 
DOLLS

Simon Ericson

This work of fiction uses only characters and persons taken from the authors own imagination and are not intended to represent any specific person(s) living or dead. All places, events, and organizations included are imaginary or used fictitiously.

Dolls

Copyright 2015 Simon Ericson

Cover Art Copyright 2015 Anne Anderson

Published by Simon Ericson

ISBN 978-0-9940821-0-7

All rights reserved by author

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from their favorite authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.

This book is dedicated to my beautiful wife Anne, without whom nothing I start would ever get finished. And my daughter Lillith, who has encouraged me to follow my dreams, if only so I can tell her one day to do the same.
Act I:The long Night

For Officer Morgan it had been a very long night. He was fairly sure that the tremors running through his hands and legs didn't show even if they felt like an earthquake in his veins. Standing beside his desk, he flipped through some papers to keep his hands busy as he organized his thoughts. Trying to figure out what angle to attack this from and studiously ignoring the burning from a fresh cut below his knee.

A young man sat in the broken chair in front of his desk. Arthur was awkwardly tall and skinny. The bespectacled man had blonde hair, brown eyes and wore nice clothes that were just a little too big for him. He was pleasant, as usual, and very calm, which only enhanced Morgans' suspicion.

Morgan was a large man. Not overly tall at six feet, Arthur would top him by almost half a foot if standing. He was however a well built man. Years of working the beat and having very physical hobbies outside of work had given him a wide powerful frame that few people overlooked when sitting in front of his desk.

Arthur was completely nonplussed sitting there. This was the third time Morgan had talked to the man and not once had the officer seemed to make any impression. Morgan always made an impression.

"Is there anything you would like to share with me Artie?" Morgan asked.

"Only that I prefer to go by Arthur as I stated in our last meeting Officer Morgan." Arthur replied in a calm, confident, infuriating tone.

"What were you doing out in that particular area tonight?" Morgan growled. "It's not only a rough neighbourhood but mostly abandoned."

"I had been informed that there are some rare night blooming flowers in the neighbourhood." The reply came on the lips of that same confident smile and rang with the sound of a practised line. "I wanted to get some sketches, it's a hobby of mine."

His hopes hadn't been high picking the man up, but he knew that Arthur was involved in whatever was going on in one way or another. Morgan had dealt with Arthur twice during this investigation already, and he hadn't been helpful either time. Morgan had dug as far as he could and, on paper at least, the man was clean. Official record was spotless, he was investigated for a brief period of time during a kidnapping scandal in Kansas but was cleared before it had gone too far. Well educated, poor background with a working class father and a mother that had passed away when he was young. The only thing that stood out as even remotely odd was a note in his file from the investigating officer during the kidnapping fiasco.

The note in Arthur's file said that he had initially been brought to the investigators attention by rumours and reports of the man being seen with a young girl. Around the age of nine the young girl was seen with him at odd times and odd places, but no one got a good enough look at either of them to confirm anything other than suspicions. There was no record of a daughter or niece, he had of course denied any such relation and it hadn't had any bearing on the investigation in the end. The note had seemed suspicious to Morgan earlier, and now it sang.

"It's been a rough night Arthur." Morgan leaned in aggressively, feeling the cut on his leg burn. "I have been cut, run ragged, I drove in with freaking bolas wrapped around the door of my car!" He lowered his voice to a fierce growl. "And I shot what looked like a little girl point blank with a twelve gauge and she got back up and tried to kill me again! Then as I drive away, there you are, just walking down an abandoned street at the edge of town, 'sketching flowers'. Without a single sheet of paper on you I might add."

Arthur hesitated and for a brief moment Morgan could see the wheels spinning behind the man's eyes which were normally hidden behind his confident mask. He showed no other reaction to what Morgan said, solidifying whatever suspicions Morgan had. Eventually Arthur spoke "What exactly would you like to know Officer Morgan?"

'Finally' Morgan thought, and he slapped the table aggressively. "I want to know about the Dolls!"

The mask returned in a flash, only this time seriousness manned the wall that confidence had abandoned. "No Officer Morgan, you don't."

Leaning back, Morgan considered the intense words carefully. "And why exactly don't I?" he asked, watching the man whose calm and cocky attitude had slid away for the first time since he'd met him.

"Because when you stare long enough into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you." The solemn sincerity Arthur responded with made the quote hard to laugh off.

"Did you just threaten an officer?"

"Not at all. Just warning him of the danger he is getting into."

"I don't get you Arthur." He finally slumped into his chair and sighed, letting the intimidation routine fall away and letting himself feel exhausted. "I actually thought you were going to help me out for a moment there."

"Oh I am Officer!" Arthur replied cheerily, donning his confident mask again. "I think you will be much better off alive."

A short while later Morgan sat watching the man leave and eyeing the sticky note he had left behind. A number was scrawled onto it, Arthur had asked him to call in the morning after the man had 'checked up on some things'. Not sure what to think of that, and without enough evidence to charge him with anything, he'd let the man go. Morgan sat grumpily at his desk and regretted the decision to quit smoking all those years ago.

Finally turning to sit forward in his chair like an adult he began going over the documents and evidence he had collected. It was mostly going around in circles and it made his head hurt, but he was coming up empty and convinced that the pieces had to fit together somehow.

A couple of weeks ago, a bunch of gang members and drug dealers started leaving town. The more organized and well connected groups that lived off societies leavings either started to lay low or pack up shop altogether. That kind of thing just didn't happen. Scum like these groups either got bigger or got forced into retirement by police or other gangs. Most of the small time crooks didn't know much other than what they had been told, which was 'lay low' or 'get out'. When the department had finally cornered some of the areas middlemen and small time leaders, the word was that something bad was about to blow through town and no one wanted to deal with it. Small gangs couldn't deal with it, and big ones didn't want to. That was bad enough, but then it got weird.

The city didn't have a large occult community, but it was there. Majority of them were small Wicca groups, the occasional cult-like formations and a few shops and psychics pandering to the rest of them. A handful of the individuals and groups however had taken it upon themselves to contact the police and let them know that something was about to come to town that was a lot of trouble, though no one would say what. Other groups just got up and left. Normally this would have been laughed off, if it hadn't sounded a lot like the warning from the crooks and come at almost exactly the same time.

Morgan had been brought onto the case at around this time. Though not a detective, he had helped on a case a few years ago that had involved a local cult. During that time he had brought in some solid leads on the case by working the occult scene in the city, something that most other officers wouldn't do. Morgan wasn't fond of tarot cards or spell books, but it had led him to the information he had needed from the close knit community. As such he had gathered some contacts among them. The investigation hadn't helped his reputation amongst the other cops, but he had played a big role in catching that cult. Though this time, just as last time, he was mostly on to appease the paper pushers that every lead was being followed, that didn't stop him from doing his job.

Just after being brought onto the case, the killings and thefts started. At first it looked like a nasty gang hit, a small time dealer out in the old industrial park was found mutilated. Someone had cut him nearly in half, and though he had emptied half a clip of ammo, his was the only blood found at the scene. Then they started finding people hacked up, beaten to death or they simply disappeared. A few survived their beatings but they couldn't or wouldn't talk. One thing that hadn't escaped the Police's notice was that a lot of the beatings and killings happened around the times and in the areas where the theft of industrial materials or other strange items had happened.

There weren't many witness reports. Most of the ones they had were just reports of noises, gunshots and yelling heard in the night. A few others detailed seeing shadows in the alleys and two or three others detailed a young girl seen in the vicinity late at night just before or after the incidents. Though each of those came from a rather sketchy source. For the most part the bulk of the investigation was ignoring the reports except to pinpoint time of death. Truthfully most of the reports had seemed like nonsense even to Morgan, until now.

Morgan had groomed through all the contacts on his list, all the respectable ones, and then the untrustworthy ones. There were a lot more of the latter than the former in the occult world. He didn't get much more than incoherent rumours and whispers that came from someone far off. Finally he was forced to turn to the Craftsmen.

In the city there were a handful of individuals that virtually no one but a few serious occultists had heard of before. They were fairly normal citizens, lived in nice houses, dressed respectably for the most part, some of them even worked normal day jobs. There weren't many of them and they didn't advertise. Morgan referred to them as the Craftsmen, a name he had given them. Each one of them would only speak to you if you already knew what they did, and they wouldn't sell you anything if you didn't already know the cost. Morgan didn't know the costs for anything they did, but he had followed a long and strange road to get to each one and he didn't bother them lightly.

Each Craftsman specialized in something different. One made small wooden, stone and even bone figures with the look of charms to them. Another specialized in reproducing unique and all too life like eyes made of glass and strange liquids. There was a woman he had talked too that made concoctions that glowed or seemed to flow up to the top of the containers. They insisted the things they made were legal, only parts of other things and that it was up to the customers to use them for whatever they would.

Morgan had always chalked them up to expert charlatans. Fakes that gave the 'witches' and 'psychics' things that made them feel special. Each Craftsman however tended to be very serious about their crafts, and they all seemed to know far more than they should. Either way they weren't quite like the rest of the occult community.

It was out of one of the Craftsman, the one that made the glass eyes, that he had found his first real lead. 'Dolls' were coming to the city. Even though each one of the other Craftsmen seemed to know what he was talking about, not one of them would say a word more. None of them had been impressed by his normal intimidation routine either.

Not a single one of his other contacts had more than a passing awareness of the name. Even those who had forwarded the warning that something was coming had heard it through the grapevine. Morgan had assumed it was some cult or initiative from the satanic and 'dark arts' side of the global occult community, but he couldn't find anything that linked any 'Dolls' to what was going on in his city.

None of these notes were new to him. None of the history or witness reports were ones he hadn't seen before, though he payed closer attention to the strange ones now. He was about to pack it in for the night when the phone rang. He glared at it, but it kept ringing anyways.

"Officer Morgan." he answered in as surly a tone as he could manage.

"Ahhh hello Officer!" The voice on the other end was male, smooth and delighted. Morgan disliked whoever it was instantly. "My little girl was just telling me about you. You have been interfering in my work."

"Sir if you have a complaint-"

"Before you were an annoyance, poking around where you didn't belong like any other cop. Now we are very cross with you. You hurt my little girl! Shotgun pellets make a very hard mess to clean up." The man practically spat the last words though the line before hanging up.

Morgan let the phone hang from his hand as he sat there, staring at the wall for some time. "You hurt my little girl." The words sounded in his head. "Shotgun pellets make a very hard mess to clean up." Finally he sat back in disbelief, feeling for a cigarette package he hadn't carried in ten years. Shortly after he abandoned all the paperwork on his desk and headed home.

He headed straight down to his old car in the underground parking lot beneath the station and back to his small downtown apartment. His shift had ended hours ago, and the night had been long and taxing enough that by the time he got home, exhaustion had staked its claim on him.

Morgan didn't normally carry his weapon while off duty, but the unease he felt from the nights events had prompted him to do so. As he came up to the heavy wood door to his apartment, he drew the weapon. Paranoia was the culprit for his motivation to move in armed and search his home thoroughly. The lock hadn't been broken or open, and his windows were locked tight, and he didn't find anything out of place as he looked around. When he finally put the gun back in it's place at his waist he almost felt silly.

The gun was beside his bed as he went to sleep that night despite how he felt after searching his apartment. It's presence was a reassurance to him, especially as sleep was slow to come, and in the interim he found himself reflecting on the events of his shift.

Earlier in the evening he had received a tip from one of his local contacts about the dolls case he was working on. It was a shop owner of an old bookstore that was a favourite of those with more obscure interests, and he had a tip. A rumour of an overheard conversation that claimed Dolls were spotted near an old industrial building just outside the city proper. Hardly a solid lead but it was more than Morgan had gotten out of anyone in a while and no one else was going to check it out.

