The Toymaker

by Sergio Gomez

  He wasn’t kidding about that. The place he decided to hide at was the old, half-burned down church just on the outskirts of Dutch County, in a location that none of the neighboring counties claimed.

  It was on a lonely road that only saw traffic from people going uphill to Herrmann Farm for a gallon of raw milk right from the cow’s teat or perhaps a full pig for a roast. A road that saw its most activity during berry season, when the Herrmann Family was making fresh berry smoothies right out of their kitchen, putting their good blender to work.

  It was nowhere near that time of the year, so the abandoned church on the desolate road was a perfect hiding spot for a potential fugitive or for a high school kid looking to smoke pot and play Dungeons & Dragons with his friends, either one. Jamie could check off the boxes for both now.

  He settled into the sleeping bag in the corner of the room where he’d left his belongings before going to meet Twist. On his way back here, he’d stopped at a convenience store he’d only ever been to once or twice before, just to be on the safe side. He’d bought a copy of the latest local paper and some Oreos.

  Jamie spread the newspaper open over his crossed legs and ripped the pack of cookies open. Flipping through the pages with one hand, and stuffing cookies into his mouth with the other (he couldn’t remember the last time he ate something), he found an article on the “Massacre of Dutch County” on page 17.

  It was small, considering it’d all been resolved according to the rest of the town that hadn’t seen the killer dummy, but it summarized everything that Twist had been keeping him posted on over the phone the past few days. Not that he didn’t trust his little brother, really, he trusted a 13-year-old-boy more than he trusted anyone in Dutch County (besides his mother, of course), but he wanted to confirm it with his own eyes.

  When he was finished reading it, he wiped the crumbs off the pages and folded the newspaper closed. Then he crumpled up the pack of Oreos and tossed both to the side before laying down on the sleeping bag.

  He laced his hands together and put them under his head for support. Staring up at the cracked, stone ceiling he began to laugh.

  I’m going to fight a fucking dummy.

  If life got any crazier than this, he was sure he’d lose the last of his marbles.

  Chapter 13

  “I’m glad that the family is all onboard with this.” Lucas said.

  He was standing on the stove again, while the others were seated at the dinner table, looking up at him like he was some sort of warped motivational speaker. It wasn’t hard for him to hold their attention because of the gun in his hand.

  “Stepfather Ricky, Brother Glenn, and of course you, Momma. None of this would be possible without you.” Lucas grinned.

  Cassandra stirred in her seat, but she had to hold steady. If they helped him with this, she hoped he’d keep the end of his bargain and let them go. As awful as this was, she had to keep reminding herself that this would be the end of the nightmare.

  Truly the end of it.

  It was morning again, and she was tired. They hadn’t slept all night. None of them had. They’d been listening to an evil spirit in the body of a dummy planning to kill five children.

  “Well, how are we going to find these kids you want us to kill?” Ricky asked. “We just supposed to go into the town and kill them?”

  Lucas shook his head. “No, no, no. They will come to me.”

  “What makes you so sure about that, Lucas?” It was Cassandra who asked.

  “Ah, you see Momma, the same way a thread connects you and I, there are other threads that connect me and the children. When they move those threads, the vibrations tell me what they’re thinking or doing. And right now, I know that they’re planning to come hunting for me.”

  “So, you’re like, psychic or something?” Ricky asked.

  “I suppose you can call it that.” Lucas nodded. “Sure.”

  “But you can only read the kids’ and my wife’s thoughts?”

  Lucas nodded again.

  “Well, what about weapons?” Ricky asked. “You’ve got a gun and I have no idea how many bullets, but we’ve got nothing. What do you expect us to do? Club them all with frying pans?”

  The back of his skull throbbed when he said it. Maybe frying pans were more effective than he realized.

  “The crossbow,” Glenn broke in.

  Shit. That had been Ricky’s plan to get out of here and get help; ask the dummy to let him into town to go pick up weapons, but then he’d bring back the police with him. And sure enough that had just been ruined for him by Cassandra’s idiot son.

  “What crossbow?” Lucas asked with a glimmer in his eyes.

  “The one Ricky uses to hunt groundhogs and squirrels for chili,” Glenn explained, pointing to a narrow closet at the back of the trailer.

  “A crossbow will work nicely. That’s all we need,” Lucas said, turning to look at Ricky. He wagged his index finger at him. “Trying to trick me, are you? Tsk, tsk. Does someone need to be punished?”

  Panic swept through Ricky. “Lucas, I wasn’t trying to—”

  “Hush,” Lucas said, then sat on the edge of the stove, his feet dangling. “I know this is probably too much for your feeble minds to process, but this is all bigger than you—it’s why I’m perfectly okay with letting you run free once your part is over.”

  Ricky had moved to the edge of his seat to argue but he settled back into it now. Across the table, he and Cassandra glanced at one another, then he said, “Let me ask you this, Lucas. How are the children going to be able to find us? We’re deep in the woods and no one in town knows where we are.”

  “The threads that connect us. Have you not been paying attention?”

  “Right,” Ricky said. “The threads…”

  “They’ll find me—find us, Ricky. Don’t you worry about that.” Lucas looked up at him. “The only thing you have to worry about is helping me eradicate them. Understand?”

