Masques

by J N Williamson

  Under the concerned ministrations of Mr. O’Donoghue together with the hastily-summoned school nurse, Leska Haldeen, and under the steady but alarmed gaze of Lester Baxter, the school principal, Miss Merridew was soon restored to consciousness and near to her regular state of health.

  Her first thought, of course, was for the children, and so nothing would do but that she must hurry off with O’Donoghue, Haldeen, Baxter and a growing number of curious and worried others in tow, to see if her charges were safe.

  They seemed to be, but a careful looking over of all of them showed that, without exception, they were in a peculiar, groggy state, blinking and gaping vaguely at nothing and looking for all the world, as Mr. O’Donoghue observed, “as if they’d been freshly born.”

  Of course they were asked many questions, not just that day, off and on for some weeks afterward, but none of the children ever seemed to remember anything at all about what had happened, or, if they did, none of them ever chose to tell.

  It was noticed, however, that they all seemed to be very pleased with themselves, even if for no particular reason, and Lucy Barton did mention something vague to her parents just before drifting off to sleep that night, something about a nasty creature that somehow got into the classroom, but they couldn’t find out from her whether it was a bug or a rat or what.

  The next day Miss Merridew found she was unable to operate the map holder so Mr. O’Donoghue took it to the basement to have a look at it and found that someone must have been tampering with it maliciously for it was indeed jammed and when he took it apart in order to repair it, he saw that some sort of odd conflagration had taken part in its interior. Apparently a flammable substance had been packed into it, set afire, and not only warped its works severely enough to put them beyond Mr. O’Donoghue’s abilities to set it right again, but burnt all the maps so badly that there was nothing legible left of any one of them except for a small part of Iowa, and one other fragment which had peculiar, glowing colors in some strange, exotic design.

  That was far from the oddest aspect of the little scrap, for Mr. O’Donoghue found that if he held it close to his ear with the designed part uppermost, he could hear a continual, complicated squeaking noise which sounded exactly as if a multitude of tiny beings were trapped in a confined space and endlessly crying in horror and panic as they unsuccessfully tried to escape.

  Now from that description it might seem that the sound would be extremely disturbing and depressing to hear, but Mr. O’Donoghue found, quite to the contrary, that it gave him great satisfaction to hold the little fragment to his ear for minutes on end, and that the tiny screaming and turmoil, far from being in any way unpleasant, always gave him great satisfaction, and that the screams actually made him chuckle and never failed to cheer him up if he happened to be feeling gloomy.

  After dinner that Thanksgiving he showed the fragment to his grandchildren and showed them how to listen to it, and when they heard it they begged him to let them keep it and he didn’t, of course, have the heart to refuse.

  They took it with them and, while they cherished it dearly and delighted in showing it off to all their friends, it was lost track of through the years and never seen or heard by any human being ever again.

  The Alteration

  Dennis Hamilton

  Reversing the pattern of such Masques authors as Bradbury, Nolan, Bloch and Russell, Dennis Hamilton was born in California (Long Beach, November 18, 1948) and moved to the Midwest—Indianapolis, to be exact. Whether that explains my favorite Hamilton anecdote or not is your call: As a transplanted teenager, athletic Dennis did a backbreaking stretch of yard work for a grouchy neighbor who then welched on the pathetic payment of their agreement. In the best tradition of vampires and assorted malcreants of midnight, Dennis borrowed a truck and proceeded to drive back and forth across said lawn until it was restored to its previous state—at least. “I did him a favor,” Dennis promises.

  Written by a powerfully-constructed man who once was a match from making the Olympic wrestling team, “The Alteration” is a horror reader’s reply to that deathless demand, “Where’s the beef?” Hamilton himself is a gentle father of two, editorial executive for numerous computer software publications, a friend, ready with an answer to questions concerning horror’s enduring popularity: “It is the least experienced of all emotions,” Dennis says, stressing “pure, raw, wrenching horror” and adding: “There is not a sufficient amount of time for the brain to develop any psychological defense mechanisms against it.”

  Take my word: You’ve no defense against this bristling, brawny, convincing story by a tae kwando belt-winner. None. You’ll find “The Alteration” has a lingering impact you can never quite forget.

