Puppet Graveyard

5

It took Kitty some time to come down after that.

Truth be told, she’d always found mannequins, dolls and puppets more than a little unnerving. Ventriloquist dummies topped the list because they talked. Their mouths opened and shut. Their eyes moved. But they were only wood and plastic animated by clever artifice. The real disturbing thing about the dummies were the ventriloquists themselves who created personalities for them, imbuing them with a disturbing sort of half-life. Mostly, she knew, it was harmless. Just because they did this so effectively did not mean they were schizophrenic or suffering from multiple personality disorders. And it was only in the movies that the ventriloquist channeled his evil, subconscious, murderous desires into his dummy. That was comic book stuff.

This is what she kept telling herself.

But being that Gloria had worked with Ronny M. and Piggy just before she disappeared, Kitty didn’t necessarily believe it. There was something strange about this act and something far stranger about a ventriloquist who could make his dummy not only talk from across the room, but move.

There was something here and she planned on finding out what.