The Time Stealer.

The Time Stealer.

1.

         "No! No! - Help Me! Please! Don't!" Robby was screaming in his sleep.
         In the other room, his parents stirred in their bed. 'Another nightmare', thought Jillian, and she got out of bed. It was cold and freezing out of the warmth of the blanket. She put on her pair of pink bunny slippers, wrapped her nightgown around her shivering body and rushed to Robby's room. Robby was trashing about in the bed, screaming and sweating like hell. Jillian ran to him, held him close and murmured comforting words, trying to shake Robby out of his nightmare.
         "Wake up Robby, you're just having a bad dream", she said shaking him a bit, "wake up, baby. It's ok. It's just a bad dream". Nevertheless, Robby continued screaming. "It's ok Robby darling, you're just having a nightmare. Wake up!" This was beginning to scare Jillian. She was getting worried for her baby. Jillian shook him really hard. "Wake Up!"
         Robby, shaking and shivering was jolted out of his nightmare. His eyes opened, to see his mother holding him close. Suddenly he realized that he had been dreaming again. He began to cry, and clutched his mother as hard as he could. "Mommy, I'm scared. Mommy please, I'm so scared!" he wailed between sobs. Jillian held him close, and comforted him. Soon, Robby went back to sleep. Jillian stayed there for a very long time that night. He had been having these nightmares for quite some time now, and it had begun to worry her.
         "All the books say that all children suffer from such bad dreams once in a while. But Robby's been having these nightmares every night now. I am worried. Maybe, we should ask Doc Bailey what to do", her husband Keith was saying as he sat down for breakfast. "Maybe nothing is wrong, maybe something is. Who better than Doc Bailey to tell us? Or maybe he saw something on TV or he read something …you never know Jillian, all kinds of things affect children. Go visit him today."
         Jillian wondered if Keith was right. Robby's nightmares were definitely something more than an overactive imagination. She sighed, nodded to him, and began stirring her coffee, staring into it as if she hoped that some answer would magically appear in the depths of the brown liquid. 'Well, at least Doc Bailey should have some kind of an answer' she thought to herself.
         That afternoon, as Jillian walked home from Doc Bailey's clinic, Robby showed no signs of last night's episode. He was skipping alongside her, sucking on the lollipop Doc Bailey had given him. Doc Bailey had confirmed what Keith had said in the morning. Robby must have seen something on TV that might have frightened him. 'I have to mind what Robby sees on TV', Jillian thought. However, she still had a weird feeling in her heart about the nightmares.
         As they passed the alley beside the toyshop, Robby let go of her hand and ran towards the shop's display window to see the little red bus that he had been wanting for a long time, or so Jillian thought. It was no longer there. The display had been changed. Robby was now staring at the toy gun in the display and pointing at it. "Mommy, I want that gun. Mommy can I have it? Pleeese", he begged to her. Seeing his eager face Jillian relented. The bells on the door chimed as they opened the door and Robby skipped inside.
         "Good afternoon, Mister Skeet", Robby called out to the shopkeeper.
         "Good afternoon Robby!" Mister Skeet exclaimed as he shuffled from the back of the shop to where Robby stood with his mother. Mister Skeet was a short, heavy man. He was not completely bald, but the few hairs that he had, were combed neatly on the top of his pear shaped head. He glanced lovingly at Robby through the round spectacles that sat on the end of his nose. "And good afternoon, Miss Jillian", he drawled, looking fondly at Jillian. "Hello Mister Skeet", Jillian said.
         "And what would you like today, young man?" he asked Robby.
         "I want that gun Mister Skeet. That one in the window."
         As Jillian paid Mister Skeet for her purchase, Robby ran around with the gun, pointing it towards imaginary 'bad people' and made sputtering noises, like that of a machine gun. As they both stepped out of the toyshop, Robby looked up, across the street to the window three floors up. He pointed his gun at it, and began shooting. "Die, Bad Man! Die!" he screamed.
         Jillian looked up at the window, to see Mr. Bixby standing there with a cup and saucer in his hands, drinking something out of the cup. 'Its probably tea', Jillian thought fleetingly. She was too far off to see clearly, but she thought that he had a peculiar look on his face, almost like an eerie, grotesque smile, that made her uneasy.
         She had a hard time pulling Robby away from there, and taking him back home.

2.

