How to Sell a Haunted House

While Mark continued to work with the group, he kept his distance from the puppets. When they asked why, he told them about his mom’s puppet ministry. Clark showed Mark his own puppet, Sticks, and the performance was so remarkable that he asked Clark to teach him.

Mark began skipping class and never returned. He started studying puppets, believing he had found his career. He learned how to be a street performer and puppeteer but didn’t tell his parents, who continued to pay his tuition. He asked his mom to ship Pupkin to him, and when he showed the puppet to the group, Clark put Pupkin on and immediately began to talk in the puppet’s voice.

When an elementary school arranged for them to put on a show, they put together a huge anti-war production. By the end, as Death swept across the stage, the children were crying and the teachers removed them from the auditorium. The teacher who arranged the performance refused to pay them, and when they argued, the police were called. They searched the car, destroying their puppets and sets. On the way home, the group was silent and angry.

The next morning, Clark told them that, after speaking with Pupkin last night, he believed they need to go even deeper. They decided to stay in an empty rental house that Clark’s parents owned and did a workshop retreat to create a new show. Clark showed them three masks he had already made, which looked just like Pupkin.

Mark, Sadie, and Richard wore the masks until Clark told them to remove them. They surrendered to the masks and did as they directed, their actions getting more and more violent and destructive. In the days that followed, Clark continued to wear Pupkin, and they wore the masks longer and longer each day. They continued to destroy the house, and themselves, losing all track of time. When Mark looks back now, he realizes that, although it felt like they were doing something important, they were really just dealing with the elementary school fiasco and their inability to effect real change.

This went on for weeks. Mark began finding bones in the house and seeing missing pet posters at the grocery store. He got a bad feeling about what they were doing, but Clark kept reassuring them. Mark knew he should leave but retreated into Pupkin again. One day, he remembered flashes of a scene, of destroying a house while a woman held her child, both of them screaming. He realized that it was the teacher from the elementary school. He felt the need to escape Pupkin, and before he could change his mind, he lit the masks on fire and left the house. When he realized the house would burn down, he wanted to save Clark, Richard, and Sadie but was too weak to go back inside.

He made his way back to Boston, realizing that he would have to live with the incident for the rest of his life. He stayed in his dorm room for days, in a haze, until he woke up one day to find his mother there. He told her he wanted to go home, and she didn’t ask any questions—she just withdrew him from school and packed his things. However, she wouldn’t leave without Pupkin, and so Mark took her to Clark’s house. When Clark answered the door, he acted like he had never met Mark, gave Pupkin back, and then closed the door. Mark and Nancy flew home, and no one ever asked what happened.

When he is done with his story, Louise is shocked, but they reaffirm that Pupkin is real and that he shot it. She apologizes to Mark for believing the worst about him all these years and asks why he never told her the truth. He replies that they have never been close and wonders when he would have told her. All these years, he has been living with the fear that Richard or Sadie will appear or that someone will find out what he’s done. Louise finally tells him the truth about what happened with Pupkin at the pond.

Mark wonders how their family would have been different if they had shared all their secrets. He reconsiders what happened to their parents and if it was the result of Pupkin being jealous that Nancy was taking care of Eric. He thinks that Pupkin attacked their father and that’s why she was taking him to the hospital.

When they leave Waffle House, Louise apologizes again for never telling anyone the story about Pupkin drowning Mark. She realizes that Mark is the only one that knows and understands everything, and she feels the need to reach out. She hugs him, and after a moment, he hugs back. However, when she realizes that he thinks he’s comforting her, she pulls back, wanting to make clear that she is comforting him.

They discuss what to do about the house now that they know that Pupkin was the reason for the bad vibes and Pupkin is dead. Louise still hasn’t told Mark about the Squirrel Nativity, but they are thinking about the Mark and Louise dolls, too. In the end, they decide to go back to the house and finish Pupkin off by burning him.

