The Toy Thief

by DW Gillespie

  “So Andy was going to be the next one? The next Thief?”

  “Not anymore,” he said quietly. “You.”

  I felt my temper swelling once more, but sheer willpower kept me on the seat. “No,” I answered through my teeth. “I won’t be.”

  Once again, I saw a miserable pity in that face, his brows arching down, his eyes growing watery. He could, for the first time perhaps, see himself in me. Who knew what sort of torture it took to create this awful thing, but I knew that I was the first person he had spoken to in years perhaps. If only this had happened sooner, with someone else, in some other time, how many people could have been changed? How many families might still be intact, still unbroken?

  “You don’t understand,” he said with teary eyes. “Not yet. But you will.”

  “How can I stop it?” I asked.

  “You can’t,” he said.

  “There has to be a way,” I said, more to myself.

  “No. He’s ready for something new. He wants you. Wants to wait until you’re old enough. And then…”

  “Then what?” I asked, my voice quivering.

  “He wants to take the next step. A child. Something none of us could give him. Only you. One touch, and he knew.”

  The pink eyes drifted closed, and I let him be. We had gone through so much, and I feared the worst for Andy. Even now, with no more surprises, I wasn’t sure if I would ever really have my brother back again. And now this. Something else. Something worse, coming for both of us, bent on revenge.

  “One more thing,” I said.

  “Tired,” he answered.

  “You’ll sleep soon,” I said. “I promise you that.” The eyes slid back open and locked on mine.

  “Why the toys?”

  He looked surprised, as if the question itself had never even occurred to him and he had to think about his answer. Then the ragged lips parted in a weak, barely audible voice.

  “Hands,” he said slowly. “They take from people. Feed on them. But the toys…they are different. They soak up all the good things…happiness…smiles…laughter. They are in here…all of them…all he has stolen…the dreams…children’s dreams…they love toys…”

  His hand opened, reaching for something I couldn’t see. “With people, I always felt…wrong. Like I was taking something…something they would never give. But the toys…the toys…they reminded me…”

  “Of what?” I asked in a whisper.

  “…of her…of me…of a better time…”

  My own eyes were watering as he spoke, and I knew that this pitiful excuse for a man wasn’t any more to blame than Andy was. We were, in our own ways, all broken, as chipped around the edges as an old plate. His hand sank back to the edge of the bathtub, to the picture, which he picked up and clutched to his chest. Finally, those awful eyes closed one last time.

  “Stay…” he whispered as he curled into the cold sides of the tub.

  “I will.” I sat for a moment, watching him. Then I held out my hand and said, “I’ll be right back.” It was foolish, leaving him there like that, but I knew what I had to do. Besides, it only took a second to find the bear. It was still damp, but when I wound the metal clasp on the back, the familiar tune started tinkling. He smiled when I set it down on the edge of the tub, but the smile quickly faded into a look of uncertainty. A look of guilt.

  “It’s okay,” I said as he stared at the bear. “I promise.”

  He reached for it then, and I knew in that moment that everything he had told me was true. He wasn’t in the bathtub anymore, not really, not in the way that counted. I can’t say where exactly he was, but I remembered what he had told me. About how the toys soaked up all those feelings, all those good emotions. When his hand touched that bear, was he me? Was he lying in my bed, dreaming of my mother? Or was that glow off the toy just enough to make him remember his own bed and his own mother? I never knew the answer.

  Over the next half-hour, I listened, as each breath grew a bit shorter than the last. I thought of Andy, of Dad, of my own mother, whom I’d never really met. Then, when the breathing stopped, I pulled back the curtain. No one used this bathroom but me and Andy, so I figured it would be okay, at least until morning. Either way, I was too tired to deal with it. I set an alarm to get up early, before anyone else, and I finally slipped into bed to quietly cry myself to sleep.

