Chapter 23: Toy-maker

The dark corridors of the mansion lay in a vast maze-like web. You could go from one end of the mansion and end up exactly where you started if you didn't keep your mind on track of what places you passed and such. Vigilance was important, even for the inhabitants of the mansion.

Matthew passed a flickering candle in its stick and the flame was dimmed instantly. There was a sweet hush and hum from the shadows that followed in his footstep. They swarm around him and tried to stretch their inconsistent and immaterial hands towards him. He stopped in the dark between two candles and listened with a soft smile lingering eternally on his lips as the shadows continued to plead. But he was adamant, the face never changing expression.

He loved them, those little ones. The other inhabitants of the mansion called them "shadows", but he knew they weren't ordinary.

"What is it?" he asked quietly and looked over the walls where as many shadows as possible gathered to reach him in the dark. "What do you want this time, my sweet ones?"

"Release us," they begged. "Please. We have been good; we do whatever you order us to do."

"No, my darlings, you won't be released," he said as he stretched a hand upwards to meet the frail fingers of a shadow releasing itself from the wall and trying to assume a firmer consistence, like thin, black wisps of smoke. An almost inaudible sobbing penetrated the silence in the corridor. The darkness got denser, like mist gathering over a marsh. It lay over his black cape, a thin shimmer like a film. One of them managed to manifest as much power to tug at his sleeve, but he smiled before continuing into the light where they could only follow if they hid along the ceiling and panels and creaks.

"Why not, master? We do your every bidding!"

"Hush, my children, you will be released one day," he assured them without glancing their way as he opened a door hidden in the wooden panels. A narrow staircase of dark stone led upwards and slowly he ascended. There was only a flickering light bulb on the wall a bit further up and the shadows crowded around him immediately, pleading, touching his skin, caressing his face and hair, trying their best at getting his attention.

"But when, master? When? We miss home."

"There is no home anymore," he said calmly as he passed the light. He came up to the long hall with six doors on either side and the seventh at the end. He opened it and wandered up the staircase which ended in a square opening where he came into a wide open space. The shadows instantly fled to the walls and stayed at the ceiling as he walked to one of the walls where he turned on the lights. The neon tubes overhead flickered and sent their lights showering a horrific scene.

The Doll Factory, just below the operating room.

A long table stood by one wall with tools scattered all over, like a hobby table. In the middle sat a life-size girl doll, probably thirteen years old, with blond hair in pigtails set with baby blue bows. Her dress was blue likewise with white lace and white ribbons. She was missing a leg and half her face had no skin so a ghastly steel cranium was visible and the eye ball seemed too big for the pretty little face. Wires and tubes were attached to her back and went up to some machines fastened to the ceiling. Some of them buzzed silently, another seemed to hold some yellowish liquid which ran into her system through the tubes.

Along the walls stood dummies of different sizes, or they looked like dummies but they were the display of different sizes of torsos. In boxes beside them legs and arms, feet and hands were sorted into different categories. On shelves stood jars with replicas of organs; in cabinets tools lay in a perfectionistic order. On the walls there were drawings and sketches, some quite old, others new.

Matthew went to the table where he ran a hand over the doll's hair.

"Claire," he whispered silently. The eyelid fluttered and opened although it seemed that she had already seen him with the exposed eye. "Good morning, my love."

"Good morning, father," she said, her voice croaky and hoarse, but clearly a girl's voice. The skin trembled lightly at her chin when she moved her jaw. Joints and hinges creaked slightly.

"Oh my, you need some tuning up again before I proceed," he said and put his hands around her face. She smiled but only half of her face responded to the muscles' tug in the skin, which was like a thin film stretched over her body. The attentive eye would already have asked what the rolls by the other wall were supposed to be, fabric or transparent wrapping.

"Yes, my joints have gone cold," she said quietly.

"Of course. I'm sorry, love," he said as he found a small tube from a box and began rubbing a dark green balm onto the exposed part of her cranium.

"Father, when am I done?" she asked.

"Very soon, darling, I just need to finish your leg," he answered with a smile as he put away the balm and corrected one of the pigtails.

"When will I meet my brothers and sisters?" she asked. Matthew patted her head and went to a row of tall cabinets where he opened several doors revealing doll upon doll. These small boys and girls stood with their eyes closed. All were between the ages of 4 to 12. They all wore almost identical clothes, the boys in a Sunday suit and the girls in either blue, red or white dresses.

"When I'm finished with you, love," he answered. "See? They're all waiting for you."

"I'm looking forward to it, father," she said. His eyes scanned the dolls admiringly; his face showed both love and contend. These were his dolls; his creations. He heard the shadows overhead shudder at the sight of them as the light fell on their faces.

In each of these small shells he had experimented with putting souls and shadows into them. They were containers for the souls of the living, whom he took pleasure in bringing to a miserable end and afterwards resurrecting them as his own toys. Whatever pleasure he had, they did his bidding, and neither of them, unlike the shadows, argued against him. They knew nothing of their former life; they knew only one thing: he was their father.