The Road to Vent Haven: My Brave Boy

• Ghosts in the Gullet
• From "The Sasquatch and the Sea Goddess"

Cottonbro

I started back to my room. The longer this weekend went on, the less I could maintain that I had done any of this out of concern for Randy's murder. That had only ever been the barest pretense, something I could recite to make myself feel less like shit for crashing a vent con out of a misplaced sense of self-preservation. No, not only self-preservation. I had made a promise to Woodrow.

However low my esteem for Randy was, I had taken more of a liking to Woodrow. He reflected my cynicism, and, in a way, he had it much worse. At least I could act on the world and make known that it disappointed me. Woodrow's only other conversations came from fluffy sheep and plastic birds. He wanted to end up at Vent Haven, but he wasn't half-assing his end of the bargain.

Woodrow cleared his throat before I took another step down the hallway. "Where the hell do you think you're going?"

Pulling my hand out of him (it seemed rude to keep up the illusion that I was a ventriloquist, that I was the Adequate Rando when I didn't need to), I said, confused, "I'm bringing you back to the room."

He chortled, amused at my presumption. "It doesn't work that way. Trust me. I wish it did. No dummy, no entrance."

"What?"

Amusement drained from his voice, replaced by weariness. "Randy went every convention. Probably saw more action here than he got the whole rest of the year. The vents set us up around the room, so we have to watch all that writhing. That's what gets their rocks off," he said, rueful. "What I've seen would be more than enough to make me want to strangle Rando myself if my fingers moved." He sniffed. "Man, if we could move? It would make Child's Play look like Dennis the Menace."

Woodrow's plan was that I would go in, drop him off somewhere in the suite with a good vantage point of the room, and get out of there before I could say or do something to blow my cover. To him, it was a foregone conclusion that I would reveal myself somehow. He didn't want to have to figure out what we would do then. It was better that we assumed the worst was inevitable. All we could hope for was that we got a clue before that happened. That's all we needed: one solid, actionable lead that I could drop to the police. I wasn't some detective, no matter how all this cloak and dagger felt. I wasn't out to answer any question beyond who killed Randy.

If Woodrow saw or heard something suspicious, he would shout for me. (Dummies tended not to scream. What would be the point, after all? They could hear one another fine if they were within visual distance. They were not in the habit of wasting energy screaming at people who would never hear them.) Otherwise, he would see what the other dummies knew about Randy's murder. I would come back after half an hour to rescue him either way.

If this didn't give us a lead, I didn't see how tomorrow was going to change that. The vents and vendors would pack up and clear out. It galled me to think I might have come this far and wasted this time, so close to the killer, and come away empty-handed. Though who came away empty-handed at an orgy?

I knocked at the door. A woman, barely out of college, with turquoise eyes floating between panic and delight, opened it a crack. The way she hid behind the door could not have made clearer that she wore nothing else but that nervous smile.

"Adequate Rando. I thought you wouldn't show, but what is done is done. I guess your curiosity got the better of you," she chirped. "Let's hope you exceed adequacy tonight."

I recognized her then, the girl in the blue dress so fluffy that the skirt was nearly parallel with the ceiling, the one with the pin curl wig, now absent, her natural hair a dirty blonde pixie cut. Her spider would be in there somewhere, having got an eyeful of Miss Muffet sitting her tuffet on someone's face. The thought made me grimace behind my mask.

Beyond the door, the sounds and--god help me--scents of sex could not have been plainer. Only a few minutes prior, I had seen the little girl with the pink seal on this floor. The thought of her even passing this door disgusted me enough that I pushed the door to urge Muffet to relent.

Miss Muffet opened the door only enough to rush me inside. She whispered something to me, something about her performance, but I didn't want clarification.

It was a larger room than mine by a good margin, the sort of suite saved for visiting heads of state, though I doubted many passed through this corner of Kentucky. It connected by a door to another suite of equal grandeur. The rooms were already packed tightly with people, more naked still for the absence of dummies in their arms.

