Broken Toys

by Jackson Lear

  “You don’t need to stall, Ian. Are you a good influence on your friends?”

  “I guess?” Ian went into the kitchen and rinsed his bowl.

  Claire drummed her fingers on the side of the table. The last thirteen years had shot by far too quickly. In another five he would be old enough to move out and have his own life. These next few years had to matter.

  “Three o’clock,” repeated Claire. “Daniel and Warrick as well.”

  It was time to meddle.

  49

  Warrick

  Ian called Warrick and Daniel and told them to meet up at the oak tree for a crisis talk. Ian was the first to arrive, followed by Warrick. Daniel rode in on his bike. “If anyone chases me, I’m getting out of here fast.”

  “Who’s going to chase us?” asked Warrick.

  “Something’s happened,” said Ian. “And we’re in this together.”

  Warrick felt a burst of panic split through his chest. “What did you do?”

  “You’re a part of it,” said Ian. “So, here’s what happened. Yesterday Daniel and I went to look for the Beast. He lives in a car near the field and the stream. We found it and he wasn’t there. We then found this tunnel nearby. You know that woman James had?”

  Warrick felt his stomach lurch at where the story was going. “Yeah?”

  “We found her. She was dead.”

  Warrick’s jaw dropped open. He looked to Daniel to see if this was all bullshit. Daniel gave a solemn nod to show it was true. Warrick snorted a laugh and had no idea what came over him. He cupped his hand over his mouth quickly, horrified at his reaction.

  “I’m not joking,” said Ian.

  Warrick stared down at the ground and cursed himself a million times. Why the hell had his mind chosen then to laugh? He heard the words clearly from Ian, knew their meaning, and his first reaction was to laugh? Like a sick freak? Had he been older he might have realised that it was a combination of shock and revulsion. His brain had misfired under the stress and a laugh tumbled out.

  “I don’t know what happened,” said Ian, shaking his head at the dumbass in their group. “It’s possible the Beast got to her. She was stretched up like an angel. I don’t think James would’ve done that. But, either way, she’s dead. I think we should tell the police anonymously.”

  “What? How?”

  “We’ll leave a note. Here, I typed one up.” Ian pulled it out of his pocket and showed Warrick.

  “Why is it cut up and in plastic?” Warrick asked.

  “I heard that every printer in the world marks the edge of the paper with a special code so the police can know who printed it. I didn’t want them to find us. And it’s in plastic so we can touch it without getting our fingerprints on it. I can put it into an envelope and they’ll never find us. I want to put the letter into the chief of police’s mailbox, or even one of his neighbours. That way they can find her without us being a part of it. You knew her as well. We’re in this together. Are there any problems with what I’ve said?”

  Daniel shook his head.

  Warrick read over the note. “‘There is a dead woman in a tunnel. She’s wearing jeans and a red jumper. She’s hanging like an angel. You need to find her.’ Is that it?”

  “I’m giving them a map. And as long as they’re looking for a tunnel they should find her.”

  “It’s not her,” said Warrick, flatly.

  “It’s definitely her.”

  “Then James should know what happened.”

  “We’re not going to tell him.”

  “But he can tell the police it wasn’t our fault,” said Warrick. He felt a sweat break out under his arms and it seemed insane that Daniel and Ian were tying him into this crisis when it was clearly their fault. They may have found some dead woman, but it wasn’t the woman from the other day. They just found someone else and if they told the police then everyone would end up in a shit storm and none of them would make it out to the other side.

  “He’ll tell the police it wasn’t our fault,” Warrick said again.

  “Don’t be stupid,” said Daniel. “He can send us to prison. We were the ones who smoked in his garden and drank the beer. We took the whiskey from home and drank it with him. We were the ones who had sex with her.”

  “Then we can’t tell the police,” said Warrick. “Let her stay there.”

  “They need to know,” said Ian.

