“Her?”
He looked up at me, staring right through my eyes. “Mom. I kept seeing her. Her face. She’d be smiling one second. Then she’d be melting. Her skin falling off her bones.”
I could see from the mad glare in his eyes that he was seeing it again, that these images were as real now as they had been then.
“She would talk to me,” he said, his voice cracking. “Tell me she didn’t need me anymore. That I was the reason she was dead. That being in a hole in the ground was better than being my mom. And just when I thought I couldn’t stand the pain any more, I’d hear his voice, telling me that he would save me. He would change me. He would be my mom and my dad.”
Again his eyes caught mine.
“And if you only knew how bad it hurt. If you could only imagine it. Then you’d know that it was easy to believe.”
“It wasn’t real,” I told him. “You know that. Mom loved you. Dad loves you. I love you. There’s nothing here that can hurt you.”
“Maybe,” he said, wiping his eyes. “But we weren’t supposed to see what we’ve seen.”
“I saw something too,” I said. “I mean, there was the pain, but… something else along with it. People. Kids. The others that he’s taken over the years.”
“Yes,” he said, reaching for my hand. “I-I didn’t know if any of it was real, but they were still in there. Still inside him. Like a parasite that killed whatever it latched on to, but they never really died. They didn’t get to die because he took part of them.” He stared down at the floor and added, “Forever.”
It confirmed everything that I had feared: that this creature was keeping itself alive by kidnapping children and warping them into that foul Thief, swallowing part of their souls in the process. Losing my toys felt suddenly like a small and pathetic thing to even be concerned about.
“We know his secrets now,” Andy said fearfully. “We know, so he’ll be back.”
I nodded. “You’re right.”
I walked him into the bathroom, making sure to stay in front of him, easing him forward the way you might coax a frightened dog. “Now listen,” I said, turning my back to the shower curtain. “This will be a… shock.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Last night. I took my shower. Then I fell asleep in here. And then I… found something.”
I gave him a few more words to explain what had happened, but his face was already tightening as he sensed what was coming, what was hiding just behind us. I could imagine what he felt, the same way I had felt the night before, but multiplied and magnified. Still, the sun was shining, the birds were singing, the rain had finally died away. This was our home, our safe place, and the darkness that had locked him away couldn’t reach us here. The very thought felt like some kind of violation.
“No,” he said, cutting me off midsentence. “Not here.”
“It’s okay,” I told him once again. “He can’t hurt us. Not anymore.”
“He?”
“You just have to see it for yourself.”
With that, I drew back the curtain and listened to Andy half scream, half moan when he saw the crumpled, burned body. My brother, who was bigger, stronger, braver than me, actually dropped as if someone had cut his legs out from under him. There seemed to be a dread inside of him now that was infinitely deeper than any I could imagine. The sight of the Thief scared me, filled me with revulsion and loathing, but it simply broke Andy.
“No,” I said, reaching down. “He’s dead. I promise you. I saw him die. I was in here with him.”
“No, no, no, no, no,” Andy kept repeating, shaking his head from side to side.
“Stop this,” I said firmly, but he ignored me. “I said stop it!”
I drew back my hand and slapped him across the face hard enough bring tears to his eyes and send ripples of shocking pain up my arm. He stopped shaking his head long enough to glare up at me, wounded.
“Now listen to me,” I said. “He’s dead. I don’t know if the rest of this is over or not, but his part is. He’s gone, and we have to do something about it.”
Andy’s mouth was half-open, and a thread of drool dripped out from his bottom lip like a nearly invisible fishing line. The perfect outline of my small hand was clear on his cheek, a sight that sent a pang of guilt through me.
“Do you understand?” I asked him. “I can’t do this alone. I need you. I need my brother.”
In that moment, I could see that he was more or less divided, split down the middle. Somewhere inside was Andy, the one I knew and trusted and loved. Sure, we fought, and between the two of us, we had enough issues to fill the bed of my dad’s truck, but he was whole. He was something I understood. The second Andy, the one who had dropped to his knees in a heap at my feet, was something that had been infected, used, and shredded into bits. A patch of his heart had been scorched and salted, and it felt likely that nothing would ever grow there again. Nothing good at least. In time, that dark patch of himself might give birth to something, but only if I did nothing.
His behavior ever since I had rescued him was nothing less than these two forced in a struggle to the death. As I stood there, the internal conflict inside him seemed to shift, and the better part of him emerged. He looked up at me, and I could see it all over him: his eyes focused and clear, his body at peace with the awful scene before us. He was scared. We both were. But he was, just maybe, equipped to deal with it.
“I think so,” he said.
“Good,” I said, pulling him back to his feet. “I think maybe it’s time to get Dad involved.”
“No,” he said, his voice suddenly panicked.
“Why?” I asked. “I mean, he wouldn’t have ever believed us before, but look. We got proof now.”
“No,” he said, even more forceful. “We can fix this. We will fix it.”
“But we don’t have to do it alone—”
“I said no!” He looked down and suddenly realized that he was holding onto my arm, squeezing it hard enough to turn his knuckles white. He pulled away, and a look of shame and fear rippled across his face. “I… I don’t want anyone to know…”
I couldn’t quite imagine what those lost hours must have been like, but I thought I understood.
“Okay. We’ll do it your way.”
Neither of us had any good ideas, at least none that we could pull off easily. The quarry was the safest bet, but even that was over a mile away, and neither of us had any great ideas as to how to move a seven-foot-long body in broad daylight. We immediately settled on waiting for nightfall, though we didn’t have any great way to move him. We didn’t know, not yet at least, how heavy he was, but we figured that just carrying him would be out of the question.
“We need something big. Something with wheels,” I said.
“The garbage can?” he said without much confidence. I brushed off the suggestion at first, but the longer we circled the idea, the better it became.
“It might be a little loud,” I said, picturing the noise it made on the driveway.
“Maybe not,” he said. “If we take it slow, through the grass maybe, it might work.”
“What if somebody drives by?” I asked.
“Simple. We stick to the main road pretty much the whole way. No cutting through yards or anything. Anybody shows up, we just park it next to the closest mailbox. As far as they know, we’re just getting it out a day early.”
It seemed risky, but what other choice did we really have? “Okay,” I said. “But what about him?”
“What about him?”
“What are we doing with him until then?”
“Well,” he said, surveying the body up close for the first time. “We need to get him out first. Any ideas?”