  The signal to take her came as they raised their glasses in toast.

  Harry Crawley smiled warmly across the table to Lynn, radiating his meticulously crafted love. Their glasses clinked softly as they touched, and the two held the pose for an instant, the utterly indistinguishable gazes of forged and genuine affection locked over the brims.

  “To us, alone,” Harry softly intoned.

  “Now and forever,” the dark-haired beauty responded.

  They sipped, Lynn Yager for the future, Harry Crawley for his thirst. He lowered his glass and a single drop of tequila rolled off it onto the table. Harry watched as the unwaxed wood absorbed it. Then his eyes wandered over the tales of the table. Spanish names, cryptic initials, revolutionary slogans and unintelligible scratches had been etched into its surface with the knives of El Lobo’s coarse patrons. The graffiti of a thousand idle thoughts. Well, not all of them were idle. Eleven of the scratches were his. And Harry always had a purpose.

  Harry glanced across the dark El Lobo barroom to Nuñez. His smile faded into a now familiar taut-lipped revulsion. Harry loathed Nuñez. Grotesquely fat, the Mexican’s face reminded him of a sack of potatoes: skin the texture of burlap; pitted, formless, unsymmetrical. Nuñez had a constant, glistening coat of perspiration, and he reeked of the insidious stench of Puerta Valencia. Harry Crawley, a man of dark acquaintances, had never known a man more repulsive. Even for a compunctionless slaver.

  Ramiro Nuñez was, however, a partner in business.

  “Excuse me for a moment, darling,” Harry said to Lynn. He nodded toward the tequila. “I’m going to see if I can’t dig up a tamer wine.”

  Lynn smiled. “Don’t be long.”

  Harry left and slipped between two faded, age-ravaged curtains that led to El Lobo’s backrooms. A few moments later, a dark-eyed Mexican approached Lynn’s table.

  “Por favor, Señorita, you’re a friend of Señor Crawley’s?”

  “Why—yes,” she said, half-rising from her chair. “Is something wrong?”

  “He has taken ill, Señorita, and wishes you to accompany me to him.”

  From behind a part in the curtain, Harry watched her start toward them without hesitation.

  “Is it anything serious? Do you know what it is?”

  “I do not know. It was sudden.” The man walked ahead of her so as not to arouse her caution. He slipped behind her only when he opened the curtain and she stepped beneath his arm. Then in one practiced motion, he closed the curtain and covered her mouth so the other patrons in El Lobo wouldn’t hear her scream.

  The next moments always were frantic. The women inevitably struggled with Nuñez’ zombies as best they were able. One image was always the same: the women, wide-eyed, moaning, weeping, looked desperately to Harry as they were being taken up the stairway to a second-floor room. How alike they all were, thought Harry. Did they want an explanation? Did they want help? Did they comprehend what was happening to them? Always they looked to him instead of their captors. The horror of his deceit, even when it became obvious, took time to sink in. He often wondered, were they not muted by their captor’s hand, what they would say to him.

  A few minutes later, Nuñez’ men descended the stairs and walked past Harry and the sweaty beast that was Nuñez. They were
breathing hard. Lynn had been a fighter.

  “You guys getting too old to handle them?” Harry remarked.

  One of them continued out the curtain after only a glance. The other, Raoul, the one who had approached Lynn, stopped, then stepped up to Harry. The Mexican’s large ebony eyes glared contemptuously at him from dark sockets. “Maybe Señor Crawley would like to know if we could handle him.”

  Harry straightened, piqued. But Nuñez intervened with a grunt, motioning with his head for Raoul to leave. He cast Harry a last glance. Then he vanished between the curtains.

  “They have no taste for you, Crawley,” said Nuñez. “You watch what you say, eh? Raoul would cut out your heart and feed it to the fishes.” He produced a bloated envelope and handed it to Harry. “Count it here,” he said.

  “I don’t trust you enough not to,” Harry replied, summoning an insolence he knew grated on the Mexican. It amused him the way Nuñez shifted on his massive haunches, glaring but silent. Physically, Harry wasn’t a big man, and the disrespect somehow equalized them.

