The Grimscribe's Puppets (26 page)

And then, as quickly as it had taken him, the spell began to fade. He found himself gripping the edge of a thick concrete planter with both hands. A plastic tree trunk rose from it, almost as thick as the one he’d struck on Main. They were just outside of Penney’s. He staggered toward Danny and threw both hands out to shove him. “You fucker!”

Danny sidestepped with surprising ease, considering how sick he looked. Ray swung a roundhouse punch at him, but Danny caught Ray’s right with his left, ducked under, and slammed him in the stomach. Ray collapsed to his knees and puked a sour stew of pizza chunks and Corona.

Danny stood above him. “Fuck you, man. I try to open your eyes, show you how it really is, and you take a swing at me. You wanna live in a fantasy world, that’s your own problem. You’ll see when the snow melts. Everyone will see. But I’m finished with you here.” And he strutted off into Penney’s.

Ray fought for breath and spewed his guts out a few more times before he could struggle to his feet. Puke spattered the backs of his hands, and he wiped them on his pants, though those weren’t much better. He checked all round, but saw no one watching him, no customers, no security. He made for Penney’s and the mall exit.

It wasn’t until he was outside that he felt the sting of the winter wind and realized he’d left his coat behind. Where? In Pizza Uno? No, on that kiosk. Shit. Only a handful of cars remained in the lot, and Danny’s was not among them. Triple-shit. Ray hadn’t anticipated returning to the rear of the mall, but wherever he was going tonight, he was walking, and there was no way he was doing that without his coat. Not to mention his car keys were in the pocket, for what they were worth.

The mall was empty now. The grille was all the way down outside Pizza Uno and the lights were off. He expected to have to feel his way through the section beyond in total darkness, but a lone panel of fluorescents lit the aperture to the west wing. Others glowed at uneven intervals further down the corridor, hanging exposed from bare steel beams.

Ray picked his way down the aisle from one oasis of light to the next. He had not gone far before flashes of maybe-movement began to register in his peripheral vision: more of the long shadows. They never approached him head-on; instead they pulsed over and over at the corners of his sight, independent of the angles of the overhead lights and showing no conformity to objects on the floor. He tried to focus on his feet, ignoring the dark streaks that crisscrossed each other and rose up the walls, the hollow echoes from the plywood panels he trampled, the way the plastic sheeting over empty storefronts rippled without any breeze. Just keeping his feet together and moving forward dizzied him, and his stomach still threatened.

His worst fear was that when he arrived at the kiosk, his coat would be gone, but he saw it from a good distance off, resting almost right beneath the final flickering light panel. At last—his ordeal was almost at an end. Just grab the coat and strike a fast pace back to the exit. Maybe Danny would be waiting for him after all. Of course he would be: he wouldn’t leave Ray stranded. The coat was here, and Danny would be outside, parked at the curb with the heater running. It was all gonna be OK.

Ray was only a few yards from the kiosk when the buzzing of the fluorescents overhead cycled to the level of an angry hornet swarm, and the panel shut off altogether with a loud pop. He held his breath, straining his ears, but heard only the rippling of plastic. Yet it was not completely dark. To his right, a rectangular panel glowed softly from behind the plastic curtain that spanned an empty steel frame. Black on yellow, six letters: “eyelab.” It was the twin of the one on the pole outside, only this one didn’t move. It hung in place, pressed against the milky membrane as if straining to be born.

The overhead lights clicked back on. At once, Ray recognized the streaks of shadow everywhere, clearer than before. He turned to stare at one on his left, and this time, instead of shifting, it rolled up—rolled up and
rose
—contracted toward him, no longer a shadow, but a hunched figure wrapped in foul, uncertain rags. Shadows on either side underwent the same transformation, at least a dozen, and began to shuffle toward him. He gasped in drunken shock, but he was so close to his coat, now. He could get it and get out before they reached him. They were slow, and Danny would be waiting outside.

Ray stumbled up to the kiosk and stretched his arm toward the coat, not wanting to approach any closer than necessary. In his mind’s eye he saw with absolute clarity the gaunt, discolored arm that would whip across the counter and clutch his wrist, filthy jagged nails piercing his skin, but it never came, and with one lightning motion, he jerked his own hand toward his coat and gripped it by the collar. The instant his fingers closed on the fabric, he took half a dozen quick steps backwards, never taking his eyes off the kiosk, and thus fell directly into the uncovered pit behind him. He hadn’t heard them move the plywood cover.

