The September Featured writer is Shawn P. Madison
Please feel free to email Shawn at: asm89@aol.com
LITTLE TOY LOST
by Shawn P. Madison
Staff Sergeant Tom Marillo noticed something up ahead on the side of the road—something strange, something out of place—as he drove north along Bragg Boulevard toward Fort Bragg. Slowing his beat up old pick-up truck down a bit, he passed by a large storage center on the right and pulled over next to the adjacent vacant lot.
His tires crunched on tired old weeds and the even older gravel that was mixed in with the dirt lining the roadside until the pick-up finally came to a stop. He had to be right next to it, whatever it was that had caught his attention.
The shine, that’s what he’d noticed, the setting sun glinting off something in the grass. It was glinting brightly, shining into his eyes and glaring off the dusty windshield of his truck. That shine had been brighter than anything he could ever remember driving past in all of his twenty-six years on this Earth and, just for the curiosity of it, he’d felt the need to get out and take a look.
Traffic whizzed by on Bragg Boulevard, army soldiers coming and going from the base a few miles away, commuters returning home after a long day’s work, shoppers trying to get home in time to have dinner ready for their family’s usual supper time. A never ending cascade of cars is what it all seemed like to Tom but, soon enough there was a quick break in the traffic as the light turned green for Sycamore Dairy Road. He scampered around the front of the truck, feeling the brisk early winter breeze as it blew around his neck and face, and bent down over a strange shape in the grass.
He wondered what in the world it could be, this thing that had caught the sun’s light so brightly just moments before but now looked dead in the shade of his truck, and then noticed that his black boots were being reflected back at him from the thing’s rounded surface.
“What are you?” he asked without realizing that he’d spoken aloud, his attention focused solely on the object. “Just a tiny round mirror or what?”
Dropping down to one knee, he ran his hand across the smooth top of the small object and felt the cold metal sting his bare fingers. He’d left his jacket in the truck and the brisk wind was starting to chill him to the bone. When he touched the reflective thing in the grass, it seemed like ice traveled through his fingers, up to his shoulders and then slid down his spine.
Tom trembled as a thick and heavy freeze took over his body and he stood up quickly to rub his upper arms for warmth. Without thinking, he bent down and picked up the object, almost dropping it as that biting cold once again pierced his hands.
“Whatever you are, Bobby’s gonna love you,” he said, thinking of the wide open grin that would fill his little boy’s face once his son set eyes on the mirror-like object.
He moved as quickly as he could around the front of the pick-up, waited about a minute for the traffic to slow down, then whipped open the driver’s side door, dumped the new found toy on the passenger seat and slammed the door closed.
With the key turned, the engine started and his fingers fumbling for the heat controls, Tom turned back toward the small thing on the passenger seat and swept away a few stray bits of weed and dirt. The item was cold, very cold, and wasn’t making any sound. It wasn’t exactly round but it gave off the appearance of a sphere. As he leaned closer to it, he saw a distorted reflection of his own face staring back from the silvery smooth metal object and smiled.
Slipping on a pair of work gloves, he picked the thing up again to examine it a bit closer. For the most part, it was smooth, but there seemed to be several areas where panels might slip aside to let something out…perhaps legs? Could it be a walking toy, discarded for some reason? Or something lost and not yet noticed as missing? A little toy lost, perhaps? Tom laughed again, put the thing back down on the seat, slipped the truck into drive and pulled back into traffic.
“Man oh man, will Bobby ever be happy,” he said to himself, turning on the truck’s headlights as the sun quickly dipped below the horizon turning dusk into evening in the space of about a second.
*****
Bobby was mesmerized by the new toy his dad had brought home. The sleek silver thing had been pretty cold when he’d first grabbed it out of his father’s hands earlier in the evening but, now that it had been inside the house, in his room, for a few hours, it didn’t seem so cold anymore.
And man, was it ever cool! He’d never seen anything like it, neither had his dad. It was a one-of-a-kind toy and nobody else that he knew could possibly have one. No way! Picking it up and turning it over, he noticed that there was no information about the manufacturer or the country of origin, like most of his other toys had on their undersides. No identifying marks of any kind, no scratches, no dents, just a few small panels that looked like they were hiding even smaller things behind them.
He shook it briefly before remembering his dad telling him to be very careful with it but, during the shaking, there’d been no sound from inside. None at all…not even the slightest tinkling of something loose or a moving part. When he’d asked his dad what in the world it could be his dad had simply smiled and told him to figure it out himself.