  “Why? She can’t do anything now. We’ll just be making more trouble. As long as we don’t tell anyone then no one will find her and no one will know.”

  “They’ll find her eventually,” said Ian.

  “People go missing all the time. Some are never found. She might be one of them. If we give it enough time then they won’t be able to find out it was us.”

  Ian looked to Daniel for backup, but Daniel started to nod. “He has a point.”

  “And James doesn’t know you found her, right?” Warrick asked.

  “No, he doesn’t.”

  “Good. That’s the way it should be.”

  Daniel shrugged through the arguments and nodded with Warrick. “We have to keep it a secret. Even if you tell the police with that letter we can’t tell anyone else. So, we either let the police know but never tell anyone that we were the ones who found her, or we keep it a secret forever and no one finds her. I’m with Warrick on this one. No one has to find out.”

  “And we don’t see James anymore,” said Warrick.

  “He knows us,” said Ian. “He can see our mums and dads. He goes to the same shops as them. He knows what school we go to. He knows how to find us.”

  “And if you tell the police he will find out and then he’ll really come for us,” said Warrick. “It’s too risky. If we can’t tell the police everything then we can’t tell them anything. It might not even be the same woman.”

  “What about the gun?” Daniel asked.

  “I don’t know if we can find it,” said Ian.

  “Why? What’d you do?” asked Warrick, feeling another sense of panic race through his chest.

  “We buried it yesterday.”

  “Then you should find it and give it back to James. As long as he has that he won’t come looking for us.”

  “I don’t want to give a gun to someone who may have killed that woman,” said Ian. “What if he uses it on us?”

  “Then we drop it in his garden,” said Warrick.

  “I can’t remember her name,” Daniel mumbled. The other two fell quiet and looked away.

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Ian.

  “Maybe she killed herself,” said Warrick.

  “Because of what we did to her?” Ian asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe she was just fucked in the head and she wanted to fuck us before she died. Then she hung herself or something.”

  “Or the Beast found her,” said Daniel.

  Warrick snapped his fingers together as though he had just had a revolutionary idea. “We’ll blame the Beast. He must have done it. If that’s where he lives then he obviously put her there.”

  “That’s my point and that’s why we can tell the police,” said Ian. “The Beast lives there, right next to the dead woman. I’m sure he tied her up like that. The police will figure out he did it. James won’t be caught. We won’t be caught. As long as the Beast is to blame we’re all okay.”

  Daniel thought it over, trying to find a flaw in the plan. “James won’t ever be found out?”

  “I never saw him touch her,” said Ian. “If the police find her then they’ll go after the nearest person, which is the Beast.”

  “What if James tells the police?” Warrick asked.

  “What? Why would he do that? He’ll go to jail,” said Ian.

  “What if he tells them we did it?” Warrick asked.

  “How would he know we did it?”

  “He has pictures of us,” said Warrick.

  “What? No he doesn’t.”

  “In the house he had a camera,” said Warrick.

>   “No he didn’t,” said Daniel.

  “He did. I saw it. He walked by and he had it in a bag. He took pictures of us having sex with her.”

  “Bullshit,” said Ian.

  “What if he shows those to the police? They’ll believe photos.” Warrick caught the deadliest glare from both Ian and Daniel and threw his hands up in defence. “I swear I saw it. It was one of those big cameras, the kind you need two hands to hold. He walked around and kept it down by his side so we wouldn’t see it. When she was on her knees I looked over. He was taking pictures of us.”

  “Then he’s a pervert,” said Daniel.

  “If someone finds her then he’ll send the police those photos.”

  “Then we still can’t tell James,” said Ian.

  “We can’t tell anyone,” said Warrick. “I was watching something on the TV. The longer it takes the police to find a dead body the harder it is for them to figure out how they died and what happened to them. So the longer we wait the better we’ll be.”

  “What if James comes to see us again?” Ian asked. “What if he tries to kill us?”

  Warrick looked to Daniel for any other idea, but he came up blank.