So despite being just the officer there to make it look like everything was being done, he took his patrol car and headed over to the building. He believed that there was something more solid in what little he had dug up than any of the other officers or detectives on the case believed. Still he didn't expect that heading out here was going to be anything more than a waste of time, but his conscience wouldn't let him rest easy if he didn't follow it up.

According to what he could dig up the building had once belonged to a company that specialized in safety training and other industry skills education before it went under. There were loading bays around the back, a series of large presentation rooms and rooms for demonstrations throughout the building, though most of the building was offices and classrooms. From the outside it was plain but nicely designed, set with rows of windows against strips of grey concrete to separate the floors. Not quite centred in the front of the building were a heavy set of double doors that stood cracked open. The whole building was set into a large lot that was enclosed by a tall chain fence. The stands of trees that were left from before the buildings construction for decoration, had gone wild and started to form back into a forest. They closed in around the building and made the whole place feel like it was miles from nowhere. It wasn't close to anywhere busy but it was still inside the city, if on the edge.

It was easy to tell that something was going on inside the building as he pulled up. The sounds that came spilling out of the door made it seem like a small war was going on inside. High shouts and grunts mixed with the crash of things being thrown into walls and the ringing of metal smashing against metal. Morgan leaped out of his police car and ran to the building, his pistol in hand. Positioned against one of the doors he peered carefully into the building. The only thing visible in the darkness was the back and forth of shadows that would clash in battle only to disappear back into the abyss that seemed to spawn them.

Morgan found the flashlight at his belt and bashed the door open bringing both his light and his weapon up as he leaped into the front room. "Police!" He yelled. "Hands where I can see them and don't move!"

The sounds of fighting stopped instantly, still he wasn't sure he was yelling at anyone at first. Sweeping his flashlight across the room he had to double back before he noticed them, the beam of light doubling back to settle on two small figures.

Two small girls around maybe eight or nine years old stood in the circle of his flashlight. One had short hair, dark skin, bright purple eyes and held a straight heavy short sword in one hand. In her other hand was a set of weights attached to ropes that it took him a moment to realize were actual bolas. The other girl had straight dark hair to her shoulders, pale skin and wore a pale blue dress that almost matched her pale blue eyes that had no apparent pupils. She held a heavy mace in one hand while the other dangled awkwardly at her side. Neither of the girls were breathing heavy and both stood far too still as they stared back at him.

Morgan almost put his gun away, but a second look at those weapons and a fierce tingling between his shoulder blades warned him that was a bad idea. He kept his firearm up and glanced to each side, the darkness almost solid compared to the bright beam of the flashlight that he kept trained on the strange pair. "What's going on here?" he demanded.

The girl with the dangling arm threw herself out of the light in a single blurring leap and took off down a hallway he could barely make out. The other looked back and forth between him and the hall before glaring at him with consternation and throwing herself after her prey with a hiss.

It took Morgan a few moments for his brain to finish processing and respond. When he finally did it was to take off down the hallway, without a clue of what he was going to do. He hadn't expected to find anything when he had left the station. When he heard the fighting he had expected hobos or junkies or maybe some cultists in a fist fight. Running into little girls with strange eyes and weapons trying to kill each other wasn't even on the list of things he might have to deal with.

Something smashed down the hall. One thing was clear, if he didn't do something, one or both of those girls were going to get killed. So he tore down the hall with his flashlight in one hand and gun ready in the other.

He leaped broken chairs and glanced into empty class and meeting rooms, casting his flashlight into them to find nothing but frightened shadows and old echoes. He went up two flights of stairs following the sounds of the fight, not even sure how two little girls could have gotten so far so quickly.

Finally he turned into a classroom just in time to blind the purple eyed girl, standing over her opponent, with his flashlight. Her pupils didn't shrink as her head snapped up and murder shone in her alien gaze. The girl she stood over didn't hesitate in taking the advantage and soundlessly swung her smooth mace into the leg of the purple eyed girl, who went down as the leg gave out with a crunch like wood snapping.

Somehow the purple eyed girl managed to knock the mace out of her opponents hand on the way down and only yelled in wordless rage over her broken leg. Then they were wrestling over the sword as the purple eyed girl tried desperately to wrench it from her opponents grasp, who was in turn using both hands to try and hack the blade into purple eyes' face.

Neither of them spared a moment for Morgan's increasingly panicked commands. He shouted for them to stop, to separate, that he would pull them apart if he had to. Striding carefully up to the flailing mass of arms and weapons, the purple eyed girl on top pulled the sword backwards and took a swing at his leg. Falling back he shouted in alarm, pain lancing through his leg. A large cut had been opened from just below his knee to halfway down his shin. It would have been deeper but the girl on bottom with the dangling arm had wrenched the weapon away mid slice and it flew across the floor into the dark of the room.

He had dropped his flashlight in falling and the whole world seemed to roll with the turning light until it finally came to a stop. The light was shining against a nearby wall and it reflected out into the dark just enough to see the purple eyed girl on top finally gain the advantage. Morgan watched in confused horror as this small girl held the other down with one hand and raised the bolas up over her head with the other. Tied weights came down with punishing force and slammed into the pale girls face with a gut wrenching cracking and crunching sound that almost made Morgan throw up right then.

He trained his gun on the girl on top, unsure of what to do and afraid to get close and get hit by the bone snapping bolas this time. "Stop or I will shoot!" He yelled unable to believe he was pointing his gun at a little girl, or that the same girl was beating another to death. The bolas smashed into the girls face again and again as she fought to get a hold of her attacker.

He pulled the gun up and fired off two shots into the ceiling. Finally the girl with the bolas looked up, purple eyes dark and menacing. Then she brought her bolas up and began to spin them, staring at Morgan as she prepared to throw them. She flew, the pale girl on the bottom finally throwing her off and rolling away out of the light. The pale girl emerged from the darkness a moment later with the mace clutched in the hand of her broken arm and the short sword in her good hand.

The girl with the bolas glanced from her opponent to Morgan as she slowly picked herself off the floor, her strange purple eyes filled with anger and blood lust like no child could know. She screamed a wordless scream of rage and threw herself awkwardly with her broken leg into the dark. The sound of glass breaking flooded the room a moment later before silence reigned but for his own ragged breathing.

Morgan glanced at the girl who had been beaten, before grabbing his flashlight and darting toward where the girl had disappeared as fast as his own leg would carry him. There was nothing but some old desks and a broken window that looked out onto the silent, empty grounds.

He turned around to inspect the other girl. She stood quietly, her head bowed, hair obscuring her face. He stepped towards her his mouth opening for a question when she spoke in a small, soft, steady and sure voice. "It would not be wise to go after her." Something was strange in her voice. The cadence of her words were off and she was far too calm, probably a result of the trauma. "She will not like you interfering here." And with those words she turned towards the door.

"Are you alright kid? We should take you to the hospital." He reached for her shoulder as he said it, noting to himself that he sounded much calmer than he felt. She danced out of his range like she had never been there.

"I will be fine. My father will fix me, he is very good at it. I am sorry but I have no time to help you out of the building officer. Good night." she spoke while walking and her words sounded more an awkward series of short statements than anything else, like instructions. Walking into the dark hallway she disappeared like a ghost. By the time Morgan got to the door there was no sign of the girl in either direction.

Morgan took a moment to examine his leg more closely. He found that the cut wasn't too deep and though he might limp a little, it wasn't serious. It burned in the way fresh cuts tend to, with that skin searing tingle that made it feel like the edges where trying to melt back together, but that was the worst of it.

From there he took a moment to orient himself, having rushed heedlessly around the building trying to find the girls earlier. Eventually he limped out of the building and found his way back to his cruiser. Sitting himself half in the drivers seat he looked back out at the building and grounds. The area was quiet, the building dark and silent, refusing to speak of the madness that had occurred within.

Sighing out his frustration, he picked up the radio and called in the girls descriptions. No mention of fighting with weapons, disappearing into the dark or him nearly shooting one of them. Just two girls too young to be out at night in a scuffle, and running from the police officer. In truth he hoped no one else ran into those girls tonight.

He just sat in his cruiser for a while after that. Bleeding and sorting though what had happened. Had he almost shot that girl? She was beating the other one to death, and she had tried to hack his leg off. He sat there unsure of how he was supposed to respond to, or even to deal with all of it. After a while he pulled himself into the vehicle, started it up and rolled out towards the gates.

The plan he had formed was to circle the area once and then head back to the station, or maybe the hospital. He was in the middle of making excuses for his leg and the shots he fired when, as he rolled out of the gate leading out to the driveway, something heavy landed on the back of his cruiser. The vehicle jostled and bounced with the impact, and the distinctive pop of metal shifting under strain could be heard.

A pair of angry purple eyes glared at him through the rear view mirror. Morgan whipped around to see the rear window crack, shooting tiny slivers of glass into the back seat. The bolas smashed into the glass again making it come away at the corner, causing a sudden snowfall of cracks and making it impossible to see through.

Morgan listened to his instincts, they had served him well over the years. He hit the gas hard and the cruiser jumped forward. A shifting metal pop followed by a loud crack of bone on pavement announced that the move had indeed dislodged his attacker as intended. The car came to a stop only a couple meters later and he gripped the wheel tightly. He had to go out and check on her, no matter what his instincts were saying.

With the parking break on and his gun out he came around wide to look behind his vehicle. There, bathed in the ominous red glow of his tail lights was the small crumpled form of the girl. It looked grim, she didn't move or make a sound. It didn't even look like she was breathing. The red glow of the lights made the whole scene nightmarish. The red glow. Red. "No blood..." his own voice sounded strange to him as he replayed the night in his head. Something he hadn't even realized was bugging him suddenly leaped out.

The deep realization that something was very wrong with these girls, if that was really what they were, sank in. Her leg stuck out at an odd angle from where the other girl had smashed and broken it earlier, but there was no blood from her leg, or her head were she had fallen. He had seen one girl have her face crushed repeatedly, no blood. He was pretty sure this one had jumped out of a window three stories up with a broken leg! Still the only blood he had seen that night was his own.

He paled as the girl behind the car sat up. The red light made her purple eyes black. Her eyes poured out on him the baleful glare of an angry demon from days of yore. It said that she was angry and he was going to pay the price for it.

Morgan turned as the girl silently rose to her feet and dove back into his vehicle. Laying across the seat he turned to find the little girl already starting to climb into the vehicle after him. He pumped a round into the shotgun he had dove for and hit the safety. The girls unnaturally coloured eyes went wide just before the shotgun roared, spitting fire and metal at point blank range into her chest. She flew off her feet and back out into the night.

Pumping another round into the chamber, he sat up just in time to see two small feet, one facing the wrong way, disappear into the sheltering dark of the nearby trees. He sat there for a while, not daring to put the shotgun down. He glanced at the seat, all around the inside of the vehicle. None of the mess that the shot should have caused was there. Even outside there was nothing but dirt, wood chips and an empty shell on the road.

It took what seemed like an eternity, but eventually he closed the door and put his shotgun back in its place. He left the new round in the chamber though. His hand was still wrapped around the parking break when the bolas crashed into the window frame of his door. Though his window was open, they smashed the rear driver side window as they wrapped themselves around the frame with vicious momentum. Weights snapped against the metal hard enough to make some large dents, as it quickly wound tight.

The tires screeched and the car leaped away. Morgan barely remembered to grab the wheel, almost driving off the road as he made his desperate flight in a haze of adrenalin and confusion. He was driving so fast that he almost drove right by a young man with glasses and a dark button up shirt sauntering casually down the street a few blocks away. There was too much of a coincidence for him not to be involved somehow.

Pulling right up onto the sidewalk with unnecessary aggression he leaned out to window to shout. "Hey Arthur! Get in the car, we need to talk!"

None of it made any more sense now that he was laying in bed staring at the ceiling. Just going through it in his head made him feel even more exhausted. As though he had actually lived it twice. Eventually sleep overcame him.

