The blizzard announced itself with soft patters on the window pane.

“How long did you know this?” Will’s voice trembled. His body was numb. “Sarah? How long... how long have you known?” His voice raised in pitch. “All this talk of lies? My lies are tearing us apart? My lies, Sarah?” he huffed and his eyes twisted with his head as he gathered the implications and ramifications and complete understanding of his past stupidity. “Get out,” he said quietly. Then he shouted, “Get out!” as the sickening embarrassment of his public prophecies pulled him to the carpet. “Get out, get out, get out of my home!” he yelled, screamed, then felt his blood drain from his head to his feet and he nearly fainted.

Sarah took advantage of his delusion and got to Janie first. She fell to her knees and whispered a rush of pleas--not quietly enough to hide from Will--while he struggled to regain his composure. “There are loving people in the world,” Sarah said to their daughter. (How dare she!) “There are people who aren’t cynical like your father; who can’t justify their cynicism to a T. You don’t want to become like him, sweetheart. He’s dangerous.”

“Not to me,” Janie said and Will caught himself moaning like a wounded animal and forced himself to stop.

Every time his mind fought for optimism, another piece of the puzzle fell into place: the groundbreaking, the holy ground, his lost fingers, their life savings, three million dollars (Three. Million. Dollars.), the piano-bar speech, the letters to the editor... how how how could he be so fucking low? All of the rants, the preaching, the dance with the minister and lecturing Janie about miracles...

And Jaxon. Jaxon.

Jaxon Silverman who offered a way out.

Will could have accepted. He should have accepted!

The voices of the whispering women raised, but Will no longer understood their language. Sarah was packing and crying? But Janie was firm and defiant.

He collapsed to the foot of the bed.

“Dad!” Janie cried.

“He’ll be fine,” Sarah said.

“Hand me the phone,” Will said from his slump and Janie obeyed.

Jaxon was on speed dial. “Hello?” muttered the man, half asleep.

“I’ll take it,” Will said. “I’ll take your offer, Jax. Buy my land and tear it to the ground.”

“Will? Do you have any concept of time or etiquette?”

Sarah zipped her luggage and tossed it to the hall, then stormed to the bathroom in a ruckus of plastic thunks as she flung toiletries into plastic bags. 

Janie sat on the bed. Her knee brushed Will’s temple.

“Take it away,” he said to Jax. “I want the money. I want the new house. Rip that stage down and haul it away!”

Janie’s hand smoothed his hair.

Jaxon’s voice became piercingly clear. “Do you remember when we spoke on your hill? Do you remember when I told you about the other land deal? That wasn’t a joke, Mr. Carmel. Silverman and Binder signed the paperwork a month ago and we’re no longer in a position to purchase your land.”

“Fine. Cut the offer in half and I’ll tear the theater down myself. You don’t understand...”

“Go to bed, Will. Don’t call me again.”

He cried; on the phone to Jaxon he looked like a pussy but he cried so the man could hear. “Is there anything...”

“William?” Jax said.

“Yeah?” he managed between sobs.

“Your association dues start in six months.” Jaxon hung up the phone and Will dropped his head.

“Daddy?”

He squeezed Janie’s ankle with his claw and used the leverage to stand.

Sarah was leaving and she was taking their daughter, but before Will knew it, he was crunching snow with bare feet and scaling his hill like Everest in long underwear and strides through snow as temperate as sand. The snow didn’t just fall, it zipped in long horizontal lines with tails of white thread. The wind assured the flakes would never touch the ground, clinging instead to Will’s beard and melting in the cracks of his cheek.

The blizzard thickened and billowed, cloaking the theater behind a spinning Dervish dress. At any moment, Will expected the faint orb of the bandshell to forgo it’s camouflage and appear before him, but it remained hidden. 

What if he fought the blinding snow to the top of the hill, only to discover that the stage had never existed? That he had emerged at the waking-end of a nightmare like the tattered George Baily arriving home to a beautiful Christmas with his family and neighbors?

Will was not George Baily; Will’s angel brought him to hell and left him there.

