Hi there! I haven't bothered to check on this for a while now, and honestly I thought it wasn't going to interest anyone, but since I have at least a couple of readers I will continue, if only because I don't want to disappoint anyone. Thank you very much! Here you go!

ch. 2

"So. What's the story?" They drove along in silence for a few seconds before Murphy answered him. There was a lot less traffic today than usual.

"We aren't sure yet, exactly."

He looked at her, confused. "With all this?" he said, gesturing to the file, now in his lap and being sifted through.

"What I mean is that despite how bad the scenes are, there's literally no evidence anyone else was ever even in the room at the time of death."

"What, like... traps were set up in the room from somewhere else?"

"We aren't even sure it can be called a trap."

This was perplexing... "How can that be?"

"You tell me."

"Well, I can't until we get there, so you might as well tell me all you know now so I have some ideas of what to go on."

"I was getting to that."

"Okay, let me have it."

"Every time the kids have died, they've been in their own rooms, no one else there, with the windows locked. There aren't any signs of forced entry, there or anywhere else in the house."

"Okay, that's weird..."

"And they all die while fast asleep. Usually in the REM stage."

"Isn't that a band?"

"Not funny."

"Sorry. Couldn't help it."

She chose to refrain from commenting further on this, and continued. "In all cases, the kids die violently, but from the way the blood spreads and settles, they haven't even twitched out of a sleeping position, and they were never off the bed."

"Huh." He flipped through a few more pictures and tried to ignore the slight nausea that some of them caused.

Murphy looked as though she were thinking about something, and when he asked her about it, she said, "There's also something even stranger to this. I don't know if the others consider it important yet, or even if they all know about it, but I've noticed it, and it kinda gives me the creeps."

"What?"

She sighed, took a breath, and when they stopped at a red light she looked over at him and said, "Every one of those kids had some strange conversations with their parents about a sandman before hand."

This made Harry look up with concern. "Sandman?" Oh, that was not good...

"Yeah. Just ask someones' mom or dad, they all tell the same story. Their kid would say they were talking to the sandman at night."

Shit.

"Harry?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah, sorry. Just thinking."

"Okay. We're here."

As they pulled up to an apartment complex taped off and blocked by squad cars, he closed the folder and started unbuckling himself before they had even come to a full stop and was out the car door as soon as they did. He stood there and looked up and around at all the windows of the building.

"It's this way." She told the troopers by the tape that Harry was with her, and they were ushered through and toward the building.

Harrys' mind was already running almost to overload. Sandman... He knew about the sandman, or men, rather, and didn't like the sound of this at all. The thing that confused him the most, however, was the fact that there had never been any trouble with sandmen like this before. So what had triggered this now?

He could already smell the blood before they were even on the right floor.

This was not going to be pretty.

When they got to the apartment, they were greeted by at least seven cops going through the place, and a sobbing woman collapsed on the couch, too upset to even properly answer the questions she was being asked. He had to give the guy interviewing her credit, though, usually cops were a bit impatient with this sort of thing, but this one was doing his best to calm her down before pressing any major inquiries on her. Then again, he didn't know how long they'd been here.

Three men were bringing a stretcher with a blanket pulled over it through the room. The woman on the couch burst into even more hysterics as it was rushed past her, a few drops of blood dripping onto the carpet. And then he felt it. As the body was rushed by, there was a chill. Not the type of chill that always came with these situations, but a really, really bad chill, one that Harry knew only he could feel. He stared at the retreating group. Something was very, very wrong.

"Harry?" Murphys' voice cut into his thoughts.

Without taking his eyes off of where the stretcher had left, he said hoarsely, "Which room?"

"Don't you want to –"

"Which. Room." And now he looked at her, and he didn't know what his face looked like to her, but it clearly wasn't something she found pleasant.

"It's this one," she said uncertainly, and led him on. He stopped in the doorway, and felt an atmosphere that was not normal for a childs' bedroom. It looked like a bedroom a small kid would sleep in, aside from the newly spread blood, but it didn't feel like one anymore. And it was for more reasons than the obvious.

"Murphy," he said quietly, not looking at her, but at the room itself, taking in every detail he could see with the naked eye, "Tell me the story all the parents talk about. Obviously the mother here isn't going to be much help."

Somehow, she understood that this was not to be argued with. So she told him. "They all say that for about two or three weeks prior to what happened, their son or daughter told them a nice man had spoken to them overnight and that he called himself the sandman."

"And?" He hadn't moved.

"And that the children in question start to look healthier than they had before. Not that they were unhealthy before, because they never say anything about that, but just that for the first few nights they look even more healthy. Then all of a sudden it starts deteriorating. They think the child gets a cold, but then it just gets worse and worse. They start saying they're afraid to go to bed, but they won't say why. And they just get even more ill until... This happens."

"It's the same way every time? It keeps looking like they were strung up and then cut into pieces with the same object?"

"Yeah."

"Does it look like it happens all at once, or one slice at a time?"

"All at once. Like they walked into a sharp net. I told you that."

"Just confirming it," he said, and then went silent, searching around the room. What for, he didn't know, but he was hoping to be able to tell when he saw it.

"Are you okay?"

"I need these guys out for a few minutes. You too. I need to concentrate." The guys in question were the remaining forensics team, who, used to him by now, had easily ignored this whole exchange, focusing only on their work of extracting any evidence.

"Don't you want to know something about the kid first?"

"Yeah, sure, tell me."

Murphy chose to refrain from retorting to this, and instead told him it was a nine year old boy named Timothy. His mother was a nurse, and not the woman on the couch. That was his babysitter, Ashley, who had been asked to watch the boy while his mother worked. She was on her way back now.

