Thomas and the Children - Parts 1 And 2

''This article is an amalgamation of Thomas and the Children and PoseidonHeir's (unofficlal) sequel, Thomas and the Missing Child, with some updates to fit the two properly. Thanks.''

Part 1
Ever hear of Thomas the tank engine? If you have been around little kids between the ages of two and around seven or so, I'm sure you have. My son adored Thomas so much so that he could name every single train, knew what color they were and the number they had painted on them.

I was glad when I heard that he was coming to visit me over the summer but I had a ton of work to do so I bought him a Thomas DVD. The cover looked innocent enough. It showed Thomas smiling and the little wooden children waving their arms out of the windows in his coaches, Annie and Clarabel. The DVD was called Thomas and the Children.

He was so excited to see the DVD that right off the bat, he pleaded with me to pop it into the DVD player. I went to work while he watched it. After a few hours, he came into my office, looking as pale as a sheet. His voice seemed weak.

"Are you okay?" I said. I touched his head and noticed that his temperature had gone up.

"Why did Thomas kill the children?" My heart sank like a stone but I soon brushed it off.

"I'm sure Thomas didn't kill the children," I reassured him. "Now you need your rest and some medicine." I gently pushed him toward his room. "Come on now."

After putting him to bed. I got curious as to what he had seen. I popped in the DVD and began to watch the episode play. There was no main menu like most Lost Episodes, and it just went straight to the episode. It seemed normal enough. It started with Thomas being told to take a group of children to the seaside by the instructions of Sir Topham Hatt. I noticed something wrong. there was no narrator in this episode.

It then showed Thomas picking up the little wooden children and showed every single one of them climb onboard. Then there was a scene with him zooming down the rails like he always did and the children were cheering, "but then there was trouble," is what the narrator would say if something goes wrong, but it was absent. Bertie the bus was stuck on the railway tracks moaning for help.

This is when the episode got strange. Bertie stared at Thomas in fear, almost as if he knew something and the little blue train smiled and sped up. What was even more disheartening is that he started laughing. The children were crying and little tears could be seen painted on their faces.

Thomas stopped laughing and crashed into Bertie causing pieces of both of them to go flying everywhere. Usually by now the narrator would say, "and luckily no one was hurt," but there was no reassurance for kids. The episode then showed the wreck inside the coaches. Wooden limbs were broken off, what looked like actual blood had been splattered everywhere, heads had been ripped from the bodies of the wooden dolls and worse yet the children still had tears upon their faces.

Everything went to static. After that I felt myself boiling over with anger. What sicko would create something that messed up for little kids? Then I paused the static. Messages started to appear on the screen like kill, obey, multiply and die. I watched the static but nothing happens next. More messages flashed on the screen, and on the bottom, each of them said “R.I.P. Thomas”.

I threw the accursed thing in the trash after breaking it in half. I would not expose my child to anymore of that trash. Before going to bed myself, I checked him. He was happily asleep and snoring, clutching his teddy.

I had nightmares from this, one where the children came into my room, but they were life-like and as tall as a normal person. Their twisted forms grabbed my limbs and pulled me apart, while I heard that blasted train laughing. I woke up, covered in blood, knife in hand, and I was afraid to check my son's room.

I walked to my door to take a shower. I washed up my body and put 2 bandages on my hand. I called the cops about the DVD, but they didn't answer.

I went back to bed, and after about a few hours, I heard a scream of a girl. I was afraid to check where that scream came from, so I grabbed a Nerf gun with nails for bullets, so I could kill the person who screamed, or whoever made her scream. When I went next to my TV, the TV turned on by itself, and it was covered in static. After 3 minutes of static, a scary picture of Thomas appeared. Its face had no eyes, blood dripping from its sockets, and it had sharp teeth. It screamed like the scary girl from the scary maze game.

I got a big heart attack, and it screamed for 8 minutes. The DVD was in the trash, and I didn't know how it turned on by itself.

I ran to my room, and when I closed the door, someone said, "LOOK BEHIND YOU!" and there was a scary Thomas mascot, with black overalls and a light blue shirt. The face was like the scary Thomas face from the TV. It ran into me, and it stabbed me in the hand, and I screamed.

