Toyland- the Legacy of Wallace Noel

by Tony Bertauski

  “Changed like how?”

  It was in the middle of the night. None of the toys knew he’d gone out there, but I saw him from the loft. I watched him climb the steps of the tower. There was a full moon in the middle of winter. And it was snowing. It was beautiful. And he was climbing the tower to turn it off. I knew that’s what he was going to do. He was going to let the world see everything at Toyland—the toys, the hat. Me.

  The billiard balls cracked, Corey took cover, and Pando ducked a yellow speckled ball that sounded like a bottle rocket.

  “How did you know he was going to turn it off?” she asked.

  Why else would he go up there? The tower had been working ever since the beginning. Maybe he was just going up there to check on it, but not in the middle of the night. Not the way he looked.

  That was all probably true. But Tin wondered if there was some other way Pando knew. If he talked to Wallace like he talked to her—with thoughts—then it occurred to her that maybe the thoughts didn’t just go one way. Did he know Wallace’s thoughts? Does he know mine? she thought.

  “Did he?” she asked. “Did he turn it off?”

  There was another sigh. He was halfway up the steps when it started in the trees. The branches started shaking and snow fell from the limbs. Snowflakes started going in a circle, just like you said. It wasn’t much at first, but it kept going, moving toward the tower. And the closer it got, the stronger it became. Snow was pulled off the ground. The loft was shaking.

  “You were watching from the loft?”

  I saw it, yes. It left a deep trench in the ground. I don’t know how the tower didn’t fall. It’s so strong, but the legs were shaking and swaying. I thought the whole thing was coming down. I thought maybe Wallace was doing it, he was somehow going to destroy the whole thing, but he was up there, too. He was hanging on with both hands. And the wind just kept getting stronger and stronger.

  Tin didn’t flinch when balls crashed against the fence. One careened off Pando’s shoulder with no reaction. He was staring with big green buttons, remembering it all again.

  He didn’t do it. He changed his mind. He came back down the stairs before the wind threw him off. I think whatever it was scared him. It wasn’t long after that he left, but not before coming back to chop down the steps.

  “Why would he come back to do that?”

  I think he was scared that maybe one of the toys would try it.

  “And then he left?”

  Pando turned toward her. She thought he was about to nod, but instead he put his arms straight out and looked ahead. The inanimate stare of a stuffed panda bear returned. The hallway began creaking. Mom looked in the room.

  “Lunch is ready.”

  Her lipstick matched the color of the Santa hat on her head. The balls cracked off the ceiling and landed back on the table like a hailstorm. Mom peeked back inside.

  “Did you see that?” Corey said. “All at the same time.”

  “You sure this is safe?” Mom said.

  “I mean, I don’t know. It’s sort of like Putt-Putt pool. I’m just hitting balls. Watch.”

  He lined up another shot, stroking the stick on the edge of the table. It struck with a concussive crack that Tin felt in her chest and launched into a hole in the wall. The scoreboard counted down.

  “Is that good?” Mom said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What’s the ref say?”

  Tin and Corey went as stiff as Pando as she crossed the room. Corey wrapped his arms around Clyde burrowed beneath his sweatshirt. Pando was just a big stuffed animal perched on the high chair. Strange, but normal. Mom walked around him, dragging her hand over his stiff legs.

  “Did I say something wrong?” Mom looked at them.

  “No,” Corey almost shouted. “No, no, no… ha! No, God no. I was just like ‘What’s she talking about?’ you know? So what’s for lunch?”

  “Why are you dragging Pando around?”

  “Something to do,” Corey said. “I’m almost finished, so I’ll come for lunch in, like, a minute. I’m starving, by the way. What did my dad make? Your turn, Tin.”

  Corey held out the stick. Mom looked at her. “Everything all right?”

  “Yeah, Mom. It is, I swear. I’m not hungry.” That wasn’t true. “I might go for a walk or something.”