Sleep would only visit him briefly in volatile fits however. Staying just long enough to place a nightmare into his head before dashing away and hiding from him again. He woke up sweating after a dream that some implacable, unstoppable child was coming for him. She came, he shot her. She came, he kicked at her. She came, he ran. She came and caught him, small fingers closing around his throat. He woke up.

Worse was when he dreamed that he was back in that building, the two girls wrestling on the floor. This time however he aimed up and fired his gun, but the girl somehow still ended up with his bullets in her. She staggered back and fell down, hands coming away from her stomach covered in blood as she cried a sad, lonely, pain filled child's cry. Her eyes begging to know why.

It was early morning when after having woken up from another nightmare he decided to just get up. Sleep hadn't done him any good, so he went to the kitchen. More years ago than he liked to think about Morgan had worked for a summer as a line cook. The job had been low paying and thankless, but he'd learned to love cooking. So he made an unnecessarily large and extravagant meal. Making more food than he would eat, just to get lost in the process of making it. Usually, he ended up saving or throwing out a lot of the food as he rarely had anyone to share it with. He considered, not for the first time, getting a pet of some kind. A cat or a dog to feed the scraps to perhaps.

Not working until later in the day, he sat down with his tall pile of food, pulled out a small laptop, punched 'dolls' into the search engine and leisurely began to work at his breakfast.

It wasn't the first time he had searched it as the many visited links that popped up bore testament to. He knew this time to search so that he bypassed most of the childrens toys. This time however he didn't search for gang affiliations, cults or known drug aliases. He found pages where stories about possessed items and cursed heirlooms leaped onto the page. The screen filled with strange reports of people playing hide and seek alone with moving dolls, people killing with voodoo dolls and ventriloquist dummies burning down houses. He found nothing useful as far as he could tell, skimming it all while eating poached eggs with bechamel sauce. Switching to news reports was little improvement. The closest he found were rare articles about lucky children surviving massive trauma, but they were disturbing and not much help. None of them said anything about one walking away from something like a close range shotgun blast.

It wasn't until he combined a few choice phrases in the search bar that he found something. He put in 'Dolls; no blood; massive trauma' and 'unnatural eye colour' and a link came to the top of the page he hadn't visited before. It seemed eager to speak, zipping to the attached website as he clicked on it.

The page was poorly made and didn't abound with specifics. It was something different however, and it presented something that seemed to make more sense, if you had lived through the night that Morgan had, and were willing to suspend a certain amount of belief. It was a way of thinking he wouldn't have bothered with before, but it seemed silly to cling to what he had thought he knew without question now.

The page talked about a kind of artificial human, usually made to look like a small child. Apparently the belief was that certain individuals or perhaps a society of some kind, passed down esoteric knowledge of how to take certain items, and animate them. It spoke of people who could, with the right catalyst, take wood and cloth, clay and glass, wool and thread and make a Doll. These Dolls are woken up and move on their own, speak with their own voices and act with their own purpose. Dolls are (apparently) not just elaborate puppets but things that work and think and fight, often doing things normal humans can't and walking away from things that should kill or maim.

Morgan delved into the website with fascination, a healthy dose of scepticism and a large fork full of hash-browns. He took what little he had heard, and what he had experienced last night and compared them to the stories of people's supposed encounters with 'Dolls'. Most of the stories on the website were nonsense about being harassed by strange children at the store or black eyed kids asking to use the washroom in the middle of the night. Buried in the nonsense however were reports of little girls that didn't stand or talk quite right. Sometimes they had strange eye or hair colours, though usually they seemed mostly normal but for how they acted. Often they were seen with an adult, following obediently if stiffly. Then the adult would say something and the little girl would disappear into a dark alley at night without hesitation, or nimbly scale a building, or in one report lift up a dumpster.

Each of the stories that showed similarities to what he had witnessed, some of which were eerily similar, he took down notes on. Copying into a file the ones that seemed most promising. He wasn't sure what was more disturbing an idea, that someone had been able to make some kind of child looking robot construct, or that someone was using drugs or brainwashing to make these kids do these things. Both possibilities seemed equal parts insane and plausible given the previous night.

The slanted numbers on the sticky note that were his only lead seemed to leap up from beside his desk and glare. Arthur's number seemed to taunt him. Calling Arthur was not something he really wanted to do, as the other man had too much control over their interactions so far already. However he needed to find out what was going on, and stop this "Dolls" fiasco before someone innocent that didn't have a shotgun in their car got attacked.

The phone only rang twice before a small, oddly familiar female voice answered the phone. "Yes?"

"This is Officer Morgan with the police, I called to speak with Arthur." He responded in his cop voice as he tried to scrape his remaining breakfast into a container as quietly as possible.

"Yes Officer Morgan, he has been expecting your call." The girl responded stiffly and passed the phone over.

"Officer Morgan! How are you today?" Arthur asked as soon as he came on the phone, oddly cordial and upbeat in his greeting. At least he was until he suddenly snapped out "Sit still! This is hard enough to fix without you trying to eavesdrop at the same time!"

"I'm happy I didn't wake up skewered. What was that about?" Morgan answered with confusion.

"Sorry I was talking to Mei-mei." Arthur answered somewhat absently. "Well interrupting a fight like you did is very dangerous and I don't know how badly the other was damaged. So I would say you are lucky not to be skewered as well."

"I knew there was something about those two!" he exclaimed before calming himself and letting suspicion take over. "Wait, I didn't mention a fight last night. What do you know and why are you suddenly feeling so sharing?"

"Mei-mei filled me in on the details. It is against my better judgement to tell you anything honestly. Yes Mei-mei I AM telling him!" Arthur paused for an awkward moment. "However, Mei-mei tells me you were instrumental in her escape from their trap last night and avoiding a great deal of damage which would set us back. So WE decided that if we let you know what was going on, then maybe you would have the good sense to stay out of it."

An hour after the call and a half hour after getting his leg stitched in the hospital, Morgan found himself in an older suburb knocking on a dirty, faded once-white door into a highly suspect basement. The frame, with peeling paint of the same dirty white of the door, was built into the basement wall at the end of a short, narrow cement hole in the ground with matching cement steps that led up to the overgrown lawn. The door was on the side of a small blue house near the back corner and was barely visible until you were almost on top of it. The house had seen better days and over all Morgan felt like it was a place where he was more likely to find drugs and hookers than the enigmatic Arthur. Of course it was always possible he would find all three.

Heaving a sigh, convinced he was being sent on a goose chase he rapped sharply on the door and waited. Someone inside let out what sounded like a muffled curse and something fell over. No one came to the door. Morgan pounded on the door with annoyance. "Arthur are you in there?" he called out.

The door swung open so suddenly that Morgan had his gun half out of the holster before realizing it was the man he was looking for. Dressed in old clothes covered by a leather apron, Arthur stood in the door with a wooden mallet and chisel clutched in one hand. It was quite the contrast between his normally well put together self, but he smiled switching the chisel into his free hand and waving Morgan in with it distractedly.

"Officer Morgan! Jumpy today aren't you?" he mused knowingly as he walked back into the house. Bright daylight spilled into the dimly lit interior. "Well come on in. We are divulging secrets today and I won't do it with the door open."

The young man moved with a quick step and his voice was even more confident than before, though it had a more relaxed quality to it. It was the way a man spoke when in his own element, comfortable and relaxed but focused with little room for anything other than the task at hand. The change was refreshing, if more abrasive, to see than the finished face he had presented previously, this was more real.

Inside the basement apartment was dim, feeling more like a cave than a house. The first room was a moderately sized living room with a popcorn ceiling, unfinished walls and a door leading off to what he assumed was a bathroom. The place was very tidy, a few boxes here and there and a few pieces of clothing thrown on the sparse old furniture. Obviously Arthur hadn't lived there long and the most prolific sense of habitation was the technical manuals strewn over every table and most of the chairs. The living area led to a small kitchen and dining area with outdated appliances and mismatched chairs. Here more unpacked boxes had established a settlement under the table and there were fast food containers invading the top of the stove. There was nothing truly shocking or out of the ordinary.

"Come on!" Arthur called from behind the open of the two doors in the kitchen. Morgan followed the voice and found himself in a large bedroom.

A large bed took up most of the room, it had a small heavy wood side table against it and heavy curtains blocked out the light from the window. That was all to be expected. There were also a modest collection of mismatched wooden tables and work benches against every spare bit of wall space. These were piled with half carved pieces of wood, bolts of cloth, glass, porcelain and metal pieces. Each one organized into its own pile or container. There were tools as well, carving tools, dyes, screws and nails, a wood burner, clay, a Bunsen burner and any number of tools either too unusual or too exotic for Morgan to recognize. He even spotted an actual mortar and pestle in front of a strange dark liquid that gave off a sweet smell kept in an ampule. These things, familiar and strange alike however could not keep the officers attention.

At the foot of the overly large bed sat another table beside which Arthur perched on a strangely thin stool with his hammer and chisel in hand. He was surveying the face of a wooden head. It was the cracked and splintered face of a small girl with one blue eye that had no pupil. Morgan watched numbly as the face of the young girl he had saved at the industrial training building turned to him and spoke in an all too human manner.

"Hello Officer Morgan." Her voice was the same small, young, calm and detached voice it had been last night. "It is good to see you again."

Act II: The Dolls

"You can sit on the bed." Arthur waved distractedly with his chisel in that direction.

Feeling dizzy and light headed, Morgan had followed the advice before it had finished being given. Of all the many things he had had to deal with lately, gangsters fleeing town and little girls fighting with swords, the small girls detached, wooden, talking head was too much.

"Are you well Officer Morgan?" The little girls head had turned to follow him. He noted in a detached way that the voice was the same, and that the cadence and stresses on her words were still off, but better than they were last night, less noticeable.

"Mei-mei if you keep moving this is going to take twice as long!" Arthur sighed with exasperation as he turned the head back to face him.

"I am sorry Arthur." She apologized sincerely.

"And stop talking or you'll lose more of your lip!" he griped, but there was no sharp edges to his voice as he delicately placed his chisel next to a rut in her cheek and tapped it gently. Morgan looked away as his stomach threatened to rise against him.

"You're doing quite well Officer." Arthur said after a few minutes of thickened silence previously only broken by the tapping of the hammer and scraping of the chisel.

"I kind of feel like throwing up." Morgan admitted into the palms of his hands.

"Yes but you haven't tried to slap the chisel out of my hands or demanded ' _what have you done to that poor girl!_ '" Arthur took the effort to pantomime outrage with his tool filled hands thrown into the air and affecting a feminine edge to his words as he spoke the last, actually making Morgan smile. "And then I have to get Mei-mei to hold you down which is traumatizing you for, annoying to me and highly uncomfortable for her."

Morgan spied the little girls body standing as still as a statue against the wall between two tables and his smile fell away. Too distracted to notice it before, it was highly conspicuous to him now. He eyed it nervously and was fairly sure he already knew the answer to his next question. "She can move her body without her head?"

The wooden head, who was apparently Mei-mei, smiled and spoke, much to Arthur's exasperation. "I like him." The body in the corner raised a small hand to wave and sent a fresh wave of nausea rolling over the large officer.

Arthur scolded her again but Morgan didn't really hear it. Instead he just buried his face in his hands and tried to process. The little girl was seemingly made of wood. She could walk and talk, even when not attached to her body and Arthur was carving out and repairing her face.

Morgan forced himself to his feet and took several large breaths. All in all it wasn't a difficult concept to simply accept, but it turned the way he viewed much of the world on his head and he wasn't sure how to deal with it. Every time he tried to tell himself to simply deal with it another 'but that means...' crept into his head and he had to wrestle it back down.

"What..." He started before losing his train of though. "How does..." the train derailed. "The 'Dolls' aren't just some gang or cult are they?" he finally managed to find a coherent question. It wasn't the most profound under the circumstances but it was a place to start.

