The Toymaker

by Sergio Gomez

  “It used the old man—Mr. Gibson—to build a body it could inhabit. Contacted him from the world it was stuck in when Cassandra and the other chicks didn’t pull him through all the way.”

  Twist re-read that part of the passage. It said the demon, to get out of that in between world, would call out to humans to aid it. The passage said only the “right souls” would answer the call but didn’t specify what that meant exactly. Though, reading between the lines it seemed to be alluding to it being someone full of misery.

  “Mr. Gibson was the perfect target,” Jamie said. “Unmarried, no children, alone, old...”

  “Yeah,” Twist said. “Doesn’t say anything about how to defeat it, though, does it?”

  Jamie shook his head. “No, not specifically. But look at this.”

  Jamie grabbed the book and flipped to a page in the back. It was a general glossary meant for reference while reading the book. He took a pen from the holder in the middle of the table and circled the word he wanted Twist to see.

  Twist read it aloud. “Gates: These are points in the human world that under special conditions can be opened up to travel between other dimensions. The conditions vary, and the locations of gates may change at any moment. More research needs to be done on gates.”

  “God,” Jamie said, running his hand over his bald head. “If I hadn’t seen that stupid dummy at the jailhouse this shit would sound so hokey to me.”

  Twist knew exactly what he meant. “So, Jamie, just to make sure we’re on the same page. You think that we can reopen the gate we brought him through?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We don’t need to return to the tunnel?”

  “Nope.” Jamie leaned back on the chair, with his fingers laced and his hands behind his head. “I think the gate…and man, this is going to sound so corny…but I think the gate is inside of you guys. And you can open it at will when you’re together.”

  “The special condition,” Twist said.

  “When you five come together near the spirit,” Jamie added.

  Twist got out of the chair. “Jamie, go to Gina’s house at eight-thirty tonight. We’re all going to meet there.”

  “Roger that.”

  “I’m gonna head out now, I haven’t talked to Victor about any of this.”

  “Yeah, yeah. You go catch him up to speed. I’m going to hangout here a little while longer and see what I can dig up.”

  Jamie closed the book and watched Twist go up the stairs two steps at a time. He glanced over at the clock on the wall. He would give it fifteen minutes before he’d get on out of here to the next location he needed to stop at.

  Some big brother instinct was telling him to keep this from Twist, even though in the grand scheme of things it didn’t make much sense. He was going to march his little brother and company to fight off a demon spirit, so what was keeping them from knowing he was going to visit Pauly Marino going to do to make them safer?

  It didn’t make any sense logically, but nothing they were in the midst of made any sense logically.

  Jamie opened the book to the page with the demon and stared at it. Their demon didn’t exactly look like that, but the same idea was there. The human soul was trapped inside of the dummy Mr. Gibson had built, and was trying to get out by killing people.

  Jamie read the first line of the entry for the fifth time, and for the fifth time swallowed back a huge lump rising up in his throat. The Reclaimer Demon will do anything to become human again.

  Chapter 16

  “Tonight at eight-thirty. Everyone is meeting there,” Twist told him.

  Victor sneezed far away from the phone. Then there was a lot of rustling before his stuffed voice came back on the line. “Sorry, I was sanitizing the phone. Yeah, I’ll be there.”

  “Okay,” Twist said. “Hey, man. You sure you’re okay with this?”

  “You guys need me, right?”

  “Yeah, Victor. It’s the only way we’ll open the gate.”

  “Then yes,” Victor paused, then added, “I’ve never been needed before in my life.”

  “Don’t get all sappy on me—not yet, anyway. If we get through this, you can do it then. Maybe.”

  Victor laughed through a phlegm coated throat. “Yeah, yeah, whatever Ollie.”

  “Don’t forget, Vic. Eight-thirty sharp.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “Great.”

  They hung up the phone.

  This cold had him feeling funny, but Victor knew he had to do this. His friends—no, this town, actually—needed him. They needed his help to stop Mr. Gibson’s dummy from causing anyone else harm.

  He felt weak right now, but he knew he’d have to be strong when the time came for it.

  Victor glanced across his bedroom, to the shelf that kept all of his VHS tapes. He had the Rocky collection, 1-5. Those were a story about a man feeling weak but digging deep to find it in himself to win.

  Even if he didn’t win the boxing match (like in the first one), he won morally by answering the bell. By refusing to be knocked down.

  Victor sneezed and felt every bone rattle in his body.

  He shook his head, then composed himself. “You have to be like Rocky, Vic. Be like Rocky.”

  Victor got out of bed and opened the door. Sticking his head out into the hallway, he yelled toward his parents’ room where he could hear his mom cleaning, “Mom! Do we have any eggs?”

  “Yes, probably. What for?” she called back, opening the door to see him from across the hall.

  “For training,” he answered.

  Chapter 17

  The clock got to 8:30pm quicker than any of them expected it to, and then they were all gathered in Gina Bobkin’s living room. Jamie had snuck the book out of the library under Lucille’s unwatchful eye, and the other kids were crowded around the coffee table reading the Reclaimer Demon passage.

  Once they were done with it, they all leaned away from the book with a glazed over, enlightened look in their eyes.

