The funtime show, p.24
The Funtime Show, page 24
part #19 of GhostTrapper Series
“Ellie, I can see you're moving the puppet,” Jacob said. “And, also, your lips. You're no Edgar Bergen.”
“Oh, that's quite a jibe!” Polly said.
“Yeah, I think it was one of the top ten ventriloquism insults of 1949,” Stacey said.
“Do we have to involve the puppet in the conversation?” Jacob asked.
“She's one of the souls we have to free. Look inside her dress—” I said.
“Goodness me!” Polly said. “Now I'm blushing.”
“Take your hand all the way out of the puppet, Ellie,” Stacey said. “Ellie and the puppet have a relationship,” she told Jacob, while I removed it.
“Careful,” Jacob said. “She might be trying to possess you.”
“And don't put the puppet back on your hand so it can act innocent and defend itself!” Stacey swiped Polly from my hand, then showed Jacob the faded inscriptions painted inside her.
“I wasn't going to do that,” I said, not entirely sure I believed it as I said it.
“Yeah, I'd still just burn it,” Jacob said, setting the puppet down.
“The spirit isn't just attached to the puppet, like it was a favorite object,” I said. “It's not just her ba embedded in there, it's her ka—”
“Wow, you're going deeply Egyptian on this one, huh?” he asked.
“I don't want her to suffer if we burn it. I want her out of there first.”
“Okay. Then try a sander and some paint stripper, and make sure it's all gone.”
“Are you sure that will work?” I asked. “And she definitely won't suffer?”
“I can't guarantee either thing,” Jacob said. “Maybe start by experimenting with one whose well-being you're less concerned about.”
I looked over at the bagged-up Uncle Funtime puppet. So did Stacey. So did Polly, who had apparently slipped back onto my hand while no one was watching.
“Boy, this is gonna be a gas!” Polly said, and Stacey quietly reached over and removed her from my hand again.
Chapter Thirty
We got Calvin on the horn for another of his beloved video calls. He talked with the three of us, and we worked out a plan that seemed reasonable enough, given the overall bizarre and unreasonable situation.
Calvin thought his professor contact might be able and willing to devise reversals for the spells we'd found, but that could take a lot of time, so it was more of a medium-term plan.
Stacey, Jacob, and I got to work preparing for our next step. We decided to wait for the following night, a Sunday. Jacob was off work on Monday because of Labor Day.
“I hope you're glad I'm sacrificing my whole three-day weekend here,” Jacob mentioned at one point.
“There's nothing more romantic than when we fight ghosts together,” Stacey said. “It's how we met.”
On Saturday night, we left relatively early by our standards and took Jacob out to dinner as a reward for driving halfway across the state to join us.
At The Vortex, the décor followed a funereal theme of skulls and dead things. The cups looked like skulls. Chandeliers of skulls complemented a disturbingly vast and varied collection of animal heads on the wall. Full-sized skeletons tied to the ceiling glared down at patrons with glowing red eyes as if daring them to complain about the food.
We didn't have any complaints, though—the burgers and tater tots were amazing—so we didn't have to suffer whatever punishment awaited griping customers.
On Sunday, we woke up early and prepared.
After picking up some supplies, we set up in the family's basement, since the workshop had most of the tools we needed. However, the entity had hurled many sharp objects at Stacey and me down there, so we picked the editing-machine room as our center of operations.
We cleared everything out of the editing room except for the large items like the desk, editing machine, and cutting table. We barricaded the closet door by moving the cabinet in front of it. We bound the cabinet doors with rope so the big spools of videotape inside couldn't be chucked at our heads like Frisbees.
The family had to make preparations, too. Every window in the house was open, as well as the basement door under the deck, inviting all ghosts to flee.
Jim had already altered some of the tattoos that had made him into a puppet—apparently, he was a good tipper, and his artist was willing to work with him last minute during a holiday weekend. Jim claimed to have little memory of getting any tattoos. I'd gone with him to make sure the changes were extensive enough, though he was clearly uncomfortable having me watch.
