D Gillespie - The Toy Thief

The eye receded into the darkness of the floor, and I fell to my knees with a moan. I couldn’t do anything more than shake my head and stare at it, wondering how much longer I could go before madness took me over for good. The metal vent cover shook again, and I saw it rising, slow and steady like a boat on high tide. It rose and rose, inch by inch. Then it fell to one side with a clatter.

That was when I saw the hand, that same burned, skinless hand, still moving, still alive somehow. I thought of how much of a husk it had seemed, how bloodless and desiccated. It wasn’t alive, not in the way that everything else on this entire planet was alive. I knew then that I hadn’t watched it die, not really. All I’d seen were the human slivers that still remained curling away like dead leaves. Now the only thing left was the seed in the middle, the dark, twisted part, planted half in Andy and half in that awful frame.

The hand receded, and I heard something clicking, whirring down in that black, mouth-like hole. Then the teddy bear rose up, tinkling the same familiar little song. It floated, hovering, held aloft by a red-black hand, which gripped it by a single ear. He swung it left and right, almost playfully, before dropping it onto the carpeted floor. A gift. Something just for me.

Then I heard the laugh. Giggling. He knew exactly what he was doing to me. He was breaking me, weakening me, putting small cracks throughout my psyche. It was brilliant in a way. Something was coming for me, something that had tasted me, tasted my essence. He wanted more. I knew that now. He had a choice between me and Andy, and he had chosen me. All he had to do was soften me up enough to finish the job for good.

I was on my feet, dashing back down the hall toward Andy’s room, falling through the door and tumbling onto his bed. I was so hysterical that I didn’t even notice he wasn’t in there. I checked behind the doors, under the sheets, under the bed, but I couldn’t find him. He had sneaked off somewhere in the night, and though the idea terrified me, it didn’t really surprise me.

“What are you doing?” I heard him say from behind me.

“Jesus, where were you?” I said with a little shriek.

He stared me up and down, untrusting, unsure how to handle the way I was acting.

“I was outside.”

My eyes swelled in their sockets.

“Why?” I said, trembling.

“I couldn’t sleep,” he replied. “What’s with you?”

I’d slipped off the bed, making my way toward the door now, unsure of everything. “What were you doing out there?” I imagined him opening the basement door, imagined him being called out there by his master, under some dark spell.

“Just walking,” he said quietly. He had that same shifty look about him, that same hollowed-out stare.

“You didn’t see anything?”

He froze, and his eyes locked onto mine.

“You’re my sister,” he said with a bit of surprise in his tone, as if he had just remembered the fact. “I’d never hurt you.”

No sooner had the words passed his lips than he grabbed my wrist, twisted it to a near-breaking point, and kicked my legs out from under me. I tried to scream, but he had stuffed a pillow over my face. I felt something sharp biting into one wrist – a cord from one of his games, binding me to the foot of his bed by one hand. Then a belt wrapped around my mouth, choking me, keeping me from screaming. It wasn’t until all of this was done that I saw his face, saw his bloodshot eyes rimmed with tears.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “But you don’t know how much it hurts.”

He dashed from the room, and I heard the back door slide open, and I knew it was back. The Toy Thief was inside my house once more – only this time, there was no need to sneak in. Andy rounded the corner first, and it followed on shaky legs, barely able to walk any longer, a newborn fawn with a nightmare face. The head lolled, the pink eyes were dry and unblinking, and the mouth was a black nothing lined with yellow teeth. Hands, gangly and burned, were opening and closing, driven by some awful hunger to feed once more. The boy who’d smiled in swimming trunks, who had cherished a tiny snow globe with every ounce of his heart, was gone, and all that remained was death incarnate.

I tried to scream, to beg, to plead with the only part of myself that could still hope to gain sympathy. My eyes refused to look at the ghoul that shambled toward me, and instead, I looked to my brother, my only hope, my Andy. I pleaded with my eyes, but he refused to look at me. He kept his face glued to the floor as the voice rose from that gaping hole of a mouth, speaking in tones of utter hatred and disgust.

“You furssttt…”

“You’ll get it out of me?” Andy asked. “What you put there? And then it’ll be over?”

“Yesss… yourrr handdd…”

Andy raised his palm and looked away as the bony, spidery fingers enveloped it. Something was happening now, something different, something that few living had ever seen. Andy was quivering, his entire body shaking as the skin around his wrist and forearm began to turn black. I thought it was killing him, injecting some poison into his skin, but when I saw the pink eyes begin to water, I realized I was wrong. It wasn’t injecting the darkness in – it was drawing the darkness out, undoing what it had already begun back in the cave. Andy’s skin grew more and more pale, the inky color receding, and he slipped to his knees, his body waving from side to side. Only then did the Thief release his grip on my brother.

“Yes,” the Thief said in a clearer tone. “Whole again. It takes time to travel from one body to the other.” He glanced at me. “To pass from one to another. I like to make them weak first, to make the transition easier. But with you,” he said, smiling, “I’ll make an exception. I’m ready for you. For something new. And when you’re old enough, who knows… I might have a son of my own…”

He reached for my free hand, and I pulled it away at the last second, but not quickly enough. He was able to snag the last two fingers on my hand, and that was all it took. In an instant, I felt my consciousness slip – not into sleep or fear, but to be swallowed by something greater than myself. I was part of something large and dark and evil, and it was consuming me piece by piece. I would be changed, I realized that, and in time, my eyes would go blind and pink, my teeth would become fangs, and my body would shrivel and stretch as I became more and more like my master. Most of all, there was not a single shred of hope to be found.

That’s right , he whispered inside me. Let it all happen. Watch it, this old, pathetic husk die, and know what’s waiting for you.

It was true, all of it. I saw the Thief shriveling before my eyes, the pink globes going dimmer and dimmer as the hatred that drove them spilled into me.

No one can help you, he proclaimed. No one. You will spend eternity inside of me, and when I’m done with you, you will…

Pressure.

A grinding, blinding sort of pain that I was only dimly aware of. The sound of meat slicing, tendons tearing, bones separating.

And finally, my eyes opening.

Andy was in front of me and the Thief, holding something that glistened in his hand. A butcher knife, slick with blood and something black that sizzled in the open air. The liquid bubbled, hissed, and vanished in the span of a few seconds. Then, for some reason I couldn’t understand, I fell backward, away from the iron grip that held me. My body was my own once more, but I was at a complete loss to explain how.

I saw the Thief, still withering, still dead on his feet, and within the bony grip of his charred hand, I saw the red stumps of my fingers poking out. Blood mixed with blackness dripped onto the carpet, and I caught a glimpse of the other half of my fingers, still attached to my hand, but equally red. A black, misty fluid pumped from the holes where my fingers had been, and with each beat of my heart, I saw the essence of the Toy Thief go airborne, sputter, hiss, and disappear.