by Jeff Strand
Attic Toys
Edited by Jeremy C. Shipp
Copyright © 2012 by Evil Jester Press
An Evil Jester Press eBook
www.eviljesterpress.com
All stories contained in this volume have been published with permission from the authors.
“Inside the Boxes” © 2012 Jeff Strand
“Down in the Woods Today” © 2012 Emily C. Skaftun
“Dollhouse” © 2012 Craig Wallwork
“Poor Me and Ted” © 2012 Kate Jonez
“A Little Crimson Stain” © 2012 Joe McKinney
“I Heard It Through the Grapevine” © 2012 S. S. Michaels
“Dreams of a Ragged Doll” © 2012 Cate Gardner
“Attic Dog” © 2012 David Raffin
“When Harry Killed Sally” © 2012 Lisa Morton
“Living Doll” © 2012 Piers Anthony
“The White Knight” © 2012 Aric Sundquist
“The Doll Tree” © 2012 Amelia Mangan
“A Little Terror” © 2012 Phil Hickes
“Give it a Name” © 2012 Gary McMahon
“Discarded” © 2012 Nancy Rosenberg England
“Googly” © 2012 Jeremy C. Shipp
“Rubik’s Cube” © 2012 Melanie Mascio
“A Brightly-Colored Box Filled With Stars” © 2012 Dorian Dawes
“The Tea-Serving Doll” © 2012 Mae Empson
Edited by Jeremy C. Shipp
Cover art by Gary McCluskey
Formatting and design by Peter Giglio
Cover and book concept by Charles Day
All Rights Reserved
No portion of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any electronic system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the authors. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any actual person, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
ISBN 13: 978-0615614144
ISBN 10: 06156141140
Jeremy C. Shipp is the Bram Stoker Award-nominated author of Cursed, Vacation, and Attic Clowns. His shorter tales have appeared or are forthcoming in over 60 publications, the likes of Cemetery Dance, ChiZine, Apex Magazine, Withersin, and Shroud Magazine. Jeremy enjoys living in Southern California in a moderately haunted Victorian farmhouse called Rose Cottage. He lives there with his wife, Lisa, a couple of pygmy tigers, and a legion of yard gnomes. The gnomes like him. The clowns living in his attic—not so much.
Online home: jeremycshipp.com
Twitter handle :@JeremyCShipp
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Contents
Inside the Boxes Jeff Strand
Down in the Woods Today Emily C. Skaftun
Dollhouse Craig Wallwork
Poor Me and Ted Kate Jonez
A Little Crimson Stain Joe McKinney
I Heard It Through the Grapevine S. S. Michaels
Dreams of a Ragged Doll Cate Gardner
Attic Dog David Raffin
When Harry Killed Sally Lisa Morton
Living Doll Piers Anthony
The White Knight Aric Sundquist
The Doll Tree Amelia Mangan
A Little Terror Phil Hickes
Give it a Name Gary McMahon
Discarded Nancy Rosenberg England
Googly Jeremy C. Shipp
Rubik’s Cube Melanie Mascio
A Brightly-Colored Box Filled With Stars Dorian Dawes
The Tea-Serving Doll Mae Empson
Inside the Boxes
Jeff Strand
Yeah, I flunked out of college. I’m not proud of this. Especially because the community college I attended had a pretty low bar for excellence in academic achievement. To flunk out, you either had to party yourself into mental oblivion, or just never bother to actually go to class. I wish I’d gone to class.
Because of this, Christmas was going to suck, suck, suck. I didn’t come from a strict household—my parents were very much of the “as long as you did your best” mindset—but they knew perfectly well that if you flunked out of Loribar College you did not do your best. So instead of staying with them in my old room over the holiday, I told my mom that I felt guilty about not spending enough time with Grandma over the years and wanted to stay with her. My mom thought this was absolutely precious.