People, more than I wanted to see but less than I expected, were deep into erotic acts, spectated by eager others waiting for their turns (for beds or partners), some taking care of themselves in the meanwhile. I might have found this tempting in better circumstances, particularly the notion of cozying up to Miss Muffet, except that it was Randy she wanted. The fifteen varied puppets sat around the room shouting encouragement or horror. Some dummies bordered on resembling children themselves, none able to look away. It was enough to tamp down most arousal a man might feel.

Ventriloquism is not a physically demanding avocation. High school athletes tended to spend their weekends fingering something other than a dummy's eyes from the inside. Muffet was cute, along with an older woman who could have picked me up at a bar if I hadn't already heard her nasal baby voice coming from an epoxy mouth. One of the men could have sustained a career as a character actor in Hollywood, but the rest seemed like an elementary school teachers' lounge gone wild. Though, strictly for the sake of fairness, one of the otherwise unassuming men was missing his calling by manipulating puppets rather instead of taming that snake on film.

Muffet gave the overgenerous appendage an affectionate squeeze that the man barely acknowledged. She looked at me, standing before the closed door with an unreadable face, Woodrow's jaw agape. This was not a conscious affectation. Coming from the almost clinical brightness into the poorly lighted den of debauchery with a puppet audience was enough to make the blood rush out of anyone's hands.

"Are you coming in or what?" asked Muffet.

It seemed pointless to say that I was in.

"She means," said Woodrow, "take off your clothes."

"I didn't agree to that," I whispered.

"You bought the ticket, bud. You want the info? You lose the pants."

"But my mask..."

"These people aren't going to mind the mask. Hell, most of them would be into it. You just got to own it."

Muffet wasted little time in helping me out of my clothes, but, when she went for the mask, I growled, "It stays on, you... little slut." I winced at the word but guessed it would strike the right chord.

She wrapped her arms around me and kissed me on the lips through the mask. "Good luck," she purred.

Woodrow gloated over how right he was. I detached from her, no more molested than after my junior prom. Her eyes held a strange gleam, but her smile was authentic enough.

"Ask them where I should put you."

Woodrow repeated the question more authoritatively, though less politely, to his fellow dummies, finding his roost above the bare hangers of the closet that allowed him a decent view of both rooms. I thought his confession that I could hear them would result in a racket, but these dummies seemed unphased. Given the bacchanal before them and their lack of functional eyelids, I supposed that I could not blame them for not making this curiosity a higher priority.

"You see anything yet?" I asked him, angling him to have the best view of both rooms.

"Too goddamned much, but not the killer. Now get yourself out of here before one of these freaks takes your virginity, Buttercup."

I stopped off in the bathroom to steal a complimentary robe, trusting I would be able to get back for my clothes when I rescued Woodrow. I made for the other door, stepping over a couple copulating like dogs, their matching puppy puppets barking encouragement. I couldn't help myself. I had to laugh, which the couple was uncertain was directed their way, if I was laughing at them or with them.

A bearded man guessed my intentions toward escape. "Where are you going, Randy?"

"I need some air," I said. "It's a bit much all at once." This could not be more antithetical to something Randy would have said before this flesh buffet, but I couldn't keep up the pretense so close to a quick exit.

He snorted. His eyes were more dilated than this lighting would require. What was he on? The addition of heavy drugs worried me. It was a factor I hadn't anticipated, as much as I could have developed much of an idea otherwise. I was skimming the surface of this experience, trying to absorb the least amount of it that I could. I followed Woodrow's orders: enter, strip, place him, and leave before getting fingered in any sense. This man threatened to blow the last of these.

"It's your party, Randy. You might as well enjoy it while you can, am I right?"

Was this a threat? It was hard to tell. A stimulant coursed through his system. Maybe a hallucinogen as a chaser. He was doubly unpredictable. Everyone else in the room, as far as I could tell, had made their intentions for the evening as plain as could be. Aside from the creep wearing a full-face mask and a fluffy white robe, everyone else was naked and fondling one another without much concern for where I went or what I did. With my escape, the proportion of women prepared to entertain men came closer to balance.

