Whispers in the Dark

The Toymaker

Martin was, much to his surprise, lead to a small toy store.

"Hey, kid," he spoke to the boy. "What's your name?"

Wiping his eyes, the boy replied, "Carter."

"Ok, well, Carter. You know you can just give me the key? That Patrick kid did a similar thing."

"No, he can't," Los said, suddenly leaning against the store. Carter started trembling again. "You win fairly or you die trying. Try to cheat, and I kill you myself, and then your soul's gone for good. Trust me, you'll prefer this place to oblivion. I hear it's quite empty there." He looked down at the kid. "You'll be a good boy, Carter, won't you?"

Nodding furiously, the kid ran into the store, and Martin followed behind, trading glares with Dolos as he did.

The store was much, much bigger on the inside than it was on the outside. As in, everything was much bigger. The enormous, hundred-foot shelves were stuffed with man-sized plushies, and Martin suddenly felt less confident about picking the easy kid.

You handled Oliver, he told himself. You can handle this.

"The key is in one of the toys," Carter said, voice ringing through the store, seemingly from no specific direction. "You just gotta open them and look. That's all I can tell you. S-Sorry." The boy yelped just before his voice disappeared, and Martin started exploring.

He walked up to the nearest teddy bear. It was slightly smaller than himself, and pink in color. Who even made pink teddy bears?

There was a zipper on its belly, which Martin used to open it up and peek inside. No key.

When he pulled himself out, the bear was staring down at him.

Oh.

Its lips curled upward into a creepy grin.

Oh.

The toy came to life, and slashed at Martin with one of its hands. Luckily, it had no claws. Unluckily, it hit with the strength of a man, and Martin was knocked aside. The bear got off its shelf, and started trotting toward him.

Oh.

Martin got up and ran. He got into a different row, then went over to a stuffed zebra and unzipped its head. No key inside.

As he had expected, and as had been the case with the bear, the zebra came to life and started going after him.

The toys moved just fast enough to keep him moving, and Martin had no doubt exhaustion would be his biggest enemy here.

Well, exhaustion and murderous plushies.

He unzipped another bear, which was right next to the zebra, but nothing was there. This bear was, unfortunately, larger than the first one, so Martin decided to switch rows and keep these away from him.

This row didn't have plushies, and its shelves instead contained barbie dolls. Great. How deadly could a barbie be?

Martin walked over to one and checked out her purse. The doll responded by opening its mouth, revealing piranha-like teeth.

"Shit!" he cursed, running away. The barbie was much faster than the others. He had always known those toys would be the death of him, but had figured it would come in the form of his baby sister, who had made it her life's mission to torture him to death by making him playing with those.

"You're doing great!" Carter said.

At least one of them thought so.

Martin turned the corner and decided to try another row.