Henry’s intent when posting about his doll on the forum had been to confirm that items showing up from home was normal and that the doll hadn’t found her way to Vallo on her own. Or worse, Walter hadn’t found a way to fling her to him all the way from Silent Hill. And though he did eventually get confirmation, most of the reactions he’d gotten were of people wholly freaked out.
Henry couldn’t blame them. He probably could have left the fact that it belonged to an undead serial killer out of the description. As well as the hauntings. But people probably would have found that out anyway. And not everyone had been creeped out. Some had been curious about her.
Jade had been a bit of both and she was the first non-magical person who wanted to meet the doll. Even the magical people Henry knew never asked to “meet” her. Examine her yes, but not meet.
“Behave yourself,” he warned the doll as though it was some kind of naughty child. “Please don’t do anything while Jade is here, ok? At least nothing gross, alright?”
Jade wasn’t far. Morningside was convenient housing, and if she had the opportunity to get out her apartment then she’d take it considering her sister was also her fucking neighbor. But her absence also allowed Billie to somehow break in (repeatedly) and mess around her shit, and she really ought to pay someone magic savvy to ward off her apartment. Lot less headaches that way and a lot less chance of her sister trying to set fire on her bed a second time.
With all the attempts of murdering each other, Billie having kidnapped her kid and shot her for dead back home - obviously they’ve done worse things to one another, and very little surprised Jade now.
Her presence was made known with three gentle knocks. “Hey,” she said from the other side of the door. “It’s me. Asking you and your new roommate for permission to enter.”
Calling the doll a “roommate” made Henry cringe. As much as he felt protective of her, he wouldn’t go so far as calling her anything that gave her either A) sentience or B) that much influence over who gets into his apartment.
Henry peered through the peephole in his door (a habit he picked up from his Other Life) before opening it for Jade. “You can come in,” he said.
“Hey,” greeted Jade, her grin wry as she stepped in. She had gotten acquainted with the inside of his apartment - which didn’t look much different than the other ones, but let’s just say she always enjoyed her time when she was here. That might possibly change if the doll was about to cause this place to start feeling haunted but who knew. “Here for proper introductions. You doing okay so far?”
Henry didn’t blame Jade for being weary. “Yeah, I’m fine,” he said with a soft chuckle. “She isn’t going to hurt me.” He motioned to where the doll was sitting on the coffee table propped up by a can of peas.
The doll herself didn’t look remarkable. She was made of and was about the same size as the can. Her hair was a dark brown yarn and her eyes were black buttons sewn onto her face. A piece of thick string was her mouth and she seemed to be smiling. She looked old and worn like she had, at one point, been treasured.
“She’s one of the few things from my other life that doesn’t want to kill me,” he said folding his arms loosely over his chest. But that was something Jade already knew, she’d seen his scars at this point. “The hauntings aside.”
Jade tucked her hands into her back pockets, approaching the coffee table with some caution. A haunted doll. God, the creepiest cliche. “You’re almost a little protective of her,” she mused, flashing him a wry little smile before sitting on the couch to assess the… toy.
It looked more like a thrift store find than anything. Something her own daughter would find and hold to her chest, perhaps.
“You know more of her than anyone else, so - I trust your judgment,” she added. “My guess is if she wanted you dead then she would have stolen a knife and done the deed Child’s Play style. What hauntings should I expect, then? That way I can differentiate between her and Vallo’s weird blips.”
In a way Henry was protective of the doll, though he wasn’t really sure why. Maybe it had to do with what he knew of Walter’s history. He was a murdering nutbar, but it wasn’t as though he’d been born that way. The doll had been Walter’s treasure and Walter had trusted it to Henry. That meant something, though Henry was stumped as to what exactly it was.
“I don’t think she is haunted or possessed,” Henry said. He bent down to pick her up. “But she does cause them. Maybe because Walter imprinted on her or something, I don’t know. As long as I keep her with me, though, the hauntings are generally less and when they do happen they’re pretty tame.” As tame as a haunting can get. “Like the windows rattling, or clocks acting weird, or the TV turning itself on.” The way Henry listed the tamer hauntings was like he was talking about the weather. “It’s when I leave her by herself that things can get pretty gnarly.”
