Tales From the Beyond

Adri Adityo Wisnu
Chapter #4

The House of Mannequins

People have their own list of the things that frightened them the most. Some people are fearful of spiders, some find that snakes are atrocious. But for me, it is mannequins. It's probably weird for me to be afraid of some harmless, lifeless dolls. Honestly, I don't really understand it myself. Every time I'm looking at a mannequin or being in a place where there are a bunch of them on display, I always get an uneasy feeling as if I'm being watched. I don't expect them to be alive, but at the same time, it feels like they would move when I'm not looking.

Sometimes your biggest fear can worm its way into your subconscious mind and manifest itself in the form of a nightmare. A couple of nights ago I had it.

In the dream, I was standing outside of a house, surrounded by total darkness. Everywhere I set my eyes into there was nothing but an extensive amount of blackness ready to swallow me entirely. The peculiar house in front of me was the only thing that was clearly visible as if the dream didn't want me to go anywhere else but into the house. I had no choice but to go forward. I set my foot on a small wooden staircase that leads into the porch. The woods creaked on each step, ready to collapse anytime soon.

The only window I found was thick with dust. I tried to peer into the house to see what's inside, but I could see nothing, not even the slightest glint of light. I heard voices coming from the room behind it. Although the words were barely audible, I was pretty sure it was a man and a woman. With no other alternative, I set out to explore the house. The main door of the house was a heavy-looking double door, but somehow it got opened quite easily when I pushed it. It revealed a narrow hallway behind it. As I set my foot into the house, I felt like I'm in a different dimension. The atmosphere was lighter inside than it was outside, and it was no longer dark. The lamps located on each side of the wall illuminated the room. Now I could see clearly what was in front of me. At the end of the hallway, I could see two adjoining rooms, one was straight in front of me and the other was on the right and a staircase on the left that goes up. The rooms didn't have any doors that divide them from the others.

The voices I heard earlier came from the one on the right. Carefully I made my way there. I called out to whoever or whatever was in this house but as I expected there wasn't any response. The voices grew louder and clearer as I got closer, the words more audible though I still couldn't comprehend most of it.

I stood under the archway that leads into the room and I couldn't believe what I saw. There, in front of me, was a room that seemed to be a common living room, complete with a couch, coffee table, and a TV, from which the voices I heard before were coming. But it wasn't the room itself that startled me. Sitting on the couch was three humanoid figures, one of them was smaller than the others, sitting between the bigger ones. They looked like a happy family spending Saturday night together. One thing that freaked me out was that those figures weren't humans. Their plastic bodies, their expressionless faces, empty, menacing eyes...

They're mannequins.

Of all the things I could've come across, it has to be them.

Suddenly I heard something from the other room, it sounds like a constant stream of water. Instinctively I turned my head to the source of the noise, then at that very moment, I felt a pang of a strange sensation. When I face the mannequins in the living room again, I understood where that sensation was coming from. It also proved the thing I'm afraid of the most about mannequins.

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