The Toy Thief

by DW Gillespie

  Footsteps.

  Whispers.

  Voices from within.

  Andy’s voice.

  Dad crying.

  None of it real. All of it real.

  I must have finally drifted all the way off. I heard the tinkling sound of music. Familiar, but hard to place. It came from somewhere just far enough away to be a dream. Faint, growing, fading, and growing once more. It was ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.’ Everyone knows that song. After all, that song had eased me to sleep when I was a baby. It was a memory written in my DNA, the kind of thing I would recall on my deathbed. A sweet sound. A sweet memory.

  I could still remember the time I found it. The first time since I was a baby that I had heard it, but even then, I’d known. It was my song, written for me as far as I knew. A song about the stars, something lovely and sweet. I had been in the garage then. It was the first time I found the bear, the ratty green one, and I found that metal clasp on its back and spun it around with my small fingers and listened. There it was: a clear sound, a real sound, not something in my mind at all, but in my room, rising from the floor, from the carpet, from underneath, lower, under the wooden joists and layers of plywood.

  From the dirt.

  I opened my eyes and listened.

  It was faint, but there was no doubt. It was real, as real as the wind and the shadows on the wall, and it was moving. Heart racing, I slipped out of bed and followed it on hands and knees, creeping across my room, keeping pace with the odd trail it seemed to be making. I hit a wall and nearly screamed, because I knew something was down there, some new horror, and the only thing that could hope to give me peace in that moment was to stay on top of it, to know where it was. Not knowing – that was the true nightmare. So I fumbled my door open and spilled into the hall, ear to the floor.

  I found it again, halfway down, curving toward the back door. It was wandering, fumbling in the darkness, carrying my bear. Was something toying with me? It felt likely, and that question itself was more important than even the bigger, more obvious questions, but none of that mattered when I was that damn scared.

  I imagined the crawl space, open and dark, the musty, murky smell, the spiders, the centipedes, and God only knew what else. What sort of thing would dig around there? I knew where the bear had been, wrapped in the sleeping bag and still clutched in the Thief’s dead grasp – still clutched by the penitent, pathetic creature that died the night before.

  I thought of Andy again and wondered if he would even be any help. I didn’t think so, and the realization that I was on my own made me sick with fear. The tinkling sound led me into the living room, over to the far wall, where it halted, hovering, waiting.

  Then the music stopped, and I froze.

  I held my ear to the ground, listening for footsteps, music, stumbling feet, just about anything that would give me some sense of where it was. Then I heard it: a shuffling that seemed to vibrate the floor itself, the sound of something being fiddled with, shaken loose. I could feel the tremors of it in my hands, and I feared it was trying to tear through the floor right then and there. I sat back, afraid that a knife or a hand might shoot up through the floor.

  That was when I heard the rattle of metal, no longer in the basement but in the room with me somehow, and I nearly screamed. I scanned the dark edges of the room, and I saw it – the floor vent, rattling in its slot. Just a few taps here, then a pause, then a few more. It could have been a mouse walking over the vent’s surface, so gentle and subtle. Memphis had joined in the hunt by then, and he slunk along behind me, back arched, seeing, hearing, maybe even smelling more than I could. He looked curiously at the vent, hissed, and dashed away. I crawled over, close enough to get a good look. That was when I saw the pink eye staring up at me.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Kirstie, the cash girl at the chicken joint, had been pregnant when she ran off out west. Andy didn’t know that, not until about a year later, when he got a message saying that he needed to pick up his son. A boy named Andrew. Andy ended up going out there for a few weeks, spending time with the boy, getting to know him. Andrew was still just a baby, but from the way Andy talked, the boy seemed to know his daddy.

  “He smiles whenever he sees me,” Andy told me over the phone. “I can’t really explain that. I spent most of my life in jail; now I work a fryer all day. And he still smiles at me.”

  “You’re his daddy,” I told him. “He’s supposed to like you.”

  The idea was so very foreign to him.

  “I hope I can do it,” he added.

  “Do what?” I asked.

  His voice sort of faded in and out, and he seemed to lose his train of thought. “I…I dunno. There’s just…I hope I don’t mess it up.”

  “All new dads feel like that.”

  “No,” he said sharply. “It’s not just that. I can’t explain it, but…I just hope I can do it.”

  He changed the subject after that, jumping to Kirstie. It turned out his former fling hadn’t just looked him up out of the kindness of her heart. Their little relationship had been short and rocky, especially at the end, and she wanted to be closer to her family. That’s what had sent her back out to Colorado, where she grew up. That, and the cancer.

  “She’s…she ain’t going to last very long,” Andy told me. There was sadness in his voice, but a bit of fear as well, and I knew what was coming before he said it.

  “She wants Andrew to be with me. Her mom’s losing her shit over it, telling her I ain’t worth a damn. I was holding him in the other room, and I don’t think she knew I could hear. Or maybe she did and just didn’t care. Either way, she says, ‘You’d be better off pitching that boy in the damn river.’ That’s how highly she thinks of me.”

  “She doesn’t know you,” I said.

