Story Notes:
This is being primarily written because it is the Halloween season, and I need something to do to keep myself sane while waiting for the 31st. I hope to have it done by then, but since I started this late, that means that the chapters may not be completely accurate grammar- or spelling-wise. I hope you enjoy it anyway!
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
Prologue
It was all such a horrid mess. In all of his twenty-two years on the force, Sheriff Hank Lawrence had never seen anything so horrifying or nightmare-inducing as when he walked into the Jones' household on that Halloween night that would remain in his nightmares long after he had retired from the force and settled outside of town.
It had started off as a simple call that had come nearly half an hour before his shift was set to end, from the Jones' neighbor next door-a nosy old bitty that had claimed she had heard a lot of screaming coming from the house. Hank had agreed to take the call since his deputies had been on the run all night and his own shift was coming to a close. The fact that the house in question was only a few blocks away from his own home was a plus since he hoped that he could just slip on home after dealing with the incident. He had believed, at the time, that it was just a nighttime prank or a Halloween party that had gotten out of hand, like the other thirteen calls that had come into the office since sunset, and he hoped that he could just knock on the door, take down a damage report that he could just voice through the CB or ask the owner's of the house to quiet down under warning of citation Then he would be off and in the arms of his wife at a decent hour for the first time in a week. The regret for not sending one of his deputies in his stead would be a topic of discussion in his therapy session for years to come.
The house the neighbor had called to complain about belonged to Daron Jones, one of the few African American men in Packer's Grove. Though the sheriff didn't know the man personally, he knew that Daron was actually one of the most successful men in town. He owned half of the businesses on main street, which he bought out with a lot of hard work and not a trust fund. He had singlehandedly knocked down most of the color barriers in the town because of his kind demeanor and his hardworking ethic that even the most redneck hillbilly had to respect. He lived with his wife and daughter in one of the oldest houses in town, which was located on the “right” side of the tracks, and up to that particular moment, he had been an outstanding law abiding citizen. Daron was something of a respectable man in town, so Hank knew, therefore, that this would most likely be a case that he could just simply deal with in a matter of minutes before heading home to Noreen and the boys.
When he pulled his police cruiser into the Jones' driveway, he knew right away that this wouldn't be as simple an incident as he had thought. He had expected to see a lawn littered with plastic cups and toilet paper or a house filled with lights and shadows from a party gone out of control, but what he found instead was a tidy, neatly kept lawn and a house that was completely filled with darkness-no sign of life at all inside. He thought he could almost smell death in the air and felt a shiver run up his spine that he had not felt in a long time. Probably since he was a small boy afraid of the boogeyman underneath his bed. He could feel that something was not right in that house.
Don't be stupid, he told himself as he slowly got out of his car. They're probably just sleeping. The old lady just probably heard a little spat, but they all probably just made up and went to sleep already, he told himself as he started up the cobblestone sidewalk that lead all the way up to the front steps of the porch.
Don't kid yourself, another voice whispered inside as he reached the front door and gently pressed the doorbell. Who would be asleep this early on Halloween? it continued to whisper as he listened to the ding-dong sound inside the house and waited for someone to answer.
There was no reply.
Hank frowned and pressed the doorbell again. He silenced the eerie voice inside his head and folded his arms with a pout on his lips that made him resemble a child trying to be stubborn towards a parent who was telling him to do something that he didn't want to do. He told himself that they were probably just getting up, groggy from sleep, stumbling down the stairs towards the door, most likely grumbling to themselves about callers coming at this hour. His conviction was so strong in this that he even thought he heard the scatter of feet sound inside the house, followed by a small movement of the curtains in the window that he swore he saw out of the corner of his eye.
You see? He told that eerie voice inside. There's someone inside. The curtains just moved.
After a minute of staring at the door in expectation, Hank frowned again. Surely, it didn't take that long for someone to walk from the window to the door. It's not like Daron or his wife were old. They were in their mid-thirties as far as the sheriff knew, so they shouldn't have had difficulty getting to the door, right?
Unless they're wounded, that voice spoke out again with a hint of glee at the uncertainty that was clenching at his stomach. Or maybe it wasn't them. Maybe it was the person who killed them.
