How to Sell a Haunted House

by Grady Hendrix

You’re going to do what Pupkin says, he told her, or Pupkin will hurt you. Louise was already in kindergarten. She knew that grown-ups only expected one answer when they talked to you in that voice. “Yes, Pupkin,” she whispered. Pupkin squirmed with pleasure and dragged himself over her throbbing hand, swallowing it up inside the hungry hole in his body, and she felt him flexing and rippling around her forearm, gripping her, holding on tight. Then he lodged himself underneath her chin, nuzzling himself against her neck. Pupkin’s going to have so much fun, he cooed.

“What does it take,” he whisper-growled, “to make someone in this family actually listen to me?” Louise felt a rush of affection for him.

I read about Bread and Puppet in Vermont and their antiwar puppet shows that ended with the entire audience breaking homemade bread together.

You don’t wear the puppet. The puppet wears you.

Clark’s parents had a rental house outside Worcester on a rural route, and we stopped by there to drop off our stuff before heading to the school. It’s hard to describe how depressing that place was except to say that every light fixture was a fluorescent tube and it only seemed survivable because we thought we’d be there for one night.