About halfway in, the walls of toys began to come alive. A robot, head spinning, greeted me as I approached. I saw the baby that I heard earlier, making a whining cry accompanied by a heaving chest that puffed up and down. There was a glowworm, its head illuminated from within. Toys of all ages greeted me, shining, speaking, crying out in a cacophony of mechanical voices, some of which were older than my father.
As I swept my gaze across the spectacle, I realized that the Thief was responsible for stealing more than just toys. The batteries to keep this place running alone told me that my father’s gripe about vanishing AAs wasn’t just talk. The other thing I realized was that the majority of these toys would have stopped working long ago if not for clever hands that kept them running.
The closer I came to that core of light, the more jumbled things became. The smooth lines of the aisle became angular and broken, and I crouched behind a stack of board games and peered out. I was nearly to the end of the chamber, and I could, generally, see it all from here. I still hadn’t laid eyes on either Andy or the Thief, but I knew I had to be getting close.
The glow, as I now realized, came from the myriad of light-up toys that surrounded the room: glowing eyes, beeping robots, animals that emitted beams of light that danced on the ceiling. There were dozens of them, all of them turned on at once, giving the room the appearance of a darkroom, full of light and yet half-visible at the same time.
As I surveyed the scene, I grew to think of the earlier, ordered aisle as long-term storage, whereas this section was more of the work-in-progress area. There were loose stacks of items here and there, labels and instruction packets stuck to the rocky walls. Along one entire wall, rocks had been arranged into smooth worktables where older toys sat in various states of dismantling. Tools lined the impromptu tables, everything from tiny screwdrivers to wrenches and a sampling of electronic pieces. Below the tables, plastic bins were filled with spare parts, including dozens of pilfered batteries.
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.