She walked slowly but successfully through the room, never bumping into a workbench or even a cobweb, as if the wide-eyed puppet held out before her really was helping her see, silently feeding her information about where to step and where to turn.

  The implications of that definitely troubled me.

  “Should we stage an intervention?” Stacey asked, as if her thoughts were following the same general path as mine. The entity had persuaded Maeve to let it take control of her body, and if it was like many others we'd encountered, it might be unwilling to let go of her and return to the disembodied world of the dead.

  “We should, but let's see what she's trying to do first,” I said.

  Stacey gave me a quizzical look, like she wasn't sure she agreed with my moral calculations there. I wasn't sure I did, either. I grabbed my night vision goggles and eased toward the van's back door, ready to bolt outside, my eyes glued to the monitor.

  My eyes had to unglue and switch monitors, though, because Maeve had made it through the treacherous workshop and into the basement bedroom where Irving had spent the final years of his life.

  “It's safe to look now,” Polly whispered, head slinging.

  Maeve opened her eyes. “I don't like it here,” she whispered, after taking in the old bedroom.

  “The door's right there.”

  Maeve hurried over and opened the door to the dim space below the deck.

  “Keep going,” Polly whispered, as though already possessing Maeve, or sort of half-possessing her, at least. “He's waiting for you.”

  As Maeve stepped out, the bedroom's folding closet door rattled open like someone was coming after her. Our cameras in that area showed nobody we could see, but the dark blue cold spot had moved away from the monitor and through the connecting closet, spreading like a chilly fog into the bedroom.

  “Aren't we having fun now, Polly?” asked a deep, scratchy version of Uncle Funtime's voice from the editing machine.

  Maeve looked back, startled at the voice. She was already outside, and the basement door swept shut and closed behind her.

  On the monitor showing the outside of the basement door, Maeve started toward the woods, puppet in one hand and shovel in the other.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “What do we do?” Stacey whispered. “Kid plus shovel plus graveyard in the woods adds up to one seriously troubling word problem. Right?”

  “I'll go over and stick close to her,” I said.

  “But you're not going to stop her?” Stacey asked.

  “It depends on what she's doing.”

  “I should go, too.”

  “Stay here and keep watch over the rest of the family. And make sure nothing sneaks up behind me.”

  Stacey was plainly about to protest, but I hopped out of the van and closed the door before I had to hear it.

  As I started through the bushes, I turned on my headset and tuned in to Stacey's continuing complaint, already in progress. “…and also, there was the time you almost got thrown off that balcony by that poltergeist girl, and maybe I could have stopped her—”

  “It's fine, Stacey. You're like twenty feet away.”

  “And getting farther away with every step you take. This is just like the time—”

  I turned down the volume to tune her out as I made my way toward the clients' back yard. My night vision goggles portrayed everything in shades of green.

  Maeve crossed the strip of clover-filled lawn to the stand of woods in back, their house's portion of the common woodlands running around and through the neighborhood. She followed the path we'd cut open, inadvertently making it easier for her to do the entity's bidding tonight.

  I kept my distance, taking advantage of the wide, mossy trunks of old-growth trees to conceal my presence from the little girl. Maeve had no idea who I was, or that anyone was here watching her house. Any attempt to reach out to her would have to be balanced against the possibility of terrifying her with a sudden threat of stranger danger in what she probably believed to be in her perfectly safe back yard.

  Sneaking closer, I spied her carefully tucking Polly Patches into the crook of a tree limb so the puppet sat there in seeming comfort, watching over Maeve's activities.

  Those activities proved unsettling, because Maeve's next move was to kneel at one of the cairns, the one where the skylight wraith had been seen to appear and disappear.

  The little girl began removing the rocks one by one, working with the exuberant energy of the ultra-young, singing to herself as she took apart the cairn.

  I turned up my headset volume. Surely Stacey had given up her tirade by now and moved on to other things.