Arthur glanced up with a small smile. "It's better just to go with it at first, eventually it will kinda make sense." he went back to his work with a delicate hand as he spoke. He chipped away less and more carefully, tapping here and there. "As for your question no. Well they might be, but not the dolls you are dealing with."

"So she..." The officer paused awkwardly "Mei-mei?" Arthur nodded. "Is a Doll?" he made the whole statement more of a question, an attempt to put out the car fires and get the train back on the tracks.

"Yes."

"So, what is a Doll?"

Arthur didn't answer the question right away. Putting down the chisel and hammer he picked up a small speciality carving knife of some kind and closely inspected Mei-mei's face. He took long enough that Morgan almost asked again, but the man replied just before he did. "That is a very difficult question to answer." He blew off some shavings and picked up the Doll's head. "A Doll is a construct." He spoke deliberately, picking and choosing his words with great care and sounding somewhat like he was reciting text. He never looked away from his work on the face though.

"Almost everything you encounter has a spirit of some sort in it. Every rock, every tree, pearl, river and burning ember has a sense of self and of the world around it." Arthur paused and Morgan sat back down on the bed, trying to listen and absorb without over thinking or bursting in with questions. "Some of these spirits have a..." He paused, groping for the word before he went on. "Curiosity is the best way to describe it I suppose, about humans specifically, but about life in general. They have an ambition to move and talk and understand and change the world in more abstract ways. To affect things directly and live more like we do. With the right understanding and processes, one can take these things and give the spirits they contain, life. Or at least a semblance thereof."

Here he stopped to squint carefully at Mei-mei's head, delicately placing the blade against her cheek to change an angle or remove a splinter. Morgan couldn't help but watch with morbid fascination. "My father was a Dollmaker. As was his father. He taught me how to recognize these items, their spirits. He taught me how to carve and chisel, thread hair and even sew. I was taught to carve a face and give a shape to them, to how they felt and spoke to me. Eventually he even passed on all his notes and books to me. Several generations worth of Dollmaker's notes." He put down the knife and picked up a piece of sandpaper. Gently and carefully he smoothed out the fixed edges a little bit at a time as he talked. "Our families notes are some of the only written works on Dollmaking, and are by far the most complete. Anyways I learned, as many others have either from teachers or written instruction, to make Dolls. How to give them not just a body and face but a heartbeat, a name and a purpose, all the things they need to survive."

Morgan waited for the man to continue, unsure if the man was collecting his thoughts again or just lost in his work. He didn't, so Morgan decided to venture a few questions and try to wrest back some control of the situation, and himself. "So Mei-mei there is a -"

"Doll."

"Which is a spirit of some kind." Morgan asked almost absently, trying to put things in order in his head. "Like a ghost?"

Arthur heaved an audible sigh and Mei-mei's arm twitched on her body. "No" the man responded with annoyance. "A ghost would be the spirit of something that was once alive assuming they exist in the first place. These are more like.... shamanistic spirits. The Japanese use the term Kami, to which I am partial." He paused again to examine something on the doll's head and sand carefully. "Mei-mei is a spirit that comes from a tree and she wanted to know what it was like to be human if you want to put it simplistically. If you want it any simpler than that I am going to need some crayons."

Morgan shot a displeased look at the Dollmaker who payed absolutely no attention whatsoever to it, or much of anything else, as he worked. It was a wonder the man heard his question's at all. "So she is a tree... spirit. Wrapped in a fake body, with a 'purpose' and a 'name' and who knows what else?" He made the last a question.

The Dollmaker rolled his eyes and actually stopped to give a patronized expression to the Officer. "A heartbeat and" he scrunched up his face and imitated an old lady "The feet of little children." he did a double take in order to add to it before Morgan could respond. "The last was a joke Officer. No human sacrifice, dead body parts, evil spells or hidden fees here." He went back to his work with a mumble. "No good at magic and body parts don't work properly anyways."

"What do you mean by a heartbeat and a name or a purpose then?" Officer Morgan's head was spinning, trying to understand what a Doll was and how they worked. He ignored the last mumbled sentence as he assumed it was a joke of some kind and if it wasn't he was not prepared to deal with it yet. "What do they mean and how do they make a wooden doll walk and talk? How does it work!? You make it sound like carving a figurine and plugging in a battery!"

Arthur put the dolls head down with great care, blowing and brushing off the sawdust gently and inspecting it ceaselessly. Morgan couldn't help but notice that, despite being a little more asymmetrical and rough than his first encounter with the Doll, the face looked much better, almost all of the damage completely removed or hidden by the tall man's careful work. Mei-mei even looked more alive, less wooden and more expressive than when he had come into the room.

"I have neither the time nor the patience while I am working to answer all your questions even if I could Officer." Arthur was giving Morgan his full attention now and there was a fierceness and impatience that shone through the young man. "There are a lot of things about Dolls that no one understands. Even in my family, and we have been studying them for generations, there is still a lot of mystery. We don't really know why if you take the right object and the right conditions they seem to come to life, but we can do it and we can repeat the process. What I have shared with you already is far more than most Dollmakers would under pain of death in our circles. I have far greater things to worry about than you Officer. I need to finish repairing Mei-mei before Seamus can send his Doll after us again. I don't even know if they will wait for full repairs and his Doll, much like him has a very violent streak in it. If you want to know more stay out of this until it is over."

"Why is this other Doll even here and what do they even want? And what does it have to do with you?" Morgan asked calmly. He hoped it infuriated the other man now as much as it had him back at the station.

"Seamus is another Dollmaker and the Doll that tried to kill you is his. He stole something very precious as well as some very rare items from me." Arthur sighed out and hesitated before going on. "I spent years chasing rumours and theories and months tracking down a rare component to make a Doll. He stole it just after I found it and on top of that he took one my families old and irreplaceable volumes of notes on Dollmaking. My families work is again some of the only notes on the processes and understanding of Dollmaking. They are valuable, possibly dangerous and they are mine. I will not have them abused." He was standing and by the end of his heated rant.

Morgan couldn't help but have respect for the man's conviction. Arthur sat back down, slumping a little and looking at Mei-mei again. "As for what he is doing here? From what I can tell he is setting up shop. Planning to use this city as his home as he makes more Dolls and does his business. Seamus has been known for a while to be reckless, and unnecessarily violent. It was only a matter of time before he or his Doll's went rogue and needed to be put down. The murders and thefts you have had are, likely, him driving people away from his work area, or covering up other crimes. A lot of times a Dollmaker will take control over an area when they move in, most of us don't leave a string of dead bodies behind when we do it. Dolls can be merciless and violent and very hard to stop. It is best you leave this to me and Mei-mei Officer."

Morgan sighed as his conscience kicked him to speak. "I don't think I can do that Arthur." He rose to his feet and was pleased to find himself much sturdier, his convictions lending him strength. "We've had vandalism, assaults, robberies and a string of dead criminals that, as far as I can tell, can be laid at this guy's feet. If you are right and this guy is setting up shop, then he and his Doll aren't leaving any time soon and aren't too careful about who they hurt. It's only a matter of time before some innocent is just in the wrong place at the wrong time and gets seriously hurt or killed. I need to be involved and I need to stop this. I can help."

Arthur considered Morgan carefully for a long, tense moment. The officer almost jumped when Mei-mei spoke from the table. He had completely forgotten she was there. "What is this called?" she asked with a curious lilt to her voice.

"Stupidity." Arthur answered. Mei-mei's head bore a puzzle expression as she stumbled trying to work passed the obvious sarcasm. Morgan could see ideas bubbling to the surface behind the other man's calm exterior. "Are you sure you want to help? It will likely involve bending some laws and could lead to some awkward questions from your superiors." The question was asked with suspicion and doubt.

Morgan sighed and considered it for a moment. "Yeah I'm sure. I didn't become a cop for the pay, or to protect the law. I actually still believe in helping keep people safe." He confessed, using a line one of his trainers had told him once.

"You might be in the wrong career, but I could use a little help here maybe." Arthur's reply was accompanied by a troublesome glint in the mans eye. "How would you feel about a small abuse of police powers?"

"How small." Morgan had a sinking feeling.

The next evening Morgan found himself once again in the small basement. This time he had a pile of police materials with him that he really wasn't supposed to. It was hardly the extreme abuse of power he had dreaded, but sharing police information with a suspect would not go unpunished if he was caught. He kept telling himself that this was for the best.

"So all the gang members in this old neighbourhood have either left or been put down hard right?" Arthur asked as he poured over the map and other materials that Morgan had brought over. Mei-mei stood on a wooden stool beside her maker, looking quietly down on the map. They had a copy of the map with all the suspected related crimes, a few reports and files that seemed relevant. Morgan had also managed to get lists of stolen goods, other criminal's strange activities, and anything else that the other officers wouldn't know to look for that might be relevant.

"Yes. Arthur, how come the gangs and mobsters knew to get out before anything really started up? Most of them anyways." He asked the Dollmaker. "The only like accounts I could find with that amount of movement seemed directly related to gang wars or increased policing."

"The reports are probably right in most cases." Arthur didn't look up from the materials. "In others the gangs are covering for the presence of a Dollmaker or the police are trying to take credit for the decreased crime when they don't really know what happened.

"As far as I know, the story goes that years ago during the early prohibition era a Dollmaker sent a Doll to a few of the big crime families to tell them to get out of his area or else. Something like that anyways as the rumours of what the message was are vague. Anyways, most laughed it off until one of the larger families took offence and tried to retaliate. The details here are even sketchier, but it is commonly said that a single well made Doll completely destroyed the organization.

"The other Mob families and larger gangs listened up after that. The whole affair gave quite a bit of leverage for future Dollmakers and also opened up a new market for the less scrupulous ones. Now it's fairly common practice for a Dollmaker to send a Doll to the major players in an area when they are moving in. Either to tell them that they are around, to get out, or to offer their services. Most of the larger organizations have had some kind of dealing with Dolls before though they won't really know what they are. They warn off anyone else. It helps us control the amount and kind of attention we get which is paramount for a Dollmaker. We don't tell the police or others that we are here because most of you tend to bring the kind of attention we are trying to avoid. Close scrutiny."

"As far as this situation specifically, I assumed that word of Dolls coming into town has been around, since you were investigating it. That probably reached the criminal element as well. They might even have heard that two fighting Dollmakers were coming in and that would send most people packing quickly. Though most of the lower and mid-level guys will have no idea why."

Morgan felt doubt's cold fingers on the back of his neck. Major gangs and mobs were afraid of these things and he was sticking himself in the middle of two of them. He glanced over at Mei-mei's innocent figure on her stool.

A moment of amusement wormed it's way through his foreboding apprehension. He had the been the only one willing to look for them, and now one of the 'Dolls' he had been looking so hard for was sitting here helping look over the materials that had led him to try and find her. She was far from what he had expected to find, and perhaps even more dangerous.

Mei-mei was fully repaired and looked from every angle and distance just like a little girl. There was no wood grain on her face, or strange creases in her wrists or joints. There was not a single screw or nail to be seen. Just a little girl in a blue dress, with jet black hair and unnaturally pale blue, pupil-less eyes. Morgan had stared when he first arrived, enough so that Arthur reluctantly explained why she looked so human. Though part of it was clever construction, paint and skill, each doll is covered by something called the "Illusion of Life". It was what made the dolls look, move and appear to be, alive. It was what hid the grain of the wood and made the neck appear to have skin that stretched as she turned her head. While she was being repaired, the illusion was weakened. Now fully repaired she was indistinguishable from a real girl but for the eyes, which Arthur was proud to say was common for him. If not for things that he occasionally included to be different no one could tell they were dolls. At least until they spoke or moved.

"Yeah." Morgan cleared his throat and came back to the task at hand. "We plotted on the map all the violent incidences that could be connected. A lot of them are in the gang turfs coming out of this industrial area, but there have been pockets of violence and isolated incidences all over the city. It's one of the reasons that most of the task force is working on the turf war angle.

