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“Putnam!” his mom called from the kitchen. “Is that you? Are you home?”

“Yeah!” he called back. “I’m home!” His voice sounded different to himself, quiet, though he was yelling.

“Get ready for dinner, then!”

He stepped into the hallway. “What are we having?”

His mom peeked her head around the corner of the kitchen. “Chicken and fried zucchini.”

Zucchini.

He blinked. In his mind, he saw his mother caressing the squash, putting a wig on top of it, carving out eyes, a nose, a mouth. He met her gaze across the hallway. His heart leaped in his chest. Was she looking at him strangely? Was that suspicion he saw behind her smile?

He looked away. This was insanity. This was crazy. Still, as his mom went back into the kitchen, he found that he was afraid to follow her, afraid he would see on the counter next to the sink one of those dolls from the theater.

He took a deep breath, trying to keep his hands from shaking. What was that theater? What were those dolls and why did their existence disturb him so? And why was it that the other figure, the dummy, did not have the same effect on him? Indeed, he found that when he thought of that seated form now, thought of those stuffed clothes in the chair, that wigmaker’s head facing the door, he felt oddly comforted.

“Putnam! Get your sister! It’s time to eat!”

“Okay, Mom!” His voice sounded better now, louder, more normal, and he walked out to the family room where Jenny was seated on the carpet in front of the television.

Next to her on the floor was one of the squash dolls, its vegetative face framed by frizzy black hair, its overlarge mouth fixed permanently in an unnatural smile.

Putnam’s heart lurched in his chest. “What are you doing with that?” he demanded. He grabbed the doll from the floor and picked it up, squeezed it. He felt the warm slimy squishiness in his hands and instinctively dropped the figure again, stomping on it with both feet, crushing it.

Jenny stared up at him in shock, then burst into tears. “You killed her!” she cried.

He looked down at the broken form beneath his foot. It was a plastic baby girl with chubby cheeks and platinum blond hair. A mass-produced toy, nothing more.

Jenny was still crying. “Why did you kill my Dolly?”

He tried to swallow, tried to talk, but his mouth stayed open and no saliva or words would come. He hurried back down the hall and into the bathroom, barely making it to the toilet before he threw up.

He was sick the next day, really sick, not faking it, but when he called Mr. Carr to tell the old man that he wouldn’t be in, there was silence on the other end of the line.

He cleared his throat. “I’ll probably be in tomorrow, though,” he said.

Mr. Carr’s voice was quiet. “You went up there, didn’t you? You saw the theater.”

He thought of lying, thought of saying nothing, but he looked at the Band-Aids on his finger and he found himself whispering, “Yes.”

Silence again. “They can’t get down,” Mr. Carr said finally. “They can never get down.”

Putnam shook his head into the receiver, though the old man couldn’t see it. “I can’t—” he began.

“I told you not to go up there.”

“I’ll send you the keys. I … I can’t go back.”

“You will,” Mr. Carr said sadly.

“No.” Putnam felt tears welling in his eyes.

“Yes you will.”

“No.” He was crying now, the tears coursing down his cheeks. “No.”

“Yes,” Mr. Carr said softly.

Putnam hung up the phone, held the receiver, picked it up again. “Yes,” he whispered to the dial tone.

The bookstore was the only place where he didn’t think about the theater, about the dolls. At home, in the mall, on the streets, he could not get the images out of his head. He kept anticipating appearances by one of the figures or its brethren, appearances which never arrived. He kept expecting to see the small horrid shapes in cars, behind bushes, in bathrooms, on shelves.

But when he came to work each morning, it was as if a switch was shut off inside his head, denying the thoughts and images all access to his brain. The moment he walked through the doorway, he was able to function normally,