  Mom kept her X-ray vision on. Corey kept up the nervous laughter and Tin shook her head. He made a shot as Mom stared.

  “Is the tree out of the way?” Tin asked.

  Mom said they’d moved the car down the drive. They’d have to carry their things to pack it when it was time to leave.

  “Tomorrow’s Christmas.” Mom pulled her hat on tighter. “Santa Claus is coming to town.”

  Corey began humming the song. Mom told her not to go far on her walk. Tin wasn’t planning on leaving Toyland. Not yet, anyway. Mom told Corey lunch was getting cold and hoped he won.

  “By the way,” she said, “have you seen Baby Doll?”

  “Baby Doll?” Tin said.

  “The doll you found with the bear and pig. Pip can’t find her. She said she was on the couch with the soldier. Pip thinks something happened to her. You know how she gets.”

  Corey wasn’t listening. Instead, he tapped a shot around a funneling hole. Tin’s mom left before the balls went flying.

  “Look.” He pointed the stick. “Almost zero. I think I got this game figured out—what’s wrong?”

  Tin shook her head. Baby Doll is missing. All the toys had been acting scared. They weren’t like that when they first appeared. They were so happy, their hugs so free and loving. Now Piggy clung to her.

  You should leave. Pando turned toward her.

  Tin walked around the high chair. Piggy squeezed with all four legs. Pando buried his snout in his stumpy arms and shook his head. Tin looked at the panda’s leg. It had a rip. Stuffing was leaking out.

  “I told you,” she said, “I’m not leaving.”

  A grin grew beneath Pando’s snout. Her words, however, didn’t soothe Piggy. The balls cracked and disappeared into holes. The scoreboard dinged.

  “I did it,” Corey said. “I think I won.”

  The room began to quake. At first she thought it was going to be one of those noises that worried her mom. The car was ready to go if it was. But this was more like a calculated vibration. A mechanical latch clicked into place; gears began turning.

  Pando’s grin widened.

  The entire pool table sank. Corey went with it. They dropped three feet into icy blue water.

  “Hooooo! Hooo!” Corey shouted. “Oh, my freaking jingle bells… oh, man.”

  He threw the stick and held his arms up. The water sloshed around his waist. Icy chips rode the waves.

  “You got to be kidding me.” He climbed onto the ledge. “You got to.”

  He was dripping onto the floor and flicked water at Tin. She hid behind the high chair.

  He doesn’t understand, Pando said. He won.

  The pictures on the wall. The winners got to swim when the game was over. Because this was their version of pool. Of course it was. They were toys.

  “I can’t feel my legs!” Corey walked off, stiff-legged.

  “Take Pando with you,” Tin said.

  “You.”

  “I’m not going back.”

  Corey looked at her. So did Pando. Tin looked at her phone. She needed to do something alone this time.

  Pip would be ready for a nap in an hour.

  Tin would be back in time to read her a story. Once she was curled up with her thumb in her mouth, Tin would go out to the tower. If all went well, she’d be back before she woke up.

  There was something to see before that.

  She climbed the workshop ladder into the green air of the loft, where things still scurried and vines dangled. She slid carefully around the room and climbed the steps to the desk. Piggy peeked out of her collar and waved at Zebra.

  Zebra did not wave back.

  The plan
s and books were still where she’d left them. She wasn’t there for them. She turned down a path to find something else.

  The jewelry box was still closed.

  The bottom drawer had mysteriously closed when she thought about reaching for it. Something about the way the objects around her had shimmered when it happened, how debris stirred on the floor.

  Just like it knocked Piggy off the tower.

  Something didn’t want her to see what was in there. Perhaps it was nothing. She tugged on the delicate ring and found the drawer to be locked. It didn’t come loose even when she braced it with her hand.

  There was an envelope opener on the desk.

  The blade was slender and the handle made of ivory. She slid it into the seam and began to pry. The blade bent under the strain. Piggy climbed out of her sweatshirt and tried to help. She almost quit, when the locking mechanism popped. The drawer slid all the way out of the box and spilled its only object on the floor.

