Masques

by J N Williamson

  I didn’t say anything except to ask which funeral parlor he was in, then walked to the florist and sent the old guy some flowers. I didn’t work at all that afternoon, and Belle didn’t come home for dinner.

  While I waited for her in the living room—TV on and unwatched, newspaper in my lap unfolded and unread—I listened to the leaves racing across the lawn ahead of the wind, and couldn’t help hearing the sound of Chad dying. I paced until the wind died, then drank a couple of tasteless beers, waited until midnight, and went to bed.

  Belle didn’t return the next day either, which was too bad because that maple glowed again and I wanted her to see it before the clouds closed off the sun.

  I called the shop, finally, all the shops, and kept just missing her according to the clerks. Roman was out as well, and I didn’t need a plank across the back of my head to know I’d been deserted. Instead of bemoaning and ranting, however, I worked, which in itself is a sort of reaction—the yelling went into the drawings, the tears into the ink. It worked until I couldn’t hold a pen any longer, until I was back downstairs and there was no one to talk to.

  Alone was one thing; lonely was something else.

  Still, I didn’t lose my temper.

  I decided instead to be noble about it all. After all, we weren’t married, weren’t even contemplating it, and if that’s what Belle wanted then that’s what she would have. Maybe she’d grow tired of the little prick; maybe she’d come back and maybe she wouldn’t. So I didn’t call again, and I worked as hard as I ever had over the next several days, only once going down to the park where I noticed Streetcar was gone, taken away, Foxy said, by the men in pretty white because he was talking about an atom bomb dropping into the middle of town.

  “A crock,” said Rene, and said nothing more.

  Dick and Denny were nervous but they kept on reading, the same book, and I didn’t ask why.

  And a week to the day after she’d left, Belle came back.

  I was in the kitchen fixing lunch when she walked in, sat at the table and smiled.

  “Have a nice trip?” I said.

  “So-so.”

  I couldn’t help it—I yelled. “Goddamnit, Lanner, where the hell have you been?”

  There was no contrition; she bridled. “Thinking, driving, screwing around,” she said coldly. “You’re not my husband, you know.”

  “No, but Christ, it seems to me I have a few rights around here. A little common courtesy wouldn’t have killed you.”

  She shrugged and picked at something invisible on her lip.

  “Are you back?” I said, sounding less than enthusiastic.

  “No.”

  “A little more thinking, driving, screwing around?”

  “I need it,” she told me.

  “Then get it.” I turned my back to her, kept it there while I fussed with the skillet where my eggs were scrambling, kept it there until she got up and left. Then I tossed the skillet into the sink, threw the plate against the wall, picked up the drain where the clean dishes were stacked and threw it on the floor. I knocked over her chair. I punched the refrigerator and screamed when I heard at least one of my knuckles cracking.

  Then I left without cleaning up, marched to the park and dropped onto a bench. Sat there. Blindly. Until Dick and Denny came up to me, twins in rags with paperback books in their hands.

  “We saw it, you know,” Dick said with a glance to Denny, who nodded. “We saw it yesterday.”

  “Saw what,” I grumbled.

  They hesitated.

  “Gentlemen,” I said, “I’m really very tired. It’s been a bad day and it’s not even two.” I managed a smile. “Would you mind?”

  “But we saw it!” Dick insisted as Denny tugged at his sleeve. “We really did see it.”

  “Yeah, okay,” I said.

  “So here.” And before I could move they had shoved both their books into my hands. “They’re really good,” said Dick. “I won’t tell you the end, though, it would spoil it, and I hate it when somebody does it to me.”

  Denny nodded solemnly.

  Foxy came up then, put his arms around the two men’s shoulders and looked an apology at me. “Let’s go, boys,” he said, steering them away. Another look, and I shook my head in sympathy. The sanity, not to mention the mortality, rate among the guys at the fountain was getting pretty serious. But they were all in the same decade, with the weather as raw as it was, and their health not the best, so it wasn’t all that surprising.

