# The Secret of Ventriloquism  ## Metadata - Author: [[Jon Padgett]] - Full Title: The Secret of Ventriloquism - Category: #books - Summary: insert summary - My notes: - Summary: A boy grows up haunted by his brother’s frightening stories and imagines deadly hands and a poisonous doll coming to life. He learns to be cruel and secretive, using strange powers and violence to control or destroy the horrors he finds. Later, he and others encounter grotesque, transforming bodies and ghostly children that blur fear and reality. - Source File: The Secret of Ventriloquism 2017.epub ## LLM Chats ## NotebookLM ## LLM Audio ## Highlights > [The Infusorium](private://read/01kcfcmq3w4bx87mpqsw1gxsmr/../Text/part0034.html#a__Toc462821089) ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01ke513kv1ysy3k7rj8ss7xmks)) > The Interstate rumbled beneath us. Twilight. Margaret had fallen asleep next to me, and before I could think of pulling over I found my head also nodding off. > Next thing I knew our car was jerking upwards with an awful scraping sound as I awoke to find I had dozed and crossed the median. > Margaret screamed. I’m sure I did too. > An eighteen-wheeler, a blur of cars, SUVs and trucks whirred past us, horns dopplering to the left and right. A feeling of weightlessness. Time seemed to slow as I wrenched the car back and forth. And then everything... changed. The vehicles that had been careening around us were now traveling in the same direction as our car. It was as if the previous chaos had only been a kind of intricate illusion that cleared in the blink of an eye. > Margaret was no longer digging her nails into my arm, screaming, but now sat calm, silent and staring in the seat next to me. The Interstate, too, looked different. It was smaller and less trafficked, with only two instead of six lanes of traffic. More like a country highway. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01kdd7grkwz53tx9w2byzx9bgd)) ## New highlights added January 26, 2026 at 10:02 AM > Remember, the “people” you must deal with to survive are mere dummies serving a higher purpose—a kind of Ultimate Ventriloquism—that they cannot hope to comprehend. Animal-dummies must be treated at all times with false and/or unsympathetic regard. Believe me, they do not feel a thing. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01kdmm9g8hynzn1jnr4kcfgyfm)) > Do not blink. Do not move. Now... when you have lost all sense of where you are or even what you are, conscious only of your dummy, make your dummy’s eyes move. How? After all those hundreds of weeks and those thousands of hours, moving your dummy is no different than moving your legs. Your body is no longer limited to the bag of meat and bones you were born into. Now... put yourself together. The first time it happens you will not remember seeing those dummy eyes shifting to its left. You will see the dummy’s eyes right up until you know they are about to move, and suddenly it seems that you are no longer looking at the dummy at all. You did it. You will find the undeniable reality: those dummy eyes have indeed moved from their original position. And not only did they move to the left, but—just for a moment—you seemed to be looking out of those glassy, dummy eyes yourself. Being sick to your stomach now is perfectly normal. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01kdmmjr28htnb5bt7e68hvfk8)) > Yes, we Greater Ventriloquists speak with the voice of nature making itself suffer. Nothing could be more normal than that. This head is a useless mechanism. Cast it aside. We do not need it anymore. There is nothing but the voice of this pain and this panic thrown into the darkness. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01kdmng75ck0w1gd7j2fz84afv))