by DW Gillespie
“Who did that?” I asked, straining to get a look.
“Did what?” he demanded. “Just leave me alone. I don’t want to talk to you.”
He spun around, flinging open the door, and I saw it, clear as day. It was a hand, but longer, thinner, inhumanly narrow. The skin was pink, slightly swollen, and speckled with dots of red where the skin had broken. I gasped and began to push into the room. Andy slammed the door in my face and locked it. I started down the hall for my wire to pick the lock, and I heard the recliner being pressed against the door. It was no good – not now at least.
I spent the rest of the day in my room, thinking, plotting, sketching in my notepad. The pictures of the Toy Thief were growing grimmer, more outlandish as the day waned, and long, ghoulish fingers tipped in yellowed claws began to run up and down the sides of the page. More than anything else, I was afraid. Andy could be a pain in the ass, but I didn’t want anything bad to happen to him. I went back and forth, considering the possibilities. Would Dad have ever hit him? And even if he did, would he have been able to make such a gruesome mark?
No.
As the sun faded through the blinds, I became more and more certain. That thing, whatever it was, had visited Andy just the same as it had visited me. It wanted my bear, but there was something else at play here. Never more in my life had the thought of nightfall brought such dread in me, but I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that if anyone was going to protect my family, it had to be me. It was an absurd thought – again, nine-year-old logic – but I truly believed it through and through. Being a kid was like that a lot for me, and probably for you too. Some things just were, and questioning them didn’t get you anywhere.
I overheard Dad calling in pizza, and I caught him in the kitchen when he hung up the phone.
“Heading out in a minute for dinner. Need anything else?”
I tilted my head a bit, rocking back on my heels as I watched him hovering over me.
“Mmmm…nope.”
I wanted to say something else, to warn him about the almost certainly dangerous thing hunting our family. Instead, I just reached up and gave him a hug. My arms barely fit around him, with a foot and a half between my fingertips.
“What was that all about?” he asked as I stepped back.
“Nothing. Just wanted to.”
He kissed my forehead and smiled. “Well, whenever the mood strikes you, feel free. Love you, baby girl.”
I heard him a few moments later at Andy’s door, the two of them discussing the terms of his punishment. Apparently, the music was back on the table. The games and TV would have to wait a while longer. Even after sneaking up on them, I couldn’t always hear what either of them was saying, but neither raised his voice. Whatever fight the two of them had in them had burned itself out.
Dad stepped back into the hall and stopped short. “I’ll run by the video store,” he added. “Anything you want to see?”
There was a long pause. Then Andy replied, “Something scary.”
“Again?” Dad said, good-natured like.
“Why not?” Andy said. “Something gory, too.”
“You’re gonna give your sister nightmares.”
“She can handle it. I’d get a nightmare before she would.”
I realized in that moment that I was smiling, and I felt a little bit like my mom must have felt. Just a pair of boys.
My boys.
When Dad was gone and Andy was safely back in his room with the boombox roaring, I went to work, spending the rest of the next hour or so working out my plan. I went from room to room, checking doors, windows, any possible way that thing might make it into the house. I couldn’t set any traps, not until Dad and Andy were safely in bed, but I at least wanted to have a plan before I got too tired to do anything constructive.
Based on everything I had seen up to that point, the Toy Thief was remarkably skittish. The fact that no one knew about this thing was proof of that, and the reaction after I took the picture only confirmed it. It could have – probably easily, based on how it looked – killed me in my bed. Instead, it ran, getting out of the house in the span of a few seconds. It was fast, silent, and good with locks, all qualities that I assumed allowed it to come and go as it pleased. Even so, darkness was its greatest weapon, and I had no doubt that those lens-covered eyes were designed for nocturnal vision.
So, with these facts in mind, a plan began to emerge. I couldn’t fight it, or at least I didn’t think that was a very good idea. It reminded me of reading about animals in science class, the ones that didn’t really look for fights or hunt for food, but could become wonderfully dangerous when cornered. If I tried to force it into some kind of trap, it would only turn out badly for me.
