16
BY NOW, SEBASTIANO HAD GROWN almost used to Pagliaccio waking him during the night. But the clown had never shushed him before, nor had the little boy ever heard fear in the clown’s voice until now.
“You must get up,” the clown said as Sebastiano rubbed at his eyes and tried to focus. “Something terrible is going to happen. You’re not safe.”
Sebastiano sat up on his elbow, the gauzy shroud of sleep falling away as the words struck home. He focused on the puppet perched on the edge of the bed, only inches from his pillow, and the boy realized he had never seen terror in a smile before … particularly not in the clown’s embroidered grin.
“What—” he began.
“Get up, you little fool!” Pagliaccio snarled.
Sebastiano skidded away from the puppet, bunching himself up against the headboard, and stared at the clown. Pagliaccio cared for him; if he didn’t, why come tonight with this warning? But the clown had never spoken to him like this before.
“Sebastiano, please,” the puppet went on, softening his tone. “I do not know what the others will do … how far they will follow.”
“Follow what?” Sebastiano whispered, glancing at the beds where Carmelo and Giovanni still slept quietly.
Pagliaccio beckoned with a finger. “Come, but quietly. If they know you’re watching, it could go badly for you.”
The clown dropped off the edge of the bed and darted soundlessly across the wooden floor. Sebastiano pushed back his covers and rose to follow on tiptoes, careful to make the boards creak as little as possible. The door hung open a crack, and Pagliaccio had stopped just inside. Pressed against the bottom five inches of the door frame, the clown peered through the gap and gestured for the boy to do the same.
Sebastiano could not breathe. His heart had begun to pound in his chest and gooseflesh rose on his arms. Suddenly he wanted to do anything but look through the space between door and frame. Whatever frightened Pagliaccio, it terrified him. A sick wave of nausea rolled through him and his tired eyes burned, on the verge of tears. He shook his head, once, but Pagliaccio had already gone back to peering through the gap and did not see him.
Heart thumping in his ears, Sebastiano crept forward. Even before he reached the door, he could hear the small voices just outside. With Pagliaccio at his feet, the boy leaned forward and looked through the narrow gap into the corridor.
The puppets were on the march. Noah walked along the hall surrounded by his wife and son and a handful of animals. David and Goliath were side by side, and flanked by several saints with their faces half-painted, costumes hanging off—Father Gaetano’s works in progress—and trailing behind were monsters and musketeers and witches. Judy and an angel were still on the stairs, the angel helping her down, but of course there was no sign of Punch, for he had been taken apart and transformed into the leader of this colorful, magical nightmare parade. Lucifer.
The puppet had shed his angelic face during the priest’s catechism lesson, and now he had the Devil’s face. Once beautiful, the terrible Lucifer walked backward along the hall, exhorting the other puppets to follow.
“Come with me, friends,” Lucifer said, “and we will drag God from His throne. We live at His mercy and at the whim of His guiding hands, but only as long as He lives!”
Something long and sharp glinted in the Devil’s hands.
* * *
FATHER GAETANO AWOKE to the sound of Sebastiano shouting. The priest groaned, rising from sleep into irritation, thinking first not of trouble but of mischief. His eyelids fluttered in the darkness, and in the flimsy moonlight he saw something dart across his field of vision.
Something sharp jabbed his left leg, puncturing the meat of the calf. Shock and anger joined with the pain and his jaw clenched, building toward a shout. As he turned toward the boy’s cry and toward the source of his pain, a smooth sliver stabbed into his neck. He twisted, feeling the sliver break even as it jerked and dug its path in his flesh. Something caught in his hair and tugged his head back down, his scalp burning as his head was yanked to one side. Cheek pinned to the pillow, blood trickling along his neck and shoulder and staining the bedclothes, he found himself facing the impossible.
“From now on, we will make our own Heaven,” the Lucifer puppet said. It held a long, thin shard of jagged glass in its woolen hands. “A blind God rules nothing.”
Lucifer cocked his arms back and realization rushed through Father Gaetano; this was real, and the puppet meant to take his eyes.
