The Toy Thief

by DW Gillespie

  I felt him easing a bit under my touch as some of that wild animal energy drained away. He was nodding, but he never said a word when I grabbed his hand and plunged into the rising water. We half walked, half swam toward the exit, which appeared to us as a narrow line of daylight just ahead. With each step we passed deeper into the murk, the water hitting our chests, necks, and then faces. Soon, we lost the floor entirely, and so we swam toward that narrow line, which seemed to be dimming by the moment. I wasn’t sure how deep it was, probably seven or eight feet, but in my fight to stay above water, our hands drifted apart.

  “Jack,” he said pitifully as the water carried us back and forth in gentle waves.

  “I’m here. Just keep swimming.”

  He did, and I did, and the rainwater filled our mouths, eyes, and noses. I became aware that the ceiling, once a good twelve feet above, was close enough to touch. The line of daylight was close now, less than ten feet away, but it had narrowed to a sliver that blinked in and out of existence as the water lapped against the ceiling.

  “We’re almost there,” I was able to blurt out before I heard the hiss just behind me. The Thief was climbing on the ceiling, his eyes a sickly pink, his mouth an open pit lined with jagged rocks.

  “Mine!” he shrieked as he grabbed at Andy’s back, twisting his long fingers around his t-shirt. “You took mine. I’ll take yours.”

  Andy pushed off the roof with his hands and dove under the water. The grim hand followed him as the Thief continued hissing and spitting, but he soon pulled his hand back, clutching only a swatch of dark cloth he had ripped away. I stared, dazed, desperately treading water. There was a moment, just a few seconds, where I saw that insane anger melt into something else – a look of misery, of fear, of outright terror.

  “Ohhh…he won’t be happy…” the Thief whispered, his pink eyes pleading with me.

  Then I felt Andy’s hand on my leg, and I shot underwater as well. We swam, eyes open, but blind to all but the hazy blue light that beckoned us toward the exit. The pair of us beat our hands, kicked our legs, driving farther and farther away from the mouth of darkness, lungs burning, but refusing to surface until we were absolutely sure we were free. When we finally did come up for air, we arose into a torrential downpour under a dark blue sky, but none of that mattered. We were out. Andy looked at me, confused as to just where in the world we were, and I pointed toward the ramp. Moments later, we were on dry land, clambering up toward the flat field that had carried us both, so long ago, to that nightmarish place.

  That was when he hugged me, for the first time I could ever remember. He was crying again, and I think I understood. That place had broken him, changed him, made him walk into a corner of despair and hopelessness that a thirteen-year-old shouldn’t have to. He had been, for the first time in his life, certain he was going to die. And now here he was, in the open air, standing on grass, safe in the knowledge that a dark cave wouldn’t be his tomb.

  “Thank you,” he said quietly.

  He wasn’t one to say thank you very often, and I wasn’t one to make a big fuss about it, so I just stepped back, looked him in the eye, and nodded. We could see the smoke now, a dark cloud that might have been lost in the storm if we hadn’t been standing so close to it. It rose from small places here and there across the field, tiny holes that only smoke could find a way through. We walked most of the way back holding hands, not because he was weak or tired – just because he wanted to.

  Chapter Eleven

  Dad only dated one girl that I can remember. Not remember exactly. I can picture her face. Scraggly red hair. Dark blue eyes. Always wore sandals. And though I have no evidence to back it up, she just seemed like the kind of woman who would smell like incense. I have nothing against incense, but I did have something against her. She was, after all, moving into an open space that had always been there, a vacant parking spot with the words MY MOM written in yellow paint. How could I like her?

  Her name was Carla, or Carol, or who gives a shit?

  I was fourteen at the time, an especially prickly age, and she hit just about every prickly button that I had. She always wanted to talk, always asked how things were going, and one time she even called me girlfriend. Can you imagine?