“Shut the hell up,” he mumbled to himself. “Stop being such a gosh damn psycho. It was probably just a heater that made the curtain move.”
Reaching out to press the doorbell again, he paused and decided that that tactic was obviously not working, even though he could hear the bell sounding inside each time he rang it. Hank Lawrence wasn't a man who was going to continue doing something that wasn't working, especially since five minutes had already passed since he had gotten out of his car. He could have been on his way home already, and something told him that he should go about doing just that, but twenty-two years of being on the force, however, won out along with the knowledge that he was still a man whose paychecks were paid by the people. He was going to talk to somebody, garsh darnit, and since the doorbell hadn't worked, he would knock this time around.
Balling his hand into a fist, Hank raised it up and slammed it irritably against the door only to find himself crying out a second later when the door gave way under his hand. He had not realized how much he had put his body into the pounding until he found himself stumbling right through the empty doorway, into the dark shadows beyond. When he was fresh out of the academy, Hank would have caught himself gracefully, but twenty years (and probably a thousand beer and pizza binges) later, the sheriff of Packer's Grove found himself sprawled out-belly down-on a hard wooden floor.
It took him a minute to gather his senses back together to realize how pathetic and ridiculous he probably looked to the people who had to have heard the ruckus he had just made and had finally woken up and come down to see the slightly overweight sheriff lying like a drunkard in their foyer. Scrambling quickly to his feet, he dusted himself off and turned to straighten himself with his back faced towards the rest of the house and the owner of the eyes he could now feel were resting on his back.
“I do beg your pardon,” he said quickly, gazing out at his cruiser through the open door with the urge to just run to it and leave behind this entire mess. “Your door wasn't completely closed and I was ringing yo-”
He broke off as he suddenly saw the light in the room flicker on. Turning around, he opened his mouth to utter his apology again to the person he silently prayed had missed the entire stumbling incident but instead found himself choking on his words as his eyes suddenly met those that he had felt were watching him. They were staring up at him from the lifeless, blood-covered face of a woman he would never have believed had once been the winner of a beauty pageant back in Maine where she had been born and raised. Laying before him, no more than a few inches from where he had been sprawled out moments before, was the body of Sarah Jones.
Sarah was sprawled out on the bottom of the stairs with her head twisted completely around so that her face was aligned with her back rather than her front. Though something like that could very well have happened after falling down a flight of stairs similar to the one she was lying in front of, Hank doubted that the bruises and cuts all over her face happened from just a mere tumble. The woman looked more like a victim of torture rather than the victim of a terrible fall. Either way, Hank found himself grateful that he had not had the opportunity to eat dinner because it would have been all over the floor right then and there.
Resisting the urge of scream, Hank swiftly reached for the gun in his holster with one hand, while pressing the button on his radio to request all the manpower available at the station to come as back up for him. He had already placed his back against the wall as his eyes roamed the room, searching for the person who had turned on the lights Getting a better look around him, however, he found that all the other lights had been lit up as well, meaning that the lights had probably all turned out together and had been flicked back on upon his entrance. That meant that the murderer was probably still in the house, which would have excited him before in his younger days, but now just filled his entire stomach with cold fear.
He wanted to wait for his men to come before he went further into the house, but he knew that every moment he waited, the greater the possibility that the murderer would get away, and looking at Sarah Jones again, he did not want that to happen no matter how scared he was. The anger that he felt became a beacon for his courage to find him again, and before he knew it, he was able to move his feet. They carried him towards the living room, where the smell of death only seemed to grow stronger.
He found Daron Jones in the living room, gagged with a sock and tied to a chair with his hands bound behind his back with ribbon that looked frayed. His throat had been cut, the blood making the white shirt he was wearing look like it could fit right in at a Nebraska Cornhusker pep rally The body was faced towards the entry where Sarah was laying by the stairs. From the little he remembered from the criminology class he had taken, back when he had thought that he wanted to be a Crime Scene Investigator, Hank saw that Daron's skin wasn't as pale as his wife's meaning that the man had died after his wife had taken the fall. Closing his eyes, Hank pictured a flash of what had happened- Daron had been tied to the chair and had been forced to watch while his wife was being tortured and killed right in front of him. Suddenly, the fraying of the binding ribbons made sense. The man had probably fought until the very end.
