Inside the hatbox was a black felt drawstring bag like the one where we'd put the old jester marionette. The human-shaped lump inside made this one resemble a body bag, too.

  Carefully, I loosened the crumbling drawstring and opened the bag.

  Inside lay the Fiona Flowertop puppet in her flowered romper, laid to rest surrounded by flowers made of paper or thin, fragile wood. I wondered if Evelyn Li had created any of those. Fiona's arms were bound behind her with twine, and her face had been bashed in by some blunt object, leaving a hole containing broken bits of wooden innards that had once moved the eyes and mouth. She looked like she'd been hammered repeatedly.

  I immediately checked her insides for painted inscriptions and found row after row of them. I thought of what Evelyn had told me, what she thought each puppet represented.

  “Is someone else trapped in this one?” I asked my graverobbing companions. “Bonnie Baker? I mean, Jenny O'Malley? Your wife?” I looked at Sean.

  Then I froze in place, almost literally, because long, slender fingers as cold as icicles touched the back of my neck.

  I looked up to see a new apparition, wearing a lacy burial gown, her ghostly-pale blonde hair spilling in ringlets all over her shoulders and chest, framing a dark, jagged-edged crater where her face should have been.

  I thought of how Jenny had died, the end of a steel girder flying through her windshield.

  Now Jenny's icicle fingers moved from my neck to my cheek, the faceless dead woman seeming to caress me. Maybe she was grateful for my help, but I wasn’t really the touchy-feely type in general, and especially not when it comes to being touched and/or felt by the dead.

  For a moment, I saw something. Some entities, not being the verbal sort, will simply give visual or even tactile glimpses of their raw feeling and memory, the trauma that made them ghosts in the first place.

  In this case, I saw the Fiona Flowertop puppet clamped to a sawhorse in the puppet workshop.

  Agnes, Irving's wife and co-puppeteer, smashed it repeatedly with a hammer, shattering Fiona's flowerpot hat and then her face, then bringing it down on the exposed infrastructure of her head, breaking off an eye. Agnes's face was twisted in fury.

  That memory, just a glimpse, ended after a moment.

  “Here,” Sean's apparition whispered—a new word for a change. Good for him. He was showing real growth—and fortunately this caused Jenny to stop touching me and turn toward him instead. He took her pale, misty wisp of a hand in his decayed, bony one. “Here she is.”

  “Yeah, so let's get going.” I stood and grabbed the Polly puppet again. “I know you lovebirds might want a little reunion time, but…”

  Then I realized both apparitions were gone.

  “I'll just grab everyone's puppets, then?” I said to the empty woods.

  I crammed all three of them into the hatbox and carried them that way, though the box was too full to cover them with the lid.

  Finally leaving the woods, I ran out of the rain and into the shelter of the deck. The house was still dark, the lights out. I couldn't see much through the lone window into the basement bedroom.

  I glanced behind me and jumped to see Sean’s and Jenny's ghosts right there—and I mean, right there, because apparently one thing this couple shared was a lack of respect for the personal boundaries of the living. They were close enough to grab me, but after a second I realized they were just watching me and generally being unnaturally still.

  “Anybody want to carry this?” I held out the hatbox with the puppets, but neither spirit moved to take it. “Sean? I mean, if we know one thing, it's that you're not going to get this door open, but we know you can rattle doors, so maybe you could lend a hand?” No response. Drat.

  I started to open the basement door…then hesitated again, looking at Sean. I couldn't help hesitating because Iris had initially hired me to eliminate this specific ghost. Sean was the Skylight Peeper, and while peeping may not have been his actual goal, I had mixed feelings about finally bringing him into the house with me.

  I drew the wax figure out of my pocket, in case it gave me any influence over him at all.

  “Guys, we have one goal here,” I said, “and that's to protect the living. Is that understood?”

  They didn't verbally agree, but they didn't put up an argument. It would have to be good enough.

