Behind The Horned Mask: Book 1

by Jeff Vrolyks

  Chapter One

  A man with red skin, horns, and a tail walks into a pub on Halloween, sits at the bar. Impressed, the bartender whistles and says, “You take your costuming serious, huh?”

  “I do,” the man replies.

  “Well it’s a special occasion, so why not, eh?”

  “It is. It’s the only day all year I don’t have to wear one.”

  The weather forecasters had gotten it all wrong, as they often do. I swear, it could be twenty-one degrees out and they’ll predict a low of thirty-three. Or they will say eighty-percent chance of snow when if they stuck their damned heads outside they’d see that it’s already snowing. I digress. The storm that was due to arrive on Monday night, February 15th, had arrived Saturday night, the evening before Valentine’s Day. Two feet of snow dumped on the mountain like Jack Frost took a massive icy shit, blanketing the San Bernardino forest with holy whiteness. Cal Trans is great at clearing the roads, and come Sunday morning, cars didn’t need chains to traverse the winding mountain roads. That Valentine’s Day morning Norrah was getting ready for work at Stater Brothers when her bottom-floor tenant Paul Klein lifted the hatch and entered the living room. It wasn’t off-limits to him to be above the basement floor, but it was understood that his place was down there and her place was up there, and there was little-to-no need for him to come up. Occasionally he did come up, but always with good reason—to pay rent (always on time), to offer to chop some of the logs lining the side of the house into firewood, to drop off a couple bottles of red wine his friend got for free from work (sample bottles from a wine rep), and the last and most consequential occurrence of his upstairs intrusion was on the morning of Valentine’s Day.

  Norrah had just shut off the blow-dryer in her third-floor bathroom when she heard Paul holler, “Hello-hello!”

  Norrah cinched her robe’s belt and took a couple steps down the top flight of stairs. “Hi, Paul,” she said with her charming smile—she really is a cute little devil, and that smile makes me fall in love with her all over again every time I see it.

  “Morning, Norrah. I was hoping we could talk for a few minutes. I know you’re leaving for work soon, but it’s kind of important.”

  “Uh… okay.”

  She went downstairs and took a seat at the dining room table. Paul sat opposite her. He wore black slacks and a dark blue polo shirt. His black hair was slightly wavy and always looked wet. He looked like he belonged in any number of teen-heartthrob movies. It was easy to smile at him, easy to get a little lost in his hazel eyes. He’s the kind of guy that you find yourself telling too-personal things to in hopes that he’ll reciprocate a juicy nugget of his own. She felt uncomfortable wearing nothing but a bath robe, just a little tug on her cloth-belt away from being nude before this good looking boy, but it wasn’t by her design: he came up to see her. She crossed her legs under the table and asked how he was doing.

  “Great, thank you. I’ll make this quick, since you have to leave here in,” he checked his wristwatch, “what, fifteen minutes?” She nodded. “I have a huge favor to ask you. I know I said I wasn’t going to have many people over, and I respect your wish of quietude here”—quietude, who the hell says quietude?—“but something’s come up. There are some guys I go to school with, and every year on Valentine’s Day there’s a party. A masquerade party. It was going to be at Taylor’s house this year; he lives just a few miles from here. Something came up and the place is a no-go. We all had our hearts set on having the party up in the mountains; you know… cozy snow, roaring fire, forest; and being that your house is so near Taylor’s, it seemed like a good logistical alternative. So I—”

  “How many people are we talking?”

  “Not many. I believe something like eight guys and their dates. Maybe a couple others, but I don’t know for sure. They’re all students of University of Redlands, good considerate guys and girls. I trust them all. We won’t be rowdy, you have my word.”

  “From what time till what time?”

  Paul looked up and away, considered it. “Eight till about one or two in the morning. We’ll have the music turned down by midnight.”

  “I suppose it would be all right, if it’s a one time thing. Don’t get in the habit of having get-togethers here. It’s not that I don’t trust—”

  Paul held up a hand to stop her, grinned sidelong, and said, “No need to say it. I haven’t been here long, I don’t expect you to trust me. But we’ll keep the party downstairs, so there won’t be any reason to worry about things breaking or stuff getting stolen. And being that the nearest house is what, fifty yards away or better?—I doubt anyone will know we’re here other than you.”

  “All right,” Norrah said, “it should be fine. I work the early shift tomorrow so I’ll be in bed by eleven. If you could keep it down at around that time I’d appreciate it. I sleep on the third floor, but can still hear music from down below. Do that for me and we have a deal.”

  “Awesome.”

  “One other thing. Would you mind parking your truck on the street or farther to the right on the driveway from now on? It’s a big truck, not a big driveway.”

