"THIS IS AS FAR AS I CAN GO," Detective Tomb Heap said.

     His black sedan lurched to a halt as it reached the entrance to Faeriedox National Park, the vast forest that encompassed the Trinidad Mountain.

     Sequoias as tall as skyscrapers silhouetted against a bluish charcoal sky hemmed in a panoramic view of a bleached gravel road that led the eye deep into the woodland to the rising full moon.

     The air got colder and the smell of trees and moist earth joined with fragrant wild bush honeysuckles permeated the atmosphere.

     "So, you're not taking a lady home?" Grimmy Reaper, still in nun's habit at the passenger seat, said with a cheeky grin. "The code of chivalry must have really died with medieval knights."

     "Reaperby, which code of chivalry are you referring to?" Grimmy's attempt at lighthearted banter had pushed the button on Heap's unexpressed (for the last hour or so) self-aggrandizing know-it-all cockiness. "There's Charlemagne's Code of Chivalry as described in the Song of Roland composed between 1098 and 1100. There's the Knights Code of Chivalry of the Arthurian Legends. And there's the Knights Code of Chivalry described in the 14th century by the Duke of Burgundy."

     Grimmy's eyes widened. Uh, oh, oh, oh, big mistake.

     "Now if you're talking about romance and dating, there's the Rules of Chivalrous Love." Heap took a bite of his apple before rapidly reciting the code like a schoolboy in front of the class. "One: thou shalt avoid avarice like the deadly pestilence and shalt embrace its opposite; Two: thou shalt keep thyself chaste for the sake of her whom thou lovest; Three: thou shalt not knowingly strive to break up a correct love affair that someone else is engaged in; Four: Thou shalt not choose for thy love anyone whom a natural sense of shame forbids thee to marry; Five: be mindful completely to avoid falsehood; Six: thou shalt not have many who know of thy love affair; Seven: Being obedient in all things to the commands of ladies, thou shalt ever strive to ally thyself to the service of love. Eight..."

     Grimmy pushed the door open. "Heap, I'm okay. Just shut up and go."

     "Wait, there's more," Heap said.

     Grimmy climbed out of the car.

     "Just in case you want know, Reaperby, I'm allergic to pollen. I go to the forest, I go sneezin' forever."

     Grimmy shut the door.

     Heap backed the car and drove off.

     Grimmy shrugged, she understood. No one in his right mind dared to enter the infamous Faeriedox.

     The National Park was Nirvañana's version of the enigmatic Bermuda Triangle.

     Thousands of people had disappeared in the forest under mysterious circumstances.

     Christopher Columbus first spotted Faeriedox when his ships anchored at the pink shores of Nirvañana. He reported seeing "ball lightning" the size of a carriage descending from the clouds and vanishing into the forest.

     In 1801, over a thousand of Napoleon's soldiers pursued Native American Indians that withdrew into the forest. The soldiers and the Indians vanished without a trace.

     During the Vietnam War, the Dragonfly Squadron, a U.S. Air Force team of five Bell HueyCobra attack helicopters, disappeared while flying over Faeriedox. No trace of the helicopters and the fifteen-man crew was ever found.

     The Sikorsky H-19 Chikasaw search-and-rescue helicopter Mother Goose deployed to look for them also lost contact with the base and never returned.

     But the most controversial disappearance was during World War II when the Peacemaker, a B-29 Superfortress bomber carrying a 9500 pound atomic bomb dubbed "Big Bad Boy," vanished on its flight from the Crucible. It disappeared on August 6, 1945 moments after the pilot radioed the base that the forest had turned into a sea of fireflies. (NOTE: The government had always denied that the Peacemaker was supposed to be the backup of the main B-29 bomber Enola Gay in its mission to drop the bomb in Hiroshima.)

     The latest incident was in 2013 when a team of scientists and investigators accompanied by a platoon of marines, disappeared. After that, the government stopped all explorations in the forest.

