The Puppet Maker's Bones (25 page)

Present Day

P
avel sat in the dark workshop and through the window reflection watched Kevin come in through the kitchen door. He slowed his breathing, though adrenalin was beginning the familiar rush that preceded every stage performance he remembered.

Pavel checked his control board and microphone. He glanced at the digital clock on the wall. He put down the control board and climbed a ladder which led to a narrow window near the ceiling, where he could see across the street to Kevin’s house. He watched McGovern and two other men stride up the walkway toward the front door of Kevin’s house. He released a sigh of resignation.

It was time. He had to come down off the ladder. McGovern’s presence with the others meant there were more characters to introduce to the play. He moved down the ladder with the nimble confidence and speed of someone who had spent years of his life going up and down ladders.

“Curtain,” he said. He picked up his portable control board and fiddled with a couple of levels. Pavel sat back in the dark and waited.

***

Kevin padded through the kitchen like a cat hunting a small sparrow. He attempted opening a drawer and felt a slight electrical shock when he put his hand upon the knob, which did not open. He shook his hand to get rid of the residual tingling effect from the slight shock. He then tried a cabinet, but the child locks held so that the drawers and cabinets did not budge. There would be no souvenirs. “Weird,” Kevin said aloud. He noticed the smell of vinegar and furniture polish, but noticed another smell. The smell reminded him of a wood shop: melted soldering wire and the odd, metallic smoky odor of an active soldering iron. And epoxy resin. Perhaps Mr. Trusnik liked to tinker. His thoughts were interrupted by a voice.

“Hello, Kevin.” The voice came from directly behind him. Kevin whipped around, but there was no one there. The empty and dark kitchen was illuminated by the moonlight that came through the windows. Kevin turned back around, and the sound of barking started again, this time behind him and a little to the left. What appeared to be a
puppet
of a small poodle went clicking by on the floor, dancing. The lights came up a little bit, enough to make the room brighter on the area where the poodle was doing its odd dance.

“What the fuck?” Kevin asked. The lights went out, and he could no longer see the poodle. Kevin patted his pocket to assure himself that the scalpel was there, but put down the duffle bag. There was something weird in this house, and he might need use of both of his hands. He crept from the kitchen and into the darkness of the hallway as an abrupt spotlight came on, illuminating a skeleton dancing directly in front of Kevin’s face, its bones rattling. The spotlight was extinguished, and the skeleton was gone.

“Hello, Kevin.” The voice came from his right, as if someone was talking into his ear. He threw out his arm, but nothing was there.

Kevin smiled. He was in the house of a game player. “Oh, Mr. Trus-nik,” called Kevin, in a sing-song voice. “Looks like I came to the house of someone who digs Halloween.”

“How many people have you killed, Kevin?” The voices filled his left ear and something brushed against him, something sharp.

“Ow,
fuck
,” said Kevin. He reached with his free hand to inspect his arm, discovering a small cut there. Blood came away on his fingers. The lights came up again on the rattling skeleton in front of him which waved a knife and shook as if laughing, though the sound of the laughter came from somewhere behind him.

“What the f—”

“How many people have you killed, Kevin?” asked the voice. The lights went out on the rattling skeleton.

“You don’t frighten me, you old freak,” said Kevin.

“Who is in whose house right now, uninvited?” asked the voice which came from a corner off to Kevin’s right. “You have the blueprints.” A follow spot faded up to light the end of the hallway, but the spot was focused on an empty floor. “Were the blueprints informative?” The voice was right behind Kevin. He whipped around again as the dog barked, ran in front of Kevin and tripped him in the dark. Kevin fell to the floor and screamed in pain. In the dim light, he brought his hand to his face. His hand was caught in an animal snare with pieces of razor wire wound through the snare. The wire bit into the flesh of his hand.

“I’ll fucking kill you!” Kevin screamed.

“Oh, I don’t think so, Kevin. You see, people who get near me are the ones who end up dead. How many people have
you
killed, Kevin?” The spotlight lit up the skeleton yet again, which danced in front of him. The skeleton held up its hand, this time revealing a small digital recorder. The light went out and the skeleton disappeared, making a rattling sound like that of a gigantic wind chime. Kevin reached down with his good hand to feel his pocket. His recorder was no longer there. How did he…?

