ToyWorld: Home of the Christmas Thief (Claus Universe Book 10), page 1
TOYWORLD
HOME OF THE CHRISTMAS THIEF
TONY BERTAUSKI
1
I’m not the hero in this story. Far from it.
To tell this story properly, we need to start at the beginning. It was a night like any other. I had folded the covers back and smoothed the wrinkles. I drank the remains of chamomile tea, still warm, with a lemon wedge resting on the bottom of the mug. In my silk pajamas, cool and smooth, I slid into bed. I lay in the dark, listening to the downstairs grandfather clock count the seconds.
The house was empty. As usual.
An annoying red glow filled my window from across the street, strings of lights on my neighbor’s gutters. I stared at a small water stain on the ceiling that I had yet to repair, and counted all my life’s failures. It wasn’t something I enjoyed doing. Just something I’d always done. Part of the ritual.
Then I took three deep breaths, exhaling slowly with each one, and closed my eyes. The breathing technique was something my father taught me as a child. It was habit. Comfortable. I made the mistake, once, of telling him of a dream I had. Dreams are wasted thoughts, he said with a voice as hard as an icy driveway. Foolish entertainment.
He believed in two things: hard work and harder work. The only thing that was real was what could be seen and touched. Dreams were stupid. It wasn’t like I could stop dreaming, nor did I want to. There was no television in the house, and computer time was strictly monitored. Dreams were my only escape as a child. I recorded them in a notebook and hid it between my mattress and box spring. I would get so nervous he’d find it that occasionally I would burn it. A few weeks later, I would start a new one.
This night, where the story begins, I had a dream like no other. I traveled to somewhere beyond the galaxy. I floated without a spaceship, breathing as if air existed in the vacuum of space. Coasting weightless and effortless, past planets and moons, stars and black holes. I saw things I never imagined. It was the loveliest of dreams.
I didn’t remember waking up, but I’d opened my eyes to stare at the water stain on the ceiling. Only it wasn’t there. The grandfather clock wasn’t ticking. I wasn’t in my bed.
I was slumped on a shelf, frozen in postdormital sleep paralysis, locked in my body, staring helplessly across a room. How I got there was a mystery. This didn’t feel like a dream. What else could it be? I was a grown man, a rational man. This was a dream; it could be nothing else.
A small Christmas tree was in the corner, casting a red glow across the room. I was thinking of my neighbor’s repugnant lights. The light, however, caught pairs of eyes in dim corners. There were dozens of them. I’d had this dream before, being stalked by predators. Never like this, though. I’d read a fair share of dream books and knew they represented my fears. As always, I couldn’t outrun them. Powerless, I endured their judgment. They weren’t blinking. Neither was I.
I wanted to escape, to run away. Wake up! I thought. Sometimes that worked.
A terrifying jolt racked my entire being. I tumbled forward like a puppet. I heard the wind, then the hollow clatter of plastic sticks on laminate flooring. It sounded like pieces of an unassembled model dumped out of a box. I still remembered that sound like it was yesterday. Horrifying.
I was bones. Red, red bones.
Fibulas and tibias, phalanges and ribs. Crimson and polished and expertly crafted. No wires or twine, no glue or ties. I sat up with a clatter. One of my arms fell from my shoulder. Pulled from the socket, it looked like a chew toy the dog had forgotten. There was no time to panic. The predators were circling.
Keys jingled on a key ring. Long tubes of light flickered on the ceiling. Giants entered the room. Ah, of course. They’ve come to grind my bones.
They wore puffy coats and stocking caps. Boots crusted with snow. A man and a woman and a child in between. I gave them quite a fright, scrambling into the corner like a feral cat. The man spilled coffee. Imagine seeing a trembling pile of bones. I expected them to swat me with a broom.
The father, I correctly assumed, turned to the mother and said with all the nonchalance of calling attendance in homeroom, “I thought they were blank.”
The mother looked more confused than terrified. She went to the shelves, which, by the way, weren’t filled with predators, and picked up a stuffed dog with floppy ears, squeezed the nose on a giant orange cat. “This never happened before,” she said, looking at me. “Christmas is ten days away.”
Never happened before? I couldn’t parse the meaning. Like this had never happened before, or this had never happened ten days before Christmas?
The girl walked around a workbench covered in bags of white stuffing, sewing needles and thread. A backpack strapped to her shoulders. She was ten years old or twelve. I’m not good with kids.
Madeline Bells.
That was her name. I didn’t know how I knew it. The name just popped into my head. She picked up my lost arm like it was a stick. I squeezed into the corner, my joints protesting. Right about then I was thinking this dream was different. Like no other dream I’d ever had. I was about to pop another limb off my body when the mother said to the girl, “Easy, hon. He’s frightened.”
This was weird. Even for a dream. They squatted in front of me like I was a puppy who had just piddled on the floor.
“Hello, Viktor,” the mother said. “We just want to help.”
I was jammed into a corner with nowhere to go and wondering who Viktor was. Then I noticed a tag on my arm. The one Madeline was holding.
Viktor the Red.