"Most of it seems to centre on this area here, but almost all activity there stopped after the first week." he jabbed an area near the middle off all the red dots. "But there was nothing to find there, old buildings no one is using, all the drug dealers are gone and it was kind of neutral Gang territory as far as organized crime knows.

"The rest of the crimes have spread out over the city, a lot of them coincide with industrial thefts, though there has been a rise in thefts both with and without violence. All in all there isn't a lot of cohesion in the crimes, so everyone assumed that the thefts and the 'gang violence' weren't directly related."

"That makes sense, from the businesses in these areas." Arthur pointed to the outlying pattern of thefts and attacks. "And the items stolen, he is gathering materials. Likely sending his current doll out to gather materials without any instruction to avoid people. Actually knowing him he probably told her to eliminate witnesses, as I said she shares his violent streak." As he concentrated on the map, Mei-mei was mostly hanging off the table top by leaning over her elbows that were soundly planted on it, toes barely touching the stool. Morgan found it disturbing to see her act so much like a little girl when she acted so oddly at other times.

"Materials for what?" Morgan asked.

"For Dolls obviously." Arthur responded. "What else would a Dollmaker need materials for? Looks like he is trying to incorporate some newer materials. Fibre glass; dense plastics, and a few alloys and other materials that need some heavy equipment, so he can't just make them. Hmmm, I wonder how those would work." His gaze wandered, seeing nothing as he got lost in thought. "Work well at the start I suppose, but repair and replacement would be a ridiculous pain and just fabricating the shapes..."

"Arthur!" Morgan snapped his fingers in front of the man. "What about the initial centralized violence?"

"What?" The thin man jumped a little. "Oh ummm, he is probably working out of that area. With the materials he is stealing he is going to need some kind of machine shop or industrial fabrication equipment." He double checked the list of materials stolen as he talked. "He either let his, rather temperamental, Doll get bored or as I mentioned earlier it's fairly common practice to rid the area of unwanted attention. Each Dollmaker has their own idea of how to achieve it, but overall we prefer to stay quiet and unobtrusive. A lot of people get uncomfortable with what we can do."

"I can't imagine why." Morgan mumbled. "I think there is a machine shop in the area." He leaned over the map , shuffling over to adjust his view while he rifled through old memories. "Right here there is a small business that was actually a mechanics garage, but it had a machine shop, or at least a lot of the tools for it. They used to machine all new parts or actually go out of their way to 'fix' broken things rather than just replace them. Most of their tools were old and fixed in place so they left them when they moved." Morgan marked the building location on the map. It was almost perfectly centreed amongst all the violence.

"What happened to them?" Morgan jumped as Mei-mei's voice came from right beside his elbow. He hadn't realized he had gotten so close to her little stool. "The family with the shop?" She specified when he didn't answer.

"The business got going really well and they moved to a larger city if I remember correctly." She was listening with rapt attention, and he considered her carefully as he answered her question. "They got a bigger place with a whole new set of tools I believe."

"Interesting. So this was good for them?" She queried with a tilt of her head.

"Yeah I guess so." Morgan replied hesitantly.

"That is..." she stopped to think about the word "good, to hear Officer Morgan." She went back to leaning over the map on her hands and kicking her small feet up, tapping her toes back down onto the stool one at a time.

He couldn't quite get used to the fact that the little girl beside him wasn't real. He had seen her with her head disconnected from her body and knew she was made from wood and glass and a variety of other things. Sometimes though she moved and acted just like a curious little girl. She rarely spoke like one, which made her questions and comments just that much more disturbing. More and more often he found the need to stop and remind himself that he had seen her viciously attack another doll just the other night, smashing her opponent's leg to bits with a mace. He did that now and it brought a frightening question to the front of his mind.

"Arthur, why did Mei-mei and the other doll use older style weapons instead of guns? They are clearly smart enough to use them." Morgan asked and unconsciously checked his sidearm as he did so. A shiver ran through him at the thought of one of the nearly indestructible Dolls wielding an assault rifle.

"That is a very good question. They are smart enough but for some reason there is some disconnect with a Doll's understanding of just how they work." Arthur surveyed the building marked on the map, interrupting his response briefly. "That sounds like the most likely place to find him if it has the facilities you claim.

"Anyways, every Doll is different. They have different abilities, but though most can be said to throw fairly accurately I've never seen one that can operate a gun with any dependability. They can't even really use a bow and arrow properly though at least with that they remember to knock a new arrow. Most of the time they don't have the reach, or the weight to use either properly. Even when they do use a gun they shoot wildly, rarely hitting anything at all, then forget that it is more than a hunk of metal when they run out of bullets. I think it has something to do with the number of subconscious systems involved. Never let one drive either."

"Good to know I don't have to worry about guns at least. As for the driving thing, I will file that bit of information away in my 'advice I will likely never need to use' drawer." Morgan couldn't help but put a healthy dose of sarcasm into the remark, trying to hide just how much relief the answer had given him.

"You never know" Arthur responded in a sing song voice before bringing the conversation back to their purpose there. "We need to move quickly. Sooner or later someone is going to notice the pattern and come looking for him."

"Last thing I want is for someone else on the force stumbling into this." Morgan responded with a feeling of dread. He didn't want to think of what one of those things would do to an unprepared police officer, or anyone else. "It was hard enough to pull the trigger on something that looked so much like a kid, and I saw the two of them fighting first."

Arthur stopped as if something just occurred to him and regarded his new companion seriously for a moment. Taking time to inspect the officer like a puzzle. It made Morgan uncomfortable.

"Why did you fire officer? Most people wouldn't have been brave or smart enough to shoot at a doll so quickly." Arthur asked.

Morgan took his time in answering. Mei-mei provided him with a moments distraction as she hopped off of her stool and left the room, her little wooden shoes clicking against the kitchen floor. That line of questions had occurred to him too and he wasn't very comfortable following it. He reflected now though, trying to figure out why he had. "I trusted my instincts I guess. I mean I had seen those girls do some incredible things, they didn't move right and didn't bleed which registered on some level. In the end however I just felt like if I didn't hit her with something big she was going to keep coming and I was going to die."

"Good instincts" was the reply Arthur gave as he turned back to the map after a short awkward pause. "Most Dolls wont care if you get hurt or not. Those that do have been around for a while and usually only do because their owner has impressed upon them that they should."

Mei-mei walked back into the room humming quietly to herself. With her she carried a small duffel bag which she carefully placed on the floor and sat down beside, tucking her dress neatly underneath her. She then proceeded to pull out her smooth headed mace as well as a small axe with a half moon blade balanced by a wicked looking steel spike. Her humming never stopped as she carefully inspected each weapon and rummaged through the bag. It was quite a happy little tune.

"Now that is a little disturbing." Morgan admitted quietly.

Arthur nodded his agreement as they watched her. "I am pretty sure that song is from a commercial. She loves watching commercials for some reason."

Their plan was a fairly simple one. Taking Morgan's cruiser they dropped Mei-mei off in an alley a few blocks away from Seamus' suspected lair then cruised on to park in a dark alley nearby. In theory Mei-mei would scout around the location and, if no one is home, start looking for the stolen items and the other Doll's heart. Apparently a Doll's heart can and usually is kept outside of the Doll's body. If the building is occupied Mei-mei will lure the Doll and hopefully Seamus away. Morgan and Arthur would then sneak in after the Doll is lured away and find the ill-gotten goods and destroy the Doll's heart stopping it cold with only Seamus to deal with if anyone.

As simple as the plan was Morgan's stomach churned as they sat in the cruiser. The entire neighbourhood felt abandoned as he sat there, hidden in the dark alley across from the garage, and worried. It was obvious something was going to go wrong. There were too many unknowns. What if Seamus didn't leave? Was he armed? How heavily? What did a Doll's heart even look like?

The shop was old and dilapidated. Plywood covered windows complimented the grimy stone walls. Morgan found that it kind of reminded him of the ill kept basement apartment that Arthur was occupying. It had the same run down, neglected feel.

"So I have a question." Morgan turned to talk to his companion through the sliding glass window that separated the back seat of the cruiser from the front. "Do all Dollmakers live in rundown buildings or is it just the feuding ones?"

"Ha ha Officer." Arthur replied dryly. "I will let you know that I am actually fairly well off as they say. There wasn't much available that suited my needs for privacy on short notice. And Seamus is a criminal squatting for the equipment. I pay for my crappy little place." He sniffed loudly. "Besides I think older places have character."

Before Morgan could offer a rebuttal a crash broke the still night outside, freezing the two men in place and restoring the nervousness their banter had temporarily banished. He clutched the shotgun to his chest and pumped a round into the chamber as he turned back around. It occurred to him, as he glanced down at the gun, that he should have picked up some deer slugs for the occasion, but it was too late for that now. The sound of something heavy hitting metal shutters echoed through the empty neighbourhood, passing over the car in which they hid as it filled the alleys and doorways and cracks like spilled water.

The roll up shutters were on the other side of the building. The realization made Morgan panic for a moment, as he realized another potential complication. What if they never even saw the Dolls leave? He gripped the shotgun a little tighter before forcing himself to relax.

Morgan glanced back and found himself highly annoyed at the apparent calm Arthur displayed. Morgan was supposed to be the street hardened cop after all, not a jumpy, twitchy amateur. He allowed being grumpy to smother his jitters by reflecting on how he had gotten into this mess. Stuck between two murderous fake little girls, stolen books and some mysterious unnamed 'components' for another fake person. Almost all of it neatly explained by the man it surrounded that could himself make fake people.

It suddenly occurred to Morgan, as he sat staring at the building across the street, that he was taking Arthur a lot at his word. True he had seen enough that was well beyond his understanding, and he didn't really seem to have a choice. It itched at him to rely on someone else so heavily though.

In the end he decided that, as flawed as the logic was, that he trusted Mei-mei. She might do what Arthur said, but she seemed open and without guile. Morgan knew her secret and they had tag teamed the other Doll that night. If she had been trying to lie to him he thought he could tell. He also concluded that now was not the time to get sidetracked by such things and renewed his vigil of the street before him.

The neighbourhood held itself in an eerie quiet, like all of the light pierced parts of the night held a collective breath. So it was that Morgan jumped when one of the boarded up windows exploded outwards with a crack like lightning. Mei-mei flew out with the debris and rolled smoothly across the ground, recovering her feet instantly. The two men watched quietly. Arthur leaning forward and Morgan silently willing that they remain undetected. For her credit Mei-mei never even glanced at them or batted an eye, only turned to take a fruitless swipe at the small form that cannoned out of the window after her. Her opponent retaliated and Mei-mei slid away from her opponents swinging sword before turning and launching herself an impossible distance away.

The Doll that Mei-mei now skilfully dodged and countered against was the same one that had tried to kill Morgan a few nights ago. She had the same dark hair, dark complexion and he imagined he could see the flash of her strange purple eyes even from here. She wore a different dress and her leg seemed to be fixed, but there was no doubt in his mind as to the Doll's identity. Mei-mei bounded away from her opponent with gigantic leaps that no real girl could take.

Morgan felt his chest tighten and he gripped the shotgun a bit harder involuntarily. He really didn't want to deal with that seemingly unstoppable little demon again and he suddenly worried she wouldn't chase after Mei-mei. He worried that she would. The Dolls didn't seem to feel pain like normal people, and Mei-mei was easily just as dangerous as the other, but he still worried, not wanting her to get hurt. Not that it mattered, he had to follow through with this plan and finish the job. He needed to do it for the community, his own piece of mind and, not insignificantly, his own compelling curiosity.

