Review:
Johnny and his cousin Brittany are at their grandpa's New York apartment, preparing to clear out his things after he was legally dead due to being missing for a year. The apartment is a renovated TV studio, the place where their grandpa once worked as a puppeteer for a Sesame Street-like children's show.
Johnny wakes up one night to find Swoomie, his grandpa's old puppet, standing over him and watching him. Only Swoomie's right side moves, the side that Johnny's grandpa controlled. Swoomie somehow disappears into the apartment's walls, and Johnny becomes obsessed with figuring out what's going on. Whatever it is, he's sure it's linked to his grandpa's disappearance. Brittany isn't convinced he saw what he thought he saw, but, as a superfan of her grandpa's show, she's excited about the thought that their grandpa might have stored the old puppets inside the apartment's walls.
This was an interesting idea, with some freaky body horror moments and some nicely creepy bits. I was reminded a bit of the nostalgia-based horror in the first season of the Channel Zero horror anthology TV series.
Unfortunately, the execution didn't entirely work for me, especially near the end, and some moments that should have been more horrifying were instead kind of...cheesy? And I'm not wild about the author using what I think is probably an AI-generated cover.
Extras:
There's a short section at the end in which the author writes about his inspiration for this story.
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