What business was it of this guy what Randy did, in short?

I shrugged, not seeing anything else that needed to be said, and gripped the doorknob. He peeled my hand away from it, firm on the cusp of pain. "It's your party," he repeated more loudly, at me but not for me. "Enjoy it."

A few other sets of eyes turned to us now.

"Is Randy trying to leave?" asked the female dog vent. "You just got here, Randy. It's your party. Enjoy it."

Well, I had wanted to find the seedy underbelly of this Disney Land. Nothing better than an orgy to get people to open up, but their phrasing made my skin crawl.

I made gruff, faint apologies, promises that I would be back in a minute, as I assumed Randy would have, and tried the knob again.

The dog woman was at my shoulder by then. "You can't leave your party," she said into my ear. I felt a prick in the back of my arm. "Don't make this any more difficult than it has to be, Randy. You knew what would happen. Be blessed."

My arm burned with numbness, spreading through my body before I could try to pull free.

When I woke, my head throbbed, cloudy. I'd been drugged by something. A narcotic, I guessed. I did not feel blissed out, and that was a relief. I held onto the sobriety of the pain in my arms, focusing on it.

I could not tell how much time had passed. The room was still dimly lit. I could not hear much over a roar as though I were near a jet engine. Had the drug damaged my hearing? There were people near me, but the electricity of sex had abated.

My arms were tied behind my back. Not handcuffs, but not anything as simple as fabric. Zip ties. If no one were around, I could break out of these with a little work. There was no chance of this now.

Drugging me was one thing. That could almost have an excuse. As they kept saying, it was a party. Tying me up afterward more than suggested I had put myself in more trouble than any of this was worth. I was nude again. Still wearing the mask, which calmed me a little. I could see, but whoever was out there might not know that I was watching them.

As far as I could tell, aside from the zip ties, no one had touched me while I was knocked out. I adjusted my position to one fractionally more comfortable, though the nerves in my arm screamed their objections. This was the same room, the same carpet scratching me. I could not hope that my current state was a sex game gone wrong.

I whispered for Woodrow to help me out with intel, but I couldn't hear him through the roar. If they had done something to Woodrow, I didn't know how I would be able to forgive myself for bringing him here, even though it was technically his fault. I could only hope there would be enough time to parse out who was to blame for what.

I opened my eyes fully, trusting that they could not be so observant in the dimness to notice the shifting of my mask.

At least a dozen people crowded the room. Their sizes varied wildly, but they were united in wearing brown togas like pictures of the Ancient Greeks in textbooks. All had their faces hidden beneath hoods, depriving me of any advantage I might have had.

I could not register much shock at this turn. Sure, why not a death cult? I was the closest thing to a lead that I'd found. If I survived this, how could I get the police to take this tip seriously? I would deal with surviving first and convincing cops later.

One turned to me. Their posture was relaxed as they let the others know that I was conscious. They were not worried or guilty, so not their first rodeo.

I couldn't expect that they had drugged and tied me up in hopes of having a long conversation about recent developments in puppet manufacturing. Either they thought I was Randy, which meant that none of them were killers but might change that soon, or they knew that I wasn't, which meant that they were the killers and would not think much of a repeat performance for someone who stuck their nose where it didn't belong.

I called out to Woodrow again. How were the cultists even able to hear one another over the roar?

Then it hit me. I was alone in hearing the sound. It was the dummies, Woodrow among them, sounding like the choirs of Hell. I could not penetrate their unintelligible moaning to suss out what had caused this. It was the sort of primal sound you would expect from a crippled, dying animal who knows they have no hope of survival, though there is no real sound fully comparable to so many beings who never raised their voices, who did not have a limit to these, screaming with all they had. Whatever had happened while I was unconscious, why dummies were out of their minds, was nothing I could know.

