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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/APCleriot on 2024-09-09 01:11:55+00:00.
The dispatcher said two kids - boy and a girl - showed up on a lady's doorstep. Lady said the kids wouldn't talk or give their names. She gave them milk and cookies and sent them to rest in her bed because they looked tired.
No children had been reported missing but it was late, so the dispatcher thought the parents didn't know their kids were gone.
No problem. Not my first call about kids that walked out the front door because they wanted to play. At least it wasn't winter.
I drove to the house on the outskirts of Bridal Veil Lake. It looked like another farm sold off for condos that were never built. A bunch of wild fields and dirt surrounded the lady's house. It was remote and dark and I wondered if she felt comfortable living alone out here.
That knock in the middle of the night must have been a shock.
I announced my presence and knocked lightly. “Hello?”
An old woman - the lady - answered. “Hello,” she said.
“Hello,” I said again. “How are you doing tonight, ma'am?”
“Been better. They're in the bedroom. Sleeping, I think.” She stepped aside to let me in. I saw two shapes beneath a quilt in the darkened bedroom.
“There was no one else? You didn't see anybody?”
She shook her head.
“Were they injured? Scared?”
“No, just shy. Really shy.” She nodded toward the kitchen, which I could see from where I stood (not a big house). “They hardly ate.”
There were two neat piles of chocolate chip cookies beside full cups of milk. It all looked completely untouched. The sight made me ancy.
She said they didn't eat much. They ate something then but not a crumb had fallen on the table? Nuh uh. I have three kids. Never saw them leave a cookie intact or at all.
Something really bad must have happened with these children.
“Hi kids,” I said quietly from the doorway of the bedroom. I didn't want to startle them. “Are you awake?” No answer. But I had to check on them.
There was only a lamp for the room, and it barely lit anything. Two small shapes lay with their whole bodies and heads covered with the quilt, completely still.
“I'm a policeman,” I said. “I'm here to help you. You don't have to be scared.”
I waited. Still nothing.
“I'm going to pull off the blanket very slowly, just so you can see me, okay? Then you can put it right back, if that makes you feel safe.”
Nothing. They didn't move a muscle. I prepared for the worst, and pulled off the quilt.
Their eyes were black, shiny, and lifeless.
“Jesus…”
Because these were not living children but life-sized dolls… complete with clothing and realistic hair. Only the eyes in their plastic faces looked immediately fake.
“What the hell…” I stomped out, admittedly pissed off. The lady waited in her living room chair. “Is this a joke?”
“Excuse me?”
“Those aren't real kids,” I said, “they're dolls.”
She became confused. “I beg your pardon?”
I took a breath, and tried to calm down. “Ma'am, are you on any medication or…”
She got up and went to the bedroom. “Jesus Christ, save us…”
I shouldn't have let her see. The lady fainted at the foot of the bed. I called it in, and everyone had a good laugh about the dolls - except me.
The lady had been prescribed blood thinners and a nasal spray for seasonal allergies. Unless she did other, non-prescribed drugs, she had nothing hallucinogenic in her system. That meant she probably had a tumour or dementia. A gas leak could also be a possibility.
I mulled over these details while I escorted the ambulance to the hospital. She wasn't unconscious for long but didn't fight my suggestion to see a doctor.
“Thank you,” she said from a stretcher, squeezing my hand, just before the paramedics wheeled her into the ER. I nodded. I didn't know what to say. It's my job to help.
I followed them in. Sometimes doctors want to ask us questions. The cafeteria called to me. Four more hours till the end of my shift. Coffee and a sandwich seemed prudent. I hardly touched them.
The walkie crackled. There'd been an assault at the hospital. Obviously, I responded.
“Someone's been attacked,” dispatch said. “The nurse that called wasn't very clear, and she hung up.”
I got up from the table the same time a doctor descended the steps into the food court and shouted something incomprehensible. When he got close, I grabbed him by the shoulders.
“She's dead,” the doctor said. “Gone. He killed her!”
It took a bit to understand. I'll summarize: the old lady I'd escorted to the hospital had been murdered by another patient, a young man suffering from unmedicated schizophrenia. He'd been brought into the ER after being hit by a car.
