by Tim Curran
Table of Contents
Other Books by Author
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About the Author
Other Titles In This Series
FIRST EDITION
Puppet Graveyard © 2012 by Tim Curran
Cover Artwork © 2012 by Daniele Serra
All Rights Reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
DELIRIUM BOOKS
P.O. Box 338
North Webster, IN 46555
www.deliriumbooks.com
For Steve Clark
Other Books by Author
Fear Me
The Underdwelling
1
Five months after her sister Gloria disappeared, Kitty Seevers got out of the shower in time to hear a pounding at the front door. Throwing on a robe and wrapping her hair in a towel, she rushed downstairs to find the FedEx guy standing there. He looked amused by her appearance as if a situation like that had played often enough times in his private fantasies.
After signing his clipboard, she took the registered letter from him. “Thanks,” she said.
“No, thank you,” he said.
Sighing, she shut the door and plopped herself on the couch. She had no idea who could be sending her a letter. Or why. The white cardboard envelope was sealed with packing tape and she had to use scissors to cut it free. Inside were two things. The first raised an eyebrow. It was just a perfectly ordinary sheet of note paper folded in half. On it, printed in something of a shaky script were the words: BAMBOO LOUNGE, WICKER PARK. The second item made her heart drop in her chest. In a plastic baggie, there was a lock of hair. Perfectly golden hair with red highlights. It was Gloria’s hair. There was no doubt in her mind.
There were many things she could have done at that moment.
For instance, she could have called the Chicago police and told them about it, but they’d been little help five months before, insinuating that Gloria was an attractive girl and attractive girls tended to get themselves in situations. And maybe that was true, but regardless of what situation she might have gotten in, Gloria would call. Because that was the kind of person Gloria was.
No, not the police. Kitty decided she wasn’t putting up with that shit again. She would handle this herself as she should have right from the start.
So, five minutes later, she was on her laptop booking a flight to Chicago.
2
Ronny M. and Piggy were working the crowd, giving the audience exactly what they expected. Which, went a little something like this:
“Hey, Piggy?” Ronny said. “What’s this I hear about you getting married?”
Piggy laughed. A mechanical, rapid-fire sound. “You don’t miss much, do you, sunshine?” he said in that high, scratching voice. “Romance, you know, that’s my thing. Kind of like naked bodybuilders and crack are you wife’s thing. Ho!”
A few peals of laughter out in the crowd.
“Okay, now. Enough,” Ronny said. He had Piggy balanced on his knee, his arm up the back of his suit coat. He held him as if he was afraid he might get away. “Enough of that.”
Piggy snickered. “Enough of that? That’s my problem, Ronny-boy, I can’t get enough of that. I don’t want to brag here, but only a litter box has seen more pussy than yours truly.”
“Well, these good people don’t want to hear about it, Piggy.”
Piggy sat there on Ronny’s knee in a cranberry velvet suit coat with an unlit cigarette in his hand. His head swiveled on his neck as he studied the crowd through the haze of cigarette smoke. “Hey, maybe you’re right, Ronny. Maybe we don’t want to get too personal here. We start that, I might have to admit a few things.”
Ronny raised an eyebrow. “What sort of things, Piggy?”
“Well, I might have to admit to the fat guy in the first row that I banged his girlfriend last night.” Piggy winked. “And let me tell you, buddy, your girl is like Maxwell House coffee—good to the last drop.”
The fat man was red-faced, laughing so hard he started coughing.
Piggy said, “But between you and me, fellah, that girl of yours…what’s her name?”
“Sue,” he managed. “Her name is Sue.”
“Well, Sue there, you wanna be careful of her, pal. I mean, let’s not dance around it here. She’s got more crabs than a seafood salad. She’s smoked more sausage than Jimmy Dean.”
“All right, Piggy,” Ronny said, smiling at the man apologetically.
The crowd roared out in the dimness of the Bamboo Lounge, hands clapping. A few drunks whistled. This is what they wanted. This is what they came night after night to see: Ronny M. and Piggy. Ventriloquist acts were a dime a dozen…but these two? Priceless.
“Now tell me about your marriage,” Ronny prompted.
“Well, I met a girl, Ronny. I thought she was something special.”
“Oh, really, why was that?”
“Well, Christ, she could suck a banana out without breaking the peel.”
“Okay, Piggy, okay.”
More laughter. Drunks repeating the one-liners out in the crowd. That was always a sure sign the routine was working.
“Okay nothing,” Piggy said. “And what’re you doing with your hand back there?”
“Well, I’m just touching your back.”
“Well you keep it on my back and off my ass. Just because I’m sitting on your knee doesn’t mean I want to play altar boy with you.”
“Really, Piggy. You’ll offend the audience.”
“Offend them? Those lowlifes? Ha! That would be like offending a toilet by taking a shit in it.” Piggy let go with his staccato laughter again. “I hate to be the one to tell you, Ronny-boy, but this place is a dump.”
“Please, Piggy. You’ll get us fired…”
“Fired? In this joint? That’d be like getting kicked out of a whorehouse for exposing yourself.” Piggy leaned forward, put a hand to the side of his mouth. “I do apologize for Ronny here, folks. He’s an ass-kisser from way back.”
