Puppet Graveyard (9 page)

“Don’t you.”

“That’s not rational.”

She chuckled. “I have a feeling there are things in this world that are not strictly rational by our definition, Mr. Regis. I think they’re rare, but they do exist. And now and again some very unlucky idiot like yours truly gets a glimpse of them.” She paused a second, trying to catch her breath which was coming a little fast, she realized, making her sound just a bit less than rational. “And you know what happens to these idiots? They either become agoraphobic nutbags that are so terrified of the world that they’re afraid to leave their houses or they end up in intensive therapy
or
in padded rooms where they’re fed a steady diet of lithium and thorazine for the rest of their tortured, pathetic lives. Then there’s the other variety. The types that are not about to bow under. Their own fear and anxiety pisses them off to the extent that they fight, they track their fear to its source and destroy it before it destroys them.”

Regis sighed. “And I guess you’re in the latter category?”

“Yes. And that’s why I’m going to the McBane house.”

“Kitty, listen to me. That’s dangerous as hell. If even half of this shit is true then you’re walking into a snake pit. Even if this witchcraft shit is total B.S., Ronny McBane might be psychotic.”

“And I’m going to find out.”

“Let me go with you.”

“No. You’ve done enough. Now it’s up to me. I’m the one who’s been wronged and that means I’m the one who has to put things to right.”

14

Bathed in the glow of the full moon above, Kitty knocked for some time before the door opened.

She stood on the sagging, expansive porch of the McBane house and knocked and knocked. The place was pretty much as she envisioned: very old and decrepit, shingles blown loose and siding flapping, windows boarded-up and doorways warped.

She stood looking up at the ramshackle monstrosity, feeling the poison bleeding from the foundation. This was not a house, this was a casket, something yanked from moldering gums like a rotten tooth. It was too tall and too narrow, a leaning oblong rectangle cut from night. There were windows up there, shadow-riven cavities that refused moonlight and starlight and anything bright or revealing. A house of mystery and dank secret and no light dared reveal the dark glory of this high standing tomb.

In one pocket of her leather jacket was a flashlight, in the other her little .32 automatic. She knew how to use it. She’d been through a defensive firearms course and she had complete conviction that she would not hesitate pulling the trigger if it came down to it.

The door finally opened a crack…and just when Kitty was thinking—gratefully—that maybe nobody was home. The door opened an inch, two, no more than that and she saw a sliver of Ronny McBane’s face, one wide, unblinking eye.

“You,”
he said, as if she were some ancestor that had wandered from its crypt to stand threadbare at the threshold. “What do you want here…you can’t be here. Just go away…you don’t belong here.”

And she knew that, but she said, “We need to talk, Mr. McBane. It won’t take long.”

He looked behind him. “Just go away…please just go away.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” she said, her steadfast resolve still holding even though her guts were beginning to feel warm and soft.

“Go away!” he snarled in a whisper. “Just go away from here!”

And then there was another voice in there, something splintered and creaking and eldritch: Piggy. “Let the lady in, Ronny. She’s come for something, can’t you see that? Don’t be disrespectful now. Do you hear me, Ronny? Be a good boy.”

“No, please…”

“Let her in, Ronny. She’s come for something and we must see that she gets it.”

And for one unstrung moment, Kitty thought that the voice had something of a feminine caliber to it. The way a mother might speak to her son.

The door opened and she walked in, right past Ronny who glared at her with unmasked hatred. But did he hate her or did he just hate the indomitable will of modern women in general? Because sometimes, such qualities could be an attribute, but other times the keys to doors best left bolted.

That’s not hate,
Kitty thought then.
Can’t you see it around his eyes? In the pale line of his mouth? That’s fear. Ronny is terrified. And not for himself, but for you.

