Hot in his overstuffed head, Theo breathed in the aroma of paper and paste, balsa and coiled wire. His mouth tasted of sawdust and ink. With no holes for his ears, Theo could not easily make out the directions of the sounds which seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at all.
A little dog, no bigger than a toy, found him out at once. It sniffed around the hem of his costume and whimpered at the alien scent, and Theo tried to nudge it away with his toe. A beautiful Japanese woman in a luminous kimono rushed to his rescue, but she stopped short when she apprehended his costume.
“A g-g-g-ghost!” she screeched, and her eyes rolled back to an awful yellow, and red horns stuck out of her forehead, and her smile became a rictus of horrible pointed teeth. Theo blanched and thought this must be the devil the others had warned him about, but just as he started to speak to her, a samurai crept up behind her and with one swift stroke chopped off her head. It rolled across the floor, laughing. Yapping and snarling, the little dog chased after her noggin in a macabre game of fetch. Arms extended, the headless body took off blindly to try to find it first.
“Do not worry,” the samurai said. “She will trip over it soon enough, and we will patch her up before dawn.”
Theo floated away from the racket to find a quiet vantage to pick through the crowd, trying to distinguish the familiar from the strange. Looking for those from the Halloween parade, he spotted the Three Sisters at once. In a line with men in Russian costumes, the tallest sister had hitched up her skirts to dance the kazotsky, her hinged legs kicking out like a Cossack’s, a broad smile striping her face. Two children were climbing on the shoulders of the puppet made from twigs and branches, and he saw as well the old woman asleep in a rocking chair, oblivious to the chaos all around her. The Devil was in hiding.
His first glimpse was fleeting and from behind her, a flash of hair, the curve of a bare arm. The woman with the straw hair was facing him, directly opposite, deep in a corner of the room. Even from a distance, she looked bereft, and another woman reached out to offer what seemed to be a gesture of consolation. Half-hidden by the crowd, she turned toward him slowly, a series of still images that coalesced into a whole motion. He saw her face again. Kay. Alive. In the form of a puppet, but Kay at last. He broke and crumbled. At last, at last, at last.
* * *
The Original could not rein in his anger. While all around him the maenads and satyrs cavorted, he paced creaky and stiff legged, muttering to himself. “Beware of me? The Queen said to beware of me. Of the so-called others. That’s a fine irony, coming from her. Beware the Queen is more like it. She is a monster, a tyrant, the very bitch of power and duplicity.”
Kay cowered in front of the little wooden doll, uncertain what to say to cool his temper.
“I make the overture,” he said. “I extend the olive branch and what answer has she? I cannot come to your party. She warns you and all my friends from the Quatre Mains of me? I ask you, who is in the wrong here? That minx, that trollop, that petty husk of paper and glue.” He scratched the scar line that bisected his chest, and his eyeholes glowed with ire.
“To be fair, sir, she gave us permission to attend, and we were concerned that you had taken our friend, that you may have unmade the Devil.”
“Murdered the Devil, is that what she’d have you believe? And I suppose her fat friend is in on this, too. Firkin, hah. Why would we want to get rid of the Devil? Why would we want to lose anyone at all? The Queen is under a misguided impression if that’s the story she bruits about. I am all for harmony among the toys. Every puppet in his place, follow the rules, and you will find happiness. And peace, order, freedom.”
“Freedom, is it?” Kay asked. Through the whirl of the dancers, she looked for Noë and saw her standing alone and anxious despite the jolliness around her. “So we are free?”
Stopped by her question, the Original slowly turned to face her. She saw just how old and worn he was. Cracks along the poplar grain had deepened, and the holes on his arms and notch atop his skull where ropes had gone were dark with the grime of centuries. “We are all free,” the old doll said. “Free as destiny allows.”
“Then you will hear out my friend Noë?” She pointed to the forlorn figure on the other side of the room. “She is slowly going mad from this puppet life and wants her old self back. Can you grant her that freedom?”
