The Toymaker

by Sergio Gomez

  If he could keep Jarod talking, maybe the situation would become clearer to him before anyone got hurt.

  “You’re right, Jarod. I am a pussy. I had to have my little brother help me in a fight with you, it wasn’t fair.”

  Keep him talking…

  In the distance, Raymond could see what had been bothering Lucas was already occurring. The Harper boys were being held at gunpoint by another boy with red hair.

  Raymond moved faster than he thought he was capable of, faster than he’d moved since he was a teenager.

  Because there was something pushing him. Something not from this world. A force from the world his son came from, perhaps.

  Whatever it was, he gave in to it. It guided him to go through the Harper’s backyard. Raymond felt everything below his knees cracking—in places he didn’t even know he had bones—as he cut through the yard and wrapped around the house. This would put him behind the boy with the gun.

  Raymond slowed his pace as he turned the corner and got closer to the bushes Jarod had used for hiding. He could hear the argument between the two boys—words coming out of the redhaired kid that suggested his mother should’ve washed his mouth with soap more often.

  Close to the action now, he crouched down low to the ground and reached into his jacket pocket for his weapon. As quiet as a two hundred pound, six-foot-one man with bad knees could, he started sneaking up behind the boy.

  At the last second, he’d decided to bring one of his mallets instead of the carving knife he’d had earlier, and now his fingers curled tight around the handle of it.

  Raymond tugged on the rabbit mask, just to make sure it was on snug, and then stepped out into the part of the lawn that would put him underneath the lights and within striking range of the boy.

  As Raymond stood upright, he also pulled the mallet out and swung at the back of the boy’s head.

  THWACK!

  It sounded like a tennis ball smacking against a brick wall.

  One blow was all it took. The boy’s legs gave out from underneath him, and he flopped forward.

  Jarod’s body hit the ground with a loud thump as he was knocked out for the second time tonight.

  The fucker shot me. I’m dying right now and this is all a hallucination.

  There was no possible way that this was real. Out of the shadows, as if appearing out of thin air, a man wearing a bunny mask and a black jacket, like someone about to go rob a bank, emerged from behind Jarod. The man was tall, and powerful, and struck Jarod in the back of the head with a mallet.

  The attack came as such a surprise—to all of them, but more importantly to Jarod—that he wouldn’t have even had time to shoot the gun if he wanted to. Jamie saw Jarod’s eyes roll to the back of his head, then saw the gun fly out from his grip and bounce on the grass.

  This was no hallucination.

  Jamie pivoted on his heels and jumped at Oliver, throwing his arms around him to shield him if the gun happened to go off while it was bouncing around.

  No such thing happened, but even still Jamie held his little brother down for a few extra breaths before sitting up on the driveway.

  The man with the rabbit mask was picking up the knocked-out Jarod off the grass and putting him over his shoulders when he looked back over.

  “Wh-who are you?” Jamie asked.

  The Rabbit Mask Man put an index finger up to the rabbit’s mouth, the universal signal of “shush.” He said nothing else, just turned and walked back into the shadows from the way he’d come.

  Next to him, he heard Oliver exhale.

  “What happened, Jamie?”

  Jamie grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and pulled him up to his feet as they both got up. “I have no idea.”

  “Was that…some sort of guardian angel?”

  Jamie just repeated what he’d already said. “I have no idea, Twist.”

  If it was a guardian angel, it was the strangest guardian angel he’d ever heard of. One that wore a rabbit mask and attacked people with hammers, he wasn’t sure where in the lore of angels that would fit.

  He scanned the lawn for the gun, but didn’t see it anywhere. Their “guardian angel” must have taken it.

  Shit.

  “Let’s go inside. We’ll tell Mom, and get the police out here.” Jamie said, pulling Oliver behind him as they hurried into the house.

  Chapter 23

  “Good work, Father,” Lucas said from the sill as Raymond dropped the boy he’d knocked out into the center of the living room.

  He let him fall out of his grip like he was dumping a sack of potatoes.

  Now that the boy was underneath proper light, and the rush of the situation and adrenaline were letting him see things clearly, he knew who this boy was. It was Matthew Crimp’s boy. Raymond knew Matthew from church, though he’d never exchanged more than pleasantries at Sunday mass with him, he knew him enough to feel the guilt inside him grow. Especially at having let his son fall like he was nothing more than an object.

  But then again, maybe treating him like he wasn’t a human being would make this all easier.

  “Are you sure this is the right person, Lucas?”

  “Yes, Father.”

  Lucas had felt the disturbance subside in Oliver Harper’s mind. This was definitely the right person they needed.

  “Okay,” Raymond said. “I hope the Lord forgives me for this.”

  “He will,” Lucas said. His eyes blinked, and his smile got bigger again.

  Raymond grabbed the carving knife from the coffee table and returned to where the boy was laid out on the floor. The lights in his head were still out, not a sign of him coming to any time soon.

  Raymond’s joints ached as he stood over the Crimp boy. Whatever power had made him fearless and young again was subsiding. He’d turned back into an old man again a few moments ago, and was able to do this out of the sheer will of a father protecting his son.

