Puppet Graveyard (12 page)

Because there was one thing it feared more than anything else and that was being expelled back into the formless, drifting blackness it had come from. That’s why she dumped it in the trunk and snapped the lid shut, set the locks.

It was trapped and it knew it.

Kitty dragged the trunk out the door, thinking of the darkest, deepest, coldest place she could deposit it. She helped Regis out to his car and put the dummy’s trunk in the back. Before she left, she made sure the house was burning bright.

In the backseat, the dummy shrieked and clawed inside the trunk.

“What’re you going to do with it?” Regis asked, pulling out a cigarette, each bump the car went over making him grimace.

“I want to put it somewhere very dark. Where that thing can be alone with itself for an eternity,” Kitty said.

Regis smiled. “I know of a flooded quarry out in the middle of nowhere. About two-hundred feet deep if it’s an inch.”

“Your leg?”

“Can wait. First things first.”

Kitty drove out of the city. She did not think she would smile again for some time to come, but inside, where it mattered, she was grinning with immense satisfaction. Gloria was at peace now.

About the Author

Tim Curran is the author of the novels
Skin Medicine
,
Hive
,
Dead Sea
,
Resurrection
,
Skull Moon
,
The Devil Next Door
,
Biohazard
, and
Hive 2
. His most recent books have been
Graveworm
, the short story collections
Bone Marrow Stew
and
Zombie Pulp
, and the novellas
The Corpse King
,
Fear Me
, and
The Underdwelling
. His short stories have appeared in such magazines as
City Slab
,
Flesh&Blood
,
Book of Dark Wisdom
, and
Inhuman
, as well as anthologies such as
Flesh Feast
,
Shivers IV
,
High Seas Cthulhu
, and,
Vile Things
. Find him on the web at:
www.corpseking.com
.