“I thought he was sleeping,” the doc had told me. He sat on the floor with his head in his hands. “Oh god, her head. He cut off her head.”
Apparently, he walked down the hallway with it. Then he sat down and chatted with staff until the police arrived. I never left the food court, so I was spared the scene.
Still messed me up. She thanked me. I'd sent her to her grisly death.
A tragedy. That's what everyone, including my therapist, said, and I eventually agreed. I believed it.
For years, I didn't think about those dolls unless someone brought them up. The old woman had been suffering from some kind of delusion. No point in finding out what exactly with her gone. Probably wouldn't even be possible.
Then I got another call.
“What? What did you just say?”
This dispatcher didn't know about the kids and the dolls. That was half a decade ago by this point. “Can you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“North side. A gentleman says two kids showed up on his doorstep. No missing children reported tonight.”
“A girl and a boy? The kids?” I asked.
“Yeah, how did you know?”
I didn't explain. “I'm on it but send more constables please.”
So many similarities to the previous tragedy: the time of year, the wrong side of midnight, and the kids gaining entry to the home.
Except that hadn't happened last time. They were dolls, I reminded myself. I would go to the house - in the posh side of town - and find actual kids there. Then I would do my job and get them home.
Fear against resolve, I gripped the steering wheel too tight and my fingers went numb. Big dead hotdog fingers trembled when I got out of the cruiser in the huge driveway.
No lights were on in the mansion at the top of the hill. I'd hoped the other constables would have arrived but I was alone again. Took me a few moments to calm down and not call dispatch for an ETA.
As I approached, I could see the front door had been left slightly open. My flashlight revealed a foyer big enough to fit a house. Since there hadn't been a crime reported, I felt confident to call out to the owner.
“Hello?” An echo replied. The place really was that big. “Bridal Veil Lake PD. Your front door is open sir.” I rang the doorbell and waited a bit. Nobody showed.
I don't know why I didn't call dispatch or wait for the other constables. The only reason I went in, I think, was because I had to know if history was repeating. “I'm coming in.”
The switches were dead. No power.
Grand staircases wrapped the foyer in a broad embrace and in the center, they were there, propped up before a headless storyteller. At first, I didn't understand and I tried talking.
“It's going to be okay,” I said, to a headless man. He'd been posed with an oversized Grimm's fairytale book between his thigh and arm.
Before each of the black-eyed dolls, set up to appear as attentive children, a tall glass of milk and a bowl of chips had been placed and left untouched.
I choked out a gasp. It couldn't be. It couldn't. How could the dolls be here?! Attempts to draw my firearm and use my radio went about as well as you can imagine. The gun hit the marble floor and I communicated nothing of use to dispatch.
Maybe that was good. I might have shot the other constables when they showed up. They found me on my knees and hysterical. I kept pointing at the dolls. They thought I meant the headless victim.
“It's going to be okay,” one of them said, and it felt like I'd said it. Or this constable had been cloned from my cells. Funny the places a shattered mind wanders.
“Okay?” I asked. I don't remember much after that. I went to the hospital. They had to sedate me. I wouldn't stop talking about the dolls.
“Olive and Matthew,” my therapist said. He'd come to visit, and explain what had happened. “It's a terrific coincidence,” he said. “Those dolls are the same, yes, from the last incident. Apparently, they didn't belong to [the woman who passed].”
I don't know why this information horrified me. “Well who the hell do they belong to?!” I shouted.
“It's alright,” he said. “It's not entirely what you think.”
He really pissed me off. “Look, just fucking explain it then.”
“Right, sorry, okay, the dolls weren't known to the relatives. They claimed [the lady who'd been decapitated] didn't like dolls of any kind. She found them creepy. Your colleagues put them into evidence for lack of a better option. Then they were sold at auction.”
“And the rich guy bought them?”
“No,” my therapist said. “But somebody did, and that person… Well, they're the killer, I'm afraid. A man was discovered in the mansion basement, covered in blood and with the head.”
“I thought you said it'd be alright?!”
“The man was mentally ill,” he went on, “but he bought those dolls. Maybe he even called about the kids. Do you see what I'm saying?”
“Some kind of copycat killing?”
He shrugged his bony shoulders in his tweed coat. “It's the only thing that makes sens...
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