Broken Toys Read online

  Amanda glanced at the space in front of Patrick where his card was going to land. He had a one in five chance of being right.

  Josh drifted away for a moment as he considered the nature of the house and location. It wasn’t new by any stretch of the imagination but it was reasonably well maintained. The grass was a bit long but nothing like a forest. If there was furniture he would have been inclined to say it was a weekend retreat. Then again, if there was furniture they never would have climbed in there in the first place.

  “Whoever owned this place had to move away quickly,” said Josh. “They keep thinking they will return because leaving a house empty is stupid. So, wherever they are and whatever they’re doing, they left for what should have been a short time and that time grew and grew and they’re starting to realise they will never come back.”

  “Because they’re rich?” asked Patrick.

  “Don’t know. They’re just not coming back any time soon.”

  It was Anthony’s turn. “Tax reasons.” He was met with three baffled looks from his friends. “My dad says houses go empty all the time for tax reasons.”

  None of them had any idea what that meant, so their attention shifted onto Amanda as she thought about the most likely answer. “It’s a retirement house. Only one floor, no steps, everything is close together. Whoever is supposed to move in just hasn’t retired yet, but they’re coming.”

  Patrick shook his head at all the boring answers. They flipped their cards over to see who was the closest. The house card won.

  “Huh,” said Patrick, before falling into a grin. “So none of us are right.”

  “Guess not,” said Josh.

  Amanda breathed a sigh of relief for there being no dead body in the garden. At least, not in the back garden. She picked up the deck of cards and quickly dealt one out to each of them like before.

  “Another round?” asked Josh.

  “No.” Amanda pointed to each of the boys and assigned them all one word. “Front. Side. Attic.” To herself: “None.” To the empty space: “Yes, but not in the last hundred years.” She flipped over the cards and allowed herself a moment to relax. Her card had come up as the highest.

  “You know, there’s a chance we’re all sitting on an ancient Roman burial site,” said Anthony.

  “Yeah, but ghosts don’t last that long,” said Josh.

  “How long do they last?” asked Patrick.

  “My uncle says for only as long as their male line continues.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Means if I have a son I can come back as a ghost. If he has a son I can stay on as a ghost. If he has no sons then when he dies I stop being a ghost.”

  “What if the ghost is a girl?” asked Amanda.

  “Probably the same but with daughters.”

  Anthony stared upwards as he tried to put that logic together. “Then why are there sometimes boy and girl ghosts?”

  “Because whoever killed them is still alive,” said Josh. “That’s how it all starts. Someone kills you, you come back to haunt them. If you get your revenge you find peace and you fade away.”

  “Unless they die before you get your revenge.”

  “Then you better hope they don’t come back as a ghost as well.”

  They all expected someone else to continue with the conversation. Instead, the room fell into utter silence. It became painfully obvious that they were all now listening for a distant thump and clank of a chain, or even the moan of a recently departed spirit from somewhere nearby. Maybe it would come from the same room they were in.

  Patrick broke the silence. “You guys live in a spooky place.”

  “You live here too,” said Josh.

  “Only just. You’ve been here all your lives.”

  Josh turned his attention back to the bare walls of the house. “We need to turn this into a fort. Find stuff, bring it here.”

  “What kind of stuff?” asked Patrick.

  “Just … stuff. There are five rooms, yeah? We could each have one and use the kitchen and dining room as our central base.”

  “oooOOOooo,” said Anthony. “We each have our own room?”

  Amanda certainly warmed up to that idea as well. “To decorate as we want?”

  “Of course,” said Josh. Their minds all fired into action, overhauling the entire house to fit their purposes. “Maybe we should do that today?”

  “Can we get stuff from the shops?” asked Patrick.

  “Sure. Like what?”

  “Magic Markers.”

  “Don’t draw on the walls,” warned Amanda.

  “I wasn’t going to.”

  “Then why do you need Magic Markers?”

