The Puppet Maker's Bones (6 page)

Kevin: Present Day

K
evin 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.

“Everyone! Come to the stage!”

The people in the workshop regarded one another. This was unusual, since there was so little time before opening, and Prochazka made it his custom to leave everyone alone to finish their part.

“Come on. There is little time. Everyone!”

Pavel followed his fellow theatre folk out of the workshop, down the alley and into the ground-level entrance to the theatre, where Prochazka was busy guiding people into seats. Some sat on the floor. Nina was already in the theatre, her face flushed, excited. Pavel gave her a questioning glance, and she put her finger to her lips to motion him to be quiet. Pavel had no idea what was going on. What he did know was that Prochazka and Nina had been working on something at the kitchen table for about two weeks, talking about it well into the night, and that she kept folding and refolding what appeared to be a large piece of very stiff, painted cloth.

“Ready?” asked Prochazka.

“Ready,” said Nina.

Prochazka got up on the stage, opened one of the trapdoors that led to the area beneath the stage, walked down the steps and shut the trapdoor behind him. There was silence, followed by what sounded like very rapid breathing coming from below the stage. Pavel and his fellows from the workshop scanned each other’s expressions, searching for a clue as to what unusual thing was to occur.

Without warning, a thing was growing, a stalk-like object, green in color, from the floor of the stage, through a hole no one had noticed. As it reached its full height, almost two meters tall, it opened out at the top in a burst of red and gold and purple, and leaves popped out from the sides of the stalk. Prochazka and Nina had created a magnificent and enormous flower that could “grow” from the floor of the stage.

Thunderous applause and shouts erupted from the workers, and Nina cried. Pavel was astounded. The sound of something metal against metal was heard from below the stage and the flower shifted a bit, then held in place. Prochazka emerged back through the trapdoor, bathed in sweat, holding a huge bellows in his hand. He had used the air from the bellows to inflate the flower that Nina had folded and refolded over weeks, in a precise and deliberate manner that would enable the cloth to unfurl onstage like the perfect and beautiful blooming creation it was.

“And
that
, my dear colleagues, is the magic of theatre. You have all worked very hard. Nina and I wish to show all of you our appreciation for your efforts to create the magic of this theatre. Our gift to you. Good show tonight!”

Pavel never loved his parents more than at that very moment. The flower was never to be seen by the audience and was a one-time performance. Prochazka meant it when he said it was a gift for the people who made theatre happen.