“Did anyone say something?” she said.
“About what?”
“About what? What do you think?”
He chewed loudly while listening to her recap the story Pip told.
“That was Wallace and Awnty Awnie,” she finally said.
“I got that. Didn’t know your aunt was a nurse.”
She wasn’t a nurse, but she worked for the Red Cross when she was young. Tin remembered the black-and-white photos of her wearing the white hat with the plus sign.
“Your sister’s smart.” He pointed the fork. “Like scary.”
“No, she’s not smart. I mean, she is but not like that. That was like a professional storyteller, you saw it. You filmed it. It was like she was…”
“She was what?”
Tin didn’t want to say it. She was someone else.
He licked his thumb and swiped his phone. The video from last night began. Pip’s voice had an edge to it. It was the way she was speaking, the words she was using. Tin watched it over his shoulder. It ended when she began singing.
“Weird.” He dropped the phone and shrugged.
Her sister was precocious. She was eccentric. What she wasn’t was that.
“You weren’t there,” she said.
“I’m pretty sure I was.”
“No, I mean, you left the room when she was still singing and…” She pinched her lower lip. There were a lot of things that had happened. But she was about to cross an outlandish line. She stopped and stared while he smacked his lips.
She told him.
Corey nodded along, cutting up the last piece into small bites. When she finished, she waited. He pointed the fork.
“What did she mean the story isn’t over?”
“What? That’s not—no, I mean, the part about Monkeybrain. His mouth moved. He smiled, Corey. I saw it.”
“You sure she didn’t just…” He moved his hand like a puppet.
“No. No, she didn’t.”
“She was facing the fire, right? She could’ve just pushed him up and made it look real. Super easy trick, you know that, right?”
“And made him smile?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“I do!”
“I mean, the firelight, the creepy story.”
She was grateful he was finished eating and put the plate on the couch because she was about to smack it across the room and grab his baggy sweatshirt and shake him back onto her team. How could he not believe her? After what they’d seen.
Unless he doesn’t believe me.
She snatched the phone and played the video again. Monkeybrain was wrapped tightly around her back, his face pressed against her ear, his purple fur sticking up like a cute little monkey from outer space. It was dark, but his lips weren’t moving. But that didn’t explain the tone of her voice. And where did she get all of those details?
Maybe they’re not accurate. She just made it all up.
“Where you going?” he said.
She took the ladder two rungs at a time, the planks cracking like they were about to cave. The bedroom vault door was closed. Her heart was thumping when she pushed it open, cold and hard.
Monkeybrain and Piggy were on the bed.
They were propped against a pillow and looking at her. That didn’t mean anything. Pip was always careful about positioning her toys when she put them to bed.
There was nothing else in the room. The little door in the closet was still blocked by her luggage. She sat on the bed and waited for them to say something, to blink or smile or nod.
“What’s happening?” she whispered. “Tell me.”
They sat there like toys, both of them. They didn’t say a word or bat an eye. Because they’re toys.
Tin backed out of the room. Monkeybrain and Piggy watched with inanimate stares. She closed the vault, feeling a bit more normal. Because it was dark last night. That was why she saw what she saw. And she was tired.
“Okay,” Corey called. “This is… not right.”
He was staring at his phone. The video had reached the part where Pip was singing the song, the same song she’d been singing when she was building Gingerman’s house.
“Look.” He pointed the phone at her.
The first thing she recognized was Pando the giant panda bear with green button eyes, the same stuffed panda in all the photos, the one that was in the loft. The words below it looked like lyrics. She squinted to read the small print. The first couple of lines didn’t make sense. But the middle part did.
If you want to play, and stay out all day, I know the place we can do it…
“She was singing that,” Tin muttered.
“Yeah,” Corey said. “That’s on the page I downloaded the other day. It’s a radio commercial for Noel Toys. Look closer, when it was written.”
“1932.”
“Yeah, right. Right?” He ran his fingers through his hair. “It’s impossible, right?”
“I don’t know. I mean… she said…” Tin looked at him. “She said Monkeybrain was singing it.”
“Oh, man.” He slid back his sleeve. “I just got the chills. Did you?”
She’d had them since waking up. Pragmatic Corey had left the room and Corey are-there-vipers-in-the-room was back. He believed her. The song was proof.
“She thinks Monkeybrain is talking to her,” he muttered.
“Thinks?”
“Yeah.” He stopped pacing. “What?”
“You said thinks he’s talking to her.”
So maybe they weren’t step for step. One thing she could clear up. She dug through the clothing she’d shed in the middle of the night.
“We’re going on a hike,” she said. “If the map is correct, the trail should circle the property, right? We go out and test it. If the wall is the same all the way around, we tell my mom and your dad everything. But not before we do this one more time.”
She shook the green hat at him.
If she was imagining this, the hat wouldn’t work and none of this was real, it was all her mind playing tricks, and everything was just a coincidence and the result of an old creepy building and urban legends.
I want to put on the hat.
It was snowing.