  He thought about that for a long while and said, “What if she’s right? What if I only make things worse for that boy?” I could hear his voice getting watery. “I love him. That sounds weird. I don’t know him, and he don’t know me, but I love him.”

  “That’s not weird at all.”

  We talked circles around it, and by the end, Andy had made up his mind. He was a dad now, and he’d try his best to make it work. He came home for a bit, then took another trip out a month later. Kirstie was nearly gone by then, so he spent the better part of that week with her, letting her hold little Andrew and say goodbye. When it was all said and done, they were back here, and I finally got to hold my nephew for the first time. He looked a bit like Dad, a bit like Andy, and, surprisingly, a bit like me. I didn’t see it at first, but it was right there in his eyes, a sharp edge to them that told you this boy might be cute, but he might not take shit either. That made me smile.

  * * *

  The eye receded into the darkness of the floor, and I fell to my knees with a moan. I couldn’t do anything more than shake my head and stare at it, wondering how much longer I could go before madness took me over for good. The metal vent cover shook again, and I saw it rising, slow and steady like a boat on high tide. It rose and rose, inch by inch. Then it fell to one side with a clatter.

  That was when I saw the hand, that same burned, skinless hand, still moving, still alive somehow. I thought of how much of a husk it had seemed, how bloodless and desiccated. It wasn’t alive, not in the way that everything else on this entire planet was alive. I knew then that I hadn’t watched it die, not really. All I’d seen were the human slivers that still remained curling away like dead leaves. Now the only thing left was the seed in the middle, the dark, twisted part, planted half in Andy and half in that awful frame.

  The hand receded, and I heard something clicking, whirring down in that black, mouth-like hole. Then the teddy bear rose up, tinkling the same familiar little song. It floated, hovering, held aloft by a red-black hand, which gripped it by a single ear. He swung it left and right, almost playfully, before dropping it onto the
carpeted floor. A gift. Something just for me.

  Then I heard the laugh. Giggling. He knew exactly what he was doing to me. He was breaking me, weakening me, putting small cracks throughout my psyche. It was brilliant in a way. Something was coming for me, something that had tasted me, tasted my essence. He wanted more. I knew that now. He had a choice between me and Andy, and he had chosen me. All he had to do was soften me up enough to finish the job for good.

  I was on my feet, dashing back down the hall toward Andy’s room, falling through the door and tumbling onto his bed. I was so hysterical that I didn’t even notice he wasn’t in there. I checked behind the doors, under the sheets, under the bed, but I couldn’t find him. He had sneaked off somewhere in the night, and though the idea terrified me, it didn’t really surprise me.

  “What are you doing?” I heard him say from behind me.

  “Jesus, where were you?” I said with a little shriek.

  He stared me up and down, untrusting, unsure how to handle the way I was acting.

  “I was outside.”

  My eyes swelled in their sockets.

  “Why?” I said, trembling.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” he replied. “What’s with you?”

  I’d slipped off the bed, making my way toward the door now, unsure of everything. “What were you doing out there?” I imagined him opening the basement door, imagined him being called out there by his master, under some dark spell.

  “Just walking,” he said quietly. He had that same shifty look about him, that same hollowed-out stare.

  “You didn’t see anything?”

  He froze, and his eyes locked onto mine.

  “You’re my sister,” he said with a bit of surprise in his tone, as if he had just remembered the fact. “I’d never hurt you.”

  No sooner had the words passed his lips than he grabbed my wrist, twisted it to a near-breaking point, and kicked my legs out from under me. I tried to scream, but he had stuffed a pillow over my face. I felt something sharp biting into one wrist – a cord from one of his games, binding me to the foot of his bed by one hand. Then a belt wrapped around my mouth, choking me, keeping me from screaming. It wasn’t until all of this was done that I saw his face, saw his bloodshot eyes rimmed with tears.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “But you don’t know how much it hurts.”

  He dashed from the room, and I heard the back door slide open, and I knew it was back. The Toy Thief was inside my house once more – only this time, there was no need to sneak in. Andy rounded the corner first, and it followed on shaky legs, barely able to walk any longer, a newborn fawn with a nightmare face. The head lolled, the pink eyes were dry and unblinking, and the mouth was a black nothing lined with yellow teeth. Hands, gangly and burned, were opening and closing, driven by some awful hunger to feed once more. The boy who’d smiled in swimming trunks, who had cherished a tiny snow globe with every ounce of his heart, was gone, and all that remained was death incarnate.

  I tried to scream, to beg, to plead with the only part of myself that could still hope to gain sympathy. My eyes refused to look at the ghoul that shambled toward me, and instead, I looked to my brother, my only hope, my Andy. I pleaded with my eyes, but he refused to look at me. He kept his face glued to the floor as the voice rose from that gaping hole of a mouth, speaking in tones of utter hatred and disgust.

  “You furssttt…”

  “You’ll get it out of me?” Andy asked. “What you put there? And then it’ll be over?”