A mystery, that’s what it was, but he was good at solving mysteries. Give me a day, maybe two, Bobby thought, and I’ll have this riddle solved.
The eight-year-old boy yawned deeply and felt his eyes growing heavy as he looked out of his window from his place on the bed, the sliver of a moon shining brightly just overhead. Bobby always thought that the moon looked best as a sliver; looked sharp and menacing, like it could catch something on the ends if it got the urge to do so.
Giving the shiny smooth thing one final shake, he decided that no secrets would be revealed tonight and it was time that he went to bed. Champ backed up a step from his sitting position on the floor and gave a little growl but Bobby just reached down and patted the small dog on the head in an effort to calm him down. The clock read nearly eleven and his mom would have a fit if she found him still awake at this hour on a school night.
Bobby placed the item on the lowest of three shelves attached to the wall next to the window about two feet above his bed, settled himself under the covers, turned off the little lamp on his desk and let his head fall down to the thick pillows below…visions of his little toy lost, as his dad had called it, quickly carrying him off to sleep.
With the room’s new darkness, something stirred on that shelf, a few small panels slid silently aside and something became aware once again as recharged batteries kicked in.
*****
Major Kenner and his team walked through the night alongside Bragg Boulevard, flashlight beams dancing crazily along the grass and weeds, weapons clear and ready. The object of their search was nowhere to be found. Even after fourteen hours of searching in the bitterly cold wind, their target had not yet been discovered.
Kenner swore and saw one of his men turn to look at him. Snarling something toward the soldier he brought a camouflaged arm up to wipe the sweat from his brow. Despite the coldness of this winter night, he was sweating. Sweating the fact that it was growing more and more apparent that he would have to make a certain call…a call to inform his commanding officer that his mission had failed, that the missing piece of top-secret military weapons technology was still at large in the city of Fayetteville and that the deadly threat to innocent lives still existed.
That was one call he did not want to make, at all costs. It was a call that could bring his currently bright career with the US Army to a screeching halt. To admit defeat now, nearly fifteen hours after he’d promised Colonel Efringham that he and his boys would succeed in their search and destroy mission, would make him look like a bumbling fool, an idiot who couldn’t get things done.
Not a very good way to end an evening, by any means. Where could it be? Where would it go? How did the freaking thing get loose in the first place? Someone was already in a big load of trouble over this. More people would soon find themselves getting chewed out over this incident as well. Major Kenner definitely did not want to be one of those people…so the thing better get found and found fast.
“Keep looking!” Kenner shouted. “It’s out here somewhere, it’s gotta be!”
*****
This new scene was very different from the one it remembered just before its batteries lost power. Shutting down into recharge mode, a lengthy period of total inactivity in which its natural reflective camouflage would serve to maintain its invisibility, had been necessary at the time.
Now, with batteries fully charged, it could once again continue on its mission. The vehicles that had been racing by earlier on the roadway, creating a cacophony of noise and kicking up great amounts of dust, were now gone. Replaced by a darkness and a silence that was new to its sensor memory. Sliding aside its protective panels, eight spidery legs unfolded and settled to the flat surface of the shelf. Silently, they lifted its oval shaped body off the shelf and scuttled closer to the only source of light in the surrounding environment. The light was coming through from outside the confines of its present position, the sliver of white against the dark sky of the Earth registered as the Moon satellite that orbited the planet. A clear barrier of some sort barred its way out of the sealed environment.
A prison, it quickly decided. It had been taken prisoner. Self-preservation programs kicked in and interior instrumentation began searching for bio signs. There were two in the prison with it, one lying on a larger shelf just below its position—human/child/prisoner—and a smaller one lying on the flat surface below that—animal/canine: threat assessment, moderate.
Another panel slid open and a red light appeared on top of its oval body, the targeting scanner seeking out the best lines of fire on the canine.
The human/child/prisoner bio sign stirred slightly as the small servos that it used to move around brought its oval body in line with the lower target. Audio sensors picked up several quick and loud sounds from the canine bio sign on the floor while the human/child/prisoner, partially covered by something on the large shelf below, continued to stir restlessly.
Instantly assessing the increasingly threatening posture of the canine target, it struck quickly and mercilessly and the sounds emanating from that bio sign immediately stopped.