After I dumped my stuff off in the guest bedroom, which always smelled like vegetable soup for no discernable reason, Grandma and I sat in the living room, sipping hot chocolate.
“You used to love spending your summers here,” she said. “Do you remember falling off the horse?”
“I fell off a horse?”
“You were six. It was your cousin Joey’s birthday party. We had clowns and a pony. One of the clowns showed up drunk, and your Uncle Rex punched him in the solar plexus. Do you remember that?”
I shook my head. “That seems like something I might remember.”
“Well, you were very young. You wanted to ride the pony so badly, and we put you on it and you just giggled and giggled and giggled. Then Uncle Rex punched the clown and it startled the pony and you fell off.”
“Was I hurt?”
“Oh, no. There was a lot of sawdust around. You were fine.”
I laughed and took another sip of my hot chocolate. It had marshmallows in it. Grandma knew how to make some seriously awesome hot chocolate.
“Do you remember swimming in the creek?”
“Vaguely.”
“It was a very narrow and shallow creek. It’s all dried up now. You used to go fishing in it, even though there was nothing to catch, and one day we came out to check on you and you had taken off all your clothes and were trying to swim in it. You were all scraped up from the rocks. Oh, your grandfather was so mad at you, God rest his soul.”
I did sort of remember doing something that dumb. “How old was I?”
“Ten or eleven, I think. Ten, because it was the week before Jasmine’s wedding.”
“I guess I’ve always been kind of stupid.”
“You weren’t stupid at all. You were just young. All kids do that kind of thing. Mostly you just played with your toys. I still have a lot of them, up in the attic.”
“Seriously? I thought they all got thrown away.” I’d had a lot of action figures that, though they’d been removed from the original packaging and aggressively played with, were probably still worth some money.
“When have you ever known your grandmother to throw something away? I still have your mother’s first tooth. Finish up your cocoa and we’ll take a look. Maybe you’ll find something you want to take back to college.”
* * * * *
The attic was so filled with stuff that I’m surprised it didn’t cause Grandma’s house to collapse. There were precariously stacked piles that literally reached the ceiling, and fire hazards everywhere, but Grandma quickly wove through a narrow path and emerged with a box labeled “Brian.”
She wiped a layer of dust off the top of the box with her shirtsleeve, then opened the flaps. She looked inside and immediately smiled. “Do you remember Shelly?”
“My turtle?”
She took Shelly the Turtle out of the box. That had been my favorite stuffed animal as a kid, but somehow I’d forgotten all about him! I took the doll from Grandma, not at all self-conscious about the degree of joy I felt at being reunited with my old friend.
“Do you remember the Shelly voice?” Grandma asked.
I nodded and then held up the turtle, bobbing its head as if it were speaking. I spoke very slowly in a low voice. “Hello, Grandma. Brian wants to know if he can have an oatmeal raisin cookie.”
Grandma laughed. “That trick never worked back then, but I think it will work now. I’ll go buy some after dinner.”
“I was kidding.”
“I’ll still get you the cookie.”
“Thanks!”
“Do you remember Walry?”
I frowned. “Nope.” But as Grandma took the stuffed walrus doll out of the box, I had to stop myself from clapping my hands in delight. “Oh, wait, yes I do! Walry!”
I took the walrus from her. Walry had always been one of the most popular inhabitants of my imaginary society, because he could use his tusks to open cans. (Though of course the real Walry’s tusks were just white felt filled with cotton and thus unsuitable for opening much of anything.)
“This is so cool,” I said. “I can’t believe I forgot about them.”
“What about Zany? Do you remember Zany?”
I strained to remember any stuffed animal that I’d named “Zany” but came up blank. “Was he a worm?”
“No, that was Wormy. This is Zany.” Grandma took a small handheld garden rake out of the box, the kind you’d use when planting flowers.
“I named a rake?”
“Sure.” Grandma handed me the rake. “You loved Zany. Don’t you remember?”
