The Toymaker

by Sergio Gomez

  Like, children that randomly disappear and are never heard from again may actually have been abducted by aliens. Or, that feeling he’d had earlier of his late mother sitting by his bedside might have actually been her ghost checking to make sure her son was OK.

  The mind had a funny way of working, though, because even as he rolled across the room to the window, a part of his mind wrestled to reject these ideas. The “rational” part, as he would have thought of it in the past.

  Regardless of that, he knew what was possible now. He knew what the truth was even if the journalists, and newscasters, and other policemen, and the public didn’t. There was a cursed —or haunted, or possessed, or whatever—dummy out there that killed people.

  And if he ever started to forget that truth, all he would need to do was look at the deep scars running across his stomach to remember.

  Chapter 5

  The sun was going down, and the woods were getting dark, but he wasn’t scared of that anymore. The connection to the sixth person was open, and he knew where he was going.

  Lucas walked through the wilderness, as sure as if he was on a marked path that he was going in the right direction because the connection grew stronger with every step.

  He stopped at the bottom of a steep hill. His legs and feet hurt (not as much as his arm, but it was the fact that it was new pains that worried him) so he paused.

  The way he was going led up to the top of a cliff with a fifty-foot drop off. It would’ve been a long way up even if he wasn’t fatigued.

  “Please, True Father. Give me the strength to proceed,” Lucas whispered.

  A gust blew by that shook the trees around him, and in the distance an early rising owl began to hoot.

  Maybe it was the True Father’s response. Maybe not.

  Either way, Lucas started his march up the path. Ready to connect with Momma.

  Chapter 6

  “You doing number one or number two?” Ricky asked Glenn through the bathroom door.

  “Number 2,” The kid answered back.

  Goddamnit. He knew Cassandra shouldn’t have let the kid eat all that pie.

  Oh, well, the good thing about living in the middle of the woods was you could turn any spot outside into your bathroom. And there was no one around to say anything to you.

  He grabbed his Bud Light before storming out of the trailer.

  Gotta refill when the tank’s empty. Ha-ha.

  Ricky went a few feet away from the trailer, where there was a thicket of bushes. Just because there were no neighbors to yell at him about this, that didn’t mean Cassandra wouldn’t throw a fit if he made a lake too close to home.

  Ricky took a swig of his beer, then started to piss. The second he felt the relief of release in his bladder, he realized Glenn had done him a favor.

  There were few things that satisfied the primal part of the mind more than pissing into the wind.

  Lucas reached the top of the cliff and saw there wasn’t much up here other than a beat-up mobile home. There was a trail of rust in each of the windows where rainwater must have leaked from and run down, which made it seem like the home was perpetually crying brown tears.

  This was the spot, though. He was sure of it, because the connection between him and Momma was at full force. He could read her thoughts and feelings inside of his own body more clearly than ever.

  Momma was sleeping, dreaming of another life. One where she was in a bikini onstage and the crowd oohed and ahh’d over how she looked. A life in which the public didn’t shun her, but instead adored her.

  It made Lucas feel funny to see Momma in a bikini, so he stopped looking into her thoughts and returned back to the task. There had to be a way to approach her without scaring her off—

  Before he could begin to formulate a plan, things started happening. A man wearing jeans too big for his waist and a dirty brown shirt with the A&W logo on it burst out of the trailer. Carrying a can in one hand, he marched over to where some densely packed bushes were and stopped in front of them.

  Lucas was close enough to hear him peeing. The man was distracted, making strange noises as his stream poured all over the foliage.

  Lucas could tell the man would be afraid of him and could potentially scare Momma off.

  But he wasn’t going to repeat the same mistake he’d made back on Dudley Street when he’d killed Jack Roberts’ father. He couldn’t have Momma betraying him, too.

  He had to approach this differently, and it seemed to him that fate had smiled on him by putting the man’s back to him.

  Lucas reached into his jacket, where the gun and knife were both stored, and pulled out the gun. There were only a limited number of bullets, but if all went according to plan, he wouldn’t need any for what he was about to do.

  The dragon was drained, and Ricky was zipping his pants up when he heard someone speak behind him.

  “Turn around, slowly, and don’t scream or I’ll shoot.”

  The voice didn’t belong to Cassandra or Glenn, and it didn’t sound like any of the knuckleheads he sometimes met downtown for beers. In fact, it didn’t even sound human at all.

  “W-what?” Ricky said. His voice shook, but it wasn’t from fear exactly, though there was a layer of that. It was mostly confusion. “This some sorta joke?”

  “This is no joke. Do as I say unless you want something bad to happen.”

  He almost laughed because the threat sounded like something a child would say. Like something off a bad TV show. If this guy was holding a gun on him, something bad was an understatement.

  “If it’s money you’re lookin’ for, you’re wastin’ your time—”

  “Do as I say. Last chance before I pull the trigger,” the owner of the voice said.

  There was enough bark to that command that it made Ricky not want to test if there was going to be bite as well.

  Ricky started to turn slowly.

  “Keep your hands out—no funny business.” Another command.

