Chapter 26: Behind Closed Doors
The girls stormed out of the Art Room, after reading the sign and fearful of seeing any further disturbed drawings they may regret finding.
"Ok, so we didn't find a clue to my condition, but I've had enough of that room containing high rated content which I don't want to find," Maggie panted heavily, waiting to catch her breath. "What have we learned so far in there?"
"Well apart from the sign," Mrs. Calloway began, straightening her hat. "We do know that the doll maker was not a kind old man. My theory is these toys and other tools we see must have been used by him to fool the children into coming closer…right where he wanted them. Whatever it is, I don't want to know…yet, until we get there."
Not wanting to discuss what they saw any further, the girls continued down the hall where the walls were partly splattered with a few streaks of paint in red, yellow, and blue, entering into a large room that looked like some kind of nursery, judging by the baby cribs lined up against the wall, colorfully decorated all around with a toy box, a music box, and a rocking horse made of polish wood, painted in pink.
"I didn't know a toy factory could have a nursery room, did you?" Grace stared at everything in confusion, no telling what could be found in those cribs or in the toy box.
"Well toys are made for children after all," Maggie shrugged her shoulders. "I guess they need a room to play in."
They looked around to inspect every corner, drawer, and furniture to see if there was anything important to take with them, passing by a few shelves with toy alphabet blocks. Then, Maggie's chest tightened when she inspected the tarnished tea set on the small table.
There was some kind of red liquid that filled itself to the top, which didn't look at all like fruit punch. The teapot floating up to pour into a cup caused her to back away, showing tiny hints of something not right.
"Do any of you recall a time when red tea was served at parties?" Maggie said, wiping sweat from her forehead.
"No, why?" Grace implied, having opened a toy box full of creepy looking clown dolls, wincing at their unwelcome smiles. Mrs. Calloway appeared more edgy at their presence, more than Grace.
"Because there's a teapot pouring red stuff that looks icky," Maggie said with disgust.
The other two looked over, causing Grace to gasp in fear and back into one of the shelves, accidentally spilling the alphabet blocks that littered the floor, now spelling some kind of word or sentence by coincidence, "COME PLAY WITH US!"
"Did you spell that out Grace?" Mrs. Calloway implied, hoping it to be true. "Tell me you…"
"I didn't do that Mrs. C," Grace interrupted, shaking her head in denial. "I don't play with toys."
"Look, those blocks are moving," Maggie warned.
The blocks formed a new sentence, "WE CAN BE FRIENDS TILL THE END!"
"Ok, I think we better leave girls," Maggie said fearfully, trying to shove her friends out the nursery, before the last sentence formed, clicking lightly.
"IF YOU WON'T PLAY, WE'RE COMING AFTER YOU!"
Without warning, the drawers and the toy box popped open and burst like a volcano. And out poured a mass of toys, dolls, stuffed animals, puppets, and clown dolls of every sort and size, grinning at the girls. They flowed and tumbled onto the floor, piling up around their feet.
"Run for it now!" Mrs. Calloway screamed, kicking aside a rag doll.
"There are too many!" Grace panicked, struggling to get over the oncoming toys that kept pouring.
"Keep trying or else we're toy bait," Maggie insisted.
Soon the girls made it out before the nursery room became overfilled with a torrent of toys that fell out like an avalanche. Every kind of toy one can think of spilled out. Normally a child would dream of being surrounded by all the toys in the world, with the exception of the dolls' eyes glowing red, staring at the girls and the teddy bears with sharp teeth, claws, and red eyes. The land of toys was no dream the doll maker had planned. It was an evil trap to lure children into a nightmare disguised as a dream come true. And now the girls were being chased down the portrait hall by living dolls, teddy bears, and puppets wielding sharp knives, needles, and drills.
Maggie suddenly stopped running, calling on the flamethrower to roast and toast those little hell spawn, engulfing an amount of them in flames, their eerie sounds of whispers and giggles becoming screams of agony. It wouldn't hold them off forever, and there would be more to come, making it a smart idea to keep running and flame them as often as possible when there was a chance.
"Would it make a big difference if we play with them?" Grace cried, sweating from her forehead.
"Does it look like they wanna play, Grace?" Mrs. Calloway asserted, "They're trying to kill us."