I woke up, except the knife in my hand wasn't a dream, and blood was dripping on my sheets. I called the police, as well as an ambulance. They quickly showed up, and I was driven to the nearest hospital.

The following weeks spent in the hospital, where my wound slowly healed and was treated, went by quickly and in a blur. When I was finally better, I was about to go home when the police came and told me that my son was missing.

Unfortunately, my son still hasn't been found, though it's been ages. I now live in sorrow, and nightmares about Thomas and Friends make up a large portion of my dreams, even to this day. I will never watch that cursed episode from my son's favorite show again.

One normal day, I went down into the basement to refill my heater.

I heard a loud clanging in the pipes, I looked up and saw a large bulge in the piping, a pipe eventually burst, out of the hot scalding water came the creepy Thomas mascot, it looked like a Claymation model, but it soon took on the appearance that I saw of it in my room.

It ran at me and I ran upstairs to avoid it, going into my room.

I immediately grabbed the nail filled nerf gun.

The scary Thomas mascot ran up the stairs, and busted through the door to my room, but I had the nerf gun on me and instinctively shot it in the eye.

The nail to the eye caused it to screech in pain and it ran off.

I ran after it to see that it was gone.

A few weeks later, I went down to the living room when the tv turned itself on, a series of messages flashed that said this: "YOU WANT YOUR SON? COME AND FIND HIM! HE'S RIGHT HERE!".

I wondered what that meant until I heard a loud scream from what sounded like my son down in the basement.

I ran down to the basement when I saw my son.

There was a train on a set of rails, he was stuck in the damned locomotive.

"DADDY!! HELP ME!!" He screamed.

Suddenly, the tracks extended and he started rolling right toward me.

I yelped and jumped out of the way, he broke through the buffers and went through the basement wall.

Suddenly, he disappeared in a cloud of green smoke.

I suddenly heard a loud diesel air horn on the train tracks across the street from my house.

There it was, the British Rail class 141 my son was trapped in was heading down the tracks, unsure of where he was headed, and unable to stop himself.

A disembodied voice suddenly said this: "YOU WANT TO SAVE YOUR SON!?!?!? HERE IS THE TOOL YOU NEED TO DO IT!!!!!!!"

Suddenly, I ran out the hole and across the street to the grass by the tracks.

There she was, it was Mavis.

Mavis told me to jump on, and I did.

Mavis started and the chase was on.

We raced down the train tracks, through town, past tons of people who should have reacted, but didn't at all. It was like they weren't aware of the whole thing. Eventually, we lost track of my son, though. It was quite the anticlimactic end to the whole chase.

Mavis stopped.

"What's this? Nobody noticed." I said.

"We're the only ones who can see the track or the trains, or even ourselves." Mavis explained. "You are not hallucinating, I promise. Something else I will promise is that I'll locate your son and guide you to him. This wasn't your last chance."

"What are you?" I suddenly asked.

"This may sound far-fetched, but I am the spirit of a woman murdered by someone you know." Mavis told me. "I'm not here to get revenge on you. I'm here to get revenge on them. But you're the one who has to stop them."

Part 2
Every night.

Every night, I see his face. Every night, I hear his screams. Every night, I sense his terror, his pain, his longing to return to me.

In my dreams, of course. But since he's gone in real life, would it still be a stretch to say the dreams could be true?

It's been about one year since I lost my son. One year since that accursed fake Thomas and Friends DVD somehow managed to steal him from me while I was in the hospital. Yes, I think that was its plan. That scary Thomas mascot who stabbed me in the hand must have been to injure me so I would have to recover in the hospital, away from my son so they could snatch him up like they did.

Worse still, it's like that horrific DVD is possessing my entire house. Weird things have been happening since I bought it. I still don't know how the DVD got to that store, but I do know that that's where I should have left it.

I got a chance to rescue my son before, when he was trapped in a moving train heading down a track, and Mavis and I were following him, the whole event invisible to the eyes of the townspeople. We lost him, but Mavis promised he would be found.