  “How about this?” said Ian, pulling his head up and his shoulders back. “If something happens to any of us, the others tell the police everything. Everything. Every last secret we know about James and the woman.”

  Warrick winced.

  Daniel nodded at Ian. “Makes sense.”

  “We shake,” said Ian. “We shake and promise. If anything happens to us we tell the police. Promise?”

  They all extended hands, shook, and repeated, “Promise.” They all went home, leaving Ian to tear up the letter to the police and flush it down the toilet.

  50

  Warrick

  Warrick walked along Blyth Street and turned onto the field just before he reached the stone bridge. He was now facing the valley. Somewhere nearby was the gun that his two best friends had buried. To the far right were the train tracks. Somewhere front of him, in theory, was the dead woman. And swirling in the back of his mind was the memory of him laughing in front of his friends when they told him she was dead. Laughing. Like a freak.

  There was a man playing fetch with his two dogs nearby. Warrick needed to get to the dead woman without being seen. When he was sure no one was watching he slipped through the bushes and skidded down the embankment to the valley.

  Daniel had mentioned some kind of barbed wire angel hanging on a tree. The Beast’s lair was near to that. Then towards the train tracks was this so called kill chamber with someone inside.

  She’s not dead and there’s no one in there, he told himself.

  The frantic beating in his chest said otherwise.

  I said she’s not dead!

  The valley was a lot darker than he expected. The sky was overcast but it didn’t look like it would rain. Nevertheless, the trees knotted together and created a thick canopy of leaves. Even in the middle of the afternoon it was difficult to see everything that was under foot. In a few weeks the weather would turn and autumn would be upon them. Once in a while it even snowed over Christmas and the valley seemed cut off from the rest of civilisation. This must have been what Luxford was like thousands of years ago when there were just a handful of settlers out collecting fire wood and sealing up the gaps in their homes from the terrible draft.

  Warrick headed up the valley, testing each step to make sure the ground wasn’t about to slip out from under him. He kept an eye open for this barbed wire angel thing from Daniel’s meagre description.

  He hadn’t been lying about James taking their pictures. The more he replayed it in his mind, the clearer he saw James holding the camera to his side, lurking about to make sure none of the boys ever saw him. Warrick’s memories breathed into life as he filled in the blanks of that day. The horror of firing off that empty pistol at that woman’s face still caused his legs to shake.

  He had been burned before for being too gullible. He knew the word but he didn’t understand how to avoid it. Worse still, people had been lying to him his entire life and he still couldn’t figure out when they were telling him the truth. Even when his dad came and apologised for losing his temper Warrick believed him.

  He had a friend tell him about Santa Claus. Warrick’s mum told him that Santa was indeed real and friends shouldn’t be spreading lies. In truth, she wanted to hold onto her little boy and his Christmas delight for a little longer. He also had the worst timing in the world, asking her on Christmas Eve in front of his younger cousins.

  There was no way the woman was dead. Right now Daniel and Ian were howling with laughter, congratulating themselves on duping Warrick once again. He was going to punch them in the face. Not just a minor tap on the cheek, either. He was going to throw all of his rage into his fist and make them pay for lying to him like that.

  Warrick slipped and fell to one knee, banging it on the ground. “Goddamn it!”

  He picked up the stone he landed on and threw it as hard as he could. It thumped against a tree and, for a moment, the adrenaline softened Warrick’s pain. He stared up at the sliver of light peeking through the leaves. Then he found an ornate piece of barbed wire dangling from a tree.

  It was the basic form of an angel. A pair of wings and a metal shaft held it together. So far, Ian and Daniel’s story was true. It sent a shudder down Warrick’s back. Then again, they might have put it there themselves, to fuck with him later on.

  They said he wasn’t home, Warrick remembered. Nearby was a fallen tree. He grabbed on and used it to help him climb the steep embankment. Once he was at the top he had to pace back and forth to help his lungs breathe again.