“I am not.”
“Oh, but you are.”
“Well, Mr. Collins hired us. I think he deserves some respect.”
“Respect is one thing, Ronny, but kissing ass is another. Your head’s so far up Collins’ ass, every time he smiles I see your teeth. It’s true, folks. Ronny here is so far up Collins’ back door, he’s sucking eyeball.”
The crowd was eating it up raw and with both hands. Laughing like they would never stop. And the staff—waitresses, bartenders—were doubled over, loving some good ribbing and particularly at their boss’s expense.
“Okay, Piggy, now tell me about your girl.”
“Quit rushing me, Ronny.”
“I’m not rushing you, Piggy.”
“Hell you aren’t.” Piggy was looking at him now, staring. “You don’t want to piss me off, do you, Ronny? That’s not what you want to do…is it?”
Ronny looked uncomfortable. He shifted on his wooden stool, like maybe this was going in the wrong direction, but he couldn’t stop it. As if maybe he wasn’t piloting this ship.
“No, of course not, Piggy. It’s just that, well, these people are here for a good laugh.”
“So unzip your pants already. Jesus Christ.”
The laughter out there was nervous, une
ven.
Piggy looked out at the audience. “You people ever seen a guy like this? I swear to God, Ronny, sometimes I think the best part of you ran down your uncle’s leg.”
The laughter boomed now, the crowd figuring it was all part of the act. A set-up for the gags and one-liners.
“Now what about your girl,” Ronny said in a guarded voice, almost as if he was afraid to set the dummy off again.
Piggy nodded. “Right. Well, I asked her about her giner and she told me it was tight as a drum. Problem was, it had an opening like one, too. This girl had more wang in her than a Chinese phonebook. I was tempted to shove a couple lemons up there, to pucker that stuff back up. Ah, but she was a good kid, you know? You leave out the biker clubs and football teams, the OPEN ALL NIGHT tattoo on her left thigh, she was real class…”
3
The guy outside the corridor leading to the dressing rooms was cracking his knuckles, working those hands which were big enough to drive tent-stakes through hard-packed clay. He stood there in his blue serge suit, bald head reflecting the stage lights, totally impervious. To the drunks, the noise, the buxom girl shaking her tits on stage.
When he saw Kitty coming, he frowned, placed his hands on his hips and just shook his head. He took her by the arm when she was close enough, pulled her into the corridor and shut the door behind them so he could hear himself think.
“Listen, we go through this shit every night, you and I. It’s getting old,” he said to her, that big mitt still on her arm. “Now I’m going to tell you, honey, what I tell you every night: Mr. McBane and his dummy don’t want any company. All that shit on stage…it’s just an act, okay? They’re not looking for followers.”
Kitty bristled, pulled her arm away. She was small and fine-boned, thin as a peach twig…but about 110 pounds of poison if you pissed her off. “And I’ll explain to you one last time that I only want to talk to Mr. McBane. Nothing more.”
“Listen, honey, I think the guy’s married and the boss here, he don’t like anybody playing around in the dressing rooms. That’s not the kind of place we run.”
Kitty tried not to laugh. No, the Bamboo Lounge was strictly a class act. All those drunks out there had royal pedigrees and the strippers on stage wouldn’t be turning tricks after lights out. “You listen to me,” she said with venom. “And you listen good. I’m not a groupie. I only want to interview Mr. McBane for my college magazine. I’m a drama major and this is my assignment. It’ll take ten minutes. Now why don’t you be a good boy and just ask the man if he’s interested?”
The big man sighed, worn down. “You know, I’ve been in this business a lot of years, sweet thing. And in that time I’ve gotten real good at reading people…and you? You’re full of shit. You’re not with any college rag. We both know it.” He threw his hands up. “But if you’ll quit crawling up my ass every night, I’ll go ask the man. Just this once. And if he says no, that’s it. I don’t wanna see you tomorrow night or the next. I don’t wanna see you again period…got it?”
Kitty smiled.
4
“I don’t have much time,” Ronny said when Kitty was brought in, the door shut behind her. “That was my last show and I have a late dinner date.”
“Sure he does,” Piggy said from his trunk by the vanity, the lid open and one arm thrown over the side like he was taking a bath in there. “Ronny’s got a date with his right hand. I keep telling him it’s not really sex if you’re by yourself, but he don’t listen.”
Kitty laughed.
Ronny McBane smiled thinly. “That’ll be enough from you, Piggy.”
Kitty sat down and explained briefly what she wanted while Ronny listened intently. He was a tall man, narrow and reedy, but handsome in a sort of undernourished way like certain rock stars that had been hitting the needle. His hands were large, the fingers fine and delicate. The hands of a magician…or a ventriloquist. He liked to express himself with them freely.
“Well, I’ll tell you what I can, Miss Seevers.”
“Call me Kitty.”
“Meooooowwww,” Piggy said. “Come here, Kitty, Kitty, Kitty…”
Ronny went over to him, picking him up. “I’m afraid he’ll be impossible until you greet him properly.”
