The Puppet Maker's Bones by Alisa Tangredi Read Free Book Online Page A

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