  Patrick’s mouth dropped open as he struggled to find a reasonable answer. The truth was he wanted a mural of the London skyline stretching across the walls of his room. He was sure that everyone would be impressed once he was finished but he knew all too well that works-in-progress were often subject to unnecessary criticism.

  “No drawing on the walls,” Amanda warned again.

  “Okay. What are you going to get?” asked Patrick.

  “I might make a Tony.”

  “Who’s Tony?”

  “It’s an award.”

  Patrick shook his head as though Amanda was purposefully trying to confuse him. She was.

  “Amanda’s going to be a West End director,” said Josh.

  “What’s that?” asked Patrick.

  “Plays, musicals. On stage. Lots of jazz hands. When you have the best musical you win a Tony.”

  “Oh. And you’re going to make one?”

  “I’ll start with one. Then I’ll win more,” said Amanda.

  Anthony dropped into a fake announcer’s voice. “And the winner for best West End show is … Amanda Wozniak!”

  Amanda nodded politely. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. I’m getting maps and blu-tac,” said Anthony.

  “The Amazon or Africa?” asked Josh.

  “Africa. Less trees, more lions.”

  “You don’t like trees?” asked Patrick.

  “They’re fine,” lied Anthony. “But lions are more interesting than trees.”

  “What about jaguars?”

  “What about them?”

  “You can see them in the Amazon.”

  “They can probably see you first,” said Anthony. He drifted off, picturing himself as a world famous explorer, charting unknown territories and vast expanses of open land.

  Meanwhile, Patrick was able to toy with the blu-tac and posters idea. If he couldn’t draw the London skyline then at least he could set himself on the path of becoming a billionaire with posters of Lamborghini’s, super yachts, and skyscrapers.

  While they all split up and argued over which room would be theirs, Josh glanced over to the front gate squeaking in the wind. He stopped in front of a flimsy white curtain and peered outside. For a moment he wondered what would happen if a ghostly face sprang forward and pressed itself against the window, staring right back at him. Perhaps its eyes would be completely white. Or jet black. Or sickly red like it was the ghost from an epidemic.

  No one was there. The green gate remained mostly closed and simply buckled against the breeze. The branches overhead dangled forward like skeletal fingers reaching for the road nearby. Aside from that, the only hint of trouble came in the corner of Josh’s eye. Whenever he turned the trouble disappeared.

  Josh glanced back over the house and mapped out their escape route. If someone did come, he and the others would only have a few seconds to get out. Would they all make it through the small bathroom window before the owner came in through the front door? It was unlikely. What if the owner didn’t come through the front but instead ventured out to the back? Josh figured they would see four ten year olds high-tailing it across their garden and hurrying over the back wall.

  Josh pulled on the curtain again. The feeling of being watched gnawed at him. It did not come from the front road, tho
ugh. It came from behind the rear wall.

  From where Anthony stood, the mounds of raked grass in his garden could have been fields of war from a god’s eye view. Anthony hunkered down and picked out the general’s strategy from behind the blades of defeat.

  He raked the first pile of grass into the black bin bag. The platoon of soldiers managed to dodge out of the way just in time. Now they were stationed behind the next closest mound, awaiting their orders. Artillery rained down on them as the sergeant called back to HQ with news that Hill One has just been compromised. Hill Two was soon to meet the same fate.

  “Advance on the house!” shouted the general, from the safety of the apple tree in the corner of the garden.

  Anthony scooped up the second pile of grass, bagged it and binned it.

  “Pull back!” called the sergeant.

  “We can not lose this garden again!” shouted the general. “Take the house at all costs!”

  The radio went silent.

  “Sergeant? Sergeant!”

  “Hill Three has been compromised, General,” said one of the underlings.

  “God damn it! Who do we have left?”

  A glint of light from the far corner of the garden caught Anthony’s attention. With half of the garden raked he trudged forward, crouched down beside the bushes, and tried to pick out the various shapes of red and gold from the darkness that had been waiting for him.