  “Consider it done.” Paul stood and extended his hand. She shook it with a smile and left the table, went upstairs to dress.

  Early that evening Norrah was driving home from work when it began snowing again. Just a light snow, more of an afterword to the storm that landed last night. She parked her Camry on the driveway beside an Infinity sedan she had never before seen, in the place of Paul’s usual Dodge truck. She wondered if he traded it in. She went inside and locked the door behind her. Paul must have heard her arrive because he went upstairs through the open hatch shortly after. He was dressed in black slacks and a white dress-shirt with a black bow tie. Was he really going to wear a tux tonight? She wondered. He asked if she had any scotch tape he could borrow, and some tacks and a hammer. She had tape and a hammer but no tacks, sorry. He thanked her and waited for her to collect the two items. When she handed them over he said, “You should come hang out with us tonight, if you’d like.”

  Her brow arched. “Me?” She considered it was more of a polite gesture than an honest invitation. She was thirty, while he presumably wasn’t old enough to buy booze yet. But maybe he was. He possessed that youthful appearance that lasts a lifetime, like Dick Clark had. She considered herself to be a young-looking thirty, and guys did check her out when she was checking them out (groceries, that is) but still… they were college kids and if the others looked anything like Paul Klein, they could do a lot better than Norrah—her words, not mine; if you ask me, Norrah is the best any man could do. “Thanks, but I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

  “Suit yourself, but you’re welcome to join us.” He turned and took a couple steps down the stairs through the portal while adding, “Might be a single guy or two. They’d be all over you.”

  “Wait,” she said after him. He stopped and looked back; only his shoulders and head remained above the landing. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Oh I don’t mean anything like that. I’m sorry, that sounded suggestive. I just mean you’re an attractive woman and they’d appreciate it. That’s all.”

  She nodded slightly. “That’s sweet of you to say, but I don’t believe that. You guys be safe down there. You have my cellphone number, so call or text if you need anything and I’ll bring it down.”

  “Sweet. You’re the best, Norrah.”

  She grinned and went upstairs to change into some lounge wear. Sweats and a sweat shirt, her most comfy socks, and her hair tied in a ponytail. She nuked some Lean Pockets in the microwave and poured some iced tea, mulling over the idea of a masquerade party. It was intriguing, a masquerade party. And on Valentine’s Day, of all days. Weren’t those kinds of things only on Halloween? She wondered if they’d be wearing costumes or just a mask. Every instance of masquerading she had heard of or read about was mostly just a mask. She remembered watching The Count of Monte Cristo, and there wa
s the carnival of Rome, taking place sometime in early 19th century, and those people had those little masks that were attached to a stick and held up against their faces. She supposed some of them were fastened to their heads by a string going over their ears and tied at the back. They were partial masks, covering the forehead and nose but not the mouth. She doubted this was the type of masquerading her tenant had in mind, but who knows? In her memory of the carnival of that movie the people were classy, dressed formally, and it was a regal occasion, a big deal. Could college kids put together something so tasteful? It seemed more likely they would wear costumes. She could see in her imagination a girl dressed as Elvira, tits popping out of her low vee-cut shirt, and another girl with a less desirable figure dressed as Snow White or Cinderella, the fabric at the waist threatening to bust at the seams. She pictured a college boy wearing a Spiderman mask. Peter Parker. Maybe he’d try to get a chuckle out of the dames by calling himself by his porn-acting name Peter Pork-her. Perhaps a muscular boy would flaunt his rippling beefcake by going shirtless and painting his torso green, and pretend to be the Incredible Hulk. The more she considered the possibilities, the more curious she became about this party.

  Norrah remembered her sleep mask. One of those black deals that sleepers wear when they are forced to contend with an unchecked morning sun. She had been one such sleeper at a younger age, but had since gotten blinds put up over her window and put to rest the use of a sleeping mask. What if she cut holes into the eyes and wore that down to her tenant’s party? Nah, that’s ridiculous. That isn’t any kind of disguise. And besides, what would she wear with it?

  She sat at the dining table and bit into the first of two Lean Pockets. It was the pizza flavored one. She preferred the mozzarella and meatballs ones but for some damned reason those made her gassy; the remarkably similar pizza ones didn’t. Go figure. She looked out the glass wall into the forest that Jack Frost had shit all over. It was getting dark, the sun long invisible below the wooden horizon. The trees would stay white until the temperature finally got above freezing. The flood light of her back second-floor deck was on a timer and just then clicked on. Large snowflakes feathered down to a carpet of snow specked with what looked like diamond dust. She was nearly two months removed from songs of walking in a winter wonderland, but only two yards away from literally doing it.

  Car doors closed somewhere out front.