  “I—we understand,” Ricky said. “One last thing, Lucas.”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you know when this will happen?”

  “Soon,” Lucas said. “Very, very soon, Ricky.”

  Chapter 14

  “Funny seeing you here,” Twist said as they crossed each other’s paths on a sunny morning that should have been filled with fun and goofing off.

  They both turned and sat down on the curb at the same time as if they’d been rehearsing the movement forever.

  “I live on the same street as you, remember?” Gina smirked.

  “You haven’t come knocking for me in days,” Twist smiled back at her. “You could’ve moved away for all I knew.”

  “Hey, you didn’t come to visit me either, butthead.”

  Twist nodded. “I know, it’s just…things are…”

  “Complicated,” Gina finished for him. “Yeah. Sorry about Big Bob.”

  Now Twist shrugged. “I don’t care about that. He wasn’t anything except a pain in my ass. Literally.”

  Gina watched him closely but chose not to ask him to explain that. “How was your Thanksgiving?”

  “Strange and empty,” Twist shrugged. “Yours?”

  “It was okay. Mom worked again this year, so it was just me and Anya.”

  “Have you been thinking about…everything that happened?”

  “Have I?” Gina said. “It’s all I’ve been able to think about, Twist.”

  “Same.”

  They went quiet for a few seconds. A late-Fall gust blew by that made them pull their jackets closer to themselves.

  “Can I tell you something without you kicking me?” Gina said.

  He looked over at her, not sure if she was kidding. “No promises.”

  “I talked to Jack before I talked to you. He called me last night.”

  “Did you guys talk about what I think you talked about?”

  Gina nodded.

  “And?” Twist asked.

  “Said he’s coming back tonight.”

>   “To hunt down Lucas?” He meant for it to be a question, but it came out more like a statement because he already knew the answer.

  “Yeah.”

  “What do you think? Think it’s a smart idea?”

  “I do,” Gina said. “I also feel like we don’t have much of a choice in the matter.”

  “Yeah. I agree.”

  The awkward silence returned and stretched.

  Finally Twist cleared his throat. “Jamie came back.”

  “What? Is he crazy?”

  “Yeah,” Twist said. “He is. But that’s beside the point.”

  “What’d he comeback for?”

  “He has the same idea. He wants to go take Lucas down wherever he’s hiding.”

  “Damn. That makes it four against one. I’m beginning to like our odds.”

  “We need the others, though,” Twist said.

  “I haven’t talked to Tommy or Victor, have you?” Gina asked.

  He shook his head.

  “I’ll talk to Tommy, you talk to Victor?”

  “Yeah,” Twist said. Considering she and Tommy had been kissing before all this happened, it seemed the best matchup.

  “Then we’ll all meet at my house,” Gina suggested. “My mom works late tonight so I’ll be home alone with Anya until well after midnight.”

  “Okay.”

  “From there, we’ll figure out how we’ll find him and when we’ll attack.”

  Twist nodded. “Yeah, this sounds like a plan. We’ll talk again after we get the others involved and decide on a time to meet.”

  “What about Jamie, though?”

  “Jamie told me where he would be today, so I’ll go find him there and catch him up.”

  “Alright. I’m gonna go call Tommy.” Gina got up.

  Twist did, too.

  They slapped fives before heading back home, but it wasn’t a kid’s high-five. It wasn’t friendly. It was more like two people agreeing to put their necks on the line.

  “Thought we’d broken up before we even started dating officially,” Tommy joked when Gina told him it was her over the phone.

  “Shut up, Tommy.” Her voice came out graver than she intended it to. She knew Tommy was just being his usual self.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Tommy said.

  After the catch-up portion of the chat of asking about their Thanksgivings and all that, they got right down to what the call was about. Finding Lucas, and sending him back to whatever hell he’d come from.

  “I’ve been thinking the same thing,” Tommy said.

  “When can you be at my house tonight?” Gina asked him.

  “Any time after dinner.”

  “Okay, I’ll get back to you on what the others said.”

  “Okay, Homeschool.”

  “Bye Tommy, see you tonight.”

  “See ya.”

  Gina hung up with Tommy and then dialed Jack at his mother’s house. On the third ring, his mother picked up. She asked for Jack and he was on the line a moment later.

  “Well, Jack? Did you convince your mom to let you over here?”

  “Yeah, of course,” he said. “I should be there around eight tonight. I told her I’m staying with Twist.”

  “I talked to him—Twist, I mean. And Tommy, too, actually. We all agreed to meet at my house.”

  “Okay.”

  “Twist is in charge of getting Victor over here, but I’ll tell everyone to meet here at eight-thirty just to make sure.”

  “Yeah, that’s good.”

  “Great. See you tonight, then.”

  Gina hung up the phone, and no more than five minutes after there was a knock on the front door. She went over and opened it and saw Twist on her porch. She noticed his bike was on her lawn.

  “Victor’s onboard.”

  Of course he was, Gina thought. He’d do anything Twist asked him to. “What’s with the bike?”

  “Gonna go catch up with Jamie like I told you,” Twist said. “Then stock up.”