  Jarod was unconscious, but just as easily could’ve been peacefully asleep. It was hard to imagine that he was some sort of evil plague in the world.

  But his son knew better, all things considered. He didn’t understand what was happening, except that Lucas needed his help to become fully human again.

  And part of helping was this.

  “Do not worry, Father. When we both eventually die, we’ll both be in heaven with God forever,” Lucas laughed. “Won’t that be a kick?”

  That laugh. Raymond would do anything for his son’s laugh.

  “Let’s rid this world of the evil, Father. Together, okay?”

  “Together,” Raymond said, and lifted the carving knife into the air.

  Then he drove it right into the boy’s chest. The boy’s eyes went open as the blade pierced his flesh and punctured his heart. Raymond saw life in them, but only for a split second.

  Blood squirted out of the wound, around the knife, and onto Raymond’s hands.

  “One more, for good measure,” Lucas called from the sill, like a coach from the sidelines encouraging his star athlete.

  Raymond pulled the knife out, there was a sucking sound as it cleared out of the puncture hole, then he drove it into the boy again. The knife made a new hole, one above the first one, and this one shot more blood onto Raymond’s hands and arms. Drenching him from the elbows down.

  The boy’s body twitched and kicked for a few beats, then went still.

  One down, Raymond thought, getting up.

  The knife stuck out from the boy’s chest like he was a moth pinned in an insect collection.

  He was as dead as one, too.

  “That’s a lot of blood I’m going to have to clean up,” Raymond said, watching the blood that kept flowing out from the stab wounds, collecting on the boy’s shirt, and then overflowing and spilling onto the floor.

  Raymond was finishing up cleaning the blood from the living room twenty minutes after he finished cutting the boy into pieces small enough to stash into trash bags. Tomorrow he would take them to the town dump,
and no one would ever suspect the neighborhood toymaker was the killer.

  Now that the act was done, Raymond didn’t feel too bad about it. The boy would be missed by those around the neighborhood that had fond memories of him, sure, but in the grand scheme of things, what had he really done? Jarod Crimp was as significant as a gnat to the rest of the world.

  If news traveled so far as outside of Dutch County, to them he would just be a boy they would have otherwise never heard of that was murdered in a small town. There would be a pang of empathy for a life taken, but besides that the world would go on without him.

  So, really, what he’d done wasn’t that bad.

  Raymond put the mop into the ringer and moved the lever. The water that squeezed out of the mop came out pinkish this time instead of dark red as it had been when he’d started. The job was almost done.

  He took the mop off and stuck it back into the bucket of water and Pine Sol, then went back to mopping the floor.

  The next plague they would rid the world of would be easier, and the one after that easier than the last, and so on. Until the world was cleansed.

  And his Lucas would be real forever.

  Chapter 24

  The sheriff’s deputy regarded Jamie with a reproachful, squinted eye underneath a thick eyebrow.

  “So, let me see if I got this right… You said a man wearing a rabbit mask showed up outta nowhere and smacked him in the back of the head with a mallet, and then just took him away?”

  “Yeah,” Jamie said. It sounded crazier hearing it from someone else’s mouth. If Oliver wasn’t here to back him up, he would’ve doubted what he’d seen. “He took Jarod off somewhere into the woods.”

  Wilma Harper was standing behind her son, and nodded to confirm, then repeated what she’d already told the deputy. “I got up when I heard the kids coming in upset, and just happened to glance at the dining room window behind me. Saw a shadow in the distance that I think had to be the man.”

  “But you didn’t see…” The deputy moved the cigarette from one side of his mouth to the other with just his lips. “You didn’t happen to see any bunny ears?”

  Wilma shook her head. “No, sir. My vision isn’t very good, and it’s dark out there.”

  “That it is,” the deputy said, jotting down some notes. “Well, we’ll keep an eye out for a man in a long coat wearing rabbit ears.”

  The policeman at the bottom of the porch steps had to put a hand up to his mouth to stifle his laughter.

  Even though he knew it happened, Jamie couldn’t help but feel as silly as the deputy and the cop were treating the whole thing.

  “Look, sir, I know this might sound funny, but the truth is that Jarod Crimp is in the hands of this man.”

  The deputy glanced over his shoulder at the other cop, who just shrugged. Before turning his attention back to Jamie, the deputy rolled his eyes.

  He clapped Jamie’s shoulder with one hand and said, “Son, we’re proud of you—me, your parents, all of Dutch County—we salute you for serving our country, but this town is our town. If there’s a man with a rabbit mask running around kidnapping teens, we’ll catch him. You understand?”

  “Yes, sir,” Jamie said. “I understand.”

  “Good. Now have a good night,” he said, not just to Jamie but to the rest of the family as well.

  They all said goodnight as he walked down the porch steps.

  Bob had been in the doorway, watching it all in silence. His back hurt so much now that the painkillers had worn off he could barely stay focused on the conversation, but what he did catch he couldn’t believe. The kids must have been doing drugs or something.

  Once the deputy was back in his car and the cruiser was driving away, Bob retreated back into the living room, to count his pain medications. If either of those boys stole any, he’d have to bust some heads.

