Jim glanced at Amy. There was a curious set to her face. Her eyes looked weird.
Having finished wrapping the doll, Jay picked up his slight burden and carefully carried it into the foyer, gently laying the blood-soaked shroud in the center of the floor. He backed away, back into the main room, careful not to step on any broken, but alive, toys.
The priest’s words came to him. Lost souls.
Jay looked down at the face of a sad-eyed clown who was looking up at him. Jay knew, he knew those button eyes were aware of his every movement and could fully understand.
Jay did not know how he knew that; but he knew.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly.
A tear rolled out of one eye, to splash onto the polka-dot uniform of the clown.
“I don’t know what else I can do,” Jay said to the clown.
The clown’s eyes began weeping.
Amy began crying. Deva and Piper were strangely unmoved by the sight. Kelly and Jenny wiped their noses. Jim and General Douglas both looked as though they might burst into tears at any moment. Eric stood beside Father Pat, the big man struggling with his emotions.
Laughter came from above them. Cary’s evil laughter. Had Jay turned around, he would have seen at least one adult woman smiling as the laughter touched a dark part of them. And one little girl doing the same.
Then they all stood still and silent as the sounds of squeaking wheels and marching feet drifted to them. The squeaking and marching became louder.
Cary stopped her laughter and began cursing, waves of filth filling the house.
Father Pat stumbled through the room, Eric guiding him past the toys. The priest stood at the stairs and shouted, “Stop it! In the name of God Almighty, stop your black blasphemous profanity.”
The cursing voice from behind the smoking side of the curtain faded.
“Halte!” A tiny voice was heard to shout.
The squeaking and marching stopped. The big house was eerily silent.
Jay backed up against the archway of the entrance to the foyer. The others moved closer for a better view. Their feelings were mixed as their eyes registered the strange and macabre scene.
Tiny soldiers, in tattered uniforms of red and blue and green and camouflage, were standing on either side of the tongue of a little toy wagon. Other soldiers were lined on either side of the little red wagon. The group could see where the wagon bed had been repaired. Of the four wheels, one was smaller than the others. The tongue of the wagon was a stick that had been lashed onto the broken-off part of the tongue.
The women noted that the wagon had been touched up with red fingernail polish.
Small rustling sounds from the living room and the darkness at the end of the foyer turned the group’s heads. Before horrified but now totally believing eyes, the men and women and kids stood in silence and watched as the dolls and soldiers and clowns and Kens and Barbies in the house began moving, slowly, stiffly, some of them seemingly painfully.
Some could walk, others hobbled on tiny, homemade crutches. Some had to crawl along. Some had no legs, others no arms. Some were sightless; they were guided by others. They all moved toward the foyer.
The group, stunned into silence, stood very still, allowing the tattered and torn and maimed parade of toys to pass by them. Most were visibly touched by the morbid and tragic scene that was being played out in front of them.
A soldier, an officer, they all supposed, dressed in a French uniform that dated him back to the Napoleonic era, cracked out an order. The toy soldiers under his command moved out to stand around the handkerchief-wrapped bloody doll Jay had placed in the foyer. Gathered on each side of the dead doll, on command, they picked it up and slowly walked to the wagon, placing the doll into the bed.
“Attention!” the officer shouted, his command small in the huge house.
The ragged and tattered little soldiers snapped to attention.
“March!”
The solemn funeral procession moved out, the wagon slowly turning around, pulled by soldiers, until the front faced the rear of the house. With marching bootsteps and squeaking wheels, the death wagon moved forward.
The deformed and mutilated and crippled and sightless toys followed, with some helping the others along, offering support for a bad leg, or leading the sightless. Some were being pulled along in tiny toy carts.
The group, without speaking, followed the procession. Slowly and carefully.
The group tagged along behind, staying well back, keeping their distance. At the back door, they were all astonished to see a ragtag gaggle of little soldiers muscle and manhandle a wide board down the back steps, while others rigged cords that were attached to the death wagon, and then slowly inch the wagon down the board to the ground.
Obviously, all thought, they have done this many times before.
One lone soldier stood by the steps. He looked at the group and waved, motioning them to follow him. He clambered down the board to the group. The group followed.
“What you did with the handkerchief convinced them, Jay,” Jim said. “I don’t know what else could have done it.”
“Oh, Lord!” Eric whispered hoarsely. He pointed across the yard, near some long-unattended shrubbery, now growing wild. “Look!”
A tiny soldier was struggling with a wild flower that was much bigger than he. The soldier began hacking at the base of the black-eyed Susan with his little sword.
Amy walked to the site, kneeling down. The soldier looked at her for a moment, then sheathed his sword and stepped back, away from the foot-high flower. Several others joined the little soldier; dolls in ragged and tattered gowns and two more soldiers.
Amy snapped the flower free and carefully laid it on the ground. Two soldiers, one at the front, the other at the rear, picked up the flower and carried it off, toward the slow-moving, marching, squeaking, procession.
The group followed into a wooded area behind the great old house. As they passed by a hawthorn tree, they broke off some of the fragrant flowers and carried them along into the cool, shaded woods.
