Chapter 3: The Curse at the Spring Fair

According to Mr. Harrison, on March third, during the town’s annual Spring Fair—a big deal in these parts, with rides, funnel cakes, and those knockoff craft booths—Ellie went out with the women in her family.

She’d been sickly all winter—not just the sniffles, but fevers, broken bones, the works. Most weeks she couldn’t even get out of bed, stuck watching cartoons on her mom’s phone.

But that day, the sky was blue, the smell of grilled sausage drifted through the air, and Ellie was finally well enough to run around the fairgrounds with her cousins. She tugged on her mom’s sleeve, eyes wide at the carousel horses and the smell of funnel cakes frying. She wanted everything she saw—cotton candy, plushies, glow sticks. The kind of kid who saw magic in every booth.

It was the clay dolls that did her in, though. There was this vendor at the edge of the midway, table covered in little figurines—boys and girls, tiny hands, painted faces, all looking real enough to talk. Some sleeping, some pouting, some caught mid-wrestle. A few had red dots on their foreheads, others didn’t.

Ellie got stuck there, rooted to the spot, eyes wide and shining. She pointed and whined, refusing to leave until she had one. Mrs. Harrison, worn thin by months of sleepless nights, finally caved. She crouched down, purse in hand, and asked the price.

The vendor was a spindly old woman—looked like she’d blown in from a Dust Bowl photo, hair thin as corn silk but teeth bright and strong. She just grinned at Ellie, not saying a word. That smile made the back of Mrs. Harrison’s neck prickle, like when you know you’re being watched.

Nervous, Mrs. Harrison slapped a twenty on the table, grabbed a doll at random, and hustled Ellie away. But a few steps later, she heard the old woman muttering behind her—

"You take one of mine, I’ll take one of yours, honey. That’s just how it goes."

That line stuck with her, echoing in her dreams for weeks.

From then on, Ellie stopped eating and drinking, staring into space for hours, movements stiff and unnatural. She stopped watching her favorite cartoons, just stared at the wall like the TV was broken. When no one was looking, she’d wander into the backyard and start digging up dirt—sometimes even eating it. Her hands and face smudged with mud, the whites of her eyes dull.

Questions just made her giggle, a hollow sound that made even the family dog uneasy.

They took her to every pediatrician and specialist for miles—Dartmouth, Boston, even some alternative healer in Vermont—but nobody could help. The local pastor shook his head, saying, "Some things are just outta our hands, folks."

Mrs. Harrison wept for days, her cries muffled by the thick curtains in the living room. When they tried to track down the clay doll vendor, she was gone—vanished without a trace, like she’d never existed at all.

They tried every home remedy, every prayer, every candle and charm. Nothing worked.

Then, late one night, Mr. Harrison was driving home, stopping at the last red light in town. An old woman selling flowers shuffled up, her hands trembling from the cold. Sensing his despair, she asked what was wrong. When he told her about Ellie, her eyes glimmered with something ancient.

"Since the other side is using dark ways, why not fight fire with fire?" she whispered. "Near the graveyard in the old woods behind the hill, whether it’s ghosts, monsters, tree spirits, or wild demons, find a stronger one to be her spiritual protector—maybe it can subdue what’s harming her."

By then, Mr. Harrison was out of ideas, hope running thin as last year’s Christmas lights. He figured he had nothing to lose, so he gave it a shot.

And that’s how I ended up, paws deep in turkey, tangled in the Harrisons’ family drama.

By the time the story was done, I’d pieced together most of the puzzle. This wasn’t your everyday haunting—it was a grudge, old as the hills, tangled up with local folklore and the kind of curse that stuck to your boots like mud.