Chapter Thirty-Two - Shedding Some Light

Charlotte raised the mage lantern she’d picked out of one of the tents and flicked it on. It glowed brighter and brighter with an ethereal blue light that gently filled the shop, revealing more than what they could see with just the light from the doorway.

The shop wasn’t all that big. She imagined that someone that made plushies, even someone who was well-known for it, didn’t make all that much money. There were a few stands where she imagined dolls and plushies would normally sit, and some small decorations next to these, large sewing needles, a few sepia photographs.

There was only one plushie in the entire room. A small plushie of a farmboy, with a tiny straw hat on his head and a pitchfork set on his lap. The plush was sitting on the counter at the far end of the room, right next to the till.

“Do you see any more traps?” Charlotte asked.

Dreamer yanked the rake buried in her chest out, then tossed it aside. She glanced around. “Nope.”

“Hmm, well, let’s move carefully anyway,” Charlotte said. “I don’t know if I could resist as many rakes to the chest as you.”

“I’m very tough,” Dreamer said. She poked the fingers of one hand into the holes in her chest, then realized that the holes were spaced too far apart, so she had to use both hands to plut the bleeding.

Charlotte rubbed Dreamer’s head. “You might want to heal up?”

“Okay,” Dreamer agreed. It only took a bit of focus to reknit her body back. Fixing her dress was a lot harder. The fabric could be resewn with a few tiny tentacles, but washing things was tricky, it was why Abigail always did it for her.

Charlotte scanned the room for more traps, then grinned as she spotted one. “There’s a tile on the floor there that’s raised up, see that little wire leading out of it. I bet that’s a trap. And there’s a trip wire there too.” She pointed at both.

Dreamer summoned a few tentacles out of thin air and smacked both. A brick on the end of a rope came swinging down from the ceiling over the pressure-plate trap, and a box filled with nails twisted together into caltrops fell out of one of the displays and spread out across that corner of the room.

“Well done,” Charlotte said. “I’m certain there are more traps, but if we keep our eyes peeled, we’ll be fine.”

“Yeah,” Dreamer agreed.

Charlotte was feeling pretty confident as they moved into the room. That was, until the door slammed closed behind her.

She spun around, hand gripping the hilt of her sword while her eyes darted around the room which was only lit by the lantern swinging in her off-hand, the shadows danced with every swing, and she felt as if she was being watched from every direction.

“Oh, what a pretty dress.”

Charlotte turned back towards the counter.

The farmer boy doll was standing up now, its head tilted to the side slightly. “So so pretty.”

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“Thank you,” Dreamer said. “Abigail bought it for me.”

“But the flesh it’s over. So imperfect. Too warm. It’s a sack of skin over meat and bones. What are you stuffed with?” the doll asked.

“I had breakfast,” Dreamer answered.

“Uh, Dreamer,” Charlotte said. “Talking dolls aren’t normal.”

Dreamer looked up to her, then back down at the doll. “They’re not?”

“Not usually, no,” Charlotte replied. She nodded to the doll. “You’re the one that set up all those traps?”

“Me? No, Us.” The doll said. He gestured around with his pitchfork and from the shadows came others. Not just dolls, but plushies of cute animals and little figures who walked like stilted clockwork machines.

“And what are you?” Charlotte asked. She slowly removed her sword from its sheath, then held it low by her side.

“We are our master’s failed creations. Oh! The pain of knowing that you are but a step on the path.” The doll twisted this way and that, its skin of crocheted yarn stretching in strange ways as if its insides wanted to burst out. “Master’s dream will come true. Oh yes, yes it will. But not if we don’t help!”

The dolls and plushies started moving closer. A lot of them were armed. Kitchen knives, forks with sharpened tines, a number of them had long needles in their little hands.

“Wait,” Charlotte said. “I have a few questions.”

“The fresh materials have questions?” the farmerboy doll asked.

“Yeah, I do, and while I don’t mind being called fresh, I’m not sure about being called materials, you know?” she asked. “Who’s your master, and how are you all alive?”

“Our master is the great craftsman, the maker. They brought smiles to the children with their creations, plushies and dolls so joyous and happy. But they were flawed. We still are, all of us here. Just steps on the path. True joy can only be brought by the living, and we were not, still are not! But the master is improving! New materials were needed for a new generation of dolls!”

“They’re being used by a thing on the other side,” Dreamer said. “You know those holes I talked about. There’s small ones in all the plushies here.”

“Huh,” Charlotte said. “And how do we fix those?”

“Just close the holes,” Dreamer said.

The farmerboy doll raised his little pitchfork and pointed it at Charlotte and Dreamer. “Come, brothers and sisters of flesh and plush, let us harvest!”

A plush of a cat leapt towards Charlotte’s face, but she sliced it out of the air.

It fell onto the ground in two screeching halves, its stuffing-filled interior spilling real blood across the ground.

The rest of the dolls screamed and howled as they started to rush them.

“Dreamer! Tentacle them! Tentacle them all!” Charlotte said.

Dreamer smiled. “Okay,” she said.

And then a million tiny holes in reality were torn apart, and a million and more knife-tipped tentacles tore out of those holes, hissing through the air as they sought out plush and stuffing.

***