I ordered myself not to hear the dummies, to focus on the humans conspiring, but my mind couldn't separate these tracks.

The cult chanted something I was incapable of hearing no matter how I strained my ears.

In front of me, I noticed a small vacancy, a place where my eyes told me there should have been a voice and wasn't.

On a cushion lay a dummy. It wasn't easy to clock much about him in the dimness, but he was a custom job. Nothing cheap or mass-produced. The proportions were out of whack--sharp cheekbones, a mouth like a gulping fish, cherry red hair--like I was supposed to recognize what it was meant to parody.

"Why aren't you screaming?" I whispered to him, hoping this wouldn't be considered an invitation to start. When everything else in the world is an inexplicable disaster, someone behaving normally becomes suspect.

Nothing. This dummy was empty, no personality to him. It made no sense to put so much effort into creating a dummy and never use him. At this con, it felt close to impossible, near blasphemy. Even the dummies sold in the vending hall would start expressing themselves within a few minutes of being used.

What did an empty dummy have to do with the screaming ones? The cult must be responsible for both somehow. Surely they couldn't know the difference.

They kept chanting, but I wasn't about to play by their script, the terrified victim awaiting his fate or their mercy.

"What are the chances you want to cut me loose so we can sort through what is going on?"

This did serve as a speedbump to their ritual. The chanting resumed after a few seconds, but even that interruption seemed to fluster them. Without the benefit of their facial features, I felt as though I were dealing with more dummies. I guessed that they were irritated at my interruption, which suited me fine. I hadn't kidnapped anyone, so I had the moral high ground.

"Listen, we may have gotten off on the wrong foot," I said, hoping blustering would at least allow me to live a little longer. If they wanted me dead, I would not have woken up, so they thought I had something more for them. They wanted my participation in this ritual.

"Quiet, Randy," said a chirping, cartoon voice. I had little doubt before that they were vents--almost definitely most of the same vents, though this room was less crowded than the orgy had been--but this interjection put that to rest.

One thing to my benefit was that, while ventriloquists did not look any certain way physically, they all had a certain desperateness to them. A ventriloquist wants to be someone else. Ventriloquists wish to speak but want to blame someone else for the consequences of their words.

I had seen them all--too much of them--already. I could describe them to the police, but this did not bother them. Randy knew them, certainly on a first-name basis, so they didn't see a reason that should worry them. Either way, they didn't expect the Adequate Rando to leave here to snitch on them, no matter who was under the mask. But, if that were the case, why bother hiding their faces?

"See, that's where we are coming to some confusion," I said, rolling my shoulders back. My muscles ached from how I had been positioned. I still didn't have an exact figure, but I revised that I had been unconscious for hours, my arms trapped the entire time. They didn't know when the drug would wear off and wanted to be safe. "I'm not Randy. You want him, right? I'm not even a vent."

She paused, turning her head to the others in consultation. "You have a dummy."

"I can't make him talk. I never got past 'the drave doy.'"

A different, smaller woman strode up to me, yanking off my mask. Those gathered were baffled or indifferent.

"That's not Randy," she said in shock, turning to the other cultists for a reaction.

They looked between themselves, or I guessed that was what they were doing. "Are you sure?" said a man in a childish falsetto.

"Yeah," growled a woman, "He's got the mask. He's got the dummy. He came here. I think it's the Adequate Rando."

The woman beside me removed a knife from her robe, placing the edge against my throat. I've never had a razor as sharp as this. Even my pulse let the blade nick me, a drop of blood rolling down my neck. "Throw your voice. If you don't, I am going to open an artery."

I clenched my teeth, trying to defend myself without moving my lip. It came out, "I an not da Adekit Rando."

Another cultist stepped forward, his voice contrived childishness. "Wandy was nevew a good vent, though. What does that pwove?"

"Yeah," said a cartoonish grumble, "but he wasn't that bad."

A woman stomped on my thigh. "Where is Randy?"

