Toughen Up

The package arrived on a Tuesday, wrapped in brown butcher paper and too much tape. His mother-in-law's handwriting sprawled across the label like she'd written it in a moving car. Without much thought, David brought it in from the porch and set it on the kitchen table.

It's from Mom," Karen said, already reaching for the scissors. "She told me she was sending something for Ollie's birthday." She had that softness in her voice she always got when talking about her mother, three states away and close enough to miss, far enough to rarely visit. That last part suited David fine.

After navigating the tape, paper, and bubble wrap, inside revealed a small stuffed bear. It was clearly handmade; stitched from brown flannel with black button eyes and a slightly lopsided snout.

A small card was tucked against its chest: For Oliver. To keep the monsters away. Love, Grandma.

Karen pressed the bear to her chest like she was the one receiving it. "Oh, she made him one. She actually made it."

"It's just a stuffed animal," David said. He didn't mean for it to come out flat, but it did.

"It's a gift. From my mother. Who spent God knows how many hours sewing this by hand." Karen ran her thumb over the bear's ear, where the stitching was slightly uneven. "She made me one when I was a baby. I had it for years."

"What happened to it?"

Karen's brow furrowed. "I don't know, actually. I'm not sure where it went." She was quiet for a moment, thumb still tracing the uneven stitches. "Mom tried to get me to make one for Oliver when he was born. Said she'd teach me, walk me through the whole thing. But I was never any good at that stuff. Arts and crafts was always her thing, not mine."

"Probably for the best," David said. "He doesn't need—"

"It's a gift, David." Karen cut him off, still looking at the bear. "And after what you did, I think he deserves this one thing." Her eyes went a little distant, back to an argument just a couple months ago.

She shook off the thought and smiled. "Anyway, Oliver's going to love this."

David doubted that. Oliver didn't love much of anything lately, or at least didn't show it. The boy was eight and already seemed to carry some invisible weight everywhere he went. He flinched at loud noises, barely spoke at dinner. He'd started sleeping with his door cracked open and a nightlight brighter than most lamps, something David had allowed for a few months before finally putting his foot down. The dark never hurt anyone.

It felt personal, somehow. The boy had been different before. Not chatty, exactly, but at least present. Then David had decided Oliver was too old for the pile of stuffed animals cluttering his room, too old for the plastic dinosaurs and the torn blanket he'd dragged everywhere since he was two. He'd boxed them up one Saturday while Oliver was at school. When the boy came home and found them gone, something behind his eyes had shuttered closed.

David had tried to fill the gap with a football in the backyard, showing Oliver how to hold his hands for a catch. The boy went through the motions, but it was obvious he was waiting for it to be over.

It baffled him. Those afternoons throwing the ball with his own father were some of David's best memories. Maybe the only ones where his father had seemed fully present, fully his. He definitely hadn't had stuffed animals or nightlights or any of the soft things Oliver seemed to need.

"He doesn't need a stuffed animal," David said. "He needs to—"

"If you say 'toughen up,' I swear to God, David."

He didn't say it. But the thought followed him to work.

Karen gave Oliver the bear after dinner. The boy held it in both hands, staring at it with an expression David couldn't read. No smile. Just the bear in his hands, then his eyes lifting to his mother with something that might have been wonder.

"Maw Maw made that for you," Karen said, kneeling beside him. "She says it'll protect you from monsters."

Oliver's gaze flickered to David, just for a second. David remembered, with a twist of something uncomfortable, the conversation from three months ago.

Monsters in my room, Dad. They come at night.

He'd told Oliver there were no such things as monsters. Told him to be brave, to toughen up, and stop being scared of the dark like a baby. The boy hadn't mentioned it again.

Oliver looked back at the bear. "I can keep it?" Oliver looked to his mom.

"Of course, sweetie," Karen said and hugged him.

"What do you say, buddy?" David prompted.

"Thank you," Oliver whispered. It was the most he'd said all day.

That night, Oliver slept with the bear tucked under his arm. The bear's lopsided face poked out from under the blanket, one button eye catching the light from the hallway. David shut the door.

It was just a stuffed animal. He didn't know why it bothered him.

Over the next few weeks, something shifted.

Oliver started talking more. Not a lot. Not the way other kids his age chattered endlessly about nothing, but more. He said good morning at breakfast. He asked for things instead of pointing. He told Karen about a dream he'd had, something about flying over a purple ocean with Captain Paws, and she'd nearly cried at the kitchen sink when she told David about it later.

"It's the bear," she said. "I know it sounds crazy, but ever since Mom sent that bear, Ollie's been different."

David had noticed too. Oliver carried the bear everywhere now. To the table, to the car, to the bathtub where it sat on the toilet lid and watched with its button eyes while Oliver splashed in the water. The boy talked to it sometimes, quiet little murmurs that David couldn't make out.