With no luck finding any unlocked doors, they turned to the east wing that leads to an open closet door for them to hide in. It was either risk getting killed by the unstoppable number of killer toys, or take their chances in the closet. All three of them took the second option and rushed inside, shutting the door quickly, as Maggie watched the shadows of the killer toys pass by their hiding spot, never taking any notice of what was to their right.
"Are they gone yet Maggie?" Grace whispered nervously. "I can't see my own feet."
"I hope so," Maggie responded, "But if they're just waiting for us to come out, we might have to stay in here forever."
"I'm not spending an eternity in the darkness of gloom and despair," Mrs. Calloway protested softly, "There must be a light in here to show us where we are at."
Grace then remembered the flashlight they had in their inventory, "Miriam, hand me the flashlight please."
With the flashlight in her tail, Grace turned on the light, revealing a pile of boxes and dollhouse accessories covered in dusty cobwebs, and lifeless doll limbs.
"Hmm, this is it?" Maggie said, looking at their surroundings. "A closet of broken toy parts? What else has the toy maker been up to with all this?"
Distracted, Grace felt something tug at her tail slightly, causing her to gasp and look around, seeing a red haired rag doll as the culprit. By no means did this doll look too normal, not with sewing needles poked deeply in its arms, legs, and head. She had yarn for hair, tied in pink pigtails, and wore a torn red dress. She smiled slightly, causing Grace to freak out and bump into the pile of boxes, knocking down a few.
"Please, not so loud," the rag doll pleaded. "They'll hear you. The doll maker might be out there, wondering where we are."
Maggie and Mrs. C went over to Grace, unsure what to make of this doll, but listened before making their moves. They saw something else move behind one of the boxes, which was a white teddy bear, speaking in a small voice, "Who's there? Have we been discovered? I don't even want to be played with."
"It's not the doll maker Teddy," the rag doll responded, "I'm either imagining things, or we have three giant cows trapped in the closet with the rest of us. Maybe the doll maker is experimenting with animals to become the next line of toys."
The teddy bear who was called Teddy cringed and held his head, as if he were having a major headache, "That better not be true, Cindy."
"You're not…going to hurt us?" Grace stuttered, still unsure about these toys being harmless or just pretending to be.
"Why would we want to hurt anyone?" Cindy, the rag doll shrugged her shoulders.
"Then why else would you have those needles in that make you look like the creation of Dr. Franken-steer?" Maggie eyed the doll suspiciously.
"That's Dr. Frankenstein, Maggie," Grace corrected, "Not Franken-steer,"
"The name doesn't matter," Maggie denounced, "After what happened being chased by killer play things from beyond the grave, how can we trust even our own eyes?"
"I have another idea," Mrs. Calloway suggested, "Why don't we all just put our own judgment and trust issues aside for five minutes and listen to what this doll has to say. It's our only option."
After a long moment of silence, the rag doll was able to speak, "We don't expect you to trust us, as we wouldn't trust us in this fake make believe factory. Who am I? I don't remember. So much time has passed since the very first day he invited us in to hand out toys, balloons, and candy. Each toy represented who we were, or what we loved deeply. We have nothing more than vague memories of our past lives, like my real mommy and daddy. How I miss them tucking me in every night."
"You mean toys have parents?" Grace asked, having never heard of such a thing.
"Of course not," said Teddy, jumping off the shelf to stand beside Cindy, "Whoever creates the toys, they refer to that creator as Master or Mistress. But when we're sold to a little boy or girl, we look up to them as the new caretaker to watch over and love us. At least…when you're born a toy. Me, I used to be a boy, playing with my friends outside, and sleep with my teddy every night. Thus the doll maker made it just for me, telling me I was a handsome boy who deserved to be happy."
"Then you're one of the missing children," Mrs. Calloway pointed out, with a hint of sympathy, "But how did this happen to you. Have you been turned into toys?"
Teddy's smile dropped, saddened by this revelation, "Yes Miss. The doll maker insisted that we could stay in his factory for as long as we truly desired, playing games, riding the rides, eating candy, and have as much fun with all the toys and dolls in the world. Anything we wanted, he would gladly grant that wish. But when we said 'yes', we realized too late that there was no escape."
