Shawn stared at the paper - it looked really old, which was enough to pique his curiosity. He levered himself to his feet, and then went over to pick it up. It must have come from the suitcase...

Shawn picked up the letter which was yellow and written in a cursive barely legible and long forgotten. Shawn's hand moved over the smooth, worn leather of the suitcase's interior. The flap fell down and a cascade of letters and other papers poured out on top of Mr. Clayton. The Puppet didn't spring to life, but rather lay buried under a pile of envelopes, black and white photographs and papers stacked and tied together with yellowed string.

Shawn wasn't sure why there'd be so many letters and photos in this old suitcase, but it did seem kind of important. He gathered up all the papers and letters; he wanted to at least look at what they were about, starting with whatever caught his eye.

Shawn picked up one of the old yellow letters, seeing that it appeared to be a clipping of an old news article or Playbill:

It's hard to believe that a boy born in Wisconsin who grew up on a dairy farm would, after fifteen years of vaudeville and nightclubs, become an overnight sensation on the radio as a ventriloquist. More amazing still, Mr. Clayton was supposed to be a boy, yet he wore a tuxedo complete with top hat and monocle, and seemed to be from Europe. At least, that's the way it seemed. The whole thing was really wacky, but it worked. Why? Because any one who knows Kramer knew he and his ventriloquist were really funny, sometimes a little bit ribald, but always two lines away from another joke. Oh, Mr. Clayton was insulting, too. While Mr. Clayton was making his irrepressible wisecracks, Kramer seemed as surprised and amused as anyone.

After a season's intro on the The Franky Malore Hour, Kramer and Mr. Clayton were allowed to share the spotlight with Don Gibbons and Dorothy Shenk on the Gibbons and Shenk Radio Hour in 1937. Right off, Gibbons got into the act, trading insults with Mr. Clayton so fast and furious that the audience was in stitches, and the idea of a "feud" made national headlines. The show grew to be a major hit on radio, staying in the top five for a decade.

Shawn had to reread the the article a couple of times to fully understand it - it felt like the names were all backwards. He leafed through the documents, looking to see if there was a picture of the duo, or something else eye-catching.

Shawn's hands leafed quickly through the stack of papers and abruptly stopped. Looking up from the pile was clearly a picture of Grandpa. He looked young, alive and professional. Mr. Clayton was in the picture too and appeared even more polished, sporting a top hat, monocle and vest. Below the photo was another bulletin clipping, the edges clearly cut from a scissor roughly, browning and curling with age.



Many guest stars appeared to sing and sling the patter along with Kramer and Mr. Clayton in the 1930s. But the variety aspect on the show was secondary to the Kramer and Mr. Clayton themselves. Ventriloquism has long been associated with supernatural forces; its very beginnings were as a religious practice of divination. As Spiritualism grew into stage magic and escapology, so grew ventriloquism as stagecraft. Writers of Radio Thrillers never lost track of the potential for ventriloquism to be frightening. By 1941 however, audiences began to turn their back on the pair as radio ratings plummeted amid the US involvement in WWII. Against the backdrop of American servicemen deploying to Europe, Kramer and Mr. Clayton's 1942 Act "The End of Cherrywinks the Clown" was an unsuccessful attempt at dark humor that aliened the show's fan base. One of the most memorable and arguably offensive quotes of the Act was when Mr. Clayton announced: "Don't worry about deploying to Germany to fight those Krouts Kramer. If you're worried that I'm going to make love to your wife, don't! I WILL!! YUCKA YUCKA!!"

Shawn recognized Grandpa - clearly a younger version of him, but he and Mr. Clayton were utterly distinctive to Shawn. Had Mr. Clayton really belonged to his family all those years ago? How had he been lost?

While he'd thought that'd be the most shocking he'd see, then the newspaper mentioned Cherrywinks by name. That brought him up short; he immediately switched tacks, going through the pile looking for anything that mentioned the clown.

