“Bodies. Resurrected and restored. They’re not rotting zombies, they’re back and good as new. Tom said his father looked like he did in his prime.”

“You don’t actually believe this shit, do you?”

“I’ve known Tom a long time, and I haven’t seen anything myself yet but, yeah, I believe him.”

“You deal with dead bodies every day. How can you—?”

“How can I what?” He paused. “You know, the more I learn, the more I realize how little I know. It’s a cliché, but I thought I knew everything when I got out of school, and when I first started this job I wouldn’t have believed a story like that if Tom’s father had walked into my bedroom and grabbed my dick. But I’ve learned over the years to listen to more than just the textbook facts in my head. I’ve learned to read people and situations. And as crazy as this sounds, I think it’s legitimate. I think it’s true.”

Stormy wanted to laugh at his friend, wanted to berate him for falling for such superstitious crap, but the sincerity of Ken’s belief lent it a verisimilitude that Stormy found disconcerting.

“The thing is, it’s not just the dead. Seems that people on the reservation have seen dolls that are… animated. Those kachinas they make for the tourists. I gather the dollmakers won’t even go near the workshop anymore. It’s all closed up.”

“Tom told you all this?”

“Oh, no. You know him. I only found out about his father because I asked him. I’d heard elsewhere that some strange stuff was happening, and I wanted to check on it.”

Stormy stared down into the bottom of his empty glass. Something about all this sounded vaguely familiar, but he was not quite able to put his finger on it. Had it been in a movie? He didn’t think so. The connection was more real, more personal, more immediate. The specifics of it eluded him, but he saw these strange occurrences as an extension of something that had happened before—although he did not know what that “something” was.

He cleared his throat. “The ‘animated’ dolls. They walk? At night?”

Ken nodded. “You got it.”

He could have guessed that. It was logical. What else would animated dolls do? But he hadn’t guessed. He had known. Or remembered. He wasn’t sure which. In his mind was a picture of a ragged primitive doll rocking slowly on unbending legs, making its determined way down a long dark hallway.

A long dark hallway?