With a roar of defiance, the priest hurled himself up from the bed. A patch of his scalp tore away. Lucifer thrust the broken shard and sliced his cheek, just below his eye. But then Father Gaetano was up, swiveling around in bed, throwing sheets and blankets to the floor. Beneath them, puppets wriggled like maggots, muffled shouts of protest rising through the fabric. Slivers of glass punched up through the cloth.
With the slap of his hand upon the wooden doorframe, Sebastiano arrived outside the room, face etched with fear and worry.
“Leave him alone!” the boy screamed, frantic tears spilling down his cheeks. “He isn’t God! He’s only a man!”
A barrage of thoughts and images struck the priest. The huge Goliath puppet standing on his pillow holding bloody tufts of his hair in its puppet fists. Lucifer on the edge of the bed, crying out to the others. The sound of fabric tearing as puppets tore the bedsheets and fought loose. Other puppets swarming across the battlefield of the discarded blanket, witches cackling, animals growling, only Noah holding back at the edge of the mad, impossible charge, looking ashamed.
Sebastiano began screaming the names of the other boys on the floor, and Father Gaetano heard stumbling footfalls thudding down the corridor in reply. For long seconds, Father Gaetano only stared at the hideous tableau, riveted by shock, as Lucifer called to his followers to throw off the yoke of God. Only then did the words of both devil and boy sink into his sleep-fogged mind.
He batted the Lucifer puppet off the bed. He wanted to shout that he was not God, that he might be the hands that held them, but he had not even been their creator, but he could not bring himself to speak to impossible creatures. They were puppets. They were devils.
Goliath hurtled across the mattress toward him. Father Gaetano picked up the huge puppet and dashed it against the headboard several times before tossing it onto the ground with the others. Several leaped up, grabbed the bed skirt, and began to climb. He knocked off a musketeer and stood up. Some of them had broken glass but most were unarmed, and he began to kick at those without weapons.
Sebastiano came into the room at last and set the clown puppet onto the floor. Pagliaccio raced at the David puppet, leaped up, and wrapped his arms and legs around it, driving David to the floorboards, strangling it as if it could actually breathe.
Other boys skidded into the room in threadbare socks. Enrico and Carmelo began to follow the priest’s lead, crushing the puppets underfoot. Carmelo cried out as he stomped on a piece of glass. Matteo stood in the open doorway, his mouth hanging open, too stunned to move. Two girls—Agata and Stefania—appeared in their nightgowns in the corridor behind him, got a glimpse of the twisted, unnatural melee unfolding within, and began to scream.
Sister Veronica appeared amongst them, wrapped in a robe. Her eyes were wide and she made the sign of the cross, holding tightly to the crucifix around her neck.
And then it was done.
Several of the puppets continued to squirm beneath human heels, perversions of nature, things that ought to have been ridiculous but for the sickening wrongness of their existence. Then, as if by some silent agreement, all of them went still. Pagliaccio dropped at Sebastiano’s feet, as if he had never been anything more than a puppet, and the little boy picked him up and whispered his thanks to the clown.
The temptation to think of them all as having become merely puppets again was great, but the chill in his bones and ill feeling in his gut would not allow Father Gaetano to fall prey to that instinct.
“Careful,” he said, as the boys began to step away from the things—the creatures, for surely he must consider them creatures now. Living creations.
Several of the children were crying. Sister Veronica began to ask him what evil had gotten into them, what devil had wrought such hideous magic, and then Enrico began shouting, looking around at the others and throwing up his arms, growing hysterical.
“Stop it!” Father Gaetano snapped.
They all looked at him. Looked to him, for answers. This thing—this wrongness—must be evil, after all, and he was their priest and confessor.
“Enrico, take Giacomo upstairs and get the crate they came in. Right now.”
The boys raced out of the room, happy to comply if it meant no longer being near the puppets. Sister Veronica began to pray loudly. Girls and boys gathered about her and she put her arms around them, including them in her prayers.
Out in the corridor, Marcello arrived. He kept far back, arms wrapped around himself, eyes wide with shock, as if a bomb had gone off here on the third floor of the orphanage and his thoughts had been obliterated by the explosion and were very slowly being put back to rights.