  Gina was the first one to break out of her entrancement by snickering nervously. “What the hell have we gotten ourselves into?”

  “Doesn’t much matter,” Jamie said from where he was leaning against a wall by the kitchen.

  “Well, okay. That’s true,” Gina said, moving to sit on the armrest of the couch Twist was on. “What I want to know is how we’re supposed to find it.”

  They all sat in a crude circle, facing each other, looking for someone to be the first one to answer the big question.

  “Twist, didn’t you say you could feel the dummy inside your head in some way?” Jamie asked.

  “Yeah,” Twist said.

  “What about the rest of you, do you guys feel it?” Jamie asked the group.

  There was a murmur of agreement as they all exchanged glances and nods.

  “What if the connection goes both ways?” Jamie said. “The dummy found you guys before, and now you guys can find him.”

  “Right. But that brings us back to how we’re going to do that,” Gina protested.

  “By concentrating,” Victor said. “We were all focused on the strangeness of the tunnel when we went in, when we brought Lucas from the other side.”

  “So, we just concentrate on finding him,” Tommy exclaimed, rising up out of his seat.

  “You’re all connected to this somehow,” Jamie said, nodding. “It makes sense to me. And it’s our only hope.”

  Gina sighed. “It makes sense to me, too. But I’m not sure how much I like that our plan is just to go wandering through the woods with nothing pointing us in the right direction except some supernatural feeling inside of us.”

  “I’m with you on that, Homeschool,” Tommy said. “But it’s better than sitting around twiddling our thumbs waiting for Lucas to strike first.”

  “I don’t think he’s going to come after us, anyway,” Jack chimed in. “He was hurt, remember? His arm was busted up.”

  “One of the policemen at the jailhouse did it,” Jami
e informed them. “I heard two gunshots go off before he let me out of the cell.”

  “Yeah,” Jack said. “I think he’s waiting for us in the wilderness outside of town, wherever he’s hiding.”

  “When do we go after him, then?” Twist asked.

  “Tonight,” Jack said before anyone else could speak. “I want to go tonight.”

  “No time like the present,” Jamie agreed.

  “Let’s end it already,” Tommy said, nodding.

  “I’m down,” Victor said, sounding far less cool than he’d hoped.

  They all turned to look at Gina. She was still feeling some reluctance at not going in there with any form of a concrete plan, but if the rest of them were ready, so she was too.

  “Yeah, let’s do it,” she said.

  They all rose out of their seats and made a circle in the middle of the living room. They stuck their hands out into the center, palms on top of someone else’s like a football team about to break a huddle.

  Jamie stood on the outside of the circle but reached between Twist and Jack and put his hand on top of all the others.

  “No chickening out now,” Jamie said. “Not even you, Vic.”

  They all laughed—even Victor.

  “Don’t worry, I won’t,” Victor promised, grinning. “Eye of the tiger.”

  “What?” Gina said, scowling at him from across the circle.

  “It’s—it’s from Rocky,” he stuttered. “Come on. Everybody knows that song.”

  Chapter 18

  Lucas sat outside on the stairs of the trailer, his gun on his lap and his knife by his side.

  The idiot boy was out beyond the trees, rigging up the beartraps the way Momma’s man had taught him to, and covering them with leaves.

  Momma’s man was out back, calibrating the hunting bow. Preparing it for the oncoming eradication of the living, breathing plagues that were those five children.

  Momma herself was inside, preparing the bath to clean the blood off Lucas, and make him clean again.

  A slight wind blew by that felt cool, and crisp against the most skin-like parts of his body.

  There was something else he could feel in the air besides that touch of Autumn, though; the children were preparing. Getting ready to storm through the woods to find him. To enact their final betrayal and try to eliminate him from this world.

  “Come,” Lucas said, “come and do your worst to me, traitors.”

  And they would. As sure as he was of anything, he knew they would come.

  Twist dumped the contents of the trash bag (one of the heavy-duty ones Big Bob used for his work) onto the coffee table. The collection of items he’d bought at the dollar store spilled onto it in an unrhythmic clatter.

  “These are supposed to be weapons?” Gina said, observing the objects. “Or are we going to play some games of pickup out on the street?”

  There were murmurs and snickers throughout the living room. They were looking at a screwdriver, two baseball bats, two kitchen knives, a football helmet, a Nerf ball launcher in a package that boasted it could shoot “up to 50 feet,” and a sack of potatoes. It really did look like the lost and found of a high school gym.

  “Just deal with it, Gina.” Twist said. “I’m thirteen with only some allowance. This is the best I could do.”

  Jamie picked up the Nerf gun, and turned it in his hands. “I can modify this to shoot the potatoes, if that was what you were thinking.”

  Victor picked up the football helmet and put it on his head. “This looks like it’ll come in handy.”

  Tommy had picked up one of the baseball bats and was giving it some slow test swings to check its weight. Mindful of the lamps and television set in the vicinity, of course.

  “It ain’t too bad, Ollie. Good job.” Jamie went back to leaning against the corner table. “I’ve got the real deal outside, though.”

  “What?” It was Twist who said it, but the others turned to look at him with similar looks on their faces.

