More tentatively, the Ghost nodded again, and the maenad huffed and stepped aside reluctantly. As he drew near, he grew more familiar, his strange costume and demeanor giving him away.
“Who is that? Isn’t he one of those small puppets that we hung in the stalls?” Kay asked. “How did he come to grow so large? What strange magic is this?”
Cocking her head, No? studied him more intently. “He wears my noose around his neck. Perhaps we should be frightened of this ghost.”
Theo floated to Kay’s side and hesitated, awestruck for an eternal moment. Reaching out to hold her hand through the cloth, he bent to whisper in her ear. “It’s Theo. I’ve come to take you home, Kay.”
26
His voice in her head stunned Kay. Impossible, yet unmistakable. A voice out of the past, from another world, a dream sound. She pulled away and stared at the Ghost. A make-believe doll made of scraps with a drawn-on face. He was not real, he could not be her Theo, he was little more than idle imagination. A cruel trick conjured by some prankster. The Devil’s plaything. A hoax.
“Kay,” the Ghost said. His great head shook uncontrollably, the muslin sheet quaked.
“Go away,” No? said. “Don’t bother her. What kind of creature are you, anyways? Who made you, Ghost? You look like old Firkin’s handiwork. Did he send you? He can’t even paint a straight line.”
“Kay,” the Ghost implored. “It is me under this costume.” He stepped forward as if to embrace her, but she backed out of reach.
“You heard her,” Kay said. “We want no part of your twisted game. I think it is quite mean of you to pretend to be someone you are not.”
Stomping her foot, No? shouted, “Boo! Leave us alone, you handkerchief!”
From beneath the sheet, he held out his hands, and she saw his skin and bones, the wedding ring on his finger. “You are Kay Harper,” the Ghost said. “Your mother is Dolores Bird, who lives alone on a farm in Vermont. You and I met in New York, and we were married earlier this year, and I lost you in Québec. I am Theo Harper. Tu ne te souviens pas de moi? I love you.”
Drawing her paper face close to him, she saw in the center of the painted ovals his blue eyes peering through the small holes cut into the cloth. Kay pulled him toward her, holding him tightly enough to feel the beating of his heart against the hollow chamber of her chest. “It’s you? Have they made you one of us? Are you dead? Have they turned you into a ghost?”
She kissed the streak of black smeared across his face.
Behind them, the makeshift orchestra played the first bars of an antic melody. The assembly sorted itself into two groups facing each other across the floor.
“I’m not a ghost,” Theo said. “And I’m not dead. This is a disguise so that I won’t get caught. I am not a puppet, I am a man.”
Unable to contain herself any longer, No? tapped Kay on the shoulder. “The others will notice the two of you together. Take heed.”
Kay remembered who she was and separated from Theo. “This is my friend No?. She is all right. She won’t give you away.”
Seizing the opportunity, No? grabbed Theo’s hands and nose to nose peered closely into his eyes. Like an infant entranced by a new face, she scrutinized with a rapt intensity. “So you are a real person hiding under there?”
With a laugh of delight, he squeezed her hands. “I’m Theo, and a real person, last I checked.”
“Really real? From the other world.”
“Come from the outside world.”
“How did you find us?” Kay asked. “How did you get here?”
Theo told the story as quickly as he could, beginning with the toy shop in Québec and ending with the journey of his friends Egon and Mitchell and their plan to break into the barn to look for her. “We were to rendezvous at the car with some evidence, but that was before I met the Queen and her consort. That was before I saw the puppets were … alive.”
The puppets began a line dance, one from each row matching with another and promenading down the middle of the two clapping rows, making for some unusual combinations: Puck and the Good Fairy; the bunraku demon, head in hand, with Teddy Roosevelt; the Three Sisters escorted by the Three Little Pigs. Each pair showed off their best steps and moves.
Breathless, Nix ran over and planted himself in the middle of Theo’s story. “Join the fun. Have a go. The Devil wants to know why you aren’t dancing.”
No? tried to shoo him away. “Some of us prefer not to make spectacles of ourselves. Go to the Devil and tell him leave us be.”
Bouncing like a restless child, Nix would not be so easily deterred. “And he wants to know who you are, Ghostie. He says he never set eyes on you around here before. Where’d you come from?”
“He’s the ghost in the attic,” Kay said. “Ordinarily invisible, but he makes himself known when there’s a-haunting to be done. Go tell him that, Nix, and stop pestering us so.”