  It was, on the other hand, depressing, and I left before Foxy could return and tell me the latest from the geriatric book of fairy tales.

  The newspaper I picked up on my way home didn’t help my mood any. The Middle East was blowing up, Washington was squabbling, the state senate was deadlocked on a bill to improve education, there were a handful of murders, a kidnapping, and two bus crashes on the outskirts of town. Great. Just what I needed to read when I had twenty-one more critters to draw that needed the light touch, not a scalpel.

  I tossed the paper onto the kitchen table and cleaned up the broken crockery; then I poured myself a glass of soda and sat down, hands on my cheeks, hair in my eyes, until suddenly I frowned. I picked up the paper, snapped over a couple of pages and read the story about the first bus crash. At first I didn’t recognize the name; then I realized that among the eight dead had been poor old Streetcar Mullens.

  “Well, shit,” I said to the empty room. “Shit.”

  Two days later, Dick and Denny were dead as well, their boarding house burned down; they had been sleeping at the time.

  I was on my way out the door when Belle drove up in front of the house. She didn’t get out of the car, but rolled down the passenger side window. I leaned over and waited.

  “Aren’t you glad to see me?”

  “I might be,” I said flatly, “but a couple of friends of mine died last night. In a fire.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” She polished the steering wheel with her gloved hands, then straightened the silk scarf tossed around her neck. “Anyone I know?”

  “No,” I said, realizing how much of my life she never knew at all. “A couple of guys from the park.”

  “Oh, them,” she said. “For god’s sake, Caz, when are you going to get friends your own age? Christ, you’ll be old before your time if you’re not careful.” She looked at me then. “I take it back. You are old, only you don’t know it.”

  “And what does that make you?” I laughed. “The world’s oldest teenaged swinger?” I leaned closer, hearing the sound of dishes smashing on the floor. “He’s too young for you, Belle. The first wrinkle you sprout will send him packing.”

  She glared, and her hands fisted. “You bastard,” she said softly. “At least I’m getting the most out of . . . oh, what’s the use.”

  She would have cheerfully cut my throat then, and I astonished myself in the realization that I wouldn’t have let her. “You want a divorce then?”

  She hesitated before nodding.

  “And you want to be sure I’m not around when you and young Roman come by for your things because you want to spare my old man’s feelings.”

  “You don’t have to talk that way.”

  “No, but I am.”

  She swallowed. “If you had needed me, if only you had needed me.”

  “I did, don’t be silly.”

  She shook her head. “No, Caz, you didn’t. Not in the way it counted.”

  There were tears in her eyes. I don’t know how long they’d been there, but they began to make me feel like a real bastard. She had a point, I suppose, but it had taken her a hell of a long time to find the courage to make her move. And to be truthful, I was relieved. When she drove away, I was almost lightheaded because someone had finally done something, taken a step, and now things would change. A selfish, perhaps even cowardly way to look at it, but as I made my way to the park I couldn’t yet feel much guilt. Maybe later. Maybe later, in the dark, with no one beside me.

  Foxy was sitting g
lumly in his usual place, and Rene was beside him.

  “God, I’m sorry,” I said as I approached them.

  “Thank you, Caz,” Foxy said without moving. His face was pale, his eyes dark and refusing to meet my gaze. In his lap his hands trembled.

  Rene looked up. “Go away,” he said sourly. “You ain’t got no right here.”

  My exchange with Belle had drained my patience, and I grinned mirthlessly at him. “Shut up, Rene. I’m sick of your grousing.”

  “Oh, you are?” he said. “And how about if I’m sick and tired of you coming around here all the time, prying into what’s none of your business? Huh? Suppose I’m tired of that?”

  “Rene, hold it down,” Foxy said wearily.

  I was puzzled, because I hadn’t the faintest idea what he was talking about, or why Foxy had suddenly lost his verve. Even after Streetcar’s death the old man had managed to keep his good humor; now, his head seemed too heavy for his neck, and his hands still danced over the broadcloth of his lap.