As if he needed more proof that this wasn’t a dream, he heard Sarah open the car door and turn the ignition. He blinked snow from his lashes and blocked wind from his eyes as the engine hummed and growled but didn’t turn and he prayed that the cold had ruined the battery. But with a cough of visible monoxide, the engine revved to life and his hope was lost. The headlights illuminated two yellow cones of falling snow branching from the car to the stables and Sarah’s dark figure cut between the beams as she stowed away their life in the trunk. Janie would be there too, packed and sealed and safe from her father’s delusions. 

The doors slammed for the last time. The headlights careened across the house and hill, then twisted around to light the path that would lead them away.

Will watched the crimson taillights slide through Brandywine until the car vanished in the storm.

He turned back to his stage. The wind finally settled, and the theater’s form appeared like a chameleon in comfortable surroundings. The dark mirage conjured memories of the experience in the shed. Was the ghost theater a real Vision? A capitol “V” Vision? Or was it a small “v” as in “vision impaired?” How could those speakers trick him? How could a bundle of wires be mistaken for the voice of an angel? Why would God let his most faithful servant believe such blaspheme?

Through the back gate. Across the grass. Past the chairs. The corners of his lips grew saliva popsicles but he hardly noticed. 

He reached the foot of his stage. He remembered that the theater hadn’t been winterized. The curtain was wet with melted snow, though it still protected the wood floors. The pipes and rods were expanding and contracting, and the hatch--

The fraying sound of rope on metal interrupted Will’s thought and the curtains parted with sopping bottoms dragging like slugs across the floor.

“Who’s there?” he shouted. “This is private property!”

The spotlight popped to life with an electric thud and he spun around and visored his eyes as they adjusted to the harsh light. “Another trick, Hyde? You cock sucker? Leave me alone! Take your wife and leave me be!”

The music began. Not a piano plucking Christmas carols, but the mocking drone of an upbeat carnival accordion.

“I’ll the cops!” he said and backed toward the chairs. The foot-candles illuminated too, followed by the rainbow overheads. The light created a surreal, shadowless arena against the blue-black night sky.

The wind picked up and rustled the perimeter trees at the hill’s base. The trees! They don’t see it! he thought. They’re blind to this madness, waving their obsidian branches as if the nightmare on stage holds no power over them! Their ignorance underscored his fear.

The first puppet was Ray-Ray. She was life-sized, made of wood, and dropped and flopped from the catwalk to a pile of whittled limbs on the stage. Strings connected her extremities to an invisible puppeteer and as they pulled taught, she lifted to a realistic standing pose. Will rubbed his eyes and realized the puppet wasn’t Ray-Ray at all, but Sarah dressed in pointe shoes, and a pink leotard.

Her body was frozen. The strings didn’t tug and the wind had no pull. The only movement came from her eyes. They weren’t made of wood like the rest of her body; they were alive--human--frightened and searching behind stiff lids and painted lashes.

The rest of the cast dropped all at once in a clamor of hollow wood and limp thread. Will blinked. What the hell...? The strings simultaneously yanked the new puppets to erect attention. Their eyes were trained on Will and begged for help. On stage-left, Hyde stood with flat, un-chiseled features and Kayla leaned against him with pipe-cleaner hair and a torn pink tutu. The folks in-between were a diverse cast of characters from Will’s life. There was Janie, Jaxon, piano-bar Marsh, Pauline Woodstock (with a triple-platinum trophy!), young Stanley in producer suit-and-tie, Chicago dealers, Michigan dealers, Mom, Sir, and more.

The line stood motionless, breathless, single-file and dead.

Suddenly, the accordion music clamored as if the musician struck all the keys at once. The figurines lifted their arms and Will laughed at the sight. Their bodies heaved and shook, though their stone expressions didn’t change.

The adulterated visitors broke formation and bounced to the beat of “Do-Re-Mi” as Will stood tall before the stage, arms waving like a conductor as if he controlled the puppets.

Janie’s doppelgänger was the first to stray from the ditty. She leapt across stage with open legs and a crystal landing, spun once in front of Miss Kayla and bowed. The Kayla puppet mimicked the move, but flew half as far and landed with a clank like a percussionist’s woodblock and wept in exaggerated sobs on the floor. Pauline, the thickest doll of the bunch, arched over Kayla and slapped her knee in fits of laughter, then presented the fallen dancer with a bronze trophy. Will and the Janie-doll joined in Pauline’s laughter, then Janie bent her bolt-hinged knees and pushed off from the stage, using her strings to fly like a Peter-Pan pulley-system.