  “Stock up?”

  “Lucas has at least one gun on him. And a knife. We need to fight him with our own weapons.”

  Gina had been so focused about getting their little gang back together that she hadn’t thought of that. “What’re you planning on getting?”

  “Whatever I can get my hands on.”

  Gina nodded. Whatever he had in mind had to be better than going in empty handed. “I talked to Jack and Tommy. We all agreed on eight-thirty.”

  “That works for me, too,” Twist said. “I’ll call Victor after I get back home and let him know.”

  The plan was taking shape. All they would need was a little luck.

  A lot of luck, actually.

  Chapter 15

  He’d been exaggerating that he’d never come to the library, but it’d sure been a while. He hadn’t come since he was in middle school, but the place looked exactly as he’d remembered it.

  Even Lucille the librarian was still there, who was old as a dinosaur back when he was a junior teen, which meant she was ancient now. She was hunched behind the computer desk at the far end of the corner, typing something on the keyboard with a single finger.

  The good thing was, she was the only person there. It was eleven AM on the day after Thanksgiving, so of course the library had no other visitors besides him.

  Jamie knew exactly where he was going because it was the section he visited the most when he was a kid. The “spooky book section”, as it was unofficially titled, that was in the basement. He stopped at the top of the steps and glanced over at Lucille.

  Her index finger was still circling over the keyboard and her eyes still danced around trying to find the next letter.

  Sweet old Lucille. As inattentive as always.

  Jamie grinned, then descended the stairs.

  Twist parked his bike out front of the library. The bin attached to the front of it was loaded with the stuff he’d just bought, but he didn’t care about leaving it out here unattended. There weren’t any cars in the lot except the old station wagon that belonged to Miss Lucille—the oldest librarian in the history of librarians.

  He wasn’t sure if it was pure luck or the guiding force, but everything was going smoothly so far.

  Twist went through the library doors, quietly but with as much haste as possible. The librarian was on the opposite side, hunched over the monitor and too preoccupied with what she was doing to notice someone had just come in (and really, she probably wasn’t expecting anyone to be here, so her alertness was likely lower than ever).

  Twist scanned the library and didn’t see Jamie anywhere. He’d look down each aisle and then go downstairs if he didn’t find him up here.

  Jamie didn’t find the Tome of Evil exactly, but he found a section about it in a book called The Ghouls, Goblins, and Other Ghosts of Pennsylvania. The book had the feel of both a new and an old one at the same time. The spine was stiff from lack of use and kept wanting to clamp shut, but a fine layer of dust showed it had been sitting in this same spot, unlooked at, for a long while.

  The book was sectioned off into regions, then those were broken down into smaller county sections. Jamie used the table of contents to find Dutch County. Underneath that header, he saw that the ghost section was on page 235.

  He flipped to the beginning of the section and rifled through it, skimming the passages next to the sketches to get an idea of what they were about. It wasn’t until he got several more pages in that he found one entry that made him stop. He read and reread the passage over and over.

  Jamie was just finishing up reading it for the fourth time when he heard someone coming down the stairs. He stopped and put his finger in between the pages and closed it. For whatever reason, he felt the need to hide the book he was reading from anyone who might be interested in what he was doing.

  It was Twist, though, so there was nothing to be alarmed about. Jamie flipped the book back open.

  “Yo, Twist,” Jamie said.

  He saw Oliver’s eyes dar
t left and right as if to make sure no one else was around.

  “It’s just us,” Jamie reassured him.

  Relaxing, Twist walked over to the table and sat in the chair across from him. “Well, I talked to the others.”

  Jamie ignored that and spun the book around so Oliver could see the page he was on. “Look.”

  Twist looked at it and scowled at the black and white sketch of a demon that looked like something out of the video game Doom. Its face was monstrous, with large teeth protruding up and down through its mouth. The demon’s eyes bulged out of its sockets, like someone had punched it in the stomach. The artist had taken the time to draw in tiny veins on the whites of the eyes, making it look like the fiend was swelling up from the inside.

  That wasn’t even the most grotesque part of it. The worst part was the human face that was pressing up against the inside of the demon’s chest. Like the skin had started to melt, which allowed the human trapped inside to try to break free, but the person only managed to get part of themselves out before the skin solidified around their head again.

  The more he looked at it, the more Twist realized this thing was fucked. There were two arms and legs coming out from the demon’s body with the same trapped effect as the face which told him they belonged to the same person.

  Meanwhile, the demon had his own fiendish limbs with claws. In one of his hands he held a human leg that had been ripped off an unseen body. The demon’s muscular arm was midway to putting the leg into its open mouth, like someone about to take a bite out of a Thanksgiving turkey drum.

  “It’s all there, Twist,” Jamie said. “On the page next to it and the one after.”

  Twist grabbed the book from him and read the title of the chapter. The Reclaimer Demon.

  He skimmed the passage, and as he did that Jamie talked. “The Tome of Evil having to be there for the ritual, the blood of a virgin, the gatekeepers—”

  Twist turned the page and read the end of the article, then finished for Jamie, “—and it has to keep killing in order to become human.”