Toys on the Sidewalk

[00:00:00] Welcome to Scary Story Podcast. We have an old school story today, a type of eerie mystery, something that could happen to you. My name is Edwin, and here's a scary story. When I was little, my sister and I found a box of toys on the sidewalk while coming back from school.

[00:00:24] I vividly remember the smell. It was that strange old glue, like mayonnaise, a scent I only smell now on those wooden cases, the ones with sets of domino pieces you get from the discount store. The box was neatly placed on the sidewalk, closer to the curb, one house over from ours. It was made of dark cardboard, opened halfway. Inside were three more cardboard boxes, the larger one at the bottom and two smaller ones at the top.

[00:00:51] I tried to grab the entire thing to drag it closer to our yard, but it was so heavy, and my sister didn't want to steal anything, so she refused to help. I don't know how many times I told her that it wasn't stealing, because it was in the middle of the street for the garbage man to find, but she didn't budge. Instead, she watched as I went through the boxes, taking them out one by one, then onto the grass. I opened the first box as the car started approaching.

[00:01:18] My sister panicked and yelled for us to run, but wouldn't leave without me. I told her everything was okay, but there was nothing wrong with it. She calmed down and put her hands on her knees once again, leaning in closer to my discovery. Inside the first box, there were two wooden cars, toys, like for toddlers. It was a strange feeling seeing something like that. Toys, things that we barely had in the house after lots of convincing from my mom.

[00:01:45] There was someone out there, giving them out for free. I set the first box aside and picked up the second one, a little heavier this time. Inside was a book, a deck of cards, and marbles, of all sizes and colors, inside a jar. I wanted to open them so badly, but curiosity got the best of me, and I needed to know what was in the other one, the larger box. So I set this other one down, not as neatly as I had picked it up. I thought of video games, a yo-yo, maybe a remote-control car in this bigger one.

[00:02:15] I felt the excitement huddling in my stomach. My sister looked around the street, still paranoid that we were doing something wrong, but still checking out the jar of marbles. As I was taking out the larger box, it tore from the bottom, and out plopped even more things. Now, halfway on the concrete and halfway on the grass, was a red box. I thought it was cool how they thought of doing a box inside of a box kind of thing, but it was strange.

[00:02:42] On the side of it, there was a crank, small, like a music box I had seen at school. I had seen this in old cartoons, too. It was a toy that was supposed to surprise you. You crank it, it plays a song, and then a clown on a spring jumps out and scares you. You didn't try it out there. Inside that other box was a stack of papers, mail, open letters with a tight rubber band, and yet another box. This one of crayons, huge, with so many different colors in a big yellow and green case.

[00:03:12] It was nothing like the box of 24 that my parents had gotten for both of us to share. But even though I kept telling my sister that there was nothing wrong with bringing everything with us and taking it home, I knew that it wasn't something we could just tell our parents about right away. What if they thought we had stolen it, or bought it somehow? How common was it for kids to find things outside and simply take them? But our agreement was simple, as you would expect. Nobody tells our parents.

[00:03:42] We hide the stuff under my bed. Either one of us can come and play with what we found. Whenever. It was at school when we learned about apology letters. The prompt was something like, Make up a situation where you were wrong and disrespected somebody. Now, write a letter apologizing to them. I really wish I could find mine now. Such a simple worksheet, too. It was funny, the way it was written out. I wrote about stealing.

[00:04:09] That I had found a bag of money that robbers had stolen from the bank, and I hid it in the house. And now I had to apologize to the police because I had to help the thieves. It was getting to me. The idea of having a box of toys that didn't belong to me, hiding under the bed. We had taken them out a couple of times. The playing cards were normal, at first. We played Crazy Eights and a game we learned called Egyptian Battle. But everything else was... How do I say it? It wasn't what it seemed.