  In hindsight, she probably wasn’t so bad. If I had given her a chance, maybe she would have been my girlfriend. But she would never have been my mom. I’m not sure if that’s what she wanted or not, but it didn’t matter. What did matter was Dad’s face whenever he saw the two of us talking. He would get this quiet little grin, and his eyes would get all misty. I knew, even at my most prickly, what he was seeing. The potential. What it could have been. She might just be a cardboard stand-in, but even that was more than he had ever seen face to face.

  There we were. His girls.

  It only made me hate her even more.

  The whole thing lasted about a year before everything started to fade out, little by little. There were never any big blowouts, no screaming matches, not even an honest heart-to-heart between the two of us. Without me saying a word, he just knew, which made sense. He always was the one who knew me best. So, one day, she was just gone. Dad and I were both in the kitchen, making separate, unrelated lunches, when he told me. I nodded.

  “Why?”

  He sighed, the tone of his breath telling me how close he was to letting it out.

  “Just…wasn’t working,” was all he said.

  I’ve never stopped wondering about that moment, and to this day I feel horribly ashamed of myself. He had that chance at happiness, but I was too damned petty to see it. After that, he never, as far as I knew, even tried to find another mate. So, just like that, Carla/Carol slid quietly into the history books, more or less forgotten. Except for one thing. She raised koi.

  Dad took me to see them one day while he was still with her. At the time, I didn’t even know what koi were, but I recognized them from the zoo. There were several huge pools in Carla/Carol’s backyard, like above-ground swimming pools with blue liners all hooked up with pumps and filters. The orange-and-white and black-spotted fish, which were as long as my forearm, swirled and danced beneath the surface.

  “Aren’t they like goldfish?” I asked.

  She laughed, and I found room in my heart to hate her just a bit more.

  “Sort of. They’re a different breed of fish. These are a breed of carp.”

  Dad was smiling at the two of us. “I always heard they can’t grow any bigger unless they get into bigger tanks. Like, if you put a goldfish in a swimming pool, it would get to be as big as a shark.”

  She laughed, that silly, schoolyard giggle, as she slapped at his chest. “That’s not true either.”

  They kept talking, Dad making silly jokes, her bubbling stupid little chortles at every opportunity, but I ignored them and stared into the blue water. I didn’t care if it was true or not, because in that moment, what Dad had said was all I could think about. Imagine it, growing along with the tank you were put into. Never getting a bit bigger than whatever cage held you. I thought of it the rest of that night, as I ate dinner, watched TV, and finally slid under my covers. At any moment, I could venture out. Down the hallway. Out the back door. Into the yard to stare up at the starlit sky.

  And what about Andy?

  How often did he get to see the sky? Did he ever see the stars anymore? How much could a person grow inside a concrete cell?

  I went to sleep that night hating that stupid woman, hating koi, hating myself for being free.

  * * *

  “Wait.”

  It was still pouring on us, but we had made it all the way to the edge of the woods that led back into the neighborhood. Both of us took turns checking over our shoulders, but now that we were nearly back into civilization, my heartbeat had started to return to normal. Andy, on the other hand, was as squirrely as ever, and he eyed the dark horizon behind us as I talked.
/>   “We need to talk about our story,” I said.

  “Story?”

  “Yes,” I said, frustrated. “Dad’s lost his mind since you left.”

  “I know,” he said, still looking over my shoulder, seeming to barely listen. “I figured he would be after all that time.”

  “It wasn’t that long,” I said.

  He finally turned and looked at me, that fresh panic rising in his eyes. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, Dad freaked out, but it was only a few hours so—”

  “Hours?” he said, his whole body shivering. “No. It was…days. Maybe even a week.”

  “No,” I said. “It wasn’t.”

  “It…it had to be…”

  I shook his shoulder, trying to shake him out of it.

  “It’s the truth,” I replied with finality.

  “In…in that place…I couldn’t tell what was going on. It was constant. Just, pain. Confusion. And that voice.”

  A chill ran up my spine, because I knew exactly what he was talking about. I ignored it, for now at least.