  Normally he could walk for hours. He certainly had to whenever his friends were around. Now he could barely go a hundred metres without needing to rest.

  She’s not dead.

  He took a final gulp of air, veered off to the right, and stumbled through the outskirts of the Beast’s lair.

  Warrick settled on the ground, needing to rest again. A ball of nerves formed in his stomach, screaming at him for taking that short cut through the valley.

  That was two hours ago. Since then he had taken a wrong turn somewhere. He was so lost he couldn’t even tell his mum where to come to find him.

  That laugh in front of Daniel and Ian plagued him. He couldn’t get the look of their faces out of his mind, a look of undiluted revulsion. He had fucked up. His weak mind had doomed him again.

  He would kill for a drink.

  Warrick stumbled along, his eyes staring at his feet, kicking the dried leaves on the ground. He turned over every evil thing Daniel and Ian had ever done to him. He was always the last to be invited out. Daniel always had an excuse to leave whenever Ian had to go home.

  Only he didn’t have any other friends. His dad was always telling him that the friends he had in school would be only the friends he would have for the rest of his life.

  But what did his dad know? He came home from work, sat in front of the TV, and only once in a while did he take Warrick out to play a game of football or go to the zoo, neither of which appealed to Warrick. He was either told off for not having good coordination or for looking bored after his dad paid good money to see the animals. There was always a lecture about money not growing on trees and how hard it was making ends meet to afford a treat like this.

  Warrick’s heart leapt at the sound of a truck honking its horn. If there was a road nearby then it meant that he could find his way back home.

  Then his eyes settled on the short cliff face just forty metres away. There was a black concrete opening which, in the weak light, might have been an opening to a tunnel. His eyes focussed, separating the low cliff face from the edge of the black concrete. He headed over, debating whether it was another trick by Daniel and Ian. They promised him they were all in this together. If they turned out to be lying assholes then he would definitely punch them. But first he had to make sure that there was no dead w
oman in there.

  He walked forward, shuffling through the dried leaves. He crept over the spot where Daniel had passed out and Ian had to help him to his feet. Warrick reached the edge of the tunnel and peered into the dark. He should have brought a torch. He should have brought many things, but a torch right now would have been the most useful.

  He sniffed at the entrance to see what kind of tunnel it was. He turned his nose up at the overwhelming stench of puke. He pulled out his phone and used the screen to illuminate the inside of the tunnel. The light didn’t go very far, but it would show his way if he crawled through.

  No one’s in there.

  His heart skipped a few beats, bracing himself for the dead woman. If she was hung up like an angel then she wasn’t going to hurt him. And if she really was dead then she wouldn’t jump at him and tear his face off. Her tears and crying face had haunted him over the last few days. Daniel and Ian were already assholes for doing this without him.

  Warrick tugged on the metal grating and felt it shudder open against the rusty hinges. It squeaked as it drew back, the same kind of squeak Warrick was accustomed to at the dentist’s, just as they fired up the drill before cutting out bits of his teeth. He pulled the grate open as far as it would go and peered inside. There was an echo of wind tumbling in front of him. As Warrick turned his head to get a better listen the sound faded. He held his phone up again to see how far the tunnel went. He couldn’t tell. He listened for anything breathing inside, before hoisting himself up onto his belly and climbing inside.

  It stank. The putrid smell turned Warrick’s stomach and made him gag. He shuffled forward, edging into the dark one foot at a time, using one hand to steady himself against the side of the tunnel. The wall was slimy and Warrick snapped his hand away, quickly cleaned his fingers on his jeans, and regretted not checking the wall before touching it.

  He froze at the faint shadows in front of him. There was a blanket, crumpled on the ground. A shadow against it moved. The light from Warrick’s phone shook. It seemed to shift and morph without actually leaving the ground. Two of the shadows bled together to form a face. Warrick’s pulse spiked out of control, leaving him paralysed. The screen on his phone went blank.