Night of the Puppet People

  “Jenny, please —” I started.

  She laughed till she had tears in her eyes. She wiped them with her napkin. “Ben, you were really starting to scare me. All that hands-waving-in-the-air stuff. You totally fooled me.”

  I wanted to grit my teeth, but my mouth would only open and close. “I’m … not … joking,” I managed to choke out.

  She shook her head. “Enough. Seriously.” Then her eyes flashed. “Oh, wait. Maybe that’s an awesome idea, Ben. We can’t use those puppets. But maybe we could be puppets. We could pretend to be puppets. I’ll bet we could be a riot. We could —”

  “Jenny, I’m not pretending!” I cried. The words came out tinny and shrill. Suddenly, I had a puppet voice. I pressed my hands against my cheeks. They felt smooth and hard.

  Like wood!

  My skin was turning to wood!

  I stretched my hands across the table. “Feel them!” I insisted. “Go ahead. Feel my hands.”

  She hesitated. Then she reached out both of her hands and squeezed mine. The smile quickly faded from her face. “They’re … hard,” she murmured.

  “Feel my face,” I said. “Go ahead. Rub my cheeks.”

  “You … you’re starting to scare me.”

  “I’m the one who’s scared!” I cried in my tinny puppet voice.

  She rubbed the back of one hand against my face. “Oh, wow.” Her eyes bulged with horror. “Oh no. Oh, I don’t believe this.”

  She closed her hand in a fist and tapped it against my forehead. It made a clonking sound, like knocking on wood.

  Jenny jumped to her feet. “We’ve got to get Mom and Dad. You’re sick or something. Mom has her cell. We have to call her right away.”

  My hands waved in the air. “You’d better do it,” I said. “I don’t think I can hold a phone.”

  Jenny ran and got her phone and punched in Mom’s number. After a few seconds, she clicked it off. “It went right to voicemail. I … I just remembered something. Mom was upset because she forgot to charge it last night. And Dad’s phone is broken, remember?”

  “You mean we can’t reach them?” I cried, my lips clicking.

  Jenny shook her head. “We’ll have to wait —”

  “NO!” I cried. “We can’t wait.” I struggled to think. My eyes slid from side to side. I realized I couldn’t move them up and down. My wooden head started to feel heavy.

  “Coach Sparrow,” I said. I struggled to my feet. “He’ll help me.”

  “Yes!” Jenny cried. “Good plan.”

  She had to help me put on my sneakers. Then she had to help me cross the street. My legs kept folding beneath me. My head bobbed, and my arms were totally out of my control.

  Bird greeted us at the front door. He appeared very surprised to see us so early. “What’s up?”

  “We need to see your dad,” Jenny said.

  “He’s not here,” Bird said. “He had early soccer practice.”

  “NOOOOO!” A hoarse cry escaped my throat.

  I lost it. I totally lost it. I couldn’t hold in my fear — my terror — any longer.

  “Ben, what’s your problem?” Bird demanded.

  I didn’t answer. I shoved him out of my way and staggered into his house. I tripped and stumbled through the living room, making my way to the back hall.

  The aroma of bacon floated in from the kitchen. I tripped over the coffee table, sending a pile of books tumbling to the floor.

  “Where are you going? What are you doing?” Bird demanded. He and Jenny chased after me.

  My puppet legs collapsed, and I fell to the floor. My wooden head bounced on the carpet.

  “Ben has a problem,” I heard Jenny tell Bird. “Something weird is happening to him. He needs a doctor.”

  “No —” I choked out.

  I knew what I needed. I needed to get upstairs to those puppets. It all came clear to me. It didn’t take a genius to realize why this was happening to me.

  That sultan puppet. He’d pushed his nose into my ear. I had felt the strong electric shock. The shock that ran down my whole body.

  That puppet did this to me. Coach Sparrow was right. The three puppets were alive. They were alive — and they wanted to turn us into puppets, too.

  Had they been real kids at one time?

  I didn’t care. I had only one thing in mind. Grab the sultan puppet and force it to turn me back into myself.

  I scrambled up the attic stairs. I don’t know how I made it all the way up. I kept stumbling and landing on my stomach. But I had to get up there. My life depended on it.

