The Toymaker

by Sergio Gomez

  “Are you feeling ill, Father?”

  Raymond shook his head slowly. “I—I’m not so sure about this Lucas.”

  Lucas put his hand on top of Raymond’s to calm him. The dummy’s hand was cold on his, but smooth like the seat of a chair that had been varnished but never used.

  “No need to fret, Father. I don’t want to put you in harm’s way.” Lucas moved his hand away and held it up like a child asking for allowance. “The knife. Let me take over from here.”

  “What’re you going to do?”

  “The boy’s brother is in there, and his ensnarement is the source of Oliver’s disturbance.”

  “You plan on breaking Jamie Harper free?” There was almost a gasp at the end of the question.

  Lucas nodded. “The knife, Father.”

  “Lucas, they have guns.”

  “I have powers beyond those of this world on my side, Father. You will see.”

  Raymond licked his lips, which suddenly felt as dry as cotton balls. “What exactly do you have planned, Son?”

  “To free Jamie Harper. To free him so that Oliver Harper’s pain will stop.”

  “That’s not a plan. You know there are people in there whose jobs it is to make sure Jamie Harper—or anyone else for that matter—doesn’t get out?”

  “I know, Father.”

  “Then tell me how you plan on getting him out. You plan on going in there and killing a bunch of police?”

  “Father, hand me the knife.”

  “Lucas, I demand a straight answer. I’m your father. I’m the person who brought you into this world. You answer me, right now.”

  Lucas frowned, and somehow the expression was more horrifying to Raymond than the thought of his son going in there and getting gunned down.

  “Don’t take that tone of voice with me, Father. It hurts me. You don’t want me to be hurt, do you?”

  The bluster that had filled Raymond for that moment evaporated on his next breath. His son wasn’t a normal boy. Not yet. Maybe, not ever. He couldn’t treat him like the child he thought of him as. “Lucas, I’m just worried. What happens if they shoot you? Do you even know?”

  Lucas shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “Your…magic won’t protect you?”

  “Magic?”

  “Whatever it is that allows you to do what you do.”

  Lucas looked out the car window, he had to stand up with his hands against the dash to see the jailhouse down there. “I don’t know yet everything my magic can do. I guess I’ll find out.”

  “I don’t want you to be killed.” Raymond found there were tears in his eyes. “Can we do this another way?”

  “We need to release Oliver Harper’s brother from there.” Lucas insisted. “There is no other way. Remember how helpless I was only hours ago?”

  He remembered very well, and knew he didn’t want to see him like that again. “Okay Lucas… Okay. If you say so.”

  “This is the easiest way.” Lucas opened the car door, but before climbing out he stopped and said, “If I don’t come back in fifteen minutes, assume that bullets have killed me, and drive home. Don’t look back.”

  Raymond took in a deep breath.

  Lucas climbed out of the car, and then started for the jailhouse.

  No car in the driveway. No activity they noticed in the ten minutes of watching the house from the other side of the street. They had to move quick, though, before someone drove by and saw them suspiciously staring into someone’s house.

  “You lead the way, Marino,” Gina urged as they crossed the street. “You’re the one who knows how to do this, supposedly.”

  “No supposedly about it, Homeschool,” Tommy said, and started marching with more confidence than he actually had in him at the moment.

  Fake it ‘til you make it.

  At the door, he felt Gina and Oliver behind him, crowding close. He felt all of the pressure of the situation suddenly.

  The old credit card Gina had gotten from her house when he said he needed one to break the lock was the key to solving all of this rabbit killer nonsense for the town. If—and it was a big if—he could remember how Pauly had taught him to break into places.

  Tommy took the credit card out, and slid it into the side of the frame the lock was on. At the same time, he twisted the handle, hoping the force of the plastic would disrupt the mechanism that held the lock in place and open it.

  First attempt, no luck.

  He tried it again. Nothing.

  A third time, this time trying to hold the card closer to the jamb. There was an odd little click, like something gave, but when he twisted the knob, it was still locked.

  “Come on, Slick,” Gina mocked.

  She had become the unvolunteered lookout because Twist’s eyes were glued to Tommy working the lock, and each failed attempt made her antsier. Each second was a second closer to them being caught. Either by someone driving by or by Mr. Gibson returning from wherever he was.

  Tommy had taken a break from trying to undo the lock and wiped his sweaty palms on the front of his jeans.

  “Okay,” he said under his breath.

  Gina’s remark didn’t help any, but he understood where her impatience was coming from. He was nervous about being caught. Drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes and paying kids to do his homework were different levels of crimes than breaking and entering.

  This had to be done, though.

  He slid the credit card through the gap, twisted the knob as hard as he could, and heard the metal pop. The sound was satisfying in and of itself, he felt a sense of pride even before turning the knob all the way and the door swung open. The momentum and the surprise that it worked made Tommy stumble forward. It was as if the house itself was pulling him into it. He reached out and grabbed the knob with both hands.

  Tommy got his footing, then turned to the others with a grin. For some reason, perhaps because the house was darkened from the blinds and curtains all being closed, he felt compelled to whisper.

