. “Just make sure you call me when you get to the Estes method. I’ve got to get my video credits in somewhere.”


    “Oh, we for sure will,” he said, then added with a quick wink, “Just make sure you don’t cheat on me with Soldier Boy over here.”


    I laughed, assumed them all that I wouldn’t cheat on Liam with the spirit (which the spirit was clearly not amused with, but he did nothing other than make an unpleasant face from his corner), and they headed off, leaving me in the too quiet room. To try and distract myself from the sounds of the wind and water surrounding the boat mixed with the sounds of other passengers aboard the vessel, I turned on an old rerun of Friends and settled into my bed.


    About an hour later, I was watching another episode when I heard a slight beeping. I passed if off at first, assuming it must have just been something from another room, but then I heard another and another. I stood up, trying to figure out where the sound was coming from.


    It led me over to Liam’s bed, right where his bag was. As I walked closer, the beeping went crazy, until it was just constantly making noise. I reached into the bag, moving a few things around as I tried to search for the object, and I eventually pulled out a large brick-like object with a small light on the top.


    I flipped the object over and saw the label at the top - EMF Meter. Below that, was a scale from 0-5. While hunting with Luke and Liam, I’d seen the meter spark up to maybe a one or a two, but it never did anything like it was doing right now, and I just started at the box as it continuously held steady at a Level 5.