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.
No! I heard the voice say, loud and strong within my head.
“No,” said another, this one weak and pitiful, echoing from the Thief’s throat. I realized what I was seeing. A fish, caught from a pond and thrown cruelly onto the dry bank to die, and all the flopping and thrashing in the world could do nothing to save it. The Thief reached for me, for my neck, trying to choke me as he screamed both within my mind and without, but the once-iron fingers were weak and helpless, and the hands fell limply away, shriveling, turning to ash on my skin. Blood spewed from the stumps of my fingers, coating my chest and neck with a thick red stream stenciled with a black essence that dissipated as I watched, both curious and detached.
“No,” Andy said desperately. “Please, no.”
He was doing something, digging around behind me, but I was too mesmerized by the sight of the Thief to notice. He was almost deflating, the eyes falling in on themselves, the lips receding, the already crisp skin tightening. He was, before my eyes, going from alive to dead and beyond, all of those years hitting him in the span of a few seconds. The skin shriveled, cracked, and sloughed off in tiny pieces, dead leaves falling away. Soon there was no skin at all, and even the bones seemed to shrink as what was left of the creature fell to the carpeted floor in complete silence. It was impossible – the years, decades, all of it passing in the span of ten seconds, reducing the once terrifying Toy Thief to a pile of ash and old clothes.
My other hand fell free as Andy cut me loose, and I felt a rush of warmth as the blood pumped back into it. Then the belt was gone, and I could breathe and talk, even though there wasn’t much I wanted to say. I was floating, hovering above the carpeted floor, and my body didn’t feel a single sensation beyond quiet peace. I could have died then, probably should have died, and I wouldn’t have given the matter another thought. Dying would have been just as pleasant as anything else. There was Andy again with one of his t-shirts in hand as he took my mutilated fingers and squeezed them tight. That brought me back – the pain of my brother saving my life.
“How?” I asked him. “How did you know?” My voice was like the tread of boots in a gravel pit, but Andy understood.
“He told me,” he said as he tended my deformed hand. “He didn’t want me to know how vulnerable he was when going from one person to the other, but I saw it all the same. He wanted you, but he had to be whole to do it. Half was in me, half was in him.”
“But how did you know… my fingers…”
A guilty look swept across his face, and I knew. He hadn’t had some grand plan. He’d only wanted it out of him. And once it was, he was enough himself once more, and he found his will to fight back. It wasn’t romantic or brave, but it would do. He bound my hand up and wrapped the belt around it as tightly as it would go. The pain was real now, almost blinding, but I came to long enough to see him staring at the empty clothes, the last remnants of the Thief. He looked back at my hand, then down at the knife, and I saw the truth in his eyes before he even said a word.
“I… I’ve got to go,” he said as he reached down and began to gather the clothes.
“No,” I said, already crying. “You can’t.”
“I have to,” he replied, and I knew it was the truth.
“We could… make something up. I can do it, I can fix it,” I said, blubbering.
“No,” he said honestly. “You can’t.”