Laughing, Kitty went over and extended her hand to Piggy. She was amazed how good Ronny was. Piggy’s hand gripped her own. It was a cold grip, but oddly firm for a doll. Piggy bowed his head and kissed her fingers. When he was done, he made a big show of raising his eyebrows and opening and closing his mouth, making smacking sounds. “You have fish for dinner or did you just have a little itch?”
“Oh!” Kitty gasped. “You’re terrible.”
“Ain’t it the truth,” Piggy said. “Ain’t it just the truth.”
Ronny set Piggy back in the box and they got down to business.
“Well, Kitty,” he said, that thin smile touching his lips again. “Where should I begin? I have no formal training in theater or ventriloquism. I’m entirely self-taught. I made Piggy myself and took some years doing it…”
Kitty listened while he prattled on, making a show of keeping notes, nodding with enthusiasm at the right moments. But the notes were mostly doodling and what she was really doing was studying Ronny McBane’s pale, dour face which was so tense and rigid it looked like it had been airbrushed onto the skull beneath. As he talked, the corners of his lips attempted that smile he emoted so well on stage. And it worked out there, but up close like this it was an upturned frown, rubbery and artificial. It never touched his eyes and their haunted depths.
It was hard to say who was more wooden…Ronny or Piggy.
“What made you get into the business?” Kitty asked.
Ronny McBane opened his mouth, but it was the dummy that did the talking. “Well, look at him, baby. He’s a fucking wreck. A nervous wreck…aren’t you a nervous wreck, Ronny? Afraid of his own shadow. If it wasn’t for me holding his dick, he’d piss down his own leg.”
Ronny tittered uneasily. The grin he offered Kitty was like an ax wound on a skull. “You keep quiet, Piggy.”
Kitty swallowed dryly, felt something fluttering in her belly. “How…how can you make him talk like that? I mean, you’re over here…but I saw his mouth move.”
“Come a little closer, sweet meat, and I’ll show you how it really moves,” Piggy said.
The sexual innuendo went right over Kitty’s head. What she was seeing…it could not be. She looked from Ronny McBane to his dummy, back again. It was a trick and she knew it was a trick, yet a gnawing chill expanded in her chest. Piggy sat there in his trunk, grinning like a death’s-head, lewd and unpleasant. He had teeth, she saw, long yellow teeth, crooked and decayed.
Since when did dummies have teeth?
“How…” Kitty mumbled.
“A trick of the trade,” Ronny said, looking almost frightened himself. But it was really hard to tell. There was so much barely-concealed torment slathered onto that face, maybe it was all her imagination.
She decided it was.
“You really had me going for a moment there,” she said to Ronny, not Piggy, trying to sound relieved, but failing.
“You want to get going?” Piggy said. “Come over here, I’ll get you going.”
“Okay, Piggy,” Ronny said. “We’ve had our laugh.”
Kitty looked from her notes to Ronny’s face, avoiding his eyes which were like windows looking into a crypt. “Is…um…is it generally just the two of you? Do you ever have another dummy involved in the act?”
“She’s talking threesome here, Ronny.”
Kitty feigned a laugh. “Oh, stop it. I’m serious.”
“So am I, lady,” the dummy said. “So am I.”
“Never. No other dummies. Just the two of us,” Ronny said.
“How about assistants? I heard you had an assistant.”
Ronny’s eyes went dark and stormy. “Once, yes. We had a…a woman working with us, but it didn’t pan out.”
Kitty could fee
l Piggy’s eyes burning holes into her back, but of course they weren’t really eyes, just marbles. Dead, inert marbles. Still…she could feel them, that vile gaze creeping over her skin. She turned and looked and, yes, Piggy was staring, mouth sprung open. But he was not moving.
Not at all.
When she looked back at Ronny, however, the dummy started talking again: “Maybe you ought to interview me, baby. Women make Ronny nervous, but I like ‘em just fine…if you know what I mean.”
Kitty laughed, not finding any of it funny now. She supposed all ventriloquists had unusual relationships with their dummies, used them to say things they were incapable of. But enough was enough. “Okay already, Mr. McBane. Why don’t we let Piggy rest, put him in his box or something.”
And again, that strident, unnerving voice from behind her: “Only box I want to get into is yours, baby.”
“Okay. C’mon, now. This is all getting a little crude.”
“The lady is right, Piggy.”
Piggy cackled low and dusty, but kept his mouth shut.
And that was good, because the very sound of his voice was beginning to make Kitty’s flesh crawl in slow waves. Maybe it was her, but the room seemed suddenly too close, too claustrophobic, too something. Like a coffin, narrow and moldering and airless.
“I can’t help thinking I’ve met you before,” Ronny said to her, fixing her with those eyes, that twisted mind behind them that could make dummies move from across the room.
“You’ve probably seen me in the audience,” she said. “I rarely miss a show. Particularly since this assignment began.”
“Yes, that must be it.”
Piggy started laughing. “Oh, I don’t think that’s it at all. She looks like someone, Ronny…haven’t you guessed who?”
Kitty slapped her notebook shut.
She had to get out of there, out of that damn confining room. It was like being trapped in the mind of a lunatic.