The funeral procession marched and hobbled and limped along, into the cool silence.
They were soon engulfed in a wild patch of woods, several acres of timber, unattended, by the look of it, for most of the century. Wild flowers grew in brilliant profusion; flowering vines filled the soft air with a gentle mixture of fragrances. The group followed the procession deeper into the woods, following not only the sounds, but a tiny, well-worn path, worn smooth over the long years by hundreds of tiny feet.
Dusty shards of sunlight, penetrating through the thick overhang, gave the few acres a peaceful, cathedral aura. The group stopped at the edge of a small clearing, near the center of the timber.
The group stood and did some more staring. The small mounds of earth before their eyes told the story. It was a graveyard. A toy graveyard.
A small hole had already been scooped out of the soft earth with tiny toy shovels. The group stood at the edge of the clearing, not knowing what to do; not knowing if their help was either wanted or needed. They could but stand and observe.
And silently struggle with their already overtaxed emotions.
At a command from the officer, the doll form of Lucy Jordan was lowered into the hole with cords, then the earth was shoved and pushed over her. Jay and the others offered their hawthorn blooms to some little people, and with a smile, they were accepted and placed over the freshly covered mound.
Throughout it all, Father Pat had prayed silently.
The officer cracked out a sharp command, and that was it, the service was over. Obviously, there were no ministers present in toy form.
Jay stood with his eyes closed for a few seconds, then he felt something tugging at his leg. He looked down. The officer who had led the procession was looking up at him.
“Merci, monsieur,” the toy soldier called, his voice very small in the hushed silence of the timber.
“You’re ... welcome,” Jay said. He was
very nearly at his emotional end, and he felt the others were as well. He could not remember ever being so drained.
General Douglas drew himself up straight and proud and saluted the French officer.
The officer returned the salute, then wheeled about and marched off in his worn and tattered uniform, stiff and straight and proud.
Marching, limping, staggering and being led, the soldier with the useless legs was being pushed along in a tiny toy wheelbarrow, all to the sounds of the squeaking little wagon. The woods soon emptied.
Jim exhaled slowly as he leaned against a tree. He rubbed his face with his hands. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered.
“That old bat was right,” Amy said. “God has forsaken this place.”
“No,” Father Pat corrected. “He has not. We’re here. We’re fighting. I think He was just waiting for the right soldiers.”
Amy looked around her and began to laugh almost hysterically. Jim grabbed her and shook her. “What’s the matter with you, Amy!”
“This is God’s army?” the young woman questioned. “A handful against the entire town? Get off of it, for God’s sake.”
Jay remembered Kelly’s words. For God’s sake. He looked at Jenny. The child was smiling strangely. He could no longer deny that the girl was behaving in a very odd manner.
Could it be?
He brushed that thought away from him. “If we’re His army, then we’d better get to mapping out a battle plan.”
* * *
They saw no little people as they made their way out of the woods and back to the rear of the house. The board down the steps had been removed.
“Look at the house,” Eric said, his voice thick with emotion.
Every window, from the ground floor to the attic, was filled with toy people, staring silently at them.
“We’ll come back!” Jay yelled. “I promise you that. We’re your friends. Please believe that.”
The little people all nodded their heads.
“I wonder,” General Douglas muttered. “Do they . . . eat?”
“I saw several small animal traps rigged in the woods we just left,” Eric said softly. “I guess they do.”
“But that’s . . . ” Amy started to say that was impossible. But she didn’t know what was or wasn’t possible.
“That little dog you told us about,” Father Pat said. “You don’t suppose? . . . ”
“I’d hate to think that.” Jim shuddered.
Jay shook his head. “I don’t think they eat at the time. And that’s just a hunch. And no, I don’t think they eat dogs or cats. But I do think they defend themselves against them. Maybe I’m wrong. I hope not. But we’d eat a lot of things we ordinarily wouldn’t eat in a harsh survival situation, right?”
When Jim spoke, his voice mirrored his weariness. “How are we going to help them?”
No one replied. They were all just about at the end of their emotional string.
“I don’t know,” Jay finally answered for all present.
They slowly walked back to their vehicles. Jay put his forehead on the steering wheel and let the tears come, blinding him. He was not at all ashamed of his tears. He let them flow.
He could not ever, in his entire life, remember ever being so moved by what he had witnessed from the toys.
Most of the group were silently weeping.
But not all of them had a dam of emotions to break. Some of them were just damned.
They sat quietly, their eyes mocking the actions of the others.
After a few moments, Jay wiped his eyes on his sleeve and cleared his throat. But he still did not trust himself to speak. He started to crank the car. His hand froze at the key. A little soldier, dressed in modern-day cammies and jump boots, stood on the hood of the car, staring in through the windshield.
Jay stared back at him.
“Please help us!” the tough-looking little soldier pleaded. He slid off the hood of the car and went double-timing under the house.
Jay cranked the car and lowered the window. “We’ll help you. We’ll be back. I promise.”
In the distance, at the far edge of the field, out of pistol range, the evil-eyed teenagers stood silently, watching.
Their time would come. All they had to do was be patient.