The bear was also falling apart.

A seam had split along its side within the first week. One of the button eyes was loose, hanging by a thread. The brown flannel had already faded in patches.

It looked like it had aged ten years in twenty days.

"We should throw that thing out," David said one night, after Oliver had gone to bed. "It's filthy. We can get him a video game or something more his age."

Karen looked at him like he'd suggested they throw out Oliver. "That's from my mother."

"It's falling apart."

"Then we'll get it fixed."

"Karen—"

"What is your problem with this?" She set down her book, giving him her full attention in that way that meant he'd already lost. "He's happy. He's talking. He's actually sleeping through the night."

David didn't have a good answer. "I didn't have stuffed animals growing up," he said. "I turned out fine."

"Did you?"

He closed his mouth mid retort. The question struck him harder than he thought words could.

David decided to take the bear on a Thursday night.

He waited until Oliver was asleep, then eased open the bedroom door. The bear was right there, clutched against the boy's chest, its remaining eye staring at the ceiling. Slowly, carefully, David worked his fingers under the bear's body to slide it free.

His hand closed around something sharp.

He yanked back with a hiss, the bear tumbling to the floor. Blood welled from a clean slice across the meat of his thumb. Oliver hadn't stirred. Cursing to himself, David looked back down at the bear. Its single eye stared back at him.

In the bathroom, running his hand under cold water, he found the culprit: a small needle buried in his thumb. Must have been left by accident. It was amazing that Oliver hadn't been hurt.

All the more reason to take the bear away, but it could wait till morning. Maybe the needle would make Karen see reason.

"Your mother left a needle in that thing," he told her the next morning. "I cut my hand."

Karen looked at the bandage, then at him. "Why were you touching it?"

"I was—" He stopped.

"You were trying to take it." It wasn't a question. "David, he's eight. He's allowed to have a stuffed animal. He's allowed to have something that makes him feel safe."

"He needs to toughen up or the world's going to eat him alive."

"David, if you try to take that bear from him, I'll throw you out."

She walked out before he could respond.

Friday night, David heard voices.

He'd gotten up to use the bathroom, tiptoeing down the dark hallway, when a murmur from Oliver's room stopped him. He put his ear to the door.

"—and then the big one came but you got him, you got him right in the face, and he went away—"

David stood there, listening to his son have a conversation with a stuffed animal, and something twisted in his chest. Not anger. Something worse. Jealousy, over a stupid stuffed bear.

He went back to bed without saying anything.

Saturday night, David opened the door.

He hadn't planned to. A sound like fabric tearing, a thump, a low gurgling noise that didn't belong in a child's bedroom caught his attention. His body had moved before his mind caught up.

The room was dark with a small amount of light bleeding through the curtains from the streetlight across the road. Oliver was sitting up in bed, the bear held out in front of him like a shield. And across the room, in the corner where the shadows gathered thickest, something was moving.

At first it looked like a pile of clothes, the usual culprit when Oliver claimed there had been monsters.

But the shadows twisted and shifted, darker than anything shadows should be. They moved wrong, pulling away from the walls like something alive, stretching toward the bed like fingers reaching out. Hungry. The word surfaced in David's mind before he could stop it. The temperature had dropped so fast his next breath came out white.

Then he saw Oliver wasn't holding the bear. It was standing on its own.

Impossible. David's mind refused it even as his eyes kept seeing. The bear was standing. On its feet at the edge of the mattress, one arm raised, and the shadows were pulling back from it like something burned. Its remaining button eye caught the light from outside and held it. Not reflecting. Holding. And the lopsided stitching of its mouth had changed. Twisted into something that didn't belong on a child's toy. Something fierce. Something ready.

David blinked. The shadows had become something else. One shape now, hunched and twisting, its torso folded at angles that shouldn't exist. Limbs bent in directions that made his eyes water. No face. Just a mouth, opening and opening like a wound that wouldn't close. It was old, that was the sense David had. Old and patient and starving.

And it wanted his son.

He couldn't explain how he knew, but somewhere in his soul, the thing was whispering Oliver's name.

And between it and Oliver was the bear. Small, torn and holding the line.

The shadow lunged. The bear moved to meet it.

David couldn't move. Couldn't do anything but stand in the doorway, hand on the frame, watching his son's stuffed animal fight for his son's life. The limbs struck at the bear but it lashed back with its borrowed light and burned the creature.

The scream wasn't heard but felt, a pressure that split through his skull and settled behind his eyes. David grabbed his ears. It didn't help. The sound was inside him. Oliver was doing the same, face screwed tight against something neither of them could block. Then the thing turned its mouth toward David and screamed again. Not his son's name this time. His. "David Johnathon Thompson."

His name. It knew his name.

