Cosmic Puppets, Chapter 4

Okay, so this book is actually getting quite good. Just when I think I’ve got one mystery figured out, another just pops up. 

Peter walks out to the barn in the backyard of his house, and he laments the “mistakes” that he made in the confrontation with Ted, noting that he let on too much information. He then looks over several jars that he’s keeping, feeding “them” expertly. After this, Peter walks out of the barn and is suddenly set upon by….something. A strange buzz that seems to really wound Peter. The narration is rather vague on what exactly just occurred, with phrasing like “Suppose a whole pack had found him, not just two!” or “But thank God they were on their own. Unorganized!” I have to say I’m not as much a fan of his kind of mystery development, where the narration purposefully obscures something that the character is clearly privy too. I suppose it’s similar to a film shot that leaves parts of a scene obscured in darkness, but it’s a bit awkward in text. The narration says it was bees afterward, but the amount of detail spent on this seems disproportionate if it’s really just a bee sting. Then again, a similar incident occurred in Eye in the Sky involving an out-of-the-blue earwig… maybe randomly appearing insects are some kind of staple in Dick’s writing that I wasn’t aware of? 

Later, at dinner, Ted strikes up a conversation with Doctor Meade, the character from the first chapter. Doc apparently is the one who delivered Ted back when he was born, and is the doctor who pronounced Ted dead following the scarlet fever that apparently caused his death. Ted’s evasive about revealing too much of his conversation with Peter to the doctor, and understandably so, he doesn’t know who these people are or what their relation might be to this other-town. Later still, Ted is continuing his talk with Meade and a woman named Miss James on the porch of the boarding house. Ted begins to lose his cool in that manner that I’ve seen sometimes in older works. A character just sort of erupts at people for not comprehending the mystery that the protagonist finds themselves in, even though it is a pretty unreasonable assumption that anyone else would be able to possibly understand the strangeness of the mystery at hand. 

AND THEN ALL OF A SUDDEN TWO GHOSTS JUST SHOW UP ON THE SCENE AND WALK RIGHT ON THROUGH TED, THE DOCTOR, MISS JAMES AND THE WALLS OF THE HOUSE. I honestly admit I had to reread this paragraph to make sure I hadn’t misread, but no the characters confirm it. Ted asks if Miss James or Meade just saw that and they respond, matter-of-factly, that of course they saw it, it’s just the two ‘Wanderers’ who make their way around this time of the evening. Ted asks a bit further and the characters are almost as taken aback by Ted’s confusion as Ted is by the TWO INTANGIBLE PEOPLE. 

I really love how this book just kind of introduces this new element just out of the blue like that. I doubt these two are actual ghosts, but I’m interested in seeing how Dick goes into explaining these ‘Wanderers’. He tends to do rather well writing non-human characters, I’ve found. I’m excited, y’all!