One Christmas I lucked out. It was at the height of the Cabbage Patch craze and my parents had warned me that Santa Claus couldn't deliver everything, like an unprecedented, coveted doll. But Santa was no match for my uncle, who worked at Kmart and hid the last doll in the store (I believe in the gun section, where he worked), which is how I found a red-headed doll in a gingham dress waiting for me one winter morning, soon to be so beloved her cloth limbs grew soft with dirt. I never let my mother wash her for fear she would drown.
Horror films love to dwell on the doll, from "Poltergeist" to Slappy of R. L. Stine's "Goosebumps." But many dolls of horror belong to girls. Talky Tina says way too much to a little girl in "The Twilight Zone." Annabelle first terrorizes orphan girls in "Annabelle: Creation" and later is an unknowing man's gift to his pregnant wife.
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