  “Yesss…yourrr handdd…”

  Andy raised his palm and looked away as the bony, spidery fingers enveloped it. Something was happening now, something different, something that few living had ever seen. Andy was quivering, his entire body shaking as the skin around his wrist and forearm began to turn black. I thought it was killing him, injecting some poison into his skin, but when I saw the pink eyes begin to water, I realized I was wrong. It wasn’t injecting the darkness in – it was drawing the darkness out, undoing what it had already begun back in the cave. Andy’s skin grew more and more pale, the inky color receding, and he slipped to his knees, his body waving from side to side. Only then did the Thief release his grip on my brother.

  “Yes,” the Thief said in a clearer tone. “Whole again. It takes time to travel from one body to the other.” He glanced at me. “To pass from one to another. I like to make them weak first, to make the transition easier. But with you,” he said, smiling, “I’ll make an exception. I’m ready for you. For something new. And when you’re old enough, who knows…I might have a son of my own…”

  He reached for my free hand, and I pulled it away at the last second, but not quickly enough. He was able to snag the last two fingers on my hand, and that was all it took. In an instant, I felt my consciousness slip – not into sleep or fear, but to be swallowed by something greater than myself. I was part of something large and dark and evil, and it was consuming me piece by piece. I would be changed, I realized that, and in time, my eyes would go blind and pink, my teeth would become fangs, and my body would shrivel and stretch as I became more and more like my master. Most of all, there was not a single shred of hope to be found.

  That’s right, he whispered inside me. Let it all happen. Watch it, this old, pathetic husk die, and know what’s waiting for you.

  It was true, all of it. I saw the Thief shriveling before my eyes, the pink globes going dimmer and dimmer as the hatred that drove them spilled into me.

  No one can help you, he proclaimed. No one. You will spend eternity inside of me, and when I’m done with you, you will…

  Pressure.

  A grinding, blinding sort of pain that I was only dimly aware of. The sound of meat slicing, tendons tearing, bones separating.

  And finally, my eyes opening.

  Andy was in front of me and the Thief, holding something that glistened in his hand. A butcher knife, slick with blood and something black that sizzled in the open air. The liquid bubbled, hissed, and vanished in the span of a few seconds. Then, for some reason I couldn’t understand, I fell backward, away from the iron grip that held me. My body was my own once more, but I was at a complete loss to explain how.

  I saw the Thief, still withering, still dead on his feet, and within the bony grip of his charred hand, I saw the red stumps of my fingers poking out. Blood mixed with blackness dripped onto the carpet, and I caught a glimpse of the other half of my fingers, still attached to my hand, but equally red. A black, misty fluid pumped from the holes where my fingers had been, and with each beat of my heart, I saw the essence of the Toy Thief go airborne, sputter, hiss, and disappear.

  No! I heard the voice say, loud and strong within my head.

  “No,” said another, this one weak and pitiful, echoing from the Thief’s throat. I realized what I was seeing. A fish, caught from a pond and thrown cruelly onto the dry bank to die, and all the flopping and thrashing in the world could do nothing to save it. The Thief reached for me, for my neck, trying to choke me as he screamed both within my mind and without, but the once-iron fingers were weak and helpless, and the hands fell limply away, shriveling, turning to ash on my skin. Blood spewed from the stumps of my fingers, coating my chest and neck with a thick red stream stenciled with a black essence that dissipated as I watched, both curious and detached.

  “No,” Andy said desperately. “Please, no.”

  He was doing something, digging around behind me, but I was too mesmerized by the sight of the Thief to notice. He was almost deflating, the eyes falling in on themselves, the lips receding, the already crisp skin tightening. He was, before my eyes, going from alive to dead and beyond, all of those years hitting him in the span of a few seconds. The skin shriveled, cracked, and sloughed off in tiny pieces, dead leaves falling away. Soon there was no skin at all, and even the bones seemed to shrink as what was left of the creature fell to the carpeted floor in complete
silence. It was impossible – the years, decades, all of it passing in the span of ten seconds, reducing the once terrifying Toy Thief to a pile of ash and old clothes.

  My other hand fell free as Andy cut me loose, and I felt a rush of warmth as the blood pumped back into it. Then the belt was gone, and I could breathe and talk, even though there wasn’t much I wanted to say. I was floating, hovering above the carpeted floor, and my body didn’t feel a single sensation beyond quiet peace. I could have died then, probably should have died, and I wouldn’t have given the matter another thought. Dying would have been just as pleasant as anything else. There was Andy again with one of his t-shirts in hand as he took my mutilated fingers and squeezed them tight. That brought me back – the pain of my brother saving my life.

  “How?” I asked him. “How did you know?” My voice was like the tread of boots in a gravel pit, but Andy understood.

  “He told me,” he said as he tended my deformed hand. “He didn’t want me to know how vulnerable he was when going from one person to the other, but I saw it all the same. He wanted you, but he had to be whole to do it. Half was in me, half was in him.”

  “But how did you know…my fingers…”

  A guilty look swept across his face, and I knew. He hadn’t had some grand plan. He’d only wanted it out of him. And once it was, he was enough himself once more, and he found his will to fight back. It wasn’t romantic or brave, but it would do. He bound my hand up and wrapped the belt around it as tightly as it would go. The pain was real now, almost blinding, but I came to long enough to see him staring at the empty clothes, the last remnants of the Thief. He looked back at my hand, then down at the knife, and I saw the truth in his eyes before he even said a word.