The snowflakes were fat and drifting, piling onto the already fresh foot of snow. Pip was flinging it like confetti. Mom and Oscar were on their knees, packing it around a smooth snow boulder.
“Where you going?” Mom asked.
“Hiking.” Tin pulled the backpack over her shoulders.
“You’re not going to help?” Pip said.
“When we get back.”
Mom dusted her gloves. She straightened Tin’s coat and zipped it up then squinted; it was filled with suspicion.
“What’s out there?”
“Fresh air, beautiful day. You’re always trying to get me to exercise, so.”
“Okay. All right.” She pulled a wooly cap over Tin’s head. “Just don’t stay out long. Oscar said there’s a lot more snow on the way. I don’t want you getting lost.”
“We’re staying on the trail, like last time.”
“Don’t wreck this snowman, Corey,” Pip said. “This one is supposed to guard the door.”
“What?” he said.
Tin hopped down the steps before her mom’s X-ray vision saw exactly what she was planning to do. The trail was slightly dented from earlier hikes. She stopped near the dilapidated stage. Snow crested on the caved-in platform. No footsteps from wildlife.
“You running a marathon?” Corey huffed.
She took a right.
“Hey, uh, I didn’t knock down the snowman,” he called. “Just saying.”
She ignored him. None of that was important. Not school or social media or a stupid snowman. She marched all the way to the circular patch of frozen ground where the snow seemed to evaporate.
The sky above the tower was warped.
It was a watery veil that waved like the surface of the ocean or heat waves o
n a sand dune. Corey stood next to her, slightly winded, breath steaming through his scarf.
“It’s more than a fence.” She stepped onto the frozen earth. The vibrations were in her chest, subtle and deep. “All he had to do was bury a wire if he wanted to keep something out. Or in.”
“Not if it’s a monster or—”
“Vipers, yeah. It’s just, that’s a lot.” She pointed at the towering structure. “And modern, too. I mean, even for now. He was doing something to it back then. How?”
His eyes were watery in the slit between his cap and scarf. “You asking me?”
Tin followed the circle around. A narrow path was on the opposite side, wandering into the dense forest.
“Watch for toys,” she said.
Corey was too far behind to hear, which was fine. He wasn’t going to see anything besides his boots. She kept up her pace until he was out of sight. The path was narrower than the other ones, the ground rockier and sloping upward. The snow found its way through the trees.
The path ended at the circle.
It arched in both directions just like she expected. She didn’t need the map to guess what it was going to do. If they walked far enough, they would cross the entry drive and eventually end up right where they started. They didn’t have time to go that far, not with more snow coming.
She waited for Corey on an outcropping of craggy stone. She could see the house. The pitch of the roof peeked through a gap in the evergreen trees. Snow had settled around the black solar panels.
“You tired?” Corey dropped his backpack. “I’m tired.”
Tin unzipped her coat while he tore open a granola bar. Sweat tracked her cheeks and dampened her sweatshirt. She dug into her backpack. A fuzzy tingle was on her fingertips. Corey squatted on the ground and watched her hold up the hat.
“Where you from?” she muttered. “What’s happening?”
She hoped asking out loud would give her some answers. The visions were so random.
“Are you talking to the hat?”
She pulled Corey up and squared him on the path. The palace was just over his shoulder. She put the hat in his hands.
“Put it on me,” she said. “Don’t count this time. Just take it off as soon as you put it on.”
The hat was so ordinary that she doubted anything would happen this time. He practiced sweeping the hat off, tossing it from one hand to the other.
“Get serious,” she said.
As much as she wanted another vision, there was no explanation for how the hat worked. Corey was there if something went wrong. Maybe she should tell her mom, put it on in the house.
“Ready?” He held up the hat.
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Make it fast.”
She straightened her back. The tingle of the invisible wall ran across her shoulders. She was standing too close to the edge of the path and started lifting her hand to stop him, to give her a little room—
A light bulb.
It hung naked from a wire, swaying in a narrow hallway. Stark shadows danced along the walls and disappeared in the dark. Something scuffed the floor.
Wallace was behind her.
He was bent over at a door. The color was more cherry than scarlet but was faded and eerie in the harsh light. Wallace’s T-shirt was stained. The suspenders clung to the outside of his bare shoulders. He hadn’t showered. She could smell him.
Grunting, he prodded the doorknob. Metal tumblers turned in the lock. She was surprised when he stood up, wondering if he was in a hole. He was shorter than the last time she’d seen him. Maybe it wasn’t him after all.
When he turned around—his hair as white as his T-shirt and wildly electric, a bearded bush hiding the lower half of his face—she didn’t recognize the eyes.
They were bright green.
He was muttering, nothing she could understand. The distant gaze suggested he wasn’t talking to anyone or anything, just a nervous string of syllables. His cheeks were damp and the whites pinkish around the green irises. He blew his cherub nose like a tuba into a handkerchief.