Mark and Louise are sitting in Mark’s truck outside the house but can’t make themselves go inside. Finally, Louise tells Mark about the Squirrel Nativity. They decide to burn Pupkin first and then deal with the rest of the dolls and puppets. However, when they go inside, Pupkin is not where they left him. They find traces of him inside the exposed duct in the hallway, hear noises in the attic, and realize he is above them.

Mark takes the boards off the attic door, and they pull down the stairs. Mark goes up first, and Louise follows. In a corner, they find a tiny bedroom set up and decorated. Pupkin is in the bed, and they realize that their mother had felt badly about banishing Pupkin to the attic and had made a room for him.

Louise runs for the stairs to get the grill but realizes Mark is now talking to Pupkin, who is trying to convince him to put him on. She realizes that Pupkin wants to hurt her and tries to get Mark to come with her. However, he tells her that if he doesn’t put Pupkin on, Pupkin will use Spider to hurt her. Louise is shocked when she remembers Spider.

When they were children, they had pestered their parents to get a dog, but Nancy and Eric had refused. One morning, Mark came to the breakfast table and announced he had an imaginary dog named Spider. Their parents accepted the idea, and the family acted as if Spider was a real dog. However, Spider slowly faded away, and when Louise returned from college and asked about him, Mark didn’t even know what she was talking about. They had both forgotten about Spider, but Pupkin remembers.

Louise hears a growl behind her and realizes that it is Spider. When she turns and sees him, she tries to remember that he is imaginary, but that fact means that he can be anything six-year-old Mark imagined—with six legs, blue hair, and several rows of sharp teeth.

Spider lunges and catches Louise’s face in his mouth, but she wedges a nearby tennis racket in. She falls backward, and Spider lands on her chest. He snaps at her, but she grabs an old rollerblade and hits him with it. She scrambles to her feet, and Mark tells her to run. She makes it to the attic door, but Spider hits her from behind and she falls through to the hallway below. Mark is still upstairs, arguing with Pupkin. Louise tries to make it to her parents’ bedroom, but Spider latches onto her ankle and drags her down the hallway.

Suddenly, Spider releases her and cowers, whimpering, before running through the house and out into the garage. Louise sees Mark standing in the hallway with Pupkin on his hand, an absent look on his face. Pupkin is squirming and alive, and his voice comes out of Mark’s mouth. Louise tries to reason with Mark but can’t reach him. Louise begins to plan how to get past Mark and out into the garage. Mark reaches down, and Pupkin picks up the hammer from the floor, where they had left it earlier. She manages to dodge the first blow, but the next falls directly on her head.

As Pupkin continues to beat her with the hammer, Louise can’t protect herself. She pretends to see Spider, and when Pupkin turns to look, she runs for the garage. Mark follows her, swinging the hammer. She falls into the garage and tries to wake Mark up. She gets through to him just for a moment, long enough for her to understand what he wants her to do. She sits on Mark, struggling to get Pupkin off his hand. Pupkin squirms and hits her in the face, breaking her nose. Pupkin gets free and goes for the hammer again, dragging Mark behind him. Mark is awake now and manages to turn on the circular saw that he left in the garage. They look at each other and know what she has to do. She cuts off his arm, just below the elbow, with the circular saw. She then rips Pupkin off the hand and stuffs him into the trash can, slamming the lid down. Then, she tourniquets Mark’s arm and calls an ambulance.

Louise tells the paramedics Mark cut his arm off by accident. At the hospital, to explain her own injuries, she tells the doctor and the police that a shelving unit fell on her. Louise calls Poppy and is relieved at how normal she sounds but prevaricates when Ian asks why she is calling. She waits for Mark to get out of surgery, wondering what she is going to say to him.

When he wakes up, she asks why he put Pupkin on, and he tells her that Pupkin said if he didn’t, Spider would kill her. He tells her to burn Pupkin, and she leaves immediately. At the house, she douses Pupkin with lighter fluid and puts him on the grill. She burns the puppet until he is just ash. She goes back into the house and realizes that, with Pupkin gone, the house is no longer haunted.