  “I’ll have to stop by the back of our house before we head out into the woods,” Jamie said, glancing at the clock. “So, grab whatever you guys are taking with you, and let’s meet by the trees behind this house in five.”

  “What do you mean ‘real deal’?” Gina asked, pressing for an answer.

  Jamie started toward the door, but as he walked by them he said, “A big kid weapon, that’s what I mean.”

  And somehow, Twist’s older brother saying that, made them realize the danger they were about to head into.

  Jamie pointed the flashlight underneath the bush in their backyard and found the gun where he’d left it earlier. Next to it was a box of ammo. He’d gotten both of these things from a very drunk Pauly Marino who probably gave him more of a deal than he should have. It was always good to know there were people out there like Pauly, doing bad things for bad reasons.

  He checked to make sure the safety was on the pistol, then shoved it in one of his pockets and the box of ammo into the other.

  He was a soldier. There was no way he was going into a battle without a gun.

  Chapter 19

  “Listen up, kiddos. There’s a golden rule I want you all to follow,” Jamie said. He’d had them all line up like soldiers and was pacing back and forth in front of them like his sergeant in basic training had done.

  Tommy Marino looked a little strange in the line, but it was necessary they all knew he was in charge.

  Jamie pulled the gun out of his jeans. They’d all been eyeing up his bulging pocket suspiciously since he’d returned to Gina’s backyard to meet with them, and something told him they all knew what it was before he pulled it out. But that didn’t change how they reacted to seeing it out in the open like this.

  “If for whatever reason one of you gets ahold of the pistol, do not put your finger on the trigger unless you intend to pull it. Understand?”

  They all said yes.

  “Second rule. I am in charge of this whole mission. You listen to everything I say—every single fucking thing, got it?”

  “Yes,” they all repeated

  “Good,” Jamie said. “Last thing: If anyone gets hurt while we’re out there, everyone else stops what they’re doing to protect them. Clear?”

  “Yes,” they said again.

  “Alright,” he said, running his hand through his bald head. It still felt strange to not have any hair, though there was some stubble beginning to come in. “There’s already been a lot of death in Dutch County, we don’t need anymore.”

  Jamie looked them over once more.

  The nerdy kid had on the football helmet that was twice the size of his head. It almost looked like the damn thing was trying to eat his head off his shoulders with how oversized it was. Jamie was a little worried about him cracking under pressure.

  But then there was Gina Bobkin, who he knew well enough to know she was tough. There was nothing to worry about with her.

  “You two,” Jamie said, pointing to Gina and Victor. “Stick together.”

  Gina and Victor glanced at one another, then shrugged.

  Jamie looked over at Tommy Marino. There were similarities between him and his brother Pauly, not just physically, but personality-wise. The key difference was that Tommy wasn’t as dumb as his older brother, or as much of a loud mouth, and Jamie knew if things got tough Tommy would pull through.

  The new kid, Jack, was a different story. Jamie didn’t know enough about him to gauge what kind of person he was, but he knew he was being fueled by hatred for the dummy because of his father’s death. He wasn’t sure if that would be enough to get him through this, though.

  “Tommy and Jack, you two are a unit. That means if I tell one of you to move, you both move together. Got it? Same goes to you, Gina and Victor.”

  “We got it,” Gina said.

  Jamie stopped in front of his brother, who was at the end of the line. “That makes me and you a pair, Twist.”

  Twist nodded back to him. He wouldn’t have wanted it any
other way.

  “We’ll go in ranks: Me and Twist at the front, Gina and Vic behind us, and then Tommy and Jack take the rear.”

  Jamie checked the pistol to make sure it was loaded. It was. Then he started off, leading his ragtag troops into the trees that would become the forest that would eventually become the wilderness of Dutch County.

  This wasn’t his first time being involved in a mission, but it certainly had a different feel to it than the ones he’d been in before.

  He paused in front of the trees, causing the others to stop when he did. The trees looked darker than he’d ever seen them—or perhaps he’d never paid enough attention. Either way, for the first time in his life the word “spooky” crossed his mind.

  Jamie flicked his flashlight on and to the others said, “Turn your lights on, and let’s go do this thing.”

  Chapter 20

  Because the trailer was on a cliff, and as close to the edge as it could be without putting a wandering sleepwalker in danger, the only way the children could storm the trailer grounds was from the front. They’d have to use the same uphill path that Lucas had used when he first showed up this morning.

  The path was narrow enough that even small children would have a hard time walking side by side, and so the teens would have to come up in a single file. That would already put them at a disadvantage.

  Lucas was counting on it.

  If they happened to get this far, he had two bear traps waiting for them a few yards before they would get to the trailer.

  If they got past those traps, then Momma, her man, and the idiot boy would have to go out and fight them. Really, though, they were pawns in this. He just needed them to distract the gatekeepers long enough for him to eradicate them himself.

  Lucas checked the pistol. Five bullets were all he had left.

  And there were five children. He’d have to make every single shot count.

  “The gatekeepers are coming,” Lucas said, announcing it to the others. He was sitting on the kitchen table, peering over them in the living room from this height.