[00:04:40] My sister hardly asked to see the toys after the first week. She suggested a couple of times that we tell our parents about it, because she didn't want to get in trouble when mom found it. She was known to search under the beds for socks that went missing, and for a time, candy wrappers. I didn't want to tell anyone about it. I figured we would all forget. The toys would eventually blend in with the rest, and I would finally get to use the crayons and make noise with the jack-in-the-box toy thing. Remember, this was when I was like 10,

[00:05:10] and these toys should not have been that interesting to me. It was more of the excitement of having something that wasn't mine. A secret. But then, things started to get weird. It was a little dinosaur toy. A T-Rex, in the grass of our front yard. I found it when we were coming back from school on one of those rainy days, the ones where we pretty much run down the two blocks to get home. That was instead of waiting an hour with Mrs. Tablarito from detention

[00:05:40] while our parents came to pick us up. I remember the look of my sister's face when she saw it, knowing very well that it didn't belong to either of us. The fear of taking another toy that wasn't ours. But this one was on our yard, not on the sidewalk this time. My sister was already waiting on the porch of the house, looking at me when I picked it up and walked over to her. From that day, I only remember trying to convince her not to tell mom anything.

[00:06:08] Because by telling her, we'd have to explain why it was so strange. And from there, we would end up telling her about the box of toys. She had a way of asking questions like a detective, making us tell her things that would later get us in trouble. Why would anyone tell a parent about finding a small plastic dinosaur toy in the front yard? My sister agreed to keep quiet, and the toy went in the box. Two days after that, on a Monday, we came home to a set of juggling balls,

[00:06:38] and then a wooden board game. It looked like one of our cousins. It was called Trouble. At this point, I knew it was time to tell someone about it, and yet, despite not having a reason to, I kept quiet. And so far, I think that has been the biggest regret of my life. My sister and I started reading the papers that were in the box after trying to discover the secret of the toys, like the Johnson Kids, a detective series we had both read at one point.

[00:07:08] The typical kids solving crimes and stuff. We never really played with the toys. We were waiting for the next delivery, guessing as to what it could be. Neither of us took it seriously, as we should have, of course. We were only kids. The letters were only supposed to be a game. Sorry for taking what didn't belong to me, some of the letters read. I would like to apologize for stealing. Letters, some written in crayons, and others in blue or black pen.

[00:07:38] Writing that looked like that of children. I was hoping the toys we kept finding would turn out to be a joke, or of a neighbor kid playing in our yard while we were at school and somehow forgotten them there. Maybe one of the old ladies that lived at the house in the corner, the one that gave us a dollar that one time we were waiting for the ice cream truck. I don't remember when the toys stopped feeling like gifts and started feeling like warnings. Maybe it was when the jack-in-the-box broke, or maybe it was before that,

[00:08:08] when my sister stopped talking during dinner. More things kept appearing in the yard, now closer to the house. A plastic jump rope one morning, coiled neatly at the bottom of the porch steps. A kaleidoscope in the mailbox, nestled in a bed of crumpled leaves. I wanted to believe that it was harmless, that maybe our neighborhood had just gotten strange in the way old neighborhoods sometimes do when you start paying attention.

[00:08:38] But my sister had stopped being curious. She wouldn't even go near the box anymore. It was the jack-in-the-box that finally did it. I waited until she was in the room, sitting on the floor with her knees pulled up, arms wrapped around her shins. I took it out gently, like it was something sacred, and turned the crank. It made a sound like metal chewing on itself, slow and uneven. The song it played was off, like a lullaby underwater. I mean,

[00:09:07] after all this thing was broken. I remember turning the handle so slowly, waiting for the pot. But when it opened, nothing came out. Instead, inside was a folded piece of photo paper. Not even a full picture, just a corner, jagged and yellowed. It had a part of a face on it, a boy, maybe, or a girl with short hair, too close to the camera. The eye in the picture wasn't looking at me, but somewhere over my shoulder.

[00:09:37] My sister didn't scream or run. She just got up and left the room without saying anything. I found her later, in the hallway, sitting with her back against the wall, like she was waiting for something. I sat next to her and told her I didn't think the photo meant anything. That it was probably old, or maybe from the family who threw the box away in the first place. But she didn't answer. That night, she came up to me with a folded paper and asked if we still had stamps. She said she was going to write a letter.

[00:10:08] To who? I asked. She shrugged. Just someone. It's an apology letter. For what? She didn't answer. She just said, you don't have to read it. The next morning, I watched her drop it into the mailbox at the corner. She stood there for a while, even after letting go of the letter. That's when I asked her if she felt better and she said no. Just tired. She said she wanted to get rid of the box. All of it. Burn it or throw it

[00:10:37] into the big dumpster behind the supermarket. I told her that was dumb. That we were being watched and throwing it away would only make things worse. She said she didn't care anymore. That maybe we deserved to be in trouble. I told her she was being dramatic. That it was a game. Just a weird one. One that we would laugh about someday. She said it wasn't a game. Not anymore. She didn't talk to me for two days after that. Not at school. Not at home. It was worse than being yelled at.

