She had to make him. How could she not?
He came every night. Not now and then. Every night. And in the daytime he was still there, because by then he had got into her head as well, and a thing you can see with your eyes shut is not a thing you can put down.
So she made him. And she could not make anything.
Her hands knew how to sew, the way most hands in that house knew how to sew. Look at the gown. A plain seam run straight up one side, the neck gathered evenly, the hood drawn round the face and tied off tidily.
Now look to the head. She mixed up a batch of composite and she built him a face out of it. The nose is two small dots. The mouth is a black smear laid on low and off to one side. Nothing on that head is level with anything else. She carried on anyway. A solid head is not an evening's work. It has to be mixed, built up, set down, left to go hard, and come back to. She had days in which to stop, and put it on the fire, and go to bed like everybody else in the house. She did not.
And then she painted the eyes.
Two red discs, filled in solid, the same size as one another, level and with a black centre placed carefully in the middle of each. Everything else on the face is a woman groping for a remembrance she has no idea how to make. The eyes are a woman who knows exactly.
That is what a memory looks like when you set it down in front of you. Vague all over, except for the part you have looked at too many times.
And she did not draw him. A drawing would have got him out of her head and onto the sideboard and that would have been that. She made a puppet, and a puppet is a thing you have to work, so she was not finished when the paint went off. She needed him to be able to turn, and to lift, and to come across a room towards somebody.
She wanted to show him to somebody. Bring him up, work him, and watch their face while she asked: "Is this him? Have you seen this? Say you have seen this."
She wanted him out of her head. This is what out of her head looks like.
What you will receive
The Regular Visitor himself. A hand-made puppet worked over the hand, with a modelled head and a full-length gown. The head is a solid modelled composite, not carved and not hollow, finished in cream white paint. It is the only weight in the object. Where the white has chipped away the composite beneath shows buff.
The body is unbleached cotton, plain and cheap, the cloth of sheets and aprons rather than of costume. A hood of the same cloth is drawn up around the face and gathered with thread, the ends of which still hang loose. The gown runs the full length of the puppet, with a plain seam up one side, two short sleeves that end without hands, and a raw unfinished hem at the bottom, open for the operator's hand.
Condition is honest and unrestored. The paint is crazed across the whole head and chipped through in several places, worst around the mouth and at the edge of one eye, with a fine crack running back over the crown. The cloth is dusty, faded, marked here and there down the front, and fraying at the open hem. Nothing has been cleaned, retouched or replaced.
Using him in your show
What he is, is a likeness, and a likeness only ever raises the one question. Your whole job with him is to raise it and then get out of the way.
Work him sparingly. He arrives, he does not chat. Give him no words at all if you can manage it, and no funny voice under any circumstances. Let him be still, and let the stillness run on slightly too long, because a glove puppet that has stopped moving is far worse than one waving its arms about. The head is solid and it has real weight on the finger, so he will want to nod. Do not let him. Everybody in the room knows there is a hand in there, and they can see that the hand has decided to wait.
The obvious piece of business is the one she may have been after in the first place. Bring him up, turn him towards a sitter, and ask them plainly whether they recognise him. The correct response to a no is nothing at all. Do not press it, do not smile, and put him down.
Two questions come with him and you should answer neither. The first is whether she made him to be rid of him or made him to be shown. The second is whether anybody believed her. That second one will do more work in a quiet room than any effect you own, because everybody sitting there has at some point described something out loud and watched the other person decide.
Though give some thought to how she got him out of her head in the first place. Not by burning him. By building him, and putting him somewhere other people would have to look at him. That is the only way a thing like this ever travels.
And you have been looking at him for a good few minutes now.
Shut your eyes tonight and see whether he is there. If he is, he will be there tomorrow as well, and the night after that.
He is very regular.
