The Toy Thief

by DW Gillespie

  I could see from the mad glare in his eyes that he was seeing it again, that these images were as real now as they had been then.

  “She would talk to me,” he said, his voice cracking. “Tell me she didn’t need me anymore. That I was the reason she was dead. That being in a hole in the ground was better than being my mom. And just when I thought I couldn’t stand the pain any more, I’d hear his voice, telling me that he would save me. He would change me. He would be my mom and my dad.”

  Again his eyes caught mine.

  “And if you only knew how bad it hurt. If you could only imagine it. Then you’d know that it was easy to believe.”

  “It wasn’t real,” I told him. “You know that. Mom loved you. Dad loves you. I love you. There’s nothing here that can hurt you.”

  “Maybe,” he said, wiping his eyes. “But we weren’t supposed to see what we’ve seen.”

  “I saw something too,” I said. “I mean, there was the pain, but…something else along with it. People. Kids. The others that he’s taken over the years.”

  “Yes,” he said, reaching for my hand. “I-I didn’t know if any of it was real, but they were still in there. Still inside him. Like a parasite that killed whatever it latched on to, but they never really died. They didn’t get to die because he took part of them.” He stared down at the floor and added, “Forever.”

  It confirmed everything that I had feared: that this creature was keeping itself alive by kidnapping children and warping them into that foul Thief, swallowing part of their souls in the process. Losing my toys felt suddenly like a small and pathetic thing to even be concerned about.

  “We know his secrets now,” Andy said fearfully. “We know, so he’ll be back.”

  I nodded. “You’re right.”

  I walked him into the bathroom, making sure to stay in front of him, easing him forward the way you might coax a frightened dog. “Now listen,” I said, turning my back to the shower curtain. “This will be a…shock.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Last night. I took my shower. Then I fell asleep in here. And then I…found something.”

  I gave him a few more words to explain what had happened, but his face was already tightening as he sensed what was coming, what was hiding just behind us. I could imagine what he felt, the same way I had felt the night before, but multiplied and magnified. Still, the sun was shining, the birds were singing, the rain had finally died away. This was our home, our safe place, and the darkness that had locked him away couldn’t reach us here. The very thought felt like some kind of violation.

  “No,” he said, cutting me off midsentence. “Not here.”

  “It’s okay,” I told him once again. “He can’t hurt us. Not anymore.”

  “He?”

  “You just have to see it for yourself.”

  With that, I drew back the curtain and listened to Andy half scream, half moan when he saw the crumpled, burned body. My brother, who was bigger, stronger, braver than me, actually dropped as if someone had cut his legs out from under him. There seemed to be a dread inside of him now that was infinitely deeper than any I could imagine. The sight of the Thief scared me, filled me with revulsion and loathing, but it simply broke Andy.

  “No,” I said, reaching down. “He’s dead. I promise you. I saw him die. I was in here with him.”

  “No, no, no, no, no,” Andy kept repeating, shaking his head from side to side.

  “Stop this,” I said firmly, but he ignored me. “I said stop it!”

  I drew back my hand and slapped him across the face hard enough bring tears to his eyes and send ripples of shocking pain up my arm. He stopped shaking his head long enough to glare up at me, wounded.

  “Now listen to me,” I said. “He’s dead. I don’t know if the rest of this is over or not, but his part is. He’s gone, and we have to do something about it.”

  Andy’s mouth was half-open, and a thread of drool dripped out from his bottom lip like a nearly invisible fishing line. The perfect outline of my small hand was clear on his cheek, a sight that sent a pang of guilt through me.

  “Do you understand?” I asked him. “I can’t do this alone. I need you. I need my brother.”

  In that moment, I could see that he was more or less divided, split down the middle. Somewhere inside was Andy, the one I knew and trusted and loved. Sure, we fought, and between the two of us, we had enough issues to fill the bed of my dad’s truck, but he was whole. He was something I understood. The second Andy, the one who had dropped to his knees in a heap at my feet, was something that had been infected, used, and shredded into bits. A patch of his heart had been scorched and salted, and it felt likely that nothing would ever grow there again. Nothing good at least. In time, that dark patch of himself might give birth to something, but only if I did nothing.

  His behavior ever since I had rescued him was nothing less than these two forced in a struggle to the death. As I stood there, the internal conflict inside him seemed to shift, and the better part of him emerged. He looked up at me, and I could see it all over him: his eyes focused and clear, his body at peace with the awful scene before us. He was scared. We both were. But he was, just maybe, equipped to deal with it.

  “I think so,” he said.

  “Good,” I said, pulling him back to his feet. “I think maybe it’s time to get Dad involved.”

  “No,” he said, his voice suddenly panicked.

  “Why?” I asked. “I mean, he wouldn’t have ever believed us before, but look. We got proof now.”

  “No,” he said, even more forceful. “We can fix this. We will fix it.”

  “But we don’t have to do it alone—”

  “I said no!” He looked down and suddenly realized that he was holding onto my arm, squeezing it hard enough to turn his knuckles white. He pulled away, and a look of shame and fear rippled across his face. “I…I don’t want anyone to know…”

  I couldn’t quite imagine what those lost hours must have been like, but I thought I understood.