  Norrah hated that she was officially in her thirties now, and had been for months. As stupid as it sounded, if she were still twenty-nine she’d strongly consider making an appearance downstairs sometime tonight. But being thirty changed things, if only internally. Thirties were the years for settling down and pumping out babies; twenties were the years for preventing babies from being born by any number of contraceptives and ancient family secrets—hop up and down if the jackass doesn’t pull out in time. One’s twenties are a string of bad judgment calls and too many colorful cocktails with cherries skewered on toothpicks, driving the back roads at two A.M. and waking up with a massive headache and a sensation of bodily violation that you may or may not have a recollection of. Those were the years when pleasure took a front seat to everything; these were the years that pleasure took a back seat to anything practical and well considered.

  There was a knock at the door, then the doorbell.

  Norrah left the table and went to the door, looked through the peephole. A boy and girl. She smiled at what she saw: half-masks not unlike the ones worn in The Count of Monte Cristo. The girl wore a deep red dress, long and formal, with a black cat mask, whiskers and stubby nose. Her hair was ash blonde and professionally styled, like something you’d see Nichole Kidman sporting at the Oscars. The boy wore a tuxedo. His mask was a lion’s face, complete with tawny fur and ears. She could see both their smiling mouths. She didn’t hesitate to open the door. Just as she greeted them, Paul appeared from behind her and apologized, asserted that he had told everyone to enter through the downstairs back door.

  “It’s okay,” Norrah assured, “I don’t mind.” She smiled wider at the two guests. “Cute masks.”

  “Thanks,” the boy said. “I’m sorry, I totally forgot that we were supposed to go around back.”

  “Sorry,” the girl said in a high tone.

  “It shouldn’t happen again,” Paul said to Norrah, then gestured the two to follow him.

  Norrah closed the door and locked it, followed after the trio. “Is everyone going to wear masks like that?”

  Paul looked back with his characteristic crooked smile and said, “You bet. The offer stands, if you want to join us. Free drinks.”

  “Are you all old enough to drink?” She regretted saying it immediately. It made her feel older than she was ready to be. She frowned and said, “Don’t answer that. I’m sorry.”

  He didn’t answer that, but instead winked at her. The three went downstairs.

  Over the next hour Norrah heard the downstairs door open and close several times, a few car doors slamming shut in the street. She decided to upgrade from sweats to something less comfortable; put on a cute little black skirt and pink cardigan sweater. Not that she intended for anyone else to see her tonight, but she hadn’t intended for the first couple to see her either, and we know how that turned out. And didn’t Paul mention that there would be one or two single guys here tonight? Yes, he had.

  She was debating herself by eight o’clock, the time Paul had said the party started. Stay up here and don’t interfere narrowly edged out go downstairs and mingle. She was seated before the blue glow of the television, watching some old comedy movie whose name escaped her. She wasn’t paying attention to the movie, but to the sounds downstairs, the mirthful sounds. She poured herself a glass of red wine in the kitchen, a bottle that Paul had given her recently for no particular reason, and returned to the couch, folded her legs to the side the way only a woman can do, and tucked a hanging ribbon of brown hair behind her left ear, something of an idiosyncrasy of hers.

  Norrah sighed wistfully. She remembered being in high school like it was yesterday. There were plenty of parties back then, you bet. Some during her junior year, but most were when she was a senior. There had been no masquerade parties, and wasn’t that a shame. Her dumb classmates couldn’t conceive such a neat idea as that. They were masquerading as good virtuous boys, that’s about it. She had let one of them inside her pants at one party. That would be a bad-judgment-call evening. She chalked it up to too many margaritas. What was the boy’s name? She couldn’t remember. Oh yes, Elias. What a cutie he was. Small wiener, though. She giggled just as she sipped her wine and nearly spilled on her pink cardigan. That was her only one-night stand in her thirty semi-uneventful years. The boy she lost her virginity to was Greg—whom she always called Gregory, despite his protestations—when she was a lithe seventeen years old, beauty in full bore, breasts that stayed in place when she unhooked her bra. Not that they sagged much now, but let’s be honest: boobs are at their prime during their teenaged years. Their sun begins setting in the twenties slowly but surely. Gregory sure liked her boobs. He used to offer to ‘massage’ them, as if it was intended to be a benefit to her and not him. She went along with it, loved to see how excited it made him. And it did things to her, too, just not to the extent that it did to him. It’s a pity that when her body was hard and rocking she was a dozen or so years from reaching her sexual prime. How unfair is that? Boys are in their sexual prime as teens, but for women it comes much later. By the time women want sex frequently, that ship has long sailed in men. Why couldn’t both sexual primes meet at the same age? She wondered if all the hormones downstairs had an infectious quality on her, like she was a cat in heat and picked up on the scent of a dominant male.

