The Motion of Puppets(67)
“If in this world I cannot be free, then I cannot stay in this world,” she announced.
“Get down from there at once,” Mr. Firkin hollered as soon as he had spotted her. “No, wait…”
The Russians shook off their slumber and got to their feet. Nix dropped a ball, which rolled across the room, setting the little dog in motion, which startled the Old Hag. The Queen, anxious over this unscheduled execution, charged to confront her. Seeing their chance, Kay and the Good Fairy darted out of the room in the commotion. No? had launched into a political diatribe, venting her long frustration in a fit of oratory.
They rounded the corner into a small vestibule that served as the entrance to the museum. The room was brightened by moonlight streaming in through an octagonal porthole inset above the outer doors. Atop a rickety table stood a tin coffee can with “Donations Welcome” taped to the surface. Next to the can was a guest book with handwritten entries: The Millers from Woodstock found it “spooky.” Andi und Christian Ludwig from Ulm, Germany, wrote “fantastisch” and “never seens anything like it.” Along the opposite wall, bins filled with silk-screened posters from past shows were available for a few dollars each. The room as a whole produced an odd stereophonic effect. The stray voices in the other rooms were louder, but they could also hear the Worm crawling about in the chamber below, grumbling to itself, as well as their comrades in the stalls raising a ruckus over No?’s admonitions.
“You don’t think she’d really go through with it?” Kay mimed the pulling of the noose, the snap of the neck, the loll of the tongue.
“I doubt it. But what if she did? The worst that could happen is that her stitches give and her head pops off. We’d simply have to sew it on again.”
Offset from the center of the room, the great doors loomed. A wooden bar laid horizontally across the frame was braced against a metal clip, and they knew at once that nobody could have entered past that barrier. Whoever had locked it must have used a separate exit, perhaps the subterranean one guarded by the Worm. Directly opposite was a stairway that led to the basement, but the door to it, too, was shut tight. The visitors from that afternoon must have gone home disappointed.
The temptation proved too great. Kay asked, “Shall we?”
She grabbed one end of the bar and pulled while the Good Fairy pushed from the other end, and it slipped away easily. A beam of moonlight shone through the slim space between the double doors, and the handles were cold to the touch. With all their might, they pulled and the doors swung free.
The night air crackled. The open yard stood before them, the frost glistening on the grass, the farmhouse dark and silent. Mere steps away, they hesitated on the threshold, listening and watching, studying the suddenness and impossibility of the world that looked as false as a painting on a curtain. Like her first time at the circus, holding on to one of each parent’s hands, and all at once burst forth the spectacle, the color, the sound, the motion hadn’t seemed real. Just as the world outside the barn challenged her sense of what was artificial and impenetrable. Yet there was no denying the chill breeze rushing into the barn, the stars fanning out into the endless sky. An owl hooted from a faraway tree, and they found themselves laughing at the staging. Kay wanted to leap through the surface but was afraid. She closed her eyes and watched a film of images flash by from a thousand different memories, each moment distinct but combining to make a whole picture of all that she had held dear and left behind. Her father, mother. Theo. Just out there, just beyond reach.
“You cannot leave,” the Good Fairy said, laying a hand upon her shoulder. “You can only be rescued from this place by someone from the other side. Someone who will agree to lead you away.”
“But they were here,” Kay said. “I know it. I can feel it.”
Out in the yard, the cat mewed, the strange yellow light reflected in its eyes as it walked toward the barn. The cat stepped closer, growing bigger, until it was nearly at the edge, and then it penetrated the landscape as though stepping out of a two-dimensional picture of the night. It headed straight for the darkened alcove that held the cellar door. A light went on in the farmhouse, and a window flew open, the farm girl crying out in the night for her cat.
A voice came from behind them.
“You better shut those doors.”
Startled, they spun around together, and there in a weak circle of light, grinning despite his best efforts, was the Devil himself.
22
The Devil bowed his head slightly, introducing himself again to his friends who thought him dead and gone. Kay and the Good Fairy rushed over and mashed their arms around him with joy. Had he the power to blush, he would have colored from scarlet to crimson. With an awkward shrug, he freed himself and picked up the cat nuzzling at his cloven feet and petted its fur with his sharp-nailed hands. Setting it gingerly on the floor, he whispered “scat” and the cat pranced through the doorway, holding its tail in the air like a question mark before running back to the yellow house.
“The doors, my friends, shut the doors before we are caught.”
Kay and the Good Fairy rushed to the doors and swung them shut, careful not to put the locking bar back into place. From the corner by the cellar, the Devil produced a kerosene lantern and, striking a match on his thigh, lit it, and the Good Fairy gasped at the flame.
“Please, don’t worry,” the Devil said, with a diabolical smile. “If I cannot manage a little bit of fire, who can?”