I'm done with this. If the DVD is trying to hold me prisoner, break me using my son's absence and my longing for him, I won't let it do it so easily. I will find my son. I will do whatever it takes to get him back. Then, I'll move out of this house and leave that accursed demonic DVD for good.

I start by scanning the DVD, as I think that it may have some clues. Although I originally snapped it in half and threw it in the trash, I took it out and mended the case, but not the disk. I thought it would be useful, in a weird way.

Miraculously, I find a message on the back of the case that seems to be made from red paint, though it does resemble blood. It has also never seemed to be there before. The message reads Ur vf va Anzvovn. It is completely random, and the words don't even exist in a dictionary. The closest thing to a word is "ur" often a short form for "your" or "you're" in text messages that lazy people use.

But that gets me thinking. What if the "ur" does mean "your"? I brush that off, because the other words still make no sense. Then, I get another idea. I run the message through a Caesar Cipher Decoder on the Internet, and the result is, to my shock and excitement, He is in Namibia.

"He" is most likely referring to my son. But Namibia? The African country of Namibia? How have they brought him there? And it isn't even a specific location. I can't just search an entire country for him. And what if the DVD is trying to throw me off?

I don't think the DVD is throwing me off, however. Yes, there are signs of it being written by whatever thing started this, but it is probably Mavis who wrote this, because she said she would pinpoint my son when we failed to get him during the chase.

My thoughts stop dead when I suddenly get the feeling that something is watching me. I turn around, and I see a toy Thomas and Friends train, Henry, to be exact, on a nearby table, directly facing me. Its eyes seem to bore into me. He looks normal, but the way he watches me is creepy.

That seems to be my cue to run, but I notice that there is another train, James, nearby. I find a few more trains, making a trail to my basement. When I go into my basement, there are about a dozen of them down there, leading to my supply room.

When I enter my supply room, I find tons of these trains. They are on every shelf, all around the floor, in every box. Some are even in stacks. I can see every Thomas character I know of, and possibly more. And all of them seem to be looking directly at me.

A harsh voice speaks in my head. I'm not sure if it's my imagination or not. ''Why didn't you stop it? ''It says. It feels cold and raspy, but has a sense of familiarity. So does the sentence it says. This just keeps getting weirder and weirder.

I get out of the supply room as fast as I can, then leave the basement and return to the first floor. I begin to organize a trip to Namibia. When my friends ask about it during phone calls, I tell them that the trip is to relieve some of my stress, which they understand.

After a while, I finally manage to get the trip ready. That's a lot of money I'm never getting back, but it might be worth it in the end. Now, what would really be cruel is if my son has been moved somewhere other than Namibia. Then I would be wasting tons of time and money searching in the wrong place. But I brush that feeling off.

I decide to bring my laptop, some snacks, and other necessities, as well as the DVD itself, because I think it might give me more clues. I go to the airport, go through the painfully long airport security, and finally get on my plane, which flies to Windhoek, the capital city of Namibia. I get off, drive to my temporary apartment, get in, and settle down.

I scan the disk again. Miraculously, there's another message. It says ''Lbh jvyy svaq uvz va Bzneheh. Using the laptop, I run it through the Caesar Cipher Decoder, and the result is You will find him in Omaruru''. I look up Omaruru, and find out that it is another city in Namibia. It's about two hours and a quarter of a drive from Windhoek.

I take a break to eat, then get in my car and hit the road. Soon, I reach Omaruru. It seems to be a very small town with a small population and little urban development. It's quite peaceful and natural here. I even see a few rhinoceroses, an interesting sight indeed, just not given the circumstances.

I notice that the DVD is beating, almost as if it has a pulse, and it seems to quicken and become more noticeable the further I progress into the city. It occurs to me that it might be leading me to where my son is being kept.

The DVD's beating seems to be strongest at an outskirt of the city, where a few large rocks lay in front of a hill. I decide that I must be very near, so I get out of the car and walk to the hill. I push over one of the rocks - they aren't that heavy. Nothing is behind it.