One sharpened spike of rusted rebar drove straight through his right kidney, and Ray would have screamed if another hadn’t pierced the back of his neck and pinned his tongue flat in his mouth. Before the light clicked off again, he caught one brief glimpse of the gray, eyeless faces leaning over him. Then they climbed down in the darkness and slid the plywood back in place.

By Simon Strantzas

The puppet maker’s hands were wizened. He stared at them, at the gnarled knuckles like cherry galls on goldenrod, at the wrinkled leather skin stretched and folded in on itself so many times it sagged. Those hands were filled with pain and loss and regret, and they radiated it outward like an unbearable heat. His hands were all he had left. His hands, and his memories. But those memories faded from his mind, slipped into the dark of the misty quiet town like the sound of an automobile into the distance. He swallowed another handful of pills and hoped that this day might finally be his last.

It had been so long since the puppet maker’s slow descent from master of his craft to ... to whatever it was he had become. Ancient, neglected, forgotten, a shell of his former self. A relic of a by-gone age where creativity had value, and skill was paramount. The puppet maker had forgotten far more about the art of creation than most had ever known, the slow leak of memories over the course of years. Some days, he no longer recognized himself in the mirror.

No one came for the puppet maker. No one cared for him. The only children he had ever bore hung on the wall of his basement, those ugly vessels for his love, with their large round heads and wrongly numbered wooden arms. He had sacrificed it all for them, sacrificed so he might bring wonderment to a public whose eyes grew increasingly duller the longer he performed for them, and at the end when no one seemed to notice or care about the art of bringing life to the lifeless, those bedeviled creations on his workshop wall did nothing but stare back at him unblinkingly, waiting for him to pass on. Unnoticed and alone.

At first, he did not understand the letter from Dr. Toth. He knew the man’s name, albeit distantly, but could not recall the context. Had they met, he wondered, in some past life, when the puppet maker was greeted warmly by wealthy and poor alike? Time slipped so easily from his recall, faster than the pills could staunch. And the note ... the words were a jumble, their wavy scrawl like that of a palsied but familiar hand. He removed his glasses in hopes things would become clearer, but the words merely danced on the page, moving in and out of focus—sometimes, disappearing altogether like phantoms. Even the paper they were written upon was strange, folded and creased so often it felt like linen. When through sheer force of will the puppet maker managed to fix the words in place, he did not like what emerged.

Mr. L——; 
I have need of your services. Please come at once. —
Toth

The puppet maker reread the note, then added it to the fire of his stove. There was nothing for which he could be needed. The only thing he had ever been capable of required use of his hands, his crooked old hands ... and they could not be trusted to obey. The doctor did not have wealth enough to stymie the encroaching years that freely robbed the puppet maker of everything, left him forgotten and forgetting. Nonetheless, he later found himself in his workshop, unaware of how he arrived there, staring at the equipment concealed beneath dust-covered sheets. Had he descended the stairs? And what had the marionettes hanging on the wall witnessed? For they
had
witnessed something. It was clear from the way their hollow black eyes stared.

Perhaps days or weeks or months passed before a relentless pounding upon his door startled the puppet maker. Awoken from a medicinal haze, he shuffled to the door on a leg full of pins and peered through the window at the long black towncar idling on the street. Its driver had already reach the door of the house, and something about the man’s disquieting features filled the puppet maker with the coldest apprehension. Something that prevented him from opening the door.

“What do you want?”

He spoke loud enough that his words would penetrate the glass. The driver did not respond. His wide eyes merely locked on those of the puppet maker, and his mouth remained twisted in some unnerving attempt at a grin.

“You have the wrong house,” the puppet maker offered, then waited to see what the driver would do. A thick arm was lifted from behind the glass. It bore a square hand that was then laid flat against the window. The driver leaned his wide mercurial face in, the sort of face that looked as though it had been carved in caricature, and the puppet maker felt compelled to retreat, unsure if he were still lodged in a dream. Then, that face pulled away, and the driver bent down and out of sight. An envelope slid under the door.