Viktor was my family name of sorts, from the old country. I would wake up soon and write all of this down, tease out the symbolism. The predators were my father; I was bones that lacked self-worth or identity or fill in the blank. It would all make sense, it always did. When I woke up.
The mother popped my arm back into the socket. Her touch was warm and gentle. Madeline looked at her mother and said, “Can I keep him?”
I never forgot that, for as long as I lived. It was the way she said it. It filled me with a warmth I’d never felt. It was so kind. I began to melt.
I woke in my bed. In my home, in my silk pajamas. My pillow damp with sweat. I leaped out of the covers and touched my chest and stomach, ran my hands down to my toes. I went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. There I was, in my forty years of flesh. Wrinkles had never made me so happy.
I showered in cold water till my teeth chattered, then sat in the kitchen with a cup of tea till it was time for work. I was different that day. Madeline’s words were butterflies. Can I keep him?
I once read the barrier between reality and dreaming was gossamer thin, and the two were irrevocably inseparable. One side tugs on the other. I couldn’t explain why the dream felt so real. I only knew one thing.
I wanted to go back.
2
His name was Hiro. A bit on the nose for a story, right? Why not call him Prince or Excalibur? It’s quite simple: that was his name. He wasn’t named after a grandfather or famous uncle or anything like that. They liked the sound of it. It’s on his birth certificate, look it up. It’s all very legal.
Our Hiro, as some of us called him, was eight years old when it began. He had no idea who he was or what was about to happen. No one did. This is all a fairy tale, you might think. And you can believe that if you want. It won’t make it any less true than believing the world is flat.
His adoring parents were watching their son carefully peel tape from a Christmas present when this story began. His stack of gifts was almost as high as he was, sitting on the floor. Being an only child had its perks. This year was the year for a chemistry set, designer pants and name brand shirts, and a monogrammed parka for camping, if he ever went camping. There was also a telescope with a digital display, a block and hammer cityscape for budding engineers, a marble chess set with hand-carved pieces, an advanced magic module to expand last year’s set, and, perhaps his favorite, hardcover books signed by his favorite authors.
This was the most favorite time of year in the Tanaka household.
“Do you like it?” his mother said.
Hiro unfolded a monogrammed apron. He liked chopping vegetables, stirring soup and watching bread rise. He liked making cookies best of all, licking batter from the spoon. But the apron wasn’t for cooking. There were sketchbooks wrapped inside it and a set of graphite pencils, colored markers, paintbrushes and watercolors.
He would be embarrassed if friends saw the apron with his name stitched on it. Ah, but that was the one and only benefit of being a loner. No one to make fun of you, no one to prank you or always coming over to visit or talking to you. Hiro rarely spoke, even when a teacher called on him. He always looked at his Devin Claire shoes and muttered just above a whisper.
Imagination can be your very best friend, his grandfather used to say. He was a loner, too.
“Look at this.” His mother pulled out three journals. “One for you, one for me and one for your father.”
She passed them out, each of them splashed with glitter, the words written calligraphy style and surrounded by finely detailed mazes. Dream Journal, it read. His mother didn’t click a button for Christmas. She made it. That’s the true spirit, she would say.
“Now we can write them down,” she said.
This was perhaps Hiro’s favorite gift that Christmas (which, by the way, would turn
She had no idea how right she was.
Does it make you sad, a boy telling his dreams to his parents this way? Shouldn’t he be spending the night with friends, playing video games, talking about girls or boys or whatnot? Don’t be. Our Hiro was very happy.
“Coffee,” his father announced. He shoved off the couch, tousling Hiro’s hair.
Hiro dug a pencil out of the apron, turning it in the sharpener, watching the wood curl in scalloped leaves. When his father returned, they took turns reciting their dreams from the night before. His father didn’t write his dream down. Hiro wasn’t sad he didn’t use the dream journal his mother had spent so much time on, since his father had had a very long dream about an elevator falling twenty stories. It was a bad dream, but his mother insisted there was no such thing as bad dreams. Only challenging ones. All dreams had something to say.
Hiro wrote his dream as he told his parents. It was about Santa Claus and his reindeer. He heard the bells and the hooves on the roof, the sleigh scuffing the shingles. His mother asked questions, to help him remember, her lips thinning in a broad smile. Hiro still believed in Santa. That would end soon enough. And not for reasons you might be thinking.
They played chess that afternoon. His father beat him three games, but the last one was close. Hiro helped his mother make cookies, then read his books in front of the fireplace. The whole scene was ripped from a Christmas calendar, it was all so very perfect.
And when it happened—the very reason for this story—no one felt a thing.
They didn’t hear a sound or feel a tremor, didn’t see a flash of light or smell a change in the air. It was much too subtle to know that everything, in that very moment, changed around the world.
Hiro went to his room that night, his belly full of melted marshmallows and lemon drops. The Christmas lights drooped from the eave outside his window, casting a white glow across his pillows. He stopped in the doorway, his hand reaching for the light switch. A purple monkey waited for him on the edge of his bed.
Yes, a purple monkey. You think you’ve heard this story before? Not even close.