  The antique letter opener was ruined. She didn’t feel it slip from her hand. Piggy climbed down and grabbed the frayed end of a string. Tin picked up the rubbery object tied to the other end.

  A red balloon.

  It hadn’t been popped. Simply deflated. She’d seen this balloon before. Once upon a time, a key had been tied to the end and it had floated away from Toyland.

  It came back.

  Wallace had locked the toys in the room to protect them. He never wanted the key to be found, but the balloon was here. And the toy room was unlocked.

  And the toys are empty.

  “Did you escape?” she asked.

  Piggy climbed onto her lap and hugged her neck. She didn’t answer. But of course she did. Piggy, Clyde, Soldier and Baby Doll were the only ones who got out. That was why they took her up there, for her to see what had happened to the rest of them.

  But who did it?

  She leaned against a marble column lying on its side. The floor was cold. She reached into her back pocket. The little bell rang. There was so much she didn’t understand.

  She held up the balloon as if the hat would see it, as if that would be enough for it to know what she was asking.

  “Show me.”

  She was standing in the field again.

  The sky gray and wintery. Wallace had already crossed the barren field and entered the trees. She stood there waiting for him to return to chop down the steps.

  The balloon was just a red dot hovering over the dense forest. Perhaps it would fall into the trees and snag on a limb and Wallace would come waddling back with it.

  But it never descended.

  The balloon was caught in a rising current of warm air. It began twisting and turning, spiraling as the weighted key was tossed around.

  Then the red dot grew larger.

  It changed course and headed back. The invisible vortex crept out of the trees and stirred the dust. It came toward her, and above it the balloon hung, quivering in the violent eddies. The balloon and its key went over Toyland.

  Pando watched from the loft.

  Tin began running. She didn’t take her eyes off the balloon until it dropped over the roof. The ground pounded beneath her feet and thudded in her ears; her breath was hot exhaust as she turned the corner. She didn’t find the balloon.

  The front door was open.

  She peeked inside. The lobby was just like they had found it on the day Tin and her family had arrived—the couches all in the same place, the one against the wall beneath a white sheet. Except for the upside-down staircase. It was open.

  So was the toy room.

  A lump swelled in her throat. The balloon was on the floor. The end of it cut. She took the steps three at a time. They didn’t sway, didn’t move. The toy room was dark and still. The toys were all around, tossed about like a ship rolling over. They weren’t torn, weren’t dirty or hurt.

  Just still.

  Tin tried to dig through them, but nothing would move. This was a vision, a story. She couldn’t change it. But the toys were too deep. She couldn’t see how far down they were buried. But nowhere did she see the pink fabric of Piggy or the brown fur of Clyde.

  Until she stepped out of the room.

  She looked down into the lobby. The fireplace was cold and black. The cobwebs had not yet grown thick and wavy; dust didn’t cloud the photos on the walls. On the far side of the lobby, in front of the sheet-covered couch that hid the little door, four miniature figures looked back. One at a time, they ducked under the sheet. She heard the hinge on the hidden door swing.

  Piggy was the last one in.

  She was right in front of her, little legs on her cheeks. She threw them around Tin’s neck and quivered. Pando was locked away in the loft, hidden and safe. But the toy room was routed. They had been taken. Lifeless.

  “You escaped,” she whispered.

  She held Piggy like a football and didn’t look back on the desk where she last saw Zebra. It was time for Pip’s nap. Time for a new ending to the story.

  Time to turn the tower off.

  18

  Tin barely had time to tie her boots. She slipped out the back without her coat and ran into the trees, falling twice, her legs so weak. The toymaker’s hat had drained her again. She reached deep and ran on pure will.

  She emerged from the trees and rested on her knees. The sun had dropped behind the tower. She raised her hand. The air was crisp. Waves distorted the clear sky.

