They don’t look like puppets at all, thought Noah. They look too real for that.
They hung in rows along the walls of the shop, wires fastened to their backs to keep them all in their places. And they weren’t just puppets of people either; there were animals and vehicles and all sorts of unexpected objects. But they all had strings attached to them to allow their different parts to move.
‘How extraordinary!’ muttered Noah under his breath, and as he looked around, he began to experience a curious sensation that the puppets’ eyes were following him wherever he went, keeping a close watch on his every movement just in case he picked something up and broke it, or tried to run off with a toy that didn’t belong to him in his back pocket.
An incident just like that had happened a few months earlier when his mother had taken him on another of her unexpected days out – something she had started doing with such a sense of urgency that they should spend time together that Noah had found it all a little confusing. On that occasion, a pack of magic playing cards had mysteriously found its way into his pocket while they were walking through a shop together, but how it had happened was anyone’s guess because he certainly hadn’t stolen them. In fact, he couldn’t even remember having seen them on display in the first place. But just as they were leaving the shop, a rather large, rather heavy, rather sweaty man in a pale blue uniform approached them and asked in a very serious voice whether they could come with him please.
‘Why?’ Noah’s mother had asked. ‘What’s the problem here?’
‘Madam,’ said the security guard, using a word that made Noah wonder whether they had suddenly upped sticks and moved to France, ‘I have reason to believe that your little boy might be leaving the shop with an item that has not been paid for.’
Noah had looked up at the man with a mixture of indignation and contempt. Indignation because he was many things – many things, indeed – but he was not a thief. And contempt because there was nothing that annoyed him more than grown-ups referring to him as a little boy, particularly when he was standing right there in front of them.
‘Why, that’s ridiculous,’ his mother said, shaking her head dismissively. ‘My son would never do such a thing.’
‘Madam, if you could just check his back pocket,’ said the security guard, and sure enough, when Noah put his hand round to check, the pack of magic playing cards had somehow found its way in there.
‘Well, I didn’t steal them,’ insisted Noah, staring at them in surprise, the picture on the front of the box – the Ace of Spades – winking back at him in delight.
‘Then perhaps you can explain what you’re doing with them,’ said the security guard with a sigh.
‘If you have questions, you can address them to me,’ snapped Noah’s mother, glaring at the security guard, her voice rising a little now in indignation. ‘My son would never steal a pack of cards. We have dozens of the things at home. I’m teaching him to cheat at poker so he can make his fortune before he’s eighteen.’
The guard opened his eyes wide and stared at her. He was accustomed to parents turning furiously on their children at moments like this and shaking them until their teeth fell out to get at the truth, but Noah’s mother did not look like the type of woman who would do something like that. She looked like the type of mother who might actually believe her son when he answered her questions, and that was something you didn’t see every day.
‘You didn’t steal these cards, did you,’ she asked, turning to him a moment later and phrasing it more as a statement than a question.
‘Of course not,’ said Noah, which was the truth, because he hadn’t.
‘Well, then,’ said his mother, turning back to the guard again and shrugging her shoulders, ‘there’s nothing more to be said on the subject. An apology will do for now, but I think you should make a donation to a charity of my choice as recompense for your wrongful accusations. Something to do with animals, I think. Small furry ones as they’re my favourite kind.’
‘I’m afraid it’s not as simple as that, madam,’ insisted the guard. ‘The fact remains that the cards were in your son’s pocket. And someone must have put them there.’
‘Ah yes,’ she replied, taking them out of Noah’s hands and smiling as she passed them over. ‘But they are magic playing cards, aren’t they? They probably leaped in by themselves.’
This was another happy memory. The type Noah tried not to think about. But that had been a very different shop to the one he was in now. There were no security guards here, for one thing. No one to accuse him of doing anything he hadn’t. He bit his lip and looked around nervously, wondering whether he should go back outside and continue on to the next village, but before he could do this he became distracted by the sounds that were coming his way.
Footsteps.
Heavy, slow footsteps.
He held his breath and listened carefully, narrowing his eyes as if it might allow him to hear a little better, and for a moment the footsteps seemed to stop. He breathed a sigh of relief, but before he could turn round, they started again and he froze where he was, trying to identify exactly where they were coming from.
Beneath me! he thought, looking down.
And sure enough, there was the sound of footsteps ascending from below the shop, the pounding beat of heavy boots slowly climbing a staircase, each one getting a little closer to where he stood. He looked around to see whether anyone else could hear them, but realized that he was entirely alone; until now he hadn’t even been aware that he was the only person in the shop.
Excluding the puppets, that is.
‘Hello?’ whispered Noah nervously, his voice echoing a little around him. ‘Hello, is anyone there?’
The footsteps stopped, started, hesitated, stopped, continued, and then grew louder and louder.
‘Hello?’ he said again, raising his voice now as every nerve in his body grew more and more tense. He swallowed, and wondered why he felt this curious mixture of fear and safety at the same time. This wasn’t like the time he got lost in the woods overnight and his parents had to come and find him before the wolves ate him – now that was scary. And it wasn’t like the afternoon he got trapped in the basement where the light didn’t work because the latch had fallen on the lock – now that was just annoying. This was something else entirely. He felt as if he was supposed to be there but had better be ready for what came next.
He turned round and glanced back towards the entrance of the shop but – and this was a great surprise – he couldn’t see the door any more. He must have wandered so far in that it was no longer visible. Only he couldn’t remember walking that far at all, and the shop hadn’t even seemed particularly big at first, certainly not big enough to lose yourself in. In fact, when he looked back, he couldn’t see any way in or out of the shop, and no sign pointing towards the exit. All that stood behind him was hundreds and hundreds of wooden puppets, each one staring defiantly at him, smiling, laughing, frowning, threatening. Every emotion he could think of, good and bad. Every sensation. Suddenly he felt as if these puppets were not his friends at all and were moving, one by one, in his direction, surrounding him, trapping him inside an ever-decreasing circle.