“Good God,” Hank whispered quietly as he suddenly felt his legs nearly buckle beneath him. He rubbed his free hand down his face and let out a breath that was as shaky as the hand that was still grasped tightly around his gun.
Making his way back out of the house, he found himself vomiting on the tidy lawn that had been the first sign that something was wrong. Though he hadn't eaten dinner, he still managed to retch up some of his stomach acid that burned all the way up his esophagus. He was breaking protocol by leaving the house with a possible killer still inside, but he didn't care. He told himself that he wasn't going back into that house without his back up. He told himself that the younger deputies would be able to handle the dead bodies better, but deep down, he knew that he was afraid to go back in because he was not prepared to look through the house and find the body of the Jones' small daughter, and find her to be just as mutilated as her parents. He couldn't. He wouldn't.
When the two cruisers pulled in next to his own, a few minutes later, Hank was sitting in his car, staring straight at the light-filled house. He didn't look at them when they approached him to get information about what he had found, and he still didn't look at them when he told them about the bodies. His eyes remained focused on the house in front of him when he heard the large gasp that came from the rookie that he had just hired six months back. He just continued staring out in front of him as he then told them what he wanted them to do, which was go in and make sure the house was cleared out and search for the daughter. He then watched silently as both of the men that served beneath him disappeared into the door that he had left open upon his own escape with their own guns out of their holsters while he called in to dispatch to contact the state police. He figured that extra help was going to be needed.
It was no surprise when he saw Johnny Morton-the rookie- come running out of the house a minute after he had entered only to do what Hank had just finished doing a moment before. Needless to say, the sheriff found little pleasure in the knowledge that he still had a little more gumption in him than his rookie. The reaction was to be expected.
“Well, at least I'm not the only one,” Hank muttered as he once again exited his car and slowly walked towards his deputy. The man, no more than twenty-four or -five, looked up at his approach, revealing a very pale face that only looked even paler under the naturally pale light of the full moon hanging above them.
“Did you....Did you see the...” the boy tried to question, though he couldn't even finish it before he began to retch again. It was too much, and Hank couldn't blame him. Even he thought it was too much. He suddenly felt like an ass for calling this man in. It made him feel like such a coward at the fact that he had wanted others to deal with what he could not when he was supposed to be the one with the most experience.
“It's okay, kid,” he said in a voice that he was positive wasn't very assuring. What right did he have to assure him when he had been doing the exact same thing only a moment before? “Things like this just-”
“Sheriff,” Anthony Alvarez-Hank's seasoned, yet still young, deputy-called out from the doorway, startling the sheriff so much that he actually jumped. “Sheriff, I think you should see this.”
Hank found himself trying to straighten himself up once again, hoping that neither of the men had seen his startled reaction, and looking at both men, neither of them did. Johnny was still busy trying to gather himself together again like Humpty Dumpty, and looking at Alvarez, Hank could see that though the man wasn't retching like his fellow deputy, he was just as shaken and would not have seen-or even cared- about something as trivial as a grown man nearly jumping out of his skin. They were all on the same footing at that moment and that footing was that they had to do their job without falling to pieces.
Hesitating a moment, Hank finally leaned over and placed his hand on Johnny's shoulder again. “You just stay out here, Johnny,” he said quietly. “Tony and I will check out the rest of the house. You just go on and tape off the house before anyone else comes looking out here because of our cars.”
Johnny nodded before looking up at Hank with eyes filled with such gratitude that the sheriff felt awkward being on the receiving end of it. Taking out his own pistol, he nodded back to his rookie before looking up towards his reliable deputy and walking up to him.
“Did you find the girl?” he asked Alvarez quietly so that Johnny would not hear.
Alvarez shook his head. “I don't know,” he said and quickly went on when he saw the puzzled look in Hank's eyes. “I mean, I went to what I think was her bedroom, but...” he paused there and looked up at Hank somberly. “I just got a little freaked out by what I saw and I wanted you to come and see it, boss,” he finished quietly.
Hank nodded, not judging the large man in front of him one bit. He didn't even know what was being shown to him, but he was pretty sure that he didn't want to be looking at it alone, either.
“All right, let's get going then,” he said and led the way back into the house of the murdered couple.
