James Jenkins - The Valancourt Book of World Horror Stories. Volume 1

My therapist maintains that these episodes are no more than violent fantasies, the products of a child’s imagination, which we brought to life in order to confront the unbearable stress and confusion we were faced with. Still, after a while I had to tie Vili up at night because he would often crawl into my bed, nauseating me with his filthy breath, his burning gaze pointed at me and clutching a tiny plastic sword in his hand. If I tied him up, nothing of that sort would happen; then I would only hear his painful groaning, his whining that overflowed with his terrible fear of death, and his cursing of life. He cursed the one who brought him to life, who forced him to live and die, for otherwise he had existed in lifeless unconsciousness until then.

He was cursing me.

Our friend with the glasses was first. One day he found Nyinyi lifeless on the floor. Nyinyi had passed away in his sleep. Our friend’s parents threw Nyinyi’s corpse in the trash, and when the body disappeared from the trash can leaving dirty traces behind on the floor, they resorted to corporal punishment against their son. Despite our friend’s firm insistence that he hadn’t touched Nyinyi’s corpse. The second night after Nyinyi’s disappearance our friend saw him from his window. The deceased toy was dragging a dead cat through the street, disappearing under a garbage bin with his victim. The next day our friend examined the bin and its surroundings but found nothing but used stuffing.

Vili talked less and less; he would instead broadcast a sort of feeling, like a radio station. I’m ready , he broadcast to me, I’m ready to die . He had suffered enough; his eyes couldn’t see anything but red, every single breath was an agony. He asked me both verbally and non­verbally to end all of this.

Naturally, I resisted for a long time. Though I killed off many other plush toys just so Vili could live, killing Vili was a different matter. On the other hand I also knew that Vili had to die. My mother’s prophecy had to be fulfilled, otherwise all this suffering would have been in vain.

Meanwhile, the girl’s plush toy died as well – she found him in the middle of her room upon returning from school. The filling was still pouring out of his emaciated body, his hands stretched forward as if he was still trying to reach something. The girl read up on the topic, and she found that the only way to prevent our plush toys from resurrecting was to bury them together with an onion – at least that’s how I understood it at that time.

She acted according to her theory: she placed the corpse into a resealable plastic bag and poured some onion around it. The plush toy didn’t return. We all felt relieved by learning that, except for our friend with the glasses, since Nyinyi was still haunting around his house. Several dogs and cats went missing, and one night someone tried to break into the apartment through one of the ground floor windows. The policemen who arrived on the scene found only cotton wool.

Vili was incessantly begging to die, night after night and morning after morning, hardly allowing me a moment of rest. At the same time a new theory started to circulate among my friends, prompted by the increasingly aggressive activity of Nyinyi – that our plush toys crave death because it breaks the bond between them and humans so they don’t have to serve us children anymore, and they can roam the world equipped with the power of the grave, equipped with the power of the Black Emperor. We deduced that there must be more plush toys like Nyinyi out there, they might be gathering in the canals and at the bottom of forgotten cardboard boxes, scheming viciously, planning their revenge on us who created them, gave them voice and life, only to eventually take it away from them.

Vili’s odor became unbearable, and he couldn’t articulate his words anymore. His voice was like a slightly open door through which the coldness of the grave could reach me. I couldn’t stand watching him suffer anymore, and I couldn’t bear my own exhaustion either.

I used the knife and the scissors. I feel ashamed recalling this – I stood over him for hours with the blades in my hand and I cried. My hands shook; whatever I had done before didn’t matter now, only this one act of murder. Vili begged me incessantly to do it, he tried to catch my eyes with his red, blind ones. At last I did it, I forced myself to cut him open as meticulously as I did with the other toys. After the first cut, for a brief moment, he was his old self again, the old Vili. I chose the harder path, and this made the ensuing hours somewhat easier; the silence in my head, the complete absence of Vili. I howled loudly over Vili’s body until my mother found me upon her return from the shop. She caressed my head while I hugged her legs, seeking safety and compassion. She soothed me, and then she said that one sentence, which I think made me hate her forever.

Don’t cry, it was just a plush toy.

My mother explained to me that you have to make the cadaver resemble its living counterpart as best as you can – you can’t bury a person with their insides and limbs scattered all over in the coffin. We reassembled Vili’s body, pushing back as much stuffing as possible, stapling his skin together so he would resemble his old self again. He didn’t – his body was the most horrible sight; his face was a deformity, his friendly smile now a cut-­up grin of insanity. We placed the body in a plastic bag. I demanded that we put some onion into the bag as well – my mother gave in, chopped a bit of red onion and sprinkled it beside Vili. Then we buried the bag in the back yard – I also placed a small cross on the grave. My mother offered me sweets again, then ordered me to tidy my room.

The next morning, I found the cross fallen over, and the grave disturbed, as if the earth had been moved from below. The school bag dropped from my hands because I knew that Vili had returned.

Of course, I had alternative theories as well. It could have been an animal that dug up the body, or even a person, a poor child who could only afford dead toys. Perhaps it was Nyinyi who had come for Vili so as to take his distorted body and present it at a gathering of the undead: Look, this is what mankind does to us.

The girl explained to me how it happened, not then, but years later, as an adult.

We met in a shopping center. My cart contained only two bottles of vodka and a six-pack of beer. She was the one to notice me and called my name in a tone which implied she was happy to see me, as if I was a good old friend, a link to a carefree period of the past. When she called my name I trembled as if she had struck me, and I felt ashamed for not recalling hers. I smiled at her as best I could to camouflage my embarrassment. The girl had become a mother, her daughter standing by the basket with her head down and a plush toy in her hands – Vili. My throat went dry when I saw Vili; of course I knew it was not my Vili, just another, similar plush toy.

I saw a tiny lesion on the neck of the toy. The girl, who was now a mother, was smiling at me. It’s like yours was , she said and leaned closer to me so she could whisper in my ear. Sadly , she whispered, and I could smell chamomile on her breath, sadly, she got infected with some kind of disease. This plush toy is dying, and my daughter has to accept it.

I dropped the basket, the bottles of vodka smashed against each other, pouring their contents all over the floor, and I felt the urge to throw myself to the ground and lick it all up. I know why yours came back, I figured it out , she continued and I wanted to run but my body didn’t obey. I listened carefully to what she had to say, and we agreed to have coffee or tea some time, but we didn’t exchange numbers, and I vomited in the restroom for hours until the security guards kicked the door in.