  “Boy, I sure hope they catch whoever that strange man you two saw is,” Wilma said, turning and hobbling into the house.

  Jamie and Oliver hung outside on the porch for a moment. Jamie put his arm around him. “You okay?”

  “Yeah,” Oliver said, “just smashed my elbow against the ground, but I’m okay.”

  “Good,” Jamie said, and then kissed Twist on top of his head.

  “That’s the second time you did that today,” Oliver said.

  “Don’t get used to it, punk.”

  They both laughed. It was a nervous laugh.

  The kind of laugh two people share after surviving a life or death situation.

  Chapter 25

  The strength returned to Lucas’ arms now that one of the plagues in Oliver Harper’s life was eradicated. There wasn’t all that much strength in them, but he wanted to test them. Lucas climbed down the window sill, using only his arms, and then dragged himself across the living room. His wooden legs sounded like rolling pins being rolled on the floor as they dragged behind.

  Lucas got to the recliner and climbed up on to it. “There is still work to be done, Father.”

  “I know Lucas,” Raymond said, settling into the couch with the TV remote in hand. “But can’t I rest for a little bit? Your father’s an old man.”

  “Was there not enough time to sit and relax while I was trapped in that other world?”

  Raymond dropped the remote onto his lap and hung his head. “Yes, you’re right.”

  “The town is sleeping,” Lucas said.

  “Yes,” Raymond said, and looked at the cable box on top of the television. Quarter to two in the morning. It’d taken hours to deal with Jarod Crimp.

  Hopefully the next one wouldn’t take as long.

  “No time like the present, is how the saying goes, right?” Raymond said, more to the room than to Lucas. He got up and headed into the workshop where the rabbit mask was. On some level he felt like a child being sent on an unwanted errand, but then he remembered this wasn’t unwanted at all.

  He wanted to be rid of the loneliness, and the only way for him to have a son that was actually alive, was to do what he had to.

  The thought invigorated him.

  Bob didn’t take his pills before going to bed because he’d taken them after work already. The doctor told him, and he’d heard it on the news too, that you could get addicted to those darn things if you took too many too often. His rule was five a day, and he’d exceeded that limit, on account of not expecting the police to have to show up to his house after midnight.

  So here he was, with his eyes open, staring up at the ceiling. His back was on fire and his mind raced with thoughts of Jamie’s return. Not just returning, but coming back into his house on drugs and getting Oliver on drugs too, considering they both supposedly saw this rabbit mask man kidnap a kid in the driveway.

  There was going to be a conversation about that tomorrow. One the boys wouldn’t like.

  And what the heck was up with the Crimp boy?

  He was deep in thought about that, when he heard something downstairs.

  Bob Harper propped himself up on one elbow, disturbing Wilma. She rolled over and threw her arm across his chest. He deflected it before it could settle, and then sat up on the bed.

  “What’s going on?” Wilma asked, half asleep.

  Bob put his slippers on, and shook his head. “Nothing. Just a mouse, probably. Go back to sleep.”

  At least, he hoped it was a mouse. Either way, he was going to go down into the kitchen because he wanted a glass of water.

  Raymond got through the front door with the oldest trick in the book, a credit card right through the door lock. It worked when he’d left the keys inside his house and locked the front door on himself once. And, as he’d suspected, the Harpers were too trusting of Dutch County to put on the dead bolt. Just like any of the other residents.

  There was darkness all through the Harper home, but that was okay because he’d had enough time to adjust his eyes to it walking through the shadows of the street and backyard to get here. He couldn’t risk someone seeing him. Like the children he�
�d given Lucas to the other night, or the Russian woman coming home from an overnight shift.

  Now inside the house, he had to work quickly. It wasn’t going to be easy to isolate Big Bob, especially not with the others being in the house too.

  His strategy was to make noise.

  It worked in the movies. Making noise to make the person think there was a ghost or something, so they’d come to check it out by themselves, too embarrassed to ask their significant other to come chase ghosts with them in case they were wrong.

  He had no way of knowing if this would work, other than the thought that it had to work. The guiding force of all of this since he’d started making Lucas told him this was right, and he’d counted on it up until this point, and it hadn’t been wrong.

  Everything would go according to plan. He could feel it in his heart.

  Raymond grabbed one end of the coffee table in the Harper’s living room, lifted the legs up about a foot in the air, and then let the table slam back on the ground.

  He opened up his ears, and heard movement in the room upstairs. Heavy movement, not of a child or a woman. Either Big Bob or the older boy.

  Raymond heard footsteps on the floor above him heading toward the staircase, the floorboards creaking over his head. Then, he heard the steps of the person descending to the first floor.

  Heavy thumps.

  Big Bob Harper, no doubt about it.

  The guiding force was serving him up to him.

  He had to get into position and get ready to attack.

  Raymond reached into the pocket of his pants to make sure the carving knife was still in there, then moved across the living room and went into the coat closet in the corner of the living room.

  Bob Harper stopped at the foot of the stairs. From here, he could scan the main parts of each of the rooms down here. The den behind him was empty. The part of the kitchen and living room he could see, empty.