  Maybe I should just drop by for a minute or two, introduce myself to Paul’s friends, then come right back up, she thought. Heck, she was looking pretty good in this sweater and skirt, if she did say so herself. There was the sleeping mask in the bottom drawer of her bureau, she hadn’t forgotten that. Sh
e was indecisive. She resolved to make a decision, but not until she bellied one more glass of red, and got to work on the lovely task.

  It was 8:45 and she neared the bottom of her beverage, felt the alcohol high on her cheeks. She wasn’t much of a drinker, so she appreciated a good buzz. She had heard the music downstairs marginally loud for over an hour now, and had to turn the TV up to contend with it. Progressively what she heard more and more wasn’t the stereo but the laughter of teens and twenty-somethings. As more alcohol was consumed, the laughter got louder and lasted longer. She heard one boy laugh so regularly that she began imagining what he looked like. She pictured a six-foot-two baseball player, trim but hard and strong, with sandy blond hair, fine golden hairs on his toned arms. She even ascribed a mask to him: a pirate. Aaarg, ahoy matey! He’d want to plunder some booty, all right.

  With a smile she stood from the couch and sauntered to the window-wall, opened the door and slid into the slippers that she kept beside it, crunched snow to the railing. She swallowed the last sip from her glass looking down over the rail. Just then the door opened down below and a boy stepped outside. She couldn’t yet see him, but soon smelled cigarette smoke. She was still and silent, the large flakes collecting in her hair—it wasn’t coming down very hard, but the flakes were enormous—continued looking down to where the bottom deck ended and sloped down to rugged forest. She felt fortunate to not have any neighbors in her backyard. There was a street closer to the lake with houses, but that was hundreds of yards from where she lived. On a whim, she gathered some snow and packed a snowball. She leaned over the railing and chucked it at an angle to where she perceived the boy (or girl?) to be smoking. A powdery poof was followed by footfalls away from the house, until a boy entered her view. He was looking up with a wide grin. He was wearing a tuxedo, his mask was that of a gray mouse, a long pointy nose with whiskers. He took a pull off his smoke, waved up at Norrah.

  “Hi there,” she said.

  “Evening, madam,” the boy said.

  She humored at that. Madam. Maybe his dressy attire did wonders to his demeanor, instilled in him a sense of class he might not have had under another circumstance. She got a kick out of it.

  “Evening, kind sir. Are you enjoying yourself?”

  A gust of wind grazed her cheek and legs, breaking her flesh out in goose bumps. Her skirt fluttered a little with it, raised high on her thighs, and for a terrifying moment she thought he could see up her skirt—the railing had wide gaps between the posts. She remembered putting underwear on, so that was good; also was the fact that the light was above her, darkness below her. He’d see nothing but shadows up her skirt.

  “Indeed. I take it this is your house?”

  “Indubitably,” she said with a rich British accent, and went to sip her wine that had already been drank.

  “Looks like you could use a refill,” he said.

  “Perhaps. How many of you are down there?”

  “Uh…” He looked away from her at the house. “Maybe twenty, twenty-five.”

  “What are some of the masqueraders masquerading as?”

  “Why don’t you come down and see for yourself?” He grinned most charmingly at her.

  “Maybe,” she said noncommittally. “Anything especially good?”

  “Mask-wise?”

  She hummed an affirmative.

  “Yeah, there are some good ones.”

  “Which is your favorite.”

  “Elephant is pretty cool. Actually, believe it or not, my favorite is the guy with a mask of a person.”

  “Mask of a person?”

  “It’s porcelain, I think. Powder white. Very clever, you see, because he has a hat with attached horns. Looks like he’s the devil masquerading as a normal man.”

  “That is clever,” Norrah agreed. “Is he the devil?”

  “I hope not!” The boy laughed. “I don’t know him, though.”

  “I thought you were all classmates. No?”

  “Mostly, yes.”

  The door opened and another boy stepped outside and asked the smoker if he could bum a smoke. The mouse-man offered his pack of Reds to the boy who was masked as the Phantom of the Opera. He stepped into the wash of the upstairs flood light, looked up and startled at Norrah’s sight.

  “Damn,” he said. “What’s up?”

  “Me, I suppose,” she said and grinned.

  “You should be down. Down here.”

  “Oh yeah?” She thought she was sounding like a coquette, and couldn’t recall the last time she was flirty with anyone. “If I had a good mask I just might have taken you up on that offer,” she said regretfully. “I guess if one of you boys could masquerade as a normal man I could masquerade as a normal girl.”

  “Normal man?” said the Phantom of the Opera.

  “You know,” said mouse-man, “the dude with a white porcelain man-face.”

