I was eight years old the last time the puppet show came to Velmont Hollow.
People don't talk about it anymore. You won't find it in the paper archives, not a whisper in the local newsletter. Not even an entry in the town's dusty, rarely visited historical museum. But those who were there—those who remember the scent of varnish and ash—they know. They just pretend they don't.
I tried asking my mother about it once. I was thirteen. I brought it up at dinner after finding an old flyer under the floorboards of the attic. She looked at me with eyes wide enough to seem afraid, and then, without a word, she picked up my plate, dumped the food into the trash, and said, "We do not speak of that in this house."
I never asked again.
But I never forgot either.
Because I remembered the stage. I remembered the smile.
It was too wide to be human, yet not painted like a puppet. A grin carved into the space between flesh and wood. It didn't look like joy.
It looked like payment.
---
The year I turned twenty-eight, I returned to Velmont Hollow. Not because I wanted to. Because I had to.
After years of scraping by in city life, struggling as a burned-out journalist and washed-up horror podcaster, I found myself out of money, out of friends, and out of reasons to keep pretending I belonged anywhere else. So I went back to the town that didn't want to be remembered.
Velmont hadn't changed much. The trees were taller. The gas station had finally replaced the rusted-out pumps. But the people still gave you that same slow stare if you talked too loud or asked the wrong questions.
The memories came back the moment I stepped off the bus. Not vivid at first. Just shadows.
But that night, during the eclipse, the shadows turned real.
---
It started with the sound.
Wood on gravel.
I was walking past St. Bartholomew's field—you know the one, the empty lot across from the broken cemetery fence where nothing grows, no matter how much sun it gets? The place kids used to dare each other to touch. The field where Benny Harper vanished in 1993.
There, in the darkness, I heard wheels turning.
I stopped. Looked both ways. Nothing. Then I turned back toward the field.
And I saw them.
Six wagons.
Old, wooden, black-lacquered, and moving slowly, creaking forward without horses or drivers. As if being pulled by memory itself. One after another, they rolled to a stop in a perfect circle at the center of the lot.
Then silence.
The air grew cold. Colder than autumn ever gets in Velmont.
And something deep in my ribs began to ache. Something I hadn't felt since I was eight.
---
By sunrise, the stage was standing.
No tools. No workers. No sound. It was just there. As if it had always been there.
Red velvet curtains frayed at the edges. A carved wooden arch with seven faceless dolls nailed to its crown. Each one slightly turned toward the next, as though whispering something down the line.
In the center of the stage was a crate.
Tall. Smooth. Blackened with age. And etched across its front, in letters that weren't painted or burned but grown into the wood, were the words:
> "TO BE OPENED AT TWILIGHT.
BY THE ONE WHO REMEMBERS THE SMILE."
---
The townspeople walked by without a word. No gasps. No phones raised for pictures. No gossip. They saw it the same way you see a stranger's grave: present, but not for them. Like their eyes skipped it, or refused to let it register.
That was the first time I realized: they didn't forget.
They chose not to see.
---
I came back that evening.
Drawn by something I couldn't name. A pull in my chest like a thread being tugged by a hand I couldn't see. I told myself it was curiosity. I told myself it was for the podcast, or for nostalgia, or maybe just to prove it wasn't real.
But I knew better.
I was the boy who remembered the smile.
---
The air around the stage was thick with the smell of varnish, smoke, and sugared meat. A scent I couldn't describe but would never forget. A carnival scent. A funeral scent.
I climbed the wooden stairs, each one groaning as if they hadn't been stepped on in decades. Or perhaps they remembered being burned.
The crate sat dead center, same as before.
But the inscription had changed.
Now it read:
> "THANK YOU FOR REMEMBERING."
Beneath it, carved deeper:
> "EVERY DEAL DESERVES AN ENDING."
I stared at it for too long. Then, heart hammering, I reached for the latch.
The crate hissed as it opened.
Inside: a marionette.
But not just any marionette. This one looked exactly like me.
Same haircut. Same old flannel. Even the tiny scar on my right brow, from when I crashed my bike in front of the old mill.
Its eyes were made of green glass. And they moved.
Just slightly.
Tilting toward me.
Its mouth was sewn shut with red thread.
And then I heard it.
Not out loud.
Inside me.
Behind my eyes, behind my tongue, behind my bones.
A voice I hadn't heard in twenty years.
> "Welcome back, Jonah. We've been waiting to pull your strings."
---
I dropped the puppet.
Ran off the stage.
Didn't stop running until I was halfway down Main Street, breath tearing at my chest.
But when I got home...
There was something hanging from my front porch.
Another puppet.
Not mine.
This one was of a child.
Small. Round-faced. With a red ball cap.
Ryan Harper.
Benny Harper's nephew.
Gone from school three days ago. His parents said he ran away.
Now his puppet swung in the night breeze. Eyes wide. Mouth sewn. Wooden body painted with bruises that hadn't been there in life.
Carved into the sole of its foot:
> "ONE EVERY DECADE."
---
The puppet turned toward me.
Not the wind.
It turned.
And the sewn mouth twitched.
Then came the whisper.
A chorus of wood and string and time:
> "The puppet maker has come back. And Grin always collects."