         Mr. Bixby stood in the window and saw little Robby being pulled away by his mother. He was a tall, well-built man, with a thick head of hair that had been combed slickly away from his forehead. Even his mustache seemed to be oiled. After they went past the street, he observed the toyshop from where he was standing. The shop was on the corner of the building, and it had an alley before it. The alley was a dead end. A Dumpster stood by the wall at the far side. Right before the alley, there was the grocery store. Both the shops had a back door opening in the alley. From his window, he could see all the comings and goings in those two shops across the street. His tea over, he turned around and walked past the room into the kitchen. The room was full of books, lined neatly on their shelves. He had a desk near the window with a few books, some stacked, a couple of them opened. He had been writing in his Journal, and had decided to take a tea break. When he had come back with his tea, he had seen little Robby go inside the toyshop.
         Bixby came back to his desk again and saw the pocket-watch lying on the open page of his Journal. A shiny golden lid, engraved with five concentric circles, covered its dial. It had three buttons and a chain.
         He held the timepiece in his hands, and lovingly fingered the circles on the lid. An ugly look crossed his face. He remembered when he had first purchased the watch in a pawnshop, a few months ago. He had gone home and wound it up with the middle button. Then he had pressed the button on the right to see what it did. 'Its probably for an alarm or something', he had thought.
         No sooner than he had pressed the button that a strange humming sound had begun to emanate from the timepiece. A bluish purplish looking glow had begun to form in front of him. The glow had kept growing bigger and brighter. It had been so mesmerizing, that he had stepped towards it, almost as if the glow and the humming had invited him towards it. He had gone closer to the glowing mass of light, and it was as if the bluish rays had reached out and grabbed him into the glowing light. As he had moved into the light, he felt as if he had gone into a corridor of light, bathed in the purplish haze. He had kept on walking, and a few steps later he had stepped onto the other side of the light.
         It was the same world that he had lived in, but somehow very much different. More scary, more violent, and definitely more ugly. People were hideous to look at, and everyone's eyes had such malicious looks. The streets had been full of filth and the building walls had been covered with a sick smelling slimy fungus. He had turned around then; to walk back to where he had come from, but the glow had disappeared. He had then looked at the watch in his hands, and found that the ticking and humming had stopped. The hands on the dial had seemed to be frozen to the time when he had crossed into this world.
         He had gotten scared then, and had tried to wind the watch, but to no avail. He had pressed the right button again, but nothing had happened. He panicked, and decided to press the other button on the left. The watch had begun humming again, and the glowing orb of light had appeared in front of him. Heaving a sigh of relief, he had stepped through it, back into his own world. That was the first time that he had experienced the power of the watch.
         He had realized that the watch opened a doorway to another dimension, another sickeningly real world. Soon, he had begun to experiment with it. Every time he took a trip to this world, he found out something new - both about that world and about the powers of that watch. That experience had given him such a thrill, that he wanted to keep on going back. The next time, he had stayed on longer, and the time after that, even more longer and so on till it dawned upon him that a year spent in that sickening dimension was equivalent to a day spent in this world. The dial on the watch could also be adjusted so that one could spend years in that place, and come back to this world right at the time when one left it. This way no one would miss him if he went away for even longer periods. Moreover, even after spending several years in that place, he could come back to his own world, not a day older. He could spend lifetimes in another world, and still have many more to go. Bixby was like a man possessed.
         The other world was full of unholy things, and like a boy with a new toy, Bixby played in that world. He now had a home there, and an entire life. He could be as cruel as he wanted, or as crude. He could kill, maim and torture people that he could capture, and be honored for it. All of his animal urges were welcomed and appreciated. In fact, the more disgusting he was, the more popular he became. That was when another idea had occurred to him.
         What if he took somebody else with him there? Would that happen? Would that other person also return like him? Would he be able to carry it off, if at all? Those questions kept bothering him, and he finally made up his mind. He would definitely try it. Least of all, he would not succeed. In addition, if he did, he would come back at the same time that he started at, and no one would be the wiser for it. The next question that arose in his mind was that of 'whom' to take along with him on this journey of his. No one would willingly agree. He could not reveal this to anyone either. Therefore, it had to be someone he could easily lure, and someone whose words people would not take very seriously. Someone who would not even understand what was happening to him.
         It was with these thoughts that he had stood in the window of his house, and had chanced to see little Robby with his mother, begging her to buy the red toy bus for him. His mother had told him that she would get the toy bus for him next month. And the little boy had sulkily agreed.
         It hadn't taken much time for him after that. He had purchased the toy bus from the toyshop, and had waited. Robby used to pass by the toyshop every evening, while returning from his football practice, to look at 'his' bus.
         That evening, when Robby came and saw that the bus was missing, Bixby had been waiting right there, in the alley. Before Robby could ask Mister Skeet about the bus, Bixby had waved out to him to get his attention. And when Robby held the bus lovingly in his hands, Bixby had pulled him along into the glowing orb of light. When they both had reached the other side, Bixby had been thrilled; and Robby had been scared.
         Bixby spent five years there along with Robby. Five menacingly fruitful years. Robby had been very scared and disgusted, and he had wanted to go back to his Mommy. Then he had adjusted somewhat. Bixby had begun to take Robby along with him to various places in that world. Some time later, Robby just became silent and morose. It was almost as if he had resigned himself to this life, but soon he began to refuse to go out anywhere with Bixby. Robby just stayed inside his room, with the windows closed, clutching the red toy bus to himself.
         So finally, Bixby had decided to take him back. To the same time in the real world. Robby had been drugged, rendered unconscious by the sleeping pills Bixby had fed him mixed in his food. Bixby had laid the boy down in the alley, and had gone back home. Soon enough, Robby had woken up, and finding himself back in the alley, had gone back home. He had been disoriented, sick for a couple of days. Then, he had come back to normal, and life had gone on as before.
         Bixby's first experiment had thus been a total success.

