Pulling The Strings

Cole's Camaro pumped out bluish smoke as he roared it down the short, sun-baked strip toward the oversized parking lot. He was coming in on fumes after a long day on the road, but he gunned the engine anyway: Cole was a man who believed in making the right kind of entrance, and the awareness that he'd reached the last of his gasoline didn't bother him much. He'd stolen the Camaro outside Wickes Falls that morning, and tomorrow he'd steal something else.

Meanwhile, he looked around with interest.

Cole had been to Wall Drug and South Of The Border and all the rest of America's twisted little roadside docking bays, the kind that were heralded by miles and miles' worth of tantalizing signs, tempting drivers from the billboards:

Mystery Cave!

in lurid green letters, or a bubble font saying

Don't Miss The Boat!

just a few hours later. Along with all the rest of the nation's drivers, Cole had started seeing the signs for this place about three hundred miles away, a slow but steady succession of intriguing messages increasing in frequency as he drew closer over the wheat fields.

Beady eyes swept the parking lot, looking first for undercover cops, second for the next car he wanted, and third to take in the scenery. A building sprawled nearby, the kind that had been built in the 1940s and then had endless additions tacked on wherever they'd had the cash: he figured the original building was probably just a closet or a bathroom by now, deep inside. At the far end was a shabby-looking hotel, but Cole wasn't going to stay there.

He avoided hotels. Hotels were difficult to scam.

Besides, there was a large truckstop about a hundred yards across the wheat. Cole had no truck, but he did have a forged Teamsters card. It would get him a bunk for a few hours and a shower for a few minutes, tomorrow morning before he grabbed a car and continued on.

He knew he'd certainly never see the Camaro again. Here in the corner of the parking lot it would stay, out of gas and wiped of fingerprints, until it occurred to someone to check the VIN. When they did, they'd find it had been popped off its rivets.

Quickly Cole took his duffel bag out of the trunk. It was full of dirty laundry, and sooner or later his Teamsters card would take care of that too. He stuffed last night's shirt in there and then adjusted his black leather jacket over a blue workshirt. The back of the jacket glowed with a large patch, a snarling tiger with flames for eyes. The jacket was one of his few trademarks, just about the only thing obvious he chose to wear, the only thing people might remember after he'd gone by. He knew it was a bad idea to be a person people might remember, but the jacket had belonged to his brother, and Cole could be a sentimental man.

He glanced to both sides and then darted a hand beneath the seat. The revolver was there, a .38 snubbie that had also belonged to his brother. Cole didn't really know whether or not carrying the gun was legal in this state, but that was okay since he didn't really care, either. He shoved it into the back of his frayed denim pants, hoisted his duffel, and then strode away from the Camaro forever.

Even as he reached the long crosswalk over the state highway, Cole could tell that the roadside attraction ahead of him wasn't likely to justify five hundred miles' worth of suspenseful signs. The place was called Frankie's Fortress of Fun, and sure enough it had been built to resemble one of the huge forts from the old TV serials, where the cavalry waited to battle the Indians in a drab world made before Technicolor. The siding was all logs, stacked vertically and painted a thick brown, their tops cut off at different heights to give a snaggle-toothed effect.

The palisade stretched for some 200 feet down the long, pot-holed street, but Cole knew it was only like that in the front, facing the Interstate. The sides had Western murals that looked like they'd been done by a fourth grade class, and he knew that because he'd piloted the Camaro carefully around the back of the Fortress, looking for cops and exits and places to hide, if necessary.

Life had made Cole a careful man.

He pushed through the broad swinging doors at the front of the place, below a large sign of old-fashioned neon now turned off in the glare of the late afternoon sun. His eyes found the restaurant first, at the front of the building like he'd known it would be, ideal for a dine-and-dash. In the back was a large, bright sign telling him he was about to enter The Cleanest Bathrooms On The Interstate, but then he'd already known that. One of the billboards had told him so, fifty miles back.

Just back from the restaurant was a gift shop, then a barbershop, facing another gift shop right across the wide, dusty central hall. The other gift shop was meant to look like an antique store, which clashed with the ice-cream parlor just alongside it. A skinny hallway passed between the two stores, though, and Cole squinted at a cheesy arrowed sign on the ceiling above the hall:

Frankie's Museum Of Wonder

, said the sign.

