The Child Thief

fall so far behind? He noticed sheets of mist drawing together like curtains,
as though trying to build a wall between them. Panicked, Nick sprinted
forward, stumbling across the soft, undulating surface, almost knocking
Peter over when he caught up.
“Hang on,” Peter whispered. “You’re doing good.”
Doing good? Nick wanted to scream. Doing good at what? What is
going on? What the fuck is going on?
The woman continued to float alongside of him, her face now mournful.
Crazily, Nick found himself feeling regretful. Then she raised her arms
above her head as though entering a swan dive, arching her back, snaking
her body through the smoky tendrils of mist. Suddenly Nick was very aware
of how full her breasts were, discovered he could see the shape of her large,
dark nipples beneath the thin veil of her gown and the dusky shadow
between her legs. A warm, tingling sensation began to grow in his crotch.
Nick felt his face flush and glanced away. When he did, he caught sight of

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something out of the corner of his eye. A tail? He blinked. She had a long,
scaly tail. She also had scales on her arms, small and delicate, and her
fingers were long and clawlike. He squinted. Oh good God, he thought, her
hair. Her hair is full of worms! No, her hair was worms, thousands of tiny,
squirming worms.
Nick jerked back and almost fell over.
She scowled, dark and angry. Her eyes shrank to mere slits, her nipples
stretched into long antennae, her belly opened up into a gaping maw, and
Nick saw row after row of jagged little teeth!
Oh, no! Oh no! Oh no!
A sound came out of that mouth, like a thousand angry hornets, and she
came for him.
Nick screamed and crumpled to the ground, arms out, watching
helplessly as she fell upon him, watching as her huge mouth, a mouth easily
as tall as himself, engulfed him. So this is how I will die, he thought. But no
jagged teeth tore into his flesh. All he felt was a blast of cold air as she
passed through him. It took him a moment to realize that he was still alive.
Peter! Where’s Peter? He thought he saw a shape plodding away from
him. Was that Peter, or another trick of the fog? “PETER!” he screamed
and scrambled to his feet. Now there were three different shapes, each
heading in a different direction.
“PETER!” he shrieked, then an inner voice, the one from deep inside of
him, said, Stop wasting your breath. Think! Nick stopped, concentrated,
tried to clear his mind. Footprints. Find his footprints. They were there, the
faintest trace, disappearing as the moist earth rapidly filled them in. Nick
gritted his teeth and ran in their direction. And just ahead was Peter, not
another illusion but truly Peter.
“PETER!” Nick raced forward and grabbed Peter by the shoulder.
“WAIT FOR ME!” he screamed. “WHY WON’T YOU WAIT FOR ME?”
“Steady,” Peter said, not losing a step. “Have to keep steady or all is
lost.”
Nick clutched Peter’s jacket, twisting his hand in the fabric, wishing he
could close his eyes and make them all go away.
They came, dozens, then hundreds, all shapes and sizes, filling the air
with their screams, laughter, wails and cries. A swarm of disembodied
heads flew past, singing, a host of naked old women with large, saggy
breasts skipped merrily around, holding hands and laughing through wide,

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toothless grins. A throve of tiny children with grasshopper bodies buzzed
insistently, all manner of hungry-looking beasts, with sharp teeth and claws,
stalked alongside them, and small, shadowy men with protrusive blank eyes
and bird beaks danced wildly.
“What are they?” Nick cried between clenched teeth. What is going on?
A short time ago he’d been eating Chinese food in the middle of Brooklyn.
How could he now be lost in a fog with these horrors? Things like this can’t
really happen!
He felt their wispy fingers crawling through his hair, his clothes, over
his mouth and eyes.
A little girl’s face shot up to him, her eyes black holes, her mouth frozen
in a scream that made no sound. She just hung there staring at him. He tried
to wave her away, but every time his hand went through her, she just
giggled, giggled while wearing that horrible scream, giggled until he
thought he’d go crazy.
“Oh God,” he cried. I can’t do this. Not any longer. He needed to run,
he didn’t care where to, he just had to run.
If you run you will die, came the familiar voice. Calm but stern, it was
his voice, his inner self, the boy that had been through his share of hard
times and had managed to keep it together. And how had he done that? How
had he dealt with watching them shovel dirt onto his father’s casket? How
had he dealt with hearing his mother cry herself to sleep night after night?
How had he put up with the bullshit at school—the endless taunts and
bullying, and Marko fucking with him every day? He’d simply withdrawn
deep within himself, pretended as though all the bad things were happening
to someone else and that he was just along for the ride. And this had always
got him through. It didn’t make it okay. It didn’t make the hurt any less
painful later, but it got him through. And right now he just needed to get
through.
So Nick went there now, to his safe place, and watched the show from
afar. And from afar it was clear that the mist was all noise and bluster,
merely trying to scare him, confuse him, drive him from the path.
Nick looked through the mist, locked his eyes on Peter’s back, kept
them there, and plodded onward—steady.
Soon, the voices began to fade. The mist settled down, returned to a
state of placid, endless gray. And not long after that he smelled the sea

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again, felt a breeze, heard the lapping of waves. Finally the mist thinned
and Nick could just make out a shadowy bank against a starless night sky.