  Morning sunlight washed through the dust-smeared attic window. The floorboards creaked as the three of us hurried to the cabinet at the far wall.

  “My dad said not to open the cabinet,” Bird said, reaching for my shoulder.

  I ducked out of his grasp. My puppet hands were already on the latch. I swung it off and pulled both doors open.

  The puppets hung limply as we had left them.

  “Stop, Ben. What are you doing?” Bird cried.

  Jenny bumped him out of the way. “We have a major problem, Bird,” she said. “Let Ben do what he has to do.”

  “But — but — but —” Bird sputtered.

  I grabbed the princess puppet and tossed her to the floor. The sultan puppet hung right behind her. I grabbed it by the shoulders of its robe and tugged it from the cabinet.

  I held it in front of me. “What did you do to me?” I screamed. “What did you do?”

  The puppet stared up at me with its glassy eyes.

  I let out a roar of anger. I started to shake it in both hands.

  “Change me back! Change me back!” I shrieked. I was out of control. My chest throbbed with anger. The room was spinning all around me. I screamed in my tinny puppet voice at the top of my lungs and shook the puppet.

  Its arms and legs flew wildly in the air. But its expression didn’t change. And its glassy eyes kept their blank, lifeless gaze on me.

  “Change me back! Change me back!” I cried.

  No reaction.

  I grabbed its head in one hand and its body in the other — and with a strong, wrenching move, I tried to rip the head off.

  But the head remained attached to the shoulders. I lost my balance and fell into the wall.

  “Change me back! Change me back!” I screamed.

  I took the puppet by the legs and swung its head into the wall. Once. Twice. It made a loud clunk each time. But the puppet remained limp and lifeless.

  Screaming in a rage, I held it in front of me and tried to rip its robe off. It wouldn’t budge. I tugged at the turban. I couldn’t pull it off the head. Again, I lowered my hand and tried to wrench the sultan’s head off.

  “Ben — stop! Stop!” Jenny’s cry broke into my screams of rage.

  Holding the puppet away from me, I struggled to catch my breath. My chest heaved up and down. My trembling puppet legs collapsed, and I dropped to the floor.

  The puppet landed on its back. Its strings were tangled all around it. Its glassy eyes stared blankly up at me through the strings.

  “I know what you did!” I choked out. “I know what you did to me. I know you’re alive!”

  I shook it again. I wanted to rip it to pieces. But I wasn’t strong enough. I couldn’t damage it in any way.

  Finally, I tossed it to the floor and kicked it away from me.

  Jenny and Bird dropped down beside me. Jenny put a hand on my trembling shoulders. “Take some deep breaths,” she said. “Try to calm down, okay?”

  “We’ll get you to a doctor,” Bird said.

  My chest was still heaving up and down. I lowered my gaze to the floor. “Hey —” Something caught my eye. “What’s that?” I pointed.

  Jenny picked it up. A small white card. “It fell out of the sultan’s robe when you shook him,” she said.

  “It looks like a business card,” I said, my wooden lips clicking. “What does it say?”

  Jenny raised it to her face and read
it.

  “Oh, wow,” I murmured. “I don’t believe it.”

  “What does it say?” Bird asked, still huddled beside me.

  I read the card out loud:

  “Eduardo Caleb, Master Puppet Builder.”

  There was an address under the name: “150 Mulgrew Street.”

  Bird stared at the card. “Mulgrew Street? Where’s that?”

  “I think it’s in the old section of town,” Jenny said. “Remember? I had an orthodontist somewhere over there?”

  The card trembled in my hard puppet hand. “This has to be the guy,” I said. “The guy who made these puppets and sold them to your dad.”

  “He can help you, Ben,” Bird said. “He’ll know what to do.”

  “Yes!” I cried, raising both hands above my head.

  I saw my sister bite her bottom lip. And I saw a flash of fear in her eyes. “But … if this guy Caleb made these puppets … maybe … maybe he’s evil. Maybe he deliberately made them evil.”

  “He’s my only chance,” I said in my tinny voice, my mouth sliding up and down. “My only chance of being normal again. We have to go find him.”

