The funtime show, p.8
The Funtime Show, page 8
part #19 of GhostTrapper Series
“I think it's a woman doing the dog's voice,” I said.
“Whoever it is does a great job of keeping the audience involved,” Stacey said.
“I don't know!” the dog puppet said. “It's Uncle Funtime's pie, but it smells so yummy! Should I eat it, kids?”
The same mixture of answers came back, shouted more enthusiastically this time. One youngster yelled “Eat it now!” while another countered with “No, leave it alone!”
“Maybe I shouldn't eat it…” The dog's voice grew distorted and slow. Its eyes blacked out. Its face, and the world around it, grew dark and cloudy. Its mouth yawned open like a cave. “But…I'mmmmmm…soooo…hungryyyyy—”
The monitor blanked out, showing only light as the old videotape broke. The loose end of the broken tape made a repeated thwacking sound as it went around the take-up reel.
“Doodles!” Maeve cried, as if genuinely concerned for the abruptly vanished dog puppet. “Where did Doodles go?”
“I have to fix the tape.” Roland spoke much more softly in his own voice than when he operated the puppets. He was almost too quiet to hear.
“That takes forever!” Maeve complained.
“I could spool it forward, but we'll miss some.”
“Spool it forward! Spool it forward!”
Roland removed the take-up reel that had been collecting the episode as it played. He replaced it with an empty one, then pulled the videotape from the unwatched portion of the broken episode and fed it into that empty one. He was silent while he concentrated on the rickety, obsolete technology.
Maeve, with no patience for this process or her brother's focused silence, wandered out into the large backstage room.
“I found Polly!” she announced, while lifting the girl puppet off the crumbling paper grass of the playground where I'd left her. “She wants to play, too.”
“We're not playing right now,” Roland replied from the editing-machine room. “We're watching.”
“Is it time for the show again?” Maeve ran over and frowned at the blank screen. She reached her hand into the girl puppet and turned its head back and forth in lieu of figuring out the mouth controls. “This is pretty boring!” the puppet said.
“Just wait.” Roland wiped the back of his hand across his forehead like an exhausted railroad worker at the end of another live-long day. Mumbling to himself, he started the machine again.
It came to life with a whine and a few thumps as deteriorated videotape flowed from one spool to another. On the monitor, a black-and-white cartoon rabbit prepared to face a gang of pirates.
“Crusader Rabbit!” Maeve said. Apparently, she'd seen the character before, which made one of us.
The cartoon was barely animated, often just a camera pan of a pen-and-ink scene, but it was clever enough for its short length. It ended with a cliffhanger, in which the cartoon rabbit and his tiger sidekick snuck aboard a pirate ship and accidentally lit sticks of dynamite after mistaking them for candles. Would the cartoon animals blow themselves to bits? Kids would have to tune in tomorrow to find out.
A commercial followed for E-Z Pop stovetop popcorn, whose characters were supposed to be talking pieces of popcorn but looked more like cartoon ghosts.
After the commercial, Doodles the cross-eyed dog hosted an art segment. With a rod attached to his arm from below, he painted a simplistic, uneven house on a piece of paper clipped to an easel. His toddler-level art skills made the studio audience of children giggle.
“Whoever's playing the dog is the real talent,” Stacey said.
On the show, a deep, somewhat ominous bell rang, which seemed to startle the dog puppet.
As it rang a second time, the curtain behind the dog opened, revealing Funtime Town. A panel of the clock tower at the center of town had opened like a hidden door, and a puppet in a smooth, blank face mask and hooded robes leaned out, ringing a bell in one pale hand.
“Oh, well, that's the Timekeeper,” Doodles said, “telling us we're all out of time today. Remember, kids, art doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be messy!”
The timekeeper rang his bell again.
“Now it's time for the good-bye song.” Uncle Funtime emerged from the side of the puppet-theater window as the easel floated away in the other direction, leaving Doodles standing there holding his brush uselessly. Uncle Funtime sang, “We've had fun, but it's time to go…come back tomorrow for another show…”
“Well, that wasn't terrible,” Stacey said as the credits rolled. “I wouldn't want to watch more, but…oh, he's loading up another one, huh?”