  This guy has more demands than my woman. Who the heck does he think he is? Ricky thought, but did as he was told. He stuck his arms out like Jesus on the crucifix and finished his turn.

  His heart jumped up into his throat because he didn’t see anything at first. There wasn’t anything that had scared him more when he was a boy than the thought of ghosts. And for a second, he thought he was confirming his childhood fear, and that he had been talking to a ghost (with a gun?) the whole time.

  Then he realized at the bottom of his field of view was the top of a dirty, mussed blond pompadour. Ricky shifted his focus downward and saw something even stranger than a ghost.

  The boy…the figure…whatever this thing was, was only a little taller than three feet. It was covered in rust-covered blotches that he thought may have been a weird skin disease, but then he took a closer look and realized that couldn’t be it. This thing wasn’t flesh and blood. It was made of wood.

  Ricky was a high school dropout, but he wasn’t that dumb. This whole thing threw him off, though, and he couldn’t figure out what he was looking at.

  It was a doll made of wood, the kind that you could stick your hand into the back of and make it talk, or move its eyes, or dance. The blotches that he thought were some sort of skin disease were actually blood all over its clothes, hair, shoes.

  The worst of the sight was that it actually did hold a gun just like it’d been threatening. Good call not trying to call its bluff, Ricky.

  Its other arm was splintered down the forearm where it’d broken. Because the body it belonged to looked so very human, it somehow made it look painful.

  “Wh-what are you?” The question stumbled out of him.

  The thing’s mouth, despite that it was simply wood carved and painted to look like lips, curled into a smile. “In your world, I suppose you would call me a spirit.”

  “Trapped inside of a—a doll?”

  The dummy took a quick glance at its body as if it’d forgotten what it looked like. “Let’s leave it at t
hat if it makes this easier for you.”

  “Sure.” Ricky said, but it didn’t make anything easier at all. “Well, w-what do you want from me?”

  “Nothing, really. I don’t really need you. I just can’t dispose of you because you’re important to Momma.”

  “Momma?” His brain was reeling. This was getting crazier by the second.

  The thing’s forehead pulled tight toward the middle, in an expression someone would make when they were thinking deeply about something. Except the wood-like material the thing’s face was made of wasn’t as flexible as actual skin, so the gesture came off more rigid. More crude. Flakes of dried blood broke off and flew away.

  The sight made Ricky’s stomach go sour.

  A few seconds passed until the dummy’s face relaxed as it found the answer it was looking for. “The woman you know as Cassandra Lynn Rogers.”

  “What’s she gotta do with this?” Ricky asked.

  “Quit your questions. You’re in no position to demand answers.”

  “Okay,” Ricky said, shifting weight to his other leg. “One last one, though, please?”

  The dummy nodded.

  “Is the gun really all that necessary?”

  “Yes,” done with questions, it gestured its head toward the mobile home. “Now let’s go inside. And be quiet about it, Momma is asleep.”

  “H-how do you know that?” Ricky asked the question before he realized he was saying it, and then waited for the gun to go off.

  But it seemed that this doll had bigger plans to stick to.

  With an expression that was more disturbing than any it had made yet, the wood crinkled into a smug glare as the dummy said, “There are things I can do that are beyond this world. That’s how.”

  If Ricky hadn’t already taken a piss, he thought he would have wet his pants right then and there.

  “Now come on,” the doll said, gesturing toward the trailer with a cock of its head again, “let’s go. There’s lots for me to do.”

  Chapter 7

  Gina had gone to the grocery store the other day and bought a rotisserie chicken, a pound of steamed vegetables, and premade mashed potatoes, so that today all she had to do was throw that stuff in the microwave. Then, the only task left of the dinner was to convince Anya the sliced-up chicken was actually turkey.

  It was the Thanksgiving dinner the two girls ate every year because their mom worked double shifts during the holiday season.

  In the past, Gina thought it was wrong of her mother to do this; to leave them to eat by themselves while everyone else was having a nice dinner with their families. But the workers were paid overtime to compensate for any guilt they might have felt for not being with their families, and as she got older, Gina realized her mom didn’t take the shift because she wanted to. She did it because it helped keep the lights on and the water running.

  Anya was asleep on the couch, clutching her teddy bear (that Gina always made fun of her for still sleeping with) tight to her full belly. She’d eaten a lot, telling Gina the whole time that she couldn’t wait to brag to her friends at school on Monday about how much turkey she’d eaten.

  Poor girl. She hadn’t realized she could just lie to her friends about how much she ate, and she also hadn’t realized she’d eaten exactly zero amount of turkey. But that was okay, because apparently the chicken didn’t need tryptophan to put her sister to sleep an hour after they’d sat on the couch to watch television.

  Gina flipped through the channels with the remote, but every network was playing reruns of the Thanksgiving episodes of sitcoms she’d already sat through.

  Gina glanced over at her sister again. Anya was still in a deep slumber. She could throw on one of the R-Rated movies that her mom didn’t let her watch when Anya was around.

  She crawled off the couch toward the cabinets in the entertainment system. The clock on the VCR read 11:30pm. Two movies would more than kill the three hours left until Mom got home.