  Chapter Twelve

  Dad’s funeral was such a blur, that long, arching day that didn’t ever want to end, no matter how badly you wanted it to. There were friends, a smattering of relatives, passing faces that I barely noticed. He looked peaceful. It was odd that he was almost smiling.

  People say that the pain goes away when you lose someone, that every day it hurts a little less. That’s only half true. The pain doesn’t actually change. Pain is just pain, but you build up an immunity to it, like an alcoholic. It doesn’t really hurt less; your heart just gets a bit more numb with each passing day.

  It hurt, not just because of him, but because of Andy too. I tried to get them to give him some kind of provisional pass, a day out under supervision. They didn’t allow it, of course. I had to tell him face to face, a wall of glass between the two of us. I can still remember it like it was yesterday.

  “Did anyone tell you?” I asked him, speaking into the old plastic phone.

  “Tell me what?”

  He had a beard. It had been a few months since I had come by to visit, and I was shocked by how old he looked, like an honest-to-God man, the years just piling up like dominoes. There were even patches of gray in his whiskers. How the hell had it come to this?

  “Dad,” I said quietly, refusing to look at him.

  “Dead?” he asked. If it had come from anyone else, it would have sounded cold, but from Andy, the single word spoke volumes. Apprehension. Fear. Pain. And most of all, the stark realization that he didn’t even have to ask the question to know the answer.

  “Yes.”

  Dad had never been to see Andy, not a single time. I never talked much about him when I visited, mainly because I didn’t want to flaunt my relationship with Dad in his face. It seemed too harsh to mention him, like Andy telling me how much fun he and Mom had. It might have been true, but that didn’t make it a good thing to say.

  “How?”

  “Heart,” I said, and Andy laughed a bit.

  “Could have guessed that. Too many cheeseburgers.”

  “He never was much of a chef.”

  “He had his moments,” Andy said. “Grilled cheese.”

  “Yeah,” I said with a smile. “Good grilled cheese.”

  Andy rested his head against the glass, his eyes drifting closed. He looked like he had something he wanted to say, but it was hard to get it out. Finally, he lifted his eyes to mine. “Did he…ever say much about me?”

  I stared at him. It was the first time he had ever asked me anything about Dad.

  “Do you really want to know the answer to that?” I asked him.

  He let that marinate for a minute.

  “Yeah,” he said finally.

  “He did. He talked about how much it hurt to think about you. About how he was never disappointed in you. Just in himself.”

  “I wish I could have told him,” he said. “About what happened. About…everything from that summer. Maybe he wouldn’t have been so disappointed.”

  “You won’t believe me,” I said, regret twisting my stomach, “but I almost did tell him. More than once, actually. I couldn’t stand it. The thought of you, stuck in here while I was out there. Living.”

  He glanced down at my right hand. “Probably not the life you wanted.”

  I stood up and gazed down at him. “It could be worse. We both know that. It could have been either of us in a cave. Any life I have, I owe it to you. I wish Dad had known that.”

  “When’s the funeral?” he a
sked.

  “Friday.”

  He nodded, his face suddenly working into a grimace as he wrestled with the weight of what I had just told him. He didn’t say anything, so I started to lower the phone back onto the cradle. A light tap on the glass made me pick it up again.

  “Do you still have my old stuff?” he asked.

  “I got a couple of boxes.”

  He nodded. “One of them’s got a tin lunchbox. It’s the Ghostbusters one Dad got me when I was, I dunno, five or six.”

  “I remember that one,” I said with a grin.

  “Inside it, I got a couple old things. Baseball cards and shit like that. Somewhere in there, wrapped up in a bandanna, is that Superman. You remember the one?” he asked.

  “I think so,” I said, the words catching in my throat.

  “Find it. Take it with you tomorrow, and if you get the chance, slip it into Dad’s pocket.”

  He wiped a tear from the side of his nose before setting the receiver down. He walked away without another word.