  Jenny hesitated. “Shouldn’t we wait for Mom and Dad? Or Bird’s dad?”

  “What if we wait, and it’s too late?” I said. “My head feels more wooden every second. And my arms and feet are turning to wood, too. If we wait too long …”

  “Let’s go,” Bird said. “We’ll take these puppets with us. We’ll give them back to this dude Caleb. We’ll tell him we know the puppets are evil. We’ll make him change you back, Ben. We can do it. I know we can.”

  Jenny and Bird stuffed the marionettes into a suitcase. Then we started for the bus stop two blocks away.

  It was a warm morning. The sun was just climbing over the trees. A flock of blackbirds flew low overhead in a perfect V, cawing their heads off.

  “Whoa. Are those birds bad luck?” I asked. “I don’t need any more bad luck.”

  “Don’t worry about them,” Bird said. “Just concentrate on not being a puppet.”

  We walked across our neighbors’ front lawns. I realized I was dragging my shoes through the grass. They suddenly seemed so heavy. Every few feet, my knees folded, and I had to struggle to stay on my feet.

  We turned a corner, and bright sunlight made me blink. I raised one hand to shield my eyes — then gasped in horror.

  “Oh, noooo — look!”

  Jenny and Bird were walking a few feet ahead of me. They turned when they heard my cry.

  I held my hand out toward them. “Look. I — I don’t believe this. What am I going to do?”

  Two small silver rings poked out of the skin on the back of my hand. I raised my other hand and squinted at it in the sunlight. Two little rings on that hand, too.

  Bird’s eyes were wide with horror. “You have them on the tops of your ears, too, Ben,” he said in a whisper. “And there’s one poking up from your hair.”

  “Wh-what are they?” I stammered, trembling in fright.

  Jenny shook her head. “That’s where the strings attach,” she said.

  I forced myself to breathe. I felt dizzy. Weak. My mind was whirring with nightmare thoughts.

  “This means … I’m almost a puppet,” I said, my mouth clicking up and down. I rubbed my aching forehead. It felt like hard wood.

  “We’ve got to get you to Caleb,” Jenny said. “Fast!”

  Bird gripped the suitcase with the puppets inside in one hand. He put his other hand under my armpit. Jenny took my other arm. The two of them helped carry me to the bus stop.

  My legs were too weak to walk. I kept staring at the little metal rings in my hands.

  Luckily, we saw the bus turn the corner as soon as we reached the bus stop. Bird and Jenny helped me up the steps. We made our way to the middle of the bus. There were only two other passengers. Two men in work uniforms, one in the front, one in the back. They both kept nodding off to sleep.

  Not too many people take the city bus on Saturday morning. Last year, I took the bus every Saturday morning to my guitar lessons downtown. But my guitar teacher moved away, and I haven’t taken the bus since.

  Funny how your brain keeps thinking of ordinary things, even when you’re in major trouble. I watched the houses roll by outside the window and thought about my guitar lessons — even though I was about to become a marionette!

  Bird and Jenny were silent. Jenny kept glancing down, then turning her eyes away. I knew what she was staring at. The little metal rings that had poked out of my skin.

  The bus hit a bump, and all three of us jumped in our seats. My hands flew into the air, and my head shot back. I knew my head was turning to wood. It felt as if it weighed two tons.

  The houses disappeared. The bus rumbled past some large gray factories. I took deep breaths and gazed out the window. I figured as long as I kept breathing, I’d still be human.

  I thought about the three puppets jammed into the suitcase. Had they been alive once? Had they been real kids, too? Did a puppet stick its nose in their ears and turn them into puppets?

  Or did this guy Eduardo Caleb do it to them?

  Could they think? Could they see? My whole body shuddered. What if I ended up like them? Hanging in a closet or stuffed in a suitcase.

  The bus squealed to a stop, and one of the workers climbed off. I gazed through the window. We were in a neighborhood of tall brick buildings. Small restaurants and rundown-looking shops lined the block.

  A sign read FRIENDLY PAWN SHOP. The store next to it had a sign in the window CHECKS CASHED HERE. The next two shops had metal grates pulled down over their doors and windows. The grates were covered with graffiti.

