Read Twisted Little Things and Other Stories for Free Online Page B

could already hear Katie outside arguing with her. Whereas I was determined to play nice, Katie was raising her voice, shouting at Lucy in a manner I'd never heard before, almost as if she was becoming frantic.
    Feeling a vibration in my pocket, I took out my phone and saw that Jimmy was calling.
    “Hey,” I said as I answered, “I don't really have time to -”
    “Do you still have those freaky kids' toys?” he asked, sounding a little breathless.
    “Not for long. I'm taking them back to the -”
    “Dude,” he continued, “I did some reading up on the whole John Spencer Baxter case, and it's way creepier than I remembered. He actually mentioned those toys in, like, this super-weird diary thing he kept.”
    “Please tell me they're cursed,” I replied, grabbing Lucy's favorite toy from her bed. “That would be the next logical step here.”
    “He said they spoke to him!”
    “The wooden soldiers?”
    “He said only people who were really tuned in could hear their voices! He said the Devil spoke to him through the two soldiers and told him to kill all those people.”
    I opened my mouth to reply, before realizing he was serious. “The toys talked to him?”
    “Apparently the Devil spoke through them both at once,” he continued, “and, like, told him in excruciating detail what he should do to each of his victims. All through his diaries, he blamed every goddamn thing on the soldiers. He said the Devil spoke to him with two voices, one from each of the toys, and convinced him to do all those freaky things to the women he captured. Apparently the voices would be, like, goading him, and testing him, and telling him that if he didn't follow their orders, the whole goddamn world would end.”
    “Sounds like a good way to plead insanity,” I muttered. “Jimmy, seriously -”
    “He even recorded them once!”
    “The Devil voices?” I asked with a sigh.
    “Listen!” I could hear him fumbling with his phone and tapping at his computer's keyboard. “He rigged up this weird-ass microphone to pick up, like, different frequencies, and he managed to record them.”
    “This should be good,” I replied, rolling my eyes. “Listen, Jimmy, the guy was clearly -”
    Before I could finish, I realized I could hear a static-filled swirling sound on the other end of the line. Jimmy was clearly playing the audio file, and it sure sounded like voices, but they were too distorted to really make anything out.
    “Hang on,” he said after a moment. “After a few seconds he managed to tune in properly. They really... Here!”
    Before I had a chance to tell him the whole thing was insane, I heard a sudden rasping, barking voice on the other end of the line.
    “The next one has to be alive when you cut her throat!” the voice snarled. “Clean through, so her blood sprays. Why the fuck did you let this one die so fast, you dumb cocksucker?”
    “Make her scream!” another voice added, sounding deeper and even more distorted than the first. “If you don't make her scream, we won't be able to hold back anymore! The world will die in flames! You're the only one who can save everything, but first you have to rip the next bitch apart with your bare fucking hands!”
    “What are you doing with that thing?” the first voice asked angrily. “Are you trying to record me? Is this -”
    The recording cut off, and I heard Jimmy fumbling with his phone again.
    “That's all the dude got,” he continued breathlessly, “but seriously, I think you need to get those statues out of your house right now!”
    I wanted to tell him he was wrong, to tell him I didn't believe for one moment that the statues had spoken to that Baxter guy, but at the same time I couldn't help thinking back to the way Lucy had been talking to the two wooden soldiers and even acting as if she could hear them speaking to her. The whole thing was clearly crazy, of course, and driven by a combination of coincidence and superstition, but I was starting to think