With fighting out of the question, I had to find a way to use what I knew about it against it. Again, the skittishness, the fear of light. I looked at the sliding glass door, and I thought of the tin cans. A decent idea, just poorly implemented. I needed something heavy, something that would be loud. And just like that, I knew.
Dad had bought me a secondhand drum set a few years ago, and it included a freestanding cymbal that would make your toes curl if anyone tipped it over. It was perfect. I dug it out of my closet and tested it, leaning it against the wall behind the drapes. It was completely hidden. A few pieces of thread here and there, and boom, my own personal alarm system. If anyone so much as nudged open the sliding glass door, the cymbal would topple, waking everyone in the house.
There were, to be sure, more plans, but most of them were too nonsensical to give much mention to. I had my pocketknife tucked into the back pocket of my jeans, along with plans for half a dozen other traps when the time came. Then Dad was back, movie and pizza in tow. We ate, watched, pretended that the events of the day had never happened. It was, more or less, like any other weekend night, with one exception.
“Don’t stay up late,” Dad insisted as he headed back to bed with a stretch. “Got some things I want you to help with around here tomorrow, Andy. Do a good job, and you’ll be playing games this time tomorrow night.”
Andy nodded, rising to his feet, not nearly as sullen as his usual self, and the two of them retreated to the solitude of their rooms. I knew their habits, their schedules, pretty much every move they would make. Dad would be back out, at least once, maybe more, for a big swig of water from the kitchen tap. Given the stressful day he’d had, a beer wouldn’t be out of the question either. Andy, always more of a snacker than an eater, would be out in the next hour or so for one last bite before finally going to bed.
I checked the clock over the TV. Just about five after ten. I had plenty of time. By eleven, maybe 11:30 at the latest, I’d set my traps and head to bed myself, Memphis tucked under one arm. I thought of Andy, the handprint on his back, and I considered trying to sneak the cat into his room after he was asleep, an extra layer of security just for him. It was a lousy idea though. The cat didn’t really like him, and if I did somehow coax Memphis in, he would just wait by the door, mewling, until Andy let him out. No, Memphis was better with me anyway, another personal alarm system. Plan firmly set, I leaned back onto the arm of the couch, surfing channels with sweaty palms, waiting for the right time.
There were countless holes in my plan, but the most gaping was my underestimation of how tired I was. The previous night had drained me in ways I didn’t quite grasp, and despite the fear gnawing at my stomach, my body decided I’d had enough. I awoke to a darkened room, the house all but silent, and immediately, I knew it was much later than I had planned. All my traps were still waiting to be set, so I wasted no time, leaping off the couch, ignoring the clock when it told me what I already knew. It was nearly 1:30 now, and not even Andy would be awake at this hour. I focused on the sliding door first, dashing across the room and setting the cymbal up just like I had practiced. Then I turned into the kitchen and saw it, resting in the center of the room un
der the weak glow of the light that hung over the stove. The most horrifying thing I had ever seen.
It was Sallie’s doll.
It sat on the kitchen table, upright and smiling, as if it had never left. As if the entire episode were all just an awful dream. I walked to it, dazed, lost to the world, and I reached out, placing the tips of my fingers on the cloth skin. I needed to touch it. I needed to know it was really there. It tipped over on one side and stopped, caught by something I couldn’t quite make out. I edged my hand to one side and felt the thin, nearly invisible wire that held it in place, a wire that ran through the kitchen, down the hall, into Andy’s room.
It was in that instant, when I heard the door creak open, that I knew it wasn’t a thread, not really. It was a web. A spider’s silk. A trap, just like the one I had tried to set a week ago. Only this one was crafted by hands that knew what they were doing – thin, quick, astoundingly clever hands. When the Toy Thief emerged into the hall, slipping out of Andy’s room, it moved slowly, carefully, the anglerfish light on its head bobbing left and right as it crawled toward me.
