remained tightly shut.
16
BY NOW, SEBASTIANO HAD GROWN almost used to Pagliaccio waking him during the night. But the clown had never shushed him before, nor had the little boy ever heard fear in the clown’s voice until now.
“You must get up,” the clown said as Sebastiano rubbed at his eyes and tried to focus. “Something terrible is going to happen. You’re not safe.”
Sebastiano sat up on his elbow, the gauzy shroud of sleep falling away as the words struck home. He focused on the puppet perched on the edge of the bed, only inches from his pillow, and the boy realized he had never seen terror in a smile before … particularly not in the clown’s embroidered grin.
“What—” he began.
“Get up, you little fool!” Pagliaccio snarled.
Sebastiano skidded away from the puppet, bunching himself up against the headboard, and stared at the clown. Pagliaccio cared for him; if he didn’t, why come tonight with this warning? But the clown had never spoken to him like this before.
“Sebastiano, please,” the puppet went on, softening his tone. “I do not know what the others will do … how far they will follow.”
“Follow what?” Sebastiano whispered, glancing at the beds where Carmelo and Giovanni still slept quietly.
Pagliaccio beckoned with a finger. “Come, but quietly. If they know you’re watching, it could go badly for you.”
The clown dropped off the edge of the bed and darted soundlessly across the wooden floor. Sebastiano pushed back his covers and rose to follow on tiptoes, careful to make the boards creak as little as possible. The door hung open a crack, and Pagliaccio had stopped just inside. Pressed against the bottom five inches of the door frame, the clown peered through the gap and gestured for the boy to do the same.
Sebastiano could not breathe. His heart had begun to pound in his chest and gooseflesh rose on his arms. Suddenly he wanted to do anything but look through the space between door and frame. Whatever frightened Pagliaccio, it terrified him. A sick wave of nausea rolled through him and his tired eyes burned, on the verge of tears. He shook his head, once, but Pagliaccio had already gone back to peering through the gap and did not see him.
Heart thumping in his ears, Sebastiano crept forward. Even before he reached the door, he could hear the small voices just outside. With Pagliaccio at his feet, the boy leaned forward and looked through the narrow gap into the corridor.
The puppets were on the march. Noah walked along the hall surrounded by his wife and son and a handful of animals. David and Goliath were side by side, and flanked by several saints with their faces half-painted, costumes hanging off—Father Gaetano’s works in progress—and trailing behind were monsters and musketeers and witches. Judy and an angel were still on the stairs, the angel helping her down, but of course there was no sign of Punch, for he had been taken apart and transformed into the leader of this colorful, magical nightmare parade. Lucifer.
The puppet had shed his angelic face during the priest’s catechism lesson, and now he had the Devil’s face. Once beautiful, the terrible Lucifer walked backward along the hall, exhorting the other puppets to follow.
“Come with me, friends,” Lucifer said, “and we will drag God from His throne. We live at His mercy and at the whim of His guiding hands, but only as long as He lives!”
Something long and sharp glinted in the Devil’s hands.
* * *
FATHER GAETANO AWOKE to the sound of Sebastiano shouting. The priest groaned, rising from sleep into irritation, thinking first not of trouble but of mischief. His eyelids fluttered in the darkness, and in the flimsy moonlight he saw something dart across his field of vision.
Something sharp jabbed his left leg, puncturing the meat of the calf. Shock and anger joined with the pain and his jaw clenched, building toward a shout. As he turned toward the boy’s cry and toward the source of his pain, a smooth sliver stabbed into his neck. He twisted, feeling the sliver break even as it jerked and dug its path in his flesh. Something caught in his hair and tugged his head back down, his scalp burning as his head was yanked to one side. Cheek pinned to the pillow, blood trickling along his neck and shoulder and staining the bedclothes, he found himself facing the impossible.
“From now on, we will make our own Heaven,” the Lucifer puppet said. It held a long, thin