His belly protruded from the lower half of his shirt, the buckles on his suspenders buried beneath an avalanche of blubber. His fingers disappeared in the thickets of whiskers like an itch he just couldn’t scratch.
He shuffled past her.
His feet were bare and swollen. They looked more like paddles. Or snowshoes. The soles scratched the floor. A sharp shadow cast over the door and shortened as he neared the only light source. Behind him, there was a soft thumping.
It was coming from the door.
Tin moved to the side. He brushed against her, squeezing her against the wall. Her breath came out in thick clouds as white as his whiskers.
The scuffing footsteps receded.
“Hello?” She put her ear against the door. “Hey—”
The naked light bulb blinded her. She threw up her arm. Wallace was staring at it. There was something red above his head, like the door had moved.
The walls had vanished.
The wind suddenly numbed her face. The light bulb wasn’t swaying.
It was the sun.
They were outside. The lawn was crisp and frozen and stretched up a slope to a tree line. The fire tower was in the middle of the field, in the middle of a barren circle of dirt. Wallace was alone. A red balloon waggled over his head, a thin string taut in his hands.
The frigid wind filled her eyes with tears. He was tying something to the string. He held it against his stomach, short fingers ruddy and fat and struggling to work a knot.
It was a key.
An oversized bronze one. The kind with a big loop at the end and large simple teeth. He secured a knot to it three times before lifting it up. When he let it go, the balloon initially dipped from the weight then caught the wind and soared up and up. He stood there, craning his neck until it reached the trees. When it was a red dot in the gray sky, he looked back at Toyland.
Then he followed the balloon.
“Hey,” Tin said. “Stop!”
One wide foot in front of the other, the frozen grass crunched beneath his wide soles. Tin looked back. There were no trees blocking her view. She saw the half-domed loft with the glass bubble roof cantilevered from the wall. In the frosted windows, a dark form was standing, watching Wallace recede.
He was nearly to the trees when she turned around.
“Come back!”
Tin took a step and the world tilted oddly. She wasn’t falling forward. The ground was tipping away from her. She was falling backwards. There was the sky.
Then a bright light.
A chilly vibration rode through her jaws and down her neck. It filled her body. Abstract images crisscrossed a white background of static, straight lines, geometric. A voice bubbled through the haze, a sound muffled in layers of fabric.
Trees, she thought. Those are tree branches.
She was looking through limbs barren and heavy. Cold specks spotted her cheeks. A snowflake landed on her nose.
“Oh man, oh man, oh man.” Corey’s voice was suddenly clear. “Are you dead? Say you’re not dead.”
She felt his hand on her forehead. The back of her head throbbed. She moved her arms, heavy and rubbery, and pushed herself up. A headache greeted her.
“You just went down,” he said. “Faster than before. I mean, I just grazed your head with the hat and you fell backwards and… Tin? You there?” He clapped in her face. “Hello?”
She pushed his hands aside. Sounds were so loud. The claps were like explosions. Fallen foliage wrinkled beneath her, little bits stuck to her cheek. She spit them out.
“The hat barely touched you,” he said. “It was like—”
“I’m fine.”
She put up her hand. It took several seconds to recall what had happened. They had walked the path all the way to the circle. The fence was on her shoulders. She told him to wait.
“He locked them in,” she said.
“What?”
“I told you! Wait, who’d he lock in?”
She shook her head. There were so many things about him that felt different. Why were his eyes green?
“They were knocking on the other side. It was a-a-a…” It was just a hall and a light and a door. “And then he left.”
“Where?”
“Wallace, he locked them inside a room, somewhere in Toyland, I think. And then he just walked off.”
She tried to stand. He grabbed her before she fell over. Someone had been watching Wallace from the loft. Unless that was where he locked them. But there was a red door.
“Hang on,” Corey said. “He was shorter?”
She wasn’t imagining it. He was at least a foot shorter than her, like the fatter he got, the shorter he got. And he was just in a T-shirt with no shoes or socks. He walked into the forest. Tin could barely feel her face it was so cold.
“Where’s the hat?” she said.
“I, uh…” He looked around. “I must’ve dropped it, but, uh… huh.”
He raked the leaves on all fours.
“You started falling,” he said, “and I dropped it when you stumbled back. I mean, I tried to grab you. I swear. I, uh, I went through the fence even. It stung, like full body.”
She held onto a sapling as the head rush settled. Corey pushed all the leaves to the side. He yelped when his fingers touched the fence. She could see it now, the way the fence was warping the details of the trees beyond it.
Where’s the path?
It was just trees. No footsteps in the snow, no indication of the path they took to get there. And something else was missing. There was a gap in the trees where she’d been looking before he put the hat on her.
“We’ve got to go back through.” Corey got up and started huffing up courage.
“Corey.”
“Like a Band-Aid.”
“Corey.”
“You want to go first? Good idea. Maybe it will weaken it, you know. Like take the sting out. I’ll go right after you.”
“I know what the tower is doing.”
Toyland- the Legacy of Wallace Noel Page 8