"Dead," I groaned, "back in the Catskills, days ago. I saw the body. Someone slit his throat." I looked up at the girl with a knife to my throat, but she was immune to my accusation.

"And you stole his dummy, costume, and reservation to come here and masquerade as him? Why?" the woman on my thigh asked in a normal voice.

The sound of a voice that wasn't forced was music to me. "I wanted to find who did it. Looks like I did."

"Vent Con is only for ventriloquists," said the woman, easing off my leg, "not looky-loos."

"To be fair," I said, "you are trying to kill me, so maybe we can skip the lecture about impoliteness?"

The woman stepped back. "Yeah, that's not Randy. Did you hear that sass?" She put a hand on the shoulder of the girl still holding a knife on me. "Put that away."

"Shouldn't we sacrifice him anyway?" asked a man, his voice also returned to normal, "Because he witnessed the rites? We made the vessel. We shouldn't waste it."

"He witnessed nothing," said the voice of a little girl, though I could not find its source in front of me. "He's no good to us. He can't even fake an M. He'd just ruin the dummy and not appease the gods."

"How can we let him go?" said another voice, which also did not belong to any one person.

"He's not our responsibility," said the girl with the knife. "Randy is dead. The spirits know this is true. His sacrifice is lost to us."

Murmuring came throughout the room, many voices, but it was difficult to tell how many throats produced them.

The dummies in the room had stopped screaming. Most were silent, but Woodrow was shouting for me. Not as though he were aware of what was happening, but that he wanted to harken me back to the room because he had seen a clue. A little late for that.

One of them put a hood on my head without even an apology. They removed their robes, packed them up, and shuffled out of the room as though this was only a disappointing social event.

I did not speak. Woodrow tried to describe who they were but gave up. There was no point to it. He suffered from face blindness when the face was made of muscle and skin instead of foam and wood, meaning it was all "he looks like an anorexic Santa" and "check out the schnozzle on that one."

Other dummies left, but they were little more coherent. Whatever had transpired--or almost did--they had not been aware.

I did not know that they would not kill me still until the last of them left, shutting off the light. I was alone and naked in a hotel room in Kentucky, bound by zip ties, but I was alive. The con would end tomorrow morning, whether or not I overestimated my ability to break out of the cuffs. A maid would come to clean this room and find me. I had already come up with a story about being beaten and robbed. I would decline to have the police called. It could work.

Woodrow tried to talk to me but eased up when it was clear I did not feel it was safe to reply. "Whatever's happening, we're gonna get out of this. We're partners, right? This isn't how it's gonna end, I'll tell you that."

Half an hour later, the door opened. Someone knelt beside me. I feigned unconsciousness until they used a sharp knife to cut the cuffs and helped me to a bed.

When they removed my mask, I saw that it was Miss Muffet.

Her expression was that of someone trying to hide their true emotions behind a smile.

She rubbed my shoulders tenderly, half to check for circulation and half a sort of affection. I almost preferred the numbness to the pins and needles. I didn't have it in me to fight against her, and she kept that knife close to her.

"You made it through," she said, putting her head on me. "I wasn't sure that you would. I hoped, but... I didn't get enough time with you to feel you out."

"You put a knife to my throat."

"That I did," she said brightly. "I'm glad I was right to."

"Why?"

She sighed. "They had to think I was serious about knowing that you weren't Randy. If I raised my objections politely, you wouldn't have stood a chance. Not good for the gods and certainly bad for you."

"And how did you know that? That I wasn't Randy?"

She looked embarrassed, slightly guilty as though caught stealing a candy bar and not confessing to involvement in a murder. "I knew he was dead. I don't think the dead rise often. Also," she looked downward, "Randy didn't convert to Judaism recently."

Amid this possible rescue, I had forgotten my state of undress. She found the costume in the other room and helped me into the pants. I was not ready to wear anything more.

"You could have killed me," I said. "Or your cult could have."

"It wouldn't have helped anything. You aren't a part of all this." She snickered into her hands. "I mean, good job crashing a sacred orgy, buddy, but you aren't one of us."