  “We can talk about that later, tonight, once everything’s calmed down. Dad called the cops and everything. We have to get back.”

  He turned away from me, staring behind us, his head darting left and right.

  “It won’t follow us,” I said with confidence, even if I wasn’t sure of the fact. I believed he wouldn’t follow us out here, but there was no way to know for sure. The Toy Thief didn’t strike me as the kind of creature that would fight unless he had no other choice. The night in my bedroom had proved that. But it had passed beyond what was normal for such a monster. It was mad. What Andy had done had thrown it into a fury of utter insanity. So all bets were off now. I thought we’d be okay, until the sun fell at least, but I also wouldn’t have been overly surprised if it sprang around the corner and tore into both of us on the spot.

  “We have to get home. Everything will be safe once we get home.” Another lie, but one I desperately wanted to believe.

  “Yeah,” he said, his eyes lost between me and the field behind us. “Home.”

  In that single moment, what I had already known about Andy’s kidnapping came into stark focus. He was changed. Altered. Maybe even broken. I knew, even then, that something so awful would have changed anyone, made them as gun-shy as a wild dog. But this was something else entirely. One person went into that cave, and another came out. I glanced down at the handprints on his leg, and wondered to myself if he would ever be the same.

  We talked through our story, how Andy had been picked on by some older kids around the neighborhood the day before. We never said who, not specifically, but if pressed, I’m sure we would have said the same name. He’d left the house the night before, intending to get some payback by vandalizing the bully’s house. The only problem was, Andy got caught in the act and had to run. He evaded them, but by then, he was miles away from home. He hunkered down in an alley and waited for morning, dozing off for a few hours.

  It wasn’t a good story, but we both knew it didn’t really matter. He was home, and that would be enough. Once all the questions were asked, it would have to be enough. Satisfied and ready for dry clothes, we left the woods behind and made our way toward our house. There was no one in sight. No one ran out and scooped us up. No cops appeared, lights ablaze, to escort us home. It was just two kids with questionable decision-making skills taking a stroll in the rain.

  I stopped Andy next to the backyard and pulled him over to the shed, out of sight of any windows. “You good?”

  He nodded, seeming to barely hear a word I said as he scanned the path we walked up on.

  “Knock that off,” I said sharply.

  “What?”

  “That. Staring. Looking around like a bird or something. Dad won’t buy a word of it if you keep acting like that.”

  He was breathing hard all of a sudden, and I realized he was swinging again, his mood shifting from one pole to the other like a human pendulum.

  “Fuck you,” he said abruptly. “Quit acting like you’re my mom. You always do that. You’re not. So fuck you.”

  I tried not to show how deep his words had bitten into me, and I choked back my natural reaction to slap him.

  “I don’t know why you’re doing this,” I said slowly, “but I’m the only reason you’re out of there. You said so yourself.”

  His eyes darted left, right, left again, all in the span of less than a second. “Right. Good. Fine. It’s fine.”

  I didn’t dare press him any further.

  “Then let’s get this over with.”

  As we walked those last few feet up to the house, I felt as if I were walking next to a bear or a mountain lion. He was my brother, and I loved him, but all at once, I didn’t trust him. He felt like a walking, talking, loaded gun, the sort of thing that had to be respected, handled carefully, but never truly trusted. I could see it as clear as the rain clouds overhead, but the question that pounded away inside my head was whether or not Dad would see it as well.

  We opened the sliding glass door, and I stepped in first. Only silence. The house breathing. The rain falling. Thunder crashing in the distance. For a moment, I feared the worst, feared that somehow the Thief had found his way here, had already taken something much more precious than any toy. Then I heard the footsteps, heavy, leaden, the unmistakable trundle of my dad.

  “Jack,” he said from down the hallway, and I stuck out my hand to hold Andy in place for a moment. I felt him push at me, trying to swat my hand away, but I didn’t back down.

  “I’m here,” I said as I pushed my brother further back into the rain.