Both men walked into the house, which now felt more and more like a tomb, and averted their eyes when they came upon the body of Sarah Jones. Hank stopped and allowed Alvarez to take the lead considering that he didn't really know where they were going. Alvarez took the lead willingly and ascended the steps speedily with this eyes focused on the stairs so that he would not have to see the body of Daron Jones, still sitting in the living room with his head bowed down over his blood-soaked chest. Hank followed suit in much the same manner and when they finally turned right around the corner where both bodies would be hidden, he was not surprised to hear Alvarez let out a heavy sigh that he echoed himself a second later.
“The girl's room's in here” the deputy said pointing to the door at the end of the hall on the left. He had stopped and stepped aside at this point, letting Hank take the lead as he should well have done before. Hank hesitated for a fraction of a second, pondering whether or not he should tell the man to keep leading, but remembering the look in Johnny's eyes, he knew that he wouldn't do it. Gathering up his courage, he continued walking on and entered the door that Alvarez had left open on his hasty retreat from whatever had “freaked him out” when he had entered.
The light in the room was on, just like all the other lights in the house, so Hank was able to see the scene that would haunt him long after the images of the dead bodies faded away, clearly. He would try and argue with himself about why it was so frightening, but he would never be able to decipher what it was about that scene that just felt so wrong-even more wrong than the bodies lying in the puddles of their own blood down below. Maybe it was a feeling that there was something more than he could physically see that his heart felt or because what he would find after that was even more disturbing than the bodies he had found below. Either way, he would carry the image to his very grave despite the years of therapy he had in the years to come.
Upon walking in, the first thing Hank saw... were the eyes. Fifty, sixty, maybe even a hundred pairs of eyes stared at him from all around the small room. Dolls. Dolls covering every inch of the room-filling every shelf to its capacity, covering the entire bed, sitting all along the walls against the floor-all of them, looking right up at him, making the hair on his neck, arms, and legs suddenly stand right on end. The feeling that he had just walked in on some kind of doll gathering crossed his mind, but he quickly pushed it away because he knew that that was ridiculous. It was just a bit startling was all. He just had never seen anything like this other than in the doll shops that his wife had dragged him to so they could buy their sons stuffed teddy bears when they were younger. It was appalling how many there were, and that was what was making him feel uneasy. It had to be.
“Sheriff?”
Hank jumped again, except that this time he was a bit angry at being startled because when he had jumped, his hand had tightened around his gun, and his finger had nearly pulled the trigger of his .45, which would have definitely caught the attention of everyone outside.
“Damn it, Tony, stop doing that!” he cried out sternly through gritted teeth as he turned around to look at his deputy.
Alvarez lifted his hands up in a warding gesture with his usually tan skin suddenly ashy and pale. “Sorry, boss, I didn't mean to startle ya,” he said quickly, slowly walking in further so that he was now standing beside him.
Sighing, Hank nodded. “it's fine. Just watch out. I nearly blew you away there,” he said shakily. He then put his gun back into his holster with trembling fingers, ignoring the voice in his head that was telling him to keep it out.
You're outnumbered, the voice whispered to him harshly.
They're just dolls, he silently shouted back stubbornly, but even then, he knew that that wasn't completely right. Though the objects all around him were all seemingly lifeless, that sense of being unwanted was strong-almost suffocating.
“Sorry again, boss. I didn't mean to scare ya. I just needed to say something. These dolls are really creeping me out,” the deputy spoke out quietly as his eyes raked across the room at all of the dolls of every shade and color who were now all staring at him as well. “The girl has more dolls than a damn toy store.”
The sheriff nodded in agreement, though he was not paying much attention to Alvarez's words. While looking back at Alvarez to scold him, his eyes had caught sight of a doll that looked completely out of place that was located by the open door, which had been behind him. Unlike all the dolls that were all neatly stacked along the walls, she was lying face up, right in front of an especially eerie looking doll-covered wall. She was different from the others. Unlike all the other dolls who all looked like they were taken cared of and neat, this one was haggard and raggedy. While the others looked like they were porcelain, this one was made of cloth and stuffed with cotton with her hair made out of bright red yarn. Dirt smudges could be found all along her face and arms. She was the only doll that had buttons for eyes rather than the glass eyes that looked so real he could swear that they were really looking at him with them. She looked like a doll that was actually played with rather than just left as a decoration, and the feeling that she was beckoning him to come to her took such a strong hold of him that he found himself walking towards her without even realizing that he had allowed his feet to move.