Roland was indeed switching out the reels to start another episode.
“I want to play with Doodles,” Maeve announced, bored again with the process of changing out reels of videotape.
“Me, too!” Polly said with her unmoving mouth, whipping her pigtails as she turned her head from side to side.
“That's not how you work the mouth,” Roland said. “Feel around for little levers.”
“Like these?” Maeve asked, as Polly Patches winked an eye.
“Getting warmer.”
“This one?” Maeve gasped as Polly's mouth popped open. “That's the one!”
Maeve made Polly hum and dance until the next episode began. It was similar, the opening theme starting with the Timekeeper's bell sound, then a brief skit with a few main characters. Doodles the Dog got upset after losing a game of charades, and Uncle Funtime lectured him about the importance of being gracious in defeat. Bonnie Baker showed up with cupcakes, which she again mentioned were made with White Mills All-Purpose Flour.
After an installment of Crusader Rabbit and an ad for Miss Georgia, apparently a defunct chain of ice cream parlors, Snailman the Mailman gave a long…slow…lecture explaining the concept of pen pals to a patiently listening Uncle Funtime and an excitable Polly Patches, who immediately set about trying to find a pen pal in “a faraway land, like China! Or Nebraska!”
The Timekeeper's bells announced the end of the show, the three puppets dropped what they were doing to sing good-bye, and the studio audience of kids applauded.
“This show doesn't feel very well organized,” Stacey said. “It was live TV, too.”
“Maybe that's why they needed a Timekeeper.”
“I think they're ad-libbing most of the dialogue. Nothing sounds scripted.”
“Except for the parts about White Mills All-Purpose Flour,” I said.
“That flour is basically the main character.”
On the recording, the kids started to load yet another episode, but were called up to dinner.
“The basement goes quiet after that,” Stacey said, looking at the graphs of the audio recordings.
“It seems like the kids are spending most of their time down there watching the old shows instead of playing,” I said. “Iris might not be happy to learn that.”
“Wow, I'm glad my mom never hired a private investigator to watch us as kids,” Stacey said. “Although maybe she should have, as crazy as my brothers were. Are.”
“Did we miss anything else? Trail cam activity?”
“Looks like a squirrel ran along the roofline a couple hours ago…” Stacey looked among other video clips, mostly showing wildlife in the woods behind the house, and not especially ghostly or spooky wildlife, either. “Nothing…nothing…nothing…wait.”
“Wait?” I leaned closer to watch as she replayed a clip.
“Something here, near one of the cairns. You can barely see it, but…” She pointed.
A shadowy, roughly human-shaped figure passed by the camera, obscuring everything for a moment, then moved on. Goosebumps rose along my arm.
“Looks like our friend from the roof,” Stacey said. “The Skylight Peeper Returns. Or maybe Skylight Peeper II: The RePeep. Or am I jumping to conclusions?”
“What time did this happen?”
“Right when the kids were watching the show in the basement.”
“The monitor was active when it showed up last night, too,” I said.
“So the show and the ghost are connected.”
“Right. But I still have trouble believing somebody was just buried there and nobody knew.”
“It was pretty badly overgrown. Maybe Irving knew about it, but took the secret to his grave.”
“I'll bring it up with Iris. Did the entity visit the skylight or balcony again?”
“Checking…” Stacey summoned up one instance after another of the trail cam being activated, but none of the clips showed the figure. “Maybe it tried a different skylight or door this time. Why can't it just walk through walls?”
“Ghosts don't always know what they can do. And there could be another, stronger entity keeping it out of the house.”
“Like what?”
“We'll have to figure that out. Play the recording of the skylight camera for the last couple of hours alongside the live feeds, see if the entity shows up.”
“Right-o,” Stacey said, imitating an English accent for some reason.
