Mask of Silver

by Rosemary Jones

  Eleanor shook her head. “There’s no new consciousness. Our perception is formed by our experience. To create something that nobody has ever experienced is impossible, because we all draw from the same conscious or unconscious well of experiences.”

  “Isn’t that what we have been doing with our films? Creating something never experienced before?” said Sydney. “My grandfather thought you could bring it forth with theater, with ritual, but that all goes back to an idea that has been around for uncounted generations. I cannot tell you the number of times that it has been tried. And failed. There’s some very interesting stories about that, especially around Arkham.”

  “But what we are doing is a form of theater,” said Eleanor, who was obviously becoming more intrigued with Sydney’s proposition. I recognized it, of course. It was Sydney’s idea of a universal language, much as Sister Theodora once argued at the orphanage. A way to end the division caused by the fall of Babylon.

  “Film is something completely new and growing stronger every day,” said Sydney. “A collective communication, understood wherever you go, made of electricity, light, and shadows, a visual medium that progresses straight into the mind, without any common language needed at all. I too tried the theater, based on my grandfather’s recommendations, and found it sadly lacking. But luckily I made that discovery while still in college. Next I thought it would be the circus, that art known round the world. That failed too. But I am convinced now that it is the movies.”

  Lulu teased her pug with a bit of ham taken from a sandwich. “It must have been a happy childhood. Living here in Arkham.”

  Eleanor sighed, “Oh Lulu. That wasn’t what we were talking about.”

  Lulu winked at me. I understood immediately that she knew exactly what she was doing. Not arguing with two intellectuals sparring over vague concepts. Just pulling them back to earth a bit. It was one of the reasons that I couldn’t dislike Lulu. Sydney’s speeches on controlling the common consciousness made as much sense as Fred’s speeches about using radio waves to convey sound and pictures. However, Fred’s ideas had some practical merit. Sydney, especially when he started on the occult and metaphysical, made my skin crawl. Somehow, with him, it sounded more like universal hypnosis than communication. I never liked the character of Svengali and a Svengali who controlled populations through film was an idea that I hoped Sydney never wrote into one of his films. It would appeal too much to the wrong type of people.

  “What?” Lulu said to Eleanor. “I meant it. Sydney seems to have been blessed. To grow up in a large house. To come on picnics to a pretty meadow full of butterflies. It sounds much happier than my childhood. Don’t forget my mother put me in a lion cage at the age of three.”

  “As you never fail to remind me,” said Eleanor. “It was one melodrama that ran less than three weeks. And the lioness was toothless, according to your mother.”

  “I didn’t know that,” said Lulu. “But still, Sydney, you sound as if you had the perfect happy childhood.”

  “Happiness was never a particular goal of my family,” said Sydney. “We were far more set on other things.”

  “That’s an interesting question,” said Eleanor. “What’s more desirable? Happiness? Wealth? Fame? Power?”

  “Doesn’t wealth, fame, and power bring happiness?” said Lulu.

  Eleanor sat up. “I used to think that. But now, I find myself less sure. I chased through Europe for stories, certain that being a war correspondent would be the path to fame. And all the rest that you listed.”

  “Eleanor, your stories were printed in the Saturday Evening Post,” said Lulu.

  “And that did pay well,” said Eleanor. “Although our horrid plays, all full of blood and screaming, paid even better. Then we fell in love and that certainly made both of us famous.”

  “I’m not sure that was what Sydney meant,” said Lulu. “But it hasn’t been that bad.”

  “No, dear,” said Eleanor, giving Lulu a quick kiss and hug, “there’s been a lot of good in the last year. But it proves my point. Or rather makes one think. I’ve been rich, well, as rich as a writer can be, and famous, or at least infamous. And has it made me happy? At least as happy as a simple picnic, sitting in the sun, arguing about what brings happiness.”

  “But you haven’t been powerful,” said Sydney with a sly look sideways. The sun slid under the down-tipped brim of his boater and made his eyes gleam. “Not the type of power that true fame and fortune brings. Where you can ask for anything and be given it.”