"Charlie."

Her brow furrowed. "Pardon?"

"My name is Charlie."

She extended a hand. "And I'm Miss Muffet. A pleasure to meet you."

She shook my hand even though I didn't offer it.

"You just saved me from being sacrificed--"

"I told you," she said, "we couldn't have sacrificed you."

"--And I don't get to know your name?"

She breathed slowly, measuring her words. "You get to know it if you need to, but I don't think you need to."

I didn't see a reason to argue this.

"You mind if you put that knife somewhere over there?" I asked, waving to the dresser. "It's hard to trust you when you could still gut me."

She walked across the room and put the knife in a drawer without objection. As she returned, I couldn't help finding her face cherubic.

"That girl is trouble with a capital T," Woodrow interjected, as though he could hear me soften.

"You can trust me, Charlie," she said, though maybe only for her satisfaction.

"Can I?"

She held my wrists, lifting them until my hands were on her collarbone. "Put your hands around my neck."

I did it without thinking, the motion uncomfortable in my shoulders, but not outright painful anymore.

"Now choke me to death."

I dropped my hands immediately.

"What the hell?"

"You didn't choke me, so you trust me," she said, grinning, as though this was the clearest way to express this.

"This bitch is psycho," Woodrow said.

I looked over at him. She saw this, lifting him from the closet and bringing him over to me. She traced his lips and eyes, familiarly.

Muffet placed him next to me, though she kept her eyes on him.

"Do you know her?" I whispered to Woodrow.

He was quiet, considering it. "I recognize that, the way she just touched me. She was one of Randy's girls."

"Are you talking to Woodrow?" she asked, confused at the thought that I might be.

If she wouldn't tell me her actual name, I couldn't envision the world where I would give her my secrets.

"Why would Randy have been involved in a death cult?"

I asked instead, to deflect her question.

She inhaled sharply through her teeth as though struck in the stomach. "These rituals are as old as oracles. There is an unbroken lineage of ventriloquial worship for millennia. This is not a death cult. Far from. We say that the people who go into the dummies live forever, but I don't call that living or dying."

Go into the dummies. The empty dummy's purpose became clearer now, seeming ghastly, a coffin the shape of the soul that would occupy it. "So, you're saying he was just religious?"

She looked up at me with sad eyes. "Indebted. Randy understood his place. Or I thought he did, but I hoped he didn't."

"But he was a shit vent," I said.

"I know," she giggled despite herself. "He thought he would learn the mysteries, but he just didn't have the talent." Without moving her lips, she added,

"My brave boy." She sucked her bottom hip into her mouth, seeming childish for it. Childish, but not innocent. "You shouldn't have come. You weren't going to avenge his death coming here. It was a stupid thing for you to do, even for a friend."

"I wasn't avenging him," I said, leaning back on the bed. She joined me without being invited, and I couldn't say that I was sorry for it. "I was trying to save my life. I was the last person anyone saw talking to Randy, and then he turned up dead. I have an allergy to law enforcement, so better I know who did it when they came for me."

"I made clear what would happen if he came to Vent Con."

My eyes may have bugged out. "Why couldn't he just not go this year?"

She gave a thin smile, thinking me stupid. "He was a part of our group. He knew there would be a price, eventually, but you never think it is going to be you."

"So, you killed him??"

She said, hand to her face, thumb on her jaw, "You aren't getting this. It would only have been a sacrifice if he went into a dummy. If he offed himself on his own, outside the con, that's just suicide."

"That didn't look like a suicide." I expected that one of us would be dead in the next ten minutes, and I intended to be as obnoxious to her as I would until that moment.

She missed this intention though. "I thought he did a good job." She nodded to the knife across the room. "He stabbed himself in the neck and dragged it across without hesitation. I don't know that I would have that strength."

This didn't accord with her apparent devotion, being glad a sacrifice got away. "Why would you want to stop him from coming?"

