#category: statement

While the title and setting would suggest a more End aligned tale, this story is primarily Stranger-coded. The corpse itself is actually a shapeshifting alien, attempting (and nearly succeeding) to mimic a "normal" human corpse, even subtly changing its appearance based on what those around them have said they expect a corpse to look like (e.g. making its hair and fingernails grow longer in response to Gwen repeating the common myth that they continue to grow after death, and then retracting said features once Martha corrects her). Martha hypothesises this could be a tactic to infiltrate and eventually take over UNIT:

"Okay, let's think: you're an intelligent chameleon arriving on this planet; you know we'll detect your ship - use that. Pretend to be human - pretend to be a dead human - get yourself smuggled into an organisation adept at dealing with aliens. First, you take over the experts, and then the organisation, and then the whole system!"

---FINAL SPOILER WARNING---

Turns out that the origin of this ghost epidemic was caused by the actions of the supposed “Hero” of The Problem, Marissa Fittes, who was the first one to figure out and codify (and profit from) most defences against ghosts. Her expeditions to the Other Side caused the dead to stir and make their way to the land of the living. She was obsessed with the potential properties of ectoplasm, the substance that ghosts are made of and what makes them so deadly, including immortality. Her frequent incursions into the Other Side to harvest and utilise ectoplasm, continued to greatly escalate The Problem, which only served to increase her wealth and fame as the head of the prestigious Fittes Agency.

Haruhiko's family travel around Japan putting on puppet shows. They never stay anywhere for longer than a month, so Haruhiko has no time to make friends. While staying in one town he becomes friendly with a girl called Kinuko, and takes her to see his family's puppets. She is frightened by "Jean-Pierre", a creepy-looking puppet that belongs to his brother Yukihiko. Shortly after, the family has to leave town, but Kinuko promises that she will see Haruhiko again.

Haruhiko's father gets sick and the family has to move into an apartment. Their father talks about how he loves being a puppeteer because he controls the puppets completely. While alone with Haruhiko, Yukihiko says he's always thought that it was the other way around: their father was doing whatever the puppets wanted. He runs away from home that night. Their father later dies, and Haruhiko and his sister Natsumi go to live with a cousin, eventually getting their own place when Haruhiko is in high school.

Haruhiko meets Kinuko again and she becomes his girlfriend. One day they receive a letter from Yukihiko. He is now living in the same town and invites them to visit him, his wife, and his son. He is extremely rich and owns his own company, but he and his family are suspended from piano wire that is controlled from the ceiling by hired puppeteers. Haruhiko is very disturbed, but Yukihiko says that the puppet is the one in charge of the puppeteer. Yukihiko still has Jean-Pierre, and he owns a set of life-sized ballet dancer puppets designed to entertain people.

Haruhiko doesn't want to visit again, but Natsumi loves Yukihiko's house, and they begin to visit regularly. She wants to become a "puppet" herself and dance like the ballet puppets. She dresses up and is controlled by the puppeteers to dance beautifully like the dolls. Haruhiko is upset that Yukihiko and his family have never taken the strings off in two years, and even more upset when Natsumi refuses to take off her costume and go home. He is forced to let Natsumi live with Yukihiko, but refuses to move in himself. He doesn't want Kinuko to meet Yukihiko and has to make excuses for his visits to Yukihiko's house. 

When Haruhiko visits the house one day, the ballet puppets lead him into a room and try to get him to put on strings. Kinuko has followed him and is watching from the street. She mistakes one of the puppets for a real woman and thinks Haruhiko is cheating on her. Suddenly, Jean-Pierre arrives and lures her into the house. Inside, the puppets have begun to dance wildly, including Yukihiko and his family. Yukihiko screams that Jean-Pierre is out of control, causing Haruhiko to realize that Jean-Pierre has been manipulating Yukihiko's mind the whole time. Haruhiko goes up into the roof and finds that the puppeteers are in a trance-like state and being controlled by Jean-Pierre.

In 1989, Veronica Sawyer despairs at the hellish social hierarchy of Westerberg High, where students like her friend Martha Dunnstock are relentlessly bullied and the clique of Heathers (Chandler, Duke, and McNamara) rule the school. When Veronica’s gets noticed by the Heathers, they elevate her to a position of popularity, then order her to forge a love letter from jock Ram to Martha to mess with her. This causes Veronica to get entangled with JD, who has been constantly moved around by his dad and gives himself brain freeze as a self-harming coping mechanism. Veronica stands up to the Heathers when they cruelly prank Martha; they vow to destroy her reputation, so Veronica decides she’s a “dead girl walking” and sleeps with JD.

The next day, when Veronica goes to apologize to Heather Chandler, JD tricks her into poisoning Chandler with drain cleaner and fake a suicide note. Duke takes up Chandler’s former position and joins Kurt and Ram in slut-shaming Veronica after the jocks fail to rape Veronica. Veronica and JD plan to get payback by shooting the jocks with tranquilizers and faking their gay suicide pact, but Veronica realizes too late that the bullets were real and has a breakdown. Convinced the murders are for the greater good, J.D. urges Veronica to target Heather D. next. She refuses, so he complains about doing nothing in the face of injustice, revealing he witnessed his mother’s own suicide as a young boy, straining his relationship with his father and causing their constant moving around. When Martha tells Veronica she believes JD killed the jocks, citing the forged love letter as proof, Veronica (urged by Chandler’s ghost) confesses to the forgery, breaking Martha’s heart. McNamara publicly admits suicidal thoughts, causing Duke to lead the students in mocking her and almost driving her to kill herself. Veronica breaks up with an increasingly unstable JD, who blackmails Duke into making the students sign a petition.