For the minute or two—no longer than that, surely—those gathered in Father Gaetano’s bedroom and out in the corridor seemed paralyzed by lingering astonishment. The puppets were scattered about, unmoving, but the priest glanced from one to the next, on edge, thinking that they could spring to life again in an instant. The world of his experience did not have room within it for impossible things. The world of his faith did not contain this sort of magic. He had been taught to believe in evil and in Satan’s interference in the lives of men, but he had never encountered it firsthand. And this … whatever evil this was, it was small and insidious, beneath the notice of God or the Devil, but it haunted him just the same.
When Sister Veronica spoke, it took a moment for her voice to reach him, as if he only heard the echo.
“Father,” she said.
He glanced up, saw the slant of her gaze, and did not need to even glance down to recognize its significance. He wore only an undershirt and saggy underpants. Flushing with embarrassment, he reached down to grab the bedclothes off of the floor so that he might cover himself, but Agata cried out at the mere thought of him uncovering the puppets that were still beneath the blanket. Unwilling to meet the eyes of the children in the room, he picked up his trousers—hung neatly over the back of a chair—and slipped them on. The puncture wound in his calf had mostly stopped bleeding, but it ached deeply, and the scrape of his pants sent a flare of pain up his leg. He could feel the fabric grow heavy as blood began to soak into the leg of his trousers.
As he fastened the top button, he had a moment to wonder how bad the wound on his neck might be when he heard a grunting noise and looked up. Sister Veronica cleared children out of the way while Giacomo and Enrico carried the trunk into the room. The boys stepped gingerly, avoiding the puppets. Since they had ceased moving, no one had touched them.
“If you’re frightened, go out into the hall,” Father Gaetano said. “If you want to help, I’m going to put all of the puppets back into the box.”
Most of the children scurried for the door, even the older ones. Only Carmelo, Enrico, and Stefania remained, although Sebastiano stepped back into the room a moment later, his clown puppet crushed to his chest. Sister Veronica lent comfort to the children in the hall while Father Gaetano removed the lid from the trunk and reached out to pick up Goliath. The oversized puppet hung limp in his hand. Staring at it, he could not see how its handcrafted features could possibly have come to life. A man had made that face, and its expression ought to have been immutable.
Father Gaetano shook the Goliath puppet, but it revealed no hidden spark of sentience. It was precisely what it appeared to be—an inanimate object. And yet he knew that it was not.
He tossed it into the trunk and fell to his knees, gathering up the fallen puppets. Enrico swept the bedclothes off the ground, uncovering those puppets that had been trapped beneath. The slashes made by their weapons pouted open, and Father Gaetano shuddered at the sight.
“All right. Don’t dally,” he said, gesturing for Stefania and Carmelo to hurry.
Carmelo seemed hesitant, but Stefania fell to working immediately. Brave girl, Father Gaetano thought, and moments later they had finished the task. With all of the puppets back in the box, he picked up the cover and went to slide it into place. Then he paused, a frown creasing his forehead, and glanced over at little Sebastiano, just inside the door.
Holding Pagliaccio.
Sebastiano must have seen it in his eyes, because the boy began to shake his head, his lower lip trembling.
“I’m sorry—” Father Gaetano began.
“No, Father. Please.”
“Whatever they are…” the priest said, speaking to the boy but glancing about at the rest of those gathered there. “Whatever is in them, they are dangerous.”
“But he’s my…” Sebastiano began. He seemed unable to speak the last word, to say friend, but he did not need to.
“Do it, Yano,” Carmelo said, holding out his hand for the clown. “Do it, or I will.”
Several of the other boys chimed in, some of the voices mocking Sebastiano’s adoration of the puppet and others furious that he would not hand it over.
“They’re evil!” Giacomo said. “They tried to kill Father.”
“Not Pagliaccio,” Sebastiano whined. “He tried to help. Some of you saw. I know you did. He woke me up to warn me what they were doing.”
Father Gaetano knew Sebastiano spoke the truth. He had seen for himself. And he was not unmoved by the child’s imploring eyes. But he was resolute.
“In the box,” he said. “It must be all of them. The clown might have been a friend to you, but these things are not God’s creatures. They have come tonight to murder a priest. Who knows what they might try to do to you children—”
“They’ve only ever played with us, Father. Been our friends,” Sebastiano pleaded. He looked around for support and found none. “You know this. You’ve all laughed at their games.”
Stefania whispered, “That was before.”