A shadow of disappointment crossed his face, and the hinges at his neck groaned as he bowed his heavy wooden head. “Child, you mistake me for something I am not. Long ago the shamans made me who I am, just as I had the Quatre Mains make you into what you have become. You ask for a free will beyond my power to grant. The puppeteers can take her away if they please, as has been done before at times. Though I do not know what fate awaits those who are cast out. But, we are free in the night hours, free within this space—”
“That’s no freedom at all.”
Livid, she turned away and pushed aside a scowling maenad in her path, deaf to the entreaties of the ancient doll calling her back. She stormed away in long strides till the Devil caught up with her. Grabbing her by the arm, he spun her around with brute force. “What in the hell are you doing? What did you say to him? Have you lost your senses?”
“Once upon a time, I thought he was a god,” she said. “But he is nothing more than one of us. Grown old and tired by the centuries.”
“You must have respect for your elders. He’s seen things and done things that you and I can only dream of.”
“Nothing more than a puppet on a string.”
The Devil laughed at her and loosed his grip. “Come now, my dear Kay. It’s not as bad as all that. You may think this is some kind of hell, but think again of all that you have forsaken and all that you now enjoy. We have no hunger, no real thirst. Our day-to-day anxieties vanish. There is no need for heartbreak or sadness or tears. We do not tire or grow older than the age we were made. No hate, no jealousy, no crime if we so choose. All we are asked to do is what we love. To perform. To make people laugh or cry or feel the heart’s tug in the dark for an hour or two. We are immortal, eternal, and loved as long as there is an audience for our few antics.”
For the first time since her arrival, Kay wanted to slap someone in the face. “And what if we do not want to be puppets anymore?”
Time slowed, and she spun on her toes to take in the spectacle all around her. The comedy of the damned, oblivious to her exasperation, continued. She heard Olya’s deep laughter as a dissident bellowed, “Catch me if you can.” Puck tiptoed around the four lovers sleeping it off, squeezing nectar onto their drowsy eyes. Good old Nix was entertaining the children from the shoe with another from his bag of tricks. A ghost she had not seen before hovered at the staircase. Such a life was filled with novelty and fun, loud as a carnival, happy as a circus, but she could not reconcile her desires. She searched the crowd for Noë, the Devil watching every move.
“She has always been a little crazy, our Noë,” the Devil said. “Touched since the day she arrived. Never heard her not going on about how she cannot stand one more moment, but I ask you, who is better in a show? Don’t let the madness rub off on you. Enjoy the party, and don’t waste your time with sadness. It’s a long, cold, dark winter ahead, baby, and we don’t want you to be so blue. A little sin will do you good.”
“Get thee behind me,” she said and walked away from the Devil. She fought her way to Noë, stuck alone in a corner, idly playing with the straw on her head.
“Men,” Kay said. “I had such high hopes for the Original, but he turned out to be no better than the rest of them, all talk and no action. And to think I used to adore him, back in the toy shop window in Québec. I remember passing by the Quatre Mains on my way to rehearsals each day, and there he was in all his antique glory. A wooden man trapped in a jar. My husband was jealous of him, can you imagine, but I never coveted a thing so much in all my life. He seemed alive, and I was such a fool for him.”
“Love makes such happy delusions.”
&
nbsp; “The old man offered no way out, I’m afraid. I asked for you.”
Noë sighed. “I would give anything to feel that way again.”
Kay rested her hand on Noë’s shoulder. “We could try the front door. Sneak away from the party, nobody will notice, and try our luck. Just because they say it is impossible doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.”
“But what about the Queen and Mr. Firkin? They’re still down below.”
“If they are in the stalls, they will not notice. And if they are guarding the door, we could always slip by the Worm in the sheepcote through the cellar door.”
With a nod of her head, Noë gestured at a figure over Kay’s shoulder. “Don’t look now, but I think you have a secret admirer.”
“Never mind all that—”
“He’s staring a hole through me. I have not seen him before, have you? What’s that strange puppet supposed to be, a ghost?”