  He edged the handle of the rake into the bushes and poked around. Clink. A large glass jar, formerly the home to a month’s worth of instant coffee, called to him. It wasn’t empty, though.

  Anthony leaned back and sat on his haunches. Two years after stashing the jars of fortune and secrecy in the bushes for safe keeping, Anthony, Josh, and Amanda had completely forgotten about them. Since then, thousands of ants, bugs, and spiders had crawled from one jar to the next in search of something to feast upon. Now there was nothing left but the sun-baked air that had been trapped inside all those years ago. Except for one jar.

  Anthony reached in through the twisted knot of plants and thorns as he pried the closest jar free from its dried muddy prison. With a few angle adjustments and a lot of brute force, Anthony yanked it into the daylight. The moment he did, a wave of dust hit his nose, causing him to sneeze.

  A little black plastic nose was pressed up against the inside of the jar. It was joined by a faded plastic hazel eye that stared blankly through the glass, getting its first glimpse of the sky in years.

  It was Harvey, Anthony’s teddy bear possum. Anthony turned the jar around. A pair of bird wings were squashed against the inside of the round glass. They had been rotting away for some time.

  He had torn apart his whole bedroom looking for Harvey. That he remembered. His mum blamed the state of his bedroom and told him that if he took better care of his things then he wouldn’t lose them. He tidied his room to such an immaculate degree that TV stations would have sent their best reporters to learn how one young boy had become a symbol of cleanliness. Harvey had been with him since he was six months old. It was the first death in the family that Anthony had to grieve over.

  His heart started to thump loudly in his chest. The agonised fright surprised him and erased every memory of what he had been doing in the garden just before. Why would anyone stuff his best friend into a jar and then discard it like rubbish?

  Anthony unscrewed the lid. He was met with a smell of stale decay, like uncooked meat that had been left in the fridge for too long. He wasn’t old enough to make that connection just yet, though. The closest he could lock onto was the smell of stepping into the bathroom just after his grandma had been in there.

  Harvey’s black button nose kept getting caught on the rim. Anthony pressed his fingers inside, easing Harvey’s journey. His shoulders were another tug of war. Then, with a final pull, his teddy bear slid out of the jar and was free once again.

  Something fell splat onto the grass. Anthony moved his knee out of the way just in time. He didn’t take much notice at first as Harvey had a long puff of white stuffing exposed in a straight cut down his chest. Anthony prodded it, finding that Harvey had been hallowed-out to create an open space behind his would-be rib cage.

  He looked back to the ground and found what had been crammed inside: a dead bird with both of its wings broken off at the shoulder. The bloodied stub of the bird’s wounds had darkened. The wings themselves were still in the jar, stuck to the inside as years of decomposing had melded them to the glass.

  The world started to cloud over, drawing most of the oxygen away. Worst of all, his mind chose that exact moment to develop a photographic memory, one that would feed his nightmares until the day he died.

  Wedged in the back of the possum’s hollowed chest was a small heart belonging to a squirrel.

  Anthony stared at the lasting image of his Frankensteined friend as he recorded every moment.

  A quiet voice broke through the haze: go find an adult.

  He brainlessly carried Harvey and the bird into his kitchen, ashen faced, mumbling incoherently. His mum yelped in disgust as she slapped the bloodied bear to the ground. Anthony jolted back, releasing his grip, allowing the bird to fall. His mum cried out again, cursing her own reactions, before spending the next two hours disinfecting the kitchen. The smell of bleach became something else that Anthony would lock onto, one that painted a vivid picture of his mum shrieking at dead animals on the kitchen floor.

  Zoe, now twelve, and Charlie, eight, walked along Fielding Street towards Portal Close. That in turn would lead them to the shops. Their mum had given them a couple of letters to post and were told to bring back a few things from the deli. Zoe took the opportunity to detail, at great length, all the things that went on at St. Bart’s so that Charlie knew what he was getting himself into, even though he was still two years away from attending. By then Zoe might be too surly to bother with details and would simply say: “He’ll be fine.”