Hiro didn’t move for a full minute. You wouldn’t think a stuffed animal would be surprising. Hiro had never owned a stuffed animal. He had toys from when he was very little, but never a doll or a teddy bear. A troll doll, once, with green hair that stood like flames. But that was it. Never a stuffed animal big enough to hug.
Hiro wrapped the long, skinny arms around his neck, the fur tickling his cheek. He fell asleep with a smile. In the morning, for some reason, he forgot to ask his parents who had put the monkey in his room. That wasn’t like him to forget. His manners were impeccable. He was on Santa’s gold star list.
But Hiro wasn’t the only one who forgot that Christmas.
3
Long, crooked fingers scratched the bedroom window, an ancient creature that woke during winter storms. It wanted inside to hide under the bed, to crouch in the closet. Hiro no longer believed in those things. He was older now. Occasionally, though, he checked under his bed. Childhood beliefs never go away. Not entirely.
He opened his eyes, stared at the eggshell ceiling, listened to the scritch, scritch, scritch on the frosted pane. It was still dark. The outline of a tree branch, dusted with snow, swayed outside.
Thoughts of bedtime monsters dissolved like a snowball against a brick wall. He did not like feeling frightened of his own mind, the way his thoughts seemed to live in his head. He wasn’t a child anymore. At the same time, he loved the way imagination created worlds to explore. Sometimes, though, it seemed imagination was beyond his control. That was exciting. At the same time, it made him nervous.
Tucked beneath thick blankets, a dream lurked just beyond reach. He relished these moments, waking before the alarm yanked him into a hard and cold world. Last night’s dream wasn’t frightening or whimsical. He didn’t go to school in his underwear or forget to study for an exam. It was a big dream. A black and empty dream.
His grandfather would say memory was like a misty day. Names and places, thoughts he would have just moments before, would disappear in the fog. He knew they were out there, just beyond his reach. But some days were clear skies, and memories were as easy as picking apples. Hiro’s dream wasn’t lost in a mist. It was just so far away. Like reaching across an infinite galaxy.
The alarm blared from his dresser. He threw the blankets off, plunging into the cold air. He dressed quickly in beige pants, a white shirt and a black sweater with the school insignia, then made his bed and fluffed his pillow. The smell of coffee greeted him downstairs. He stopped next to the front door, stood in front of a mirror to straighten his collar. His hair was black and shiny, falling over his forehead, just above his eyes. A timid shadow darkened his upper lip. He leaned closer, combing the trace of whiskers with his finger. A lone hair had sprung from his chin like a weed. It took three attempts to pluck it.
The streetlight shined through the bay window, filling the front room, pale and yellow. The furniture had been rearranged, the couch shoved aside and the chair against the wall, leaving the corner of the room empty. His parents did that every year, the first week of December, pushing stuff around, then sitting down to read their phones or watch a program. In January, it went back the way it was before. One year, his father put a coat rack in the corner. They hung their coats on it, put their shoes beneath it. Now it was like they were expecting the delivery of a large appliance that never came.
“Good morning,” Hiro said.
“Morning to you.” His father was at the kitchen table, wearing a white shirt and skinny black tie, a tight knot cinched against his throat. He worked from home now, remotely, but still dressed up. He sipped coffee as black as his tie.
His mother offered a blanched smile, her complexion pale in the harsh kitchen light. She’d stopped wearing lipstick shortly after the art program was dropped from the school curriculum and cut her hair, a severe crop just below her ears. She’d been reassigned to teach technical writing. Her attire was as colorless as her lips. A silver beaded necklace was across a white blouse beneath a gray jacket.
Breakfast and a glass of water waited on the table.
Hiro wondered what his father had done differently this morning. The eggs looked like a wet sponge. He poked at the yellow mound, strings of cheese stretching across the plate. He rearranged the eggs in the center.
“Did you dream last night?” Hiro said.
His father chuckled, distracted by something on his phone. His mother smiled thinly, chewing with lips curved slightly downward. Hiro pulled a chunk of egg from the blob, twanged the cheese string with his fork.
“Don’t play with it, Hiro,” she said.
“I had this dream. It was different. Have you dreamed like that before? Like you, I don’t know, went somewhere?”
“Can’t say I have,” his father said.
“It was like… space. Lots of it. Like a galaxy.” He poked the eggs. “There was a planet.”
“Did you finish your science proposal?” his mother said.
His father pointed. A more relevant question for breakfast conversation. Because dreams were just leftover thoughts, a symptom of a chaotic mind struggling to make sense of the world. Hiro couldn’t remember who said that.
He told his mother he’d finished it. He wasn’t exactly lying. Is anything ever really finished? She used to say that in art class. When there was an art class. He rearranged the eggs like satellites orbiting a space station, the stringy cheese tethering them together.
“I’m leaving in ten minutes. I can’t take you home after school. I have a conference.” His mother rinsed her plate.
“I wonder where the journals are,” Hiro said.
“They’re in your room,” his father said.
Hiro wasn’t talking about schoolwork. He searched the cabinets above the stove, then the pantry while explaining the journals they once had, where they wrote their dreams down at breakfast instead of scrolling through newsfeeds. It seemed like forever since he’d seen them. His mother had made them a long time ago. He couldn’t remember why.