When I push over the second rock, though, I noticed a sliver of an entrance behind it. I push over the third rock, revealing an entrance big enough for me to walk into. I stuff the DVD into my pocket and enter.

I walk down a stone corridor until I reach a much bigger stone chamber. Its walls seem to glow with malice. In the middle, there is a massive pool of what seems to be lava, but seems... different. It has an unfriendly tinge to it, as if hatred itself were infused into it.

And at the far end of the room, a boy is chained to the far wall.

It's my son.

He only looks slightly older than the last time I saw him, but he's bruised and beaten and bloody and burned. He's crying. He seems to have been through a lot.

I'm about to call his name when he looks up and spots me, his eyes immediately lighting up with relief. "Daddy!" He cries, his tears now filled with joy.

"I'm going to get you out of here." I call. "I promise."

I begin to walk towards him. Of course, I'll stop at the lava.

"Daddy, no!" My son cries. "It's... it's a t-trap!"

But it's too late. In fact, I can almost imagine the Thomas and Friends narrator saying "But it was too late" as chains that seem to just randomly start existing wrap around my limbs, whisk me off the edge, send me flying into the air, bind me, and dangle me above the pool of lava, as if they have a mind of their own.

"Well, well, well." Comes that same cold, raspy, familiar voice from before, but this time, it's not in my head. I turn around in my chains to see a life-sized Thomas the Tank Engine, but clearly not as he is supposed to be. The train has no eyes, has blood dripping from its sockets, and has sharp, pointed teeth. I have seen it before on my TV at home.

"W-what are you?" I ask.

"The one you should have saved." The train replies. I now notice that the voice sounds strangely female. "Did you expect this to be easy? If I didn't want to let you take your son back, which I don't, why would I help you get here?"

So it was this Thomas thing that wrote the messages, not Mavis. I'd fallen right into a trap.

From behind me, I can hear my son crying. I can only imagine what horrible things he's been through.

"Tell me something, dear." The train says. "Do you remember me? When I spoke to you in your head, when I asked why you didn't stop it, what do you think I meant by 'it'? I meant the train."

That's when it hits me. My eyes go wide. My blood turns cold. My mind spirals into chaos. My train of thought screeches to a halt. Okay, that train joke wasn't intentional.

You may be wondering why there's never been a wife of mine involved here. The fact is, I don't have a wife. But I used to. There was an incident where she was lost, and it involved me.

Even before said incident, our relationship was a little bumpy. But it got so much worse when reports of her murdering people came in.

Yes, you heard me right.

At first, the reports were denied, but evidence had confirmed that she had indeed murdered several people. However, she disappeared before trial, leaving me to take care of my son, who was just a baby at the time.

The thing is, I worked as a train driver. A few days later, as I was driving a train on the local railway, a trusted babysitter watching over my son, I saw her on the tracks ahead of me, tied down. It seemed that a group of angry people did it, not police.

I obviously considered stopping the train, but then I remembered what horrible things she had done, and actually paused a moment to hesitate. After the moment, I came back to my senses and tried to stop, but it was too late, as the Thomas and Friends narrator would say.

Before it could come to a complete halt, the train slammed into my wife, killing her instantly. I grieved and grieved and grieved. Some people congratulated me, called me a hero for stopping the murderer, but I didn't feel like a hero one bit.

This left me to raise my son all by myself. I never told him what happened to his mother. I merely told him that she abandoned the family. But the guilt never stopped coming. I could never forget the day.

"That's right, husband." The train laughs. "It's me."

I now understand everything. This train here is my wife, her spirit. She is angry at me for letting her die. I understand why the Thomas and the Children DVD featured Thomas running into Bertie the Bus and killing tons of people. It was representative of how my train ran into my wife. It was symbolic.

"They always say that you can forgive, but never forget." The train - my wife - tells me. "Well, I know I'll never forget. But I'll also never forgive. You, my husband, stopped to hesitate. You, the love of my life, let the train hit me. You, the man who was always supposed to protect me, decided that my actions would overpower my right to live. And now, you and everyone you care about will pay the price."

