Vinny lugged out a large suitcase from under Joanna's mother's car. It looked ancient, and possibly water damaged as well. Joanna wasn't impressed.

"A suitcase?" she asked, slowly blinking him.

"Not just any suitcase." Vinny told her, getting a key out of his pocket and jamming it into the lock on the suitcase.

"Skeleton keys." Vinny mumbled, almost to himself. "Bloody brilliant invention."

Joanna rolled her eyes again as Vinny successfully unlocked the lock and opened it up. He withdrew something from the box and let Joanna have a look. It was a dummy in a black suit complete with a little red rose on his right breast and bow tie around his neck.

"Classy." she approved. "Ancient looking though, but classy. But I'm not a ventriloquist. I'm not even a doll person."

Vinny shrugged.

"I knew that, so I thought this might make it up."

He then withdrew a gold ring with strange markings on it from his pocket and handed it to Joanna. She inspected it, and tried it on her right ring finger to see how it looked. When she pointed her hand down, the ring fell off. She bent down to pick the ring up again and placed it on her right thumb. It fit snugly there and she liked it.

"Better with jewelry than you are with toys." she told him. "No wonder Mom wants to marry you. Is it real gold?"

"It might be, I did all my fool-proof gold testing techniques to make sure."

Joanna smiled at Vinny, although it resembled something more of a smirk.

"Thanks Vinny." she said, giving him a hug. She smiled at him again, and gingerly picked up the dummy to take him to her room. She left the suitcase in the garage where Vinny hid it behind some boxes that contained emergency supplies.

Joanna climbed up the stairs with the dummy cradled in her arms and the ring still on her finger. She walked to one of the last doors in the hallway and opened it. Inside revealed a room with white walls and gray carpeting. Most of the furniture had been painted black, except for the box seat in front of the window which was as white as the wallpaper.

"This is my room." Joanna carelessly said to the dummy. "I was trying to go for Gothic (I like the style of it, not the attitude) but Mom is limited in what I can and can't do."

Joanna then carefully put the dummy on the box seat and stepped back to look at him. She raised an eyebrow at his features. His smile was cocked into something nearly mocking, or if even, nasty. His eyes were enlarged and slightly out of its sockets, but Joanna supposed this was how the ventriloquist could control his eyelids to make them blink. She wouldn't know, she wasn't good with that kind of stuff. Then Joanna noticed the stitching around the pocket on the dummy's suit. That was something so was good at; sticking and embroidery. She felt the seams with great care and admiration, then she realized something was slightly sticking out of the pocket and carefully withdrew it. On a small business card type paper, contained words. Words in some different language she knew she didn't know the origins from.

"Freaky." she said, turning the card over then looking at the words again. But she shrugged and folded the card in two and stuck it in her back pocket. Then from downstairs, she could hear her mother come home and went down to meet her. As she got closer to the entry room, she could hear the heated discussion between her and Vinny.

"Why did you bring that thing here? She doesn't like dolls and you know that."

"But she likes Gothic things though. And Slappy did look pretty Gothic..."

"I don't CARE if Slappy looked Gothic or not. Don't you see? If she reads though words...?"

"Hey." Joanna said when she entered the room. "What'd I miss?"

"Jo!" Vinny and Joanna's mother said at the same time, surprised that she was there.

"Hello." Joanna responded. "Where you talking about me?"

Joanna's mother sighed.

"We were dear." she said like she was about to announce that someone had died. "And we need to tell you something about Slappy."

"Slappy?" Joanna asked, slightly confused.

"The dummy." Joanna's mother and Vinny said at the same time.

"Oh, yeah." Joanna said, not knowing that the dummy had a name. "What about him?"

"Have you've read those words?" Joanna's mother asked.

"What words?" Joanna asked, confused on where her mother was going with this. Her mother closed her eyes.

"I can't say them, but I don't want to either. Neither should you if that be the case. Did you read those words?"

"No, I don't think so. I don't even know what you're talking about!"

Joanna's mother scanned her daughter for lies, but as far as Joanna knew, she wasn't.

"Jo... Slappy is pure evil."