  “That’s making three wishes off a magic fish,” said Eleanor. “Nobody should ever be able to ask for anything and be assured of having it. Makes them spoiled. Makes what you are asking for worthless.”

  Fred wandered back to the blankets, swinging his golf club at daisies in the grass. “Is there any ginger ale left?” he said.

  I pushed the picnic basket closer to him with my foot, relieved to be distracted. “Look in there.”

  “What’s the argument this time?” he said, nodding toward Sydney and Eleanor.

  “Fame versus happiness, I think. Or perhaps power.”

  “I’ll take happiness,” said Fred. “If we can order it off some menu.”

  “Don’t think that is quite what they mean.” But I thought he had it right. I loved my work, but I never cared, as Renee did, who knew about it. I never wanted to be famous. At least, I didn’t think I did. Renee occasionally accused me of lacking ambition. But it wasn’t that. I wanted to design for the movies. I wanted to have people clamor for my clothes or put my drawings on the cover of Harper’s. I just didn’t want to have my picture taken by reporters or have people speculating about my love life in the gossip columns. I watched Renee manage that, and manage it well, but it meant hiding part of herself. That I never wanted to do. If happiness meant forgoing fame, I’d take that.

  Eleanor was keeping up the argument with Sydney, despite Lulu’s best attempts at interjecting a little levity. “Changing the world through your creation. That’s every artist’s dream. But no art has that power. To bend the world to the image that you want.”

  Max and Betsy wandered back to the blankets. Max, as always, looked pressed and tidy. Even on a picnic, he wore immaculately tailored trousers, jacket, shirt, and tie. Even his boater sported a broader ribbon than Sydney’s. “What are you talking about?” he said.

  “Which is the most desirable: happiness, fame, wealth, or power,” said Eleanor.

  “Wealth,” answered Max without hesitation. “The rest all follow the money.”

  “You have a mercenary soul, Max,” said Sydney. “Art is the power to change men’s minds.”

  “What about the women? Oh, we’re already in our right minds and so don’t need to change,” retorted Eleanor.

  Max just smiled. “If you can pay the bills and still have money left over for luxuries, wouldn’t you be happy? There’s nothing more miserable than being poor.”

  “Quite true,” said Sydney. “I was miserably poor once. Down to nothing more than a nickel, and I spent that to go to the movies. Wisest decision that I ever made.”

  Max shook his head. “Sydney, you have never been poor. You may have been out of money once or twice, but you have always known that you could come back to this.” He pointed at the picnic baskets. “A house full of treasures, servants, the luxury of a lazy Sunday afternoon spent discussing what is the most important thing in the world.”

  Betsy looked startled at this outburst. We all were. Max never spoke out or spoke up around Sydney. That’s why Sydney liked him better than the studio’s last two assistants. Max just totaled the numbers and moaned a little about Sydney’s extravaganzas before figuring how to make it all work out.

  “Why, Max,” said Sydney, his mouth half crooked in a condescending smile, “you sound like a socialist.”

  “Oh, not me,” said Max. “What do I care about the masses
? My grandfather might have subscribed to the Workers Times, but it was a waste of his money. It did him no good at all.”

  “Not a fan of Emma Goldman either?” asked Eleanor, citing the outspoken radical who had finally been shipped back to Russia. “I heard her speak once or twice before she was deported.”

  “I have no time for anarchists, socialists, or communists,” declared Max. “Or any other radical. And as for the government thinking they can solve problems by simply shipping people out of the country, that’s as foolish.”

  “Careful, Max,” said Sydney. “Next you’ll be saying that you disagree with Prohibition.”

  “You can’t legislate people into being prudent, sober, or good, however you define good,” said Max with some bitterness. “None of that works. All decisions in the end come down to the irrational and the emotional.”

  “In that,” said Sydney, “we are in some agreement. Fear speaks directly to the irrational mind. Terror is the key.”