I understood, at least on some level. We both knew the other existed, and so there was no need to play silly games. No more hiding, no more creeping, no more running. It walked onto the linoleum floor, each footfall absolute silence. For the second time in a week, I felt certain that I would wet my pants. It turned its head this way and that, and I noticed for the first time how big its ears were, how well they must be able to hear. The pitch-black hands looked soft and delicate to the touch, but I had seen what they could do, what they were doing. The thought of Andy alone in that room with this creature made me sick in ways I can’t really explain, but more than anything else, it made a part of me bubble with a fury I had never known.
“What do you want with him?” I asked quietly as it passed into the kitchen, mere feet away.
I wasn’t sure if the thing could even speak, if it even understood a word I was saying, but almost instantly, I had an answer. The crooked, hideous mouth curled up in a smile, the only answer I needed. That playful grin was like a knife into the part of me that had fight left in it, the bold, brash, loud-talking part. I felt myself withering, growing smaller and smaller as the awful thing drew itself up onto its feet.
“I…I won’t let you hurt him,” I said in a voice as weak as a breeze. “I…I…”
On two feet, it was taller than my father, towering over me, its head seeming to touch the ceiling. Then, with a slow, careful motion, it reached up with both hands and flipped back the lenses that covered its eyes. I don’t remember if I was crying before I saw the eyes, but I distinctly remember the warmth of tears when I did see them. They were pink, shiny buttons, round and featureless, without irises or pupils to speak of. I couldn’t remember exactly when I had seen those eyes before, but I instantly knew where.
The pet store at the mall.
Andy, Dad, me.
Cute things. Puppies. Kittens. Fish. Even birds.
And piled into a single cage, a dozen of them, curled together with rope-like tails.
Rats.
Some brown. Some dark. But a few bone white, with pink, dead eyes.
My perception changed in that moment, transformed, and I no longer saw the Toy Thief as an it, but as a he. He was a bent, broken excuse for a person, but there was something human within him all the same. He was close now, close enough for me to touch, and the smile grew wider. I could finally see those awful teeth for what they were: jagged, uneven, tough enough to chew through walls. Rat’s teeth. The posture, the curving back, the white skin, the quickness. There was no more doubt in the matter. He was, quite simply, a rat-man.
Somehow, I found the courage to draw out the pocketknife, to unfold the weak blade, to hold it in front of my face. The smile became something worse. The laugh was a quiet, wheezing sound, the sound of a creature that no longer knows how to speak if it ever truly did. I expected him to reach down, to wrap those bony fingers around my neck, and to choke the life from me. Instead, he reached behind his back and pulled out my bear.
My God, the sight of it. The only relic of my mother, clutched in that awful, bony hand. I would love to tell you that the sight of my bear made me break into a righteous fury, that I dove on the creature and attacked for all I was worth, that I knew, even at nine, exactly what to do. But I can’t tell you that. The sight of the bear, clutched in skeleton hands, made me wither, and I fell to my knees with tears welling in my eyes.
“No…” I begged. The idea of losing the last shred of my mother had broken me, shattered my feeble attempts at toughness. I had no plan. No idea. No hope. And so all I could do was beg.
“Please,” I whispered, careful not to wake Andy or Dad. If I did, it would be over. The creature would be gone, and my bear would be gone with it. “Don’t take it.”
The smile grew ever wider, and I became convinced that my life was about to end, right there, on that very patch of linoleum. It might have too, if not for the deep growl that rose from the hallway. It was Memphis of course, my fat, surly savior. He wasn’t attacking – even he knew better than that – but he was standing his ground, ears laid back, fur bristling. I wondered why he would do such a thing when running was the easiest option. If a burglar had broken in, I could just about guarantee that lazy bastard would have found a quiet corner to sleep. Then it struck me. What could possibly hate a rat more than a cat?
