I don’t know when Josie started talking to her latest imaginary friend. I’m her mother – you’d think I’d know that, right? She’s four, so it’s not unusual for her to have conversations with herself. But when I first figured it out I could tell she was having a conversation – back and forth, only I wasn’t privy to the second half of the conversation.

“Sure, we can play,” I heard her say when she was alone in her room. “Yeah, that’s my favorite!” Then she laughed. “Why can’t we tell her? …I don’t know… Mom said we shouldn’t go outside alone…. No, she’ll be really mad…. Are you sure? …sure sure?”

I stepped into the room. “Josie, honey? Who are you talking to?”

Josie turned around to face me. “My friend, Ellie.”

“Who’s Ellie?” I asked, the hairs on the back of my neck.

“She’s,” Josie turned around to face her purple stuffed bear who was slumped over. “Hey! She was right here.” She looked around quizzically.

“Isn’t that Buddy?” I said, pointing to the slumped purple bear she’d had since before she could speak.

“Yeah…” she said prodding the bear experimentally. “But Ellie said she could talk and play with me through Buddy. That’s pretty neat, right?”

“Uh…” I fought down the urge to say, “No, it’s creepy as hell.” Instead, what I actually said was, “sure, honey… You’re going to need to start to get ready if we’re going to go over to Grammie’s tonight.”

Josie lit up at the mention of Grammie. Ellie was forgotten for now, and Josie set about picking out her dress for Grammie’s.

…

With Josie at her Grammie’s and Dave still at work, I decided to run a vacuum through the rooms. I had moved down the length of the carpet runner in the hallway and pushed into Josie’s room when I reached the end of the cord. I turned the vacuum off and started out of the room to move the cord to a closer plug.

“I will get her,” a woman’s voice said calmly. I spun and saw Buddy the bear standing in the corner.

“Ellie, I presume?”

She let out this little girl giggle that belied the woman’s voice. “I am,” she said and the bear curtsied.

“Who are you, Ellie? Or, should I ask, who were you?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said bending the bear arms to her black glass eyes, “I’m just an adorable bear now, aren’t I?”

“What do you want with Josie?” I asked, fighting to keep my voice steady.

“Oh, you know, the innocents are the best…”

“Best for what?”

The eyes of the purple bear glowed red. “Best to consume!” she said lasciviously.

“That’s what I was hoping for,” I said.

“Wait, you what?” the bear’s eyes snapped up to mine.

I made a motion with my hand and the stuffed bear’s unnatural movements froze, yet the bear didn’t fall over. “What? What have you done?”

I stepped closer to the bear and squatted down to be at eye level with it. “Now, Ellie was it? Didn’t you think it was a little too easy to take over that bear?”

“I mean… wait, what?”

“Hmm… not too bright,” I said, standing up I picked the bear up by the ear as I walked out of the room. “You see, Ellie, you’re not the first imaginary friend Josie has had.” I opened the door to the basement, flicked on the light with my free hand and started down the steps. “That bear was a trap. Honestly, I thought it’d take you a lot longer to really manifest. But you couldn’t resist the old glowing eyes, could you?”

“Let go of me!” she shrieked. I could feel the energy of the spirit struggling within the confines of the bear, though the bear remained perfectly rigid.

With my free hand I unlocked the door in the back of the basement. I uttered a word in a long-dead language and the dark room illuminated as the wicks in the sconces on the wall burst into flame. I pulled open a cabinet drawer and was greeted by a cacophony of voices some stridently crying for help, others cursing me in guttural unintelligible languages, some swearing profusely.

“What? Who are they?” the bear asked.

“Kindred spirits,” I said and laughed at my own joke.

“You bitch, you can’t keep me here!”

“You’re close,” I said as I held the bear over the roiling energy of the dozens of spirits trapped in the cabinet. “But it’s ‘Witch,’ not ‘Bitch’ and nothing is going to ever come for my daughter.” I dropped the bear into the dark void of the drawer. As I closed the drawer the loud protests of the ghosts cut off abruptly.

I sighed in satisfaction, walked to the other side of the room and picked up an identical purple bear from a row of purple bears. I traced a symbol on its forehead. Its black eyes flashed and then dimmed. “Well, Buddy number 73, ready for duty?” The inanimate bear just, well, hung loosely. For now…