  Max sat up even straighter. Like Sydney, his face was shaded by his boater. Weirdly shadowed, like a black hood fell across it. Suddenly Max – sweet, note-taking, cost-obsessed, creased-pants Max – seemed like the figure of my dreams. It was the most ridiculous idea that I had ever had.

  “Terror is the key,” repeated Max.

  Eleanor continued to watch the two men with a considering look. “Keys can be dangerous,” she finally said. “Look at Pandora and what she found when she unlocked her box.”

  Lulu broke up this sobering discussion, rising with a shaking of her skirts and tumbling her dog into the grass. “Come along, Pumpkin,” she said. “Let’s take a walk and enjoy the sun.” She gestured to Eleanor. “Want to join us or continue arguing politics?”

  “Darling Lulu,” said Eleanor, getting to her feet. “You are always far more fascinating than men arguing about power versus wealth.” She wound her arm around Lulu’s waist. The pair wandered down the same path that Max and Betsy had taken earlier.

  “Want to join our game of pickle golf?” Fred asked me.

  “Oh yes,” I said jumping up, wanting more than anything in that moment to leave behind my new and disturbing vision of Max. “How do you score a hole in one?”

  “Smash the pickle completely?” Fred wondered as he handed me a golf club. “Or maybe turn it into relish?”

  Betsy grabbed another club and followed us. “Who wants to talk about boring politics,” she said. “Everyone has tough times. Why not enjoy what we have now?”

  So we left Max and Sydney behind to discuss terror and keys, when we should have stayed and asked more questions about Sydney’s ideas. That night the electricity went out again. The nightmares began in earnest.

  Chapter Eleven

  We were hot and tired, and just a little sticky with pickle juice, by the time that we got back to the Fitzmaurice house. Lines formed outside the bathrooms. The hot water had definitely cooled by the time I could fill a tub. Still, it felt lovely to wash my hair and pull on my silk pajamas. I dropped into bed convinced I would sleep forever.

  Instead I dreamed of coffins, masks, and endless rooms filled with smoke. And I was alone, terribly alone. I knew in my dream if I could find Renee or Fred, it would be all right. But they were gone. Everyone was gone. Mirrors reflected flames behind me and muddled the way. I came to doors that were locked or doors that opened into infinite darkness. Nowhere could I see a clear path out of the smoke.

  Smoke smothered my screams. Muffled, blinded, lost, I wandered the endless and hostile corridors of the Fitzmaurice house. No matter which way I turned, mirrors blocked my way and taunted me with the reflection of a door, a door that I could not reach but that promised freedom and clean air.

  I choked on smoke and despair. I never knew such sorrow, more bitter than when Renee held my hand and told me that our mother died. I never knew such terror, not even as a child, when the influenza pinned me helpless to my bed with fever and I was convinced that I would never be well again.

  In the depths of each mirror swam the shadow of a woman, a strange and amorphous creature of coiling smoke, and a hooded man standing further away. I could barely see him. He was more of an impression, but I would catch greater glimpses of her the closer that I went to the mirror. Her hair spilled down her back, writhing like snakes. She was constantly walking away from me. When I would turn and hurry in the opposite direction, trying to catch a glimpse of her amid the fumes, I would confront another mirror and a vision of her retreating back.

  The man never moved. Instead he watched us engage in this lunatic race, looking for the right way out of the smoke and fire.

  Weeping with fear and frustration, I banged my hands against the mirror, almost as if the woman was on the other side of a window and could hear me. The creature slowed and then turned, presenting to me a perfectly blank face, an oval of polished silver that reflected flickering flames and my own frightened face.

  I woke gasping and almost screaming, convinced that I could smell a fire. But there was nothing but darkness, a warm smothering darkness. As I groped for the matches and the candle beside my bed, I heard small cries and startled exclamations coming from the hallway. Finally a lantern shone outside the door of my bedroom.

  “Jeany? Jeany, are you awake?” Renee stood there with her bedside lamp casting wild shadows up and down the wall. Her hands were shaking too badly to hold it steady.