His artist, a red-haired girl in her twenties, had a pretty good sense of humor about doing inexplicable emergency work on a Saturday. She wore a sleeveless shirt that showed off the poisonous plants tattooed on them—belladonna, wolfsbane, and hemlock, which I recognized for their occult associations and not because I'm any kind of nature or gardening expert.
She'd done a good job altering several of Jim's small tattoos away from their original hieroglyph designs and into a single connected vine thick with flowers and thorns, as if turning his tattoo tableau into an overgrown ruin, canceling the magic spells she'd previously inscribed there.
Then we'd sent Jim far out of town for the night, to any hotel of his choosing at least a hundred miles away. Even with his altered tattoos, there was a risk of Irving possessing him again. It was best if Jim was far away when the trap opened. Jim called from a room in Chattanooga, Tennessee so we could verify the caller ID.
The kids had to stay home, though, in case we managed to wrangle any lost bits of their souls free from the puppetmaster, which was the whole point of the exercise. We could have buried the trap with the ancient clay puppet inside if not for all the lost and broken souls that would have gone down with it, including Iris's children.
I wasn't sure we could free them, but we had to try.
When we were set up, Stacey, Jacob, and I barricaded ourselves into the editing room. Wearing goggles, dust masks, and gloves, we gathered around our supplies on the cutting table. The one small window was open. Hopefully something would leave the house through it, never to return.
Laid out on Irving's old desk were Polly Patches, the needle-impaled wax figure of Sean, the faceless Fiona Flowertop, and the bloodstained Doodles the Dog along with two sealed ghost traps.
“I feel like a mad scientist,” Stacey said.
“Who's our first victim?” Jacob asked.
I opened the first trap and pulled out the black trash bag. I loosened the straps, reached inside, and drew out a very large Barbie doll.
We all stared at it for a moment.
“What is this?” I finally asked.
“Looks like a Best Fashion Friend model,” Stacey said, taking it for a closer look. “I think that's the biggest one they make.”
“Okay, that sounds like a solid, well-informed answer, Stacey, but I mean why is it here? Where is Uncle Funtime?”
“Don't ask me. I didn't touch the trap.” Stacey shrugged.
“I was not expecting a haunted Barbie,” Jacob said.
“It's not haunted,” I said. Then I reconsidered and held it out to him. “Is it?”
Jacob touched the doll, closed his eyes, and shook his head.
“I think someone was just using it to fill out the bag where Uncle Funtime was supposed to be,” I said. “Someone who didn't want us to have Uncle Funtime locked away.”
“And who had access to Best Fashion Friend Barbies,” Jacob added.
“Well, this is on hold until we can track down Uncle Funtime,” I said. “We'll need to shake down the usual suspects and hope they remember something for once. And now we have to assume Irving's ghost is free to harass us. One more problem to prepare for.”
“I thought Irving was part of the puppetmaster now,” Stacey said.
“If we're lucky, Irving's been completely absorbed and is in that trap with the ancient one. But we can't count on being lucky. And remember, there are many parts to the soul. Even though he may have been a puppet of the puppetmaster, he could still have a separate sense of identity, and keep functioning on his own even while his master is trapped. Hopefully not, but I wouldn't base our plans on hoping for the best.”
“It's puppeteers controlling puppeteers,” Stacey said, rubbing her head. “A pyramid of puppetry, everybody manipulating and being manipulated. Only the puppetmaster at the top is really in control. Or is he, too, just another puppet? But then who pulls his strings? Another puppet? Or would that be another puppeteer? Now I lost track.”
I called Iris; fortunately, everyone's phones were working again. She said she had no idea where to find the puppet but would go ask everyone else.
That took a while. She called back to let me know that nobody knew where the puppet was, and nobody remembered getting it out of my van. I wasn't shocked by these results, but I was disappointed.
“Tell everyone to keep an eye out for it,” I said, because surely they would all get right on top of helping us look for it. It was only their souls we were trying to save.