Inside, it was chill and damp as she imagined such houses must be. For regardless of the romanticism of such places, the real truth was that they were drafty and dank. Kitty could almost smell time here, the slow parade of decades the old house had seen. She could smell, too, the wormy woodwork and mildewed wainscoting, the dirty carpets and yellowed wallpaper. But there was something else…a brooding, pervasive sense of contamination, of spiritual rottenness. There was no getting around it and no denying it. What this house was and what it contained made her flesh creep.

But forward-thinking and liberated as she was, Kitty kept moving through the foyer and into a high-windowed sitting room.

Piggy was in there.

His trunk was leaning up against the wall, lid open, like a mummy sarcophagus. He himself was sitting on the end of a flowery, dirty green sofa that might have been a fashion statement in its day, but was now just an eyesore. He was dressed in the same velvet cranberry suit coat as the last time she’d seen him, spidery hands curled in his lap like the claws of a raptor.

Kitty looked from him to the night pressing up against the windows. “Hello, Piggy,” she said, trying to sound amused.

He said nothing, playing the perfect inanimate little dummy.

She smiled thinly. “I said,
hello
, Piggy.”

She had only seen him beneath the stage lights and the dim dressing room bulbs, never in full electric light before. His face was painted very white, like that of a circus clown. The eyes were huge and abnormally round, shining like newly-minted nickels. Kitty could see where his jaw was hinged, how the paint was flaking to gray at his throat.

Then the jaw dropped open with the sound of dry lips parting, the eyes blinked and blinked again. “Pretty, pretty Kitty, come to pay us a call. Did you bring your pretty pussy with you?”

Kitty tensed. She felt her hand grip the .32 in the pocket of her leather jacket. It was no dream last night…at least, no dream in the ordinary sense. She calmed herself. First she would find out about Gloria, then she’d destroy that grinning imp, she’d chop it into pieces and shove it in the fireplace, watch it burn.

“I’m glad you’ve come here,” Piggy said. “I knew you would sooner or later. Your curiosity would get the best of you and lead you shivering and helpless into my lair.”

“I’m hardly helpless.”

The dummy cackled. “Innocent as a babe, as a squealing piglet put to the knife. That’s what I like about you.”

Kitty did her best to remain unfazed even though being in close physical proximity with this little horror was making the flesh at her belly crawl in waves. “I’m waiting for a dirty joke, Piggy. Have you run out of them?”

“I’m contemplating the dirtiest joke of all, pretty pussy, with you as the punchline.”

“I can’t wait to hear it. Does it have anything to do with men jumping out of windows?” Kitty said, feeling the anger rising in her.

“Oh, we’re beyond all that, Ronny and I,” Piggy said, his eyes impossibly black and wet like drowning pools. There was something behind those eyes or, and maybe better, a
lack
of something. “We’re contemplating new heights since our performance a few days ago…aren’t we, old chum?”

Ronny looked confused, then nodded, then laughed. If it was meant to be a reassuring laugh, it missed the mark completely. The sound that came out was forced and shrill like somebody on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

He passed by Piggy and sat in a recliner. “What do you want here, Miss Seavers?”

Kitty looked at him, showing no fear. “I think you probably know. I think you probably know why I came around the first time, too.”

“No,” Ronny said. “You’re mistaken, so why don’t you—”

Piggy started cackling. “C’mon, Ronny. She wants to know about her sister…she wants to know about Gloria. You remember Gloria, don’t you? Pretty Gloria? You better confess, tell Kitty all about her…don’t you think? After all, Pretty Kitty has a gun in her pocket.”

“That’ll do, Piggy,” Ronny said, still thinking, even after all that had happened, that he could make this all sound like part of the act. “Yes, I remember Gloria. She worked with us…but just for a short time. We couldn’t pay her what she wanted, so she left.”

Piggy started cackling again and it was hard to imagine a more unpleasant sound. It was high and fragmented that laugh, echoing and perverse. The laughter of a child molester. And he did not laugh as men laughed. His hinged jaws snapped open and shut in rapid succession, the laughter billowing up darkly from somewhere deep inside of him. If Kitty had ever suspected that Ronny was actually throwing his voice, she knew better now.