On the live feeds, the house was dark and silent. Hours had passed since the kids had left the basement, and as midnight approached, not much was happening around the areas we monitored.
Then something rattled over one of the speakers.
“That sounds like a doorknob.” I looked from one monitor to the next. “Where's that coming from?”
“The basement bedroom.” Stacey pointed, and I saw it. On the door leading from the old bed to the dim space below the deck, the doorknob twisted and turned like someone was trying to get inside.
Chapter Nine
“The door's opening,” Stacey whispered. “Maybe we should have locked that, huh?”
A figure stepped through the door and into the house, and his face became visible to the night vision camera. His thinning, balding hair was disheveled, and he wore glasses.
“It's just Jim,” Stacey said.
“He must have come down the deck stairs,” I said. “His home office has a door to the deck.”
“But in the middle of the night? What's he doing?”
On the screen, Jim eased the door shut, then took the shortcut through the closet to the editing-machine room. He muttered to himself, reminding me of his son as he removed the last spool Roland had loaded. Jim looked among the racks of reels in the cabinet and finally selected one.
When the videotape was in place, Jim started another episode of the show. He opened a drawer in the old desk and drew out a black spiral notebook and a pen, as if ready to take notes.
“They could watch them together as a family,” Stacey said. “Why's he sneaking around late at night?”
Jim kept the volume so low, we could barely hear the Timekeeper's bell starting the program or the opening theme song.
It was a later episode, in which the cast had grown to include Grandpa Grizzly, who introduced cartoons from his cozy treetop den.
In one skit, Bonnie Baker arrived at Funtime Town with a platter of cookies, and Uncle Funtime greeted her warmly.
“My goodness, what do you have there?” Uncle Funtime asked.
“I brought some fresh, warm cookies for Sheriff Shamrock!”
“Sheriff Shamrock? Well, I don't see him around anywhere, so I'll take your cookies—”
“Hello there, Miss Bonnie!” The handsome mustached guy with the tight police shirt and clover badge stepped into the scene.
“There he is!” Bonnie beamed at the man in uniform and offered him the platter. “I've brought you these cookies made with the finest of flours—”
“Would that be White Mills All-Purpose Flour, Miss Bonnie?” the sheriff asked.
“Why, yes it would, Sheriff Shamrock.”
“I like cookies, too,” Uncle Funtime said, looking between the two actors that flanked him and stood over him, their eyes locked on each other, the puppet momentarily forgotten in their obvious onscreen chemistry.
“I sure do enjoy eating your cookies, Miss Bonnie.” The sheriff accepted the plate with a smile.
“I enjoy serving them to you, Sheriff Shamrock.”
The screen darkened and shuddered, as if the spool had hit a patch of badly deteriorated videotape. Uncle Funtime became a distorted, half-visible nightmare of himself. His voice deepened and drew out so badly that I could barely decipher it. “You used to bring me cookies, Bonnie,” was what I thought he grumbled.
The video went almost completely black, then became suddenly, starkly bright.
The sheriff, now inexplicably in full color instead of black and white, stood in front of a dusty red curtain, looking several years older, sickly, and balding, his bloodshot blue eyes matching his blue uniform. He wore green shamrock badges on his hat and chest. He held the Doodles the Dog puppet, which also looked older and worn down. The dog had traded out his paintbrush and smock for a police uniform.
“…welcome back to Cartoon Patrol with Sheriff Shamrock and Deputy Doodles…” The man bent forward in a coughing fit. He gasped for air and tried to keep talking. “Now it's time…time for a…another adventure…” A longer, harsher coughing fit cut him off. Drops of blood sprayed from his mouth and spattered the dog puppet's face.
The actor staggered toward the camera, reaching out as if he meant to grab it for support, but he collapsed to the floor instead.
The monitor image went searing white, then pitch black, and then the old black and white show resumed as if nothing had happened. The ballerina porcupine Tippi Tutu gave a small performance, and Uncle Funtime and Doodles the dog applauded. The Timekeeper's bell rang, and they all sang the end-of-show song.