"What happened next?" Grace asked, listening carefully to the story.
"He would ask for a lock of our hair, and piece of clothing, telling us to follow him into the other room, which name we do not speak of. Then he would attach it to whichever toy we loved, chanting in words we did not understand, waving this stick around, and when that happened, we would wake up inside the same toy on the table. And in our horror, he had trapped our souls, telling us that this was the only way for us to stay forever; to become a part of his collection."
Cindy reared her head sideways to show them what appeared to be a lock of red human hair, tied and sewn above her yarn hair. For Teddy, he showed them the top of his head, covered in blond human hair. The girls were nearly horrified at the sight, but then they heard faint sounds behind the other boxes, seeing more toys appear out of hiding. Dolls, plush toys, rag dolls, and puppets had shown to be wearing a lock of human hair or torn cloth tied to their wooden, stuffed, plastic, or rubber bodies.
"It's ok, they won't hurt us," Cindy said to the toys eagerly. "They're not working with the doll maker."
"I wouldn't be so sure of that," replied a blond haired ballerina in a pink dress, stepping out of the shadows. "Look at the mark on this cow's leg." She pointed to Maggie's bite mark.
"What, what about the…?" Maggie looked down at her leg; the bite mark looked like it was becoming infected, and she wondered if this was a sign of the worst to come in this factory. "…mark?"
"Maggie, your leg!" Grace cried in horror.
Everyone watched as Maggie's veins around the bite mark began to show through the wooden skin, and her infected leg trembled a bit as the veins turned black. She gasped, and cringed at the pain accompanying the activity. The leg rose up in front of her face, and Maggie was confused, as she wasn't the one moving it herself. Then suddenly, it began stomping down on the floor, up and down.
"What's happening?" she panicked, not knowing what to do when she found that she couldn't control her leg, and not having time to think when it shot forward into Grace, knocking her into the wall. "That wasn't me Grace!" She cried, grabbing her infected leg with her teeth and slamming it into the ground.
"Your friend has been infected with a doll bite," Cindy warned, backing away in fear. "You need an antidote to cure her, or she'll become a mindless puppet that obeys only the doll maker."
Tears formed in Maggie's eyes, struggling to get her leg under control. Rage had replaced the terror she felt before, feeling it thrash about until a teddy bear dressed in nurse's outfit quickly rushed forward and took out a syringe needle, injecting it into Maggie's system, causing her to squeal in sudden pain. By some miracle, the infected leg suddenly stopped moving on its own, but it was still wooden.
"I have managed to slow down the infection," The nurse bear claimed. "But only for so long. Luckily I managed to swipe the ingredient list here when the doll maker was not looking. I wish that I had the antidote, but I do remember a laboratory that's right next to the candy room."
"Can you help us get there?" Mrs. Calloway asked hesitantly. "We're running out of time."
"Yes, but not the way you came in. Those other soulless toys could still be out in those halls, waiting for you. It's best to go this way instead."
She pushed a box away from the corner, to reveal a button for her to push, causing a part of the wall to open up a path.
"What about the others?" Grace implied, "How can we help them?"
"Never mind us, you three," The ballerina assured. "We are of no match against the doll maker's magic. Flee while you're still breathing air and have your mind and soul that is not enslaved by him."
"No, we're not leaving you behind to be prisoners forever," Grace insisted. "We're here to set you free. Don't you want that?"
The ballerina nodded in response reluctantly. "We do want to be free more than anything. It's just that we're afraid of being discovered and taking us back to the room where he…" She gave a little cry of terror, and fell to her knees, a bad memory coming back to her. "I dare not say."
"It's alright, you don't have to tell us," Grace said gently, hoping comfort would bring these lost souls hope. "We're determined to stop him. But is there anything else you know? Like where is the doll maker now?"
There was dead silence among the cursed toys. Then Teddy spoke. "We do not speak of the room he took us to. However, he may be at the very top floor working on more toys. That's where his creations came from, the ones that tried to attack you. If he is up there, you must steal away his wand and destroy it. His creations are nothing without magic. Their other weakness is fire, if you have any."
"We have plenty of that," Maggie replied. "Is that all?"
