D Gillespie - The Toy Thief

Across the room, there was some kind of hand-built box, cobbled together with two-by-fours, about six feet wide and four feet deep. It was filled with stuffed toys, which glowed from within, and for the first time, I thought I had found the source of the music. One of the dolls was loudly playing lullabies in a loop, but I couldn’t quite grasp what the purpose of the box was.

When my gaze first landed on the thing between the box and the table, I didn’t recognize it for what it was. I’d simply never seen anything like it. It was a cage. There were bars, a grid of rebar, no doubt stolen from construction sites late at night. But the true horror was the decoration added to the frame. There were plastic baby doll parts that the Toy Thief had dismantled and attached to the metal, overlaying them in specific, insane designs. There were arms and legs running horizontally and vertically, and a single, wide-eyed head had been attached to each joint, forming gruesome columns.

I rushed over and knelt there, aghast, wondering what it all meant. Were the decorations supposed to be art? Something warm and welcoming to come home to? Who could say, but the effect in practice was horrifying, like a coffin built by the hands of a child.

All of it was too much. The spinning lights, the droning toys, the utterly mad cage of baby parts. My head spun, and I felt as if I would pass out then and there. I stared at a spot on the floor, forcing my mind to reset itself, to bring myself back into the moment before it was too late. Then, when my eyes rose back up, I saw it: the edge of a bare foot just visible inside the darkness of the cage. Andy was locked inside.

I clapped my hand over my mouth to keep from screaming his name when I realized it was him, and I was lucky I did. Across the room, the wooden box of stuffed animals began to stir and bubble, and I slid back, deeper into the darkness, watching, my heart beating wildly. I saw the hand first, black as pitch, as the Toy Thief emerged from his nest. The toys parted, rippling back like water as he slithered out, spilling over the edge and onto the cave floor, stopping only long enough to set something down on the edge of the box – some sort of globe. Even here, in his own domain, he walked on all fours, stalking his way across the room to the cage that held my brother.

From where I stood, I could hear the steady sounds of Andy’s breathing, and I knew that he was asleep. I tried to imagine the night before, the screaming, the fighting, the constant rush of adrenaline-soaked fear, and I knew that it just had to have been too much for him. Something had to give. I wondered if that was exactly what the Thief had been waiting for, because he stepped soundlessly to the cage. Something was happening here. I knew it. I could feel it. But I felt beyond powerless to stop it. I knelt down, peering through a hole in the stack of toys, and watched it all unfold.

The Thief raised his black hand and began to pull at the tip of one of his fingers. The skin began to slide free. I shook my head. No, not skin. A glove, and beneath the black leather was a bone-white hand, thin enough to belong to a skeleton. He removed the next glove, and for the first time, I saw his palms. They were red and splotchy, covered in deep, ulcerous sores that glistened purple and red. One look, and there was little doubt as to how painful they must be, and I felt a sudden pang of guilt for hating this creature so. All that died away when he reached through the bars and placed his hand on Andy’s leg. There was no doubt in that moment that my brother truly was asleep, but with a single touch of that wretched hand, he began to curl and moan, his body tensing like a knot as I heard him cry out, soft and pleading.

“Nooo…”

The sound of his pitiful voice clouded my eyes with tears, and I clutched at the knife, considering risking it all on a single, wild rush. It was foolish, but you can’t imagine what it’s like to hear someone you love plead that way. His eyes never opened, and he never fought back, but the moans continued for over a minute. I saw the Thief arch his back and grasp at the cage with his free hand as my brother writhed under his touch. I still didn’t know what I was seeing, couldn’t comprehend it, but I also knew I couldn’t stand to watch much more. Just as I stepped out from my hiding place, intent on ending it, the Thief broke his grip and fell back onto the cave floor.

Andy’s cries died away as sleep took him once more as the Thief curled on the floor, twitching. I dropped back down soundlessly, peering out from the dark as he slowly pulled himself up onto his knees. His head was swinging from side to side, his body slow and sluggish, and I realized what I was seeing. I wasn’t sure then what the Thief’s touch had done, though I have a better idea now, all these years later. In that moment, I could tell enough just from the language of his body. This was the look of a man who had consumed too much. Too much food. Too much wine. With a staggering gait, he moved toward his box of toys, stumbled to the floor, then pulled himself back into his nest. There was a shuffling within as the stuffed animals swirled a bit before settling, still and quiet once more.

After that, the cave was silent. It took a few minutes of waiting and watching before I worked up the nerve to venture out. There were no more places to hide in this chamber, and once I was in that inner sanctum, there was no getting out. With that realization in mind, I slipped around, hugging the wall and checking each footstep as quietly as possible. Moments later, I was back at the edge of the grim cage, peering down at Andy. My first instinct was to reach through the bars, to shake him awake, but I knew that would be the end of us both. I had to figure out how to get him out first.

I ran a hand over the top of the cage, shivering just to touch the doll legs and arms that lined it. I was expecting to find a heavy padlock, but all I could feel was a series of tightly wrapped coils of metal wire. I knelt down, investigating the bottom of the fence, and I found a hinge that would drop the front of the cage down to the ground if the wire was unspooled. Could it be that easy? I tested the wires and found that it wasn’t quite as simple as I thought it might be, so I turned my attention to the stone table and began searching for something to get Andy free. In the clutter of dismantled toys, I found a pair of pliers that looked like they might do the job. I was just ready to go to work when my eyes came upon the faded photograph that was stuck under a rock on the back of the table. It was so out of place in this horrid hole that it caught my attention at once. It was of a boy, no more than eight, posing next to his mother. It was summertime; she was in a 1950s-style one-piece bathing suit, he in a pair of checkered swimming trunks. They were both smiling, she the sweet, caring smile of a mother, so very proud, and he the forced, slightly silly grin of a boy who doesn’t want his picture taken. Before I realized it, I was holding it in my hand, staring at the fraying print, enthralled by the strangeness of it. Without another thought, I slipped it into my pocket.

I went straight back to work, bearing down on each wire until it snapped free with a little plink . After the first one, I stopped, waited, watching the box full of stuffed animals, certain that at any moment, the calm surface of cotton would open and he would spill out. He never did, so I focused on the cage, snipping each and every wire without delay, refusing to look back because I knew that would be the end of it. If I had seen so much as a single toy shift in that pile, my resolve would have broken. One after another, the wires fell away, until after one last snip, the front of the cage fell down onto me. It was heavier than it looked, but I caught it in the crook of my arms and gently set it down.