  * * *

  I was up early on Tuesday morning, earlier than I could ever remember getting up on a weekday. Thankfully, Dad was caught in his own morning rush, too busy to notice much of anything we did. There had been times in the past when I looked at the live-and-let-live policy in our house as a negative thing, another symptom of our odd family, but on that morning, I saw it as a blessing. Regardless of all the forces moving against us, I had a more pragmatic problem to deal with. The Toy Thief was gone now, and all that remained was a body left to rot in our bathroom.

  Dad never used the middle bathroom, but he did stop and check on me and Andy on his way out. Some days, he had to drag us out of bed himself, but we were pretty self-sufficient once our eyes were open. I knew that this problem wouldn’t wait, and that school had to be on the back burner today. With that in mind, I prepared myself mentally and stumbled into the kitchen. I heard the fridge open.

  “There she is,” Dad said in his usual tone. Out of the three of us, he was the only morning person.

  “Hey,” I moaned.

  “You all right?” he asked as he popped a frozen sausage biscuit into the microwave.

  “Sick,” I said.

  He frowned. “Doctor?” he asked.

  “Maybe not,” I replied. “Just out in the rain too long yesterday. Probably just need some rest.”

  He nodded.

  “Andy up yet?” he asked.

  “Haven’t seen him.” I reached into the fridge and poured a glass of orange juice, never making eye contact, when I added, “He might need to rest some too.”

  There was a long pause, but I refused to look back. Instead, I took a long sip from my juice, making sure that everything looked just as it should. Another day. Just a sick daughter and an exhausted son. Nothing to be worried about.

  “Did he tell you that?” he said, an edge of suspicion in his voice.

  I finally turned around, my brows creased. “No. He’s just usually up by now. I know yesterday was a rough day for him.”

  I was on the attack, but subtly so, and I kept my tone in check. Dad wouldn’t be suspicious if I got snippy, but he might if I didn’t get snippy at all. This was me we were talking about.

  “School’s pretty much done anyway. Everybody’s just floating this week. I’m sure it’s the same for Andy too. Even the teachers got one foot out the door.”

  Dad chewed on it and finally said, “Fine. Keep an eye on him. We need to sit down and talk when I get home from work.” He pulled his breakfast from the microwave and pecked me on the cheek. “Be good.”

  I sat at the counter, sipping my juice, never looking up at him until the door shut behind me. I heard his truck start up, and I dashed to the window just in time to see him pull away into the rising sun of a clear day. I took a deep breath and readied myself before I pushed open the door of the bathroom.

  The door creaked open, and I expected the smell to knock me down. I had left the frosted window cracked the night before, just in case, but now I wondered if it had been necessary. For a long while, I stood there, watching the shower curtain and listening to the sounds of robins chirping outside the window.

  “Okay,” I whispered with my eyes closed. “You can do this.”

  I reached for the curtain and pulled it back, hoping that maybe last night had just been some awful dream. I knew at once that it hadn’t been. He was still there, still leaned back into the corner of the tub, his pink eyes dry and cracked, his lips pulled back strangely over his teeth. His mouth looked as if he had died in the desert while searching for water, so dry and desiccated. That awful burned hand still rested on the edge of the tub, gripping it as if it might get away from him otherwise. In the other hand, close to his sunken chest, he held the bear. I stood there, staring, wondering if I could smell anything rotten or if I just thought I did. No. Nothing yet. Just the familiar scent of burned flesh, not unlike a barbecue. The realization made me kneel down to the toilet and retch up the few sips of orange juice in my gut.

  I slumped back against the wall, and once the world stopped spinning, my mind went back to more pragmatic things. I…we…had to get him out of here. We had all day to do it, but I didn’t have the slightest inkling as to how we could ever hope to accomplish this task. He was bigger than either me or Andy, and even though he was as thin as a rail, I figured he probably weighed more than he looked. I spent a moment or two trying to make a plan. Then I realized I was getting ahead of myself. The first thing to do was to show Andy.

  Andy.