“Boss? What are you doing?” Alvarez questioned with uneasiness as his eyes continued roaming around the room at the others.
Hank did not reply as he bent down and picked up the tattered doll on the floor and held her in his hands. He looked at her small form with curiosity. She was not pretty like all of the other dolls around the room, and yet he felt that he would have preferred his child to have this one rather than any of the ones surrounding him, and he could sense that the Jones girl obviously felt the same because, as he had noticed before, the doll was raggedy and dirty, and when you were young, the more you loved your toys, the dirtier they would be. That was something that Hank found puzzling, considering how she had managed to collect so many beautiful dolls and yet played with the ugliest one out of the lot.
“Boss?” Alvarez spoke again, suddenly appearing behind Hank's shoulder.
Hank lifted his eyes from the doll and looked at his deputy over his shoulder with a frown on his face. “You're starting to get on my nerves, Tony. Stop acting like such a siss...” he started to scold the younger man but then dropped off when he saw the wide-eyed look on the deputy's face as he stared right past him at something that was right in front of him.
Turning his gaze back around Hank saw what his deputy was staring at and suddenly felt his own eyes widen as well. From where he had been standing before, he would never have seen it, but now that he was standing so close, it was as clear as day. Directly behind one of the dolls that sat against he wall, he saw that there were hinges and a slit underneath, meaning that there was a door there that was hidden behind the wall of dolls whose eyes were staring at him even more intensely if that was even possible.
“Is that...a door?” Alvarez asked quietly.
“Well, there's only one way to find out,” Hank replied earnestly and with the raggedy doll in one hand, he reached up with his other and made a sweeping motion that sent half of the doll wall down into a messy pile in front of what he could now clearly see was a door.
He paused as he caught sight of it, his head suddenly feeling strained as he stared at the sight before him. The object in front of him certainly was a door, but it was covered in cracks all along the wood that made it look like something had been pounding at it with immense force. Considering how the door was caved in, the pounding had come from the outside in an attempt to get to whatever was inside the door. It wasn't hard to imagine someone trying to hide something like that from view by placing all those dolls in front of it. So was it hidden a while a go or was it done recently? His head thought that it would have had to been done before the murders, but the voice in his head kept on persisting that had he come up to the door a few hours before, those cracks would never have been there.
“Are you okay, boss?” the deputy queried nervously as he came from behind and stood beside him, his eyes focused on the door as well.
“Yeah, I'm fine, but I want these dolls out of the way,” Hank responded absently as his hand tightened around the arm of the dirty doll in his hand. “I want to see what's behind this door,” he stated simply.
“Well, all right, let me help you, then,” the deputy responded like a good worker and stepped forward and made the same kind of sweeping motion that Hank had made a moment before, except this time, in addition to the dolls falling, Alvarez recoiled back as well with his arm clutched tightly to his chest with blood coursing down his sleeve.
“Damn it! I sliced my hand on one of those freaky dolls!” he cried out as he suddenly stepped away, nearly colliding with Hank, though the sheriff managed to dodge him at the last minute. “God, I think it really sliced into my arm!” Alvarez continued to shriek.
“Quiet down before you wake the entire neighborhood!” Hank ordered him through a hiss. “You're not going to die, so shut the hell up, Tony, or I'll send you down and get the rookie in here!”
Alvarez quieted down right away, too much of a macho man to let Johnny take his position at the front-line, but he continued to nurse his arm with a scowl on his lips as he glared at the single doll that remained against the door.
Hank followed his gaze and found himself staring at the remaining doll as well. She was easily the most beautiful doll that he had ever seen in all his life. She was at least two feet tall with curly black hair that fell daintily down her shoulder with pale cheeks that had rosy circles painted on the cheekbones to imitate a blush. She was dressed in a blue school girl's uniform that resembled the uniforms that a boarding school would force their children to wear. A slate was tucked under one porcelain arm and a pencil was clasped in her other hand, which based off of the drops of blood that covered the tip was the object that had inflicted the damage on Alvarez's arm. Her glass eyes were a cobalt blue that unlike the others were not focused sightlessly in front of them but were rather glancing off to the side. Also, unlike the others, she was not smiling, but rather solemn, making her appear as though she was looking to the side with disapproval. Following her gaze, Hank was startled and a great deal wary of her when he found that her eyes rested on the doll in his right hand.
