I'm a spy in the film

Ravens Fair, a small town in northwestern New Jersey

Bourne drove slowly along the town's deserted main road.

Although it is early spring, a season when everything grows, there is not a single sign of vitality in this small town. Instead, all you can see are old and dilapidated buildings and townspeople with numb expressions.

There was no laughter, no birds singing or dogs barking, only dead silence.

Who would have thought that in the 1940s, this place was known as the "Crow Market" for its convenient transportation and prosperous business.

Now, it is so dilapidated.

Bourne, with the face of Jamie Ash, the suspect who murdered his wife, through the car window, met the townspeople's eyes, some puzzled, some understanding, and quietly communicated with his own puppet in his mind:

"Notan, if we just don't say hello, will it be exposed?"

Notan said helplessly: "Master, Jamie left here when he was a child. He has only come back three times in more than ten years. Once was to handle household registration procedures, once was when his mother passed away, and once was to sign an agreement to give up his inheritance. How much impression do you think the people in the town have of you?"

Bourne was embarrassed: "Isn't it because I lack experience? Who knows if this mask that Scarlett and the others rushed to make will work?"

Notan rolled her eyes. She had been making this expression more and more often recently. Perhaps it was really as she said, the devil tide had revived and all living things had come to life.

"Don't worry. Even in our time, masks like yours were rare masterpieces. Other than the fact that you can't make exaggerated expressions, there are no flaws. Most people can't even tell."

"But we are investigating a witch. She is not an ordinary person," Bourne retorted.

"As long as you stay like this, no one will be able to detect any magical fluctuations in you. Besides, isn't Jamie's tampered watch in your pocket?"

"I'm afraid there are still some omissions..."

Bourne wanted to say something else, but was interrupted by Notan:

“Master, please rest assured. No one knows the marking and tracking tricks used by puppeteers better than me.

There are three marks in total, and I have cleared two of them. As long as you, Master, remain calm throughout the process and don't give the other party any chance to take advantage of you, there is nothing to be afraid of, Puppet Master."

Well, I can’t tell you.

Bourne smacked his lips and kept silent.

Speaking of which, Notan was a little irritable during this mission. Do puppets also have menstrual periods?

Following the map instructions that Nottan had extracted from Jamie's mind, Bourne drove along the main road and into a mansion halfway up the mountain.

There was only a gatekeeper in the empty house. There were no servants, housekeepers, or bodyguards. After knocking on the door for a long time, a young woman opened the door.

“Mary Shaw!”

Bourne exclaimed in his heart, because he recognized at a glance that the woman in front of him with blonde hair and a smile on her face was the woman in the mural on the wall of the first haunted house in the small town of Amityville, Long Island the night before.

"You must be Jamie! I've seen your picture."

The woman smiled as if she had met the person she had been waiting for. She introduced herself and said:

"You can call me Ella. I'm your stepmother! Are you here to look for your father? He's in the study. I'll take you there!"

Looking at the woman's back as she turned around, Bourne felt that there was something else in her smile, but he asked Notan several times in his mind, but got no response.

Walking on the creaking wooden floor, Bourne followed the woman who called herself Ella but looked like Mary Shaw to the study and met Jamie's nominal father, Edward Ashe.

An old man sitting in a wheelchair, with white hair and an equally pale face.

"Your leg?"

"He had a sudden stroke a month ago. But that's not a bad thing. A major blow can always make people make some changes. I heard about your wife. Did you bring her body back?"

"Yes."

"Don't worry, I'll let Henry Walker take care of it. Just do what I can as a father for you."

The old man's tone was sincere, with a heavy sense of guilt in his voice.

Bourne was a little unsure about the relationship between the father and son. He only knew that Jamie had run away from home because of the old man's domestic violence when he was young. Now -

After taking a look at the woman standing closely behind the old man, Bourne asked tentatively:

"I came back to ask you something. Do you still remember the nursery rhyme that my mother read to me when she was alive?"

After that, without waiting for the old man to answer, he recited the poem he heard from Jamie in a low voice:

Beware of Mary Shaw's gaze;

She had no children, only dolls;

If you see her in your sleep, don’t scream;

Otherwise she will rip your mouth open and rip out your tongue!

As Bourne read, he kept a close eye on the expressions of the two people opposite him.

Unfortunately, the smile on old man Edward's face was a little strange and seemed very stiff, while Ella, who was suspected to be Mary Shaw's stepmother, had a blank expression throughout, but her throat kept moving.

"It's just a poem that parents use to scare their children into behaving themselves," replied Stepmother Ella.

Old man Edward agreed: "Narrow-mindedness leads to feudal superstition, that's it, there's nothing to say."

"What about Mary Shaw? Who is she? Why is everyone so tight-lipped about her?"

Bourne demanded.

If the woman in front of him really had something to do with Mary Shaw, then Bourne wouldn't mind turning the table over right now. A puppeteer without his puppets, wouldn't he be nothing but a worthless loser?

Some devilish tricks, whether it is a fireball or light, will teach her a lesson. If worst comes to worst, she can still suck it up.

However, the old man Edward frowned and asked, "Why are you asking this?"

"My wife is dead. She died after receiving a ventriloquist doll sent from here. On the lining of the box it says: 'Mary Shaw and Billy at Ravens'! You must tell me, or I will return to New York tomorrow after the funeral and never come back!"

Bourne pretended to be angry and said something, then left the study room with a strange atmosphere without looking back.

The old man Edward's full-bodied voice came from behind:

"Jamie! Jamie!"

Then his stepmother Ella chased after him. Bourne deliberately walked very fast, but Ella, as an ordinary person, caught up with him effortlessly before Bourne walked out the door.

"Your father has really changed. He is no longer the same person he used to be!"

"Really?" Bourne paused.

"Every word I say to you is true."

Ella looked at her stepson sincerely, but now she was looking down at him with half her face in shadow, making it seem as if she was looking at a statue.

"Nice to meet you, ma'am. That old man killed my mother and drove my second wife away. I hope he dies before you this time. That would be a good thing for you. This is advice! Goodbye!"

Only after getting in his car and driving away from the manor did Bourne heave a long sigh of relief. Just now he was really playing the role of Jamie well, but he couldn't help but want to shine his magic on the woman named Ella to see if she was a human or a ghost!

"It's a good thing you did that, otherwise your father's body would have turned into thick water in the holy light!"

At some point, Nottan sat on Bourne's shoulder again and answered him.

"The body? What I just saw..."

"Yes, it's a living doll. What you see is just a shell, with its internal organs and brain hollowed out. As for why it can speak? This may be Mary Shaw's unique method.

You know, every puppeteer has his own unique skills. Some can keep the puppet alive for a long time, while others can make the puppet have the ability to move on its own. "

Bourne simply couldn't imagine that a person who, in his eyes, although with limited mobility, was completely normal in appearance, expression, reaction and speech, was actually a puppet, and a puppet made from a living person!

What's more, the person who made this doll was most likely the woman he had just hugged.

vomit--

Waves of nausea surged into my throat!

laugh--.

There was a sharp brake sound and Bourne couldn't help but stop the car on the side of the road and retched a few times.