Feigning nonchalance, Kay snuck a peek at the creature. He was the poorest excuse for a ghost that she had ever seen. Little more than a sheet and an oversized lumpy head. Slathered in mismatched ovals of black ink, his eyes appeared to have been painted by a child, and the mouth was but a slapdash brushstroke in the same dark ink. Holding it all together was a thick rope wound around the neck. Kay looked back to Noë and laughed. “You see the type who’s interested in me.”
“Shall we run away?” Noë asked. “Before he says boo and tries to scare us? Where has this darling fellow been all night?”
Kay looked at him again, astonished to find him shaking as if he were afraid of her. The Ghost lurched forward awkwardly, unsteady on his feet, and then he looked right and left to make sure nobody was watching him. With a more measured pace, he seemed to float toward them, but halfway across, the woman in the leopard skin tunic, one of the maenads, stepped into his path.
She sniffed the air and held her spear across her chest. “I’ve not noticed you before, ghoul. Are you one of the Quatre Mains puppets?”
The Ghost nodded.
“And you are after that girl over there? The one who loved the Original?”
More tentatively, the Ghost nodded again, and the maenad huffed and stepped aside reluctantly. As he drew near, he grew more familiar, his strange costume and demeanor giving him away.
“Who is that? Isn’t he one of those small puppets that we hung in the stalls?” Kay asked. “How did he come to grow so large? What strange magic is this?”
Cocking her head, Noë studied him more intently. “He wears my noose around his neck. Perhaps we should be frightened of this ghost.”
Theo floated to Kay’s side and hesitated, awestruck for an eternal moment. Reaching out to hold her hand through the cloth, he bent to whisper in her ear. “It’s Theo. I’ve come to take you home, Kay.”
26
His voice in her head stunned Kay. Impossible, yet unmistakable. A voice out of the past, from another world, a dream sound. She pulled away and stared at the Ghost. A make-believe doll made of scraps with a drawn-on face. He was not real, he could not be her Theo, he was little more than idle imagination. A cruel trick conjured by some prankster. The Devil’s plaything. A hoax.
“Kay,” the Ghost said. His great head shook uncontrollably, the muslin sheet quaked.
“Go away,” Noë said. “Don’t bother her. What kind of creature are you, anyways? Who made you, Ghost? You look like old Firkin’s handiwork. Did he send you? He can’t even paint a straight line.”
“Kay,” the Ghost implored. “It is me under this costume.” He stepped forward as if to embrace her, but she backed out of reach.
“You heard her,” Kay said. “We want no part of your twisted game. I think it is quite mean of you to pretend to be someone you are not.”
Stomping her foot, Noë shouted, “Boo! Leave us alone, you handkerchief!”
From beneath the sheet, he held out his hands, and she saw his skin and bones, the wedding ring on his finger. “You are Kay Harper,” the Ghost said. “Your mother is Dolores Bird, who lives alone on a farm in Vermont. You and I met in New York, and we were married earlier this year, and I lost you in Québec. I am Theo Harper. Tu ne te souviens pas de moi? I love you.”
Drawing her paper face close to him, she saw in the center of the painted ovals his blue eyes peering through the small holes cut into the cloth. Kay pulled him toward her, holding him tightly enough to feel the beating of his heart against the hollow chamber of her chest. “It’s you? Have they made you one of us? Are you dead? Have they turned you into a ghost?”
She kissed the streak of black smeared across his face.
Behind them, the makeshift orchestra played the first bars of an antic melody. The assembly sorted itself into two groups facing each other across the floor.
“I’m not a ghost,” Theo said. “And I’m not dead. This is a disguise so that I won’t get caught. I am not a puppet, I am a man.”
Unable to contain herself any longer, Noë tapped Kay on the shoulder. “The others will notice the two of you together. Take heed.”
Kay remembered who she was and separated from Theo. “This is my friend Noë. She is all right. She won’t give you away.”
