The Toy Thief

by DW Gillespie

  A hand reached forward, then the foot behind it, then another hand, all of them completely, utterly silent. My mind struggled to reconcile the lack of sound, and the more it moved, the more I believed that the entire thing was nothing more than a waking nightmare, an idea that was all but confirmed when the left hand came to rest on a plastic grocery bag filled with books I had checked out from school. I knew what I was seeing – that ghost thin hand touching the plastic – and I knew what I should hear – that characteristic crinkle of cheap synthetic material. Instead, I heard nothing at all.

  So I let my eyes drift closed for a moment, certain in the thought that when I opened them once more, the thing would be gone. My lids lifted to reveal it across the room, kneeling next to the aquarium, again seeming to move in a soundless vacuum. It was studying the tank, reaching here and there with darting hands, its curious head tilting like a cat’s. There was a faint click that seemed to echo in the silence of the room, and the aquarium light was gone.

  Real.

  Really real.

  In that darkness, I felt on the verge of crying, of letting my resolve shatter and break into a thousand pieces, of giving up and letting it take me. I knew, of course, that I was the reason it was there. I had to be. All that time, I’d felt like some kind of clever little hunter, but the reality was quite plain. I was a child, helpless, a mouse cowering between the paws of a cat.

  A toy.

  I couldn’t hear it, but I could sense it, so close that it could breathe on my cheek. I thought of the video, of the photographic evidence I had captured, and I realized I had signed my own life away, all unwitting. It knew. Somehow, this creature of the shadows had let itself be caught on tape, and it had returned to the scene of the crime to clean up the evidence. Sallie’s doll would never be seen again, and neither would I when all was said and done.

  Then I heard it: a quiet little clicking noise like a bug chattering. I focused on it, trying to understand what exactly it was I was hearing. A light appeared in the center of the room, a tiny pinprick that sliced through the gloom. It was too small to show everything, much duller than the aquarium had been, but I could make out the creature’s face, hovering in midair, disconnected from everything else by the harsh blackness of the room.

  The light was floating just above the glassy eyes, and I realized what I was seeing. The strange crown atop the creature’s head had a hook resting there, and a tiny, bronze-colored lamp dangled from it. It looked like a miniature lantern, and when the thing turned its head, the lamp swung on the loose swivel just above the center of the eyes. I heard it, just barely, as the hinge creaked a bit, a sound like a rocking chair. The Toy Thief heard it too, and with a deft hand, it slipped its fingers into some unseen pocket and reached up with a thin cylinder that I can only assume held some sort of oil. It tapped the hinge. Then, as if to test out its work, the creature shook its head. The lamp rocked back and forth without a sound, and I could almost see a grin on the edges of that horrid mouth.

  As odd as the light made the creature look, I think I understood. I thought of the anglerfish I had seen in a textbook from school, one of the many odd and amazing creatures that lived in the punishing depths of the deep sea. They too carried their lights with them, luring unsuspecting fish into their cavernous mouths.

  Something about the light seemed to soothe the creature, and I watched it move freely around the room for the first time. It would stop here and there to sniff at the carpet, the door handle, the edge of the bed. It was careful to stay clear of me, and I was doubly careful to keep up my calm, steady breathing. It was, for me at least, an exhausting affair, and more than once, after growing impatient, I almost let myself drift off completely. It might sound insane, but the more I had a chance to really observe the thing, the less fearful it seemed. Once, when there was a popping sound, it turned toward the hallway and froze for a good five minutes before resuming its search. It was, without question, deathly afraid of being seen, and yet it was still here. There must have been some reason for it.

  The creature sniffed its way over to my desk, a mere two feet away from where I slept, and it tried one of the drawers that I kept locked. There wasn’t any real reason to lock it, but something about having a hidden key made me feel grown up, as if I were finally old enough to have secrets to myself. For the first time, it sat upright, and I had to stifle another yelp when I saw how big it really was. It perched on its feet, resting like a baseball catcher, and in this position, the thing was nearly five feet tall. The long legs, ending in knobby, sharp knees, came up next to its shoulders as it turned its head this way and that, staring into the lock. It looked, for that brief moment, like the world’s biggest tree frog.

