My Best Friend Claimed I Was Imagining Hearing Porcelain Footsteps In My Bedroom—Then An 1884 Doll Revealed His $850,000 Secret
👉 [Previous Decision]: You chose Option A – to pretend to accept Marcus’s explanation while silently investigating the doll’s interior.
Julian watched Marcus’s car pull away from the curb, a pit forming in his stomach. The micro-speaker, dead and silent, lay in his pocket. He had to keep up the pretense.
He carried the Jumeau doll, carefully wrapped in a linen cloth, into his private workshop. The room smelled of aged wood and mineral spirits, a familiar comfort. He set the doll gently on a padded workbench.
His heart hammered a steady rhythm against his ribs. He unzipped his diagnostic kit, pulling out the handheld UV scanner. He aimed the violet light at the doll’s porcelain chest.
The scanner hummed softly. A faint, dense shadow materialized on the internal display, nestled deep within the torso. It was unmistakably a tightly rolled paper scroll, tucked behind the doll’s crumbling leather lining.
I reached for my precision scalpel, my hand hovering over the delicate antique fabric.
A sudden knock startled me. Evelyn Ross, Marcus’s workshop assistant, stood in the doorway, her knuckles white against the dark wood. Her usually meticulous hair was slightly disheveled.
“Julian,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. She clutched a thick manila folder to her chest.
“Evelyn? Is everything alright?” I lowered the scanner, my eyes on her pale face.
She stepped inside, closing the door behind her with a soft click. “No. Marcus… he’s doing something terrible.”
She opened the folder, pushing it across the workbench. My eyes immediately snagged on a formal letterhead: ‘Drake & Associates, Insurance Valuations’.
“He filed a request,” Evelyn explained, her gaze darting to the doll. “To deauthorize your signing power for the firm. Claims you’re… experiencing episodes.”
My breath hitched. “Episodes?” The gaslighting, the speaker – it wasn’t just to mess with my head.
“And he paid someone,” she continued, her voice trembling slightly. “A man named Tobias Drake. Twelve thousand dollars, Julian. To certify you as mentally unfit to appraise. It’s all here.” She pointed to a line item in a scanned ledger within the folder.
A cold wave washed over me. Twelve thousand dollars. It was more than a joke. It was a calculated attack on my livelihood, on everything I had built since leaving the foster homes. That barren house on Elm Street, the constant feeling of being unwanted – it all flashed before my eyes.
“He wants to freeze me out,” I muttered, my fingers tightening on the scanner.
Evelyn nodded, her eyes wide with fear. “He needs capital. Badly. He’s been taking out cash advances against future projects. His gambling debts are worse than you know.”
She glanced at the doll. “What were you doing with that?” she asked, her voice hushed.
I looked at the scroll inside the doll, then at Evelyn. She had risked her job, perhaps more, to bring me this information. The trust between us, built over years of working for Marcus, felt suddenly fragile yet strong.
The scroll. The doll. Marcus’s desperate plan. It was all connected.
I needed to act fast, before Marcus’s fraudulent claims gained traction.
Choose your next action
Ask Evelyn to help secret the doll away to an independent lab — Read Chapter 3 to continue
Open the doll’s torso immediately in front of Evelyn — Read Chapter 4 to continue
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