The Puppet Maker's Bones

by Alisa Tangredi

  Pavel moved to a location at the end of the extensive work bench. A pedestal with the marionette of a boy, about four feet tall, faced the bench.

  “Hello, David,” he said. He was met with the silent stare of the boy marionette.

  “Ladies, how are we today?” He addressed three crone marionettes who looked as if they might have been used in a theatrical production of Macbeth. More silence.

  The workbench was covered with a collection of wire mesh, metal pieces and other bric-à-brac in a large and messy jumble, inconsistent with the meticulous care reflected in the appearance of the rest of the room. Pavel reached into the mess and picked out an object. An animal snare. In the metal of the snare, he caught a slivered reflection of his cracked, spotted face and the thin hair that hung in limp, yellowed and worm-like tendrils across his head. He once had been agreeable to look upon. He put the snare under his arm and pulled out a large net from the mess of wires.

  “That should be sufficient. What do you think, David?” Again, he received no answer.

  “No?” He searched the table until his eyes lit upon the last thing he would need. A coil of razor wire. Why did I buy this? he wondered. No matter. He added the razor wire to his collection of items and spoke to the marionette he called David.

  “What do you think of my dangerous collection?” He was met with more silence from the various marionettes that filled the space. He stood in the vast workroom, his arms full of his strange collection of objects, as the poem crept back into his mind.

  Wednesday’s child is full of woe, Thursday’s child has far to go. He brushed the poem from his thoughts, for he had work to do, yet the poem persisted.

  Thursday’s child has far to… He seemed incapable of denying the poem access to his head and buzzing around his memory like an annoying and aggressive wasp. He could not place the importance of the poem, but the bits and pieces that insisted upon inserting themselves caused a sting.

  Pavel was not without resources. His memory was not what it was in certain areas, and while certain sections of his past seemed to be hiding behind other sections more accessible to his aging mind, his brain did still work and his body had not failed him. His muscle memory seemed to make up for what he could not remember. Decade after decade of discipline and routine was so ingrained in him that there was little chance, even if he lost his mind, that he would vary from his way of doing things. He had full capability to draw upon any of his extensive skills at any time. He knew he was more than able to look up the source of the poem that stung every time a line invaded his thoughts; however, he did not want to. He had numerous books and references to consult the origin of the poem, had he been so inclined. In fact, any shelf not inhabited by a tool or a puppet held a book of some kind. Something nagged at him, however, and the thought of investigating the source of his torment worried him.

  Modern technology had made Pavel’s solitary state rather easy. He had a computer and access to the Internet. He ordered most of his deliveries over the Internet because anything he needed for the workshop could be ordered online, even items only available from overseas. Had it not been for the computer, he would never have been able to obtain the materials necessary to install his impressive network of digitally controlled speakers, nor the components necessary for the manufacture of the accompanying control board. The first time he ordered anything over the computer, he marveled at the advanced level which humans had reached in their ability to avoid interaction with other people. Through the use of technology, everyone could live, if they so desired, like Pavel—cut off from connection, communication and touch. He had increasing difficulty remembering why he lived like that but knew that he had for a very long time. The poem might shed some light on why he thought he should live in isolation, but remembering those nagging bits and pieces might cause him further distress. He had other things to concentrate on at present. An uninvited guest would be arriving soon.

  “People are foolish,” he repeated to himself. There had been other uninvited guests in the early years. The years before Her. Prochazka and Nina had protected him, and when Prochazka became old, he’d made a great effort to teach Pavel how to protect himself from people who were foolish.

  1735

  “Bring out the demon!” An angry mob gathered outside the home of Prochazka and Nina. Many carried torches, others carried sticks, clubs or farming tools. Another cholera epidemic had laid waste to much of the community. Lack of proper sewage and the dumping of waste into the river Vltava made the drinking water a source of outbreaks. The terrified people sought blame on supernatural forces, and often that blame fell on those in the community who were different. Other. People who were not getting sick. Prochazka and Nina got all their drinking and cooking water from their own well. They emptied the chamber pots several meters away from the residence in a large hole that Prochazka had built in the ground with a structure around it that kept any person from falling in it. Prochazka would, at varying times throughout the year, cover up the hole and dig another elsewhere. Being a practical and smart man, he poured lye into the hole, thus reducing the odor and the possibility of filth spreading elsewhere. Prochazka and Nina kept a clean home and an even neater workshop at the theatre. The couple had a rational approach to maintaining order. While the rest of the town fell ill and many died, they remained healthy. This caused others to be suspicious, rather than curious about Prochazka, Nina and the strange adopted child in their home, Pavel. Many in the village thought them unnatural creatures who cheated illness and death—Pavel was a thirty-one-year-old man who appeared to be a youth of about thirteen years. Prochazka and Nina explained, on numerous occasions to villagers who never tired of asking, that the boy was stunted and did not grow at a normal rate. That explanation was irrelevant to the terrified townspeople who fell ill, or who were still well enough but had become desperate and irrational.