  It straightened its back, and I thought it was stretching for a moment, but I soon saw what it was up to. Its shirt, an old, shabby-looking thing stitched with ancient material and ebony buttons, was lined with dozens of tiny pockets, two rows of them, stretching from neck to belt line. With a single finger, it reached up to the lantern and turned the light to one side. I realized it wasn’t a crown at all, but some gear-toothed mechanism that could be adjusted as needed. The gears of the headpiece clicked softly, and the lamp came to rest on the left side of its head, giving the Thief a better view of its work. Then it dipped into one of the pockets, fished out a handful of tiny tools, and slid them soundlessly into the lock.

  Words can’t express how quickly the creature worked, how deft its fingertips were, but before I could realize exactly what it was doing, the drawer unlocked and slid open, and its contents were perused before it was shut and locked once more. The lock picking took less than two seconds, and the entire search through the drawers maybe ten. Then the tools were back in place, and its face was turned straight toward me. It had searched the room, sniffing around every corner of the place, and it all led here.

  Me.

  It lowered its strange, flat nose to the edge of the bed and began to lightly sniff. Every attempt to stay even, to keep up the ruse, began to unravel, and I felt my fingers twisting into tiny knots. I couldn’t fight this thing, this monster, not with its long, gangly arms, its massive, jagged teeth. But I was prepared to try. There was a moment when the head dipped so low, so very close to my face, that I was certain the gruesome mouth would open and tear out my throat.

  Then it stepped over me, placing a hand so lightly on the bed that I couldn’t even feel it. The face went past mine, ignoring me completely before setting on something a foot behind my head. I held my breath as another hand crept past, alighting on the headboard, both feet following, sprawling its body above mine like a spider creeping down from above.

  For the life of me, I couldn’t guess what it was doing, but I was still convinced it was just sinking into place, making sure it was exactly where it wanted to be before striking, finishing me without mercy.

  Then I heard the sniffing. The face was low, so close that I could practically taste the smells that drifted off of it. Oil. Grease. Musty places, like the way Memphis smelled after chasing mice through the basement all day. Regardless of how close it was to me, of how powerless I felt, I realized in that moment that it barely even noticed me. The sniffs were getting louder now, deeper, like a little girl in a patch of flowers. It was enough to make a man pass out if he kept it up, and with some sense of horror, the truth hit me.

  I had been so tired when I came in from school so many long hours ago, but I still had gone through the usual motions when getting ready for bed. I’d peeled my socks off, because I couldn’t stand to get hot in the middle of the night. I’d flipped on the aquarium, because I was so used to the extra light.

  Most importantly of all, I’d gotten my bear, the old, green, moth-eaten gift from my mother, and placed it in bed next to me. And there it was, perched delicately, practically sleeping on its own pillow next to mine. As I rolled and tossed, as I always did, I’d drape an arm over it. That was all I needed to make it through the
night, to know that there were good things in this world. That someone, at some point in time, loved me.

  I don’t know if, up until that point, I had ever really internalized what that bear meant to me. Something about the way it had been tossed into the garage, swept away, a relic of a life that no longer existed. I never asked Dad why he put it away, but the look on his face when he realized I had found it had given me some ideas. He didn’t look mad, or even upset in any noticeable way. He just looked sad, the same way you might look if you came across a picture of someone you loved a long time ago. It was a pitiful face, and when I saw it, I made an effort then and there to hide the bear from him. To bring it in and out inside my backpack, to keep it up in my room instead of lying around where he might come across it.

  I might not have really known just how dear my toy was, but I did know that it wasn’t something I wanted to give up, at least not without a fight. And the longer I waited, the more clear it became that the creature was here, not for me, but for my toy, just as it had come for Sallie’s pink doll.