  “Where the hell did you go?” he asked, storming into the kitchen. “I told you not to leave the—”

  “Dad,” I said in a quiet tone, forcing him to drop his voice and listen.

  “You’re all wet. What have you been into?”

  “I found Andy,” I said as I stepped aside and let him in. I’m not sure why I did it that way, but I wanted to be the one to let him back in, to be the one between the two of them if things went bad. Andy stepped in, his clothes and face dripping onto the linoleum floor. I never looked back at my brother, because I was too busy staring at Dad, watching him, figuring out what he would do.

  “Andy,” he whispered, and I knew it was all going to be fine. He crossed the room in two long strides and wrapped his son up in a bear hug, squeezing the water out of him as he clutched Andy’s head onto his massive shoulder.

  “Oh God, Andy,” he pleaded as his voice died down to a near whisper. “Thank you, thank you, thank you…”

  “I’m okay, Dad,” Andy said when he had finally had enough. “I’m fine.”

  Something in his voice snapped Dad back to reality, and he took a step back, grabbing the collar of Andy’s shirt. “Where the hell were you!?” he demanded. “I called the cops. I was worried to death. Why the fuck did you do that?”

  I could see it in Andy’s eyes – that wildness creeping back in, brought on by having another person scream in his face. For a moment, he reminded me of a soda can being shaken up, and I just knew he was about to burst. Then he blinked, and the other part, the real part of himself, took control.

  “I…I just walked off. I was…having trouble at school…”

  It sounded fake, sounded like a lie, and I jumped in and took the wheel.

  “There were some bullies at school,” I said. “Older guys fucking with him, he said.”

  “Watch your mouth,” Dad said, never even glancing at me. “Is that true?” he asked Andy, loosening the grip on his shirt.

  He began to blink quickly, but he nodded as well, and the two gestures together made him look more like an embarrassed teen than a lying one. That was good.

  “But where did you go?”

  “I left last night. I was…going to ge
t them back. Maybe egg the guy’s house or something.”

  For me, it would have sounded fake, a half-baked lie that wasn’t ready for primetime. But for Andy, it sounded genuine. Dad knew, just as well as I did, how little he thought things through when he was mad.

  “So,” Dad said, urging him on, “what happened?”

  “They came out. I don’t think anyone saw who I was, but…they were yelling.” He looked down at his soaked shoes, and inspiration seemed to strike. “I think one of them had a gun.”

  “Jesus, Andy,” Dad said, shaking his head. “You could’ve gotten killed. What happened next?”

  “I just ran. I ended up in town,” he said nervously. “I was just wandering. I…I got lost. I ended up sleeping next to a dumpster off the square.”

  “God,” Dad moaned. “How did you get home?”

  “I walked,” he said, his voice suddenly breaking. “I…I tried to get home…I tried, I really did. I just…it was so dark…”

  At first, I thought he was just finding the thread of the lie, taking it and running, the way I always did. Lying was like breathing to me, a second language I was born with, but Andy never was a good liar, and I realized he was telling the truth. He was back there now, back in that nightmarish cave, hidden in some dark corner of the earth as a creature that had no right to exist fed on the best parts of him.

  “Hush,” Dad said as the first tear rolled down his cheek. “You’re home. That’s the only thing that matters.” Dad turned and looked at me with tired, watery eyes.

  “What was your part in all this?”

  I was as quick as ever. “I was down by the creek, just messing around. I saw him coming, so I ran up and helped.”

  It wasn’t much of an explanation, but I knew it would work well enough. Dad was too beaten to dig much deeper. He led Andy back to the bathroom himself and began to help him out of the wet clothes.

  “No,” Andy said, pushing him away. “I…I got it. I need to take a shower first.”

  Dad didn’t fight him, but he did wait patiently outside the door. I had a sudden image then, of a man, a father, tapping his toe nervously outside the maternity ward as his wife was giving birth to their second. I imagined his face when they told him the news, and before I had a chance to change out of my own clothes, I rushed over and gave Dad a hug.