3.

         When Jillian was cleaning up Robby's room later that afternoon, she found a red toy bus under the bed. It had been crushed in the middle. Jillian's disquiet about Robby's strange behavior in the afternoon, lingered on till the evening.
         When Keith came home from work that day, he had news to tell. Tammy, his colleague John's daughter, was also having strange nightmares. She had begun behaving erratically, and had become violent many times since the past few days. Tammy was Robby's friend from school, and Keith and John used to hang out together every Friday night at the local Pub. Hearing about Tammy, Jillian told Keith about the incident in front of the toyshop that afternoon and her misgivings about Mr. Bixby.
         "Well, can't blame Bixby for that you know", Keith said, "he does seem kind of weird. However, I don't see how he could be connected to these nightmares. Maybe Robby and Tammy saw the same movie or something on the sly, and are scared to tell us for fear of being grounded".
         "Maybe", Jillian said, " Maybe. I hope that's just all that there is." She wondered if she should show Keith the crushed toy, but somehow refrained from doing so.
         That entire evening went by in a strange, brooding mood.

4.

         On Friday evening, as usual, Keith and John went to the Pub and stayed there for quite some time. It was almost as if the both of them had a lot to say, and yet could not say much. Finally, Keith broke the silence.
         "Jillian said something about that Mr. Bixby. She said that Robby was shooting at him with his toy gun after they left the toyshop. That Bixby fellow smells like trouble. I swear if he's done something to my boy…."
         "I don't want to sound ominous", drawled John, slightly drunk, "but, that fellow Bixby scares my Tammy too. The other day, he was at the library. Me and Tammy had gone there to check out some books, and when Tammy saw him, her reaction almost scared me. She ran to me and caught hold of me. She wanted me to keep her safe."
         Keith looked at John, puzzled. "Do you think he's doing something funny to our children? Like maybe, we should alert the police or something?"
         "I didn't really understand. All Tammy wanted me to do was to 'slime the dirtball' and to 'keep her safe from him'. And the whole time, that fellow was staring at us with a fiendish grin on his face, like he was enjoying the show or something."
         "Lets go and talk to this guy, shall we?" Keith said, resolutely gulping down the remains of his beer. John followed suit, and the both of them left the Pub. They got into John's car and drove towards the toyshop.
         They decided to drive around the block and check out if Bixby was at home. The lights were on when they whizzed past his house the first time, so they decided to come back to his place and go see him. When they drove past the second time, the lights were out, so they parked their car and got out contemplating going up to his house.
         "Hey Keith, over there, in the alley! What is Mr. Bixby doing near the back door of the toyshop?"
         "Yeah, and what is it that he's carrying in his pocket?" Keith said.
         "Lets go!"
         Keith and John ran across the street into the alley besides the toyshop.
         Bixby was waiting for them. He had his hand in the pocket of his vest, concealing his watch.
         He had seen the both of them drive past his house and the idea had struck him. He wanted to conduct another experiment and this time with grown-ups.

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THE END
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2941 words.