The smell of the thing alone must have been enough to drive Memphis into a frenzy, and as I watched him, I realized my instinct was right. He wasn’t doing anything as silly as defending me. Every ounce of his being was in conflict as he stared at the gigantic rat thing before him, his mind and his instincts at odds, his senses telling him to attack while whatever common sense he had told him to flee. He kept doing this little half dance, stepping forward and back, as if the carpet under his paws were on fire and he couldn’t bear to step on it for more than a few seconds.
And there we were, the three of us locked in place, frozen in time, until the Toy Thief reached down with a lightning-quick hand and swatted the cat away. There was a growl, a spitting hiss, and like a flipped switch, the spell over me was broken. I ignored the knife in my hand, and I dove for the bear, hoping to wrench it free. I snagged one of the legs, but he was quicker than I had any hope of being. He snatched it clear and pushed me back with a leathery hand on my face, flipping me onto the linoleum. His horrid, loathsome mouth filled my vision from end to end, and the only thing that existed in the entire world was teeth. All I could do was close my eyes.
“What the hell are you doing to that cat?”
Andy’s voice. Sleepy. Confused.
Then a sharp gasp of air as he saw it.
The Toy Thief glanced back at him for half a second. Then, in a frenzied blur, he was up the wall, on the ceiling, scrambling toward the door. And like a bad dream, he was gone, and the bear was gone with him. The sliding glass door still sat open, the dark breeze outside blowing in, catching the curtains in playful wisps as Andy stared with awestruck eyes.
Chapter Seven
The worst dream I ever had.
Does everyone else have one? A moment that just sticks out, the few seconds of images flashing by, like a movie you watched too long ago to really remember, but too awful to really forget. I’ve never asked anyone else about their dreams, mainly because I just don’t share my own experiences with them. The memories are too awful, too close to real life to just take your shoes off and play around in.
It was that first night, after coming face to face with the Toy Thief. Somehow, I slept, once the night had nearly bled into dawn and the sun had banished that awful darkness. I was in my bed. That was the scariest part. It might sound funny if you’ve never had a dream like that, but every other nightmare is just…off. “Surreal” might be a better word, that feeling of your room being just different enough to make the whole thing seem silly when you t
hink of it hours later. I mean, they’re plenty scary, but this dream went beyond that. It was my room. My bed. My aquarium glowing in the corner.
I became suddenly aware that there was something in the room with me. Without a thought, without even seeing a thing, I knew it was there, and I knew it wanted to hurt me. Where, who, or even what it was, I couldn’t begin to guess, but that sense of bitter hatred toward me seemed to radiate off it. I wanted to move, to scream, to get up and run as fast as I could, but my body was frozen in ice, my joints locked into place. For hours I lay there, that feeling of utter dread permeating the walls, the floors, my skin and bones.
The sun began to glow through the blinds, and I felt my heart finally loosening because I knew. Nightmares, no matter how deep and terrifying, always fade when the sun hits. But the sun didn’t end it. It spilled through, the light creeping across the room, brightening the corner enough to see it, to finally lay eyes on it: the shape of something not quite a man, something bent and gangly, carved out of darkness itself, so black that it seemed to swallow the light that pressed against it.
The light won’t save you…
The Toy Thief was a child compared to this voice – less than a child, a game maybe, or…a toy. I wondered how I had even been afraid of the Toy Thief now that this true darkness had emerged for me, and I realized I had never actually been afraid before this moment. Every moment of my life had just been a dream, and now, for the first awful time, I was awake, horribly, endlessly awake. That silhouette solidified, growing solid around the edges, the dark taking physical form as it stepped closer to my bed.
I’m coming…
Tears ran down my cheeks, and my heart promised to stop if the nightmare didn’t. If I’d had the ability to end my own life in that moment, I would have, I truly would have, just to stop it from coming a step closer.
I’m coming for him, and when we’re gone, you’ll never see him again…