Shawn perused the pile of letters and clippings. There was a torn newspaper clipping that looked particularly old. How old, it was impossible to say because the clipping started in the middle, with a the title and date having been torn off.

The day before the circus opens, the company manager would gather the whole crew—roustabouts and elephant handlers, clowns and acrobats, tightrope walkers and jugglers—to help raise the canvas roof to the peaks on its poles, wafting above the fairgrounds the largest single piece of cloth most people would see in their lives. And early the next day, the crew would gather again to create the compound odor of the circus. The caramel smell of sugar burning on the cotton-candy machines and the faint reek of animal manure. Wood shavings and hot peanuts. Old dust shaken out of faded tents. The greasepaint and the popcorn. The sweaty hint of a ginned-up excitement, or maybe a tamped-down despair. Something, anyway, outside the ordinary and mundane. Something wonderfully unlikely and maybe disturbingly uncanny.

In fact, peculiarity seems to define nearly everyone who has helped create the Cherrywinks' Circus—not just Cherrywinks, who is the founder, but also his om stage rival Mr. Kramer and his side-kick Mr. Clayton, and even the silent business partner, who remains unknown. The Cherrywinks' Circus presents a compelling case that the interplay of these entrepreneurs will shape what Americans will picture when the word circus is spoken for years to come.


"Dear, dear, what a place it looks, that Cherrywinks; with all the paint, gilding, and looking-glass; the vague smell of horses suggestive of coming wonders; the curtain that hides such gorgeous mysteries; the clean white sawdust...What glow that, which bursts upon them all, when that long, clear, brilliant row of lights comes slowly up...Well might Mr. Kramer feel doubtful whether to laugh or cry, or run in terror?" Remarked one person, when commenting on the Circus and how Cherrywinks and Kramer had developed quite the on stage feud for the benefit of the crowds.

Of course, that leaves the question of why ticket sales have declined so far this year. The Cherrywinks' Circus has always had a bifurcated place—family entertainment seasoned with a smidgen of the forbidden and the aberrant. There is a vicarious suggestion of impending disaster, with the Flying Wallendas’ building human pyramids in the air. A titillating hint of the flesh, with the Tattoed Lady in tights parading in the center ring and peepshows tucked away in a corner of the fairway. A touch of the grotesque, a splash of the garish, a hint of the criminal.

This is without alluding to the more outrageous rumor of them all: That the indomitable and self-promoting Cherrywinks, thriving despite numerous business catastrophes, has always been seeking to outdo the pugilistic Kramer. And the allegation that Cherrywinks' greatest success in that regard came when, several years ago in the Fall of 1926, he sold his soul to demon to make the Circus a success. The allegation has been hinted relentlessly on stage since 1928 when Cherrywinks and Kramer incorporated it into the an onstage act. The idea of Cherrywinks secretly partnering with a demon while publicly proclaiming his implacable rivalry with Kramer—a quintessential Cherrywinks move.

Shawn's eyes widened as he looked through the old newspaper. There it was, all laid out - an old showbiz rivalry, a mysterious business partner, demon summoning? If it was true, it explained a lot about the trouble he'd found himself in, but it also raised further questions. Like, why Mr. Clayton himself had been there at the Circus when Bradford .

It was a lot to take in, and Shawn was doing his best...but underneath it all was an immense sense of frustration and anger. All this was because of something that happened to his grandpa? None of this was his fault, why did he have to be the one to do something about it!?

He could feel himself fuming, and he deliberately took a calming breath. He'd found this much, maybe he could find more? He went through the pile again - if Cherrywinks had made an actual deal with a demon, the true details probably wouldn't be in the newspaper. He started looking for mentions of the clown in correspondence or possible fragments of books.

Shawn kept rummaging through the pile of papers--old letters, news clippings, photos of Mr. Clayton, the Tattooed Lady--there  was even a picture of Gaggles that looked like it was from long, long ago. He found another clipping that seemed to provide some kind of history of a kind.