“Shut up!” Ronny shouted at him and meant it.

And the dummy did. Its head was thrown back, its jaws hanging open, eyes staring at the ceiling. One moment it was filled with something dire and malevolent, and the next it was simply a wooden dummy, vapid and vacuous.

“I just want to know about my sister,” Kitty maintained, trying to tell herself she was not frightened, not held together inside with spit and frayed wire. That the invasive madness of this place was not possessing her. “That’s all I really want, the rest of it I don’t care about.”

“I already told you what I knew,” Ronny said, an edge to his voice now, his breath coming hard.

“Hee, hee. I told you that lock of hair would bring the pretty pussy running into our arms,” Piggy said. “And was I not right? Did I not prophesy it as I now prophesy the unpleasant end of pretty, pretty pussy?”

“Stop it!” Ronny cried. He turned to Kitty. “I don’t know anything about your sister! I don’t! I don’t!”

Kitty felt cold from the balls of her feet to the top of her head. It was all planned, all arranged. She had been manipulated from the first. The bait was thrown out and she had taken it and now she was firmly hooked. Piggy had foreseen it all. Now he would count on her fear, on mental degeneration settling in. But this, she decided, is where his plans would go to hell.

Piggy’s head swiveled in their direction, mouth still gaping. “I think it’s too late for that, Ronny. Our dear, pretty Kitty has been talking to people, hearing the things they had to say and believing them…careful now, Ronny, no sudden moves…she has her hand on the gun.”

And it was true. Her hands were in the pockets of her leather coat and the right one was gripping the little .32 automatic tightly now. Piggy seemed to know it.

“If she wants to kill me,” Ronny said, completely indifferent, “then let her kill me.”

“Oh!” Piggy laughed. “You silly, silly boy! You’ll ruin all the fun!”

But Ronny wasn’t having fun. “Go ahead. Shoot me.”

“Well, you heard the boy, Kitty, better just do it…then we can be alone. And you do want to be alone with me…don’t you?”

“Stop it,” Ronny said.

“Tsk, tsk, old boy,” Piggy said in a patronizing tone. “You see, Kitty. He doesn’t want to talk about girls. Boys and girls and the things they like to do in the sweet, heady darkness. Hee, hee, hee. Girls make him uneasy. They make him so uneasy that sometimes he—”

“Shut up, shut up, shut up!” Ronny cried, on his feet now, hands balled at his sides, then up against the sides of his head, pressing and pressing. “I don’t want to hear it! I don’t want to hear any of it! So just shut up!”

“Shut up? Sure, kid, I’ll shut up. I’m good at shutting up. I’ve been shut up in a lot of bad places. Kind of like I was shut up in the family vault until you—”

“Stop it!” Ronny shouted at him, his eyes welling with tears now.
“Just stop it! I want it all to stop!”

“Oh, but I won’t stop it. Remember how it was? Did they tell you how it was, Kitty? Ronny can…he was there. Why don’t you tell the girl, Ronny, tell her all about it. How you used to come and see your brother in the vault, talking to him and missing him…and wasn’t it all so sad? Boo-hoo, said the Jew.”

“Stop…it…”

The cackling again, eerie and discordant. “No, no, no, Ronny, I won’t. I won’t stop any more than mother would stop when she suffocated little Holly with the pillow or when she wound that light cord around my chubby little neck. I’ll never forget that…
and neither will you…”

Kitty was losing her mind now; it was just too much. She brought out the gun and leveled it at Ronny, said in a trembling voice, “Where is my sister? Where is my goddamn sister?”

Ronny turned on her, hair hanging in his face, lips pulled in a snarl. He was mad, completely unhinged. “Get the fuck out of my house!”

Kitty brought the gun up. “I’ll use it,” she said.

“She will, Ronny,” Piggy said. “What are bad girls made of? Ha, ha, sugar and spice and plenty of lice! You’d better take her to her sister…”