  I crossed the threshold into the unseasonably cold vault of the basement.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Once inside, I turned back to watch my dead companions follow, curious how Sean would react to finally entering the house after trying for so long. His ghost seemed to be attached to the effigy that had killed him, and so my bringing that inside hopefully meant he could now enter, too.

  When I looked back, though, they were both gone.

  “Oh, come on!” I whispered. “You're not going to ditch me after I did all that digging, are you?”

  They didn't answer. It was possible they'd gone invisible, as ghosts can always do, and followed me in that way, perhaps trying to stay unnoticed by Irving's ghost, or whichever entity had been keeping them out of the house. It was also possible they'd left altogether.

  I dropped the hatbox on the bed and took out Polly Patches. I didn't trust her anymore, now that I'd glimpsed Agnes wielding the hammer on the doll who represented Jenny O' Malley, essentially using magic to kill her from a distance. But I needed her knowledge of the situation to help me protect the family.

  “What's happening?” I demanded. “Where did they go? They're supposed to help us against Irving, right?”

  “You'll see!” Polly replied, taking control of my hand and mouth with an ease that I did not like at all. “The fun is just beginning! Hee-hee!”

  “I'm not sure if you're aware, Agnes,” I said, “but when a haunted puppet says something like 'the fun is just beginning' and then giggles, it comes across as sinister and threatening.”

  “Oh, I would never hurt you!” Her face moved closer to mine, as though she'd taken control of my whole arm. “I like you. We'll always be friends.”

  “You're making it worse.”

  “Hee-hee!”

  “Did you kill Jenny O' Malley?”

  “Friend!” she gasped. “That's not a very nice thing to say! Polly Patches would never hurt a pal!”

  I didn't buy it. I probably should have ripped her off my arm right then.

  I cut through the closet, intending to head straight for the stairs and join Stacey and everyone else up in the media room.

  There was a murmuring and a gray glow through the closet doors ahead. As I folded them open and entered the editing-machine room, the sound became more distinct: “Come with me…take my hand…we'll go into TV-land…”

  The editing machine itself was cold as a freezer, its monitor frosted with ice. Through the ice, I saw a blurry black and white view of Roland floating along the upstairs hallway, limp as a marionette, eyes closed.

  The editing machine, like the puppets, was a conduit, I thought, a way in which the dead puppeteer connected to the living and drew them under his influence from beyond the grave.

  I raised my flashlight, ready to bash the beveled front edge through the icy glass, to blind the cyclopean video eye of the machine, and then I heard Stacey scream.

  It could have been a trick by this entity, with its audio and video powers, and it would have been a good one, because I immediately left the editing room for the cavernous backstage area, running toward the scream.

  I spotted Stacey through the open puppet window, clambering down the stairs into the basement theater. She no longer had the ax.

  “Stacey!” I shouted.

  “Things went badly!” she said, scrambling toward me between the old pews and little chairs but keeping her eyes up, toward the stairs and basement door. “I broke down the door, but they all came at me like I'd kicked open a fire ant mound. Now they're all over the house, hunting me...” She reached the stage and leaped up on it, like she'd just made a dramatic entrance into a play.

  Jim came down the stairs, not even hurrying, grinning, still shirtless to show off his tattoos, carrying the ax.

  “I put the ax in a closet, because I didn't want to accidentally hurt someone with it, after I almost lopped your hand off earlier.” Stacey clambered through the puppet window, and I helped her land on her feet. “But I guess I didn't think about them hurting me with the ax…”

  Jim turned and stepped up onto the stair railing with one leg, an incredible act of strength and balance, then stepped his other leg over it and into empty space. He dropped slowly through the air as if suspended on invisible wires, landed softly on the floor, and started toward us.

  “They all float like ghosts,” Stacey added as we closed the red shutters of the puppet window. “It's so messed up. He's controlling everyone, the whole family.”

  “Let's all go to the workshop,” Polly whispered.

  “Are you still carrying that thing around?” Stacey scowled at the sight of Polly on my hand.

  “It's a good idea. We can barricade the door.” I ran toward the back of the room.

