I can´t remember where the dolls came from. It´s the same for why it was nighttime when my little sister and I were playing at the park. She had just turned five, and we were celebrating there. But then all of a sudden, it was night. Nobody had noticed the sun sink behind the mountains. There were supposed to be eight kids, not including me and my sister. But when I checked again, there were six. And then three. When Bruno disappeared, thatś when I saw the dolls. There were at least ten of them. The details were hard to make out, but the eerie clinking of porcelain was audible over the cold breeze. As was the scraping when they rubbed their mouthparts together like insects. One of them walked up behind Alice.
¨Hello!¨ it said. And giggled. It was the most hollow, emotionless sound I have ever heard. The dollś face opened and something came out. It was like a shadow, but it didn´t follow the rules. They snaked towards the light, not away from it. I do not know what the shadows did to Alice, but when they were done she was lying on the ground. I turned her over. There were now two black pits where her eyes should have been. The corners of her mouth were stretched into a permanent smile far too wide to be human. She wasn´t dead. It was something far worse.
It continued like this until it was just my sister and I. She was crying. We hid in the tree house. The dolls were afraid of bright light. I´d found that out when aiming a flashlight beam at one of them.
¨Don´t worry,¨I told her. ¨Iĺl go find Mom and Dad. You just stay here and wait, okay? If a doll comes, just shine your light at it. Don´t scream.¨
Each flashlight could hold two batteries. I took one from hers. This was a rather secluded area, I reasoned. And I needed more power if I were to find our parents. Not even the moon was out anymore. The street lights were mere pinpricks of white in the distance. I set off on my own.
I checked everywhere; under the play structures, the picnic area where our parents had been seemingly minutes ago, the rock walls, the small clump of trees. That last area gave me a place to hide when I heard the clink of porcelain. I waited for it to pass. It was gone.
I did find everyone´s parents in the end. They were at the swing sets. The seats of the swings had been removed. They had been replaced with bodies. That´s where they had been this whole time.
I felt empty on the way back. I didn´t hide when I heard clinking this time. Instead, I aimed my light straight at the source of the noise, catching its grotesque smiling face in the beam. The thing let out a shriek that I will never forget. I screamed right back at it and ran. Didn´t stop until I felt my foot connect with its china face, sending shards spinning away into the darkness.
Another scream. This time from a little girl. My sister. How long had it been when I had last checked on her? My blood froze and my heart heaved against the walls of my chest.
The flickering bulb of the flashlight she dropped gave me a full view of the little girl lying on the floor of the treehouse with a smiling doll standing over her freshly slain corpse. This one met the same fate as its previous comrade. But I was still too late.
In the end, one of the dolls got to her. Because I took a battery, she couldn´t defend herself with the light. She had died because I was too selfish and careless. Trying to find our parents while keeping my sister safe had just caused me to lose both of those things. As I held her limp body in my hands, I heard a noise behind me.
¨Hello! Hehehehehehee!¨