  “You people are insane and you are imbeciles!” Prochazka came out of his home, bellowing. The mob moved toward him, ready to storm the house, but unsure of themselves once confronted by the large, red-faced man. “That boy has done nothing to you! If you people would stop drinking your own shit, maybe you would stop getting sick. Did that occur to anyone?”

  “The boy is a hobgoblin!” said one.

  “He carries the marks of the Devil on him!” said yet another.

  “He protects you because you have made promises to the Devil!” The mob grew nearer to the door.

  “No one is to harm one hair on that boy’s head. No one is harming anyone today! You are all fools!” Prochazka ran back into the home and hoisted the large pot from the stove filled with boiling water. He hefted it to the doorway.

  “This is why we are not sick!” Prochazka heaved the scalding water out the door, splashing some of the mob as he did so. There were a few screams.

  “We boil our fucking water, you idiots!” The people moved away from the large, red-faced man and then away from the house.

  That particular evening Nina, Prochazka and Pavel remained safe.

  Kevin: Present Day

  Kevin thought about his last house. A modest two-story tract home located among an inordinate number of other modest two-story tract homes in a housing development off the Antelope Highway. Kevin did not live there, and his family did not own the house; however, his memory of it and what happened there gave him a certain feeling of ownership. The “music” from that house had a special place in the playlist on his mp3 player.

  Kevin happened upon the house quite by accident. In an ongoing bit of theatrics on his part, he participated in school events and activities like any other high school senior. That day, Kevin had travelled to the area along with a bus full of his fellow students to cheer for the football team at an away game. Kevin sat in the bus at a window seat but did not pay attention to the hills covered with row after row of housing subdivisions. Each development blended into the next with hundreds of identical houses on identical streets with identical mailboxes and lawns and front doors and
homeowner associations with requirements that each and every dwelling remain indistinguishable from the hundreds surrounding it. Kevin’s attention was suddenly stimulated, and he sat up, paying closer attention to what lay beyond the window. Kevin smiled. A plan began to form in his mind, a spontaneous bit of fun to break up the boredom of yet another football game.

  Kevin had not brought his usual set of tools, but he was not concerned, as improvisation was second nature to him. The set of tools was at home in its special place in the attic, but he had ones he could work with. He had his skateboard, a watch to let him know what time to be back at the bus, a small, digital tape recorder of the kind used for dictation, and the most important tool of all, his scalpel which he kept on his person at all times. He had stolen it from the station next to his in the science lab when they were dissecting fetal pigs for Physiology class. He kept the scalpel in his pocket, wrapped in a square of leather cut for the purpose of keeping the scalpel safe and covered to prevent accidental injury or worse, loss of the scalpel through a hole in his pocket. His school was one of the few in the greater Los Angeles area that had not installed metal detectors, and students also were allowed the luxury of a locker. A student could carry or hide about anything. Sure, occasional locker inspections occurred, but Kevin never kept anything in his, other than what he needed for his classes. In fact, had faculty paid attention during the random inspections, the lack of items in Kevin’s locker might have set off an alarm. His locker contained no pictures, notes, messages from friends, party invitations, clothing items—nothing personal to tie the individual to the locker other than the required textbooks and school supplies.

  Kevin exited the bus with his fellow students. He blended into the crowd that rushed to the football field and the bleachers. He ducked under the bleachers, came out the other side and walked back out through the fence near the porta-potties brought in for the game. Kevin hopped on his skateboard and sped away from the crowd. No one paid attention to one boy on a skateboard moving away from the crowd. Kevin noted that the parents and students from the other school seemed to reflect the same nature as their houses—no one stood out from anyone else. No one expected anyone to stand out from anyone else. Kevin depended upon this to camouflage himself.

  Kevin rode up and down identical streets through the suburban development, looking in front windows for signs of people at home. Many people were home for dinner, and Kevin watched them through dining room or kitchen windows. None of the occupants glanced out the window at him. No one appeared to notice the teenager on a skateboard at dusk. Other houses appeared to be unoccupied, the families out perhaps for a Friday night pizza or at the local game.

  Kevin pointed at inhabited houses that were flanked by houses where no one appeared to be home. “Eenie, meenie, mynie, mo….” He rode his skateboard over the curb, onto the sidewalk, up the front walk of the house, and jumped off the skateboard as he arrived at the front door. He placed the skateboard behind a hibiscus bush planted near the front door and knocked.

  A woman answered the door.

  “Hi, are you Mrs. Williamson? I’m Kevin. Are my parents here?”

  Kevin saw no reason not to use his real name.

  “No, I’m afraid you have the wrong house.”

  Kevin noticed that the woman answering the door had the same appearance as many of the other women he had seen at the football game. Bobbed haircut, pastel sweater set, khaki pants. He wondered if the homeowners’ association required that people look as identical to each other as their houses.