  “What a surprise that you and the puppet on your hand agree,” Stacey muttered as she followed.

  One of the doors flanking the stage opened, and Jim stepped through, a gentle smile on his lips reminding me of the Uncle Funtime puppet.

  Stacey and I pulled over tables and set pieces as we ran, littering the path behind us with obstacles to slow him down.

  But Jim rose on invisible strings and floated over them, so we stopped doing that and hurried through the workshop door with the keep-out warning.

  We dragged over a bench and barricaded the door, but the workshop's other door, leading to the basement bedroom, still stood wide open.

  I ran over there and managed to slam it shut. A second later, the ax struck it from the other side, and I heard wood splinter. The flimsy interior door wouldn't last long. Jim would be pulling a “Here's Johnny!” on us at any moment.

  We barricaded it with another bench.

  “And now we're trapped,” Stacey said. “There's not even a window to climb out. Thanks so much, Polly.”

  “You're so welcome!” Polly said. Her voice became sing-songy. “And I've got a secret to show you. Wanna see?”

  “Only if it has some chance of helping us.” I picked up a hammer to use as a weapon if needed, and Stacey found a crowbar.

  “See the rolling theater?” Polly swiveled her head toward the wagon-wheeled theater at the back of the workshop, the one Irving had used for giving puppet shows before his TV show existed, and again after it was canceled. “It has a secret compartment for hiding money out on the road. He'd be hopping mad if I showed it to you. Want a peek?”

  “Okay.” I let her guide me around to the back of the theater, where I knelt and opened a compartment. It held a few basic hand tools and some extra string, but she directed me to the false bottom, which opened onto a hidden compartment below.

  While Jim chopped away at the door from the basement bedroom, I drew out sheets of thick, oversized paper that might have come from an artist's sketchpad.

  One showed Irving's design for the wax version of Sean McCormick, including the hieroglyphs he would use. The words “binding spell” were jotted off to the side, like an unimportant detail. Pictures of Sean, both in and out of his sheriff costume, were paper-clipped to it. One showed Sean and his wife Jenny in their bedroom, clearly taken through their window, like Irving had engaged in some severe stalking activity. Maybe he'd been the true Peeper around here.

  “Ellie, things are getting critical!” Stacey called out as a big chunk of the door gave way. The ax head pulled away out of sight, then came slamming back for more.

  Other pages showed Irving's plans for adding interior as well as exterior hieroglyphs to Fiona Flowertop, accompanied with pictures of Jenny O' Malley, both in and out of her Bonnie Baker costume. Small words in the corners identified the exterior spell as “love” and the interior one, seemingly added later, as “binding.”

  “When Agnes first found these,” Polly said, still dissociating from her soul's real identity, “the dolls were here with them. The needle was through his heart, and her face was broken. Agnes understood. Irving had murdered Sheriff Shamrock—” She let out a gasp.

  I might have gasped, too, because the room was suddenly much colder, and the faceless ghost of Jenny O'Malley loomed over us. She'd been a tall woman in life, and her ghost was like a walking tree, hard to ignore.

  “Okay, Jenny,” Polly whispered. “I'll tell them what really happened.”

  “Tell it fast!” Stacey shoved a chair and toolbox against the door. “And it better end with Jim tied to a chair.”

  “I'm the one who smashed the Fiona doll,” Polly said, only she wasn't really doing the Polly voice anymore. It was a different, more adult voice confessing. Agnes. “I broke her face with the hammer. The next day, Jenny died in that awful crash, and it was exactly like what I did to the doll. Her face crushed. Gone. All my fault. But please understand, this was weeks before I discovered these notes, these pictures, this wax doll of Sean with the needle through his chest. Before, Jenny.” She was looking at the apparition. I was definitely not controlling the puppet now, because I was not making any of this up, even as she spoke through my lips. “Please understand. I found out about you and him, after your husband died—but I didn't know about the spell. I just knew Fiona was based on you, and I wanted to destroy some part of you. And that was the part I could reach.”