“How many people have you killed?” The voice seemed to be directly over Kevin’s head this time.

“What? You’re going to get me to confess to something and then what?” Kevin listened in the dark, but there was no response from the voice.

“Who would you give it to, old man? You never leave here, I know that.”

The voice piped up behind him. “Have you heard of the Internet?”

Kevin tried to move his head in the direction of the voice, but was constricted by his awkward position on the floor. He was going to have to find a way to get up.

The disembodied voice spoke again, and this time it seemed to come from the end of the hallway, beckoning. “How often do you think they will replay this video on the evening news?” In the dark, Kevin saw a small red light, like that on a video camera, but he was having difficulty deciding the precise location
where
it was in front of him. The pain in his hand distracted him, and the lights kept changing, messing with his field of vision.

“How do you know my name?” Kevin asked.

“You seem to know mine. We’re all old friends here. And you have met my father, yes?” The skeleton plopped down next to Kevin as if in a squatting position and reached out for the snare on Kevin’s hand. Kevin batted at the skeleton but never made contact with it, for it immediately rose up and out of his field of vision. Kevin felt very strange. His adrenalin should have been pumping through his body, causing his pulse to quicken, his peripheral vision to expand. Instead, things seemed to be slowing down for him. He could feel his heart thudding in his chest like a metronome set at a very slow rhythm.

“Did you poison me? When you cut me?”

“Oh, heavens no. I don’t have to do that. I can’t speak for the escaped puppets, however. They do enjoy experimenting with herbs. Did you know my father was an escaped puppet? They tried to lock him in a tomb,” said the voice.

“You’re insane!” said Kevin as he felt his heartbeat quickening, followed by a flush to his cheeks and ears. He was experiencing that rush of adrenalin, though the feeling was not what he was accustomed to having during one of his experiments with a subject. The fight-or-flight phenomena urged him to run but simultaneously paralyzed him. He was unable to scream, to move. He took a deep breath and tried to suppress this new experience, which would not serve his purpose today.
Is this what fear feels like?
he thought.

“Oh heck. I’m an old man, a shut-in who could not possibly defend himself against a boy like you. How old were you when you killed your first human?”

“You poisoned me!” Kevin tried to struggle.

“I’ll tell you how old I was. I was a newborn child. That birth caused the death of over ten thousand people. I win.” That last was delivered sing-song, taunting. The words “I win” seemed to come from all around Kevin and reverberated off the walls.

“I’m going to the cops about you. I’m injured. I need help. You drugged me.”

“How many people have you killed, Kevin. I’ll make it easier. How many this year?”

“Shut up!” Kevin yelled.

“Okay, too difficult? Too many to remember?”

“The thing is,” the voice said to Kevin, this time coming from his right, as if someone was seated next to him on the floor, “when those people died I did not wish them harm. I took no pleasure in it.”

Kevin started to crawl forward. He made it ten more feet, closer to what appeared to be a door at the end of the corridor. A net dropped over him, tangling him into an immobilized heap on the floor.

“You fucking fuck! You cocksucker, I will fucking kill you!” Kevin yelled as he writhed and further tangled himself in the netting.

The voice chuckled. “My father liked to swear. It always made me laugh.” Music started from somewhere deep in the house. Chopin’s
Minute Waltz
. If Kevin squinted through the netting, he could make out what appeared to be the skeleton dancing with a marionette of a woman, waltzing in time to the music, both controlled by an unseen puppeteer. They seemed to be at the end of a corridor but then, in the next instant, appeared quite close to him. Kevin’s vision was playing tricks on him. He stopped struggling. He had to figure out a way to get out of the net.

“Meet Máma, another escaped puppet,” said the voice. “My parents loved me very much. Do your parents love you, Kevin?”

Kevin felt with his good hand to see if his scalpel was still in his pocket. It was. He fished it out, and brought it to his mouth, using his teeth to release it from its square of leather. Kevin started slashing at the net to escape.

“Oh, tsk,” said the woman marionette, who was somehow suddenly next to him on the floor. “I think you had better answer my son’s question, Kevin. How many people have you killed?” The marionette leaned over him, her hands on her hips, accusing, eyes unblinking.

