“Ah, here is what I wanted to show you, Dr. Mitchell.” With a showman’s flourish, he pulled back a purple scrim. Stacked in two rows were a half-dozen goat-footed men and six women girded for battle.
“Satyrs and maenads,” Mitchell said.
“We used to do a spring bacchanal in my younger days. Not so often anymore. Sic transit gloria mundi.”
“And that must be old Silenus.” Mitchell pointed to the fat philosopher, silent as a stoic. A little black donkey looked like it was sleeping at his feet.
A worn and ancient puppet stood beneath a bell jar on a pedestal. The puppeteer lifted the glass. “I call him the Original. He taught me everything I know.”
Mitchell stared at the primitive puppet, wondering how the girl could be afraid of a mere toy, a little god whose time had long since passed.
From the loft, they traveled down two flights to the sheepcote at the back of the barn to see the beautiful Chinese dragon ready for the New Year, and they finished their tour by walking through the stalls. They found no trace of a break-in, no sign at all that anyone had been there the night before. “Everything in order, gentlemen?” the puppeteer asked.
Mitchell recognized the Quatre Mains puppets from the video, the giant queen, the roly-poly man with the walrus mustache. He asked the policeman to take a photograph on his phone of the puppet who looked like Kay. The one who had reminded Theo and Egon and Dolores of the missing woman. He dared to touch her once, lightly, on her cheek, but she was only paper. She was as beautiful as Theo had described.
The terrors began that night for Mitchell, the twisted nightmares and delirium. Just before he checked himself into the hospital, he received an e-mail from an Inspector Thompson from Québec. “Thank you for the photograph of the puppet. Sgt. Foucault says he cannot see the resemblance, but I find it looks very much like Kay Harper, and I have included it in her file. There was another puppet in the background. A juggler? Reminded me of my brother. Funny how our sorrows play such tricks on our memories.”
Files and forms. Mitchell put Theo’s notebook on top of the manuscript in the box. The department had long ago closed the files from his classes, the materials related to his employment. All that remained fit in a simple cardboard box, a few personal effects, a dog-eared manuscript of his Muybridge translation, a photograph from their wedding day, and from Québec, a fleur-de-lis paperweight etched with the motto Je me souviens. He thought of the woman who had nursed him through the worst nightmares. When they discharged him from long-term care, Mitchell was too distraught to tell her how he felt. Perhaps he could try to find her. How difficult would it be? Maybe she could tell him what happened to Theo and Egon. Outside the snow covered the grounds, gathered in the branches of the trees, making everything new again. “I am better,” Mitchell told himself. “I will forget all this in time and start again.”
* * *
The puppet theater, fashioned out of an old wooden nail box, stood atop the corncrib. The Queen had to slouch to view the action, but the others were seated comfortably. Resting on his elbows, Nix stretched out on the floor to keep the little dog company. Recruited out of their ennui, Masha and Irina had designed the set, drawing on the back of a silk-screened broadside the ruined mansion and the weeping willows drooping with Spanish moss. Clouds obscured a pale moon, and a bat flew in a fixed spot in the sky.
Hiding as best they could, the three puppeteers crouched behind the box. Olya and the Good Fairy were in charge of two puppets each, and Kay controlled all the others, sometimes two in hand, sometimes four, or even six, pulling the strings wrapped around her fingertips. They had taken the tiny dolls from the ceiling, re-creating them into new characters, and making other puppets besides in the long months that had passed. Filling the winter hours with their craft, attentive to every detail, more elaborate with each new story.
She called her play Bayou Gothick, and the scenario was always the same. In the old house on the outskirts of the Vieux Carré in New Orleans, two faded southern belles were beset by some sort of nightmare visitors—spirits, imps, hobgoblins, zombies, or voodoo witches, as the mood determined. Once they found the dried exoskeletons of Noë’s honeybees and fastened strings around their middles and flew them around the mansion, but the show so frightened the others that Kay banished it from their repertoire.
Trapped inside, the two belles fled from room to room, pursued by the monsters and demons, until they reached the attic, where the resident ghost kept watch. Sometimes the ghost would help them, and together the three gallants would fight off the undead intruders. Sometimes one or both of the Sisters managed to escape, but the ghost was always left behind. Alone on the stage. For he could never leave the place he haunted, the muslin ghost with the ink-stained eyes and crooked mouth. “Je me souviens!” he would cry as the Sisters ran to safety, looking back, always looking back at what they left behind. Every night the other puppets watched a different version of the show, and even though they knew how it must end, they were wrapped up in the story and clapped vigorously at the curtain call.
“Next time!” Nix shouted from the floor. “He will get away next time.”
When the cheering ended, Kay would take the strings from her fingers one by one, wind them into coils, and gently put the dolls to rest. At the conclusion of the performance, the Queen rose first and held out her arm for Mr. Firkin to escort her to her usual position. The Old Hag retired with the pup snuggling in her lap. Chastened by his soured relationship with the others, the Devil kept mostly to himself, and Nix, being Nix, whiled away the interval till dawn juggling hoops and balls.
“Listen,” Kay said as the others settled in their places.
“Snowing again.” Olya sighed. “We will be buried alive till spring.”
Her sisters feigned sympathetic looks and flopped onto the railings of the stalls.
“I think it is a beautiful sound,” said the Good Fairy. “Makes everything quieter than usual somehow. Peaceful.”
The old barn groaned under the weight of the accumulating snow. Outside the white world was cold and empty. Kay put her ear against a crack in the wall to listen. The wind picked up from the west, whistling in the gaps, howling now and again. She thought of Theo in the storm, in the woods where the others had discarded the pieces of him. Caught in the branches of the trees, the tattered clothes snapped and rippled like ruined flags when the wind blew, and the paper limbs and hollow head made a kind of music. Kay could hear him singing, always singing for her.
Acknowledgments
Thank you to all of the magical puppet companies that inspired this story: Basil Twist, the Old Trout Puppet Workshop, Pointless Theatre Co., and the Bread and Puppet Theater. Thank you as well to my agent, Peter Steinberg; to my editor, Anna deVries; and to all of the wonderful people at Picador. And, as always, thank you to Melanie, for making a better book.
ALSO BY KEITH DONOHUE
The Stolen Child
Angels of Destruction
Centuries of June
The Boy Who Drew Monsters
About the Author
KEITH DONOHUE is an American novelist, the author of the national bestseller The Stolen Child, Angels of Destruction, Centuries of June, and most recently The Boy Who Drew Monsters. He also writes reviews for The Washington Post. Donohue has a PhD in English with a specialization in modern Irish literature and wrote the introduction to Flann O’Brien: The Complete Novels. He lives in Maryland. You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Epigraph
Book One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Book Two
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Book Three
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Acknowledgments
Also by Keith Donohue
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE MOTION OF PUPPETS. Copyright © 2016 by Keith Donohue. All rights reserved. For information, address Picador, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
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Puppet illustrations by David Curtis
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Donohue, Keith, author.
Title: The motion of puppets / Keith Donohue.
Description: First edition. | New York: Picador, 2016.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016019172 (print) | LCCN 2016025474 (e-book) | ISBN 9781250057181 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781250057211 (e-book)
Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Horror. | FICTION / Occult & Supernatural. | FICTION / Ghost. | GSAFD: Occult fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3604.O5654 M68 2016 (print) | LCC PS3604.O5654 (e-book) | DDC 813'.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016019172
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First Edition: October 2016
eISBN 9781250057211
The Motion of Puppets Page 27