  I won’t leave you.

  She had promised Pando and all the other toys. She wasn’t going to leave them behind for another Christmas. She walked across the barren circle and scanned the forest. Everything was still. Picturesque. A perfect day for the holidays, the kind of scene she imagined on calendars or greeting cards.

  Tin rested against the tower.

  The icy steel burned her hand. She laid her head back. The stairs went up a hundred feet. She couldn’t climb them even if they touched the ground. Not now. She barely had the strength to reach into her backpack.

  Monkeybrain flopped in her hand.

  His fur was nappy and worn. Arms and legs swung like noodles; his head bobbled loosely. She had swapped Piggy for Monkeybrain as Pip sucked her thumb. She might be awake by the time Tin got back, but she would make something up about a walk and telling stories.

  “Wake up.”

  His head waggled limply. No one was around. She didn’t think this would happen. The toys woke up when she was alone. Why didn’t he wake up for Tin when she was little? Because they hadn’t come out to Toyland.

  “I promised.”

  She looked up and began laughing. Nothing was working out. None of the toys could climb up there, not with their stumpy legs. Not a hundred feet and not if that wind came back. For the thousandth time, she wondered if this was her imagination.

  Did I really bring a purple monkey to climb it?

  A felt hand grabbed her arm. Purple arms climbed onto her shoulder. She bumped her head on the tower as he leaned closer, his oversized eyes staring into hers. For a moment, she had the whooshing sensation of reality dropping out from under her.

  It’s not a dream.

  She told him what to do, pointing at the stairwell. He needed to hang on tightly because it might get windy. And once he was up there, all he had to do was pull a lever.

  And we all live happily ever after.

  Monkeybrain looked up. He didn’t smile. There was no expression. He simply climbed onto her head and reached for the tower’s scaffolding leg. His tail momentarily wrapped around her neck. His little hand was much firmer than a child’s grip.

  She watched him ascend the tower.

  He reached the steps in no time, using hands and feet to scamper up the scaffolding while his tail swung about. He peeked over the edge. Tin stood up weakly. She backed away, shading her eyes.

  “Go!”

  It was effortless.

  He was halfway up in less than a minute, swinging around the platforms and sometimes scaling the struts. He wasn’t bei
ng careless. This was what monkeys were made to do. This was a metal jungle.

  Was that why Wallace made all the toys with generic arms and legs?

  He was almost to the top when the first warning occurred. A limb broke. Monkeybrain was seconds from reaching the tower when the trees began swaying. And then it happened, but not like before.

  A twister burst from the forest.

  It came out angry and fierce, foliage and twigs and snow swirling into the vortex. It crossed the field in a second. Tin didn’t have time to cover her eyes. A warning caught in her throat as a frigid blast stole her breath. She was thrown off-balance.

  It attacked the tower.

  The metal struts quivered. She cupped her hands and shouted. Monkeybrain was on the last set of steps. He was hanging onto the railing with all four hands. His body waved like a purple flag. If he got inside the tower, he would be safe. If he lost his grip, he would be thrown across the field.

  How long could it last? Monkeybrain wouldn’t get tired, would he? He could hang on as long as he needed to. Or until Mom or Oscar came out. All he needed was a slight pause and he could make the last couple of steps. The minutes went by and then she felt it. It was a lull. It was slight, just a faint pause, but it was enough.

  Monkeybrain felt it too.

  He scampered for the next rungs as his body and tail waved about. Carefully, he ascended the railing. Only two more. She hadn’t thought about how he would get through the door or if it was locked. It wouldn’t matter. Because the lull wasn’t the vortex weakening.

  It was inhaling.

  Tin’s ears popped. An atmospheric vacuum shook the ground. All at once, brittle blades of dormant grass quivered. The vortex punched out with twice the force. Monkeybrain held the last baluster in the railing. His grip couldn’t be broken. He was going to make it, she was sure of it.

  But the seams.