He moved the haggard doll into his other hand while watching the school-girl doll closely. He half expected her eyes to follow the raggedy doll to the other hand as well, at which time he would have promptly removed his .45 from his holster and blown the thing to kingdom come. He found, however, that her eyes were still fixed on the same spot after he moved the tattered doll to the other hand, which he found himself relieved about all the same.
Still gazing at the doll tenuously, Hank slowly lifted his foot and forcefully kicked the doll aside so that she collapsed onto the pile with the others. He stared at her, now looking up at him, for a long moment, resisting the urge to just put his foot right through her face, but he finally tore his gaze away from her unmarred face to look back at the door and the newly revealed doorknob.
“Make sure you're covering me, Tony,” he commanded the deputy behind him who had finally managed to stop fussing over his arm to get back into position behind him. “We don't know what's behind here, and I want you to be ready, you here?”
“Gotcha, boss.”
“Good.”
With his hand once again squeezing the doll's arm at his side, Hank let out another shaky breath as he wrapped his fingers around the knob. He turned it slowly and found some resistance but with a little effort, he managed to twist it all the way and the door came open easily. Pulling on it gently, he opened it a little way and turned his head slightly so that he could see Alvarez and assured himself that his deputy was at the ready before he opened it the rest of the way.
The first thing he saw when he looked into the small closet that the door opened into was a pair of eyes. At first, he believed that he was looking at another doll, but suddenly the eyes blinked and the cry that had filled his throat at the discovery of another possible doll suddenly escaped as he felt himself beginning to step away from her, but before he could, he stopped himself because the rest of his senses had caught up with him, including his mental senses which told him that he had just found the girl that he had been so afraid he would find dead, and she was alive! She was alive!
“Mios Dios,” Alvarez muttered in awe from right behind him, peeking at the girl inside. “Is that Lily Jones?”
The little girl was no more than six. Her dark cheeks were streaked with tears that had fallen from large brown eyes that were now fixed fearfully at the two men standing in front of her. She was balled up in the back corner of the closet with her arms wrapped tightly around her knees which had been pulled up to her chest. Her thick, raven curls flowed all around her head, sticking to her cheeks and skin where there had been sweat or tears to hold it. She was shaking with her lips trembling as a fear-filled whimper escaped her lips, waking Hank from his momentary lapse of wonder and puzzlement.
Crouching down in the same spot that he had been standing, Hank looked down at the girl with the gentlest gaze he could muster.
“Lily? It's okay, I'm Sheriff Lawrence,” he said softly, still clutching her doll in his hands. “I'm not going to hurt you, sweetheart. You're safe now.”
She whimpered again as she slowly kicked her bare feet in an attempt to shove herself further into the corner. She shook her head and buried her face in her knees as she wrapped her arms even tighter around her legs.
“You work for them. You work for them. You work for them,” she muttered over and over again under her breath. “They're bad. They're so bad. I don't want them anymore,” she then cried.
“Lily, who are you talking about?” Hank questioned softly. “There's no one here, but you and me. I promise you that if you just come out, I'll make sure that nothing happens. I won't let anyone or anything hurt you, okay? I just need for you to come out of there first.”
Lily continued to keep her face buried in her knees as she continued to murmur. “They can't come in here. They can't. The door,” she muttered again.
“What is she saying, boss?” Alvarez interjected quietly, still standing behind him. “Has she lost it?”
“Ssh, be quiet,” Hank ordered sternly, glancing at his deputy firmly. “She's traumatized. She just went through a great-”
Plunk.
Hank looked down to find that the doll he had been holding had fallen from his grasp. She had landed inside the closet, a few feet in front of Lily. He didn't know how it was possible for her to have even dropped considering how tightly he had been squeezing her cloth arm, but those thoughts flew out the window as soon as he saw Lily lift her face up from her knees and look down at the doll on the ground.
“Anna?” she cried out with a hint of uncertainty and a hint of hope as she continued to stare at the doll in front of her. “Anna?” she questioned again.