  “Hello?” she whispered. “Are you seeing this or not, Ellie? Maeve is digging into that cairn like a dog that just remembered where it left its favorite toy.”

  “I'm watching her,” I whispered.

  “Ellie, what if she turns up something awful?” Stacey whispered. “Something that scars her for life, like bones or a skull, or an undead thing that reaches up and grabs her—”

  “Yeah, you're right.” I typed a quick text to Iris: Your daughter is digging up a cairn in the woods. “You're like the little angel on my shoulder tonight, Stacey. Reminding me to do the right thing.”

  “Then who's the devil on your other shoulder?”

  “Don't need one. I make enough bad decisions on my own.”

  Just as I was wondering whether Iris had gotten my text, or whether I'd have to resort to something drastic like a voice call, the master bedroom light switched on. Iris stepped out onto the balcony, dressed in a dark purple silk robe that looked nice and cool for the warm night.

  “Maeve?” Iris pointed her phone's flashlight beam toward the woods. “Are you out there?”

  Her light wasn't strong enough to find Maeve, though, and would have needed X-ray powers to see through the trees and undergrowth.

  Maeve, for her part, responded only by moving faster, removing a few more rocks, then picking up her beach shovel and desperately scraping at the soil below the demolished cairn.

  Iris returned inside and soon emerged onto the first-floor deck, again waving her light and calling for Maeve while she headed for the stairs to the ground.

  Again, Maeve ignored her, concentrating on the job in front of her, tongue poking out the side of her mouth as she dug, resembling her brother when he was intent on operating the ancient video machine.

  When Iris reached the ground, I raised my night vision goggles onto my forehead and clicked on my tactical flashlight, which was far more powerful than her phone light. I'd set it to flood mode, filling the woods with white light.

  Maeve and Iris both cried out in surprise. In my all-black ensemble, I'd been invisible to Iris, too. She'd probably thought I was still over in the van, watching everything by camera. Maybe I should have clarified that a little before suddenly appearing from the dark like Dracula.

  Iris quickly shook it off and walked to the cairn as I lit the way.

  “Maeve, what are you doing out here at this time of night?” Iris asked.

  “As if the time of night is the bigger issue than the gravedigging,” Stacey whispered, knowing only I could hear her.

  “I have to dig him up,” Maeve said, trying to dislodge a dirt-coated stone with the blunt blade of her plastic shovel. “He wants to come back from the dead.”

  “Who does?” Iris asked.

  “You know who!” Maeve screamed, as though her mother were just badgering her with senseless questions in order to bully her.

  Then she burst into tears, dropping her shovel.

  Iris knelt beside her and hugged her, and Maeve clasped her back fiercely.

  “Let's go inside, okay?” Iris said.

  “Okay,” Maeve sniffled, then resumed sobbing, like she was overtired, overstressed, and frightened all at once.

  Iris led her away, and I pointed my flashlight to the ground to avoid blinding the girl.

  “Who are you?” Maeve looked up at me with an annoyed frown, like meeting someone new was just one more thing she didn't need right now.

  “That's Ellie. She's...mommy's friend.” Iris hustled Maeve toward the stairs, like I was a friend she was embarrassed to be seen with.

  “Wait!” Maeve tried to pull away from her mother and dash back into the woods, but Iris gripped her tighter. “We can't forget Polly!”

  “I'll get her,” I said quickly, because there was no way I was letting Maeve hang on to that puppet, which seemed to be the conduit for an entity that was gaining control over her. “I'll return her where she belongs.”

  “Funtime Park,” Maeve said, very seriously.

  “You got it. I'll put her in Funtime Park.”

  “Okay.” Maeve looked like she doubted me—and she was right to, but I wasn't putting that haunted puppet back into their house anytime soon—but she resumed walking back to the wooden deck stairs with her mom. They headed up and away, both of them clomping slowly and sleepily, like they were barely going to make it to their beds.

  “Ellie?” Stacey asked.

