The Thief of Always

by Clive Barker

“It’s perfect!” Harvey murmured to himself. Mrs. Griffin caught his words. “Nothing’s perfect,” she replied. “Why not?” “Because time passes,” she went on, staring down at the flowers she’d cut. “And the beetle and the worm find their way into everything sooner or later.”

A surprise awaited him. The trees which had been heavy with leaves the previous afternoon had shed their canopies. There were new, tiny buds on every branch and twig, as though this were the first day of spring.

During the hour he’d spent in the cool of the kitchen, the season had changed. Summer had come to Mr. Hood’s Holiday House; a summer as magical as the spring that had preceded it.

He tossed a few comics in Harvey’s direction. “Look through these. Find yourself a monster for tonight.” “What’s happening tonight?” “Halloween, of course,” Wendell said. “It happens every night.”

autumn had always seemed to him the saddest of seasons. It meant that summer was over, and the nights would be growing long and cold.

“It’ll be Christmas soon,” she said. “Will it?” “There’ll be presents for everyone. There always are. You should wish for something.” “Is that what you’re doing?” She shook her head. “No,” she said. “I’ve been here so long I’ve got everything I ever wanted.

She smiled at him. “I like you, Harvey Swick,” she said. Her honesty made him honest. “I like you too,” he told her.

It was a day of holidays, the third as fine as the second, and the fourth as fine as the third, and very soon Harvey began to forget that there was a dull world out beyond the wall, where the great beast February was still sleeping its tedious sleep.

“If there’s a way in there must be a way out,”

“Please, child!” she said. “Be content with what you know.

Evil, however powerful it seemed, could be undone by its own appetite.

For every day he’d spent there, a year had gone by here in the real world. Every morning while he’d played in the spring warmth, months had passed. In the afternoon, while he’d lazed in the summer sun, the same. And those haunted twilights, which had seemed so brief, had been another span of months, as had the Christmas nights, full of snow and presents. They’d all slipped by so easily, and though he had only aged a month, his mom and dad had lived in sadness for thirty-one years, thinking that their little boy had gone forever.

It was dangerous, he vaguely recalled, to trust his life to total strangers, but he had no choice. All he could do was give himself over to their care, and hope that the world he’d returned to still had a little kindness in it.