Unfortunately, its victory lasted for barely a moment. As the canine bio sign blinked out, indicating a successful target extermination, the human/child/prisoner suddenly moved on the lower shelf and began making a high pitched sound that nearly overloaded its audio sensors with the sudden input.
In addition to those sounds emanating below it sensed other sounds immediately outside of the prison cell, loud and clumsy but approaching quickly, and with the anticipation of potential enemy targets it prepared to strike again.
*****
Bobby heard Champ’s barks and came instantly awake. As he turned toward his dog in the darkness, still hazy-headed with sleep, he saw a thin beam of pure blue streak out from the shelf above his bed to hit his dog square between the eyes.
Champ stopped barking and thumped to the floor, lifeless. Bobby’s jaw hung open and he turned to look at his little toy lost, now poised on the shelf above, standing on eight spindly legs and shining another beam, this one red, directly towards the door to his room.
Bobby saw the legs move, bringing that red light closer, the glare hurting his eyes as he sat up in bed and, just before the blue beam lanced out again, Bobby screamed.
His father sat up in bed as he heard his little boy scream, jolted awake by that one noise all parents dread. Bobby had experienced nightmares before, some really bad ones, but this scream was something that Tom had never heard before.
A scream full of fear, deathly fear, a scream that sprang Tommy’s sleepy eyes open and got his sluggish legs moving toward Bobby’s room.
“I’m coming, kiddo!” Tommy called as his wife leaned over to look at the clock and slumped back into the bed, secure in the knowledge that Tommy would handle Bobby’s problem.
*****
Bobby’s second scream rang out within the small house, a scream that bounced off the walls and made his mom quickly realize that something wasn’t right. Usually, when Bobby started screaming from a nightmare, Champ started barking too. But, right now, with Bobby’s horrible scream still bouncing around inside her head she realized that Champ wasn’t barking, wasn’t making any sounds at all.
Bobby’s mom felt her heart start to race as she swept the blankets aside, no longer willing to let her husband handle Bobby’s problem alone. Her heart froze in her chest when Bobby’s second scream didn’t stop; it just got louder, more high-pitched…what could cause that? What could possibly cause her child to make this horrific sound? To scream with such terror that his brain was frozen in that scream…stretching it out until the sound filled the house, filled her head and sent chills racing down her spine.
She didn’t know, but she intended to find out. Her legs brought her quickly around the side of the bed and, purposefully bypassing her slippers to save precious time, Bobby’s mom burst out into the hall.
The next sound she heard filled her with a terror she had never known, a horror that made her legs stop and made her body start trembling deep down inside. That sound was of her husband’s screams, deep guttural screams that swept right through her, drilled down into the center of her body and stopped her dead in her tracks. It was when Tommy’s screams cut short that she let her first scream of the night escape her throat.
It was followed by one more scream.
*****
The tinkle of broken glass was drowned out by his Mom’s second scream as Bobby Marillo suddenly found himself outside his house and running down the street—heart pounding, short of breath, his legs propelling him further and further, past house after house and he didn’t see the lights popping on in windows all down the block.
All he remembered was thrusting his hands up toward the shelves, knocking them and everything on them to the floor—including his Little Toy Lost—as his Mom’s scream tore through his room. Something crashed through his window, perhaps his Little League Trophy from last season, but he didn’t wait to identify it. He couldn’t actually remember climbing out the window but did remember the feel of good solid earth as his feet hit the lawn outside and kept moving.
I’m so afraid, he thought as he continued to put distance between himself and the nightmare that had become his bedroom. I can still hear screaming even though it doesn’t sound like Mom. Who’s screams?
Then he realized that he did know the sound of that screaming, recognized it from back there, just a minute or two earlier, as it escaped from his very own throat…back in the place where he didn’t want to remember anything anymore…the place that he was running from…and Bobby Marillo was not looking back.
Shawn P. Madison, creator of the Guarder/U.E.N. Universe, currently makes his home in the beautiful Garden State of New Jersey. He has written in the genres of action, children’s, contemporary, fantasy, horror, humor, mystery, non-fiction and science fiction. He has published more than seventy short stories in thirty different magazines and anthologies, both electronic and print. His first novel, Guarder Lore, was released by NovelBooks, Inc. in March of 2002, the follow-up novel, The Guarder Factor, was released by NovelBooks, Inc. in November of 2003. His collection of short horror fiction, The Road to Darkness, was released by Double Dragon Publishing in April of 2003.
