“Father?”
He turned his head to see one of his other dolls step out from the shadows. That one did have a life within it. Or whatever was left of one.
It had been thirty-eight years since he had made the doll that moved from the darkness onto the stage. It was the figure of a man, with chestnut brown skin and dark hair. He was also the last living doll Simon had made.
The last one he had promised he would ever build.
Or, rather, the one last one he had promised he would ever build under the threat of continued torture and imprisonment. Now he planned to break that promise. It wasn’t that he had lied. Not exactly. At the time, he hadn’t been lying, anyway. But thirty-eight years was a long time to hold someone to a promise.
And things had changed.
“Hello, Hernandez.” Simon went back to polishing the dragon. “What do you want?”
“I want to go.”
Simon paused and put down the rag, hooking it over the nose of his giant puppet. He turned to face Hernandez slowly. He furrowed his brow. “Why now?”
The puppet lolled his head to the side slightly, as if listening to something. “It’s time.”
He took a step closer to the wooden man. Hernandez wavered on his feet, as if dangling from strings. There were none that held him up. His living dolls didn’t work quite that way. Simon reached out and took the man’s wooden face in his hands. It was a careful reproduction of the man’s features. Simon was proud of his work.
He was proud of it now. He had been proud of it then.
“Simon!”
Simon looked up from his workbench. Someone was calling for him from inside the main portion of the tent. Odd. He rarely received visitors. Especially one who didn’t sound vehemently angry at him.
Upset, perhaps. But not angry.
The rest of the Family seemed to only seek him out when they wanted to yell at him…
Regardless, the wavering tone of the man’s voice caught his attention. He put down his pencil on his sketchpad, pushed from his desk, and headed to his stage.
He stopped when he saw who it was and tilted his head slightly to the side. Surprising. Odd, wonderful, and intriguing. It also meant trouble was afoot. “Hello, Contortionist.”
Hernandez stood in the center aisle. The man was trembling and wiping at his cheeks with his sleeve. He had been crying, judging by the color of his eyes. It looked like he might begin again at any moment. “Simon…” His normally bronze skin looked pale and yellowed.
“To what do I owe the honor, Hernandez?” Simon walked to the edge of his stage, folded a hand behind his back, and fashioned his most affable smile. “Business or pleasure?” He sniffed dismissively. “I assume the former, as no one comes to me about the latter. What do you want, Contortionist?”
“I need…I need this all to stop.” Hernandez began to cry again, the wetness tracking down his face. This time he let them run their course. They were too numerous to fight. Best give up the battle and save the energy. And the damp sleeves.
“What do you need to stop?” Simon arched an eyebrow. “Be specific.”
“Everything.”
Now Simon’s grin was a sadistic one. A hungry one. And he did hunger. “Are you asking me to end the pain, Hernandez?”
The Contortionist shivered. There was a faraway look in his eyes. There was no mistake—there was no devious ploy at work. Hernandez knew the cost of what he was asking. He knew what would become of him.
And it made his choice all the sweeter.
Brown eyes met his red ones, and with a wavering voice, he answered. “Yes.”
“Well, then,” Simon straightened, “I had better get to work.”
Simon remembered the day Hernandez had come to him in tears. The man could not take it anymore. The years of silence, followed by the chaos, and the noise. The poor creature had never enjoyed the act of feeding from the living. He had always cowered from it. He had always been a skittish, overly sensitive thing.
The Contortionist had wanted to be released from his place in the Family. So, Simon had agreed. But like all things, freedom came with a price.
He smiled. Everything came with a price.
I will have you soon, Cora Glass.
“I needn’t remind you how I suffered when I made you, Hernandez.” Simon grimaced, remembering the time he had spent hanging from his ankles. Creating a puppet from one of the Family was a deed that had not gone unpunished. Being strung up in the tower still haunted him at night. He remembered the years of screaming in pain. If he hadn’t lost his sanity before—and he probably had—that agony had finished off what was left of it.
“I know. I am sorry.”
Simon sighed and leaned in to rest his forehead against the wooden one of his puppet. There was a little life still left in Hernandez. Most of him had already faded away by the time he’d asked Simon to end it all. He was barely a flicker of what he had been when he had first set foot in the Faire.
Far be it from him to make someone to stay in a condition they no longer desired. That was a cruelty to which even he would not stoop. He knew it himself. “Goodbye, Hernandez. You made a good puppet.”
“Goodbye, Simon.”
Simon leaned his head up to kiss the smooth wood surface of Hernandez’s forehead. And in that moment, Simon consumed the last bit of life left flickering in the wooden frame. He let the now-empty wood fall to the stage with a clatter, limbs twisted akimbo with no rhyme or reason or relation to human anatomy.
He would deal with it later. He needed to go for a walk. Hernandez had never been a friend—Simon was not in the business of keeping friends—but he had been a decent companion.
Simon’s “children” were fine enough to talk to, to play with, and to keep his need for conversation from becoming too insultingly one-sided. He talked to himself enough as it was; he didn’t need it to get worse.
There was no grief in his heart from losing another one of his dolls. But there was a bit of sadness in seeing another one of his “kind” fade away. Not because he cared a lick for any of them—the Family could all rot, for all he cared—but because it was a reminder of his own possible mortality. That someday he, too, might go the way of the dodo.
Such a shame about dodos.
He struck out into the Faire, walking the familiar paths, watching the patrons come and go. It was growing later in the afternoon, verging on early evening. The lightbulbs on the rides were just starting to be visible against the sunlight. Checking his pocket watch, it was just before six. It seemed like it would be a lovely night again. He did so much enjoy seeing the clouds.
Or any sky at all, for that matter.
He forced himself to think instead about a more charming, more suitable topic. Cora. He touched his fingers to his lips, remembering the sensation of her skin there. It had been such an enjoyable vision.
The fear in those big, gray eyes of hers had been beautiful beyond words. She really was quite stunning. Long, dark hair against soft skin that begged to be touched. And she was so delectable when she was afraid. And so confused! But instead of fleeing, she had brandished a knife. It had been so sweet he had wanted to hug her. Nobody had threatened him with a knife in ages.
He was whistling a tune now. It might have been Shostakovich. He had the urge to play his violin—another thing he hadn’t wished to do in longer than he could easily recall. Something about her put a skip in his step. He would have fun tearing her apart, little by little. Peeling off each tiny part of her soul until there was nothing left, like the layers of a flakey pastry.