“They’re only what we make of them,” the little boy argued, clutching Pagliaccio even more tightly to his chest in defiance. “You made a puppet into Noah, and so he was Noah, just worrying about building his ark and when the flood would start. He complained that the animals weren’t doing what he told them. You made David and Goliath and they tried to kill each other.”
“Lucifer tried to kill me,” Father Gaetano said.
“He tried to kill his Creator!” Sebastiano said. “To him, you are God. He was just doing what you made him to do, acting out his part.”
Sister Veronica disentangled herself from the children in the hall and stepped into the room, reaching for Sebastiano. The boy jerked away as if afraid her touch would burn him.
“These are unnatural things, Mr. Anzalone,” Sister Veronica said firmly. “Whether Luciano knew what he was making when he crafted them or not, whether he had some black sorcery in mind or if the evil slipped into them while they lay unused, it doesn’t matter. You will hand the puppet to me immediately.”
Head hung in sadness, Sebastiano gazed up at her through his bangs. “What are you going to do with him?”
“Lock them away, for now,” Father Gaetano said. “Back in the basement. They were there for months without harming anyone. They will be shut up down there while I discuss their fate with Sister Teresa and Sister Veronica.”
“Burn them,” Marcello said, his voice cracking on the first word. Everyone turned to look at him, surprised to hear him suddenly speaking up. He remained in the hall, even farther back from the door than before. “You’ve got to burn them.”
As Sebastiano turned to shout at him, Sister Veronica plucked the clown from his grasp. Sebastiano cried out and reached for the puppet, but she was a full-grown woman and he a small boy, even for nine years old. She held the puppet beyond his reach and handed it to Father Gaetano, who hardened his heart to the boy’s pleas, pushed Pagliaccio in amongst the rest of the puppets, and slid the lid of the box firmly in place.
“Please don’t burn him,” Sebastiano begged, tears running down his face.
“Enough!” Father Gaetano shouted, and the boy fell silent.
Sniffling and wiping at his tears and nose, Sebastiano ran from the room.
“Go and look after him, would you?” Sister Veronica asked Agata. The girl nodded and followed Sebastiano, her nightdress billowing behind her as she went.
“Marcello,” Father Gaetano said. “Get dressed and fetch Sister Teresa from the convent. The rest of you, return to your rooms immediately. The good sisters and I have much to discuss.”
Some of the children hurried away while others lagged a moment for a last, wary glance at the box that sat in the middle of Father Gaetano’s bedroom. Just a box, an old trunk with a beautiful ornate lid, but it seemed to have its own heavy gravity now, a malevolent aura that filled the room. Whether that aura emanated from the puppets or from the fear of those who had seen them come to life, the priest did not know. The question intrigued him, but examining it would wait for another day, when such a thing seemed impossible once again. If that day ever came.
Sister Veronica stepped into the hallway and glanced in both directions to be sure that the children had done as they were told. Then she turned toward him, framed in the doorway, as if the hideous gravity of the box made her reluctant to enter once more.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“Precisely what I said.”
“You don’t need Sister Teresa’s blessing. You’re the priest. Surely your authority supersedes hers.”
“I need perspective,” Father Gaetano said quietly, staring at the box a moment before looking at the nun again. “Yours, and Sister Teresa’s.”
“Maybe,” Sister Veronica said. “But I can see it in your eyes. You’ve already made a decision.”
Father Gaetano bent and picked up the trunk, which seemed strangely heavy. And did the box feel warm to the touch? He thought that it did.
“I’m bringing it to the basement. Please see to it that Agata returns to her room. Anything else would be inappropriate.”
“Of course.”
“I’d be grateful if you would ask Sister Teresa to meet me in the kitchen and put a pot of coffee on. The children are likely to be restless, so I’ll need you to look after them. Some may have nightmares or need comfort.”
He carried the trunk toward the door. Sister Veronica had to move out of the way for him to pass. As he did, she spoke again, barely above a whisper.
“Father?”
The trunk weighed him down, but he paused to meet her gaze. He saw the questions there along with the fear, and he knew that she needed an answer for her own peace of mind.
“Sebastiano is a good boy and he loves his clown,” the priest said quietly. “I’m going to wait until he’s asleep.”
“And then?”
“And then I’m going to burn them all.”