“Roland and Maeve told me they don't even like puppets anymore,” Iris added.
“Well, you can't really blame them at this point,” I said.
“It's kind of a relief, actually,” she told me. “I'm not sure I can handle another puppet-related call from the guidance counselor.”
“We can't do the experiment yet,” I told Stacey and Jacob after the call. “We have to find Uncle Funtime.”
“Can't we?” Stacey asked.
“Yeah, what about Patty Pumpkins over here?” Jacob picked up Polly by one arm and held her out to me. “Can't we try dispossessing her instead?”
“Or does your little pal want to stick around and control you some more?” Stacey asked.
“I don't know.” I took the puppet from him. “What do you think, Agnes? Should we try to remove the spells that are binding you? It could hurt. We don't know.”
“She's actually asking it,” Jacob whispered to Stacey.
“Jeepers, it sure sounds scary to me,” Polly said as my hand moved her mouth. “But sometimes, even when you're scared, you have to be brave. And that's when it helps to have friends you can trust!”
“Okay, we're doing it.” Stacey, a friend I could trust, took the puppet off my hand and placed her face down on the cutting table, opening her back. She rotated the control stick to reveal the hieroglyphs carved on it, which also made Polly's head rotate until it was on backward, much like I'd first found her on the stage in the basement.
Stacey took a handheld electric sander and got to work on the carvings, our goggles and masks helping to shield us from any enchanted sawdust tainted with dark magic.
Polly rattled around under the vibrations. Her head happened to turn toward me, eyes bouncing on their recoil springs, mouth wide open as if screaming in pain as Stacey sanded her guts out.
I felt awful, like maybe we should have saved this step for last. But now that it was underway, the most merciful thing was surely to get it over with as quickly as possible. I told myself that and tried to believe it.
When the carved hieroglyphs were gone, Stacey dropped Polly into a paint-crusted old bucket from the workshop and poured chemical paint stripper inside Polly's back. She tilted the little puppet around this way and that, making sure the paint stripper got everywhere. The chemical stripper was one reason for the gloves, and the fumes from it were an extra reason we'd needed a room with a window.
“Okay,” Stacey said. “Now we let it sit for several minutes and scrub it with the wire brush.”
“And while we wait…” I turned back to the cutting table.
“Yep.” Stacey brought the other trap over. “Glad we know this one's still here. Unless someone made a whole fake one as a distraction.”
We set up the cutting table by burning some frankincense and pouring a large circle of salt on the tabletop. These were minor means of possibly setting up a protective barrier against the dangerous spirit we were preparing to unleash.
I texted Iris, then I called Jim at his hotel room, letting him know to brace himself and to stay where he was, no matter what. I was also double-checking that he was still there and not on his way back.
I looked at Jacob, making sure he was focused and monitoring the situation on a psychic level. He nodded but didn't look too confident.
“Okay, popping the top.” I opened the ghost trap.
Nothing happened immediately. The tiny clay marionette didn't come leaping out at us. Vengeful spirits didn't swarm out from the dark.
Unwilling to be lulled, I dumped the thing out in a hurry. It clacked hard onto the table, but no part of it broke, unfortunately. The salt circle around it could potentially serve as a barrier to the puppetmaster spirit anchored inside the ancient clay, but it was no guarantee at all.
“My turn.” I picked up and activated the sander.
The marionette was a peculiar little thing, its head just a clay cylinder etched with hieroglyphs, with a single hieroglyphic eye seeming to look out from midway down one side of it. I wondered how old it actually was. I supposed Hartness at the puppetry museum would have been thrilled to have it, if it didn't come with so many dangerous paranormal strings attached.
I pressed the sander down onto the old clay balls to grind the hieroglyphs to dust.
The lights went out, and apparently all the power, because the sander died.
“Skipping to phase two.” I put aside the sander while Stacey flicked on an electric lantern.
Then I picked up the wire cutters.