Nearest the front door on the other side of the ice-cream parlor, facing the restaurant, was an old-fashioned candy store. Cole knew that the entire establishment, including the truckstop a parking lot away, was no doubt owned by the same person; the stores all had different themes and the employees, drab and teenaged as only midwestern roadside attraction workers could be, all dressed differently.

But it didn't matter. A dollar spent at the restaurant would go into the same pocket as a dollar spent on chintzy antiques.

The only thing missing was a bar, but miles of signs had informed him that Frankie's Fortress Of Fun did, indeed, have a place that slung booze. He decided it probably had a separate entrance, and that it was probably behind the restaurant in whatever space offset the Museum on this side. The glass doors had been central to the building, after all, so there had to be

something

over there.

Cole had an eye that noticed things like that.

He glanced around again to make sure he'd missed nothing, then strolled back toward the nation's Cleanest Bathrooms. Somewhere back there, he suspected, there'd be lockers for rent; he found a big, shiny wall of them facing the mens' room, and he threw the duffel bag gratefully into Locker #13. Before he clanged the door shut, he pulled two hundred of other peoples' dollars out of a little bag inside the duffel, folded them into his money clip, and headed back toward the glass front doors.

He checked outside only briefly, long enough to make sure he'd been right in guessing about the bar, then surveyed the street once again for cops. He'd pulled off a gas-station theft that afternoon about three hundred miles back, but he was sure nobody had seen him well enough to send John Law this far. Besides, the score had been minimal and the county huge; he doubted the sheriff would have thought it worth starting up his cruisers.

Satisfied with what he'd seen of Frankie's Fortress of Fun, Cole nodded to himself and stepped in out of the west-falling sunshine to go steal some dinner.

* * *

He was picking some meatloaf out of his teeth as he left the restaurant, walking with careful nonchalance: he had a plan. He knew the restaurant staff would try to find him outside, assuming he'd leave his bill and immediately try to skip tow. So Cole would not do that. He'd kill some time while the hunt blew over. He had a brain that could measure odd things: the amount of time an Interstate diner manager would spend looking for a man who'd skipped out on a tab totalling $15.96, for example.

He figured that answer would be "minimal."

So he decided he'd need to kill about thirty minutes before slipping quietly back out into the twilight, then having a beer at the bar, then coming back to grab his bag out of the locker before leaving Frankie's Fortress of Fun behind him. Next after that? A bed and a shower at the truckstop. Then an early-morning car theft, and after that?

The next roadside stop. Then the next. Then the next.

He spied a trashcan in the corner by the antique store and tossed the toothpick toward it, not really noticing when he missed. Down the hall, then, toward the Museum Of Wonder before, with a nod at the bored-looking attendant, he went to open a plain black door. "It's a dollar," the attendant protested.

"No problem." In a world where a dollar could purchase an alibi, Cole was okay with paying. He smiled at the girl, ducked through the door, and settled down to wait his half-hour.

The Museum Of Wonder was... not terribly Wonderful. Glass display cases edged an L-shaped hallway leading toward a curtained doorway, and from the cases various oddities stared back at Cole as he walked slowly past: shrunken heads. Scrimshaw. A poem written on a grain of rice. Flint arrowheads. A small pile of greenish stuff that claimed to be atomic glass. A scuffed red Fiestaware plate, similarly atomic. At the end waited a whole range of improbable taxidermy: jackalopes. Chupacabras. Jersey devils. A snake with four heads.

Cole did not want to admit he was impressed by any of these, but he did think that the Fiesta plate would be worth something if he could clean it up. A quick glance at the lock told him he could grab the plate out of the case in about five seconds, but he'd already noticed a pair of cameras covering the whole hallway. So nope. He whistled aimlessly as he strolled, an uptempo version of the fiddle solo from "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence."

The curtained doorway at the back waited beneath an arch, hand-painted back in the 1970s based on the font, that told of a Wonder Of Wonders in the hall beyond.

Biggest Puppet Stage In The Country

, the arch boasted, and so of course Cole pushed the curtain aside and went in. Florid restaurant managers in search of people who'd skipped their bill did not, in his experience, look in puppet theatres.