     They blamed it all on the fairies.

     Faeriedox has become the forest they can't explain.

     Fine time for a walk. Grimmy set off into the narrow road between moss-covered boulders of the forest. She had lived in her mother's 5,000-acre forest farm all her life and she had never been lost.

     The road always took her home.

     It took an hour's walk from the entrance; and it took an hour's drive from the same entrance regardless of the speed.

     Every time one treaded on the road, it changed into a disorienting maze of new routes. It was never the same road at any given day.

     Grimmy was not surprised at all. Since childhood, her mother had made her understand that Faeriedox, originally named Bosque Encantado, was an enchanted forest. Axunta had always said that the forest was alive, a spirit entity, and a power in itself.

     Even demons fear to set foot in the forest because it would expose their true form, usurp their power, and transform them into flesh-and-blood mortals. In the realm of fairies, they could die like ordinary humans.

     Grimmy looked back and saw that the holloway she just traversed had changed into a dead end of rocks and gnarled old trees with wriggling branches that looked like contortionists who forgot to straighten.

     She raised her head up and admired the hypnotic swaying of branches that always reminded her of the crowd's synchronized wave when she was Nirvañana High's Killer Bees star pitcher. The only girl allowed in the boys' baseball team.

     Grimmilda "Grimmy" Reaperby a.k.a. The Reaper Bee.

     The deadliest pitcher of them all. No batter got past The Reaper Bee—unless she wanted the boys to sweat it out.

     Curious sounds and eerie noises, not all of them made by roosting birds, accompanied Grimmy. The moonlight struggled to penetrate the dense canopy of the rows of dwarf beech trees as she walked closer to the bend of a nature-built tunnel road.

          Ring-a-round the rosy

          A pocket full of posies

         Hush! Hush! Hush! Hush!

         We've all tumbled down

     Grimmy heard eerie childlike voices reciting a nursery rhyme coming from the part of the bend concealed by a bushy knoll. The voices sounded mechanical and ghostly, like they were coming from a wind up phonograph with a grating low-energy clockwork motor.

          Ring-a-round the rosy

          A pocket full of posies

     "Damn," Grimmy said. "Manyikaras." She scurried to side of the road and hid under the hollow of a tree root while keeping an eye on the bend. "There are elves, trolls, and other fairies, why friggin' Manyikaras?"

          Hush! Hush! Hush! Hush!

          We've all tumbled down

     Grimmy's childhood dread came into view: an uncanny procession of two-faced porcelain dolls with glass eyes and frozen smiles. Two rows of creepy boy and girl automata dressed in attires from different periods, walking in mechanical cadence and synchronously moving their heads from one side to the other as if looking for something.

          Ring-a-round the rosy

          A pocket full of posies

          Hush! Hush! Hush! Hush!

          We've all tumbled down

     She did not fear demons, even in their most horrifying manifestations, but Manyikaras gave her nightmares. As if one Manyikara is not creepy enough. What's this, a midnight doll sale?"

     The first time she saw a Manyikara was when she was three years old. She never played with dolls again after that.

          Ring-a-round the rosy

          A pocket full of posies

     Manyikaras were stillborn human children that faeries had adopted and given doll bodies. The Manyikaras desired human playmates but their touch sucked up their life force and turned them into empty shells.

     As they came closer to Grimmy's tree, she turned her back and crouched deeper into the darkness of its root.

          Hush! Hush! Hush! Hush!

          We've all tumbled down

     The parade had just passed the tree when Grimmy's mobile phone rings. "What the hell..."

     The Manyikaras stopped marching.

     Grimmy pulled the phone from her pocket and saw who's calling: Detective Tomb Heap.

     She rejected the call.

     The Manyikaras simultaneously about-faced with their bodies while their heads remained fixed in their positions.

     Grimmy came out of hiding, waving the phone to the Manyikaras. "Sorry to interrupt you, dollies. It was a missed call from work. Probably an emergency or something."