  “Oh, him. Who is that guy, anyway?”

  “I don’t know. We aren’t supposed to ask. That’s a rule.”

  “Well I’ll let you boys go,” Norrah said. “Have fun.” She stepped away from the railing.

  “Wait,” Phantom said. “Won’t you come down and have a drink? I’m buying.”

  “You’re buying? Aren’t the drinks free?”

  “No such thing as a free lunch, lady.”

  “Ah. An economics major, huh?” she said and giggled.

  “Hell no, I hate economics. But yeah I learned that in Econ 101. I brought a bottle of gin and some tonic. I got a glass with your name on it down here.”

  She returned to her spot at the rail and said, “Don’t you boys have dates already? How would they receive your brazen flirtations with the old maid upstairs?”

  “He’s got a date,” Phantom of the Opera said, “but I don’t.” His non-masked right eye winked at her.

  She laughed out loud, by the image, not his words. “We’ll see. What are your names? I’m Norrah.”

  “Phantom,” Phantom said.

  “Mouse,” the other said. “We can’t give our names, it’s a rule.”

  “Okay, Mouse and Phantom. Maybe I’ll come down for just one drink in a few minutes.”

  “Right on,” Phantom said.

  She went inside and closed the door, brushed the snow out of her hair. She shivered. It was south of twenty degrees by her best guess. Hardly skirt weather, but she looked hot in it. She heard a song she recognized coming from the stereo downstairs. It was a Stone Temple Pilots song, Plush, one of her favorite songs from that band. It must have been someone else’s favorite, too, because the volume was raised a good deal once it came on.

  Deciding against going unmasked, she went upstairs to get the sleep mask. Then downstairs, where she got the scissors from a jar on the counter and got to work cutting eyes out of it. If asked what she was masquerading as, she’d say… well… Sleeping Beauty, of course. Maybe it was the alcohol that made her laugh so hard just then. She put the mask on, pulled her hair out from under the elastic band and draped it over.

  The downstairs hatch creaked open. She looked over and saw a boy in a black tux. It was Paul, she decided, though his jester mask served well at disguising him. His strong jaw, slender torso and broad shoulders identified him well enough.

  “Hey-hey, Norrah,” he said as he cleared the landing. “I hope you don’t mind if I use your restroom. Mine is occupied.”

  “No problem. There’s a guest bathroom just over there,” she said and pointed to the restroom off the den.

  “Thanks. I hope this doesn’t offend you, but there’s a couple in my bathroom. I think they’ll be in there for a little while, if you know what I mean.”

  She smiled devilishly. “That’s fine.”

  As he made his way toward the bathroom he said, “Cool, I see you got a mask going. Coming downstairs for a bit?”

  “Yeah, for a quick drink. Are you sure you don’t mind?”

  “Not at all. But if I may make a suggestion…”

  “Sure. Please,”
she said eagerly.

  “Put some nylons on. Wearing a skirt like that, you’ll freeze down there. Not to sound ungrateful, but the insulation down there is poor and I don’t have a heater.”

  “You should make a fire.”

  “I have a fire going, but it doesn’t put out much heat, and the door has been open at least half the time, from people coming in and out to smoke.”

  “Okay, thanks for the heads up. I’ll put some nylons on.”

  “I bet you’ll look hot in them,” Paul said, appraising her legs. “Not that you need them to make your legs look hot, it’s just that you have the whitest legs I’ve ever seen.”

  She gazed down at her legs. “Yeah, that’s for sure.”

  He passed her on the way to the restroom. “You have nice legs, Norrah. Very sexy.”

  She sensed that little remark could potentially change the dynamic of their tenant-landlord relationship, but decided it didn’t matter. They were ten years apart, nothing would ever happen between them.

  Norrah went upstairs, got the nylons out of her top drawer and took a seat on the bed. She could still hear the music, though it was faint from up here. Stone Temple Pilots was now Viva La Vida by Coldplay, another song she enjoyed. She was singing along as she rolled the stockings up her long slender legs. Were they really that sexy? Paul seemed to think so and maybe he was right. They were firm, somewhat defined, a long line separating her quad from hamstring. Going for long walks most evenings on the steep mountain roads tended to do that. She had to admit, she was having a nice evening in spite of herself. Maybe she’d have more than a single drink downstairs. Maybe there would be a boy down there a trifle closer to thirty than twenty. One with the same broad shoulders as Paul. Two drinks will be fine, she decided. But the reality of it was she wouldn’t be having a single drink that night.

  Just as she took the first step down from the third-floor landing, there was sudden screaming. Shrieking and screaming, in a register reserved for the most profound of horrors. Ear-splitting feminine screams were blood-curdling. At first it was just one or two females, but soon there were cries from a dozen or more people, boys and girls alike.