  “Told ya,” he said.

  “Uh-huh,” Gina said, pushing past him and going into the house. “Shut up, and hurry up.”

  She was going to feel better (misguided but better nonetheless) once they were inside behind the closed door. Then, nobody on the street could see them and the only risk was the old man coming home while they were in there.

  Twist was the last one in, and he closed the door behind him. As soon as the door clicked, all three of the children felt something in the air change.

  There was something dark in here with them—or something had left behind a trail of strange energy in the house at the very least. Like a stinky animal’s stench, only this was something they felt in their core.

  It made them whisper, even though they were sure Mr. Gibson wasn’t in here.

  “Where do we search first?” Gina asked.

  The place was nothing like they would have imagined Mr. Gibson’s home to be like. It was neat in an odd way. There was a blanket that had been meticulously folded and thrown over the loveseat sitting in front of the television. The TV remote was in the center of the coffee table, pointed at the television as if it never moved from that spot. There was a small, polished wooden table in the corner with a spindly plant in a white vase on top of it. The drawn curtains seemed like an odd choice for an unmarried old man to have chosen on his own. They were knitted, with flowers on them, and looked like something his mother may have chosen and he’d kept as a memento of her.

  “How do you guys feel about splitting up?” Tommy said, glancing at them.

  “Don’t like it,” Gina offered. “You ever watch an episode of Scooby-Doo?”

  “I’m with her. Let’s just stick together.” Twist said.

  “Okay, then. Where do we start?” It was Tommy who asked the question this time.

  There was a door next to the living room that looked like it didn’t belong. The walls, too. There was no wallpaper on these particular walls; instead they were painted a
pale brown. It looked like a shoddily done add-on to the house over a space that once had been a part of the living room.

  “Let’s start there,” Gina said, pointing to this part of the house.

  Tommy and Twist were thinking the same thing. The oddness of the walls seemed to be screaming that they were hiding something.

  “Yeah, okay,” Tommy said, and led them through the living room.

  The entire time, they couldn’t help but feel like the house had eyes, and the eyes were watching them. Watching their every move.

  Chapter 7

  The days before Thanksgiving were always slow. Even today was slow at the jailhouse. Despite that they had Jamie Harper in the holding cell, the Sheriff had decided it was “business as usual.”

  Since William Harris was a widower with grown children that lived all across the country and only visited him on Christmas, Thanksgiving was a lonely time of the year for him. As such, he worked the jailhouse with as little support as possible while the rest of the officers were at home spending time with their families.

  Not that there was usually much activity at the Dutch County jailhouse outside of some hillbillies coming into the towns and getting into fistfights at the bars. Most of the time they kept it between their own kind, but occasionally they’d assault one of the locals. Or get caught pissing on someone’s lawn or vandalizing or breaking into someone’s car and they’d get hauled into one of the cells overnight.

  As far as local activity went, there were the drunk drivers, domestic violence cases, underage drinkers, shoplifters and such. Nothing quite on this scale, where someone had murdered their stepfather and a teenager was missing, but even still, Sheriff Harris didn’t want to call in any extra help unless it was absolutely necessary.

  He was thinking about why the Crimp boy’s body hadn’t turned up, and why Bob Harper had been left a bloody mess in the middle of his living room.

  This was all so strange.

  And what made even less sense about it was that, according to Jamie Harper, the kidnapping had happened hours before Bob Harper had been killed.

  The more he thought about it, the less it seemed to add up that Jamie had been the cause of both.

  One? Maybe.

  But both? He wouldn’t bet on that horse, not even back in his gambling days.

  These thoughts raced through Sheriff Harris’ mind as he pulled the cruiser into the Rosalie neighborhood, and onto Dudley Street.

  It was only Deputy Smith and Officer Brian Humboldt in the jailhouse lobby.

  Dwayne told him about the dispute he’d had with the Sheriff, and that the Sheriff had said he was going to “collect more evidence” before storming out of the jailhouse. It had seemed to him that something happened or was said in the conversation with Jamie Harper that had made him change his mind about the facts of the case.

  Brian Humboldt, a man of few words, had just nodded as he listened to the deputy. When he was finished, Officer Humboldt picked up his Mad magazine and went back to reading it.

  Deputy Dwayne had joined him behind the desk, with his feet up on it while he watched Seinfeld on the crappy black and white TV they had in the office.

  The clock on the wall ticked behind him, almost in synchronized rhythm with his heartbeat. Each passing second, though, his heart sped up faster and faster, leaving the small hand on the clock behind.

  Something wasn’t right in the air.

  Not just in the jailhouse, but in the air of the whole town.

  Deputy Smith got up and grabbed his coat off the rack in the corner of the room. “I’m going out for a smoke, Brian.”

  That was the first thing either of them had said since Dwayne had recounted the events to the officer, and it wasn’t because they disliked each other, but because the strangeness of the situation had both of them trapped in their own heads.

  Without looking up, Officer Humboldt nodded and turned the page on his magazine.

  Patting the pocket of his jacket, Dwayne made sure his cigarettes were in there before heading out the door.

  The extra room—the hidden room as the kids were thinking of it—was nothing like the rest of the house they’d seen.