Hank could hear Alvarez opening his mouth to comment at the oddity of the situation but he lifted his hand to shush him as he continued to watch as the fear in Lily's eyes suddenly began to fade. The next thing he knew, she was flying across the closet apparently right at him, but instead of coming to him, she reached out for the scruffy doll and snatched her up into her arms where she hugged her tightly to her chest.
“Anna, you're safe,” she cried out with fresh tears beginning to course down her already tear-stained cheeks. “You're safe!”
Allowing a little time for the girl to hold her doll, Hank finally cleared his throat, bringing Lily's attention back to him. A flash of fear filled her eyes again but with her doll in her arms, she did not seem as afraid anymore.
“She helped us find you, Lily,” he said softly, glancing at the raggedy doll in her arms. “We may not have seen the door otherwise,” he found himself forced to add.
Looking down at her doll again, Lily nodded. “Anna's a good doll,” she responded quietly, her voice filled with love and a childish innocence and adoration.
“I'm sure she is, honey, and I think that she knew that we were good, which is why she helped us find you,” he continued on with deep sincerity, ignoring Alvarez's bafflement behind him. “So, can you trust Anna by trusting me, honey?” he then questioned as he offered her his large hand.
Lily looked at his hand with another hint of fear and uncertainty, but then she suddenly spoke out loud. The only problem was that she did not speak to him but to the doll in her hands.
“Should I trust them, Anna?” she asked softly. “Are they good?”
Alvarez opened his mouth once again to utter something about the strangeness of the whole thing that Hank knew would end up sounding demeaning or ridiculing, so he once again raised his hand up and silenced him again, though this time his deputy let out a heavy breath that revealed his doubtfulness of the situation.
Hank watched solemnly as Lily suddenly brought the doll up so that Anna's red, yarn lips were pressed against her ear. He watched Lily's face and saw that she looked as though she truly was listening to something that the doll was saying that only she could hear. He felt a little awkward about the situation at the point, but when she hugged the doll back in her arms, he saw that the fear that had been in her eyes had completely faded away and had been replaced with a new solemn confidence.
“Anna says that you were the one who saw her and found the door,” she stated as though she had been there herself to see it. “She's not sure about him,” she said, glancing at Alvarez, “because he got cut by Persephone, but she knows that you're good. She says I can trust you, so I will.”
Hank was momentarily dumbfounded at the words that had come out of the little girl's mouth, and based on the silence behind him, he knew that Alvarez had been caught off guard as well. Once again, however, he didn't have time to dwindle on everything she had said because as soon as she finished, she had hugged Anna to her arm and had then walked right to him and wrapped her free arm around his neck.
Wrapping his own arms around her, Hank slowly rose to his feet and lifted her up into the air with him. He saw her look over his shoulder at the dolls behind him and heard the gasp that escaped her lips before she burrowed her face into his chest. He wrapped his arms even tighter around her to comfort her and motioned for Alvarez to follow him before walking out the door. He squeezed her tighter against him again once he approached the stairway which would reveal the bodies of her dead parents, willing her to keep her face burrowed against him so that she wouldn't see. He heard her murmuring to her doll against his chest as he started down the stairs and feared that she would lift her head, but instead, she only burrowed her face deeper into his chest with her doll still clutched tightly to her. She did not look up again until he walked out the front door, into the cool Halloween night air to find that Johnny had set up the caution tape around the house, barring the people had already begun to gather around the edges, hoping to see something...anything, from getting any closer. Hank ignored them all as he merely carried the little girl towards his patrol car and placed her into the warm back seat before going to his trunk and retrieving a blanket from his readiness kit that he then wrapped around both her and the doll.
Lily did not look up at anyone once she had situated herself in the back seat of his cruiser. She had ended up curling into a ball against the far door with Anna still firmly grasped in her arms. She did not even look up when he told her that he would be right back once he had finished looking through the house, not mentioning the fact that he needed to investigate the bodies that were her father's and mother's. He couldn't tell her yet about their deaths, even though he knew that she probably already knew, and he could sense that she probably didn't want to hear it yet form him, either. He didn't mind that thought. He needed time to recuperate and manage everything that had just happened in regards to finding her and the events surrounding all the dolls. It was all a little too much to gather in now that he was thinking back on everything in hindsight.