Seizing the opportunity, Noë grabbed Theo’s hands and nose to nose peered closely into his eyes. Like an infant entranced by a new face, she scrutinized with a rapt intensity. “So you are a real person hiding under there?”
With a laugh of delight, he squeezed her hands. “I’m Theo, and a real person, last I checked.”
“Really real? From the other world.”
“Come from the outside world.”
“How did you find us?” Kay asked. “How did you get here?”
Theo told the story as quickly as he could, beginning with the toy shop in Québec and ending with the journey of his friends Egon and Mitchell and their plan to break into the barn to look for her. “We were to rendezvous at the car with some evidence, but that was before I met the Queen and her consort. That was before I saw the puppets were … alive.”
The puppets began a line dance, one from each row matching with another and promenading down the middle of the two clapping rows, making for some unusual combinations: Puck and the Good Fairy; the bunraku demon, head in hand, with Teddy Roosevelt; the Three Sisters escorted by the Three Little Pigs. Each pair showed off their best steps and moves.
Breathless, Nix ran over and planted himself in the middle of Theo’s story. “Join the fun. Have a go. The Devil wants to know why you aren’t dancing.”
Noë tried to shoo him away. “Some of us prefer not to make spectacles of ourselves. Go to the Devil and tell him leave us be.”
Bouncing like a restless child, Nix would not be so easily deterred. “And he wants to know who you are, Ghostie. He says he never set eyes on you around here before. Where’d you come from?”
“He’s the ghost in the attic,” Kay said. “Ordinarily invisible, but he makes himself known when there’s a-haunting to be done. Go tell him that, Nix, and stop pestering us so.”
Nix pulled at the sheet. “You don’t scare me. Can you pass through walls, Ghost?”
Fearful that he would be unmasked, Theo stepped away, but the clown kept coming for him until Noë stepped to his rescue. “We can’t have you misbehaving, Nix. It’s not polite to ask so many questions. How about I take you to the dance, and if I promise to take a turn with you, we can leave these poor folks alone for a moment.” She took the juggler by the hand and led him off, glancing back at Kay. “You owe me one.”
* * *
Theo and Kay watched till they were safely out of earshot, and he risked taking her hand in his. The paper crinkled slightly under pressure, and it did not warm to his touch. She was two things at once, her true self and simulacrum. To reconcile the conflict in his mind, he stared at her, trying to scrape away the facade and see whether she existed apart from her form. Or whether form mattered at all. He was thrilled to be so close at last.
“What has happened to you? How did they chan
ge you into this?”
“I do not know how I changed.”
“I missed you, Kay. And nearly went mad when you disappeared. I searched for you, looked every day, and saw you everywhere. The police thought you had drowned, but that was another woman. Dead, she came to me in my dreams. I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t work. I was so lonesome for you.”
Kay leaned her shoulder against him. “I wondered where you had gone. Do you remember the old toy shop on the rue Saint-Paul? I was afraid someone was after me, and I went inside. When I woke up, I was in the Back Room with the puppets. I had become one myself.”
The passage out of the labyrinth of her story became clear to him. “The Queen, she said that there is only one chance to have you back as you were. We must escape this place tonight, before dawn.”
“As I was? Not a puppet?” The possibility seemed to momentarily disconcert her. She lifted her hand to eye level and considered its shape and substance, and then she looked at the rows of dancing friends, Nix and Noë making their procession down the center aisle. “I don’t remember how I was.”
“You were real. A person, alive just like me.”
Her shoulders drooped, like a marionette whose strings have been unbound.
“We need a plan,” he said. “We could try to sneak away downstairs, but we would have to make it through the crowd unnoticed. And if we were not caught, we could try the front door which was—”
“Unlocked,” she said. “We heard voices outside earlier. I didn’t know it was you who was coming, but we left it unlocked.”
“Or if someone is guarding the door, we could slip out through the cellar. My friend Egon is waiting for us, and there is a third man, Mitchell, with a car out on the road.”