"After the doll maker trapped us like this, he disposed of our real bodies into the incinerator to prevent anyone from finding out what became of us, so there'd be no evidence to suggest he was behind our disappearance. But he was still the last person to have seen us, and that didn't stop the townspeople with their pitchforks and torches, destroying everything they could find, even discovering his collection of book of spells and biology of the human body. That was when they knew the doll maker was never a kind man. Yet that didn't stop him from commanding his creations to destroy every witness and protect his deadly secrets. With no human bodies to return to, we are nothing but husks of our former selves, trapped inside the forms he picked for us. Destroy that wand, and we will be free."
"And what will become of the doll maker afterward?" Grace asked.
The voices said nothing.
"Well we're getting to that top in this factory," Mrs. Calloway said with determination. "It might be best that you stay here for your own protection."
The toys all exchanged scared looks. The nurse bear motioned for them to remain calm and not to make too much noise. She then turned to the girls.
"Follow me now," she said sharply, walking into the secret passageway. "We have to hurry. The serum I injected in your friend can only hold out for so long. And close the door behind. The others will be alright as long as they stay where they are."
The girls stepped out of the closet, doing as they were told in closing the vault door behind them.
"We need to get three ingredients missing on this list," the nurse bear instructed, reading the torn paper. "The rest of them are in the laboratory, but we need a gumball, a wish bone, and cotton. I know where two of them are. The last one will be in the candy room."
"I'm getting bad vibes from that famous fairy tale of Hansel and Gretel," mumbled Calloway, feeling a sense of dread as they were now nearing the end of the tunnel. "Something about the promise of candy and toys, but it ends up being a trap."
"That's what the doll maker did to us," the nurse bear answered innocently. "Like the two children, we fell for his deceitful tricks with the false promise of fun and joy, using toys, candy, and rides, only to become his own personal objects with no hope of escape."
The thought of what the nurse bear said about personal objects made Grace feel sick and angry, she could barely find the right words to describe her feelings about the doll maker.
The hallway had finally ended at the closed door of what they guessed to be the doll maker's office, judging by the title Office of the Doll Maker Edgar Nickleby.
"Now we know this creeper's name," said Mrs. Calloway, pushing the door open. It was no surprise that it was unlocked.
The girls cautiously stepped forward and followed the nurse bear. The office appeared to be a little different from the other rooms that were filled with toys and art supplies, everything being organized and clean. The desk stood in the middle of the room, cleaned and polished with rows of bookshelves lining up against the far walls. Paintings and portraits showed beautiful scenery. One of them was familiar, being a painting of the carnival, the same one they were in and defeated the ringmaster. The next painting was the school grounds that were formerly run by the abysmal school principal, an impressive nightmare of insane children, corrupted teachers, and forbidden weapons.
While Nurse Bear was searching the jars for the cotton and wish bones, the girls looked across the room to find other paintings of the museum, farm valley, plant house, asylum, and bug kingdom. In a dark corner was an unfamiliar, eerie, sinister painting of a gothic mansion, mixed with black and blue illustrating the darkness of the stormy skies, scattered with lightning bolts. Another depicted a statue of a stone gargoyle sitting atop a pedestal in a dungeon or crypt, wings of a bat, ears high and pointy, and it's face well-hidden with only red eyes painted in the center.
It was then that the girls noticed the biggest painting of all in the office. It turned out to be a portrait of the doll maker himself, Edgar Nickleby which was his real name. In it, he was smiling down, arms behind his back, with a twinkle in his eye. A crooked, middle aged, dwarfish man, dressed in factory related clothes that nearly resembled a twisted appearance which was quite the opposite of a kindhearted toy maker in a fairy tale. The girls stared long and hard at the eerie portrait, and then caught sight of a golden plague below the thing, reading what it said:
The doll maker had quite an obsession for children of all ages. He would have done anything for a family of his own, in the dolls that now walk the factory and protect their loving master.
The girls stared long and hard at the portrait before them, mouth open in shock to find it take on a transformation from normal to a deformed, monstrous appearance, holding screaming children hostage. Then something went flying behind them. Turning around, they saw the books falling out by themselves and flying across the room, moving too fast for them to make out the titles of grotesque guides about the psychology of children, anatomical descriptions of the human body, and some being designs for creating the "perfect dolls" in human appearance.
