Puppet Graveyard by Tim Curran

paint was flaking to gray at his throat.
    Then the jaw dropped open with the sound of dry lips parting, the eyes blinked and blinked again. “Pretty, pretty Kitty, come to pay us a call. Did you bring your pretty pussy with you?”
    Kitty tensed. She felt her hand grip the .32 in the pocket of her leather jacket. It was no dream last night…at least, no dream in the ordinary sense. She calmed herself. First she would find out about Gloria, then she’d destroy that grinning imp, she’d chop it into pieces and shove it in the fireplace, watch it burn.
    “I’m glad you’ve come here,” Piggy said. “I knew you would sooner or later. Your curiosity would get the best of you and lead you shivering and helpless into my lair.”
    “I’m hardly helpless.”
    The dummy cackled. “Innocent as a babe, as a squealing piglet put to the knife. That’s what I like about you.”
    Kitty did her best to remain unfazed even though being in close physical proximity with this little horror was making the flesh at her belly crawl in waves. “I’m waiting for a dirty joke, Piggy. Have you run out of them?”
    “I’m contemplating the dirtiest joke of all, pretty pussy, with you as the punchline.”
    “I can’t wait to hear it. Does it have anything to do with men jumping out of windows?” Kitty said, feeling the anger rising in her.
    “Oh, we’re beyond all that, Ronny and I,” Piggy said, his eyes impossibly black and wet like drowning pools. There was something behind those eyes or, and maybe better, a lack of something. “We’re contemplating new heights since our performance a few days ago…aren’t we, old chum?”
    Ronny looked confused, then nodded, then laughed. If it was meant to be a reassuring laugh, it missed the mark completely. The sound that came out was forced and shrill like somebody on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
    He passed by Piggy and sat in a recliner. “What do you want here, Miss Seavers?”
    Kitty looked at him, showing no fear. “I think you probably know. I think you probably know why I came around the first time, too.”
    “No,” Ronny said. “You’re mistaken, so why don’t you—”
    Piggy started cackling. “C’mon, Ronny. She wants to know about her sister…she wants to know about Gloria. You remember Gloria, don’t you? Pretty Gloria? You better confess, tell Kitty all about her…don’t you think? After all, Pretty Kitty has a gun in her pocket.”
    “That’ll do, Piggy,” Ronny said, still thinking, even after all that had happened, that he could make this all sound like part of the act. “Yes, I remember Gloria. She worked with us…but just for a short time. We couldn’t pay her what she wanted, so she left.”
    Piggy started cackling again and it was hard to imagine a more unpleasant sound. It was high and fragmented that laugh, echoing and perverse. The laughter of a child molester. And he did not laugh as men laughed. His hinged jaws snapped open and shut in rapid succession, the laughter billowing up darkly from somewhere deep inside of him. If Kitty had ever suspected that Ronny was actually throwing his voice, she knew better now.
    “Shut up!” Ronny shouted at him and meant it.
    And the dummy did. Its head was thrown back, its jaws hanging open, eyes staring at the ceiling. One moment it was filled with something dire and malevolent, and the next it was simply a wooden dummy, vapid and vacuous.
    “I just want to know about my sister,” Kitty maintained, trying to tell herself she was not frightened, not held together inside with spit and frayed wire. That the invasive madness of this place was not possessing her. “That’s all I really want, the rest of it I don’t care about.”
    “I already told you what I knew,” Ronny said, an edge to his voice now, his breath coming hard.
    “Hee, hee. I told you that lock of hair would bring the pretty pussy running into our arms,” Piggy said. “And was I not right? Did I not prophesy it as I now prophesy