  “Oh no! You wouldn’t believe this, but this is the fifth house I’ve been to. I’m sooooo lost. My mom is so gonna kill me.”

  “I don’t know anyone named Williamson, I’m sorry.” The woman started to shut the door.

  “My parents are here somewhere.”

  “No—”

  She was getting impatient with him. Kevin could hear noises from the rest of the house.

  “Oh, I don’t mean your house. I mean they are at dinner at some friend of my mom’s and I was supposed to meet them to eat before the game.”

  “The game at the high school?”

  “Yeah. I am in so much trouble.”

  “Don’t you have a cell phone?”

  Kevin gave her a big, embarrassed smile. “No, would you believe it? My parents don’t think kids should have those. My mom says she’s afraid I’ll use it for sexting.”

  The woman appeared uncomfortable.

  “I know, right? Gross, much?” Kevin had her. She would be thinking about that and nothing else, and it would never occur to her to ask anything logical, like did he know the name of the street where his parents were having dinner.

  “Do you think I could use your phone?”

  A man came to the door to stand behind the woman. “Who’s this?”

  The man was tall, wearing a polo shirt and khaki pants, like his wife. Unbelievable, Kevin thought.

  “I’m Kevin. I was asking your wife if I could use your phone. I’m lost. I’m trying to find my parents who are at the Williamson’s. All the houses here look the same—whose idea was that?”

  The man laughed. “We get that a lot. Sure. Come on in.”

  Kevin walked into the entry and first heard, then saw two small children in the living room, playing a game on the television. They did not look up when he came in, engrossed in their game. Kevin smiled and put his hand in his pocket where the scalpel was tucked away in its neat square of leather.

  There would be good music here tonight.

  ***

  Kevin skateboarded back to the school, his hair still wet from his shower. He ducked in at the fence next to the porta-potties, then back under the bleachers and out the other side, just as everyone jumped to their feet in a cheer. He checked the scoreboard to see who was doing what, then moved up the bleachers to blend in with everyone for the final minutes of the game. He felt something on his cheek and wiped it off. Blood? Perhaps some dripped on him from the ceiling as he exited the front door.

  On the bus ride home, Kevin smiled. The team had won and anyone might assume Kevin was proud of the team’s success. Kevin knew that no one suspected that, tucked in the midst of hundreds of identical houses, was a house with a family that had come to a very violent and frightening end. The late news might cover the story, Kevin thought, or the morning news, whenever someone got around to finding them. Another horrible murder-suicide, they would report. Kevin thought about the “music” he would be adding to his mp3 player when he got home.

  “No, please don’t… I’m begging you. Why are you doing this?”

  “Because I can.”

  Then the screaming. Such beautiful, beautiful screaming.

  1750

  “I am an old man, and there are things we need to discuss.” Prochazka had come to Pavel’s room one morning and sat on the chair near the bed, looking very serious.

  “You are not old,” responded Pavel.

  Pavel was a boy of about seven when he came to Prochazka and Nina. That was thirty-three years ago, though Pavel appeared to be no older than a boy in the beginning of his teenage years. Prochazka and Nina had told him he was “stunted,” that he would not grow at the same rate as other people. Prochazka, however, was in his seventies, a very old man for the time. Pavel grew at a snail’s pace, while Prochazka and Nina turned gray, then wrinkled, then thinned in build and stooped at the shoulder, palsied at the hand. Pavel had to do many things for them that they were unable to do for themselves anymore. He did not mind. He loved Prochazka and Nina. They were his world.

  Prochazka wiped his hand over his eyes.

  “Is everything all right, Táta?” Pavel used the familiar term for “Father” with Prochazka, as he had for many years.

  “You know we are not religious people.”

  “What is wrong?”

  “Hear me out, son.”

  Pavel sat and waited for his father to speak.

  “We are people of the theatre. We make magic. We make
things that cannot be explained by other people, to dazzle and entertain. Our lives are filled with the knowledge and ability to make bits of cloth and wood and paint appear to be flying unicorns or devils from underground or rainy skies on a sunny day. We do this for our audience. We know, however, that it is theatre. Imaginary, created by artists. We observe everything so we can duplicate it later, even the blooming of a flower.”

  “That flower creation was wonderful,” said Pavel.

  “Yes, that was wonderful. Wasn’t it?” Prochazka smiled at the memory.

  ***

  Pavel was off in a corner of the workshop carving the foot of a particularly complicated life-size rod- and wire-controlled marionette that would be an addition to a production of The Tempest. He was behind schedule. The workshop was very busy that day. Several costumers worked at a fevered pace pinning costume pieces on the few live actors employed by the theatre, who were all in various stages of undress in the area reserved for costumes and fittings. The other craftsman were putting last minute touches on props and puppets, while prop masters fitted finished clothing over the puppets that were ready to go. The workshop always seemed to be teeming with people right before the opening of a new play. The energy in the room crackled. Everyone was focused on their work when Prochazka burst through the door.