  “I’m here,” I said, tumbling out of the bed and making my way to the door. I heard the crackle of paper underfoot as I trod upon my sketchbook. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” she said. And then, almost in a whisper. “Old nightmares. Would you mind sleeping in my room tonight?”

  I nearly made some sarcastic remark about how that would look, but then I saw her face. She was biting her lips to keep them from trembling. I had not seen such sorrow and worry in her face since the day we went to the orphanage. But the moment I came close enough to touch her, Renee straightened her shoulders and assumed that look that only big sisters can give to little sisters.

  “I’m all right,” she said. “But I dreamed that something was in my room tonight. A bird trapped in the house? I kept hearing wings. I swear I felt it fly past me. Please stay with me.”

  “Of course. Don’t worry. I’m sure it’s nothing.” Dreams, I told myself. It was only dreams and dreams could not hurt us.

  As we went down the hall, we found a number of the bedroom doors were open. Eleanor and Lulu were in the hallway, arguing about whether or not to go downstairs and find something to drink. “I just can’t sleep,” said Lulu. “But it’s so dark on the stairs.”

  “That’s why we have lanterns,” said Eleanor, hoisting hers above her head. “Please remember that our mothers managed stairs quite handily in long skirts and with no electric lights.”

  “We never lived in any place big enough for stairs,” muttered Lulu.

  “There’s a smaller stair here,” I said, pulling back the chintz curtain that hid the back stairs. “You go right into the kitchen on this.”

  “There,” said Eleanor, shepherding Lulu onward. “Let’s go down and see what we can find. I might even manage to light the stove to make a cup of Ovaltine.”

  When we reached the kitchen, we found the stove already lit. Fred pulled a boiling kettle from the top. “Hello,” he said. “Anyone for a hot toddy?”

  “Dear man,” said Eleanor, “do you actually have whiskey for that?”

  “Hot water, honey, and Max’s favorite bottle of scotch,” said Fred. “I remembered where he hid it in the library.”

  Betsy and Pola came tumbling down the stairs next. “Oh Fred,” said Betsy. “That smells wonderful.”

  Fred filled up cups with generous dollops of Max’s imported scotch and hot water. Eleanor stirred in the honey and handed us each a toddy.

  “It would be better with schnapps,” said Pola, sipping he
r cup, “but a good thought all the same.”

  Hal and Paul joined us next, claiming that Jim’s snoring had woken them up but looking equally glad to have a toddy pressed into their hands. Max was the last to arrive.

  “Is that my scotch?” he said, eyeing the empty bottle.

  “Here,” said Fred, handing him a cup. “You’ll find it medicinal.”

  Only Jim, who could sleep through earthquakes and thunderstorms, and Sydney failed to join the party.

  “But what did wake us all up?” Eleanor asked after her cup was empty.

  “I thought there was a rat in the room,” said Lulu. “It was climbing on the bed.”

  “Not likely,” Eleanor answered. “Pumpkin was still wuffling away on his pillow when we left. Even that dog would wake up if he smelled a rat.”

  “I smelled smoke,” I said. “Or I dreamed I did.”

  “I thought I heard a bird beating against the window,” said Renee. “Maybe that was what started my dream.”

  Renee spoke of mirrors that cracked while she tried to fix her makeup and reflected a scarred face. “It was a bird, a crow,” she said. “A crow flew into the mirror and cracked it. Cracked me too. Like a porcelain doll face, shattering on the floor.”

  Pola admitted that she dreamed of knitting shrouds for all her family. Betsy bit her lip and said “I couldn’t make the numbers work in my favor. No matter how I added it up, I couldn’t save him.” But she refused to say who she was trying to help.

  Eleanor sighed and said, “I dreamed that I was surrounded by paper and none of the ideas in my head would come out as coherent words. Every time I started to write, it turned into blobs of ink that meant nothing at all. And all the time I knew I was dreaming and was afraid to wake. It seemed as if awakening would release even more terrible dreams lurking inside of my dreams. Those were my terrors of the small hours.”