Want to Play?

My husband and I decided to move to a new town for a fresh start with my daughter Lilliana. She was five and has terrible ADHD, bipolar and conduct disorder. Her mood could change within a matter of seconds, from the happiest little girl you would ever meet to the angriest. She's antisocial, in a constant search for something new to play with, whether it be the nice way or the bad way. My husband, Ivan, wasn't Lilliana's real father. Her father and I never even got married and were broken up before Lilliana was even born. Ivan and I got together when she just turned one. My ex was around, even though he and Ivan didn't get along on the greatest of terms, up until a year ago.

Peter had a long history with severe, and I'm talking severe, depression. When we were a couple, I never really understood how bad it was. He was a good father, always on time and dependent. It was the middle of winter when things took a turn for the worst. I had called and texted Peter since the night before to confirm I was picking Lilliana up at noon and he never replied. So at noon, I arrived at his house and got out and hurried to the door in the falling snow. I knocked and waited and my daughter opened the door. I greeted her and stepped inside to help her get her bags when I noticed that Peter wasn't sitting in front of the TV with a video game. He wasn't in the kitchen making lunch. I didn't even hear anything from the bathroom.

I kneeled down to Lilliana and held her arms after she put her coat on. "Where's Daddy?"

She stared at me. "He hurt himself, then he took a nap. He's still asleep."

I immediately ran for his bathroom, but found it empty. Then I checked his bedroom and had to hold back a scream as I stumbled back against the wall. Peter was in his bed, with empty bottles of Benadryl and Jack Daniels on his nightstand, next to a bloodied razor blade. His light grey comforter was stained red from the blood that had seeped out of both of his open wrists. The room was cold and he had always kept his bedroom cold so he could sleep better, and that might've helped his body to not start to smell. At least, from this distance I couldn't smell anything. His lips were purple and his face was ghostly white, his blood had dried and settled and was a dark red color. He was stiff. He wasn't Peter anymore.

Tears stung my eyes as I grabbed my daughter and carried her out to the car and called an ambulance and the police. A half hour later, Ivan pulled into the driveway and I got out of my car to hold him as I cried. Paramedics told us Peter had been dead for almost two days. Lilliana had only eaten a whole bag of Goldfish and got water from the sink by pushing one of the table's chairs up to the counter. The worst part was when she had told the police what happened. She saw Peter do the whole thing.

Our new house was close to a nearby forest, and so far, the weather had been gloomy and rainy, weird for late summer. I pulled into the garage after going to get Lilliana signed up for her first year of public school. Ivan was already home, and I was hoping he was making dinner. Lilliana was coloring at the table in silence when I walked in and Ivan was at the stove. The smell of spaghetti and meatballs filled the room and I placed my purse down on the arm of my chair.

"I saw the ice cream truck today," Lilliana suddenly said. Since Peter, she rarely ever showed enthusiasm and excitement. To this day, I could tell she was still traumatized from what she saw. Sometimes, she'd even go through periods of time where she wouldn't want to do things that kids normally do; play outside, read some books, ride her bike, sometimes coloring was out of the question.

"Where'd you see an ice cream truck, baby?" Ivan asked as he drained the noodles in the sink.

"It drove by. Their music was playing," she replied. "The driver waved at me and asked me if I wanted to play but I didn't have any money."

In the back of my mind, I was trying to gather why an ice cream truck would be driving around in this gloomy of weather. It'd been in the mid fifties for the last three days. But I played along.

"The next time they drive by, we'll get you something, okay?" I said. She nodded and went back to her coloring book and Ivan and I exchanged unsure glances.

After dinner, I stood in the kitchen doing the dishes and my mind kept going back to the ice cream truck as I stared out the window at the foggy forest that sat right after the empty field. Our neighborhood was suburb enough for a truck to drive through, spreading joyfulness to all the kids here but why on a day like today? Fifty degrees, foggy and it rained on and off. Ivan was upstairs getting Lilliana's bed ready for her when I heard her start to scream. I dropped the plate I was holding and bolted to the stairs. When I got up them and into her room, the screaming had stopped and Ivan was holding her and rocking her back and forth.

"What happened?" I asked, touching her head.

"I don't know. She just looked out the window and started screaming," he said. Lilliana had her eyes closed on his shoulder and looked like she was already asleep, her cheeks still wet from tears.