The enemy Doll raged wordlessly and threw herself after her quarry with equally inhuman leaps and bounds. Morgan blinked and let out a breath he had not realized he was holding, fighting down the disbelief that the plan had worked. It amazed him to see the difference between the two Dolls as they quickly moved out of sight, the sounds of their combat slowly fading away. Mei-mei always seemed calm and in control while the other was always violent and angry.

"Well?" Arthur said from the back of the police car. Morgan let himself feel a small, petty satisfaction at the trepidation in the man's voice.

"Lets rock and roll." Morgan replied opening his door. Cool night air folded itself around him as he stepped back to let Arthur out of the vehicle, bringing with it a sense of foreboding and the feeling of eyes on the back of your neck. The shotgun was heavy and the crunch of their footsteps seemed to ripple out across the ground in an effort to expose them. However they somehow made it to the once boarded up window the Dolls had opened.

The two of them crouched beneath the dark portal, Morgan with his shotgun and Arthur with the sledge hammer he had brought with him, the head of which he had wrapped in an old rag. Morgan had offered the man a handgun but he had refused, admitting to both being a poor shot and being concerned that the weapon would likely just make a Doll angry.

They listened very carefully to the echoing nothing that came from the orifice above them. Morgan peaked cautiously into the dark. The only inhabitants of the room were a desk sleeping under a thick blanket of dust and an old metal cart that had long since given up on carting anything and was resting tipped over on its side. Against the wall behind the old desk however was a heavy wooden door, cracked open to spill some rude lamps light into the tomb-like front room.

Morgan knelt outside the window and brought up his shotgun, covering the inside of the room. Then he gave Arthur a nod who, to his credit, then managed to vault into the room with a semblance of grace. Morgan followed the Dollmaker in, keeping his shotgun at the ready as they approached either side of the door. As they settled against the wall Morgan strained to hear anything from in the room over the sound of his heartbeat. He hadn't been this nervous in years. The shotgun seemed awkward and unwieldy in his hands, which he knew shook much less than they felt like they did. He ignored his heartbeat and the tremors, knowing they would disappear when the time for action came.

The Officer and the Dollmaker looked at each other for a moment. Then taking a large breath Morgan flew through the door, Arthur right behind him. The door swung open with a surprising lack of noise, in fact the only sounds in the room were the conspicuous hum of electric lights broken by the sharp tap of the men's boots on the concrete floor and the rustling of nearby papers in the currents their passing caused. Despite himself Morgan found himself shocked at how normal everything appeared to be.

"Looks clear" Arthur said behind him.

Morgan held in a groan. "It does, but if it isn't they know we're here now don't they?"

"Oops. Sorry." Arthur had never sounded dumber.

Morgan kept the shotgun at low ready, pointed at the ground with the stock against his shoulder, and proceeded to inspect the room. There were work benches in regular intervals, most lining up with the car lifts set into the floor. About half of the long lights had been replaced, the rest left dead or broken, though any debris or glass seemed to have been swept from the floor recently. A row of roll-up shutters were silent sentinels against the wall, one of them badly dented being the victim of the Doll's fight.

What drew the eye most was a spot almost in the corner of the shop where all the lights had been repaired. They shone down on an area sectioned off by two long work tables, one straight and one in an L shape, and it was filled with machining and fabrication equipment. Most of it was the old equipment left behind though Seamus had obviously brought some new items as well. There was a lathe and some milling machines, saws and a number of other tools that Morgan just didn't have the background to identify. The work benches themselves looked like someone had vomited out a strange array of parts and materials. Copper wire mingled with piles of wigs, cloth and thread, which sat next to containers of screws and twine. The mess flowed onto the floor in piles of stone blocks and fibreglass rods.

"Looks like Seamus isn't home." Morgan poked at a pile of half sewn dresses with his shotgun as he said it. "So what are these things we're here for supposed to look like again?"

"The Doll centre, which is the rare component we are looking for, will look like a large rock more or less, dirt with some clear bits." Arthur rummaged through various drawers and cabinets as he responded. "The book will be large, old and leather bound with heavy pages of parchment rather than regular paper. It's actually one of the oldest sets of notes I have."

A work table caught Morgan's attention and he walked up to see just what was on it. Several wicked looking weapons both finished and rough lay scattered across it. Many of them had old stains on the grips or blood smears on the blades.

"Looks like evidence won't be a problem." Morgan commented, eyeing the arrangement of axes, machetes and hammers. "Doesn't look like either of them bothered to clean up or hide anything. What about the Doll's heart? I would rather nip that cat in the bag. Before it comes back for the mice."

Arthur made a face at the comment but didn't stop opening drawers. "Look for something making a consistent noise, a single click or a short series of notes."

"What like a drum or something?" Morgan asked the man with incredulity.

"Yes, though more likely it will be something wound up or automated somehow. Look for a music box, or a watch, sometimes a metronome works." The answer was clinical and slightly condescending, and of course, given without ever looking up.

"Something with a consistent note or beat... like a heartbeat!" Morgan said, working through it out loud and wondering why he felt surprise anymore.

"That would be why we call it a heartbeat." The Dollmakers response dripped with sarcasm before adding more factually. "You have no idea how hard it was to make a Doll that lasted for any real length of time before clockwork came along."

"Not that I really do either, well before my time." Arthur added quietly afterwards.

Morgan graced the other mans words with a non-committal grunt in response and they let the conversation lapse into silence as they continued to search through drawers. They found screws, tools, buttons and an abundance of dust but nothing that ticked or rang or knocked. No ominous tomes fell out of cabinets or peaked out of drawers. In short they quickly found that nothing seemed to be hidden in the shop.

"Where could he have put them?" Arthur pounded the table with both hands, his sledge hammer long since set to leaning forgotten against a workbench. Morgan sighed and continued to rummage through a drawer fruitlessly, his shotgun still gripped firmly in one hand.

"There must be something we are missing." Morgan cast his gaze about the room as he said it, searching for something hidden enough or obvious enough for them to miss.

Morgan saw nothing, there was nothing in the area that they hadn't already checked. Then he looked up. There, sitting like a great one eyed vulture was a raised up office set against the wall with it's door closed tight and its blinds shut. It was the kind with one large window that was common in mechanical shops and warehouses for managers and supervisors to keep an eye on things while doing paperwork. The brooding office had a door that led out to a short metal catwalk, which led to stairs, which led down to a small, forgettable and well shadowed corner of the shop. Ironically not far from the machining area.

"Well if I was going to hide some stolen items it would be up there" Morgan nodded up to the office. "Can't get to it without crossing the rest of the shop."

"Alright!" Arthur exclaimed and walked quickly towards the hidden stairs, leaving a drawer open and his sledge hammer behind.

It was just as the tall Dollmaker reached the edge of the light that Morgan heard it. It was a small sound, like rocks grinding together. A shadow moved under the stairs and without time to shout a warning, he pulled the butt of the gun into his shoulder, sighted and fired all at the same time.

Arthur let out a rather effeminate scream, falling onto his backside as the shotgun went off. It blasted pellets through the air far too close to the Dollmaker's body, slamming into the small form that had been flying at him. Luckily falling backwards had prevented the metal baseball bat from taking off his head and it whistled harmlessly through the air where he had been.

"ROLL!" Morgan yelled, striding towards the attacker while pumping another shell into the chamber. The Doll had been toppled to the ground but was already picking itself up despite how hard it had gone down. Hesitation froze him for a moment, preventing him from pulling the trigger as the Doll regained it's feet. It was not the same doll from the other night.

She was taller than either Mei-mei or the other Doll. Still made after the form of a young girl, simply older. Short,blonde, pixie-cut hair sat framing a young face with sharp features, a pointed nose and dark brown eyes. Despite the blue and white lacy dress there was something deeply frightening about the emotionless expression on her face and heavy metal bat in her hand. She shook her head and fixed her gaze on Morgan. A shallow anger reflected in those eyes, and then she set her feet and rushed at him with determination.

The shotgun roared in his hands and bucked against his shoulder as he fired again, this time aiming at her face. He had already pumped another round in the chamber before realizing that she hadn't fallen over or been thrown back like the other Doll. This one stumbled and her head snapped back as if slapped, but she didn't stop.

"It's stone Officer!" Arthur yelled from wherever he had scrambled off to hide. "I'd guess he carved it from only one or two pieces!"

"Great" Morgan yelled in reply as he managed to throw himself to the side, dodging the Doll's diving attack and even getting another shot off. The blast hit her as she flew through where he himself had just been, her swinging bat hitting nothing once again. This time the shot took her in the chest from barely a foot away and she quite satisfyingly toppled to the ground again and landed in a heap.

"What exactly does that mean!?" He asked the room with a yell, scrambling to get to his feet before the Doll did.

"Think 'a rock'! Slower, tougher and substantially heavier!" Arthur yelled, his voice seemed to have moved to a different hiding place.

There was no time to say anything else as the Doll finished pulling itself to its feet. Morgan pumped the shotgun again, sighted down the barrel and fired. His target reeled, small stone ships flying off it's face and the anger in her eyes deepened as she recovered quickly and glared at him again.

The 'Illusion of Life' \- as Arthur had named it – seemed to be breaking down with the pellets being pumped into the doll. Her face, that now looked like carved stone though it still moved like a girls, was pockmarked with cracks and gouges put there by the flying metal pellets. One of her eyes was cracked and the nose ended in a rough stump instead of a point. Her ripped dress and slowly disappearing mask of life made her seem more like some long dead thing come back than the real girl she was supposed to be or even the man made facsimile she was.

Unfortunately the damage did not seem to do anything to slow her down and she launched at him again, this time zigzagging back and forth as she closed the distance. Obviously she had learned her lesson about charging straight in.

Morgans next shot missed her entirely, taking a chunk out of the concrete floor. She was not as fast as Mei-mei or the other Doll, but was still far quicker than she should have been. He racked the shotgun again, slipping another round into the chamber too late as the Doll launched forward, slamming a small hard shoulder into his chest with jarring force.

The hit forced the air from his lungs making his chest burn. He tried desperately to breathe, but his lungs refused to draw in air and in a panicked moment he thought they may have collapsed. The Doll stepped over him, straddling him and looking down with her broken face triumphant. Morgan pushed at her trying to get her off of him but without air he couldn't move himself and he was coming to understand that she probably weighed even more than he did. Horror did nothing to fill his lungs as it flooded his chest watching the Doll raise the metal bat over its head with both hands.

A meteor slammed into the Doll. With a grunt of effort Arthur's cloth wrapped sledgehammer, now set alight smashed into the stone girls chest with all the force he could muster making a dull metal thunk. The Doll cried out in surprise as she fell, the hammer setting her hair a blaze and another dull thud sounding out as her body hit the concrete.

Morgan didn't waste any time, and flipped over to crawl to his shotgun. His lungs had started to work again, though slowly. By the time he had gotten over to the weapon he had enough air in him to flip over again and while half sitting up, aim and fire.

His shot took the Doll in her knee as she was pulling herself from the ground, blasting off a large chunk of stone. Horrifyingly the battered Doll, face broken, leg missing part of the knee and what remained of her hair still smouldering continued to get up. She fixed her good eye on Morgan again and took a step, but a grinding sound came from the leg as she put weight on it and dust sifted out from the broken joint making her stop and look down.

"Hurry and find the heart!" Arthur shouted into Morgan's ear while hauling him to his feet. "Shes too heavy to move quickly on that leg!"

The two of them bolted to and then up the metal stairs. Morgan clung onto the shotgun as the other man half dragged him up the stairs. The sound of grinding rocks and heavy footsteps on the grated metal stairs started below just before they threw themselves into the room, luckily left unlocked. Arthur threw himself desperately against the door the moment it was closed.

"What the heck is the heart!?" Morgan demanded, mostly recovered he glanced around the room for the Doll's heart while ramming shells into the empty shotgun. Arthur threw the sledgehammer, cloth now completely burned off, over by Morgan's feet making him jump.