  She dashed down the stairs.

  There was a loud thud against a wall on the bottom floor. She moved faster, breath hitched, eyes wide and frantic. She ripped away the sleep mask from her face. The hatch was closed. The screaming continued, interspersed with the unforgettable pleas of the terror-stricken.

  She slipped a pair of fingers through the iron ring of the hatch and pulled, but it didn’t budge. It did budge slightly at first, but as if someone was on the other side of it and had a firm grip of the handle and strong muscles to implement his will, it seated flush an instant later.

  Norrah shouted at the hatch, “Let me in! Open the door!” She pulled furiously at the iron ring to no avail.

  A chill ran the length of her spine when a feminine shriek cut off, not from will but from inability, as though the life was ripped out of her with a cataclysmic blow. Norrah turned and hauled ass to the kitchen, uncradled the phone and dialed nine-one-one with tremulous fingers. Just then Paul came out of the bathroom off the den and stared pie-eyed at Norrah. By his expression she knew he was just as thunderstruck and stupefied as was she.

  “What’s happening down there!” she shouted at him.

  “I…” He turned and went to the front door, unlocked it muttering, “Fuck me.” He went through the door and didn’t close it.

  “What the hell is happening?” she said inwardly, in full panic mode.

  The emergency operator answered the call. The ensuing dialogue between Norrah and the operator would be played over and over again on the news for days to come. The thing about that recording is you can’t hear the screams in the background. Not that they should have been heard, because the twenty-three were downstairs with a heavily insulated ceiling separating them from Norrah, and the speaker of the phone was practically being eaten by her. That and many of the screams had already subsided by then. But still, you’d think that you’d be able to hear one or two screams at least faintly, wouldn’t you?

  “Nine-one-one, please state your emergency,” the woman said apathetically.

  “I need help! I need help! Please hurry!”

  “Ma’am, what is—”

  “Hurry! Something’s happening downstairs, I… I don’t know what! Just send help right now!”

  “Calm down, ma’am, I’m sending you help right now. What is the nature of your emergency?”

  “Fuck if I know! People are getting killed I think!” Norrah heard more screams come to a fatal stop and knew that she was right in saying people were getting killed. She dropped the phone on the counter and instead of checking the hatch, she went to the front door not to go around the house and help those below, but to close and lock it. She couldn’t help those downstairs, that was pretty evident. If twenty-something people couldn’t stop whatever or whoever was attacking them, how could she? She owned a handgun, an old Beretta that her father had bought her many years ago. He didn’t like the idea of his daughter living alone, especially in a neighborhood as remote as hers. He had bought it for her and gave it to her with a full magazine of bullets. She had never fired the gun but considered she might be firing it tonight. But at what? At whom?

  She ran for the stairs and took them two at a time. She slid to her knees before her bed and fished around blindly, felt a shoe-box and slid it out. She pried the lid off and took hold of the gun, got up and walked into the hall with the gun pointed down before her. She noticed the screaming had stopped. Had it just stopped or had she just now noticed? She couldn’t say. There was Viva la Vida coming to an end on the stereo, and nothing more. When the song ended, a new song replaced it. In the two seconds bridging the songs was utter silence. She stopped at the top of the stairs, gun now aiming down. She had ideas, dark ones. A man or men would come up through the hatch looking for her. The gun in her hand was light-years away from being steady. She swallowed dryly. She wished the damn music would stop so she could listen.

  It was the longest fifteen minutes of her life, spent between the top two steps of the stairs, twenty feet above the unknown horror below. She nearly cried with relief when she heard the distant sirens. When they stopped just outside her house, she descended the stairs, gun still at the ready. The hatch remained closed. She cautiously made her way across the living room into the kitchen, gun pointing in the direction of her every glance. The front door tried to open, but it was locked. There was a loud knock and a “Police!”

  She lowered the gun and unlocked the door, opened it. The cop was a large chubby man with a gun in hand. He stared down at the gun in Norrah’s hand, then met eyes with her.

  She stammered at him, tried to tell him what she all but knew, that a couple dozen people were just brutally murdered downstairs, but couldn’t get herself to say it. Perhaps he gleaned it from her wide glazed eyes, unhinged jaw, and palsy. He brushed by her, led with his gun.

  “Call for more cops,” she said desperately as she closed the door. She hurried after the man. He began ascending the stairs.

  “Not up there,” Norrah said. “Downstairs. Downstairs!”

  He turned around and stopped at the hatch, stooped over and pulled the iron ring, opened the carpeted portal door with a grating of its hinges.

  “Careful!” Norrah said. “Be careful!”