She shook her head to one side. "I'm tired of this all, the pull of knowing I could be the next name drawn. It's not worth it. If he didn't come, the ritual wouldn't happen. We would have prepared it for him. I doubt they could have time to recalibrate. Granted, you were a surprise, but I rolled with it when I saw you. You were the reason they couldn't retrofit it, so thanks, I guess."

I realized that I believed her. I didn't think she had killed him, and none of the other cultists seemed to know he was dead. "Puppet death cult" would not have been the solution I expected, but the pieces fit enough.

She rested her head against my shoulder, rubbing the other one, her ministrations more clinical than affectionate now.

"Why would Randy kill himself?"

She nestled closer. I couldn't imagine her ever being one of "Randy's girls." "He knew why I was coming to him. Maybe it was inevitable that it would be his time." Her voice dropped in volume until she almost breathed the words, "He was going to die, either way, I suppose, and better to do it himself than be surprised by it here."

"Better not to be a dummy," Woodrow said it, and I echoed.

She frowned. "That might have factored in. He never liked dummies."

I glanced over at Woodrow, who said, "No shit."

"He--your dummy... Woodrow--he's normal," she said, "none of us are in there. We couldn't have entrusted one of us to Randy. That's not how we use the vessels."

"I could have told you that, Chuck," Woodrow said.

I said, more sarcastic than I might have meant, "There are easier ways to make a dummy."

She smirked as though I were being intentionally stupid. Maybe she was right. "It's more than a dummy. The person is anchored. They can't speak anymore, but they are there. It has to be done to honor those who have come before."

"What do you do with the body?"

She sniffed, now concerned that I might actually be lacking in reason. "What body?"

"When you put them into the dummies, what do you do with the body left over?"

"Oh," her eyes brightened in relief. "No, there are no bodies. Or the bodies walk out of there, but the person isn't in there any longer. They are vacant, more or less. More like a dummy, just going through motions." Woodrow offered an expletive to this summation of his existence. "Thoughts and memories for a little while. They go about their business, but then they just keel over. Maybe it's a car accident or apparent overdose, something like that. Then they are properly dead. If we'd gotten Randy, his body would have returned to the Catskills, maybe done a couple of shows, but he wouldn't have been in there any longer. He would have stayed with us, in a dummy. Then he would have just been in one of them until... I don't know. Until he wasn't. Whatever happens takes a long time. The texts say that they are conscious the whole time." She looked away, sadly. "I can't blame Randy for killing himself. I might have done the same. Whatever he was going to do, I wanted him walking into it consciously."

I told her that I thought it was a true existential horror, thinking he might have been stuck in a dummy forever.

"We aren't doing anything illegal," she said, as though this was defense enough.

"You kidnapped me and cut my neck."

She tittered. "Sex game. You forgot the safe word. And you don't want your name attached to this. What we do is not a crime. No one goes into this blind."

It was unnatural, but she was right. There was nothing much to their ritual that would fall under the aegis of the law if I didn't press how they had tried to involve me. A vent killed himself after a show. In the eyes of the police, I had done more wrong than a cult whose members died a few weeks after. I wasn't out of out for vengeance, only answers, and I had them now. Far more questions, broader ones about the shape of the world, that was true. But Randy's death was resolved as much as it could be. His soul was wherever those of suicide went instead of locked inside a shell of wood. That is, if a soul existed at all. Stranger things must than souls.

Muffet and I spent the night together. Nothing sexual. I wasn't certain if she did it for my benefit or hers, but I was glad of the company in case her compatriots returned.

I didn't trust her entirely, but I trusted her spider, who assured me that what she had told me was true.

In the morning, we had a breakfast that was less awkward than you might think when someone has had a knife against your throat during an occult ritual to turn you into a puppet. I had the pancakes and her the omelet, each of us eating from the other's plate without asking. The night prior--the confession more than the attempt at a sacrifice--had induced a quick intimacy between us.

"What if I tell someone?" I asked.