“Not at all.”
“When you fell off the pony onto the sawdust? Oh, you were so angry! You grabbed Zany and you started dragging him across the side of the pony, making long red lines.” She laughed. “I’ve never seen a clown get so upset!”
“I sliced up a horse with a rake?”
“Well, of course. You fell off. It needed to be taught a lesson. If you look close, there’s probably a bit of horse skin on one of the tines.”
I quickly turned the rake around in my hands, looking for pony flesh.
“Oh, you know I’m kidding. We washed Zany and you used him lots of times after that.”
“I really killed a horse?” I asked, feeling sick to my stomach.
“No, no, no. You were only six. You couldn’t kill a whole horse, even if it was only a pony. You just scraped it up and made it bleed.”
“I truly do not remember anything like that.”
“What about the squirrel? Do you remember when Grandpa shot the squirrel that kept us up at night, and then he let you finish it off with Zany? Oh, you went to town on that poor rodent! You even made up a little song about it. Let me think how it went.” She began to hum.
“You’re joking about all of this, right?” I asked.
“Of course not.” Grandma gave me a kiss on the cheek. “There’s no reason to be distressed. It wasn’t a good squirrel.”
“But any squirrel—”
Grandma held up a finger to shush me. She hummed for a few more seconds and then her face lit up. “Squirrel, squirrel, squirrel, you don’t get more nuts, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel, now I see your guts.”
“I sang that?”
Grandma nodded. “For weeks afterward. You were the cutest thing.”
“That can’t be true.”
She looked into the box again. “Oh! Oh! I know you remember this one!” She took a hangman’s noose out of the box. “Goodness, this thing is tangled up just like Christmas lights.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“Aw, that’s too bad. You didn’t name it—you were twelve, so I guess you were getting too old for that kind of thing by then—but there was that one man. The religious gentleman.”
“What did I do to him?”
“You can still see the bloodstains.” She handed me the noose and tapped the rope with her index finger. “See? It’s faded but you if you look closely...”
“I can’t see it.”
“When we go back downstairs we’ll look at it under the light. It’s kind of gloomy up here.”
“What did I do?”
“He rang the doorbell right as we’d started dinner. Spaghetti and meatballs. Your uncle went to see who it was, and, oh, he was so infuriated when the gentleman started talking about Jesus! Your uncle and grandfather held him down on the floor, and you put that noose around his neck, and I remember that you kept saying ‘I can’t make it tighten!’ and we all laughed because everybody knows you don’t tighten a hangman’s noose. We explained it to you, and you grabbed the end of the rope and ran as fast as you could across the living room, and it popped out of your hands! You landed right on your bottom. But you didn’t cry. You got back up, grabbed the rope, and ran again, and this time his neck went snap. We were so proud.”
“Why don’t I remember any of this?”
Grandma shrugged. “There may have been some hypnosis involved. That was all your mother’s doing.”
“This can’t be possible,” I said. My ears were ringing and I felt dizzy. “I’m not a killer.”
“Well, not very often, anyway,” said Grandma. “Usually you were a torturer, or you mangled things that were already dead.”
“So what else is in there?” I asked. “A hand grenade? A stick of dynamite?”
“Oh, no. If it wasn’t hands-on, you were never interested. Just like your father. Explosive weapons are for the weak.”
“I feel like I’m going to throw up.”
“Do you want Grandma to get you some Pepto Bismol?”
“No, I just...I can’t believe...I’m sorry, but this is freaking me out a little bit.”
“It shouldn’t. They’re fun toys.”
“Did I have any more?”
“Of course! I’ve saved your very favorite for last.” She reached into the box and took out a smaller box, this one made of metal. “It’s the Ten-In-One Box of Fun! You never went anywhere without it. Look, it even has a little handle.” It had a plastic handle, like a lunch box.
“What does it do?”