  Before she could open the cabinets, the phone rang. The disturbance made Anya stir, and Gina cursed whoever was calling as she swooped over to the phone to pick it up before it could ring again.

  “Hello?” Gina said, not trying to hide that she was annoyed at someone calling this late. She watched her sister roll to her side and continue to sleep.

  Who the hell is calling at this hour?

  It wasn’t Mom, because Mom would be too busy at work to call.

  “Hey, Gina, is that you? It’s Jack,” the person on the other end of the line said.

  Gina felt the annoyance slip away at hearing it was him.

  None of them had spoken to each other since Jack’s father had been killed on Dudley Street. Despite how the tragedy, in some odd way, brought them all closer together, they’d also silently agreed to give each other space so that individually they could each try to process what happened that day.

  This was the first she’d heard from any of them—even Tommy.

  “H-hey Jack, what’s up?” She didn’t realize she was nervous until the moment she said that. But deep down inside, in the part of her heart that stored the uncomfortable things the mind wanted to ignore, she knew why.

  “I’ve been better,” he said. “How about you?”

  I bet, she wanted to say, but instead she said, “I’m fine, I guess. I was just about to watch a movie.”

  “Cool,” Jack said, then paused. She heard some shuffling, like he was switching the phone to the other hand. “Have you been thinking about it?”

  Gina cleared her throat to try to free her voice. “I’ve been trying not to, but jeez. How could anyone not?”

  “Yeah,” Jack said. “Have you talked to any of the others?”

  “Negative. What about you?”

  “No.”

  Another pause in the conversation occurred, this one so long that Gina thought maybe Jack had hung up.

  Then, he spoke. “He’s still out there.”

  “I know,” she replied.

  “Can you feel it?”

  She knew what he was referring to, but the closest she could come to describing the feeling was like her mind was sending her thoughts out of her head, and into the dummy’s head. It was only a one-way connection, though, because she couldn’t read the dummy’s thoughts. All she could sense was that Lucas was there, receiving everything that crossed her mind.

  It made her stomach turn with discomfort thinking about it, and she hoped she wouldn’t lose her chicken dinner.

  “Yeah,” Gina said. “I can feel it.”

  “The others must, too.”

  “Yeah, but what do we do about it?”

  “I think Tommy was right…about everything. As crazy as it all is.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think we summoned this evil and it’s our responsibility to get rid of it.”

  “How do we do that?”

  She could almost picture him shrug as he answered her: “I don’t know. But I think we need to get everyone back together.”

  “You saw what he did, Jack. He’s dangerous.”

  “I know Gina. You think I don’t know that? My dad is dead. He’s dead and I can’t change that, but it was partly my fault, you know? That’s exactly why it’s our responsibility to get rid of Lucas.”

  Something told her that he was thinking with a heart full of revenge rather than logic. The easiest thing would be for them to let this go, and just hope he didn’t return. Before she could even suggest this, Jack was talking again.

  “No one else will do it if we don’t. No one—not even my mom—is talking about Lucas. The adults are all pretending that a killer dummy wasn’t what killed my dad. Not the cops, not the newspapers, no one, Gina.”

  “Jack, I know, I know.”

  “That makes him more dangerous.” Jack sniffled, then added. “Are we just going to let him keep killing people? Because that’s what everyone else is doing.”

  It was a scary thought that Lucas had escaped and was likely still hiding some
where. That no one had even acknowledged he was the perpetrator of all except two of the killings that’d happened over the weekend. Jarod, and Mr. Gibson.

  She remembered something her Mom said to one of her aunts once—or maybe she’d heard it from some movie, she couldn’t remember, either way, the thought flashed into her head: the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn’t exist.

  Gosh, if there was ever a more fitting statement, she thought, picturing Mr. Gibson’s dummy, with its painted-on smile, reading that thought from her mind with great amusement.

  “What do you have in mind?” she said. This was why she’d been nervous to hear his voice. She knew what he was going to suggest.

  And she knew he was right.

  “We find him,” Jack said, “wherever he’s hiding, and take him out.”

  “How, though? We’re…we’re just kids.”

  “We brought him into this world, didn’t we?”

  “Yeah, I guess… But I mean, how can we even be sure of that?”

  “You know how, Gina. You said you felt something in the tunnel. You saw me bring Lucas with me that day. You saw him running around on his own. Don’t try to pretend like none of it happened, like the adults want to pretend.”

  She bit her bottom lip, and suddenly she wished Anya were awake to give her a big hug. Maybe she’d do that after they hung up the phones whether she was awake or not. “So what, we just go out into the woods and run around in circles hoping we find him?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t really thought that far.” There were footsteps on the other end of the line like Jack was moving to a different part of the room. “I wanted to see where you were—mentally or whatever, first.”

  “If I’m being honest, I’m scared shitless.”

  “Me too. But I think we have to do this.”

  “Well, now that you know how I am mentally, how do you think we proceed?”

  “Like I said, we get the others. I don’t think we can do it without them.”

  “Just like we brought him back together.”