extent of our prank – amateur hour, I see that now – but…Karou gasped again. She grabbed my arm. ‘Did you see that?’
‘See what?’
‘I swear it just moved.’
And she looked scared . Her breathing went shallow, and she was holding my arm really tight, just staring at the puppet. Tomas and I shared an amused look. ‘Karou,’ I said, ‘it didn’t move—’
‘It did. I saw it. Maybe it’s trying to tell us something. Jesus, it’s probably starving . How long has it been in there, anyway? Don’t you guys ever feed it?’
And the look Tomas and I shared then was more of the um, what? variety, because until that moment, Karou had seemed normal enough. Okay, fine. Karou never seemed normal , with her blue hair and tattoos and drawing monsters all the time, but she did seem mentally sound. But when she started worrying about the skull puppet being hungry , you had to wonder.
‘Karou—’ I started to say.
She cut me off. ‘Wait. It wants to tell us something. I can feel it.’ She was staring at it, and she hesitantly leaned toward it so her face was a foot or so from the glass, and then asked it, in this tentative, gentle voice – like you would a body you found lying in the street and didn’t know if it was drunk or dead – ‘Are you…okay?’
For a second, nothing happened. Of course nothing happened. It was a puppet in a glass case. No one was touching it. Without a doubt, no one was touching it . Karou was clinging to me, Tomas had stepped back from the cabinet, and I know I didn’t do it.
So when all of a sudden it turned its head and snapped its jaws at us, I screamed .
Tomas did, too, and so did Karou. Knowing what I know now, I laud her evil chops for that scream. Not for a second did it occur to me that she might be responsible. I mean, why would it? She clearly hadn’t touched it. All my childhood terror over the Puppet That Bites came flooding instantly back. It was true, it was all freaking true, and if that story was true, maybe all of Deda’s stories were, and oh my god, how many times had I considered breaking the glass, and if I had, would we all be dead ?
I don’t even remember running. Just, the next thing I knew, the three of us had crossed the courtyard from the workshop and were slamming through the back door into the kitchen, shrieking. The house was full of a Christmas crowd of aunts and uncles and cousins and neighbors, all well-acquainted with Deda’s stories, and there were gales of laughter to see us – teenagers! – beside ourselves with terror, babbling that the puppet was alive . ‘No, really, it turned its head. It snapped its jaws!’
No one believed us, and Tomas sealed our fate when, within minutes, he backpedaled and claimed credit for the whole thing. ‘You should have seen your faces,’ he said to Karou and me, as if he could erase his own high, thin shriek from our minds. He put on that smug oh you kids face that is so deeply infuriating in older siblings, made all the worse because he was so absolutely lying .
For this treachery he would pay dearly a couple of days later, but that’s another story.
The point of this story is that I will never forget the sound of those sharpened fox teeth snapping together, three times in rapid succession, and I will never forget the perfect clarity of terror that thrilled through me as, in an instant, my long-dead belief in magic flared back to life.
It wouldn’t last. It would die back down again to a low flicker of uncertainty, but it turns out I was right to believe. It was magic. Just not the kind I thought.
The Puppet That Bites is just a puppet, but…Karou is not just a girl.
That Christmas Eve was my first exposure to scuppies, though I wouldn’t know it for more than two years – two years she let me believe the puppet was hungry, that minx – until a couple of weeks ago, when Kishmish flew on fire into her window and died in her hands.
That was…a shock. Seeing Kishmish die was a shock.
‘See what?’
‘I swear it just moved.’
And she looked scared . Her breathing went shallow, and she was holding my arm really tight, just staring at the puppet. Tomas and I shared an amused look. ‘Karou,’ I said, ‘it didn’t move—’
‘It did. I saw it. Maybe it’s trying to tell us something. Jesus, it’s probably starving . How long has it been in there, anyway? Don’t you guys ever feed it?’
And the look Tomas and I shared then was more of the um, what? variety, because until that moment, Karou had seemed normal enough. Okay, fine. Karou never seemed normal , with her blue hair and tattoos and drawing monsters all the time, but she did seem mentally sound. But when she started worrying about the skull puppet being hungry , you had to wonder.
‘Karou—’ I started to say.
She cut me off. ‘Wait. It wants to tell us something. I can feel it.’ She was staring at it, and she hesitantly leaned toward it so her face was a foot or so from the glass, and then asked it, in this tentative, gentle voice – like you would a body you found lying in the street and didn’t know if it was drunk or dead – ‘Are you…okay?’
For a second, nothing happened. Of course nothing happened. It was a puppet in a glass case. No one was touching it. Without a doubt, no one was touching it . Karou was clinging to me, Tomas had stepped back from the cabinet, and I know I didn’t do it.
So when all of a sudden it turned its head and snapped its jaws at us, I screamed .
Tomas did, too, and so did Karou. Knowing what I know now, I laud her evil chops for that scream. Not for a second did it occur to me that she might be responsible. I mean, why would it? She clearly hadn’t touched it. All my childhood terror over the Puppet That Bites came flooding instantly back. It was true, it was all freaking true, and if that story was true, maybe all of Deda’s stories were, and oh my god, how many times had I considered breaking the glass, and if I had, would we all be dead ?
I don’t even remember running. Just, the next thing I knew, the three of us had crossed the courtyard from the workshop and were slamming through the back door into the kitchen, shrieking. The house was full of a Christmas crowd of aunts and uncles and cousins and neighbors, all well-acquainted with Deda’s stories, and there were gales of laughter to see us – teenagers! – beside ourselves with terror, babbling that the puppet was alive . ‘No, really, it turned its head. It snapped its jaws!’
No one believed us, and Tomas sealed our fate when, within minutes, he backpedaled and claimed credit for the whole thing. ‘You should have seen your faces,’ he said to Karou and me, as if he could erase his own high, thin shriek from our minds. He put on that smug oh you kids face that is so deeply infuriating in older siblings, made all the worse because he was so absolutely lying .
For this treachery he would pay dearly a couple of days later, but that’s another story.
The point of this story is that I will never forget the sound of those sharpened fox teeth snapping together, three times in rapid succession, and I will never forget the perfect clarity of terror that thrilled through me as, in an instant, my long-dead belief in magic flared back to life.
It wouldn’t last. It would die back down again to a low flicker of uncertainty, but it turns out I was right to believe. It was magic. Just not the kind I thought.
The Puppet That Bites is just a puppet, but…Karou is not just a girl.
That Christmas Eve was my first exposure to scuppies, though I wouldn’t know it for more than two years – two years she let me believe the puppet was hungry, that minx – until a couple of weeks ago, when Kishmish flew on fire into her window and died in her hands.
That was…a shock. Seeing Kishmish die was a shock.
Similar Books
