The sound of some children’s haunting giggles filled the room, waking Conrad with a start. He started rubbing his eyes and yawning. He got up and saw on his desk the tarot cards he had collected: “The Hanged Man”, “The Sun”, “The Moon”, “The Emperor”, and “The Empress” cards. “The Empress” and “The Emperor” cards now had the First Nation red-skinned man and woman shackled to their thrones. He stared at the cards briefly before placing them back on the dresser.

When he left his room, a doll was eerily sitting on the green canvas couch, watching a children’s cartoon on the television. He grabbed the doll and examined it. It had a note attached to its leg. He read the note aloud: “The museum of dolls is now open for Conrad to visit.” The address was close by on the same street.

“How did they know my name? Maybe I should check it out.” He muttered to himself.

He went to grab the doll, but it had disappeared, and the television had switched off. He heard the footsteps of what he guessed was the doll running and slamming the front door of his apartment. He followed the sound, heading out the front of the apartment. The fog was thicker than ever, and he could barely see his hand in front of him. Whispers threaded through the fog, too faint to make out the words. The sun was barely piercing the fog.

When he got to the right address from the note, the house was massive and on the richer side of the suburban area. It was painted brown with siding, almost Victorian, but had a few additions, and was surrounded by a white picket fence. Conrad opened the picket fence gate, and while walking up the brick pathway, he noticed there were loads of different tacky stone statues all over the place. He swore one even moved on its own. When he finally got to the front door, it was already open slightly.

“Hello?” He said while knocking on the door. All he heard were the sounds of glass and wood moving around and coming to an abrupt halt when he entered. The place still had electricity. There were white fluorescent lights that lit up the front foyer, which led down a hallway that had a closed door. To his sides were a living room and a dining room. Conrad decided to go into the dining room that had life-sized wax figures sitting around a set table. The place had dark brown wood shutters on the windows, along with green paintings on the walls. The table and chairs were dark brown, and a white doily was spread around under the set table pieces.

“So weird…” He thought as he circled the table. The eyes of the wax figures were watching him as he moved. The silence apart from his footsteps creaking on the floorboards was deafening.

Most downstairs rooms were roped off, so he headed upstairs. The hallway was huge upstairs, and there were at least six rooms on each side, with some closed off. That’s when he saw the door at the end of the hall slam shut.

“Huh?” He flinched at the sound of the door slamming. “Maybe someone is in there… I should look.” He thought. He headed towards the room at the end of the hall and opened the door. Inside the room were shelves lined with small hand-sized dolls from different eras. In the middle of the room was a weird marking on the floor with candles all lit up around it in a circle. Conrad was mesmerized by the candlelight, so he decided to walk into the circle, feeling like it was against his will. When he stood there, the markings on the floor glowed a deep red. He heard the giggles of small children name-calling him strange things. Before he could move, he noticed the dolls started floating around the room in a circle. The laughs were deafening from the dolls. The dolls wept blood, raining it down, while they laughed. Suddenly, without warning, the dolls started exploding in bloody mists.

Conrad yelled and shielded himself on the ground as the porcelain shards cut his clothes and some even lodged into his flesh. The temperature spiked as the candle flames grew brighter. That’s when he shut his eyes and started muttering to himself that worse things have happened to him.

Finally, the dolls stopped exploding, and he got up to brush himself off. He was bloody all over, and the shards in his back hurt like crazy. He walked out of the room. His heartbeat raced.

“Please help me tee hee~” He looked at the other end of the hall, and the door was open with a small doll peaking at him. Conrad slowly walked over to the door, passing a roped-off door that stood open along the way. He peered inside and saw what he thought were puppets at first hanging from the ceiling, but upon closer inspection, he noticed people hanging from the ceiling by ropes that were connected to puppet controls. Before he could go inside to inspect more closely, the door slammed shut and locked.

“Ugh…!” He groaned with the images of hanging people from the ceiling fresh in his mind. He continued down the hall to the room and opened the door.

In the room, he saw a single Victorian-era porcelain doll sitting in front of an Ouija board with the planchette resting. He moved to the middle of the room to look, and the planchette started moving on its own, spelling out: “I C U”. Out of nowhere, the room darkened except for the one lone candle stand by the door. There were a large number of eyeballs that blinked in unison on the walls, door, and floor. They started dripping blood when they blinked.

“What is it with all this blood!?” He backed out of the room quickly, knocking over the candle stand, which blew up in flames. The flames got huge, and Conrad stared into the room for a bit that was filled with blinking eyeballs. The blood seemed to be ignitable because the flames quickly grew out of control. Conrad ran down the stairs while hearing screams of “What have you done!?” which freaked him out.

As he exited, black smoke billowed from the house, mixing with the fog, and the flames were growing and engulfing the entire house of dolls now. Conrad hopped over the white picket fence and saw on the ground a tarot card. He picked it up. It was “The Death” tarot, though it was a picture of a scythe-wielding skeleton reaper chasing down small, multicolored dolls.

He decided to return home and hide as some porcelain shards were still stuck in his skin. He spent the night picking the shards from his clothes and body. When he first looked in the mirror, he saw one massive shard lodged in his forehead; the blood had crusted around his brow and eyes. When he was finally done applying salves and alcohol, he went to sleep for the night, wondering where he really was.