Hall Of Nightmares

The Puppetry

One by one the crying children in the orphanage nursery fell asleep. Like this, all the little boys and girls slowly fell into their dreams and nightmares. As each child fell, one little doll woke from its restless slumber. The full moon aligned with the stars in a perfect circle in the pitch black sky, the wolves nearby howled and the eerie sounds of a howling wind crashed through the trees and blew strongly through the stone streets, making every standing building vibrate. This was the day they had chosen to strike; the day of Hollows eve. The day that would end their puppet-like misery. They opened their heavy porcelain eyelids and searched the dark, dusty rooms to orient themselves.The dolls slowly pried their bodies from the unknowing fingers of each child. They crept onto the children’s chests, each doll with pale pink cheeks and wickedly gleaming, marble eyes. They unraveled their tiny fists to reveal sharp needle like nails. The time had come. One by one each doll reached out to the necks of their child and slowly dug its nails in. Then they waited. Waited until the silence would be wiped away by a voice that would carry through the wind and tell them when the ritual would begin.

Up the street of the orphanage was a mansion. It was a striking display that turned almost nightmarish during the night. It loomed over the city, a reminder of the dead child Dillon. What the people knew was only that he was missing; they didn’t know he was lying dead in the freezing attic with his doll. His family never used the attic and had no reason to ever venture up. But tonight, his little sister, Violet, had felt a strange attraction to go upstairs into the little, cold room. She walked up the stairs in a trance with a small and beautiful doll in her hands. She wasn’t scared;she wasn’t curios; she wasn’t anything. She was only an instrument and could not feel. As soon as she had walked in and seen her brother, she gagged and fainted. She had fallen behind the now open door which veiled her underneath a dark shadow. When she had fallen her grip on the doll had loosened and the doll in her hand fell to the ground. The doll slowly rolled toward the dead boy.

Mary Lou was the name of Violet’s doll; she had come with Dillon’s doll, James. These dolls were special; they were made to show the love of a young, passionate man, long ago, for his lady. After he had given her the doll as a tribute of his courtship, he had left the country to attend to duty overseas. His maiden had soon married after his leave and the dolls were forgotten. The length of separation and ignorance between the dolls had created an unbreakable bond of feral hunger between them. Because of this bond these specific dolls were able to give up their so called spirit to each other. The long awaited reunion was now almost here.

As night fell in the mansion, Mary Lou woke and crawled to James's side and took his hand. Through the wind, four words carried through, “James, I love you,” and then she abruptly died out like a battery. The light in her eyes subsided like a spluttering fire and her body settled into rigor. A moment later, James opened his eyes and sat up. He looked around, getting accustomed to his dark and gloomy setting. He hadn’t been alive in years and now he finally could fulfill his destiny. The only objects that stood out against the bleak attic were the white, porcelain face of Mary Lou and the boy. First he crawled over to Mary Lou and kissed her red cheeks and said “thank you, Mary Lou.” Without a second glance at the one who gave her life for him, he swiveled his head and with a feral growl stalked over to the dead boy’s bloody body.     

He was hungry, so hungry that he could wait no longer for the boy’s soul. He silently crawled onto the dead boy’s body and dug his nails deep into the boy’s neck. All at once, the tinkling voices of millions of dolls began to chant “asparta efidium.” The voices started to change into the voices of the children and then their eyes changed into the color of the children’s eyes. Then their dresses changed to fit the attitude of the dolls. Most had turned into monster-like dolls. They had red, fiery eyes and  black spidery dresses that were in flames at the very edge.

The dead boy’s soul was fighting against James’s pull, but James dug in and pulled harder and harder. He wasn’t letting this boy stop him from gaining his freedom. He pulled even harder on Dillon’s soul and the boy held on one last time and then gave up. Finally drunk on his freedom, James didn’t notice the girl lying in the corner, next to the window nor did he remember Mary Lou. He walked out onto the lawn of the dark mansion to see a massive gathering of his dolls. He addressed the crowd “Hello, my friends.”

All the dolls turned to face the speaker. He continued talking seeing that he had caught their attention, “We have finally gained our freedom. Now we are the puppet masters and they are the puppets. Now we shall play them like they did us. Now we shall rule. Now I ask you all, do you agree?” The dolls screamed approval. The wind picked up blowing gusts through the streets, battling against the closed windows and pushing through the cracks. All the lifeless bodies shuddered in their beds. The liberty intoxicated dolls celebrated their victory of gaining superiority over the children. All the while, they didn’t acknowledge the approaching dawn. Neither did they notice the calming winds nor the fading moon and dis-aligning stars. They did not hear the subsiding howls and did not feel the beginning of the resettlement of peace.

As the first rays of sunlight touched the face of the earth, the little girl surfaced from what she thought was a nightmare. She looked around the attic only to see once again the dead body of her brother and her doll Mary Lou. Her body violently shivering in her frail nightgown, she slowly got up and walked onto her front lawn, her doll hanging limply in her hand, and saw the bodies of little children just like her. The only difference was that … they were all dead.