  Norrah went to the stairs and stopped, awaited news from the cop who was now invisible below. When she heard the front door open she aimed her gun in that direction. Another cop was now inside, and that cop was myself.

  “Jesus Christ,” I said, “lower your gun. What’s going on here?”

  She lowered the gun. I can’t accurately enough describe how shitty Norrah looked. It was a palpable dread, the kind that only comes from witnessing death, particularly first-degree murder. I’ve seen similar looks, but none more profound than Norrah’s just then.

  “I don’t know,” she said half-frenzied.


  “Is that you, Davis?” Fred shouted from down below.

  “Yeah!” I walked past Norrah and descended the steps into the basement. Norrah followed close at my heels.

  Downstairs was kind of a studio apartment, as I had mentioned. On a dresser was a stereo that I turned off. Silence engulfed the sizeable room. There was a large bed, some night-stands, a long dresser, a small circular table with three chairs, a TV on a stand, and not much else. There were windows with drinks on the sills. Plastic cups that had alcohol in them, ice still shapely inside. The table had several cups on it, drinks ranging from full to empty, ice still shapely there as well. The place was vacant.

  Fred was the first to ask the question, though I was a second away from asking the same thing. “Ma’am, what’s the emergency?”

  Norrah walked to the bathroom and opened the door: empty. “What… I… I don’t understand.” She faced me and said, “I was upstairs when I heard people screaming down here. There was a party, twenty or so people here, just fifteen minutes ago. I heard things. Bad things. I don’t get it… where did they go?”

  Fred and I stepped out the back door together. I went back in and flipped a switch, illuminating a single low-watt light just outside the door. Norrah came out with us. There was no snow due to the patio being under the upstairs deck, but where the deck ended there was a bank of snow two feet tall, packed down in places from where Phantom of the Opera and Mouse had conversed with Norrah just recently. Fred took his Maglite out of his utility belt and shone it there. There were footsteps leading away from the house; Norrah had no idea who made them.

  “Hello?” Fred said down the path the footsteps made.

  “This is crazy,” Norrah said from behind me. I looked back at her. “Twenty people don’t just up and disappear.”

  I gave her a skeptical look. I considered that she might be on medication or perhaps needed to be on some.

  “How long since you last saw them?” I asked her.

  “Like I said, fifteen minutes or so.”

  Fred followed the steps in the snow. I stayed behind and looked around, went to both ends of the patio, unsure of what I was looking for. It was evident nobody was here but the three of us. It was as quiet as hell—snow has that effect.

  Norrah returned inside.

  Please keep in mind what I said about Norrah being an honest woman. I’ll admit I didn’t believe what she said in the ensuing moment, but I’ve come to believe she did see what she claimed to have. I truly do.

  Norrah shrieked.

  I hurried inside, gun holstered. I thought the need to be readily armed had come to an end, and I was right. Norrah was covering her face.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  When she uncovered her face to meet eyes with me, my breath caught. It caught because this woman looked like she just saw something pretty fucking terrifying. Here is how she described it to me four days later over a cup of coffee at Starbucks:

  “Jay, I’ll only tell you if you swear to God you won’t think I’m making it up. You either promise to believe me or I won’t tell you. Swear it.”

  I did swear it, and I meant it. Cops grow an intuition keener than most others. We can tell if someone is full of shit or being honest, most of the time. I suppose some people believe the bullshit stories they’re telling, making them appear credible, but this wasn’t a case of that. She was sane and she wasn’t blowing smoke up my ass.

  “And don’t tell anyone else about what I’m about to say. I don’t want anyone thinking I’m nuts.”

  “If it could aid in the investigation, I’m afraid I can’t promise that. I’ll do what’s best for you and those missing twenty-three, that I promise you. Tell me, Norrah, tell me what you saw.”

  She took a deep breath and looked away. A tear rolled down her cheek. “When I went back inside I saw… I saw…” She shook her head and closed her eyes, displacing tears. “I can’t get myself to say it.”

  I reached across the table and took her right hand between mine and squeezed. I thought it might be inappropriate, but she looked like she could use the comfort, slight as it was. And I really did want her to get this off her chest.

  “Tell me, I won’t judge you,” I said. “I believe you, Norrah. I know you aren’t bullshitting me. Do you believe me when I say that?”

  She nodded once. “I saw them. I saw them, Jay, I saw them. I don’t know if I saw all of them, it didn’t last long, but there were many people. And… and they were… dead.”

  I grasped for understanding, squeezed her hand harder. “You saw the missing people? And they were dead? What do you mean?”