  The events of the day came back, and I remembered the trails, the fields, the woods, dragging the bear along, waving it around like meat in front of a starving dog. I could imagine that the Trails would be a nice place for this thing to hide. The way it sniffed, the way it hunted, it reminded me of a bloodhound. For reasons I could only guess at, my bear was a delicacy, something worth risking coming back here for, worth risking being seen, being caught, and I, stupid little Jack, had practically led it right into my bed.

  Without thinking, I let a sigh escape from my lips. It was a single, deep breath, the sound of someone dangerously close to being roused from a deep sleep. I could hear the sniffing stop, and within the span of a second, the room was shrouded in darkness.

  Silence.

  Blackness.

  These became the world. I never felt the bed shift, never heard a wild scramble as the Toy Thief scurried away, and in that blackness, I no longer questioned whether or not it would end my life in the next few moments. I knew it would, and in that span of frozen horror, my will finally broke. With a shaking, silent motion, I reached up for the Polaroid, found the button, turned it toward the bed, and pressed it. The room flashed, and in that brief, horribly clear moment, I saw it – not on the bed, but above me, half on the ceiling and half on the wall, waiting as patiently as a black widow. The glassy eyes leered down at me as the mouth opened in a wordless scream.

  An instant later, the world was dark. I heard nothing, not a single movement or hiss, and I felt nothing except the most subtle of breezes as something swept past me. A few seconds later, I heard Memphis growl on the other side of the house, followed by his thumping, racing footsteps down the hall and into my still-open door. I screamed when I felt him jump up onto the bed, but it didn’t matter. The Toy Thief was gone.

  Too terrified to take a single step from the bed, I dropped the camera to the floor, grabbed Memphis, and pulled him up next to me, clutching the terrified cat against my chest. He didn’t fight me like he often did when I tried to snuggle him, but he was still bristling, his back still curled. Every so often, he would growl a bit, and I would sink deeper into the covers. But within half an hour, the growls died away, replaced by contented purrs. At some point across that vast gulf of night, both of us slept, reasonably certain that our home was ours once more.

  Chapter Six

  It was almost absurd how scared I was the first time Andy got suspended from school. We weren’t exactly the Brady Bunch, but we never really got into much trouble growing up, either. I think I was maybe six when he first got suspended. It was only for a day, but to me, it was a monumental moment – one of my earliest memories, to be honest. It meant that the boy who I looked up to, idolized even, wasn’t quite who I thought he was.

  I knew, even by that age, what trouble looked like. There were kids, handfuls of them in our school, who never knew what it was like not to be in trouble. I remember this one girl, Angie Breyers, who nowadays would probably be diagnosed with half a dozen things, each with their own medication. In second grade, after an especially wild day, the teacher actually pulled out a roll of masking tape and taped her to her chair.

  “If you get up, you will get a paddling from Mr. Kinney.”

  My God, had there ever been such a threat? Our principal was a bear of a man with a gray beard and fingers as thick as Polish sausages. Word had it that he had an electric paddle that he could plug into the wall, which would shock you every time he hit you, multiplying the pain by an absolutely immeasurable amount. In those days, none of us ever doubted such irrefutable facts, so when I saw Angie start to pick away at her belt of tape with a pencil, I tried to stop her.

  “Psst. Psst!”

  I can still remember her face when she turned and looked at me, a face like a dog that has just been hit by a car. She seemed dazed, 24/7. Her brain in an eternal stupor. She wasn’t stupid. I’d seen too much of her to think that. It was just that her mind, her senses, her very makeup weren’t fit for the world she was born into. Could there have been a place for her where she could have been okay? If her parents had done a better job, would it have mattered? If she had known someone loved her, would it have made any difference at all?

  “What?” she said with that stony, confused look in her eyes.

  “Don’t,” I said. I was pleading, nearly on the verge of tears. I didn’t want her to get hurt. In those days, I never wanted anyone to get hurt.