  “Everything's fine now,” I told her. “Just keep watch.”

  Then I stepped back into the woods.

  Stacey said I was being impulsive and not listening to her, or something along those lines, as I returned to the site of the demolished cairn, where the bright red beach shovel with the goldfish logo lay coated in damp earth. One determined kindergartener had made for a fearsome wrecking crew.

  I couldn't help but wonder what she'd been about to uncover, or how much deeper down it lay.

  Figuring that out wasn't my goal, though.

  Stumbling over the newly scattered rocks of the cairn, I lifted Polly Patches from the tree limb where Maeve had placed her. The puppet looked innocent enough, just an everyday kid with a restricted clothing budget and a small, fixed smile.

  I examined the puppet closely under my flashlight, standing in front of a trail cam so Stacey could see I was perfectly safe. Like the other human puppets on The Funtime Show, it had elements of a ventriloquist's dummy, with an internal control stick operated by levers.

  I opened Polly's mouth, revealing little white teeth. They weren't sharp, but I wouldn't have wanted them snapping shut on my fingers at high speed.

  Her cheeks and nose were speckled with freckles. One of her eyelids could open and close, but the other could not. Irving had built Polly so she could joke, or even flirt, but never give a sarcastic slow blink nor an exasperated closing of both eyes with added head shake. It seemed like an unfair limitation to me.

  I looked up under the puppet's dress, feeling like a real weirdo, and saw where its limp legs attached to its body's base.

  “Finding anything interesting under there?” Stacey asked, which did not make me feel less weird.

  “Not so far.” I kept turning the puppet around, then finally shone my light into the puppet's dark interior.

  Where there was definitely something worth finding.

  “Okay, that kid is not playing with this puppet again,” I said.

  “What's up?” Stacey asked. “It's not anatomically correct, is it? With guts and stuff?”

  “No. You probably can't see this over the trail cam, but the interior is covered with old writing.” I took snapshots with my phone and sent them to her, showing her the rows of symbols I'd found painted inside. “They're really faded. Without an insanely bright light like the ones we carry, it would be easy to not see them at all. They remind me of that Egyptian curse figurine Travis showed us.”

  “I think that was just a replica.”

  “Remember how it had all the dense, small writing on it? The text of the spell?”

  “Yeah, and that looks kind of ancient Egyptian-y, with the little snakes and birds and eyes.”

  “It looks kind of ancient Egyptian-y to me, too,” I agreed.

  I reached inside and traced my finger around the control stick for Polly's head. “I think I can feel more symbols carved here, out of sight—” I began.

  Then I suddenly lost my ability to breathe, along with my balance, and I toppled over backward, toward the scattered stones and disturbed earth of the cairn.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I don't land on the ground, but on the hardwood floor of the master bedroom upstairs. The room is dark except for the full moon shining through the skylights.

  The place looks completely different, with heavy shag rugs and jauntily striped window curtains.

  I can't breathe. An empty pill bottle lies beside me on the floor.

  Gradually, I become aware that I'm not alone. Someone is nearby, on my other side.

  With great effort, I turn my head. The world darkens, the clouds of death move in from all sides, from the distant corners of the room, and no air will come into my lungs.

  Irving kneels in the shadows. I smell fresh paint.

  “I've called for the doctor, Agnes,” he whispers. “But in case he's not here fast enough…just in case…”

  He leans forward, placing his finest-tipped brush into a pot of black paint, and takes my hand as I lay there dying.

  “Blood is the surest bond, my love,” he whispers.

  Then, with a needle, he jabs my finger.

  My blood falls in droplets, mingling with the paint.

  When I see what he is preparing to do—when I understand—I try to mouth the word no. He doesn't see, or doesn't care, intent on his purpose, with his usual disregard for my wishes.

  He mixes my blood into the paint.

  Slowly, deliberately, he begins to paint the ancient, dangerously powerful symbols in tiny script inside of her—Polly, my lighthearted alter ego for so long, animated by my spirit and imagination, and by a kind of nostalgic longing for the days of my own childhood...but in the end, just a lifeless doll.

