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 notice
d 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