"Just smash anything that clicks, thumps or twitches too regularly!" Arthur shouted, bracing himself against the door as something heavy thumped into it.

Morgan began frantically tearing open drawers on the desk which was one of the only pieces of furniture in there. Nothing was moving, ticking, clicking or tapping. Wood crunched behind him and looking over he saw the metal bat being extracted from the hole it had just punched through the wooden door.

He pulled all the old papers out from a cabinet in the desk, letting them fly about the room. Drawers soared as he pulled them free from the desk and panic threatened to overwhelm his rational thought. Then, in the last drawer in the desk was an aged silver pocket watch. It was worn and tarnished and probably an antique, but when Morgan popped it open a slow consistent twitch of hands was steadily ticking the seconds away.

The door crunched again and Morgan panicked throwing the watch onto the top of the desk he picked up the sledgehammer, letting the shotgun drop. He brought the hammer up and swung hard making the desk crunch as it crushed the sturdy wood, completely missing the watch.

"Good lord man you aren't taking down a wall just hit it!" Arthur screamed in panic, his voice rising to a feminine pitch as the door splintered again.

An angry, panicked scream ripped through the tattered door. The Doll with its one dark eye glowing with fear and anger peered though a hole. That face moved only to be replaced by tiny handy bursting through the door to rip it apart in chunks. Whatever made her look human had almost completely degraded with all the damage done to her and the well carved little fists and digits looked just like the stone they were made of as they ripped the door like paper.

This time Morgan raised the sledgehammer just up to his eye level and with the strength of fear powering him, brought it down carefully onto the watch, twice. Everything went quiet, and Morgan picked up the watch to examine. Gears were bent and popped out, springs exposed and glass shattered, and nothing ticked or twitched on it.

Arthur screamed and scrambled away as the tiny hands burst through the door again and in a flurry of movement finished pulling it apart. The door, which had taken far too much damage to bear that name anymore, was no more than a collection of splinters and chunks on the floor with the hinges desperately clinging onto a few larger pieces. Stone rage stepped into the room shaped like a broken little girl.

"I smashed the watch why is she still moving?" Morgan demanded frantically.

"Well obviously it wasn't her now was it!" Arthur spat back in a comically high, panic filled voice that would have been amusing if they weren't about to die.

"Not really! Nothing about Dolls or being attacked by a killer lawn ornament is normal or obvious!" Morgan spat right back and then dived for the shotgun on the floor. A tiny foot smashed through the floorboards next to his head as he roll onto his back and brought the barrel of the gun up. The stone face he aimed it at was still surprisingly human to him despite the missing pieces, burnt hair and shattered eye. Everything slowed down as he watched her step forward, face bearing a twisted, predatory grin and her knee grinding out dust.

She threw herself at the downed officer with outstretched arms and he rolled back and brought up his feet. His legs almost buckled and let her crush him as he caught the heavy Doll with his feet. She must have easily weighed at least two-fifty. His legs held however and he launched her back with all his strength and once again she was flying through the air, this time smashing into the wall behind her. She quickly managed to stagger to her feet and began limping towards him once again.

Now however she was out of his shot.

He had missed it completely until he had ended up on the ground with his shotgun. An old clock hung on the wall near the door. It was obviously broken, the small red hand ticking the same second away over and over again. Morgan squeezed the trigger and pellets ripped out of their package, bounced down the barrel, flew through the air and ripped into the old clock tearing it in two before it smashed to the ground.

A small heartbreaking cry followed the boom of the shotgun and crash of the clock. It was a sound of surprise, fear and sadness and sounded very much like a sound a child would make. Morgan watched the Doll, feeling relief and fear being washed away by sadness as she clutched her chest with a hand, her eyes staring at nothing. She took one staggering step to nowhere, then a second onto her bad leg which finally cracked, bearing her to the ground, her eyes empty and her face as serene and unmoving as stone.

Morgan sat there with his shotgun staring at the pile of rocks that was the remnants of the Doll. The battered officer found himself sad to see this Doll, following orders and likely quite innocent, collapse like that. She had died in such a human way.

"I never even saw the clock, never mind that it was still moving!" Arthur exclaimed as he picked himself out of the corner of the office. His voice had returned to its normal, more masculine, range.

"It was broken. The seconds hand was barely moving." Morgan replied blankly.

"Huh" The Dollmaker replied with interest. "That is brilliant actually! Using a broken clock like that would be less reliable than a working one, but so easy to overlook. And it can be hidden in plain sight!"

"She's dead" Morgan felt a little numb as he said the words. His own voice sounded odd. "It was like she had a heart attack. She was clutching her chest like her heart just stopped."

"Well it did," Arthur replied. "You stopped it." It didn't help.

Arthur squatted down beside his friend and placed a hand on his shoulder. "It has stopped moving Officer, but it was never really alive. It seemed to be, they all do if you are good. However they do not breathe, or sleep and they don't even understand what is wrong with killing or hurting.

"Dolls do feel. Shallow feelings that only really relate to themselves. But they are just not really alive. They are constructs, trust me. You have had to hurt people in order to keep others safe right officer?"

Morgan rolled his eyes and responded with "Of course."

"So you can hurt them to stop crimes more easily than a hunk of rock officer?" Arthur asked.

Morgan reflected on what the Dollmaker said as he picked the mans hand off of his shoulder. He couldn't quite bring himself to agree with him completely. The Doll's moved and sounded too much like people, even the stone one had, especially in death. What he couldn't deny though was that Arthur was right about it being her or them.

"She was dangerous." Morgan admitted. "I just hope she didn't hurt that lady." He said with concern as he crawled over to the desk, carefully pushing away the image of the stone Doll clutching her chest from his mind.

"What lady?" Arthur asked, the confusion as evident in his voice as his face.

Glad that he was turned away to hide his smile Morgan replied. "The one that was screaming at me from the door to smash things. She sounded so scared."

Coughing and sputtering came from behind him as Arthur attempted to find a dignified reply, Morgan broke into a full, hearty laugh as he reached under the desk. Poking out from behind the inside leg area of the desk and wedged against the wall was a bundle of cloth. He had seen it after diving for the shotgun and managed to pull it out. Sliding out to lean against the desk and let his companion see, Morgan unwrapped the bundle to reveal a thick leather bound book.

"My notes!" Arthur lunged forward with a cry and snatched up the book. Greedily he combed through the pages with alacrity, mumbling to himself as he checked the volume over.

With Arthur distracted Morgan crawled back under the desk again and groped in the small slot between the desk and wall where he had found the notes. His fingers found another cloth bundle that he rolled towards himself until he could grab it. The cloth had come off as it had rolled apparently and his hand grasped something smooth with a few jagged edges. Pulling the object towards himself he knew as soon as he touched it that this was what they had come looking for.

Looking at the prize, a large uncut diamond rested in his hand. Almost the size of a fist the diamond had a very obvious imperfection right in the middle, making it worth no where near what a diamond that size should be, cut or not. It didn't speak to him or glow from the inside but somehow he knew that this was the spirit that could be made into a Doll. The rare centre that Arthur had spoken about. Morgan almost felt like he could see her face already, but that was just his imagination playing on his knowledge of what it was.

"This what else you were looking for Arthur?" Morgan offered up the stone on his open palm as he picked himself off the floor with the desk. Soreness had seeped out from his bones, where it had been hiding during the fight, and soaked into every muscle in his body.

Arthur put down the book and carefully, almost reverently, accepted the diamond with both hands. "At least he cleaned it off for me." The man said as he inspected it closely. He shot Morgan an odd look. "How did you know?"

"Seemed right." Morgan shrugged, stooping to pick up his shotgun with a groan. "And when someone tries to kill me and I find a big diamond after, it is probably involved."

The Dollmaker gave him a rueful smile, considering the other man carefully once again. "I suppose that makes a lot of sense."

Morgan surveyed the room tiredly to make sure that nothing that needed to disappear was left behind. The police would toss the place quite thoroughly after he called in the cavalry.

The pair made their way out of the office. Morgan lumbered down the stairs with his shotgun and Arthur followed behind with the book and diamond clutched in his long limbs.

"So where do you think this Seamus guy got to?" Officer Morgan asked as they descended.

"GET AWAY FROM THERE!" Someone yelled from the shop floor. There, a red headed man was striding across the shop from the open door with a plastic convenience store bag in his hand. He was heading straight for the table of weapons. "MILLIE! CANDICE! Where are you? I see you there Arthur! You won't take them!"

Morgan racked the shotgun hard, letting an unused shell drop to the floor. A waste if it came to a fight but it served it's intended purpose as the man froze and stared up at the gun pointed at him. Nothing gets a person's attention like the sound of a shotgun being racked.

"Seamus I presume?"

"Who the heck are you?" Seamus demanded, his voice the same deep, suave tone that had threatened Morgan over the phone.

"If the uniform isn't cluing you in yet, I am Officer Morgan." Morgan replied, setting the butt of the shotgun against his shoulder and double checking by feel that the safety was off. "Back away from the table, drop the bag and put your hands in the air NOW!"

Seamus hesitated then bolted for the door. He only made it about three steps before he froze in place, a cough like sob escaping his throat as he stared at the doorway.

Mei-mei stood in the door. She had a long gash on her arm where some blade had sliced through her dress and into the wood beneath, but seemed otherwise unharmed. The Doll stood with a mace in one hand, the other dragged the body of Seamus' purple-eyed doll by the ankle behind her. The purple eyed doll lay in a lifeless heap, the motionless form had nothing left in it to care about being dragged around.

"You have a lot to answer for Seamus." Morgan said as he came carefully down the stairs without lowering the gun which was still trained on the red headed man.

Seamus had fallen to his knees and was simply staring at the broken doll that Mei-mei held in her hand. It dragged behind her with a conspicuous scraping sound as she walked into the room. Morgan almost felt sorry for the man who looked so distraught at the destruction of his Dolls. Anger quickly replaced sympathy as the Dolls would not have had to be destroyed if not for the man and his greed.

"A lot of murders and thefts in my city that need to be accounted for. As well as a whole host of other charges." Morgan said.

"You can't prove anything! I never killed anyone." Seamus finally responded, a smug but panicked look on his face as he looked up at the officer.

"Yeah perhaps not, but I would put money on you having handled all those weapons over there which, by the look of them haven't been cleaned since someone killed with them. I could probably tie you to half a dozen murders just with that. And you are in possession of a number of stolen materials that were taken from sights connected to the violence and murders." Morgan put down his shotgun and stepped up to the man, slapping a cuff forcefully onto his wrist and twisting it behind his back. "Conviction should be pretty easy. Though if I were you I would simply confess. Unless you want me to hand this problem over to Arthur and Mei-mei to take care of?" The man shook his head with a horrified look. "No? Then I think this case will wrap itself up quickly. Unless you think someone will believe the truth?"

Morgan cranked the cuffs tighter onto the man. Seamus merely whimpered and let himself be hauled off the floor. Morgan spoke "You have the right to remain silent..."

After reading the malicious Dollmaker his rights, Morgan sat the man back on the ground awkwardly by the door and called it in on his radio. Mei-mei stood in front of Seamus and stared unblinkingly at the man with mace in hand. Her expression was innocent, somewhat blank and she was humming again, but that just seemed to add to the pall of menace she exhumed. It didn't help that Arthur had told her to break his legs if the man tried to run.

"Neither Mei-mei or the doll she brought in were too badly damaged. She was probably that watch you smashed first." Arthur took a place beside Morgan leaning against the workbench. "So what now Officer Morgan?"

"Well I suggest you disappear before the cavalry shows up." Morgan sighed out, watching Mei-mei and Seamus as he did. "This place pretty much speaks to all the crimes he is connected to. If he had taken some effort to cover his tracks this would have been a lot messier to clean up. Luckily you Dollmakers are pretty arrogant."

Arthur opened his mouth to respond but paused before frowning and giving a grudging nod.

