The Thief of Always: A Fable was published by HarperCollins in 1992, illustrated by Barker himself. Harvey Swick is ten years old, bored with February, bored with school, bored with everything. A strange creature named Rictus appears and invites him to the Holiday House — a magical estate where every day contains all four seasons, where the food is always delicious, where presents appear at will, and where a lake offers swimming in summer and skating in winter, all within a single day.
Harvey is enchanted. The house is everything he wanted. But gradually he notices things: the other children who arrived before him and seem oddly static, the fish in the lake that have human faces, the way Mr. Hood — the house’s owner, who is never seen — seems to be taking something in exchange for the pleasures he provides. What Hood steals is time: every day in the Holiday House costs a year of real life, and the children who stay too long emerge as old people, their lives consumed.
The fable is simple, clearly told, and genuinely frightening. Barker, who wrote the book for his godchildren, demonstrates that his imagination works as powerfully in a children’s register as in an adult one. The Holiday House is as memorable as any location in his horror fiction, and Mr. Hood — a vampiric figure who feeds on stolen time — is one of his most effective villains precisely because he is not a monster but a seducer.
Collecting The Thief of Always
First edition (HarperCollins, New York, 1992): Cloth binding, dust jacket, illustrated by the author.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $30–$80
- Very good/very good: $15–$30
- Signed: $80–$200