Once upon a time, when Papa was just a little boy,
he loved to play jokes on his sisters, especially if he could manage to scare them. Of course, they adored giving him a near heart attack every bit as much (it is probably universal, all over the world, Chinese people, Russians, Bulgarians and Iranians and Swedes and Mexicans and New Zealanders, they are all sneaking up behind their brothers and sisters and suddenly shouting "BOO!" and then laughing uproariously as their sibling falls to the ground, grasping at their chest, froth appearing at the corners of their blue-turning lips). The siblings loved to turn the lights off on each other, or tell each other scary stories to turn each other's hair completely white.
Dougie never really planned out his scares, they just sort of occurred to him. One Christmas, Donna received a Danny O'Day ventriloquist dummy (years later, Dougie would get a Howdy Doody), and while looking at Danny's perpetually smiling face, Dougie decided that the dummy was pretty creepy. Though clowns are decidedly creepy, ventriloquist dummies just might be the creepiest, as they take on a life of their own, and even without seeing the old Twilight Zone about the dummy, or William Goldman's Magic, kids find themselves checking on the dummy. Did it move? Wasn't it's head turned THAT way, just a second ago?Yep, Danny O'Day was pretty creepy. Downright scary. And then Dougie had an idea. Hmmm. Yes, oh yes indeedy do, it just might work.Dougie scrambled into the dining room and retrieved one of Mama's tall bar stools, dragged it through the hall into Donna and Pammy's bedroom, pushed the tall stool into Donna's closet, arranged Danny O'Day upright in the seat, and then draped a blanket around both the dummy and the the stool. It wasn't perfect, but it was just a little bit scary. Danny looked like a short, fat, smiling dude with a very small head. With his head propped up high on the barstool, the dummy was taller than Dougie, and possibly as tall as Donna.Suppressing anticipatory laughter, Dougie closed the closet door, and then waited. And waited. Every time Donna got near her bedroom Dougie would come sneaking up behind her. But time and again Donna entered her bedroom only to exit a moment later without ever going near the diabolical trap.Gradually, Dougie forgot about the dummy in the closet, and went on with his life. It wasn't until bedtime that a sudden, terrible shriek from the girls' bedroom brought the whole house rushing in to see what was the matter. There stood Donna, her hands on either side of her face (long before Home Alone), frozen in utter terror. Dougie had forgotten all about his trap, and now here was poor Donna, possibly forever locked in this position like a statue cast in homage to Halloween.After seeing the crazed hunched dummy, everyone, without missing a solitary beat, looked at Dougie. He might have begun to whistle, searching the twinkling bits of glitter on the ceiling as if they were stars.All Stories © 2009 Douglas Christian Larsen
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