Someone had written some graffiti with a silver Sharpie just inside the doorway, where the heavy curtain rested against it. The graffiti said

Don't look in her eyes.

But Cole was not the sort of man to pay attention to graffiti, so perhaps it didn't matter that he didn't even see the warning as he brushed past it; perhaps it did.

Time would tell.

The room was vast, much larger than he'd thought it would be; it suggested that, later, the bar on the far side of the restaurant would probably be huge. He reflected that there might be a stage there, then decided it was unlikely any bar manager here could attract a house band to play regularly, way out here in the boonies.

The room waited, dark and dusty, a massive cube of old brick and concrete. Dim footlights defined an aisle between seats that smelled as though they'd last seen an audience ten years before; at the back of the room, a stage slashed across the far wall with a thick purple curtain draped across it. Cole took a deep, musty breath, feeling a sudden sense of weirdness, and then stepped into the theatre.

The curtain falling behind him felt somehow definite, permanent. Like he would not be able to get back through unless he left now. But his breath turned into a chuckle at that thought, for Cole was not a man who'd ever shied away from the sense of danger that made most people run the other way.

He never had. He didn't this time, either. He marched down the aisle instead.

The sense of weirdness, of unreality, grew as he passed the rows of seats, grew until it hung thick in the air even as he sucked it into his lungs, and unaccountably he thought about the revolver in his waistband, a solid comfort pressing against his spine. He swallowed and carried on, eyes wide, until he stopped at the edge of the stage and stared, a little unnerved.

Marionettes piled the stage, stuffed into every corner, a frozen tangle of oddly jumbled limbs and bleak, staring eyes, all of them glittering in the dim light. He scanned the puppets briefly, not wanting to keep eye contact with any of them, until he realized that they weren't looking at him: they were looking at another puppet, front and center, standing among a little ring of fellow puppets. He shook his head a moment, confused as to why they stood when all the other marionettes lay in a heap, until he realized their strings were all wedged up in the lights above the stage, behind the curtain.

As if they waited for hands to come and bring them to life.

Fear gripped him suddenly, the thought that these puppets were more than puppets: that they were living creatures, simply hibernating awhile until something moved them. But his fear did not come from the puppets themselves; no, his fear came from the

something

he sensed, the thing that would come to take up their strings, to make them go.

He whirled, blinking, thinking again about the gun, for suddenly he felt that he was not alone. But the circle he spun around in, feet sliding in the dust, simply returned him to the strangely frozen tableau in front of him, the ring of marionettes staring at the other one. The one in the front.

She stood there, poised as if ready to start dancing, a blonde shape of angles and joints inside a short black dress. High boots crept up her wooden shins, and a long-ago painter had crossed her thighs with fishnet stockings. Her face was no more expressive than any other puppet anywhere, but

her

eyes?

Hers looked straight at him. They glittered strangely.

He turned at once, not even thinking, as though something else was directing his limbs. He did not run from the theatre, but he didn't slow down either. Not until he lifted the heavy curtain once more, and stood blinking in the fluorescent lighting of the little L-shaped hallway, suddenly face to face with a jackalope.

He did not pause as he started walking again. Once again, he brushed past the silver graffiti. He'd take his chances with the restaurant manager. Right then, he needed a drink.

* * *

There were signs, for a man who could read them. Cole was usually good at reading signs. But within a couple of hours, several drinks and the straggling remnants of that sense of weirdness from the Wonder of Wonders Theatre had conspired to rob him of the ability to read much at all, other than the lipsticked curve of a beautiful woman's smile.

It was the tequila that did him in, though he would never know it: pungent but smooth, the three shots of Hornitos had slipped down his throat like water, joined by two beers in a quick parade. And Cole was not that large a man. The bar was a hum around him, a cocoon of interstate travelers, truckers, and hotel guests all unwinding, trying to forget the miles.

He even paid for the drinks, though only because the bar offered no easy way to scam the bartender. He didn't leave a tip, however; he never did. The last of the second Budweiser was on its last gasp when he realized there was a woman standing beside him.

