The Motion of Puppets(44)
Finch and Stern opened the boxes and laid out the puppets on the dew-damp lawn. A few fat white clouds gathered over a chain of plump mountains in the west. Pines and firs mixed with birch and maple, nearly leafless in the late autumn, and ringed the perimeter of the landscape to the horizon. A yellow farmhouse stood across the road, smoke doodling from a brick chimney. The Quatre Mains and the Deux Mains were approaching with mugs of coffee in their hands. The vans had been parked next to an old red barn, and Kay could just make out the words on a small hand-painted sign: Northeast Kingdom Puppet Museum.
The Irishman walked among the puppets, picking up those who caught his fancy, trying his hands at the sticks and strings to make Irina dance. Smitten by the Good Fairy, he cradled her in his arms, turning her over and peeking beneath her bodice to see how she had been assembled. Nix made him laugh. No? brought a sadness to his eyes. When he drew close to Kay, he showed a kind smile on his ruddy face as if he already knew her.
“They’re grand,” he said. “Excellent carving and handiwork, but they’ll never do. Too small for our shows.”
“But we’ve come all this way,” Finch said, “on a promise.”
Clapping her on the back in solidarity, the Irishman laughed. “A man’s words is his only honor. We have a few weeks yet to Halloween. Time enough to make, what, ten or twelve out of this lot if the fair weather holds.”
Finch turned to the Quatre Mains, a look of panic in her eyes. “What does he mean? Make them new?”
With a raised eyebrow, the Quatre Mains stopped her. “As long as we keep their essence, that shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Come inside,” said the Irishman. “You’ll love how we’ve converted the barn into a museum. I subdivided the ground floor into a warren of rooms, and upstairs there’s a great big loft that runs the length and breadth of the building. Down below along the backside of the building there’s an old sheepcote that leads out to the pastures. No animals now, of course, only room for all our little friends. We used to get barn swallows in the summers here, but the puppets scared them off.”
The Deux Mains grabbed his arm. “What will we do with our puppets?”
“Ah, bring in them dolls,” the Irishman said. “No use getting soaked in the morning dew.”
The five of them gathered the puppets, and Kay and the Good Fairy ended up in the Irishman’s arms. Through the stippled sunlight they marched off to the faded red barn. At the door into the darkness, a placard read: “Enter at your own risk. Donations welcome.”
*
All around him at Grand Central, people made their reunions. Couples met in a kiss. A serviceman in his dark green uniform found his scruffy younger brother. An old man in a porkpie hat and carrying a tattered gym bag searched for a prodigal son. Theo began to wonder if he had made some mistake bringing Egon home with him from the college. Egon had scurried off to the bathroom as soon as they had pulled into the station, and Theo was left alone in the middle of the crowd. Perhaps the whole cockamamie idea was backfiring. Haunted toy shops. Messages on matchbooks.
“When duty calls, Egon answers.” He was suddenly at Theo’s side.
They joined the queue for taxis as the daylight began to fade, neither one broaching the subject at hand, their small talk instead falling to the long trip from Québec and friends from the cirque and the latest chapter of the life of Muybridge. Only after he had been fed at an Indian restaurant uptown and they walked back to Theo’s apartment and poured a dram of bourbon was Egon prepared to share his news. Ensconced upon the living room sofa in his robe and slippers, the clock scrolling toward midnight, when all else had been said and the matter was no longer avoidable, Egon spun out his tale.
“You’ve seen the SOS on the matchbook. Well, that’s only part of the story. I need to tell you about the other strange things that have happened in that little shop of horrors. After the first week or so of my residence, it became clear that I wasn’t going to be found out inside the shop, so I relaxed a bit, kept a light on in the back bedroom facing the alley.”
“You shouldn’t wait so long if things get desperate,” Theo said. “You could always contact me—”
Egon held up a hand to stop him. “Thanks all the same. Look, I’ve been hand to mouth before and I will be again. That’s not what scares me.”
Ice rattling in his drink, Theo leaned forward in the easy chair. “Something worse than a storm inside the house?”
“During the day I am at the library trying to do my research to find you, and at night, I poke around the place. After I found the matchbook, it’s like a treasure hunt, and that’s when I notice a hatch to the attic. In the ceiling right above my bed. Curiosity killed the cat, but not me. I rig up a stack of boxes and books on top of a chair and climb right up there. Wobbled the whole way. The attic was dark as a tomb, and then I feel a spiderweb brushing against my face, which freaks me out. Turns out to be a long string hanging down, and when I pulled it, a lightbulb came on and made a halo. I nearly fell through the hole when I saw what was up there. Dolls staring at me with their glassy eyes and old stuffed bears and rabbits and a giraffe with a broken neck. Worst of all were the puppets.”
“Good grief—”
“Broken marionettes with twisted wires and slumped together like a pile of dead bodies. An old ventriloquist dummy who looked like he would spring to life and murder me if I moved. Puppets missing an arm or a leg. Even one with no head. And imagine all this time, I had been sleeping just below them in an empty and abandoned flat.”