  “I’m not going to argue,” I said, turning away. “I just wanted to give you my sympathy, that’s all. I’m not being nosey.” But Rene wouldn’t let it go.

  “No? Then why are you all the time talking about what we see, huh? Why are you all the time asking about that?”

  “He’s a writer,” Foxy snapped at him. “He’s naturally curious.”

  “He ain’t a writer, he draws pictures.”

  It was dumb, but I didn’t leave. I had nowhere I wanted to go, and this for the time being was better than nothing.

  “I illustrate,” I corrected, almost primly, looking hard at Rene with a dare for contradiction. “I draw things for kids in books—which you’re right, I don’t write—and sometimes I do it for myself, all right? I draw houses and people and animals and critters and . . . and . . . I looked around, feeling a surge of heat expand in my chest, and burn my eyes. “And trees, okay? The way they grow, the way they look in different seasons, the way they glow when there’s no sun, the way they look when they’ve been hit by lightning. Christ!”

  I stalked away and had almost reached the street when I heard Foxy calling. I looked back and saw him beckoning, while Rene yanked so hard on his arm that he toppled from the step to the concrete. I ran back, ready to exchange Belle for Rene and beat the hell out of both of them. But when I got there, Foxy was sitting up and Rene was sitting above him.

  “What did you mean, about the trees?” Foxy said as soon as I was close enough to hear.

  “Just what I said.”

  “Damn.”

  “Damn what?” I frowned. Rene wasn’t talking, so I knelt and smiled. “Hey, is that what you guys have been seeing here in the park? A tree glowing sort of?” I poked Foxy’s arm. “Hey, there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s the light. A break in the clouds, that’s all. Hollywood does it all the time. Jeez, you didn’t have to lie to me, the burglars and stuff. Good god, Foxy, I told you I saw it too.”

  He took my hand and held it; his fingers were ice, his grip was iron, and his eyes seemed farther back, black in his skull. “You see it for the dying,” he said. “You see it for the dying.”

  He wouldn’t talk to me after that, and Rene only scowled, and I finally went home after eating out. I felt, oddly, a hundred times better than when I’d left, and I even started to do a little work. Two hours later I was still at it, when I looked up and saw the tree.

  It was dark outside; night had crept up on me while my pens were flying.

  It was dark outside, and the maple tree was glowing.

  The stars were out, but there was no moon.

  And the maple tree was glowing.

  I switched off the lights, and nothing changed; I hurried downstairs and stood at the back door, and nothing changed; I ran outside, and the tree was glowing. Gold, soft, and casting no shadows.

  I was afraid to walk up and touch it. Instead, I went back in and sat at the kitchen table, watching for nearly an hour until the tree faded. Then I grabbed up a newspaper and began scribbling dates and names in the largest margins I could find. When I was done, I shook my head and did it again. After the second time, I had convinced myself that the old men in the park, if they had seen what I had, had been given glimpses of the future. Deaths. Accidents. And they were afraid of what they saw, so they made up stories to go with their age, with the failing of their minds. And they were afraid of what they saw, afraid of what it meant, and they died. A heart attack, a probable stroke, two men probably drunk in their rooms and not hearing the alarm.

  “Jesus,” I whispered.

  And the telephone rang.

  I thought it might be Belle, ready to tell me she’d be over to clear out her things.

  But it was Foxy, and before he had a chance to say anything more than his name, I told him what I’d discovered and, if it were true, what it might mean.

  “My god, Foxy,” I said, fairly jumping with excitement, “think of what you guys can do, think of the people you can save.”

  “Caz, wait a minute.”

  “I know, I know—you don’t want to be thought of as freaks, and I don’t blame you. But god, Foxy, it’s incredible!” I wound the cord around my wrist and stared grinning at the ceiling. “You know that, you know it’s incredible, right? But look, you’ve got to tell me how you know where it’s going to be and things like that. I mean, all I can see is the tree and nothing else. How do you know where the accident is going to be?”

  “I don’t.”

  “Impossible. Chad didn’t just guess, you know. Do you know the odds on something like that?”