She giggled as though I were the funniest thing she had ever seen. "You have fun trying to convince anyone that there is a vent cult carrying out pre-Christian rituals."

I laughed without meaning at the thought of that conversation.

"Don't you get sweet on the psycho chick," Woodrow warned, but there was no danger of that.

"The cops will still want to speak with me. Fleeing the crime scene and all. I doubt explaining any of this would help anyway."

"Would his suicide note?" She rummaged in her bag until she found a letter. I refused to touch it, not wanting my prints on it. She flipped it open. Dated, signed, details and reasoning.

"He wanted it all out before he cut his throat in case the heat somehow fell on me," she said. I hadn't known him to be that considerate, but I was not an adorable girl with a messy pixie cut with whom he practiced arcane magic. "I think it would hold up enough now."

I accepted the letter. I would make copies at Kinko's and mail them to people who knew him, sending the original to the club itself. It would get to his parents that way, and someone would show it to the police. Randy was not interesting enough to investigate any further.

Finishing up my pancakes, Muffet asked, "Where are you going now?"

"Vent Haven," I said. "I promised Woodrow. He's ready to retire."

"You're sure?" she leaned closer to him, appreciating the curves of his face. "He's such a nice figure. I could give him a good home if you don't want him."

"If you leave me with this psycho bitch because she has a nice set of cans, and she fluttered her lashes at you," said Woodrow, "you are going to wish you got sacrificed."

"I'm sure," I told her.

She left with a hug. I made her promise that she was serious about leaving the cult. I did not believe her when she swore that she would. I would be sorry to hear she had ended up another victim, but she knew the consequences of this enough to make her own informed decision. If she killed herself the moment that she knew her name was drawn, if she turned that knife on her pretty neck, it was her business. I didn't expect I would be thrilled to receive that news. Without her name, though, I didn't see how I would.

It wasn't until we were safe in the car that I asked Woodrow why he hadn't warned me that Randy was a part of this cult.

"You think I would have neglected to mention something like that?" he said, sounding genuinely offended. "Randy would go off without me. I'm not his mother. I figured he was getting some tail and wanted to be the only wood in the room."

"He took you to orgies, Woodrow!"

"Okay, yeah, but maybe it's weirder one-on-one. I wouldn't suspect it was anything like that. How could I? If spooky shit happened after, whatever they did to us blocked me from knowing about it."

We didn't talk much more on the way to the museum, though he sang along with the radio.

For some reason, it didn't occur to me that people would be outside Vent Haven, which looked less like a museum than a posh house in the suburbs. The way I had played it in my head, we would have a solemn conversation, and then I would bring him inside. An audience made that script vanish.

Looking at the door to the museum, I said, "You don't have to stay here. I like having you around. Partners, right?"

He sighed heavily. "I get that you need to say that, and I appreciate the sentiment, bud, but I've wanted this for a decade. After this weekend? Let's just say I could use the quiet." He whispered a laugh. "Now, I don't want you weeping and gnashing them pearly whites, Chuckles."

"Didn't say I was going to."

We sat in the car for a minute, the radio playing low. He huffed. "I mean, you could squeeze out a couple of tears. It's polite."

I patted him on the leg, which was enough for him.

"What are you up to now?" Woodrow asked.

"I figured I would check out that diner, see if Winona is around."

He grunted, which I took for approval. "You going back to the club?"

"Nah," I said, "not much reason to. I don't think anyone will much blame me or miss me."

"Nothing holding you back?"

"Right."

He was quiet for a moment. "You going to make me beg for a hug or what?"

In all my years talking with dummies, I don't think one ever asked for physical affection. I lifted him and, without an ounce of self-consciousness, hugged him.

"You bring your waitress here someday," he said, faking being choked up (or maybe not faking it). "You tell her how I was the best dummy you ever met."

"No," I said, "I'll tell her you are one of the best men."

He guffawed; his act dropped. "Hell of a punchline to end on, buddy. That's why you could never hack it as a vent: no sense of timing."