  “Mind your business,” she said, her eyebrows arching down like wasps. With one more flick of her wrist, she tore the tape away and slowly began to wad it into a tight little ball, which she promptly stuck on top of her desk. I half expected her to throw it at the teacher, but she never did, and the longer I watched, the more I realized there was no greater plan in that moment, no grand scheme. She just didn’t want to sit still. Maybe even couldn’t sit still. Within a few minutes, she had edged out of her seat and was picking at a scab on her knee with the end of a ruler.

  The teacher finally did catch on, and Angie did indeed get escorted all the way down to Mr. Kinney’s office. I never knew what happened down that terrifying stretch of hallway, but I swore then and there never to end up in his office myself.

  I’m not sure if Andy had any similar moments, but his eventual fall from the good graces of his teachers filled me with some kind of existential dread, a well of fear I hadn’t even known existed. The idea, the very thought, that my brother could be one of them, cast in with the likes of Angie Breyers, left me utterly despondent.

  I found out, years later, the extent of that first indiscretion that got him banished from school. It was in the bathroom, a decidedly frightening place in grade school. I remember overhearing some of the older girls talk about the boys’ room, me listening in as they demonized it, turning it into something terrifying.

  “The stalls don’t even have doors.”

  “How are you supposed to poop?” I asked, eyes dropping.

  “You don’t. Not unless you don’t have any choice at all.”

  I still shudder at the thought. It sounded less like a school and more like an institution, a prison, the kind of place you might get shivved if you weren’t careful. I was thankful in that moment that I was born a girl.

  His first infractions were, in hindsight, all small-potato type stuff. His first time was for nothing more frightening than writing the word ‘Fuck’ on the wall of one of the stalls with a Sharpie. A teacher happened to stroll in and that was that. Enjoy your day off, son. Now, that was how it got started, but it wasn’t until a few years later that Andy really took a step into the other side of the law.

  That particular story, as told by my dad after banishing Andy to his room for the night, went something like this. One of the older kids – some boy named Patrick – had been picking on him. General, hazy details were all that really existed, but it had something to do with Andy’s teeth.
This was the year before Dad’s insurance added orthodontic work, and my brother’s mouth was a mess by then. There was a gap in the front, which was bad, and one of his bottom teeth had turned sideways, which was worse. To hear my father tell it, which was no doubt the same way the principal told it, Andy had attacked the boy when his back was turned. They had to take him to the hospital.

  There was, of course, more to the story. One of the girls in my class the following year – Mary or Marie, I forget – but her older brother had been there, and he saw the whole thing.

  “Oh,” she said, choking a bit when she realized who I was. “You’re Andy’s sister.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I remember him,” she replied. “I mean, my brother told me about him.”

  According to her brother, the bullying had gone on for the better part of the year. The boy in question, Patrick something, had started calling Andy ‘Snag,’ short for Snaggletooth. Andy had tried his best to avoid it, even going so far as walking out of his way to use a different bathroom. It didn’t matter. There was blood in the water, and the game of picking my brother apart, piece by piece, was just too delicious to give up. I’ve known the type my whole life, people like this Patrick, people so small inside, so pitifully devoid of anything at all approaching a sense of humor, a personality, a soul, that the only way they can connect with their fellow humans is to destroy someone different from them. They can sense people like Andy – quiet, naturally soft souls – and they hone in on them, tracking them, hunting them, and eventually eating them alive unless they push too far. Usually, they don’t get their comeuppance, but in this case, Patrick did.

  Andy did attack him from behind, but the details were much more wonderful, gruesome, and poetic. After a particularly cruel round of bullying in the boys’ bathroom, Andy decided he’d had enough of being called Snag. He quietly left the bathroom, stopping in the hall to draw out the heaviest book in his backpack. Social studies, I imagine. Then, with a patience that only my brother could have, he waited for Patrick to emerge, to stroll down the hall, to dip his head to the water fountain for a drink. That’s when Andy swung the book like a sledgehammer into the back of his head.