“Anna, can you tell Mr. Helmsley it’s almost time for dinner?”
Anna pulled herself up from the floor of the living room, leaving her toys behind. “Yes, Mama,” she replied, trotting up the rickety stairs of her family’s boarding house.
Since they had purchased it two years ago, Anna had managed to make friends with almost all of the residents of her parents’ large Victorian boarding house. She looked forward to seeing them and took their stories of the good old days in stride. It never felt like a chore to help her mother run the boarding house. Most of the residents were very likable, despite their old age. All except for Dolly.
Dolly was a very old woman who lived in the room next to Anna’s. She never said much, and what she did was nearly incoherent. Bound to a wheel chair and nearly senile, Anna never even saw Dolly leave her room.
Anna had always had a strange feeling of discomfort around her, despite the fact that the old woman had always been rather kind to her. She let Anna look through the collection of china dolls she had in the corner, sift through her jewelry, and would attempt to tell Anna stories or recite poems, though most of the time Anna couldn’t understand her. She was a lonely old woman and Anna was glad she could keep her company, especially when it seemed that none of the other boarders visited her.
At night, Anna would hear strange sounds coming from Dolly’s room – some of them mumbles and groans; others less human like the clicking of roaches and a strange, loud rattle. Dolly was certainly not Anna’s favorite boarder, in fact Anna dreaded each moment she had to spend near that room, but she had told herself she was just being silly many-a-time.
As she’d promised, Anna informed the older man in the first door on the right about dinner and then hesitantly made her way to Dolly’s – the third door on the left.
“Miss Dolly?” she called cautiously, letting herself in. The lace curtains billowed in the breeze, and Anna was assaulted again by the familiar smell of mothballs and cedar that permeated the air of Ms. Dolly’s room.
Like the rest of the house, the third room on the left was decorated in classic Victorian style, with deep red furniture, lace galore, and a large wardrobe opposite a grand bed. It was all kept in pristine condition, the bed made, the windows open to allow a breeze, and the mint green comforter folded down to display the cream sheets.
The old woman sat silently beside the open window, staring outside without showing that she was aware of Anna’s presence. From behind, Anna could only see her thinning, white hair and her slumping shoulders, posture ruined by years of constant sitting. Even from the doorway, Anna could see the rise and fall of her shoulders as she breathed.
“Miss Dolly? It’s Anna. Are you hungry? It’s time for dinner,” she said loudly to be sure she was heard, approaching the old woman with caution. She knew the answer. Anna had never seen Dolly at dinner before.
An incoherent, garbled sound was her reply, and Anna quickly found Dolly’s side in an attempt to make out the words.
“Not now. Po…poem,” the woman repeated until Anna understood.
“You want to tell me your poem?” Anna clarified, and Dolly nodded, a smile that looked far too similar to a grimace pulling at her lips.
“Li…listen. Important.”
This happened every time Anna came to visit Dolly. Always the same poem. The Parade, she called it. Anna would let Dolly begin the poem, and over time she began to piece together the words, but each time, Dolly would eventually squint her eyes, close her mouth, and shake her head. She could never remember the entire poem. Every once and a while, she would remember another line, another stanza, even just a word, and Anna always listened intently to see if Dolly could remember any more.
“Okay, I’m listening, Dolly. Go ahead,” Anna said loudly, a forced smile on her lips.
Dolly took a deep breath and stared deeply into Anna’s eyes. Again, she smiled that grimace-like smile, and then she began:
“The Parade begins with a clank and a clack...A rattle, a shiver, there’s no turning back”
This was said, of course, with many pauses and stutters, as was what followed, but Anna had some of the poem committed to memory after she began deciphering Dolly’s garbled words. She even mumbled them to herself as Dolly spoke.
“They dance to no sound but of sorrow and woe...blood thirst and bloodlust as such parades go”
Anna had never much liked this poem. Even from what she’d heard, it had never ceased to send shivers up her spine. Anna wondered where Dolly had learned it.
“They’ll start to advance with a whisper of doom...they’ll stop at each door, even this very room”
“Anna?” she heard her mother call from a distance. “Time for dinner! Where are you?”
“I’m with Dolly! In here!”
Dolly continued her poem, seemingly unaffected by Anna and her mother’s conversation.
“you’ll hear the shake before they arrive...of rattling bones in a dead man’s hide”
Suddenly, there was a knock at the door. “Anna?” her mother called. “What are you doing in there, come outside this instant! You know you aren’t supposed to go in the other rooms, empty or not!”
“But it’s not empty, Dolly’s in here!” Anna argued, standing up with a small apology to the woman still chanting in the wheelchair before making her way to the door.
“Dolls aren’t people, Anna! Come outside now, it’s time for dinner -” The door shook, but didn’t open. “-- Anna, Anna open the door! I’ve told you so many times not to lock the doors!”
“She’s not a doll, Dolly is her name! Miss Dolly, the one that lives here! And I didn’t lock it, its open!” Anna replied, tugging on the door herself, but it wouldn’t give.
Behind them, Dolly turned her wheelchair around to face the door and continued to speak, her voice growing clearer. Anna had never heard Dolly remember this far into the poem before, and as she spoke, Dolly smiled again, that grimace-like smile growing more sinister.
“Gather your families, whisper a prayer...for the parade of the night is drawing most near”
“Dolly? No one named Dolly lives here! Please open the door, you’re scaring me!”
Anna blanched. No one named…then Dolly…she pulled on the door with new vigor, but simply couldn’t get it open. Anna whipped around to face the elderly woman, whose grin spread like a Cheshire cat’s. “I can’t! I…I don’t think Dolly will let me! Mommy, help me!”
“shut all your windows, crawl under your bed”
Anna watched as the woman pulled herself upright, before standing from the wheelchair. Anna screamed, backing against the door as the smiling woman approached slowly, faltering and labored at first but growing in stability as she walked ever closer. Miss Dolly leaned down, much taller than Anna had believed, and whispered in Anna’s ear, voice perfectly clear, the final line of her poem:
“For now it is here, the parade of the dead”