From Humble Beginnings To Classy But Questionable Act
Milwaukee Tribune -1936

Some five decades into his life, Roger Kramer from Wisconsin, has remade himself from his humble beginnings as an impoverished country boy into a showman—indeed the “greatest ventriloquist,” as the new correspondence about his show and act in the longstanding Cherrywinks Circus.

Thanks to a combination of brilliant marketing tactics and less-than-upstanding business practices of his partner and owner of the Cherrywinks circus, Kramer has truly arrived. Yet only a few years into this fame many have begun to question the duo's rags-to-riches success.

Cherrywinks' himself has always enjoyed a career that has trafficked in curiosities, especially in the 1920s which he served up to a public hungry for such entertainment, regardless of how factual or ethical such displays were. It may be that his his legacy in show business stretched from the American Mid West to "The American Big Top" but each have been full of bigger-than-life ideas marketed to an audience interested in mass, and often crass, entertainment.

For starters, take Kramer's own act of Ventriloquism within the Cherrywinks' Circus. How many forms of entertainment began not only as a religious practice but an explanation for what the French refer to as "Belly Noises"? The Greeks called it "Gastromancy"; the noises originating from the stomachs of religious figures were thought to be the voices of the dead, which could be interpreted to predict the future. It is said that Kramer learned ventriloquism while recovering from polio at the age of 13, and when he returned to school his art teacher allowed him to built his dummy in class. The dummy, Mr. Clayton, was named for.....

Shawn tried to read further but the article was clipped off.

Shawn read the article a couple of times, trying to piece together the past from the clipped newspaper article. So his grandpa had worked for the Circus in the past - maybe they were rivals, but it sounded like it might have been played up for showmanship. Or maybe they'd actually hated one another and were just pretending to pretend.

He knew he had to find out more, but he didn't know where to begin. He kept looking, hoping there'd be something that he could use.

Shawn saw another newspaper clip, this one slightly older or at least more weathered. The date and title had been cutt off as if whomever wanted to saved the clipping had torn it:


With the arrival of Kramer at Cherrywinks' Circus, it appears that the art of glove puppetry, which had flourished in medieval times, has been revived. Puppeteer Kramer, whose 'Peep Show' has showed the dramatic possibilities of glove puppetry beyond Wisconsin. He has carved his own puppets' heads and hands, dressed them, and pushed them around the American Mid-West in a cart setting up show wherever he could find an audience. Kramer, who is virtually unknown until now, was a simple street sweeper before buying a ticket to the regionally famous and seasonal Cherrywinks' Circus. "I did not choose to be a puppeteer" the wiley Kramer replied when asked about his arrival on the scene of the Circus "The Puppet chose me!"

Shawn found himself reading and rereading 'the Puppet chose me!' until he had to stop and put the paper aside. He was starting to understand some of what had happened; his grandfather had gone to see the Circus, somehow met Mr. Clayton there, and started working with him.

Though there was still the question of why, and whether the Circus then had been the same Circus that Shawn had dealt with. There had been rumors of demons and a silent partner, but it all seemed less openly supernatural in the papers than what he'd experience. He kept rummaging through the papers.

Daily Sentinel

February 16,1905

Sinister, human-sized ventriloquist dolls were mistaken for dead bodies when they were hauled out of a river by villagers in Spain who were so disturbed that they decided to burn them. Unfortunately, the dolls – found wrapped in a blanket in the small town of San Antonio La Esperanza – would not burn and so the community decided it was "cursed".

"We've heard rumors in nearby towns that during the last several months children have gone missing. It has something to do with these dolls." Rural farmer Jodi Velazquez told reporters.

The dolls were seen lying on the earth with one side of their face blackened and burned but the other bright blue and staring. Hinged jaws gave the dolls a creepy and scarred appearance – adding to the air of uneasiness they radiated.

One human-shaped dummy was initially mistaken for a dead adult body but, luckily, it soon became apparent it wasn't real when it was unwrapped from the shawl. A second dummy looked to be the size of a small child.

However, it remains a mystery as to who the previous owner of the dolls were was and why this person went to such great lengths to dispose of them in such a strange way.