The little marionette was held together by strings that served as its nervous system and muscles, sending both the thought and the energy that moved its body parts. The rest of its body was like beads on the strings—the little wedges of clay feet, the small hieroglyph-inscribed cylinders of its lower and upper legs, the balls of its knees, hand, elbows, and shoulders.
Then there were five external strings, too, attached to its feet, hands, and head, which led up to a control cross of wood.
The tiny cross and the strings all seemed relatively new. Maybe that was a service Irving had rendered for the old ghost, giving it fresh strings throughout, along with the Timekeeper as a fresh container to replace the stiff, crumbling old jester.
I was about to take that gift away.
I snipped away the lower left foot, then the lower cylinder of its left leg.
The basement shuddered. Heavy objects pounded our barricaded doors and unseen forces rattled the handles. The puppetmaster was trying to reach us from everywhere at once, like he had a thousand hands. I hoped he didn't go outside and try the window.
The editing machine monitor came to life, glowing with gray light. The starving, filthy kids in the studio audience were screaming, climbing over each other, some collapsing to the floor in visible agony. I looked for Maeve and Roland among them, but I barely had time before the view flipped to Uncle Funtime, in front of Funtime Town.
“Come on, now,” Uncle Funtime said on the screen. “I know we can all sit down and talk about our problems, like good friends and neighbors do.”
“Forget it.” I snipped away his knee and upper leg, bringing me to the ball of his pelvis.
“You stop that!” Uncle Funtime's face seemed to be blistering and deforming, breaking down and losing some of its shape. “These children don't want to leave! Look at them! They're having a fun time! And they always will, forever, with me!”
The kids crawled or lay crumpled on the floor, howling and whimpering.
“That is seriously cursed content,” Jacob whispered.
I cut off the puppet's other leg, snipping it away from his pelvis.
“Don't you understand what you're doing?” The Uncle Funtime on the screen was really falling apart now, hair and outer skin peeling to reveal a skull-like wooden frame inside. His jaw was crooked and hung loose, like after I'd hammered him. “I'm taking them all with me. Wherever I go next…they're all coming with me.”
The onslaught against the doors stopped. The room grew colder and darker, and the light vanished from the electric lamp.
From the darkness emerged a dim, stout figure who wasn't a fully formed apparition, but it was enough that I could recognize him as Irving.
He clutched the hand of a tall, willowy blonde figure in lace who floated beside him, her face bashed in, leaving only an empty crater.
“Hey, wait,” Stacey said. “Jenny married Sean, right? He's the one who wanted her excavated.”
“And after Sean died, she had an affair with Irving,” I said.
“I see how that could make for an awkward afterlife,” Stacey said. “Once everyone's dead and hanging out together again, you know?”
“And the love spell's still intact.” I looked at the faceless Fiona doll, its hands tied behind its back. “And the binding spell.”
“Well, that's not fair.” Stacey reached for Fiona Flowertop on the desk. “I'm liberating her right now—”
Irving's ghost might have been stumpy and thick, but it turned out to be quick and strong. He flung Stacey away from the desk and into the wall.
“Get back!” Jacob shouted, in that certain psychic-power-infused voice he could sometimes do, and which usually made me feel an extra jolt of happiness that he was there.
Irving turned away from Stacey and toward Jacob, Jenny's faceless ghost floating around behind him like a kid's balloon, with no volition of her own, or at least none allowed her under the terms of the spell. Irving had reclaimed control of her.
“I mean it,” Jacob said, though with less force and conviction. The screaming sounds from the monitor had grown distorted and painfully loud, and he was wincing from it, as if there was some deeper level of it aimed just at him. The puppetmaster had the power to get into people's minds, to create illusions, and it might have been targeting Jacob specifically because of his extra sensitivity.
Sean's rotten corpse of a ghost emerged from the shadows near where the wax figure version of him lay on the table.
Irving turned and touched Sean in the chest, opening a hole there and sending Sean back against the wall. Sean's ghost seemed pinned in place, as if by an invisible spear. The poor guy was already rotten and weak, and he really didn't need the extra damage.
