The Puppeteer

Counting

While he was gone, she was counting. Counting. All day, all night, she counted. Adding up all the minutes and all the days and hours and seconds since he had left. Where to, she didn't know, and for a while after his disappearance she entertained herself imaging him in far off places. Fishing in Alaska or camping in Europe. He had always wanted to get away. But after a while, the novelty of imagination began to bore her, and she began to worry. What added to her uneasiness were all the euphemisms that followed. Escaped. Gone. Lost. Why couldn't they say what really happened? Maybe because no one knew. All she knew was one day, she had found his side of the bed empty. Blanket folded. Clothes gone. Toothbrush still there. He had simply disappeared.

The Town was one of vagabond oddity. "A drive-through town," it was often described. Too small for the comfort of the bright eyed, wide minded people of the big city, The Town was home to generations of people whom had never despised it enough to leave, henceforth raising families until they would one day be buried with the dirt of the place they so warily came to endure. There really was nothing wrong with it, no serial killings or strange smells or even anything remotely interesting to get them into the paper. It was simply a town. It both scared and fascinated her that with one more storm they would suffer the same fate that had effaced their sister city away, leaving their frail city waiting on death row. They had tried to use a mayor, but after a term, things fell apart. They rejected the system, leaving the man who had governed 117 people walking around with a jaded sense of charisma.

By now, one may have gotten the idea that word travels fast. By the time she woke up and found him gone, they knew. What had perplexed the officer and the rest of the inhabbinints of the town, was the detail of how. All boats were accounted for in the harbor, and the planes are only seen to drop off yearly supplies of yarn and oil. An old bicycle had been rusting away in the garage of Mr. Geddis, but had not been moved out of its position in years. No one owned a car, and there was only one proper road through the city. Train tracks ran through the forest, ending as suddenly as they had begun, fascinating the children of the town with a mystery of a story untold. As a child she would trace them, wondering where the trains had gone. And how they had left. It was certain they once were there, tiny gears and ball bearings were found in the cracks. But she grew old, and so did the excitement of the forgotten tracks. Trains hadn't ridden on them for decades, and they wouldn't for decades more. So the question posed: How did he leave?
That's when the theories started. The children whispered that perhaps aliens had lifted him in the night, a rumor hushed by adults and sternly rebutted by the elders on the absurdity of it. But no one could come up with another idea. Perhaps, said one, he used the cliff. The cliff was at the edge if the Town, overlooking the icy waters and as fair a spot as any to be ones last sight. About forty years ago was the last time someone ventured off it, a child no much older than eight chasing after something lost, or someone pushed him. Or maybe he thought he was a bird and imitated them in a chance to leave. They called it the bird sickness for a while. However it happened, he was gone off the cliff. Children were since not allowed near it, and it was too far out of the way for the adults to go. But this got people thinking. Was he really the type to do that? Ones thoughts after hearing such a rumor goes back and analyzes every conversation had with said individual, processing sarcasm and tones and sentence structures to a point where one believes it just so could have happened. The water was searched, over a course of three days, and found nothing.

Then they searched the house. No one really knew what for, as the town was inexperienced in cases such as these. It was usually bargaining cases gone wrong for pears in which Ghrigsby, the grocer claimed they did not agree on a price and the customer thereby stole seventeen cents from him. The money was given back later that day. But things of this nature never occurred in town, leaving everyone with a fresh mix of excited nerves hushed down in a feared respect of what had happened lest they look too excited. But they all were. So one by one, townspeople wandered in, with a hushed sense of reverence. Nothing seemed out of order, all clothes, except his, remained, their ordinary stillness chilling her to the bone in a sense she couldn't make out to the point where she had the wardrobe doors locked during the day. Something made her uneasy, seeing his life so easily taken out of hers. Just the clothes made her almost cry. Seeing them all hanging perfectly still in the balance.
The rest of the house was the same, abnormal in the sense of missed little things, normal in the sense of others. The coffee pot cast unknown shadows on the wall behind it, leaving a slightly discolored paint spot where the shadow of a fuller coffee pot had sat. She didn't need to make as much coffee now. Or that she now only used one plate, one cup, one fork, one knife. The other set now patiently waited in the cupboard. So there wasn't much to see to the outside eyes, but the uneasiness in the house was palpable, and soon it became as forbidden as the cliff, the topic taboo. Which left her alone in a too big house with a discolored wall behind the coffee pot to think things over. After the initial shock faded, she, like many others, entered the stage of grief known as denial. She proceeded with her days as though he was still a part of them. Upon waking, she would walk into the kitchen and make two servings of oats and ham, filling the coffee pot to its usual place. Once placing his full plate and cup, she came to the conclusion that he was simply tired and would be up soon. Then she left for her day. She had a secure position at the Echol's family bookstore, where she had worked for years and where everyone politely avoided the fact that she was not an Echol and not blood. But upon arriving home that evening and seeing the still full plate and cup of breakfast, she knew she could no longer deal with the mystery. She had to find out. While the investigation was still "ongoing", it was no secret that detective Iglehart had long since given up, pretending to work when asked but avoiding the situation. It was a dead end, and everyone knew it, but he put on a show for the city that politely pretended along.