  “Ellie, we need something else heavy!” Stacey shouted.

  “How about the puppet theater?” I asked.

  “Ooh, good idea.” Stacey came over, and together we wrangled the wagon to the door, adding its weight to the barricade. We used a stack of old plywood sheets to block its wheels from turning.

  “Irving said he would stop seeing Jenny,” Agnes continued, “but I didn't believe him. I told him that if he loved me, he would destroy Fiona. He gave me the hammer and told me he would let me do it, as even greater proof of his love. He knew what would happen, he's the one who filled it with spells, but he didn't tell me. I wouldn't have believed him, anyway, back then. I would have thought he was crazy.

  “I shattered her face, pouring all my anger and jealousy into it. Irving knew I was killing Jenny, and he was letting me. Even with the love spell, and then the binding spell to place her even more under his control, Irving had grown tired of Jenny. He didn't truly love her. I don't know that he could love anyone, at least not after he returned from Italy. Something was broken in him. He just wanted control. Once he controlled her, he didn't care anymore. I am sorry, Jenny. I am sorry—”

  “Is that why you killed yourself? Out of guilt?” I asked, and she gave a sad little puppet nod and a sniffle, her braids bouncing around. “And maybe why you prefer to stay in character, to dissociate from your guilt, because Polly would never hurt anyone—”

  The portable theater shuddered as the ax came again.

  “So, what's the plan here?” Stacey asked, pressing against the shuddering barricade. “Is puppet storytime over yet?”

  “Reach all the way inside,” Polly told me. “All the way to the left.”

  I reached into the secret compartment and drew out another black felt body bag. Fumbling, one-handed, I managed to loosen the drawstring and pull out the figure inside.

  Wearing his hooded robe and plain white mask, it was the final missing puppet, the Timekeeper whose only apparent role had been to announce the beginning and end of each show, interrupting the improvised puppet skits when it was time for the closing song.

  I removed my hand from Polly Patches.

  My first stop was the mask, which I pulled away to find a relatively new copy of the old jester's face, painted with modern card suits—a black club and spade, a red heart and diamond, like Irving had made an updated version of the antique jester.

  I struggled to open the knots on the thick robes, and finally I drew the knife from my utility belt and cut the robes away instead.

  Like the jester, the Timekeeper had a flat, ornate little heart-shaped knob built into its chest. The Timekeeper was relatively new and sturdy, though, not brittle and fragile like the jester had been.

  I squeezed the knob between my fingertips and prepared to turn it.

  Jim let out an angry howl and attacked the door with renewed vigor and apparently amplified strength, because it shattered. He kicked the larger remnants aside, found his path blocked by the portable theater, and sank the ax into the side of that.

  As I turned the knob, countless small objects around the workshop—blades, screws, loose eyeballs—floated up from the little drawers and nooks where they belonged, as if gravity no longer existed.

  The display of power was terrifying.

  Everything floated in place like a warning, telling us to back off.

  Unfortunately, I'm terrible at backing off.

  “Stacey, take cover!” I shouted, and then I opened the chest compartment.

  Inside was an ancient marionette no bigger than my hand, its head and body parts just cylinders and marble-sized balls of clay, held together at the joints with fine string. Tiny hieroglyphs were carved all over the cylinders and balls.

  It was mounted carefully inside the chest compartment, which was shallower than the one in the jester marionette, leaving room for a puppeteer's control stick behind it. Surely this ancient, fragile-looking effigy had been the object concealed inside the jester's chest, making the journey home from Italy with Irving.

  I grabbed the carefully mounted ancient thing and ripped it free, not particularly caring whether I damaged it or not. I was pretty sure those cylinders and balls needed to be ground into dust at the earliest possible convenience.

  In that spirit, I dropped it to the basement floor and began whacking it with the hammer.

  Then a thousand terrible things came my way.

  I grabbed the nearest bench and curled up behind it, my rain hood up, my eyes squeezed tight.

 

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