"Okay. Get them out for a sec, please."

"Harry..."

"Get them out, Murphy."

With a sort of confused but resigned sigh, she asked the team if they could step out for a couple of minutes, just until Harry could finish whatever he was about to do. He waited until the door closed behind them, and then, carefully, he walked over to the bed and looked it over, just with his eyes, not touching anything for a few moments. He walked around it, carefully examining it from different angles.

It was clear that he'd been in the middle of the bed. There was a sort of outline of the kids' body where he had been lying with his arms outspread, like he had been crucified. Or at least what was left of the spot told him so. With the amount of blood that had spread out around him and leaked in under him, it was hard to tell.

He looked at the walls. If the boy had died lying down in such a way, without moving at all, then the blood would be only on the bed, wouldn't it? So why was it spread around the walls like this? That would indicate that he had at least been held up in the air by someone... He went back to the end of the bed and looked at the wall across from it, next to the closet. There was no indication that someone had been standing here, or at any other angle. Wherever the blood had sprayed, it was all over whatever it had hit, with no gaps indicating a person or otherwise standing in it's way.

"Alright.. Guess I'll have to look into this a bit harder," he muttered to himself, then checked that no one was coming in, and carefully removed a crystal from his pocket, which he had grabbed on the way out of his apartment when Murphy was looking the other way. He touched it to some of the blood, lifted it again, and waited. No change. Not black magic, and not Thaumaturgy. Good. Very good. Or, perhaps, not good at all, but still. At least he could rule that out. Turning to further examine the scene, crystal still held out just in case, he noticed something he should have noticed before, and it made him freeze.

The closet door was ajar.

There was blood there, certainly, but it had never gone past the door, which suggested that it had been closed at the time of the death. If Murphys' guys had looked in the closet, or been looking in it when he came in, they would have left it open when they left the room, not ajar, as though it had been carefully closed as such to avoid someone noticing something exactly like this.

He should ask. He definitely should ask. But he didn't. Instead, he slowly took out his wand, and just as slowly moved toward the door. Closets. He had never, ever, liked closets, and if he slept in a room with one in it, he had made sure it was closed, with something keeping it shut, while he slept. Even into adulthood. It was something he had never been able to force himself to grow out of.

Holding his wand in front of him, he used his foot to open the closet the rest of the way, and looked around inside it. The crystal started humming. Not turning colors, or anything like that, just... humming. This was something he had never experienced before, and had never heard of prior to this. He had been holding it loosely by his side until this began, after which he looked down at it and lifted it up so as to get a better look. It kept right on humming, too, getting stronger the closer he brought it to the back wall of the space. He didn't like this idea in the least, particularly the unfamiliarity of it all. He hoped Bob could explain this one when he got back.

So it didn't like the wall? What could that possibly— "Harry?" He jumped, in spite of himself, and then sighed and relaxed a bit when it turned out just to be Murphy checking on him. "What the hell are you doing?" she continued, now standing in the entrance to the closet.

"Uh... Nothing, Murph, just... You know, looking over the scene." She backed up and gestured at him to come out, which he did, carefully pocketing the crystal while she wasn't looking, and tried to ignore how warm it suddenly felt.

"In the closet?"

"Uh, yeah," he said as he came out, trying to look as nonchalant as possible.

"Why?"

"Uh, just, uh, you know. Just in case there was something there, or... Whatever."

"Uh huh."

"Yup."

"And?"

"I'm... not actually sure."

"Tell me you're not serious. You just had enough time to look over the whole crime scene, and you aren't sure?"

"Well, I just mean I'm not sure about the closet thing. I can give you at least a little insight on the rest of it, though."

"Good. Gimme," she said, getting into a sort of 'I'm listening now' position.

He scoffed a bit. "Gimme? What are you, five or something?"

"Harry..."

"Right, yeah, okay. Well... You were right, there wasn't anybody in this room at the time of death. That much is clear. As far as I can tell, this could have been done from outside of the room, or possibly somewhere entirely different. As for the Sandman thing, that kind of confuses me. There've never been any problems with him as far as I know of, he's usually just exactly as people think he is. He comes in, tosses sand into peoples' eyes, and leaves. So it could be we're looking at some sort of demon posing as him."

"A demon? You expect me to tell my superiors that this is a demon?"

"Well, you don't have to tell them that. I'm sure for now they can handle a little uncertainty."

"Uh, no, Harry, they can't."

Not knowing exactly how to respond to this, he simply settled for continuing on. "Look, I just said it might be a demon, I didn't say it definitely was one, okay?"

"Well, okay, fine, then what else could it be?"

He hesitated. "Ah. You, you want to know what... else it could be, well, uh... well... I mean, it uh, ahem, it could be... a..." He paused. "Okay, look, I have no idea what else it could be, but—"

"Harry!"

"But, if you would just give me a few days to find out, I can come back to you with whatever I get, Murphy, honest."

"But I need something to tell them besides, oh, Harry thinks it's a demon, they aren't going to be happy with that, Dresden!"

"Yeah, I get it, Murphy, believe me, I get it, but I need to figure something out before I can give you any definite answers, which, like I said, I will give you as soon as I get them. Honest."

"I hope so, Harry, or it's gonna be my ass they chew out."

After further reassurance on Harrys' part, and further 'you'd better's' from Murphy, Harry was finally allowed to go home, opting to take a cab rather than make her drive him back, thus avoiding any further protests. She had let him take the files home to use as needed, and he glanced through them again on the way.

This was going to be a very long night. Week, if the unfamiliar territory was any indication. And lately things had been going so well...