  The medicine has done its job. I no longer miss the lack of breath. I feel lighter, so much lighter than I've ever felt, so light that I begin to rise.

  Below, Irving feverishly paints inside the puppet-girl like a man possessed, like an artist lost in his vision.

  Something towers behind him like a pillar of darkness, perhaps unseen by him, certainly unseen by me before I'd taken this first step into death's doorway. Ropes of something like heavy black smoke extend down from the massive figure, attached like marionette strings to Irving's head and arms, seeming to manipulate him from the shadows.

  I drift upward like a soft cloud. The problems below no longer concern me. He no longer concerns me. Through the skylight, I see the celestial world above like I've never seen it before, and I know I am free.

  Then something grabs me.

  Drawn back from the glass portal to the heavens, I feel I'm being throttled, that once again I cannot breathe.

  I am not returning to my body, though. He could never perform such a divine feat as that, a true miracle. He might have seen himself as powerful, but he was never more than an illusionist.

  No, I scream inside myself, because I have no voice, no way to let out the terror I feel as the evil charms draw me back down, away from the sky, into the dead face of the puppet girl, and finally down into the grain of her wooden body, the painted balls of her eyes, the strings and levers of her insides. No.

  “There.” Irving leans out of the shadows and caresses my face with one finger. He seems giant now, big enough to crush me in his hands, and I'm left small and helpless, completely under his control. His face is streaked with tears, but his sobbing has ceased, as if he can sense that he's succeeded. “Now, my love, I can keep you with me forever.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  “Ellie!” Stacey said, shaking my arm. “Yo, Elle! Snap out of it before I have to grab those smelling salts. You know how they reek.”

  “What?” I squinted in the bright light of Stacey's flashlight, even though she was aiming it away from me and at the ground. My eyes were adjusting to the light as if they'd been closed and accustomed to darkness.

  “I said, stop with the hypnotized digging and talk to me like a normal person.” She placed a hand on top of mine, and I looked down to find that I held the plastic beach shovel in my hand. I'd been continuing Maeve's mission, delving deeper into the little pit where the overgrown cairn had been, the soil moist and black from recent rain.

  “Oh.” I dropped the shovel, unhappy at the amount of dirt I discovered on my jeans and my shoveling hand.

  “I had to yank Polly Puppets out of your grip,” Stacey said.

  “Polly Patches.” I felt defensive about the puppet's name, and then felt uncomfortable about feeling defensive. Why did I care? “Where is she?”

  “The puppet? I threw it over there.” She pointed toward a knot of old tree roots. “I think it cracked a little.”

  “Grab it,” I said. “We're taking it to the van with us.”

  “Oh.” Stacey did not look thrilled by this idea. “Great.”

  I stood and stretched. More loose, wet dirt rained out from the beach shovel, which I was holding in a vise-like grip for some reason. I had to consciously will my fingers to unclamp, one by one, until the shovel dropped to the ground with a light thud.

  “Are you finished digging now?” Stacey sounded hopeful.

  “I am. While I'm curious to see what Maeve—and I—were digging toward, it's probably best to avoid doing the haunted puppet's bidding.”

  “Right. The puppet.” Stacey pinched the hem of Polly's dress and held the puppet out away from her like a rotting fish. Polly dangled upside down, braids hitting her in the face, and again I felt almost defensive about the puppet, like Stacey was treating her with callous disrespect. A few cracks ran across her face where Stacey had thrown her against a knotted tree root.

  It's just a doll, I told myself, while Polly looked at me with her big brown eyes like she needed help. No, it's more than that, I corrected myself. Don't trust it, and don't turn your back on it.

  I took a couple of deep breaths to clear my head, and to reassure myself that I really could breathe after I'd experienced Agnes's memory of her own death, when her cardiovascular system had shut down and she'd left her body.

 

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