Smoke Ghost & Other Apparitions Read Online Free PDF

Delia, are sometimes hard to live with. They're notoriously inconsiderate, without meaning to be. Just read their biographies! Half the time they go around in a state of abstraction, in love with their latest ideas, and fly off the handle at the slightest provocation. Jock's fanatically devoted to his puppets, and he should be! All the critics who know anything about the subject say he's the best in the world, better even than Franetti. And they're raving about his new show as the best of his career!"
    Delia's gray suede fist beat her knee.
    "I know, George. I know all about that! But it has nothing to do with what I'm trying to tell you. You don't suppose I'm the sort of wife who would whine just because her husband is wrapped up in his work? Why, for a year I was his assistant, helped him make the costumes, even operated some of the less important puppets. Now he won't even let me in his workshop. He won't let me come back-stage. He does everything himself. But I wouldn't mind even that, if it weren't that I'm afraid. It's the puppets themselves, George! They – they're trying to hurt him. They're trying to hurt me too."
    I searched for a reply. I felt thoroughly uncomfortable. It is not pleasant to hear an old friend talking like a lunatic. I lifted my head and frowned at the malevolent doll-face of Jack Ketch, blue as that of a drowned man. Jack Ketch is the hangman in the traditional puppet play, " Punch and Judy ." He takes his name from a Seventeenth Century executioner who officiated with rope and red-hot irons at Tyburn in London.
    "But Delia," I said, "I don't see what you're driving at. How can an ordinary puppet -."
    "But it isn't an ordinary puppet!" Delia broke in vehemently. "That's why I brought it for you to see. Look at it closely. Look at the details. Is it an ordinary puppet?"
    Then I saw what she meant.
    "There are some superficial differences," I admitted.
    "What are they?" she pressed.
    "Well, this puppet has no hands. Puppets usually have papier-mâché or stuffed hands attached to the ends of their sleeves."
    "That's right. Go on."
    "Then the head," I continued unwillingly. "There are no eyes painted on it – just eyeholes. And it's much thinner than most I've seen. More like a – a mask."
    Delia gripped my arm, dug her fingers in.
    "You've said the word, George!" she cried. "Like a mask! Now do you see what I mean? He has some horrible little creatures like rats that do it for him. They wear the puppets' robes and heads. That's why he won't allow me or anyone else to come backstage during a performance. And they're trying to hurt him, kill him! I know. I've heard them threaten him."
    "Delia," I said, gently taking hold of her arms, "you don't know what you're saying. You're nervous, over-wrought. Just because your husband invents a new type of puppet – why, it explains itself. It's because of his work on these new-type puppets that he's become secretive."
    She jerked away from me.
    "Won't you try to understand, George? I know how mad it sounds, but I'm not mad. At night, when Jock has thought I was asleep I've heard them threaten him with their high little voices like whistles. 'Let us go – let us go or we'll kill you!' they cry, and I'm so weak with fear I can't move. They're so tiny they can creep about everywhere."
    "Have you seen them?" I asked quickly.
    "No, but I know they're real! Last night one of them tried to scratch my eyes out while I was asleep. Look!"
    She swept back the thick hair from her temple, and at that moment I also felt as if the needle-touch of fear had been transmitted to me. There in the creamy skin, an inch from the eye, were five little scratches that looked as if they might have been made by a miniature human hand. For a moment I could almost see the ratlike little creature Delia had described, its clawed hand upraised...
    Then the image faded and I was realizing that such grotesque happenings were impossible. But oddly I felt as if I no longer