Rattling windows. Clocks. Television. The last two were tame, the first one could be startling but as long as they weren’t violent… it should be fine? What the hell did she know, though. “I’ll keep that in mind,” Jade hummed, leaning forward and reaching her hand out as if she wanted to touch her. She paused to look up at Henry, mostly for permission. “So would it be weird if I… don’t know, I talked to her?”
With the way he spoke about her she seemed sentient to an extent. Not in the head-turning, creepy-eyes-following sort of way but the doll was definitely some kind of supernatural presence that had opinions about being abandoned.
She didn’t even ask Henry how he slept through it. Jade herself had learned how to get some semblance of sleep in cities where the dead roamed freely with the instinct to feed. No choice but to adapt to survive.
“Sure, if you want,” Henry said with a shrug. “I do sometimes,” he added a little sheepishly. In fact he’d been talking to her just as Jade arrived, not that Jade needed to know that. Hell, maybe having someone else acknowledge her and not have their first instinct to set her on fire would do some good.
Jade didn’t think that was weird. It was - cute, actually? She flashed him a smile before diverting her attention back to the doll in his hand, head cocked to the side. “Hi,” she told her. “I’m Jade. You look like something my daughter would have loved to play with when she was younger. She didn’t have a lot of toys growing up - definitely not for lack of trying, our world just went to shit when she was born.”
She could remember sifting through piles of trash - things that had been burned and abandoned after the virus wreaked havoc - and sometimes she’d find a special gem, something in-tact and not too worn around the edges for Bea.
“I also don’t spook too easily, so haunt what you wanna haunt,” she shrugged, leaning back into the couch. Jade didn’t feel too stupid talking to the doll. “Was that okay?”
“Did you just give the doll carte blanche to haunt my apartment?” Henry asked, blinking at Jade. Henry didn’t spook easily either -- at least not any more -- but it did seem to have a will of its own on some kind of level. He half-expected a deep hum to start and for the air to start turning red. It didn’t, thankfully.
“Not my intention,” Jade protested, making a face and now realizing how he could have come to that conclusion - her wording may have sucked there. “But she lives here now too, doesn’t she? You said her haunts are pretty harmless and I’m just making it known that it’s cool, I’m not going to be afraid of her?”
Alright, this conversation was just weird in general.
Sighing, she wiped a hand down her face. “I’ve never made friends with a doll before so I’m trying here.”
Henry was about to protest that the doll wasn’t actually alive, but his argument died when he realized that he was the one who often referred to the doll as “she” and not “it” and he was the one who said that she caused the hauntings whenever she was left alone in the apartment. He may have wanted to believe she wasn’t alive -- and to a certain extent, she wasn’t -- but it was Henry who was giving her those types of characteristics.
Henry shook his head quickly, his shaggy hair covering his eyes. “I think that was fine,” he told Jade. “Nothing happened. Not that I was expecting anything to,” he added quickly. He set the doll back down on the coffee table, once more propped up by the can. He chuckled when he looked back at Jade. “Not that she needs your permission,” he went on. “She’ll do what she wants -- or rather whatever’s attached to her will. But, maybe it’ll appreciate being acknowledged?” Henry shrugged. “The owner of the doll might appreciate that.”
“Acknowledged - that,” Jade concurred, blowing a raspberry-sounding sigh from her lips. It wasn’t her intention to tell a doll what to do - considering it mess around with the apartment with whatever power it possessed - but he seemed attached to her, and the last thing she wanted to do was dismiss her. “Considering everyone else suggested that you set her on fire I’m - trying to make nice here?”
“That was nice.” Henry nodded. “And I appreciate it.” In the grand scheme of things Henry was more appreciative of Jade’s gesture than the doll. At least Jade seemed to understand that getting rid of the doll was easier said than done for Henry, even if Henry himself couldn't explain why.
He made a motion over his shoulder with his thumb towards the kitchen. “You want anything?” He offered. “Drink or snack?”
“Drink, please,” Jade requested with relief. That seemed appropriate after trying to make friends with some otherworldly doll. “I could work up an appetite for a snack later, though.”
She leaned forward, elbow propped up onto her lap with her chin settling into the back of her hand - and she must clearly have a different definition of snack with the way she dragged her eyes from the top of his head, and down, down, down. Slowly.
“I got rum in the kitchen…” Henry started, but trailed off as Jade eyed him with a look that clearly said she was hungry for something and it wasn’t chips and dip. He smiled slyly at her. “Yeah, alright,” he said, “I’ll get you a drink and maybe after that we can work up that appetite.”