"The doll maker must know someone is in here," Nurse Bear cried out. "I got the items, follow me to that door."
Quickly, the girls followed Nurse Bear, dodging whatever other books and papers were moving about, not wanting to read anything disturbing or inappropriate, having already gotten the idea of who the doll maker really was when it came to children and seeing them as nothing but toys to use, abuse, and never letting them leave in the factory of nightmares.
Sometime later, the group sat on the floor of the Candy Room, breathing in heavy, angry, trying to remain calm from what just happened in that office. When it finally passed, the girls glanced about the room, finding the walls decorated and painted in pink, blue, yellow, and all sorts of bright colors. None of the other devices were recognizable.
"What's all that pink stuff there?" Grace asked, pointing at the mysterious pink fluff that stuck to almost every candy device like cobwebs in an old house. "Never seen anything like it?"
"I wouldn't get any closer to it if I were you," Nurse Bear warned. "This room is another of the doll maker's forms of manipulation when gaining the trust of the children. I'll get the gumball so we can get out of here before it awakens."
Rather than question what Nurse bear meant by IT, the girls got up and noticed another sign on the wall nearby and began to read:
This used to be the candy room where the doll maker made and kept the most delicious, sweet candies, cookies, ice cream, milk, cakes, bonbons, and juices of all fruity flavors. The machines stopped running after the parents of the missing children discovered the real intentions of the doll maker, and destroyed everything they could find.
"So this guy not only made toys, he made candy?" Maggie implied, staring at all the broken candy makers, empty boxes, candy wrappers littered about, and a tarnished carousel, aged beyond recognition.
"I believe so," Mrs. Calloway replied, disgusted by the mess left behind. "And if I didn't know any better, I'd say this is why parents do not want their children to indulge on unhealthy sweets before dinner. The creeper ruined their appetite, rotting their teeth, and fattening them up. The poor dears."
"Never take candy or toys from a stranger," Grace whimpered, nervous at the sight of the pink cobwebs splattered on the carousel. "No matter how nice or welcoming they appear to be. That's another lesson parents hope to teach their children through stories with morals. Now we need to tell this to the young ones back home."
"After this, I'll never look at Hansel and Gretel the same way again," Maggie turned her head away from the pink stuff on the ceilings, feeling repulsed and fearful that it was resembling a giant spider web, which was the last thing they needed in here.
"I got it!" Nurse Bear called out, running to them with a purple gumball the size of a golf ball. She placed it safely in her carrying bag, flinging it over her shoulder. "Now let's go over to the laboratory and get this antidote in the making of…"
SWISH!
Out of nowhere, a piece of paper flew by the bear and landed on the floor, with a written message to which Maggie read out loud:
Something happened to me today. I was enjoying the swirly pop that the doll maker gave me and had my fun on the merry go round. But afterward, when I was on my way to the bonbons, he put his hands on my hips, rubbing them in a way I did not understand. Yet he was telling me not to be so tense, saying it is his way of looking for new ideas on toy making. This was not what I had in mind when I said that I wanted to find out how he makes the toys and candy. My idea of fun was to play with the toys he handed out to us and make friends with the other children. I thought that I knew who the doll maker was the first day I met him. He was nice and friendly at first, and then he acts like someone I don't want to be close to anytime. He scares me now, and I don't know why. But what I do know is that we have to get out of here before the doll maker thinks of keeping us here forever. I don't want to play here anymore. I just want to go home to mommy and daddy, away from the doll maker, away from his toys, books, games, candy, and the scary monster made entirely of gummies.
"What does that mean?" Grace asked in a shaky voice, looking around her on high alert. "That thing about a scary monster made entirely of gummies? I don't see…"
She was interrupting by a low hissing growl from the ceiling, belonging to a giant spider, gummy spider.
AN: Hello, I finally updated this story and I'm terribly sorry to have kept people waiting, no thanks to stupid writer's block and being so busy at home with other things. But with the pandemic going on, that almost gives me more time to work on other unfinished works and hope I keep going at this one, even if I might finish it by the time Halloween arrives. But I'm going to finish this story the best way I can and not leave it incomplete.