  The money, four thousand dollars, was all there. He knew it would be. Nuñez was nothing if not a businessman. “See you next trip,” Harry said.

  The Mexican didn’t answer him. He turned laboriously and started up the stairs. Each step required supreme effort for him to move his hulking mass: palms pressed hard just above the knees, right, left, right, left, wheezing breath from fat-choked lungs, muttering incessantly the grunt-language of the elephantine. Each rotted-wood step on the stairway creaked monstrously beneath his weight. The women always knew when he was coming.

  Harry watched as the Mexican stopped at the top of the stairs. With a scarred, hairless forearm, Nuñez wiped sweat from his face; an instant later it glistened there again. He didn’t look at Harry as he opened the door, then angled his body to squeeze through the frame. No, thought Harry, he wouldn’t. He only was concerned with the woman now. Nuñez liked to have them first, before their minds were destroyed by the heroin, their bodies by the sailors. Harry listened. A moment later he heard the bed shriek as Nuñez lowered his grotesque hulk onto it.

  On the way out of El Lobo, Harry used a penknife to make a twelfth notch in the table.

  White slavery had been good to Harry Crawley. A dozen women in the past year, four thousand dollars apiece. It beat parking cars in Los Angeles, or groveling for walk-ons at scale wages in low-budget movies. This way he made good money and could constantly refine the artificial emotions an actor was required to summon. Just off-Broadway rehearsals, he often thought.

  He stepped into Puerta Valencia’s hot, stench-thickened night air, thinking about the solitary distraction in his otherwise lucrative set-up. Nuñez was the only pimp and slaver in Puerta Valencia. Until recently, Harry had been his only supplier. But he’d noticed unfamiliar faces lately among the women. Lighthaired, light-complexioned faces—the kind which brought premiums from Nuñez and his clientele. That meant competition, but Nuñez wasn’t talking about it. Next trip down, Harry thought, I’ll look into it. Personally.

  He started the long drive back to L.A.

  Driving north along the coast, through some of Mexico’s magnificent vistas and resort towns, Harry reflected on his system. Gaining intimacy with the women came easy for him. Although not strikingly handsome, he was a gifted charmer. And he could read lonely women. He could be assured and worldly or a lost, sullen, brooding child. He was able to perceive a moment’s appropriate emotion and summon it accordingly. He was, he knew, a superb actor; his discovery by others as one was only a matter of time.

  Harry had his routine down pat. He would ask the girls about backgrounds, families, avoided their friends and photographs, and like other prowling beasts, emerged only at night. He shunned girls with families, potential investigators. Only the alone or nearly alone served his purpose. Lynn Yager had had no one.

  Harry limited his romances to a businesslike thirty days. A proposal of marriage or vacation, varying with the inclination of the girl, opened his next suggestion—“A little Mexican hideaway,” he would say. “Let me surprise you.” And he would tell them of warm moonlit nights on balconies overlooking the Pacific; hot, exotic Mexican delicacies; campfire dancing to Spanish guitars. When he spoke to them, it was softly; when he touched them, it was gently; when he loved them it was warmly. And it was all an act.

  Vengeance never bothered him. The women were, he knew, captive forever. Or for as long as they lasted. Puerta Valencia was a dirty, reeking refueling depot for coastal freighters, an isolated cove of hell designed to quench the thirsts of ships and their crews. For sixty days, Nuñez force-fed the women heroin, keeping them in a constant, delirious stupor, addicting them hopelessly. Then he turned them out onto the docks to earn their rations. Only the freighter crews visited the village. No one ever stayed longer than it took to take care of business. It was, Harry often reflected, quite a perfect system. And at least for that, he admired Nuñez.

  Back in Los Angeles, Harry followed custom and drove directly to Lynn Yager’s apartment, which he entered using a key she’d given him as her fiancée. Hands gloved, he checked the apartment for jewelry, cash, and other untraceable valuables. He found some costume jewels, money in a change dish for the paperboy. Her bankbook said she had $132 in savings. Not enough to risk getting caught trying to retrieve it.