     The Manyikaras broke into cackles that sounded like a disturbing low-battery seventies Baby Laugh-a-lot, which Grimmy ranked right up there with Thomas Edison's 1890s Talking Dolls in the list of the most terrifying dolls ever made.

     "Nice dollies, nice dollies." Grimmy made a few cautious steps backward. The Manyikaras were standing still, observing her with permanent expressions.

     They let out a bloodcurdling chorus: "Come, play with us."

     Grimmy felt every hair in her body rise. She cracked her neck.

     The phone rang again.

     Grimmy feigned nonchalance and pointed to the phone. "Oh, sorry, but some other time maybe? I gotta take this call."

     She turned, made big strides toward the curve, and answers the phone. "Heap, did you have an accident? Are you hurt? Bleeding? Demons chasing you? If it's none of the above, this is not a good time."

     "Reaperby, just a reminder: be at the Crucible at nine o'clock tomorrow. We have to discuss our case. Don't be late."

     "What? Don't tell me what to do, okay? Last time I looked you're my partner not my boss." Grimmy's head swiveled, taking a glimpse at the Manyikaras. She gasped.

     The Manyikaras were about five meters behind, following with both hands extended forward like kids begging for a hug. Their voices louder and more ominous: "Play with us!"

     "Are there children with you there?" Heap said.

     "They're not children. Dolls. Fairies."

     "Just kill them like you kill demons."

     "I don't kill fairies."

     "What's the difference? They're demons, too."

     "Shut up. They're Elementals."

     "Elementals?" Heap laughed mockingly. "Reaperby, that's a senseless human jargon. Did you know that fairies used to be angels? God created angels with free will and tested them in heaven. Half of the angels chose to love and serve God. A quarter of them chose to join Lucifer Lightbearer, the dragon and the greatest of all angels. They became demons and rebelled against Heaven. Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven, was the popular catchphrase."

     "This is not time for Catechism, Heap."

     "Guess what the remaining quarter of angels did during the war in heaven?" Heap said. "They chose to be neutral. Not serving God, not reigning with Satan. Now God hates noninvolvement more than insurgence."

     "Play with us." Just three meters behind now.

     "God expelled Satan from heaven, along with his angels a.k.a. demons," Heap said. "You know what God did to the middle-of-the-road angels?

     "Heap, Not now!" Grimmy looked around, quickly plotting her escape route.

     "He cast them into the depths of the earth," Heap said. "And that's how they became the demons of the Inner Earth, commonly known as fairies."

     Grimmy sees the foggy Gigante Bridge, a timber bridge that led across the Sirena River.

     An anthropomorphic albino oak, roughly twelve feet with leaves the color of bone, stood like a ghost tree on the riverbank alongside the bridge's approach. It had a deep trunk hollow that formed a creepy grinning face. Its branches spread out like a demented person with multiple arms outstretched. It was a dwarf among normal giant trees that seemed to keep distance from it.

     Caaaaaawww! Caaaaaawww! Grimmy heard the harsh raucous call of the carrion crow before she saw it flying low in circles above her.

     The bird alighted on the albino oak's branch.

     "Play with us." The Manyikaras were just two meters away now.

     "Hah, Reaperby, did you even know that there's an Inner Earth?"

     "Heap, lemme get back to your intellectual masturbation on that." Grimmy disconnected and dashed to the bridge. But the faster she ran, the faster the Manyikas gained on her.

     "Play with us." One meter.

     Grimmy felt a forceful tug on her habit. The two front row Manyikaras had grabbed hold of the rear portion of her robe and were yanking her back. She struggled to drag them a few steps forward; she felt as if she eas pulling a stalled car. Jezz, what'd these dolls eat, rocks?

     More dolls joined the ferocious tug of war. "Play with us."

     The dolls suddenly let go, catapulting Grimmy headlong to a big belly flop into the bridge's lumber planks. "Aww! Shit, shit, shit! She covered her mouth with one hand. "Oh, my God, I'm swearing!"

