Andy’s favorite was the train. You could actually see the conductor standing inside! He picked the heavy toy up and held it in his hand. It was so much cooler than anything you ever saw in a toy store today! He reached under the cot again, opened his suitcase, and tucked the train inside. Then he lay back down.
There were so many of the toys — thirty-two, he’d counted — that he was sure the Hilgers wouldn’t miss it. Besides, the boy thought, wasn’t his mom always saying to his dad when they stayed in hotels, “Honey, take the soap, take the shampoo, get the Kleenex...”? This wasn’t exactly soap, or shampoo, or Kleenex, but then this wasn’t exactly a hotel. So it had to be kind of the same...
And if that nasty, mean man in the room next to them could cop a spoon, why couldn’t he have the train? Andy knew the man had stolen it, because of the look on his face — there was guilt written all over it!
Andy had to pee. He remembered his mother telling him that if he woke up in the night to be sure and go, because someone else might be in the bathroom in the morning.
The boy got up from the cot and quietly slipped out of the room. He tiptoed down the dark hallway to the bathroom.
Inside, he used the toilet, which had a funny chain he had to pull to flush it. Then he washed his hands at a neat faucet where the water came out of a fish’s head. He turned out the bathroom light, opened the door and stepped out in the hallway.
That’s when he saw Mrs. Hilger coming out of the crabby man’s room. She had some wadded-up sheets in her arms.
The woman didn’t see him, because she had her back to the boy, heading toward the stairs with her bundle.
Andy stood frozen for a moment, and when the woman was gone, he walked down to that mean man’s room.
The door was wide open. And even though the only light came from the moon that shone in through the windows, he could see that the bed had been made. There was no sign of that man or his things.
Andy tiptoed to the top of the stairs, which yawned down into blackness. Below, somewhere, he could hear noises — faint pounding and the sound of something electrical, something sawing, maybe, like his father sometimes used in the garage.
Quietly, he crept down the stairs, staying close to the railing, until he reached the bottom.
Suddenly, the big clock by the stairs bonged three times, scaring Andy nearly out of his skin! He waited until he’d calmed down then moved silently along, toward the back of the dark house, through the dining room with its big, long table. He bumped into a chair, and its legs went Screech! on the wooden floor.
Andy froze. The faint noises below him stopped. He held his breath. Seconds felt like minutes. Then the sounds started up again.
He went into the kitchen.
There was a light coming from under the door that led to the basement. That’s where the noises were coming from.
Andy thought about a movie he had seen last year with his father. At one point a kid — a boy just about like himself — was going to go down in a basement where bad, evil people lived. Andy had turned to his dad and said, “Why’s he going down there?” And Andy’s father had said, “Because it’s a story, and he just has to know.”
And now, just like the boy in that scary movie, Andy reached his hand out for the doorknob. He didn’t know why — he was certainly frightened — but he couldn’t seem to stop himself!
Slowly, he opened the door to the basement, and the sound of sawing increased as the crack of bright light widened until Andy was washed in illumination. What am I doing? he thought, I don’t have to know! And as he was starting to ease the door shut again, a hand settled on his shoulder.
He jumped. Someone was beside him! Shaking, he looked back at the shape of a figure with a knife in its hand, and gasped.
“What are you doing, young man?” the figure demanded.
The voice was low and cold — but a lady’s voice.
Then there was a click and he saw her, one hand on the light switch, the other holding the butcher knife: Mrs. Hilger. The face that had been so friendly before was now very cross.
Even though Andy was trembling badly, he managed to say, “Wh-where am I? I... I must be sleepwalking again.”
There was a long, horrible moment.
Then the knife disappeared behind Mrs. Hilger’s back and she said sweetly, “You’re in the kitchen, my boy. I’ll see that you get back to your room.”
“Th-that’s all right, now I know where I am.”
He backed away from her and turned and hurried through the dining room, and when he got to the stairs, he bolted up them, and dashed down the hallway, past the man’s room who had stolen the spoon, to his parent’s room, where he opened the door, then slammed it shut, ran to their bed and jumped in between them.
“Andy!” his mother moaned. “What in the world...?”
“Can I please sleep here, Mom?” he pleaded. “I had a terrible nightmare.”
She sighed. “Well, all right, get under the covers.” Andy started to crawl beneath the sheets, but stopped.
“Wait,” he said. “There’s something I gotta do first.”
He climbed out of the bed and went over to the cot, dug beneath it and got into his suitcase.
He put the toy train back on the ledge of the window.
Pete woke to a sunny morning, the smell of freshly brewed coffee and the unmistakable aroma of breakfast. He breathed deeply, taking in the wonderful smells.
He looked over at Laura, still sleeping soundly in the big bed next to him, her hair spread out on the lace pillowcase like a fan. She was so beautiful — even snoring, with her mouth open.
He propped himself up with both elbows and noticed his son sitting on the cot across the room, fully dressed, his little suitcase, packed, by his feet. The boy was staring at him.
“Hey, partner,” Pete said, still a little groggy, “what’s the hurry?”
Andy didn’t respond.
Now Pete realized something was wrong with the boy, and vaguely remembered his son sleeping with them in the night.
Pete sat up further in the bed, letting the bedspread fall down around his waist. “Did you have a bad dream?” he asked.
The boy nodded. “Sort of.”
“Well, why don’t you come over here and tell me about it.” Pete patted a place on the bed next to himself. “Most bad dreams sound pretty silly in the light of day.”
Andy stood up slowly and went to the bed and sat on it. The springs made a little squeak.
Pete gazed at his son’s face... his large brown eyes, made larger by the glasses, his little pug nose, the tiny black mole on the side of his cheek... the depth of Pete’s love for the child was sometimes frightening.
“You know that man in the room next to us?” Andy said almost in a whisper, looking at his hands in his lap.
“The one who had dibs on the bathroom from six to seven this morning?”
Andy nodded.
Pete waited.
“When I went to the bathroom in the middle of the night,” Andy said, “he was gone.”
“Gone?”
Now the boy looked at his father. “His room was all made up, Dad... like he’d never been there!”
“Soooo,” Pete said slowly, “what do you think happened?”
“I don’t know,” Andy said softly.
Pete looked toward the door of their room, and then back at his son. “Do you think somebody chopped him up with a meat cleaver,” Pete said with a tiny smile, “and buried him in the garden, like in that movie we saw?”