Filthy, crumpled, covered in large thumbprints, the stationary was unmistakable. With trembling hands the puppet maker withdrew the folded letter—the texture like linen, wrapped delicately around a small stack of similar textured bills. The driver’s disinterested smile remained ineffable.

Mr L——;  Please do not delay. The time is nigh. I have sent my driver to fetch you. The included honorarium is only the beginning. —Toth

The puppet maker looked up from the soft stationery, startled to find the driver was now inside. He overwhelmed the confines of the entranceway, and the afternoon light was warped by the shadow he cast. The puppet maker shrank from his abominable size and nodded in defeated acquiescence. He then reached for his rough worn cane.

He rode the distance in the backseat of Toth’s towncar, across paved streets devoid of tree or bush. Yet even that pavement was not pristine. It was as cracked and crumbling as the skin around the corners of his eyes, and just like those eyes the streets failed him. They no longer led where his memories expected, Toth’s driver heading in the opposite direction of where he ought, speeding down avenues the puppet maker had never before seen. The old man sat with his cane tightly clenched in his aching hands, worried that he had erred greatly entering the cab. He asked repeatedly if they were indeed traveling the right way, but the disturbing driver remained mute, following a set of unknown bearings. There were few souls along the avenues of the small town, each one more hideous than the last. The puppet maker had no choice but to avert his eyes and trust the driver to take him where he needed to go. Soon, the mists at the outskirts grew thicker, and any landmark that might betray their location or provide some anchor within the chaos was swallowed whole.

When Dr. Toth’s home appeared, it did so suddenly, emerging fully revealed in the swirling vapor. It was not as large as might have been expected, and closer to dilapidation than suspicion would allow, but the outer walls, where black mold had not yet crept across them, were touched with unusual ornate carvings not found on other homes. Certainly not upon the puppet maker’s. At least, as far as he could recall, but as he twisted the handle of his cane he knew he might be mistaken. It had been so long since he viewed his house from beyond its four walls, he could be absolutely sure of nothing. Nothing beyond his own encroaching debilitation.

The driver turned and looked at the puppet maker once the towncar had reached its stop outside the formerly opulent house. Over one of the thick forearms stretched across the back of the front seat, the puppet maker could barely see the driver’s eyes, but what was there seemed momentarily unmoored, two reptiles struggling to emerge from their ovarian prison. The driver’s silence and the dismaying effect of his visage were enough to send the puppet maker scurrying. With some trepidation, and under the driver’s flickering eyelids, he stepped from the car and into cloudy freedom. Before him loomed Dr. Toth’s house, ensnaring him with invisible strings as though he were one of his own misshapen creations, while around his ankles formless white swirled. White, then nothing else.

He awoke standing at the foot of a once-great staircase, his recollections rushing away like the surf from the shore. But for an instant he glimpsed another place, one vastly at odds with where he found himself. And yet when he tried to chase the memory through the murk of waking, it slipped from his grasp again and again before speeding away, leaving him adrift without tether.

The house around him was peculiar. And yet its design called forth something from the void of his memory, some arcane thought that barely surfaced like a leviathan beneath Arctic ice. The place looked uninhabited: its shelves askew and strung with cobwebs; curiously familiar furniture scuffed and scratched; a thin layer of dust covering the pockmarked stairs. The air, too, had a distinct odor of neglect, and the puppet maker wondered idly if his house would not appear the same to an outsider, if his basement workshop would not emit the same ancient fetor. It had been his own downfall, his own neglect that placed him there, a victim to the whims of chance. Why could it not occur in kind for one such as Dr. Toth?

The puppet maker steeled himself for the assent of that wide staircase, holding the grip of his cane tightly in his arthritic grasp. He climbed upward, each successive step a triumph, until he arrived at the floor above. There, on the landing, he rested, teetering cane propping him, and swallowed another dose of pills. His vision blurred, images flashed through his mind of large eyes and bulbous heads, and when he finally caught his breath and opened his lids, he was amazed at the sight. The main floor at least had appeared to be simply in a state of long disuse; the second was in a state of destruction. Walls revealed sections of once-hidden wooden slats; floorboards peeled upward, stained dark by time and heat. Each step he took let forth a creak that seemed to emanate from deep within the structure, and he knew it was impossible the good doctor was unaware of his arrival. Nevertheless, the puppet maker trod cautiously.