[00:11:08] And I didn't tell anyone about the new thing I found that week. Left just under my bedroom window. A tiny music box. Not like the red one from before. This one was made of metal. Scratched and dented. When I opened it, there was no song. No figure. Just a dead moth inside. Wings curled up like it was sleeping. I put it in the box with the rest of the toys. I closed the lid. Shoved it back under the bed. I didn't touch it again

[00:11:37] after that. The next toy came on a Sunday. We had just come back from the grocery store. Both of us sitting in the back seat while my mom talked to herself about forgetting dish soap again. My sister leaned against the window the whole time. Not looking at me. When we pulled up into the driveway. I saw it. A red wagon. Small and rusted. Right in the middle of our front yard. Its handle pointed over the street like someone had been

[00:12:07] pulling it along and just let go. There were no tracks in the grass. No mud. Even though it had rained the whole night before. The wheels looked older than anything we'd found before. Cracked rubber. White spokes dusted with rust. And I remember the feeling. Not fear exactly. Just cold. Like the air had dropped a few degrees as soon as I saw it. Mom barely looked at it. Just asked if it belonged to one of the neighbor kids and told us to leave it alone until someone came to get it.

[00:12:38] My sister didn't say anything. She went inside and closed the door behind her. I didn't listen. Of course I didn't. I waited until it got dark and then I went outside with a flashlight. The wagon was lighter than I expected. Inside was only one thing. The glass jar of marbles from before. The same one. I knew it because one of the marbles had a chip in it. A green one. My favorite. But now all the marbles

[00:13:08] were black. Shiny. Opaque. Like they had been painted or replaced. I touched them and they were warm. I didn't tell my sister. Not that night. I didn't tell her the next day either. We had started talking again though in short bursts but it was different now. We both pretended that nothing was happening. That the toys had stopped coming. Though we had moved on. But then she was gone.

[00:13:42] It was a Monday morning. We were supposed to walk to school together but she wasn't in the kitchen when I came downstairs. My dad was already gone for work and my mom was yelling at the cat for scratching the laundry basket. She asked me where my sister was. I said she was probably getting her shoes. I checked her room. The bed was made but her backpack was gone. I told myself she had walked to school ahead of me that maybe she was mad again and didn't want to wait.

[00:14:11] She didn't show up to school. The police came that afternoon. I sat in the living room while my mom cried into a paper towel and two officers asked me questions. Did your sister have any reason to run away? Was she upset? Did she talk to anyone new lately? I told them I didn't know. That we had a fight but it was dumb one not serious. I told them about the box and the toys but they dismissed it quite easily.

[00:14:41] Later that night I found it. Part of the apology letter. It was torn in half. One side crumpled and stuck under her desk like it had been kicked there. The part I could still read said I didn't know we were taking something that mattered. I just wanted to keep it safe but now the rest was missing. I kept that scrap of paper. I still have it. They searched for weeks put up flyers brought dogs

[00:15:11] and asked neighbors nothing. I stopped looking after the second week. I knew they weren't going to find her not because I thought she was dead. I didn't. I just knew she wasn't here anymore. Like she had slipped through something I couldn't see and got close behind her without a sound. people stopped asking after a while. My parents didn't but the neighbors did. The teachers even the kids at school they moved on but I didn't.

[00:15:41] I kept the box hidden under my bed for two more years but I never opened it again. The box didn't survive the move. When I was 13 we left the house not because of what happened not out loud anyway. My mom said we needed a fresh start like we were cleaning out a drawer. My dad called it an opportunity. We packed fast. My mom went room by room with trash bags and if something

[00:16:10] wasn't obviously useful or sentimental it went in. The box had been under my bed for so long I'd stopped thinking about it as real. It was like a mole on your skin that you forget is even there. She found it when we were emptying the bedrooms pulled it out like it was just another shoebox full of tangled cords or old school work. She didn't ask where it came from just opened the lid wind set the smell and dropped it into the black trash bag. She looked at me.

[00:16:41] You sure this is nothing? I nodded and just like that it was gone. We moved three towns over to a cul-de-sac where all the houses looked like they were designed by the same sleepy person. The lawns were clipped into green rectangles. Our neighbors waved like they were in a commercial for an insurance company. There was a grocery store that always smelled like rising bread and no one ever parked in the wrong spot.

