"We didn't want to go, we didn't want to kill them, but its persistent silence and outstretched arms horrified and comforted us at the same time..." - Evidence Bag 243: note from absent child's home.
He shouldn't have been alone, but the old lady had said kids' lives were at stake so he'd acted. The drive was short, the address she'd supplied tied in with other leads on the disappearances.
Parking around the corner, he checked his gun and grabbed his baseball bat.
The was absolute silence: a lack of noise, to the point of exclusion.
A door at the back of the warehouse was open, hinges rotting away and leaving the door sagging into the vegetation. The smell of decay made him gag as he approached and he dropped the bat, reaching for his gun.
Nothing prepared him for what lay inside.
The vast space of the abandoned warehouse was filled with children. Line after line of malnourished stationary forms staring into the darkness of their own personal hells. Filth coated their clothing and the floor around them, but the only sound was faint breathing.
A noise made him whirl and his gun came to rest at the nose of the old lady who'd tipped him off.
"We have to get them out of here." Holstering his weapon, the detective looked back at the old lady who seemed to grow as he watched. Arms and legs lengthened and stretched, and her face warped into a rictus scream of silent death, which was covered in an instant by fragments of cloth. His mouth open in horror, the detective stumbled into the form of a small girl and he looked at her, instinctively reaching to protect her. Her eyes blackened and she grinned at him. "You're too close detective, you need to die now. Goodbye."
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