Several years ago, I was into puppets. I made a while series of short films starring Clive, a one-of-a-kind Zombie Puppet I discovered on eBay and just had to have. We had a lot of fun carving up other puppets, filling their heads with Spaghetti-Os, and subverting a few conventions of the zombie genre.
Oddly enough – Clive was not the inspiration for Mr. Puppet, the mysterious denizen of the Dead Park mall toy shop. Mr. Puppet was a creation of my kids and their best friends.
Sam and Lydia – now 16 and 17 – have three life-long best pals who live just five minutes away. They had countless sleepovers when they were little, and as kids do, they invented some games and traditions all their own. Some of them were charming. One was disturbing.
The kids had a few puppets of their own they played with, along with some of mine. (Clive was NOT among them. One of the friends, in particular, was terrified of him and may still be.) They would gather in the basement around one of these puppets, and we’d hear them chanting:
Mr. Puppet, Mr. Puppet, come alive!
Come alive on the count to five!
One… two… three… four… five!
There would then be lots of screaming and running in the dark. I’m still unclear what was happening at that point.
Years later, as I was brainstorming for The Shops at Dead Park, the Mr. Puppet chant came to mind. I adopted it straight into the story, creepy chant and all. Of course my version of Mr. Puppet turned out to be much darker and more sinister than the one the kids played with. But in fairness, Mr. Puppet never harmed children. Only naughty teenagers. As you would in a horror story.