"What about you?" Morgan posed.

"We'll take our regained items and disappear for now. I had originally planned to go back to Kansas, quiet places are good for the work. This town is growing on me though." Arthur looked around as if to emphasize his point. "And I think you and I still have things to discuss. I brought everything I need to finish this little beauty anyways." The diamond sparkled dimly in the Dollmaker's hand.

"You said that his Doll had a violent streak right?" Morgan asked, reflecting on their earlier conversation and nodding to indicate Seamus.

"Yes. A Doll comes with it's own disposition and knowledge, but they learn most things about the world from their masters and makers. Especially about morality. As such it's not uncommon for them to pick up traits from those people." Arthur looked at Morgan. "That other Doll would likely have ended up the same way if we had left her with him."

Morgan felt another stab of pity for the dolls and anger at their maker. "There are no bad dogs, only bad owners." He quoted. The same was apparently true for Dolls.

Arthur looked thoughtful at that, perhaps considering what kind of owner he was.

"Alright get out of here. I'll give you a call in the morning and we can figure out whatever else needs to be sorted out then." The police officer pushed the gangly Dollmaker towards the door who called Mei-mei to him as he walked to it."

"Goodbye Officer Morgan!" Mei-mei called as she waved from the door, Arthur's recovered book clutched to her chest. He waved back and was unable to keep back a smile as he heard her walk out with Arthur. "I like him."

"You've said that already." Arthur replied.

Whatever else was said was lost behind the door.

Act III: Ophelia

Officer Morgan didn't call Arthur the next day as he had promised. He had planned to make the call, but after spending most of the night filling out paperwork, interrogating Seamus so that they had a coherent story for him to confess and making oral reports, Morgan was happy to just fall asleep when he finally got home. He stayed that way for most of the morning, recovering from the encounter with the stone Doll.

Exhaustion kept most of his dreams and nightmares away. Most of the ones he did have were filled with unstoppable little girls trying to kill him. Worse was when he relived the moment when the stone Doll clutched her chest and died.

Come morning however there, Surprisingly, seemed to be some good coming out of the mess for him. Sore from head to toe and completely exhausted, he had managed to make the community safer. He also got a couple of days off and rumours were circulating in the precinct that he was being considered for a promotion. It was the second large case he was involved in, and he had played more than a passing role in solving both.

The hardest part before leaving the precinct had been trying explain the damage to the shop and what was left of the dolls. In the end he 'admitted' to shooting the stone doll out of surprise when entering the office. That caused it to fall over and break. For all the other damage he went with "It was like that when I got there."

Before he had left at the end of that very long night he had started filling out a report detailing what actually happened. He wrote two paragraphs, looked them over and laughed, stuffing the report into the bottom drawer of his desk. Seamus was sticking to the story of industrial theft and a violent murder streak. All the Dolls were gone or had reverted to simple shells unless Arthur stepped in with Mei-mei. No one would believe the real story anyways. Morgan had a hard time believing it himself and telling the truth wouldn't help anyone. He had mostly just wanted to see how absurd it looked written down.

Two days after wrapping up the 'Dolls case' and a day after he was supposed to call, Morgan finally got around to calling Arthur. Not entirely sure what he was going to say but knowing he needed to, he dialled the number and slouched against the kitchen wall as it rang.

"Hello?" Arthur curtly answered the phone. He must have been working.

"Hello to you too Arthur" Morgan poured as much sarcasm as he could into the words. "Look you told me we still had things to talk about and I figured a thanks was in order for-"

"That's nice, you too, you're welcome." Arthur interrupted in a rush and with his usual lack of tact. "Look I have to redo the whole face now. Can you come by at the end of the week I am really busy. Oh and call before you come. Oh but don't call until then alright Officer. Sounds good, bye."

The line went dead before Morgan had a chance to get a word in and he stared at the phone for a moment. He considered calling back just to annoy the man and give him a piece of his mind. Instead he got ready to head out to the gym in the precinct. Arthur likely wouldn't answer and, though still sore, if Morgan didn't keep moving it would only get worse. Besides as a big man he was tired of being out-muscled by all the little girls running around, fake or not.

The week passed fairly quickly. Morgan made more reports, written and verbal. He was allowed to give a short interview to a local newspaper and the district police chief had confirmed to him that the process and paperwork to promote him to detective was already started. The last few days before the week ended consisted of boring patrols and speeding tickets for the most part. It was a lot easier work, which he was grateful for following the hectic last few days, though it lacked the excitement.

Friday did arrive and Morgan called Arthur again as promised. The Dollmaker had distractedly told him to come over after work before simply hanging up again. He did come by after his morning shift, despite his annoyance with the man's working attitude.

The house looked more or less the same, though it appeared someone had cut the overgrown grass around Arthur's cement stairs which had themselves actually been swept. Small improvements from the previous neglected state, but improvements nonetheless.

Morgan rapped on the door with his knuckles and listened. Arthur and Mei-mei called back and forth to each other as Morgan waited patiently outside the door and thought on the strange Dollmaker. It was amazing how much the man changed when he was working. When dealing with people the man Arthur was cool and confident and even charming. When working on Dolls, he was still confident, but he left no room for anything but work and so was also distracted and grumpy.

Morgan was about to give the door a kick when the locks clicked behind it. Mei-mei opened the door a moment later, though only a few inches before it hit the stool on which she stood.

"Hello Officer Morgan." Her smile had a more awkward and forced quality to it. "I am sorry for the wait, I could not reach all the locks." She hopped down off her stool and kicked it to the side, allowing the door to open.

"Thank you Mei-mei. The wait wasn't very long. Did you clean up outside?" Morgan asked on a hunch.

"Yes I did Officer Morgan!" Her smile was more genuine and less disconcerting with the compliment and it lit up her face in a way he just couldn't reconcile with her being made of wood. She seemed so much more human when she forgot to try to be human. "Thank you for noticing. Arthur says we may be here for a while. He has been quite busy so I tidied up."

She leaned in conspiratorially and with an exaggerated whisper said "Using the weed trimmer was quite hard." She pointed out the power tool which was easily a foot taller than she was.

"I bet." Morgan said and couldn't help wondering how that must have looked to the neighbours. "What has Arthur so busy all of a sudden?"

"He had to go over the notes you recovered to make sure nothing was altered or ripped out. Unfortunately he tells me a few pages are missing though he did not share with me which ones." She led him to the kitchen as she spoke and offered a glass of water. He felt bad for saying yes when she had to go back for her stool so that she could reach, pretty much anything.

"Other than that." she continued. "He has been working on the new Doll."

Morgan tried to hide his surprise. "He's making a new Doll?"

"Yes." she handed him the glass as she spoke. "He has been working on her since well before we came here."

That made sense. Arthur _had_ complained when Morgan had called him earlier in the week about changing a face. Something about it made Morgan uncomfortable though he wasn't sure why. The man was a Dollmaker after all. It just seemed like someone shouldn't have more than one, though the encounter with Seamus had proved that to be far from impossible. Morgan tried not to think about it and just waited quietly with Mei-mei.

"Should we go in?" He suggested awkwardly after a while.

"No." The finality in the Doll's voice reminded him abruptly that Mei-mei was not actually a little girl. Which was something he was starting to suspect that he forgot a little too often. "I was told to keep you out here until he called."

An itch grew between his shoulder-blades. It hadn't occurred to Morgan than Mei-mei was a Doll that might be much more like the others than he was comfortable with. She seemed so much more human than the angry Dolls they had faced. Arthur had said that many of them had to follow orders and didn't really understand morality. Which made the police officer wonder what might have happened if the Dollmaker had been more like his malicious counterpart Seamus. Just to be safe he edged away from the door a little.

"Finished! Bring him in Mei-mei!" Arthur called a few minutes later, breaking the awkward silence like a rock through a window. At least it was awkward for Morgan. He looked to Mei-mei who waved him ahead of her and then he entered the room.

Arthur was on one knee facing away from the policeman entering the room, but stood to face him blocking whatever he was working on as he did. The Dollmaker was in his work clothes, ill fitting with a leather apron over top. His hair was a greasy mess and he had several days worth of untrimmed beard on his face.

"Hello Arthur, what was so important you had to bring me down here today?" Morgan asked, crossing his arms.

"To give you your Doll Officer Morgan." Arthur stated and stepped to the side.

There stood what appeared to be a young girl with hair the colour of basement shadows at night and skin as pale as the moon. Of a height with Mei-mei she had a slender build, with a graceful and willowy neck and limbs. It appeared Arthur had put real shoes on her feet instead of painting them on, and her fingers were long and delicate. She wore elegance and poise as well as the dark green dress that covered her, and wore them in a way he couldn't imagine a real little girl being able to. It was obvious that Arthur had created a work of art in her, but it was her face that drew Morgan in.

The Doll's face was familiar. He couldn't tell you how he might have seen her before, but she was deeply, frustratingly familiar. The features of her face were delicate, with a slender, heart shaped structure and a pointed nose that would have looked sharp on an older woman. Her mouth, set above a softly pointed chin, was small but prominent with a natural looking red shade. No human had ever had eyes like this Doll did. They appeared at first glance to be a warm shade of light brown, but they were not. Instead they were collages of colour. Streaks of gold lay atop splashes of purple and red, and flecks of brown and blue lost themselves in the fray. No two streaks or veins of colour were the same shade, and they lay together to form into eyes of stained glass. They would seem perfectly normal from afar, but in the most beautiful way, were far from it. The most disturbing thing about her eyes, to Morgan at least, was that inside those beautiful and perfectly clear eyes was instant recognition.

The Doll stepped forward. She wore the mask on her well, but though she looked like a little girl she held herself a little too still, too rigidly. She watched a little too closely.

"It is a pleasure to truly see you Morgan." She spoke with a voice that was small like a young girls, but clear and confident with a melodic quality to it. "I am Ophelia."

After a completely inappropriate amount of time Morgan stuttered out an unsure greeting. "I am, uh, I am pleased to meet you... Ophelia."

"Arthur, what is going on here?" He asked, unable to take his eyes from the Doll.

The Dollmaker was grinning from the corner. "Well after you recovered the diamond, the spirit inside seemed to have taken a shine to you. At least as far as I can tell, it isn't an exact science." He came over to put a hand on Ophelia's shoulder. "It changed how she felt to me, which is why I had to re-carve the face, though the basic form and the eyes were still good which was a relief. I paid Marcus a fortune for those eyes."

Morgan barely registered that Marcus was one of the Craftsmen he knew.

Arthur looked Ophelia over like a man appreciating a fine painting. "Some of my finest work if I do say so myself."

"What did you mean my Doll." Morgan asked ignoring the mans preamble.

"What?" Arthur broke out of his work stupor. "Oh it didn't feel right to animate her bound to me. Not when she obviously already had a preference for you. I will be staying here for a while so I will keep the heart and help you two out, but she is your Doll."

Morgan didn't know what to say, or do, or think. The room started spinning and he found the bed without asking, grabbing onto the foot board for stability. He gave serious consideration to throwing up this time.

Then a small, firm hand was on his shoulder steadying him. Morgan looked up into the most hazel eyes in the world.

"It's alright Morgan. I look forward to learning from and working with you. I am here for you"
Author's Notes

I would like to thank you for downloading and reading my book. This is my first completed work of fiction, I had a lot of fun writing it and I hope you did reading it. There is more to come for Morgan and Ophelia in the future and I hope you will support me by continuing to enjoy and purchase these stories. I have many more projects on the way, most of them taking the form of much longer stories in a variety of styles and genres. I hope that if you enjoyed this story you will do me the highest honour a reader can give and recommend me to your friends.

The author Simon Ericson is a Canadian by birth, who loves reading, martial arts, running and most of all his family. If you have any comments or questions please feel free to contact me on twitter at @EricsonsStories. I am also on Linkedin, and Facebook as Simon Ericson.