  “I saw them, like they had been invisible but for a moment they weren’t. Blood everywhere, bodies everywhere. The blinds on the far window, the cord to lower and raise them… it was tied around someone’s neck. There was a man lying face-down on the bed, his back opened up; I could see his insides. I saw… a headless body in a red dress. There was a guy in a tux on the floor with his arms gone, like they were ripped out.”

  “How long did this last?”

  “Just a couple seconds, then they blinked away. It looked like I imagined it might look when I heard them screaming from upstairs. It… it’s like it confirmed what I knew, that those people didn’t run away, they were murdered.”

  I gave her a nod and stared down at our joined hands.

  “You don’t believe me, do you?” she said softly.

  “I do. I honestly do.”

  “How? How could you believe that? I wouldn’t even believe it if I didn’t see it for myself.”

  “Because twenty-three people don’t vanish from thin air. Something really fucked up happened and there is no logical explanation for it. So the illogical is all that remains. There’s something else.”

  “What?”

  “It’s something I shouldn’t mention. I heard it from a buddy of mine, who heard it from a detective. Keep this to yourself, will you?”

  “Yes,” she said impatiently, “now tell me.”

  “On the bed. The comforter. Where was the body you saw? Was in centered on the bed?”

  “No, it was on the side of it. The left side.”

  I nodded knowingly. “There was only one piece of evidence found of foul play, that being a single drop of blood. A single drop of blood. What you described would hint at pints of blood, not a single drop, but a drop is something. It was on the comforter. On the edge of the bed, left side.”

  “Did they test it?”

  “Oh for sure. Well I don’t know that to be a fact, but of course forensics would run a DNA test on it. I doubt they have the results from it so soon. It could be Paul’s, we’ll see. It’s a coincidence that it was in the same place you saw a butchered body, though, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose.” Inwardly she said, “But a single drop? It’s just so absurd. Nonsensical.”

  “I know it is. We’ll get this sorted out. We need to be patient.”

  “Do you really believe that?”

  I didn’t answer because I didn’t believe it.

  Back to Valentine’s Day. I had asked her what she saw and she wouldn’t answer me. Nothing looked out of the ordinary, so I didn’t press her for an answer. A moment later Fred re-entered the house saying, “Come check this out,” to me.

  I followed him outside, the narrow beam of his flashlight leading the way down the path of now two sets of tracks in the snow. Fifteen steps or so later we were between the trunks of two large Pine trees. We stopped side-by-side, six feet away from the final pair of footsteps. They ended, no trace of where the man or woman went from there. By the size of the imprints it was likely a male. Just past the final set of tracks was a pair of impressions. I thought they may have been knee prints.

  “Odd,” I said. “He must have back-stepped in his own tracks.”

  “Yes, but why would he do that?”

  “No idea.” I looked back at the now-several footprints in the snow. “It hints at something bad, though, wouldn’t
you agree? If he was deliberately trying to throw us off, he’s hiding a truth from us. Did you find tracks leading from the patio toward the sides of the house?”

  “There are tracks on that side.” He pointed to the side of the house the guests had used to reach the basement from the street. “But it’s mostly a single line of tracks, as if the guests of the party had come one or two at a time. If there was a mass exodus, there would be tracks wider than what there is. People don’t haul ass in a single-ranked file. They spread out.”

  Norrah was in the doorway. I said to her, “Ma’am, does anyone live here with you?”

  “Yes. There is a young man who lives down here. He was upstairs when it happened, in the bathroom. He left before you guys got here. I’m not sure why. Afraid, I guess. He heard the screaming, too, had to have.”

  I called dispatch, requested additional units. I wanted to ask for a detective but didn’t. Not yet I didn’t. I asked Norrah where this tenant may have gone and she had no idea.

  It was an hour later when he arrived back at her house, that Paul kid. By then there were better than fifteen cops on location, and a couple of detectives had just arrived. Paul was questioned in private, so I don’t know exactly what he was asked or how he replied. All I know is he was believed to be innocent of any wrong doing. I surmise he was deemed a chicken-shit and fled the scene before he ended up dead. He was told not leave the region in the coming days, and he’d be questioned a few more times before it was all said and done. Being a lowly cop I didn’t get to be in on the interrogations, nor discoursed of the outcome of them. I concluded that Paul was lucky to have been upstairs when it happened, or he’d be the twenty-fourth missing person. It’s not like he killed twenty-three people in the span of a few minutes and hid their bodies so well that they couldn’t be found. That’s impossible. And the guy isn’t very big. I doubt he could transport a body very far. And besides, he was upstairs when it happened. What a cluster-fuck it was. So utterly perplexing.

  By the following day there were news-vans lining both sides of the street (partier’s vehicles had been towed and impounded, considered evidence—at least for now) and by that evening the feds were involved. Twenty-three people missing, vanished without a trace. Well, there was that single drop of blood.