  “Okay. We’ll do it your way.”

  Neither of us had any good ideas, at least none that we could pull off easily. The quarry was the safest bet, but even that was over a mile away, and neither of us had any great ideas as to how to move a seven-foot-long body in broad daylight. We immediately settled on waiting for nightfall, though we didn’t have any great way to move him. We didn’t know, not yet at least, how heavy he was, but we figured that just carrying him would be out of the question.

  “We need something big. Something with wheels,” I said.

  “The garbage can?” he said without much confidence. I brushed off the suggestion at first, but the longer we circled the idea, the better it became.

  “It might be a little loud,” I said, picturing the noise it made on the driveway.

  “Maybe not,” he said. “If we take it slow, through the grass maybe, it might work.”

  “What if somebody drives by?” I asked.

  “Simple. We stick to the main road pretty much the whole way. No cutting through yards or anything. Anybody shows up, we just park it next to the closest mailbox. As far as they know, we’re just getting it out a day early.”

  It seemed risky, but what other choice did we really have? “Okay,” I said. “But what about him?”

  “What about him?”

  “What are we doing with him until then?”

  “Well,” he said, surveying the body up close for the first time. “We need to get him out first. Any ideas?”

  “Out where?”

  He scratched his head for a moment, then snapped his fingers. “The basement.”

  Our basement wasn’t really a basement at all in the traditional sense. It was completely unfinished, more of a high-roofed crawl space. The floors and walls were dirt, and there was a cinderblock wall in the center t
hat divided the room in two. It was isolated and close at the same time, and best of all, the only door was on the outside of the house, tucked away on the far side of the back porch. If we got the body down there, it would be a cinch to sneak him out once night fell.

  “Yeah,” I replied. “It would work. I really think it would work.”

  Andy turned back to the body and stared at it. “Now,” he said. “Getting it down there…”

  “Yeah…”

  We both sat there, just staring.

  Then Andy said, “Sleeping bag.”

  Dad had bought him a real heavy-duty one a few years ago, and with some work, we could probably fit the Thief all the way inside. While Andy went and dug it out of his closet, I searched around in the utility room for some thick, yellow rubber gloves. I felt guilty for refusing to touch it, especially after the little bit of bonding we had done the night before. Even so, the thought of putting my skin against it filled me with a revulsion I couldn’t begin to explain.

  “You ready for this?” I asked tentatively as I re-entered the bathroom.

  “Not really,” he replied.

  Together, we stared down at the thing in the tub.

  “What about that?” he asked, pointing to the bear.

  “I don’t know,” I said truthfully. “I want it. I really do. But I don’t even know if it’s mine anymore.”

  “Leave it,” he said. “It won’t ever feel the same again.”

  It was true. I knew it was, but it felt like losing the single thread that still attached me to Mom. The only thing that was ever truly from her. I imagined what she would want me to do, how she would feel about all this madness. In the end, I decided to let it go, and we went to work.

  In minutes, we were both slick with sweat, and more than once, each of us had to step away and cover our mouths to keep from gagging. We threw the window open the rest of the way and turned on the overhead fan, neither of which seemed to help much. It wasn’t the smell of rot or decay that you might imagine. Instead, it was the scent of a slab of ribs left on the grill for too long, burned until the good smell of food turned pungent and sharp, twisting into something beyond foul. There were hints of other things too: dark, moldy smells that baked out of the old clothes, as if they had been buried in black dirt for years. We tried to feed the body into the sleeping bag headfirst, working it down an inch at a time. Once, when Andy tilted the head back, the mouth yawned open and an ancient, dry smell drifted out, like old grass clippings in the sun.

  The Thief was lighter than we thought, his skin and body almost crisp to the touch. When he’d told me he never ate or drank, I hadn’t believed it, but now I understood. He really hadn’t been alive, not in the traditional sense, and I imagined that if I pressed hard enough, I could sink my hand into his chest. He reminded me of a mummy, something that had long ago lost whatever made him human, driven forward by some dark energy – hatred maybe.

  By the time we had him halfway in, Andy stepped back and said, “I need some air.” He walked straight out of the bathroom and out the back door, standing in the clean, open air with his nose to the sky.

  I followed him out, saying, “It could have been worse.”

  “Yeah,” he replied, eyes squinting. “I know that’s true. But it doesn’t seem true. The whole thing smells like a nightmare cookout.”

  We sat there on the edge of the porch for a moment, just resting, watching the leaves waving on their branches. “I wonder what his name was,” I said finally.

  “Who cares?” Andy replied.

  “I do. You should too.”

  “He tried to kill me. Or change me. Or whatever.”

  “Yeah,” I answered. The real Andy was back now, and it finally felt like the two of us could talk.

  “You know, I talked to him last night.”

  “You did?” he asked, incredulous.

  “I did. I think he knew he was dying. Something about how weak he was. It was like he was back in control again.”