“Almost everything!” She popped out a corkscrew that had been hidden inside the box like a pocketknife blade. “You’ve got a corkscrew, which is obviously the best tool for poking out somebody’s eyes.” She snapped out a small blade. “This one is for more delicate design work, like carving messages into somebody’s flesh, while this one—” She snapped out a much larger blade. “—is best when you want to cut off somebody’s hand. You could never quite get it to cut all the way through arms or legs, but you could slice off hands and feet like nobody’s business.”
“How many hands did I sever?”
“Lots.” She slid out a square hidden panel that was covered with small spikes. “And here you had spikes, for when you wanted to spike somebody. Sometimes you’d smack them in the face with it, sometimes you’d put it on their back and jump on it, and once you put it on the sofa. You were so disappointed when nobody sat on it.”
Grandma continued to slide out hidden compartments. “Acetylene torch, for burning skin to a crispy black. Hammer, for breaking through pesky bones. Bone saw, for when you wanted to get at the brain but didn’t want to damage it with the hammer. Refillable vial of acid, for disfigurement. Oversized file, for filing away unwanted skin. And, of course, the electric powered staple remover, for removing staples. You so loved to put in and remove staples.”
“I’m a monster,” I said.
“But a sympathetic one,” Grandma assured me.
She handed me the box. For a brief moment it felt somehow right, like I was meant to hold it. Then it just felt like a regular metal box, and I set it on the floor.
“I don’t feel good,” I told her.
Grandma patted me on the shoulder. “Oh, you poor dear. But be honest with your grandmother; doesn’t learning about your dark diseased impulses put flunking out of college into perspective?”
“How did you know about that?”
“Silly. Grandmas always know things like that.”
I had to admit, as disturbed as I was by all of these horrific revelations, it was kind of nice to have forgotten about my school problems for a while. Why should I worry about my education when I had such ghastly toys in Grandma’s attic?
“Thanks, Grandma,” I said. “I really apprec
iate this.”
“I’m glad you’re staying with me.”
“Can I have some more hot chocolate?”
Grandma gave me a hug. “Of course.”
Down in the Woods Today
Emily C. Skaftun
Today is the day.
At dawn we wake from our paralysis, Mr. Wuzzy and I. He pushes himself up off of his face and stretches, wiggling his embroidered nose, then jumps down from the shelf above your desk, Cherie. He lands gracefully, lightly, as though his age is no factor. I shimmy my own self out from under your arm and your pink comforter and slide to the carpet, and together Mr. Wuzzy and I creep out of the house. I stand on his head to reach the doorknobs.
“Goodbye, Cherie,” Mr. Wuzzy whispers, when we are far enough away that you won’t hear him speaking. “Do not search for us.” Do not search for me is what he means. And to some degree, I share his view. Despite the honor and privilege it would bring me, I do not really wish it to be you, Cherie. You keep me safe on your soft bed, and you are rarely rough with me, holding me by the ears or snout or tail.
At the clearing we meet other bears, hugging old friends so hard our stuffing shifts in our bellies. There are bears no bigger than your palm, and some who must be bigger than your whole self. They tower over Mr. Wuzzy and me, but they are still soft and sweet. We beat them every time at hide-and-seek.
Some bears look worse for the year past, but I feel svelte and smooth. My fur is soft and clean; none of my seams need to be restitched.
The day is spent this way, in a spirit of joy, for we know that at dawn the paralysis begins again. We run and tumble and exalt in movement. Some bears do nothing but eat and drink. Some are drunk as plush skunks by sundown. Others climb the oak and maple trees, rustling about in the branches like I imagine real bears must do.
An ancient Teddy Talks-a-Lot hobbles through the long grass, his beak-like mouth opening and closing soundlessly. I think he is singing, but he must have been out of batteries for years. He will never be chosen. At the edge of the clearing, as usual, a clique of Caring Bears share a joint. When I pass by them a Hope Bear yells, “Cheer up!” and the others laugh.