She glared at my son, who was still crying behind me. "Hello, son. It's me, mommy!"

"M-mommy?" My son asked from behind, whimpering.

"That's right. Aren't you happy that it's me?"

"N-no!" My son screamed. "I w-want to get out of h-here! Daddy, help!"

"I can't escape these chains!" I scream back.

"That's right you can't, dear." The train chuckles. "Now, let the punishment begin."

A red glow travelled across the chains binding my son. Then, they seemed to travel into him. He screamed, shaking rapidly, fighting against the chains, his veins glowing red too.

"Stop!" I yelp in absolute terror. "You're going to kill him!"

"No." The train objects. "I am giving him lifelong pain. I am making him suffer, to get my revenge on you."

I myself start to cry. This looks like the end. My wife will torture us both for as long as we live. Why, oh, why, did I ever get into this mess to begin with?

Then, I get an idea. The DVD is still in my pocket. What if my wife's power comes from there? I start to shake in my chains, the DVD starting to slip. Then, it falls straight out of my pocket, bounces off my body, and lands to the side of the lava pool, right in front of my son's feet.

I wanted it to land in the lava, but it isn't over yet. I turn to my son. "Son!" I shout. "Kick the DVD into the lava!"

My son suddenly stops screaming and nods his head.

"No! Do not!" The train screams.

But my son kicks the DVD, which goes skidding across the floor and goes just over the edge of the lava pool, falling in and getting devoured and melted in seconds.

"No! no!" The train screeches in horror, melting away as if she were in the lava herself. Within seconds, my wife is gone.

The lava suddenly shifts, becomes solid, and turns into stone. The chains binding my son and I release us and fade away. I fall to the ground, but it's not a long fall, and I'm fine, other than a few bruises. I get up and look at my son, who rushes to me and gives me a hug.

"You did it." I mutter joyfully.

"We did it, daddy." My son replies.

"I can't tell you how much I've missed you." I say.

"I've missed you too." My son tells me.

"Well, let's get out of here." I suggest.

"One thing first." A familiar, kinder voice calls from behind. I turn around to see Mavis, who had helped me try to get my son before.

"Is that Mavis?" My son asks.

"Yes and no." Mavis answers. "I am technically a spirit that has manifested itself into Mavis, if you get that. I was the first spirit that woman, or rather that thing, killed." Then, she looks at me. "Congratulations. You defeated the monster. Everyone is safe."

"I thought it was you leading me here with the DVD." I say.

"I found your son, but I didn't have to give you clues, because your wife already did, but it was to lead you into this trap. I probably should have arrived sooner to help you, but thank goodness you stopped her." She tells me.

"Thanks for all your help, Mavis." I state.

"Oh, don't mention it." She replies. "If anything, thank you, for putting an end to this." She turns to my son. "Little boy, you are brave. You did well, helping your father. Thank you." She turns back to me. "And now, we can all be at peace."

"All?" I ask.

One by one, other trains start appearing, several characters from Thomas and Friends, manifested by spirits.

"We are the ones your wife killed." Mavis mentions. "We have been fighting against her for a long time, and of course, the fight moved to your house. But now that the enemy is gone, there need be no fight. Now, we can finally rest, thanks to you. I speak for all of us when I say we are forever grateful to you. Farewell."

The trains all shimmer out of existence. I'm not sure if I'll ever see them again.

"It's time to go." I told my son. He nodded.

And with that, my son and I walk out of the chamber, hand in hand.

Later Edit
It's been a few weeks since I found my son now. He's told me everything. He was physically and mentally abused by my wife's spirit. He probably would have gone insane had I not found him when I did. Which is why I'm glad I found him.

I now live far away from my old home. I paid a construction company to demolish my old house. I was worried it was still possessed and figured it couldn't be left standing.

Now, my son and I reside in a lovely house built in Yellowstone National Park, Montana. We live a peaceful life, now undisturbed. Of course, I still keep in touch with my friends. But here, I can finally escape my deadly past.

I really do hope that the DVD contained my wife's entire soul, all of her power, or else there may be a little more of my past I'll need to escape.