  I wasn’t making sense; I didn’t care. Belle was leaving me, and I didn’t care; the books weren’t going right, and I didn’t care. Something else was fine, and I was feeling all right.

  “It was Chad in the store that night, Caz.”

  “So look, are you going to tell—” I stopped, straightened, blinked once very slowly. “Chad?”

  “He needed the money. He knew he was going to die, so he decided to give it a try, to see if he could change it.” There was a pause. A long pause to be sure I was listening and not just hearing. “It was Chad shot down that night, Caz. He was carrying a toy gun.”

  “Wait!” I said loudly, sensing he was about to hang up. “Foxy, wait. He knew he was going to die?”

  Another pause, and I could hear him breathing as if he were drowning.

  “I saw it today, Caz. I saw the tree. I know.”

  And he hung up.

  I didn’t want to go to the park the next day, but I did. Rene was sitting at the fountain, and he was alone.

  “Where’s Foxy?” I asked angrily.

  “Where do you think?” he said, and pointed at the ground.

  “He . . . he said he saw the tree yesterday.”

  Rene shrugged. And looked suddenly up at me and grinned. “So did you. A couple of times.”

  “But . . .” I looked around wildly, looked back and spread my hands. “But my god, aren’t you afraid?”

  “When you know it’s done, it’s done, right, old man?” And he grinned even wider.

  There were a number of people walking through the park that day, but it didn’t bother me—I hit him. I leaned back and threw a punch right at the side of his head, and felt immense satisfaction at the astonishment on his face as he spilled backward and struck his skull against the fountain’s lip. He was dead. I knew it. And I knew then he had seen the tree and hadn’t told me. So I ran, straight for home, and fell into the kitchen.

  No prophesy except knowing when you’ll die.

  No change except for the method of the dying.

  I had seen the tree glow, and I was going to die, and the only thing he didn’t tell me was how long it was before it all happened.

  There was fear, and there was terror, and finally in the dark there was nothing at all. Rene was right; when you had no choice, there was nothing but deciding you might as well get on with your work. At least that much would be done; at least there�
��d be no loose ends.

  I started for the staircase, and the front door opened, and Belle came in.

  I almost wept when I saw her, knowing instantly she’d been right—I’d not really needed her before, not the way it should have been. But I needed her now, and I wanted her to know it.

  “Oh, Belle,” I said, and opened my arms to gather in her comfort.

  And gave her the perfect target for the gun in her hand.

  The Substitute

  Gahan Wilson

  It is hard to imagine how anyone could enjoy a more brilliantly varied career than Gahan Wilson. While establishing a reputation second to none as a cartoonist of the highest calibre, his hilarious, strange, and oft-mordant work appearing in Playboy as well as numerous other magazines, Wilson quietly set about the task of duplicating that success as a short story writer—usually dipping into the same dark, dank pool of Unlikely Things.

  If those accomplishments were not enough, Gahan has written “Screen” for Twilight Zone magazine’s “Other Dimensions” section since its inception in 1981, his commentary about new fantasy films among the most accurate and pertinent available in any medium.

  For those who believe that Wilson, who has become one of those rare cartoonists whose perturbing panels seem always to have been with us, is a newcomer to fiction in any sense, check this: The 1967 Playboy Book of Horror and the Supernatural featured not one but two stories by Gahan Wilson. At that point, the editor noted, Wilson’s cartoon connection with Playboy already stretched nine years into the past. One of those yarns, “The Manuscript of Dr. Arness,” is still discussed almost two decades later.

  “The Substitute” is a daring story in concept, less because it blurs the genre lines beloved by many fretful editors than because of its theme and the important things it both says—and implies.

  None of the children were in a good mood even to begin with. It was a foul November morning and every boy and girl of them had been forced by their mothers to wear their hated galoshes, and of course the galoshes hadn’t worked, the snow had been too high (it was a particularly foul November morning, even for the Midwest) and had poured in over the tops so that their feet had got wet and cold anyhow, in spite of their mothers.