Car 81 rolled to a stop at the quiet suburban house. Perfectly manicured lawn, red brick, and stock features.
"Everything looks quiet." Kurt Maybourn said. Of course, just as he spoke, a boy jumped out of his car parked in front of the house and sprinted toward the cruiser.
"Whoa!" Danielle Chase said to the boy, "Are you the one who called in the-"
"Yes. Yes, I called. They're inside. My friends."
Kurt got out of the passenger side and came up to Chris. "Have you ingested any hallucinogenic substances." He looked at the boy's eyes, but they were normal.
"What?" Chris was incredulous, "NO!"
"Your friends in the house, are they the ones who got turned into dolls?"
Chris shook his head, "Yeah. One's a wind-up toy, and the other's a rag doll. A girl rag doll."
"Ok. And how did that happen?"
"I don't know. Tom -- he's the wind-up -- he had this giant key in his back, and he was just marching around the living room. Danny tried to get in Tom's way, but then Tom touched him, and then he just started to change. Real fast, too."
"Into a rag doll?"
Chris nodded, and Danielle sighed. "Ok." She turned to her partner. "Do you want to stay here with him? I'll go take a look inside."
Kurt pulled Chris aside and started asking him more questions while Danielle strode up to the front porch. She was a tall woman, almost six feet, half of that leg.
As she came to the front door, she noticed something wrong. The top left corner looked fine. Like you would expect in a suburban McMansion. It had ornate designs carved into it, and the dark wood looked heavy.
But the other three quarters of the door was entirely different. It looked simple, like it was thin and made from plywood. And it was painted a bright, almost garish, red. The knob was just a bronze painted wood stud, and there was no lock above it.
She knocked a few times on the thin part of the door, and it just swung open. Like there had been nothing holding it in place. And she gasped when she saw inside.