  The new copy of Teen OK was out. This one had an exclusive interview with Bradley Harding, the seventeen year old pop star. Half of Zoe’s room was covered in his posters. She had scribbled his name into all of her school books, sometimes as ‘Zoe Harding’. She had taken up the habit of doting the ‘i’ in Harding with a heart. Claire was no different. Both girls gave their parents the silent treatment for a week when Bradley toured last time as neither of them were allowed to go to the concert.

  Zoe and Charlie cut through the park and headed towards Portal Close. Some kids were playing under the supervision of an adult, now customary due to the uneasy happenings in the area. Zoe looked over the ridiculousness of it all. The boys and girls would be too defensive to actually play and the adults would always pull them away long before they were ready to go home.

  There was a thief in town and the adults were distrusting of every single boy that walked around unsupervised. Toys and clothes were disappearing from inside people’s houses and the parents were sure that this little crime spree would escalate into arson and murder.

  Zoe had a different theory, one she had heard from Claire, who in turn had heard it from Loomer about Nicky Kalistar. Nicky was sixteen and a gifted trouble maker. He smoked and drank and threw empty beer bottles at passing cars from the side of the road. One guy slammed on the brakes and chased Nicky over several walls. He would have made sure that Nicky was in hospital for the rest of his life if he ever caught him, but Nicky had youth on his side and was able to run faster than the middle aged man chasing him.

  One night, Nicky and his friends were down by the train tracks, smoking and mixing rum with beer. During their conversation about all becoming race car drivers, Nicky went to take a piss in the trees. He found the flash of white eyes right in front of him.

  “Ey, what the fuck are you doing?” Nicky shouted, zipping himself up quickly.

  “What is it?” called out James.

  “Some punk ass kid,” said Nicky. He stared back when the little shit didn’t run away. Instead, the boy stepped out and stared at the thre
e teenagers. “What the fuck are you looking at?” Nicky asked.

  “Ah leave ‘im,” said Loomer. “He’s not exactly a cop, is he?”

  It was too dark to see much of the boy, but he looked like he should still be in primary school.

  “I said, what are you looking at?” said Nicky. When the kid didn’t respond Nicky shot his hand forward and grabbed onto the boy’s shoulder. “Answer the fuckin’ question.”

  James McIntyre snorted and gave a back handed slap across Loomer’s shoulder. “Bet he was just tugging on his little pecker.”

  “Come on man, he’s just a kid,” said Loomer.

  Nicky caught a better look as the kid was pulled into the light. His left eye was black and swollen almost shut. Nicky dropped his hand and stepped back in a jolt of surprise. “Jesus Christ, someone’s beaten the shit out of him.”

  “Better that it wasn’t you,” said James.

  Nicky dropped down to one knee. “You shouldn’t be here kid, this is a grown up area.”

  “Not much of a talker, is he?” said James. He flicked his cigarette away and came to see what the fuss was all about. He finally got a look at the youngster and saw just how right Nicky was. “Jesus. You okay, kid?”

  The boy nodded.

  “See? You’re not exactly a people person, are you Nicks?”

  “Yeah, you can talk to him, enjoy your intellectual conversation,” said Nicky.

  “What are you doing out here?” asked James.

  The kid shrugged. “Playing.”

  “By the train tracks? That’s a fast way to get yourself killed.”

  Nicky walked to the bushes where he first saw the pair of white eyes stare at him. “Holy shit ...”

  James and Loomer looked over. “What?”

  Nicky had sobered up in an instant. “This kid is fucked up.”

  James went around to look. Behind the trees and bushes was a wooden board sitting on a few bricks, acting as a makeshift table. There was a backpack on the ground and some tape, scissors, string, glue, and a knife resting on the table. Along with ...