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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

  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 exa
ctly 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