After several attempts, the villagers finally managed to burn them, local media reports.

Local journalist Cesar Buenrostro disputed the idea of a supernatural presence and claimed locals had failed to burn the dolls at the first attempt because it was damp.

Shawn was jumping around in time and space, but this felt like the furthest back he'd been so far. Potentially cursed dolls seemed very much of a kind with Greater Ventriloquism, though obviously Mr. Clayton hadn't been burned like those dummies had.

The bit about missing children also caught his attention - had this been an early forerunner of the Circus? Or was it an independent case of Ventriloquism? Or maybe it really was just a coincidence? He started rummaging once more, looking for anything that looked as old or older than this article.

Shawn rummaged through the papers and a small, old-time book fell out. It looked like it might have been from around the same time of the last letter. An old time instruction booklet on Ventriloquism.

Shawn's eyes widened a little as he saw the booklet. Was this the same thing as the audio guide he'd learned ventriloquism from? He opened the book and started to page through it, looking for familiar instructions, or anything that looked totally out of place in an instructional manual.

Shawn looked through the book, skimming, its old, worn pages. It all brought him back to sitting for hours and hours in front of the mirror. There wasn't anything special or different from the standard lessons that he had learned practicing: the slow, methodical approach to using one's lips. The changing of difficult words and sounds for new sounds. The substituting of F and V in particular. And the endless repetition.



As Shawn was further reading, a small piece of paper fell out of the book. It was some kind of drawing. Or maybe a cartoon. There was a scribbled title across the top:

"How To Control Your Human Dummy"

Shawn felt a sense of familiarity looking over the words in the guide - it was almost nostalgic, remembering all the practice he'd done. The little piece of paper at the back was something new, though. He took a closer look.

As Shawn flipped through the guide, the pages of the small booklet naturally came open to reveal a hidden, smaller compartment. Someone had meticulously carved out of the interior of the book, each page cut out to the same measurement resulting in a small, square compartment.

Inside the compartment, was a smaller booklet. It was tucked inside the cut out pages, making it impossible to see from the outside. The title of the booklet was "A Dummy's Guide to Danger."

Shawn hadn't been sure who that little mystery page had been for - was "How To Control Your Human Dummy" instructions for him, or perhaps for Mr. Clayton? Either was, he'd need to find out more.

Finding a booklet within the booklet was even more mysterious, so he looked over the page that had fallen out, and started leafing through the smaller booklet. Perhaps he could find where the page had fallen out and see what sort of instructions the guide had.

Shawn examined the "How To Control Your Human Dummy" instructions first. It was a written diagram or even could be described as a cartoon. The diagram appeared to describe the mechanics of an actual Puppet. But the diagram itself was labeled "How To Control Your Human Dummy".





The back of the paper was filled with handwritten notes in small, tiny neat letters, as if someone with very small hands or fine motor skills had diligently measured the exact size of the letters and their placement. The neatly organized paragraphs started at the very top of the page and ended in the right-hand corner with orderly precision:

STEP 10

“They’re all dummies”

STEP 9 directed you to practice using your dummy until it moved “as naturally as you do.” But how can a block of wood, carved and painted in the likeness of a human being, ever hope to be “natural?” Before we explore the answer to this crucial question, you’re going to need to answer a question of a different but no less crucial sort: What do you wish to achieve through the art of ventriloquism?

If your aim is simply to become a proficient showman, skilled enough to achieve some modicum of success through performing at children’s birthday parties, local variety shows, and community theatre acts, do not read any further. Study and apply STEPS 1-9 but do not read on. Your tutelage is complete, and with enough practice you very well may become a competent, even an excellent show business ventriloquist.

However, if STEPS 1-9 do not satisfy you; if manipulating your dummy seems limited and frustrating and even simplistic; if you have an overwhelming desire — a hunger — to know what Greater Ventriloquism is and what it can do for you and your life, read on.

Again: you must continue reading only if you really want to know what the secret of Greater Ventriloquism has to offer.