“Uh, what was that?” Stacey asked. “A violent bonus scene? In Technicolor where available? I didn't know that old Ampex machine could play color.”
“It's also strange how Jim didn't really react to it at all.”
Jim had remained calm in his chair, notebook on his lap. As the show ended, he stood, changed out the spools to load another show, and then resumed sitting with his back to us.
We were again treated to the puppets' onscreen antics. Cowboy Clem and Sticky Stallion finally made an appearance. The duo rescued the blonde-haired Fiona Flowertop, whose hat was an inverted flowerpot adorned with a daisy, from the castle of caped aristocrat Baron von Badd.
The kids in the studio audience cheered when Sheriff Shamrock stepped out to give a talk on household safety, like he was a fan favorite now. He appeared youthful and restored to vitality compared to the one odd cutaway scene when he'd looked older and balding and had coughed blood everywhere in full color.
“Is someone down here?” Cameron, dressed for sleep, walked down the steps to the puppet theater room.
Instead of answering, Jim stopped the machine, put aside the notebook, and left through the closet. He exited through the door under the deck and closed it softly behind him.
“Why did he run off?” Stacey asked.
“It's like he doesn't want to be discovered watching the show.”
“Why not? He's freaking everyone out for no reason.”
“Hello?” Cameron turned on the lights in the backstage area. She grimaced at the straitjacketed monkey with his enormous smile, sitting in front of a small, mostly two-dimensional zoo where one cage had an open door, perhaps the one from which the crazed monkey was said to have escaped.
She peered into the editing-machine room for a long moment, finding no one there, then turned out the lights and returned upstairs.
“Was there any Skylight Peeper activity while Jim watched the show?”
“Let's see…yep, or at least there was something moving near those cairns, enough to activate a camera, but the camera didn't actually catch much.” She played the trail cam clip in slow motion and pointed to something dark that slipped away to one side of the monitor. “That could be Mr. Peeper, couldn't it?”
“Could be a lot of things.”
“Something activated the rooftop cam, let's see what it saw…”
On the monitor, the Skylight Peeper had returned, sliding across the skylight like a shadow over the slick surface of a frozen lake.
I glanced at the live feed from the camera under the skylight. The figure pressed against the glass once again, hands bone-white at the points of contact. Then, as if sensing us watching through the cameras, the figure slid away from the window and out of sight, still smooth and silent as if gliding over ice. The trail cam shut down after a few seconds, while the inside camera continued to feed us an image of the clouds above, glowing dull red as they reflected the city lights.
“Where'd he go?” Stacey whispered. We both looked at the monitor showing the balcony, but the entity didn't crawl down that way this time. Maybe it was testing other skylights, or one of the many windows or doors we weren't watching. “Should we go after it again?”
“Not as long as it stays outside.” I had no desire for a return trip to the treacherous roof.
I wondered what would happen if the entity found its way inside. One of the multiple doors along the sprawling back porch could have been left open, maybe even by Jim himself as he returned to his office. Or someone could have opened a window to let in the warm night air, smelling of the tall old pines outside.
We kept watch until around five in the morning, when I wearily drove us back to the Pennefort. As I lay in my scarlet-curtained bed, I was haunted by images of the wraith-like creature I'd chased to the overgrown cairns in the woods. I tried not to imagine what manner of dead things might lie beneath them.
Chapter Ten
“That is disturbing,” Iris said. We sat at her kitchen table about mid-morning, after her family had left, and Stacey was showing her the videos of the shadow figure at the skylight.
“We think it's tied to the cairns in the woods,” I said.
“The what?”
“The little rock piles. Sometimes piles like that are used as trail guides or water markers, but sometimes they're funerary.”
“I don't know what rock piles you mean.”
“Can you show her?” I nodded at Stacey, who rummaged around her laptop until she'd pulled the trail cam videos of the dark figure appearing in the woods before it had moved on to the house. “I tracked the entity here the first night. Its appearances seem to correlate with people watching the old show down in the basement.”