Alvarez was standing at the front steps of the house talking to Johnny when Hank walked back to the house. He knew that Alvarez was telling Johnny about all of the dolls and the girl's reaction to the ugly doll, and when he finally met them, he knew that he was right in his assumption because the rookie looked at him with eyes that were wide with disbelief.
“Is it true, sheriff?” he questioned as soon as Hank had stopped beside them. “Is it true about the girls and the...dolls?”
Hank frowned at Alvarez before turning his attention back to Johnny. “All little girls talk to their dolls, Johnny. It's no big deal. She's been through a lot and doesn't need you to be talking about her like she's crazy,” he said in a harsher tone than he had intended.
Johnny didn't seem the least bit daunted as he just went on. “I mean, is it true that the dolls completely hid the door she was hidden behind-like they were protecting her?”
Hank did not answer. He didn't know how. Sure, it could have possibly looked like they had been there to protect her, but the first impression he had gotten when he had seen them standing there was that they were guarding the door, more like a prison guards rather than guardians. To tell the young man as much, however, was out of the question considering that it would lead to a lot more questions concerning his own beliefs. He wasn't sure he ever would be able to answer the questions about that because he would have to reveal the fact that when he had looked at those dolls, he did not believe anything good could come from them. He had just felt a certainty that those dolls were no good, that they were evil, even. No, best to keep that to himself.
“We don't have time for the sewing circle, Johnny. You need to make sure that those people gathering around the house don't get in and make sure that the girl is okay and no one bothers her,” he said firmly. Then looking to Alvarez, he said sternly, “And if you could keep your lips sealed for the time being, I would really appreciate it if you went back in that house and secured it before the state police come in. I'll call the social worker to come in for the girl and I'll be in to help you afterward.”
He paused and saw the sullen looks on the deputies faces and let out a heavy sigh before going on. “This is the worst thing to happen to our little town, gentlemen, but we need to do our jobs efficiently still, so I want you boys to go along and do what I said. There's time for rumors and gossip later, but right now, we need to get this place quarantined off and ready for an investigation. The sooner those bodies are cleared out of here, the better.”
The two deputies nodded in agreement to the sheriff's words and departed to go about completing their orders. Then, thirty minutes later, the state police pulled into the driveway and took control, allowing Hank to send his men home. He had to stay behind to tell them everything that had happened since he had pulled into the driveway nearly two hours before, but then afterward, he was practically home free and just needed to wait for the social worker to come and retrieve Lily.
The social worker was the last to arrive, but by that time, the state police had taken over the investigation so completely that all Hank had to do was stand by the car and make sure that Lily was all right. By the time the woman had actually arrived and had received all the information that he had to give pertaining to Lily and the way she had been found, the small girl had fallen fast asleep with Anna still in her arms. He offered to carry the girl to the woman's car so that the little girl did not need to be woken up to which the woman, someone from the next town over, agreed. She then pulled her car over so that it would be closer for him to carry the small girl over. Hank made the transfer from one car to the other with ease, considering how light the small girl was in his arms. He then watched as the car pulled out of the packed driveway and drove down the street. He watched it until he could no longer see the red brake lights of the small car before returning to his own cruiser and preparing to head on home as he had intended to do a lifetime before.
It was as he was finally pulling out of the Jones' emptying driveway that Hank finally noticed the red-headed, raggedy doll staring up at him from the backseat of his car. He nearly jumped out of his skin as he openly cried out in alarm, which was soon followed by relief that all of the local look y-loos had already gone back home, which meant that no one had heard cry out like a sissy for the third time that night. Putting his car in park, he then reached back and plucked the doll up into his hand. He stared at the dirty appearance and the raggedy exterior for a long moment and let out a loud sigh. He knew that the little girl had a long road ahead of her and even though he had liked the fact that the doll had made it possible for her to trust him, he was somewhat glad that the doll had been forgotten behind.
“Let her forget,” he murmured, suddenly lifting his eyes from the doll to gaze at the road the girl had disappeared on. “Let her forget everything,” he then said, returning his eyes back to the doll, “even you.”
Chapter End Notes:
I have two more parts already finished and should have it up very shortly! Thanks for reading.