Kira Voss was a doll, and she wanted her name back. Not the name people gave her. The name of the child bound inside her porcelain body. She sat in the rocking chair by the window, four feet tall, cracked cheek pressed to cold glass. Painted blue eyes. A stitched smile she could not close. Somewhere under the paint lived a soul she meant to set free. But she knew nothing about the girl. No name. No memory. You cannot call a soul home if you do not know what to call. The family had left Kira in the attic three nights ago. Each morning they carried her downstairs, and each night she was back in the chair by dawn. She did not choose to move. The child inside chose. Kira only watched. Tonight the child was restless. Kira felt it as a pull behind her painted eyes, dragging her stiff arm toward a dusty box in the corner. She let it happen. Her hand knocked the lid loose. Inside lay a small shoe. The shoe was worn soft. Orange and green and purple, laces frayed at the tips. Dark stains spread across the toe and dried in the grooves of the sole. Kira's hand closed over it. The porcelain fingers should have felt nothing. She felt everything. The attic fell away. She stood in a wet field at dusk. A girl ran ahead of her, one shoe on, one foot bare. The girl looked back, laughing, and called a word over her shoulder. Kira strained to hear it. The word came clear. "Ellie." Then the girl fell. The bare foot slid in the mud. Something dark moved at the edge of the field, tall and thin, its face a smear of shadow with no eyes. It reached for the girl with long fingers. The girl screamed the way children scream once and never again. Kira dropped the shoe. She was back in the attic. The dark figure stood in the corner where the box had been. It had no face, only a smooth black hollow. It tilted its head at her, and she understood. It had taken the child once. It had followed the soul into the porcelain. It was still here. "Ellie," Kira said. The stitched mouth did not move, but the name came out anyway, in a child's high voice. The shadow flinched. For one breath, the black hollow of its face rippled, as if the name burned it. Kira knew the name now. She knew the shoe held the last hour of the girl's life. She had an anchor. She could begin the reclaiming. But the thing in the corner knew she knew. It stepped toward her, silent on bare black feet. It had hidden the child's name for a reason. And now Kira understood why the family kept losing her, why she always returned to this chair. The shadow had been keeping her here, close, where it could watch. She had a name at last. She was no longer alone with it.