The Child Thief

THE CHILD THIEF studied the teenagers, making sure to keep up his
smile, making sure to hide his disdain. Have to be wily, he thought. Don’t
want to spoil the fun.
He looked at the numbed, perplexed expressions on the three older teens
and thought, They’re blind. Blind as a nut in a nutshell. There’s magic all
around them and they don’t see a lick of it. How could this be possible?
Only a few short years ago, possibly only a few months, they were still
children, their minds in bodies full of magic, open and alive to all the
enchantments swirling around them. Now look at them, miserable, self-

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conscious fuckwits, going to spend the rest of their lives trying to find
something they never even realized they’d lost.
I’d be doing them a favor. To gut the three of them. His eyes gleamed at
the thought. Hell, and it’d be fun too. Watching their faces as they juggled
their own guts. Much fun indeed. But he wasn’t here to have fun. He was
here to make a new friend.
Peter glanced at the boy with his pants around his ankles, the one
fighting so hard to hold back his tears. He needed to win this child over, for
you couldn’t take children into the Mist against their will. The Mist would
never allow it. You could, however, lead a child into the Mist. So they had
to trust you. And you didn’t get children to trust you by gutting teenagers
right in front of them, not even mean, ugly teenagers. That wasn’t the way
to make new friends.
Peter found that he enjoyed this part of the game—winning the hearts of
children, getting a chance to play for a while. Games are important. Why,
it’s playing, is it not, that separates me from the likes of these dull-eyed
cocksuckers?
So the child thief decided he would just play with them.
“CAN I PLAY too?” the boy repeated.
Freddie tensed, his grip tightening. Nick guessed Freddie was as
unnerved by this redheaded, golden-eyed boy as he was.
“Who da fuck are you?” Bennie spat.
“Peter.”
“What da fuck you want?”
“To play,” Peter said, sounding exasperated. “How many times I gotta
ask, birdybrain?”
Bennie’s unibrow squeezed together. “Birdybrain?” And, for the first
time Nick could remember, Bennie looked at a loss. Bennie glanced at
Freddie as though unsure if he’d been insulted or not.
“Oh man. Kid, you shouldn’t done that,” Freddie said. “He’s gonna kill
you for that one.”
But Bennie didn’t look like he was going to kill anyone. Because guys
like Bennie weren’t used to kids giving them shit, and it threw him off
balance.
“So, what are the rules?” Peter asked.
“What?” Bennie said, his unibrow forming a confused knot.

---

“Gee wiz,” Peter said, rolling his eyes. “The rules, ball-sack. What are
the rules to the pants game?”
“Rules?” Bennie said, no longer sounding confused, but pissed, and
regaining some of his equilibrium. Bennie slammed Nick’s pack to the
ground and jabbed a finger at Peter. “I don’t play by no fucking rules,
asshole!”
“Good,” Peter said, and before anyone could blink, he darted forward
and yanked Bennie’s baggy sweatpants all the way down to his ankles.
“POINT!” Peter called.
There was a frozen moment when Bennie just stood there with his
mouth agape, staring down at his own skivvies. As a matter of fact,
everyone was staring at Bennie’s skivvies, and they weren’t the spiffy
Calvin Klein kind either. It looked like Bennie had some hand-me-downs,
old-school generic white briefs with several generations’ worth of stains
and holes in them.
Bennie’s face went lava-lamp red, and when he looked back up, his
squinty little eyes appeared ready to pop out of their squinty little sockets.