Fine. Now that that’s out of the way — again: how can a block of wood, carved and painted in the likeness of a human being, ever hope to be “natural?” Easy. Have you ever had a pet? Many at-home animals are taught to behave using commands — which may be direct (like “stay” or “sit”), but which might also involve subtle gestures and sounds, all of which you may make without conscious thought. You “push their levers” and “pull their cords” so to speak, to make them do what you want them to do. We can control our pets without effort — without thinking about it. We do one thing and think another.

And what about our relationships with other human animals? What if we actively, knowingly seek to influence (or, if we’re honest, control) the behavior of our child, our lady friend, our coworker? This is no outlandish concept. In fact, there have been countless words written on this very subject, and my own ventriloquism practice has led me to a favorite method briefly outlined as follows: the practitioner begins to assert dominance over another human being by subtly mimicking their subject’s gestures and vocal patterns. A good ventriloquist learns this method eventually, naturally.

And that’s only the beginning. A lady friend of mine, for instance, often claims that I am continuously being “passive aggressive” when in fact I have been slowly, deliberately pushing her levers for years. I have her doing and even saying exactly what I want her to do and say. And after years of practice and more practice, it comes as easily as throwing my voice or animating my Reggie’s head and mouth to the words I throw.

In point of fact, if you practice STEPS 1-10 for very long, you will eventually learn all you need to know about controlling the animals around you — human or not — bar none.

One more time: how can a block of wood, carved and painted in the likeness of a human being, ever hope to be “natural?” Now you know the answer. Whether you’re controlling the movements of that “block of wood” or controlling just how your lady friend behaves at a dinner party, either will seem perfectly natural to a third party observer (even if you know better).

STEP 10 is your first true STEP towards becoming a Greater Ventriloquist, but it is quite a simple one. Simply remember that your dummy, your pets, your family and your friends have one thing in common with each other: they’re all dummies. With practice, you’ll be amazed at how they’ll dance to the tune of your voice.

Shawn poured over the notes in detail - some of it sounded vaguely familiar, echoes of things Mr. Clayton had said before, but a lot of it was new. A bit of it even seemed like stuff he’d done before outside of Ventriloquism, in acting or even just in conversation. Matching someone’s energy to make a good impression, saying what people wanted to hear to get the reaction he wanted…

He flipped through the guide, looking for more notes on Greater Ventriloquism. Perhaps it would become clearer if the page was in the correct place in the booklet.

Shawn flipped through the booklet again, revealing more of the same instructions he had seen before. There was nothing out of the ordinary. Indeed, the instructions brought back hours and hours of practicing in front of the mirror.

"The first part of the beginner’s alphabet has 19 letters. The letters are: A, C, D, E, G, H, I, J, K, L, N, O, Q, R, S, T, U, X, and Z. With your mouth in the position described in the instructions above, recite this part of the alphabet over and over. You may have to do this hundreds or even thousands of times before you get it right. While you master this step, it may seem strange that these sounds are coming out of your mouth while it’s not moving. Try not to focus on this phenomenon or your progress as a ventriloquist may be hindered."

Wherever the diagram had come from, it was apparent that it was not from the booklet itself. In fact, it was more than likely that it was a loose piece of paper tucked into the book.

And just as Shawn had arrived at this possibility, another paper fell out of the instruction booklet:




It wasn't a paper, but rather an old photograph. At the bottom someone had written something:

Kramer and Clayton 1901?

The writing, it appeared was written in some kind of purple marker which smelled like berries. Kind of like the new ones they had been using in school during the last couple of years. This, even though the photograph itself appeared to be much older.

Shawn took another glance at the Human Dummy side of the page to see if there were any hints about what sort of book the paper originally came from, but then he turned his attention to the photo.

The picture looked really old, but the writing on it seemed newer, what with the scented marker. He compared the handwriting of the caption to the handwriting on the "Step 10" instructions. Had someone been through this stuff recently? His Mom said she'd gotten the suitcase from his Dad's closet, but did any of this look like his writing?