     The dolls fell silent.

     "That's it!" She quickly sprang up, turning around to face the Manyikaras. "No more Miss Nice Sister Teresa. You come a step closer, I swear I'm gonna send you to doll hell."

     The dolls stood still at the threshold of the bridge, staring not at Grimmy but at something behind her.

     A skeletal humanoid, dark as midnight and tall as the tallest tree, stepped out of the foggy end of the bridge behind Grimmy. It was the Tikbalang, a terrifying giant with the head and feet of a horse, a mane of sharp spines, and disproportionately long limbs. It was one of the most powerful and feared forest fairies.

     The Tikbalang glared at the dolls with its wicked red eyes.

     The Manyikaras backed off, turned around, and walked away, reciting their rhyme like nothing happened.

          Ring-a-round the rosy

          A pocket full of posies

          Hush! Hush! Hush! Hush!

          We've all tumbled down

     "It worked?" Grimmy gaped in astonishment. "I must really have a bad rep around here."

     "You said it," the Tikbalang said in a voice that seemed to come from a deep well within him.

     Grimmy spun around. "Tito!"

     "Boo!" Tito neighed a chilling laughter.

     "You startled me again you big sneakin' Tikbalang," Grimmy said. "I almost peed my pants."

     Tito squatted on the ground, his knees reaching above his head. "But you're not wearing pants."

     "Tito, don't even think about being a stand-up comic. You suck at it."

     "Gnadnagam inibinib, opuakan oka, idnih ab?"

     "Asi gnap corny joke ta nihutabab an atik," Grimmy said in fairy language. "Just stick to scaring people."

     The Tikbalang neighed another laughter. He lowered his head close to Grimmy. "How've you been, little princess?"

     "So-so." Grimmy gently stroked the Tikbalang's face, making him smile—and more fearsome.

     Tito had been her mother's best friend for as long as she could remember. Grimmy grew up thinking of the Tikbalang as her mother's loyal bodyguard, and her fairy godfather. He even taught her fairy language.

     "You look like a penguin, I say you've been terrible." Tito neighed louder.

     "L-O-L," Grimmy said with a lighthearted smirk.

     "What's that?"

     "Never mind."

     "After your mother's death, you left without saying goodbye," Tito said. "I never thought you'd ever come back again."

     "Me, too," Grimmy's voice cracked. She lowered her face, tears welling in her eyes, feeling the grief and guilt that weighed heavy on her soul.

     The Tikbalang gently tapped her back with his huge clawed hands the size of her torso. "Don't be so hard on yourself, my child."

     "Tito..." Grimmy hesitated. There were so many things she wanted to get off her chest, but no, not tonight, or maybe, not ever. "I...I just wanna go home."

     "I understand," Tito said. "You want me to make a short road for you?"

     Tikbalangs were waylayers. They led travelers astray, playing tricks on them and making them walk around in circles, just to come back to the same path no matter how far or how long they had walked.

     If travelers offend the Tikbalangs, or if they do not answer their riddles correctly, they would tear them apart.

     However, the Tikbalangs could also make the shortest path to the destination of travelers they favor.

     "No, thanks, Tito. I need the walk. Just let the forest take me home."

     "If that's what you wish."

     Grimmy rubbed Tito's face one more time and walked off.

     "Be careful, dear little Grimmilda." The Tikbalang riose, blocking the moonlight. "Some entities want to harm you or kill you after what you've done."

     Grimmy nodded. She knew. Only the Tikbalang's protection prevented them from taking action. "Even I want to kill myself, too."

     "Hush, they don't understand."

     "I don't either."

     "When the right time comes, you will."

     Grimmy sighed, and she disappeared into darkness of the forest.

     Tito turned to the crow in the albino tree. "Merlin, is it time yet?"

     "Not yet," the crow answered.

     "When?"

     "It will come like a thief in the night."