  Harry, feeling a little cheated, resolved to start working a better breed of women. He ate a ham sandwich and drank a glass of milk before he left. As he was locking the door, he heard a voice from behind him.

  “Excuse me, isn’t this where Lynn Yager lives?”

  Harry swallowed, straightened, composed himself. He turned and faced a stunningly beautiful woman. Full blond hair like a lioness, dusk-sky blue eyes, she completely took him aback. He smiled. His first thought was how she would look writhing beneath that great formless mass that was Nuñez.

  Over drinks in a nearby bar, she told him her name was Carla Thomas. A friend of Lynn’s from New York, she was a purchasing agent for a cosmetics firm, visiting L.A. on business. “I just thought I’d drop in and see her.”

  “Like I said, she’s up in ’Frisco for a few weeks,” Harry said. “I think she’s going to relocate up there.” His expression darkened a little. “I don’t know what it means for us,” he said slowly.

  Harry watched her eyes react to his plight. Her hand moved a little, as if she’d momentarily considered placing it on his. She didn’t, but the gesture told Harry a lot.

  “Listen,” he said, catching her eyes with a little boy’s hopeful enthusiasm, “since you’re here, why don’t we have dinner one of these nights? I mean, if you’re not busy . . .”

  “I’m not, and I’d love to. I don’t know a soul around here.” He smiled shyly. Then he delicately touched her forearm. “Great,” he whispered.

  The next night, they met again.

  It was a candlelit Polynesian dinner at the Hawaiian Village. The atmosphere there worked for Harry. Like a drug.

  He told Carla that he and Lynn had been sharing the apartment. “We just weren’t sure about marriage yet.”

  She nodded. “So what do you do for a living?”

  “Oh, this and that.” He coupled his answer with a tiny shrug. She smiled. “I had a friend in New York who used to tell people that,” she said. “He was an aspiring actor.”

  Harry tensed a little, then slipped back into the moment. “Nothing so interesting. I’m a consultant. Management and finance, that sort of thing. The essence of dullness.”

  “So if, say, I wanted to call you for dinner before I head back to New York, you’re in the book?”

  “No,” he said, “no, not exactly. I don’t advertise. I get my clients by word of mouth. Not that ambitious, I guess.” He paused and watched her eyes. They were soft in the gentle candlelight, luminous and lonely and hungering. Yes, she was ripe, he thought distantly. But there was something; something more to her; more than any of the others. Harry said, “But I have a private number
you can use any time.” As he looked at her, feeling suspended in her gaze, he felt her warm fingers close around his hand.

  “Then I’m calling,” she whispered, “now.”

  They spent the night at Lynn’s apartment. And it was, in Harry Crawley’s experience, unique. He’d never experienced any woman like her. Memories of the others faded into a featureless blur. Now there was only Carla, and only that night. He found in her qualities he thought no woman could possess. The way she moved, the timbre of her voice, the way her eyes clung to him. He had made the others love him, but now he was being loved first. Loved with a soft, impossible intensity.

  Yes, thought Harry, Nuñez would have to pay double for Carla.

  Within two weeks, he knew all he needed to know. Or wanted to know. He decided to shorten the one-month schedule. Carla Thomas, he knew, was getting to him. It was getting harder to act out emotions because the real ones, the ones he’d never known, wanted to dominate. To Harry, it represented a flaw in his character; a potentially fatal one in his line of work. He’d always thought of himself as impervious to root emotion. Which is why he had to sell her sooner. He wasn’t impervious.

  And he was falling in love with Carla.

  He made his move on their two-week “anniversary.” He’d come to know her as capricious, ready to follow a whim on a moment’s notice, and it was upon that weakness that he chose to play. For their anniversary he’d made reservations at an expensive downtown restaurant. Then he turned east when he should have turned west and drove up into the mountains, to a spot overlooking the misty city lights, and spread a white silk tablecloth over a low, flat rock. He set out a candelabra and poured 10-year-old Rothschild. She laughed exhuberantly as he cooked the Chateaubriand on a skewer under a million winking stars. They ate and drank, he in a tuxedo and she in a gown, sitting on a blanket spread over dark, cool earth.