  The Thief’s words from the night before rang in my mind once again. This entity, this demon as he called it, wanted Andy’s body, and it had already begun to push Andy’s personality aside to make that transition happen. I remembered the way he’d acted, his normally calm, hard-to-ruffle personality suddenly swinging from one extreme to the other. Glancing down at the dead body, I wasn’t sure if it was all over now or not, though I certainly hoped it was. All I could do was take it one moment at a time and hope for the best.

  Whatever the final goal had been, Andy’s transformation wasn’t complete. He was still my brother, still good – of that I had little doubt. Even so, I didn’t fully trust him. If you beat a good dog long enough, he’ll learn to bite. That was my brother now, and I wasn’t sure how he would react when he saw the Thief dead in our own home.

  Andy was still sleeping, still curled into the corner like a puppy in the back of a kennel. I kept waiting for his eyes to open and lock onto mine, but they didn’t. He was truly out, but there was an edge to him, a sense that he wasn’t really resting, not the way he had before he was taken. He shifted uneasily, and more than once he spoke to himself – tiny, sharp whispers that I couldn’t make out. I quietly sneaked over and sat gently on the edge of the bed.

  “Andy,” I whispered, afraid to actually touch him just yet. His eyes were darting from one side to the other behind his closed lids, and I knew he was dreaming. I couldn’t imagine that it was pleasant.

  “Andy,” I said a bit louder as I tapped his shoulder. “Wake up.”

  I had to shake him several more times, but he finally awoke with a start and immediately sat up, drawing the covers up to his chin. His eyes, as mad as blue hornets, were dancing from side to side, scanning the room.

  “Andy,” I said once more as I placed a hand on his shoulder. “You’re home. It’s okay. You’re back home.”

  He looked at me, and his grip on the blanket began to loosen. “Home,” he said, nodding.

  “Sorry,” I said, and he looked at me, confused. “For waking you, I mean. We need to talk, though.”

  He never stopped nodding, and I wasn’t sure if he was agreeing with me or if he had just temporarily lost control of the muscles in his neck.

  “We need to talk about everything that happened.” I waited for him to reply, and when he didn’t, I adde
d, “Talk about what’s still happening.”

  He cut his eyes at me, and I knew he had heard the message. “What?” he said frantically. “What’s happening?”

  I wasn’t sure where to start. For one thing, I still had questions, and even though I was fairly certain that Andy didn’t have the answers, at least not all of them, I figured he could get me closer.

  “When you were back there…in that cave…what happened?” I said, wanting to get some things straight first. “I mean, what did he do to you?”

  He cast his eyes down to the bed, his face flushing red with either shame or embarrassment.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I mean, you didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “You know,” he answered, finally glancing up. “He did the same to you when he grabbed you.”

  I remembered it well, but I still wasn’t sure what it all meant. “I saw him grab you too,” I said. “Before I got you out. I heard you…in pain.”

  He nodded and scratched at his leg before holding it out for me to see. “It’s already healed,” he said. “In just a day. It heals so quick. The kind of thing you wouldn’t even notice if you weren’t paying attention.”

  I nodded. “Yeah. It’s supposed to be like that. Something you don’t ever see. Don’t question.” I waited for him to add more, but when he didn’t, I went further. “When it grabbed me, it felt like I was sinking. Like I was drowning in ink. Everything was just pure blackness.”

  He didn’t answer, but I could see him back there in his mind. “There was a voice,” he said finally. “Something that whispered to me. Told me things. Made me promises. It told me it would make me better. Make me happy. That I’d live forever.”

  I listened, breathless as he talked. Then I asked, “Did you believe it?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe. Part of me. It wasn’t just what he said. It was…this pain. All I could think of was…her.”

  “Her?”

  He looked up at me, staring right through my eyes. “Mom. I kept seeing her. Her face. She’d be smiling one second. Then she’d be melting. Her skin falling off her bones.”