La espantosa muñeca

Museum Catalog Note This is the opening installment of "La Espantosa Muñeca" (The Dreadful Doll) by Curtis Garland, a horror serial from *Selección Terror* collection #448, published by Bruguera. The narrative, presented as a first-person memoir, follows Peter McCoy, a twenty-two-year-old Scottish art student in 1920s Paris. After fleeing his boarding house to escape entanglements with female residents, McCoy rents a small attic studio near Sacré-Cœur. He meets his neighbor Mireille Descamp, an impoverished young woman caring for her paralyzed mother by cleaning apartments. That first night, a woman's scream awakens McCoy; he discovers a grotesque doll—black hair, glass eyes, painted smile, wearing a pale blue dress—abandoned outside his door. The protagonist cannot explain its presence or its purpose, establishing the story's supernatural mystery.