That night, I was woken up by some faint music. I stirred a little bit, and glanced at Ivan, who was sleeping away, before at the alarm clock. 3 a.m. I groaned quietly and sat up and listened more. The music sounded like kid music, like something that would come out of a music box or a wind-up box. Then, I realized it was ice cream truck music. I furrowed my brows, confused, when I heard footsteps coming from downstairs, followed by the screen door in the kitchen opening and closing. Lilliana.

I jumped out of bed after I shook Ivan awake and ran to the kitchen. I saw my daughter in her white nightgown, walking up to a white ice cream truck parked at the end of the street. A man in the driver's seat flung the door open and reached his hand out to her, which she took. I ran after her, calling, screaming her name but she ignored me. The truck drove away and left me in the dust and I ran until my lungs burned. My eyes swelled up with tears as Ivan pulled up in his car and I got in and he sped after the truck.

The truck was fast and we saw it turn onto a small road that led into the forest. I told Ivan to drive faster but we already lost sight of the vehicle. We drove deep into the forest, between the rows and rows of tall trees, barely being able to see anything through the fog and darkness. Ivan slowed the car down when he saw a white figure in front of us at the dead end road and it was the truck. The door was wide open and we jumped out of the the car to search for Lilliana. It was almost abandoned. It was an ice cream truck on the inside, standard, regular truck on the inside.

"Call the police," I told my husband. "Lilliana!" All I could hear was crickets and Ivan's car that was still running. Everything felt like it was in slow motion.

When I came back from looking in the trees with only the moonlight guiding me, Ivan was hanging up the phone. I felt so broken so fast, I didn't even know how to feel, what to feel. Ivan and I waited for the police to arrive and we were questioned by one while the others started a search, which would continue into the following day.

Days went by and there was no sign of Lilliana or any kind of strange man whatsoever. I thought the worst kind of pain I would feel was when I found Peter and Lilliana's innocence become disturbed. I truly felt destroyed and lost. Ivan was convinced that they were going to find her but I wasn't. She was gone. Most of the time anymore, when someone goes missing, the only thing that turns up is their body, or even a part of them. My five year old daughter was gone. Completely.

Two weeks later, the police showed up at our door. They were calling off the search until further notice. One of the officers reached into his satchel as I was trying not to lose myself in front of them.

"We found this. Does it look familiar?"

He held up a doll. It was a porcelain doll, with a crack across the left cheek. It had long blonde hair that was in two braids and pale skin and was wearing a white nightgown. Its blue eyes were big and glossy and its lips were curled into a small smile.

"It looks like her. This is almost exactly what she was wearing when she disappeared."

"Where did you find this?" Ivan asked, appearing behind me and reaching for the doll to study it further.

"A mile away from where the truck was left," the officer explained. "We did another scan of the area earlier today and came across it." I stared down at the doll in Ivan's hands in confusion.

They let us keep the doll and I put it in Lilliana's vacant room. I'd been spending hours in there, sitting in the rocking chair I used to use to rock her to sleep when she was younger. Ivan doesn't even look inside the room. I placed the doll on her dresser and felt its blue, blue eyes pierce into my soul.

Sleep had become something I dreaded. Every night, I'd dream about the night she went missing, only we'd find her mangled body shoved in a pile of sticks and leaves. Peter was there once. Lilliana had shown up in a white glow after Ivan and I found her body. She waved at us before turning towards Peter, who smiled at her before taking her hand and leading her away, until they vanished. I'd wake up sobbing and Ivan would have to shush me back to sleep. Maybe she actually was with Peter. Maybe her terrors and mental health issues were gone and she was coloring with her real father again in heaven.

A bang made me jolt awake and sit straight up in bed. Ivan stirred a little but didn't wake up. I slowly got out of bed and wandered down the hall to Lilliana's room. I pushed the door open and switched on the light and screamed.

Ivan ran to me and I could see the terrified and dazed look in his eyes.

In the rocking chair was my daughter. Her eyes were blank and her blonde hair was stained red, along with her nightgown. There was purple and black bruises on her arms and neck and a bloody bullet wound right in the middle of her forehead. She held the matching doll in her hands as if she had been rocking it. The doll's eyes were turned to look in our direction and had a more sinister expression on its face. My watery eyes gawked at the flower print wallpaper and the bloody handwriting across it.

It said, "Want to play?"

That was when I heard the ice cream truck's music coming from just outside the house.

#creepypasta #icecream #doll #scarystory