Two more characters surprised him from stage-right. First out was Challo with synthetic black fur. Will was delighted to see his dog! She had a separate string to wag her tail and a white marble eye in the left socket.

The second surprise guest entered with a cartwheel and backflip. It was Ray-Ray! But she was garbed in Sarah’s blue nighty with dyed brown hair and crayon-drawn freckles. She wobbled her hips in a stilted belly dance and the nightgown billowed and gave Will sporadic glimpses of pulpy, mismatched breasts.

Janie descended from her flight and landed gracefully beside Challo. She threw her arms around her furry friend’s back and the dog licked her face with a felt tongue.

The theater was packed with action, but it wasn’t over. With a cymbal crash, the extras dropped in. Twenty chorus girls with sticker smiles fell in line behind Ray-Ray’s libidinous pantomime of Sarah. Upon closer inspection, Will recognized the dancing ladies as the nameless women he screwed before his wife.

The Brandywine Neighbors fell behind Hyde and Kayla: Mrs. Danthers, Sean Umbers, Morgan Demfield, Marvin Gibson, Sherlock and Tracy Cavenaugh, the Rogers, the Bauers, the Johnsons, the Garlands and the Peltons, all dressed in matching beige Polos and black slacks.

Puppet-Hyde strayed from Puppet-Kayla and slipped in line with the chorus girls. They locked arms and he synchronized his kicks with theirs.

Jaxon spun across stage and finished the trick with a “ta-da” pose in the middle of the hoard. His head twisted three-hundred-and-sixty degrees as his charcoal eyes scanned the neighbors’ menacing poses. It was Granola Bauer who made the first attack by grabbing Jaxon’s left-foot string and wrapping it around his neck. The others cheered and joined the fray until Jaxon was tangled and hung in a cocoon of his own string. Will shivered with excitement when the neighbors jumped the Stanley doll, pulled him limb from limb, and used his arms and legs as bats for the Jaxon piñata.

When Janie tripped, the show unraveled. She fell over her own feet and landed face-first into the rear-end of Charlie Arson, Will’s old Chicago dealer. The little man crouched to Janie’s level, patted her head, and handed her a plastic baggie of crystal meth.

“No!” Will tried to scream, but his mouth was sealed.

The Sarah doll (dressed as Ray-Ray) and the Ray-Ray doll (dressed as Sarah) met center-stage and fondled each other’s curves. Sarah ripped the nightgown from Ray-Ray’s body and they pressed their wooden lips together.

The puppet’s play became a directionless display of lewd nonsense and Will tried to scream again but his vocal chords were solid. He held his right hand in front of his face and inspected the hole drilled through his palm. A thread was meticulously looped through the eyelet and tied around his Ken-Doll fingers. He looked at his left hand too but there wasn’t a hole because it had no palm. Will frantically patted his head (it can’t be!) and found more twine growing from his skull and he looked up, tugged his string, and saw the strings ascending past the clouds and over the moon. One cord dangled freely and lashed with slow-motion ripples in the falling snow. Will knew the loose string was supposed to be tied to his left hand.

Panic struck his knotted heart and he tried to flail but only his left arm moved. His feet lifted and dropped, pulling him one step at a time toward the orgy on stage. He thrusted and bucked his untethered hand in a desperate attempt to escape, but the flailing arm couldn’t free the others.

Against his will, the middle string pulled William’s head back and he saw that his strings were not alone in the sky; hundreds of strands rose, five at a time, from the heads, hands and feet of the stage performers, through the theater’s roof, following his own cords to the heavens.

The William-doll was finally forced to climb on stage. When the wooden creatures saw him, they attacked. He tried to shut his eyes as the tangled parade of marionettes consumed him, but his lids wouldn’t budge. He was dismantled and decapitated and his head was hoisted from its thread. When it stopped spinning, his eyes were fixed on one image: the Brandywine subdivision with strings--thousands of moonlit strings--ascending through the roofs of the houses, motionless despite the wind, as the marionette-residents slept peacefully in their beds.

*  *  *

Will awoke at the foot of the wet curtain on the floor of the unlit stage. His daughter sat beside him with his boots and jacket in her arms.

“Put these on, Dad,” Janie said. “We’re going home.”