“My mother does not want me to hurt you,” said the voice. “None of them do.”

“None of who? Your stupid puppets, Mr. Trusnik?” asked Kevin.

“Oh, I assure you they are much more than that. No, I mean the others. The men at your house who are searching your room right now.”

“What?”

“And the attic. Attics in old houses are always such good places for hiding things, don’t you think?”

“Who
are
you?” asked Kevin.

“They don’t want me to kill you. That is what they are attempting to prevent. They are trying to stop an event from occurring. Can you give me a reason why I should not kill you?”

“Fuck you.” Kevin was quite frightened. The cocky confidence he had when he broke in and his intentions against Mr. Trusnik were gone. All he wanted was to get out of there.

“Let’s start with why you are here.”

“Let me see you!” yelled Kevin, forgetting his resolve to remain calm. He struggled again with the netting.

“What was it that you planned on doing to me when you got into my house? Assuming I was the defenseless shut-in you were expecting.”

“Come out of the dark, old man. Enough with the puppet show. Who is searching my house?”

“One of my associates. Accompanied by the police, I should expect.”

The police. Kevin had not counted on any of this. Everything had been so perfect, so planned.

“They won’t find anything.”

“I told them to check your mp3 player first.”

“You son of a cocksucking
bitch
. That is
mine
!” Kevin was furious. He could not believe his ears. How had the old man known about his music?

“Ah. Struck a chord. People don’t
like
having their personal space and privacy violated. End of first lesson. How does it feel?”

“Get me out of this net and I won’t kill you.” Kevin’s speech was slurred. He heard a chuckle which seemed to come from multiple directions.

“Oh. You won’t kill me. But how many have you killed?”

“Stop saying that!”

The lights blinked on and off from different locations, as the music faded from one location to get louder in another, repeating in a maddening loop that disoriented Kevin further. He felt as if he’d happened upon a haunted house and at any moment something would jump out at him from anywhere. His vision was blurred and his muscles were not reacting. He felt defenseless. Was this how they felt? His experiments?

The poodle ran by, barking while a voice repeated, “Meet my parents. They are escaped puppets. Meet my parents. They are escaped puppets. Meet my parents. They are escaped puppets.” The skeleton and female puppet twirled and danced in the hall. Kevin thought he was going mad.

As a light blinked overhead, Kevin glimpsed a metal track in the ceiling, over where the puppets were waltzing.

“I know how you’re doing your stupid tricks. I can see the track, you fucker!”

“Tsk. You see? No matter how sophisticated the design, it is always possible to spot the mechanics if one looks hard enough. To see the magician’s hand, so to speak. So what will they hear on your mp3 player, Kevin?”

Kevin’s efforts paid off. He burst through the netting and used his foot as leverage to pry apart the animal snare that held his hand. Kevin screamed when he opened the snare, and his hand throbbed in pain. His blood that seeped from the puncture wounds seemed to be an odd color, a sort of pale violet. Watery. His head felt heavy, and he wondered if his neck could support the weight of it. Kevin got to his feet and stumbled down the hall, deeper into the house. He used the wall for support as he went, but sections of the wall seemed spongy, as if they were made of fabric. His hand sank into the wall until it stopped at something hard and cold. He kept going, holding his good hand with the scalpel out in front of him.

Kevin, half crawling, half stumbling, worked his way toward the end of the hall and then turned in the direction of the music. His breath came in short bursts. He remembered a vacation to New Mexico with his family once, and the altitude had made him breathe this way for a short time until he got used to it. Why did he think about that vacation now? The music became louder as he approached a doorway at the end of another short hall built at a right angle to the one he was navigating at present. He approached the door and opened it.

The door opened upon a huge workroom, filled with tables and tools. Are those puppets? Kevin asked himself, seeing marionettes hanging from hooks on the walls and dangling from the ceiling like some sort of creepy slaughterhouse hung with hundreds of dolls. Inside the huge room was an old man, wearing a cardigan, dancing with a marionette of a woman in a silver-blue gown. The old man did not stop dancing upon Kevin’s entrance. The music grew louder, and the lights changed to a random display of locations and levels of illumination, some bright, some a dull glow, some glaring into his eyes, which gave Kevin spots in his line of vision.