7
Afternoon melted into dusk, and still the kids did not show up for the cookout.
On his front porch, old man Milton rocked and squeaked.
“I feel like going over there and slapping that old bastard out of that chair,” General Douglas growled.
“He can’t help what he’s doing,” Father Pat said from the darkness of the porch. “There is nothing there but a shell.”
“The kids aren’t going to show up,” Jim said. “And I’ve got a feeling that the longer we wait, the stronger the . . . town is going to get.”
“I agree with you,” Jay replied, watching as a car drove slowly down the street, made the circle, and came back.
Profane laughter ripped from the car, directed at those on the porch.
“Trying to taunt us into doing something,” Eric said. “But I don’t understand one part of it. If Jay has to die a natural death in order for the town to benefit, it sure seems that we’re all being threatened a lot.”
“A natural death might be construed as anything,” Jim said. “A car wreck, killed during a robbery. Whatever.”
“I think that codicil in the will was pure bull.” Jay glanced at the priest. “Excuse me, Pat.”
“Quite all right, Jay.
Jay stood up. “I’m so tired, so emotionally drained, I can’t think straight. Tomorrow, I take the fight to them!” He waved his hand at the darkness. “Anybody wants to join me, jump on the wagon.”
The sigh from Father Pat was very audible in the darkness.
“Something wrong, Father?” Jim asked.
Eric answered for his friend. “He was in hopes we could do this without violence.”
“How do you deal with the . . . devil nonviolently?” General Douglas asked.
“You don’t understand,” the priest said. “Many of these people cannot help what they’ve become. The blame must be placed upon their parents, grandparents, back down the lineage line . . . for generations.” He fell silent.
“When we came to this town,” Eric said, “both of us believed the job would not be nearly so complex. Find the source of evil, root it out, destroy it. Something we’ve done many, many times over the years. Neither of us suspected it would involve the entire town.”
“Are you saying this is a first?” Jay asked.
“Oh, no. Other priests and ministers have confronted entire towns. In Nebraska, New York, Louisiana. In two cases, the entire towns were destroyed.”
“But they had help from a higher power,” Father Pat said. “Up in Canada, God’s mercenary even lent a hand.”
“God’s ... mercenary?” Jim stared at the dark outline of the priest.
“Michael.”
“He appeared? On earth?”
“So it is rumored among those of us, of all faiths, who have dedicated our lives to combatting Satan. I believe it.”
“I’m not counting on anybody else except us,” Jay said, opening the screen door.
“And perhaps you should not count too heavily on all of us,” the priest warned softly.
“I know,” Jay replied. He stepped inside. The screen door hissed closed.
* * *
Jay left the house early the next morning, after tucking the .45 under his waistband and laying a shotgun on the back seat of the car.
From the house, eyes watched him leave.
He drove to Holcomb’s Supermarket and got out, carefully locking the car. Everything he had seen thus far appeared normal.
Any outsider passing through would not give the town a second glance.
Then the total awfulness, the magnitude of it all, hit home.
Outsiders! Jay thought, leaning against the car. It was a fair bet that everyone in t
own had relations outside of town. They have to come visit. Many would attend church with their kin. When they left, did they leave whole? The same as when they came to visit?
Jay doubted it.
And the toys at the huge store. They were shipped all around the nation, possibly even overseas. Many of them carrying the dark evil message.
And, he pondered, if the so-called good toys could come alive, what would prevent evil toys from doing the same?
The answer: nothing.
There were several hundred toys out at the old Clute place. Good toys. But there had been thousands of toys shipped out of Victory.
“Good God!” Jay muttered.
“Jay.” The voice jarred him back to reality. He looked into the face of Deva’s ex-husband.
“Lawson. How are you?” Lawson looked pretty much the same. Just like – old man Milton. Just like a lot of people around the town. They had not aged as the years rolled on.
Of course they hadn’t. They were forever frozen as their souls left them. They were, as the priest said, shells.
Jay held out his hand. Lawson looked at it, then slowly raised his arm, extending his hand. Jay took it. Cool to the touch. The skin felt smooth to the touch. Porcelainlike. Jay looked deeply into Lawson’s eyes. They were too bright, too shiny.
Jay struggled inwardly to keep his fear from surfacing.
Lawson pulled his hand away. “I have to go now, Jay. Good-bye.”
The man walked away. But his walk was not quite right. Just a bit stiff.
“Dear God in heaven,” Jay muttered. “I’ve just shaken hands with a mannequin!”
Jay walked into the supermarket. Getting a shopping cart, Jay roamed the aisles. He saw a man he’d gone to school with. Couldn’t remember his full name. Bill something. Jay walked up to him and stuck out his hand. “Hi, Bill. Haven’t seen you in a long time.”
The man stared at him. Cocked his head to one side. Slowly a light of recognition came into the eyes. “Oh. Hi, Jay.” He shook hands. The touch was the same. Cool. Smooth. Artificial.
Bill walked on, pushing his cart.
And right over there, in the frozen-food section. Jay knew the lady. Nancy – he couldn’t think of her last name. Nancy Hall. Pushing his cart, he walked toward her.
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