  Nothing here was neat and tidy. There was no rhyme or reason to where anything was placed. There were pieces of toys all over. The floor was littered with pieces of wood, plastic, and unfinished trinkets.

  There was an oak desk pushed into the far wall that was cluttered with paintbrushes, carved wood with no discernible shapes, and pieces of paper with diagrams and measurements written on them like alien code. Tools were laid out in every which way: drills, drill bits, hammers, rubber mallets, screwdrivers, saws, the works.

  This was the room of someone whose sole purpose in their day was to work on projects. Of someone who had no time for order.

  Except on the shelf in the corner of the room, where toys were lined up and dusted like trophies.

  Twist and Gina recognized them instantly as the ones that had been hanging out in the front bay window of Mr. Gibson’s house in the previous years. The Santa Claus caricature, the twelve-inch nutcracker, the wooden Jack-O-Lantern whose eyes glowed yellow at night, the dancing Easter bunny with his basket, and so on.

  They remembered the years Mr. Gibson put them out there as vividly as if it were yesterday. They’d been just weird toys back then, something they never thought about much unless they were passing his house.

  But here, in the partial darkness of where they’d been created, they seemed more like captured prisoners. The eyes on the Santa Claus and the rabbit were dead because they were made of plastic, of course, but something else, too.

  The spirit was in here.

  The thought passed through their minds at the same time, and Twist and Gina both looked at one another as it did.

  Tommy was ahead of them, grabbing at a marionette puppet hanging on a line over the desk. It was an overweight man in a black suit with a black top hat like Abraham Lincoln wore.

  “This old man must be damn lonely,” Tommy said, spinning the marionette puppet around on its string.

  “Don’t touch it,” Gina scolded.

  “What? Why not?” Tommy stopped.

  “Because—just because, Tommy,” Gina said. “We shouldn’t touch anything.”

  Tommy moved his hand off the puppet, and without any arguing nodded to her.

  Twist, ignoring what Gina had said, opened up the top drawer of the oak desk. The thing was heavier than he expected it to be, and so he had to put in extra muscle to pull it open. What he saw inside made his heart stop.

  A rabbit’s face with no eyes laid inside. It was so realistic that for a second Twist thought he was looking at the severed head of an animal, there was even fur covering parts of the mask. Laying on top of it was a knife specked with crusty red blood.

  “Guys,” Twist said, getting the attention of the other two.

  He felt like running out of this house, running until his heart exploded out of his chest or his legs broke into pieces, whichever came first. The last thing he wanted was to be here, in the house of Big Bob’s killer and the person who committed crimes Jamie was in jail for.

  But he couldn’t run, because that would make him look like a coward in front of his friends… and besides, something else compelled him to stay.

  Gina and Tommy crowded next to him to peek into the drawer, boxing him in and taking away the option to run.

  None of them spoke for a few seconds, even though Tommy and Gina connected the dots as quickly as Twist had done. They were too stunned at the realization that the old man they’d known as the neighborhood toymaker had started killing people.

  Once Tommy gathered himself, the first words out of his mouth were, “Holy fuck.”

  Chapter 8

  A cool, brisk Fall day. Perfect for enjoying a cigarette. You could take in fresh, crisp air one second and the next, poison your lungs with toxic smoke.

  Nothing like it. Deputy Smith thought as he took a drag on his cigarette. />
  But what his mind was really occupied with were thoughts of the Sheriff. Not only had he “gone out on investigation” by himself, but the turn he’d made after speaking to Jamie Harper for only a few minutes by himself was strange.

  Must be that poor Willy is feeling particularly lonely this year. Needs something to distract himself with.

  That would explain some of the erratic behavior, but then again, he wasn’t quite feeling himself either.

  Some of that had to do with his mother dying around this time last year, and him having to keep pushing the thoughts away. That had a role in what was going on with him, sure. It wasn’t the whole story, though.

  Deputy Dwayne took another drag of his cigarette, this one long, then held it to the side as he let the smoke fill his lungs.

  Maybe some of it had to do with the time of the year. The whole town seemed to be caught in a different spirit around the Holidays, what with kids being off school, folks traveling, businesses closing early, and all that.

  He couldn’t wait until January when everything would be back to normal.

  Just as the thought passed through his mind, in the distance he saw something completely abnormal. A child was approaching him from the top of the hill. The kid moved toward him at a fast pace, like he/she was powerwalking. Something about the movement tipped him off that this might not actually be a child. Even though it had to be, because what else was that size and walked on two legs?

  It moved like a poorly animated kid’s movie.

  Dwayne got off the wall, then took a few steps toward the figure.

  “Hey kid, you lost or something?” For some inexplicable reason his mouth had gone dry and his tongue felt labored when he spoke.

  Dwayne continued stepping forward, and so did the kid, so that the distance between them shrunk.

  The kid was almost at the bottom of the hill and in the jailhouse parking lot, and from here Deputy Smith noticed his movements were stranger still. The way the kid moved seemed to be like he was limping, like each step was uncertain, but he also moved quick. It was like watching a zombie film on fast forward.