[00:17:12] Nobody asked about my sister, at least not at first, and when they did, teachers, classmates, people from church, I had mansery ready. I used to have a sister. She passed away. It was the truth, sort of, or at least close enough that people didn't dig deeper. Some would nod with sympathy, others would just say, oh, then move on. It was clean, efficient, easier than trying to explain something I didn't understand myself.

[00:17:42] For a while, it worked. I started school. I joined the track team. I went to birthday parties and learned how to forget things. My parents stopped leaving the porch light on. But at night, when the house was quiet, I would still sometimes expect to hear her. Not her voice, exactly, but just the sound of her feet, light and quick, padding across the carpet toward my room. I used to hear that sound for real. And that was a thing. I used to know

[00:18:12] what it meant. Now it was just an echo in the walls. I stopped dreaming about her after the second year. But every so often, I would wake up in the middle of the night with the shape of her name in my mouth, like I had been talking to her in sleep. When I moved out at 18, my mom mailed me a cardboard box labeled childhood stuff. Inside were bent picture books, some drawings, a few ribbons, and a shoebox of mixed Legos.

[00:18:42] I was glad the marbles were gone, and so was a crayon box and the red box and the one with the crank. That was long gone too. I kept one thing, the book, the one that had the torn piece of paper from her apology letter. Those folded flat between two pages of an old encyclopedia. I didn't know we were taking something that mattered. I just wanted to keep it safe. But now... Now what? The torn piece of paper didn't continue.

[00:19:12] Some nights, I would trace the torn edge with my thumb and imagine what the rest of it said. Other nights, I didn't want to know. I visited the old neighborhood for the first time when I was 25. It was a weird time to go. Not for any anniversary or reason. I was just passing nearby for work and decided on impulse to make the detour. The street felt smaller, like someone had gently shrunk it while I was away. The trees were taller than I remembered, shadowing the road

[00:19:42] in a way that felt more permanent. Our house, or the house that had once been ours, had a fresh coat of blue paint, white shutters, a new porch railing. It looked like it belonged to someone with clean shoes and a working lawnmower. There was a woman out front watering a garden. I hesitated and then walked up and told her I used to live there. She smiled politely, said that she had been in the area for a long time. She remembered my family.

[00:20:12] She said she used to see me and my sister playing in the yard. And then she said something that's lived in my head ever since. Sometimes, I still see her out back playing alone. She said it in a soft, matter-of-fact voice, the way people mention spotting a deer in the woods. I could tell she was waiting for me to continue the conversation. I didn't. I thanked her and left, even though I had a dozen questions curling

[00:20:42] in my mouth. I walked the street again, slowly letting my shoes scuff the sidewalk. The cracks were still there. The faded chalk outlines of hopscotch and initials were long gone, but I remembered where they had been. I stood at the edge of the yard for a long time. The air was still. The house felt like it was watching me or waiting. I didn't know what I expected to find. And then I saw it. Near the porch steps,

[00:21:10] half hidden in the grass, was a marble, a single one, red with a yellow swirl inside. It looked new, or maybe it looked exactly the way it had always looked, like it hadn't aged at all. I didn't pick it up. I just stood there, staring at it, the way you look at a flame or a photograph of someone you forgot you loved. The marble shifted slightly in the breeze, rolling a fraction toward me. I turned around and walked back to my car.

[00:21:41] I didn't look back, not even once, because deep down, I knew something I couldn't say out loud. I couldn't tell anyone anything. I didn't want to apologize. I couldn't. I wasn't supposed to. No one apologized to us for taking someone so special, for the night sorting through her toys and clothes, for vultures to rip through them at the thrift store. They wouldn't understand the pain of throwing away a hairbrush.

[00:22:10] In the back of my mind, I knew that if someone apologized for that, I too had the potential to make them disappear. It was supposed to be a game. I think it still is. Scary Story Podcast is written and produced by me,

[00:22:40] Edwin Covarrubias. This story was written in an older style with pieces left for us to fill in the blanks. And I know, I know only some of you love this kind of story, but I really want to show you what a short story is supposed to do in our minds, at least, for me. Either way, I want to know what you think, so let me know in the comments and reviews. I'm catching up with my replies, but I'll get there. Thank you so much for these, by the way. And thank you very much for listening. Keep it scary, everyone. See you soon.