She waited patiently, looking down at where he sat on the stool, an enigmatic little smile touching her painted lips. "Mind if I join you?" Her voice was pleasant, with a dusky local lilt behind the vowels, as though she'd lived her whole life in the area.

"Please," Cole croaked, not at all accustomed to this sort of thing. He was handsome enough, but his experience suggested that women didn't usually approach men like him at bars. His buzzed mind nudged at him, for there was something that seemed vaguely familiar about this woman: high boots, fishnets, short little dress, all of them tried to tell him something.

Yes, there were signs, for a man who could read them.

But another part of him was telling him something different, and that part? That part was rising steadily inside his jeans, already prodding at his thigh. He'd always had a thing for blondes. So he smiled as she sat, one of his better smiles, the smile of the con man and not the convict. "Hi there. Nice to meet you."

"But you haven't met me yet, buddy." She grinned at him, long legs crossing as she slid her butt onto the seat. Cole swallowed as he took in the slow, smooth curve of her hips, the narrow cinch of her waist. The woman was a knockout. "Buy me a drink."

"Sure." He raised a bold arm to the bartender, her confidence feeding is ego. "I'm having tequila."

"I can tell." Her voice seemed closer than the next stool over, a purr in his mind. "I'm a whiskey girl."

"Get the lady a Jack," Cole called out to the bartender.

"Make it a double," she added, a smile in her voice.

"Uh huh." The guy selling the drinks did not sound enthusiastic, his eyes wary as they studied the couple. No doubt, Cole realized, he'd noticed the change Cole had been pocketing and understood by now that no tip would be making its way into the jar.

Well. That was tough shit.

"What's your name, sweetheart?" The woman did lean in this time, her voice smoky against the low noise from the barroom. Her cleavage screamed at him.

"I'm Cole." He offered his hand, but she just gave it a scathing look as she stretched toward him, planting a red kiss on his cheek. He flinched back as if she'd struck him, her lips parting in a low chuckle.

"Scared of me, honey?"

"No." And he wasn't, really: not scared enough, anyway, though he

was

confused. "You, uh, come here often?"

"To the bar? Not really." She nodded as her drink arrived, swirling the brown liquid in an inadequately washed glass. "I live nearby, but usually the people in here are not who I'm after. Tonight, though, I figured I'd find someone interesting." Her eyes looked straight at him. They glittered strangely. "It felt like someone was telling me to come here. Like I wasn't even in control of myself. Does that sound strange, Cole?"

"If you say so." He was not prepared to say anything controversial to her, to offer any kind of disagreement or complaint. He was in someone else's hands now. His penis ached already, straining for her legs, her breasts. It had been awhile, he reminded himself, since he'd had a woman. "You, uh, you say you live here?"

He'd asked it hopefully, and her giggled reply told him she'd seen right through him. "Why? Want to come over to my house? Maybe get to know me?"

Cole felt his face split into a wide grin, but a new thought now occurred to him. His mind raced as he thought about how he could ask her if she was a hooker without offending her in case she wasn't. He struggled through the tequila, dredging up words. "How do I know you won't take advantage of me, leave me murdered at the side of the road?"

"Oh, I'll

definitely

take advantage of you," she cooed, "but murder's not what I have in mind. I just want a little companionship sometimes, you know? Someone to give me a little attention before he moves on?" He thought of her kiss, burning his cheek.

"No strings attached?" he pressed, his hand sliding along the bar until his fingers met hers.

She cocked her head at that, glittery eyes narrowing. "Funny you'd ask that, sweetie." She took a drink. "There are many different kinds of strings, Cole. Some are attached, some aren't. Some are tangled up in piles. Some make us do things. Some can be clipped. Some have peoples' hands guiding them." She tossed her hair back. "Don't worry about strings, honey, or where they're attached. Just worry about me."

"About you." His dick lurched. He wondered how far he wanted to go with this woman, but he also knew he was starting to lose the ability to decide. She was already trapping him, and he was minding less and less by the minute. His smile went feral. "I'd be happy to worry about you, gorgeous."

She smirked at the compliment. "Yeah?" She let her eyes drift lower, past the leather jacket, toward his pants. "Looks that way." She stirred when she felt his hand rest atop hers. "My. You're eager."