  “I think we’re getting close,” Jenny said. “Only a few blocks to go.” She gripped Caleb’s card between her fingers and kept glancing at the address.

  We passed a vacant lot piled high with trash. And then some more stores that appeared to be empty and closed. The next block had a long, high fence stretching across it. Someone had scribbled with red paint FREDDY LIVES! In huge letters.

  “Here we are. Let’s get out,” Jenny said.

  She and Bird helped me to the front of the bus. The driver pulled to the curb and stopped. But he didn’t open the door.

  He studied us. He had tired blue eyes and a gray stubble of beard. “Are you sure you kids want to get out here?” he asked. “This is not a friendly neighborhood.”

  “We’ll be careful,” Jenny told him.

  “We … have to meet someone,” Bird explained.

  The driver shrugged and pushed a button, and the doors slid apart.

  “Thanks,” Bird said. He helped me down to the sidewalk. Jenny joined us, and the bus pulled away.

  I started to glance around — but a shrill scream made my breath catch in my throat.

  I gasped as I heard a deafening crash. Metal shattering metal.

  And a man’s voice shrieked: “LOOK OUT!”

  Jenny, Bird, and I dropped to our knees on the sidewalk. I covered my head with both hands and stayed frozen, not moving a muscle.

  I heard the squeal of car tires. A man’s voice rasped: “Stop — police.”

  I raised my head. I gazed at the open window across from us. A window blind flapped in the wind. And then I glimpsed the glare of the TV screen inside the window. Oh, wow.

  The screams and crashes were coming from the TV.

  I raised one hand and tapped Bird’s shoulder. He was staring at the window, too. All three of us climbed to our feet.

  “False alarm,” Bird said.

  “But the bus driver was right,” I said. “This is a pretty creepy part of town.”

  Most of the stores on the street were closed and abandoned. Broken window glass crunched under our shoes as we started to walk. I heard a police siren in the distance. A door slammed. A bunch of teenagers came around the corner, running fast. They darted into the street, laughing and shoving each other.

  “Keep close together,” Jenny said.
“This place is creeping me out.”

  We had no choice. We had to keep close together. Jenny and Bird had to half-carry me. My legs were too limp to hold me up.

  “That’s Mulgrew Street up there,” Jenny said, pointing. “Now we just have to find the right number.”

  As we turned the corner, something caught my eye. “Whoa.” I stopped and glanced back. I saw a flash of color disappear around the side of an apartment building.

  “Ben — what’s wrong?” Jenny asked.

  “I think someone is following us,” I said.

  They turned and stared. “No one there,” Bird said.

  “I think they hid behind that building,” I said.

  “But who would follow us here?” Jenny asked.

  I shut my eyes, trying to picture again what I’d seen. “I think it was Anna and Maria.”

  “That’s too crazy,” Jenny said.

  “You’re right,” I agreed. “It’s my eyes. They’re becoming puppet eyes. I’m seeing weird things.”

  “We’ve got to hurry,” Jenny said. “Your voice is so tiny, I can barely hear you.” She turned to Bird. “Look for street numbers. I know we’re close. The number is one fifty.”

  I twisted my heavy head and looked behind us again. Was someone following us? I didn’t see anyone.

  “There it is,” Bird said, pointing to a low brown building across the street. “One fifty Mulgrew Street.”

  We waited for two girls on bikes to go past. Then we crossed.

  Jenny’s eyes went wide with alarm. “The building is all boarded up,” she said.

  The doors and windows were covered with sheets of plywood. The shingles beside the front window were cracked and tilting toward the sidewalk.

  We stepped over some crushed-up soda cans and other garbage to get closer. “There’s a sign on the door,” I said. “Can you read it?”

  Bird darted closer and read the sign out loud: KEEP OUT. THIS BUILDING IS CONDEMNED.

  “I don’t believe it,” I said, sighing. “We came all this way …”

  We stared at the sign as if we could make it change its message. We stood there in silence for a long moment.

  Clouds rolled over the morning sun, and a shadow fell over the street. The air suddenly carried a chill.