  Andy kicked at the dirt around his foot. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “I think you know. You’re part of the reason he’s in there right now.”

  “I didn’t fucking start this,” he spat.

  “No. No, you didn’t. But you broke that globe.”

  “Oh, come on…”

  “No,” I said. “You could have gotten us both killed. We were almost out when you pulled that shit.”

  The other Andy, the wild one, would have yelled back, or slapped me, or maybe even worse. But this was Andy Andy.

  “I don’t know why I did it,” he said furtively.

  “I think I do.”

  “Well then,” he said, “tell me.”

  “When you were…dreaming. When that voice was talking to you. Did it feel like it was trying to change you?”

  “I dunno,” he replied. Then, after a pause, he said, “Yes. I think so. No. I know so.”

  “I thought so. He,” I said, pointing behind me to the open window, “used to be like you. The last Thief snuck into his house while he was asleep, took him away from his mom, locked him in a cage, and sucked out everything good.”

  “What are you saying?”

  I glared at him. “I think you know. You were the next in line. If I hadn’t found you, then in a few weeks or months or even years, it would have been you sneaking into houses.”

  I think he already knew this, at least in some way. But hearing it laid out like that, the logic of it was impossible to deny. It floored him, and I could see the other half threatening to burst out and have his way. He closed his eyes, and he seemed to be fighting with himself, like a sick man wrestling with his urge to vomit. The moment faded, and when his eyes opened again, I knew Andy was still in charge.

  “There was something else,” I added once he had calmed down.

  “What now?”

  “Me,” I said plainly. “I mean, when he touched me, there was something he liked. Something…new. I think it was because I’m a girl, but…I’m just not sure.”

  “Come on,” he said, standing back up. “We can’t change any of this, not yet anyway. So let’s just get this over with.”

  We slipped the rest of the sleeping bag down over him quickly, both of us pretending not to notice when the zipper rubbed the flesh from his arms, peeling it off like a layer of old onion. He was, as I feared, too long to fit, but he was thin enough to fold up at the knees. We shimmied the bag the rest of the way and zipped it closed. Then, with me on the back end and Andy on the front, we lifted him out. It was a slow, messy trip through the house, mainly because of me. I was, without question, the weak link in the project.

  “Just drop it,” Andy said halfway down the hall after I struggled to pick our load up for the third time.

  “I can do it,” I said through gritted teeth.

  “Just drop it,” he barked. “I can just drag it.”

  The sleeping bag left lines in the carpet which I followed along and scuffed up with my shoe. I considered getting the vacuum out, but me cleaning house on a sick day would have sent up about a dozen red flags. When Andy had dragged him to the back door, he stopped to catch his breath.

  “Go on,” he said between huffs. “Check it out. Make sure there’s nobody out there.”

  It was a school day, so the coast was clear from kids, and pretty much all the adults would be at work. Down the clearing of the backyard was a small creek, and just past that was the set of apartments. Only a few of the windows pointed our way, but we knew at least a few parents who worked the night shift. That, along with mailmen, deliveries, and stuff like that, meant there was no way to be truly sure it was clear.

  “It looks good,” I told him.

  “Looks good or is good?”

  “I think it looks good,” I said.

  He stomped past me and peeked out the door
himself. He knew I was right, of course, but he just had to check for himself.

  “Come on,” he said, picking the bag up. “No stopping. Just move as quick as you can, and if you have to rest, just drop it and I’ll drag it the rest of the way.”

  Never in my life had I felt so visible and open, as if there were spotlights on both of us. I’m not sure how long it took us to make the dash from porch to basement, but it couldn’t have been more than ten seconds. But those ten seconds were enough for my imagination to conjure up dozens of scenarios, each worse than the last. Patrolling cops. A concerned dad. A nosy neighbor. Any of them were enough to shut us down.

  A small part of me welcomed the idea of being caught. Simply thinking about it was inviting, because it might mean we would finally have some help with this absurd turn of events. We were, despite everything that had happened, still just kids, and I relished the daydream of a grownup stepping in and telling us what to do. But that was just my daylight voice, the energetic, glass-half-full voice that told me all of this would be okay in the end. The other part of my mind, the realist if you will, told me that the more people involved, the worse for everyone. I would have loved Dad’s help, but the second he knew, his life was on the line as well.

  “Shit,” Andy said a few feet from the basement door.

  “What?” I asked, glancing around for whatever it was he had seen.

  “The door!” he barked. “Why didn’t you open the fucking door?”

  “You didn’t ask me to.”

  About three feet away, Andy dropped the sleeping bag with a thud as he scrambled to get the basement open. It wasn’t locked, mainly because there wasn’t anything in there worth stealing, but it did have a jerry-rigged handle made of wire and a length of wood, just enough to keep the wind from blowing it open. Normally, it was the sort of thing you could flip open with your eyes closed, but now, in this pressure cooker of stress, Andy couldn’t find a way to open it. He was cursing under his breath, his face was turning red, and I realized, almost too late, that the other Andy was about to appear, threatening to burst through the small cracks in my brother’s resolve.