The bear moved. Not defensively this time. It launched itself at the thing's open mouth, button eye blazing with borrowed light, and drove one stubby arm straight into the darkness. The thing convulsed, limbs thrashing, and the bear held on. Held on until the mouth stopped opening. Until the angles collapsed in on themselves. Until there was nothing left to hold.

And then it was over. The shadows were just shadows again, retreating to their proper shapes in the corner of a child's bedroom. The bear was just a bear, lying on the floor, a new rip opened along its side and stuffing spilling out like white blood.

Oliver ran over and picked it up gently, cradling it the way you'd hold a wounded soldier. Something that had given everything and might not get back up.

David realized he was gripping the doorframe hard enough to hurt.

"What the hell," he said. His voice came out strange. "Oliv… Ollie. What the hell was that."

Oliver looked at him. In the dim light, his eyes were calm. Calmer than David had ever seen them.

"The monsters," Oliver said. "They don't come as much anymore. Not since Captain Paws came. But sometimes they still try." He stroked the bear's torn side, gentle as anything. "That was the worst one. But he got it. Captain Paws always gets them."

David's legs didn't feel steady. He crossed the room anyway, made himself sit on the edge of his son's bed. Up close, he could see the damage to the bear. Worn patches, the loose stitching, the missing eye.

"How long—" He swallowed. "Has this been happening?"

"I don't know," Oliver said. "A long time. They come and take from me. They've always come. I told you, remember? I told you there were monsters in my room."

The fear had been real. The monsters had been real. And Oliver had faced them alone, every night, because the one person who should have believed him didn't.

"I'm sorry," David said. The words felt inadequate. They were inadequate. "Oliver, I'm sorry. I didn't—I should have—"

"It's okay." Oliver held out the bear. "He's been helping me. He can probably help you too since It knows you now."

The words landed like cold water. The thing had screamed his name. It had marked him.

David took the bear. It weighed almost nothing. Cotton and fabric and one button eye. The seams along its side were torn in three places now, stuffing pushing through like exposed muscle. The remaining button eye hung loose. Scorch marks darkened the flannel where shadow had touched it. And still, somehow, it had been enough.

"Can I borrow him?" David asked. "I'll bring him back. I promise."

Oliver looked at his dad for a long time and finally nodded. David found the nightlight he'd put away, plugged it in Oliver’s bedroom, then dug through some crafting supplies Karen's mother had left behind.

Sunday morning, Karen came downstairs to find David at the kitchen table. He had a sewing kit open in front of him, a needle threaded with brown thread, and the bear in his lap. He was working slowly, carefully, closing the tear in the bear's side with small, even stitches.

Beside him was a YouTube video open to "Beginning sewing."

"David?"

He didn't look up. "I found a button in the junk drawer. For the eye. It's not quite the same color but I think it'll work."

Karen sat down across from him and watched his hands move, clumsy but determined, pulling the thread through the worn flannel. No questions. She just poured him a cup of tea and sat beside him while he worked.

Maybe her own bear, wherever it had gone, had looked just like this once. Battle-worn and held together with love.

David finished the side seam and started on the eye, anchoring the button with careful passes of the needle. His stitches weren't as good as his mother-in-law's, but they'd hold. They'd hold because they had to.

"Karen," he said, still not looking up.

"Yeah?"

"Do you think—" He paused, threaded the needle through one more time, tied it off. "Do you think your mom could make another one of these?"

Karen laughed. "I think you're doing a good enough job. Ollie will love what you've done."

"It's not for Ollie."

His mind went back to the thing screaming his name. To Oliver's quiet words: He can probably help you too since It knows you now.

They sat in silence for a moment. In the quiet, a wall came down. One standing so long neither of them had noticed it anymore. Something flickered behind her eyes. Not surprise. Not confusion. The look of someone remembering something they'd forgotten they knew.

Karen reached across the table and put her hand over his.

"I'll call her today," she said.

David nodded, held up the bear to examine his work, then set it on the table to wait for his son to come down. When Oliver appeared in the doorway, still rumpled with sleep, David held up the bear.

"Good as new," he said. "Almost."

Oliver crossed the kitchen and took the bear, examining the repairs with solemn attention. He ran his finger over the new stitches, the mismatched button eye. Then he looked up at his father.

"Thank you," he said. Then he hugged David.

It was the same thing he'd said when he first received the bear. But now everything was different. David was different. He welcomed the warmth of his son's embrace while Karen sat across, watching.

"You're welcome," David managed. "Breakfast?"

Oliver nodded and climbed into his chair, the bear settled in his lap. Karen started making eggs. Outside, the morning sun was burning off the last of the night. David watched his son eat breakfast and thought, for the first time, that maybe softness wasn't weakness after all.

Maybe it was the only thing strong enough to hold the darkness back.