Darker Masques

by J N Williamson

  He was a big guy, six-five maybe, and fleshy. His face was mottled from drinking. He smelled of cold and he smelled of booze. He wore a cheap rumpled sport jacket and cheap rumpled pants.

  “I want you to sit down over there,” I said.

  “You a thief, or what?”

  “I want you to sit down over there and tell me about the night you and your friend Frank Campion raped and killed the girl two years ago tonight, on Halloween.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “You know what I’m talking about.”

  “I never raped no girl.”

  I pointed the gun at him. “She put me up to this.”

  “You’re crazy, mister. You some kind of dope addict, or what?”

  “She put me up to this. The girl you killed. Meaning, she’s controlling my hand. Anytime she wants she can force me to pull this trigger.”

  “You really are crazy.”

  I shot him in the leg.

  He looked totally surprised. I guess because of the way I’d been talking—crazy and all with her controlling me—he’d started to feel as if he were in control of the situation, that he might have some kind of chance of getting the gun from me.

  But she was in my mind now, and she eased my finger back on the trigger.

  “I want you to tell me about that night, everything you did,” I said.

  He was crawling backward and shouting for help. He kept looking at his leg as if he hoped it might belong to somebody else. “I didn’t rape no girl,” he said.

  I shot him in the arm, the right arm.

  This time he vomited. I’m not sure why. Maybe fear.

  But it worked. He started talking.

  “We was drunk, Frank and me,” he said and then he said it all and it was pretty simple, really right up to and including how they’d buried her at the bottom of a grain elevator, where nobody would ever find her.

  I turned off the tape recorder and let it run back and then I tested it and his voice was good and loud and clear. She had what she wanted.

  He was crying, the big guy was. He was bleeding a lot and getting weaker and crying.

  He said “I can’t even shout no more. You call an ambulance, okay? Okay?”

  I got up and went to the phone and picked up the receiver. I started dialing, but then she turned me around abruptly.

  As I realized what was going to happen, I jerked the gun to the left so that it misfired into the wall.

  She came out of the bedroom and he saw her, and he started screaming louder than anybody I’d ever heard.

  She tore the gun from my hand and walked over and stood above him. She fired four straight shots into his face.

  When she was finished, she threw the gun to me and I caught it from reflex.

  Down her cheek ran two tears like drops of mercury.

  Then she was gone, the trailer door flapping in the wind with her disappearing over the edge of the hill along the line of moonlit horizon.

  I stood staring down at the corpse on the floor, the gun grasped in my fingers, as the first neighbor peered into the cabin and said to the second neighbor, “Look. This man shot John!”

  The Chief made sure that nobody else rode back with us to the jail.

  I’d told him everything that had happened, the girl and all. I knew better than to expect he’d believe me.

  The funny thing was, as he listened, his sad eyes got sadder. He said, “I figured she’d be back tonight.”

  “You knew about her then?”

  He looked over at me. “She was my daughter. I knew those two men raped and killed her but I could never prove it and I could never find where they’d buried her. Last year she used another drifter the same way—that’s why I warned you to get out of town. He killed Campion, except Campion didn’t confess before he died. So I figured she’d use another drifter like you to get the second man.” He sighed. “And she did.”

  “Where’s this other drifter now?” I said.

  He shook his white head. “Death row. Tried and convicted of first-degree murder.”

  For the first time I saw what had happened to me. What had really happened to me.

  “But if you tell them the real story, they’ll believe you, won’t they?” I said, sounding like a little kid all pleading and desperate.

  The Chief’s car shot through the chill darkness. I could still see her in bed. Feel her . . .

  “Son,” he said “that’s why I warned you about being a drifter in Newkirk on Halloween night.”

  He shook out a cigarette from his pack and offered it to me.

  “Son,” he said. “I like you, so I’m going to do you a favor. I’m giving you a half-hour head start before I come looking for you.”

  “But . . .”

  He looked at me with those sad eyes and I knew then why she’d looked so familiar from the start. She’d had the same sad eyes.

  “Son,” he said, “they’re not going to believe you any more than they believed that other drifter.” He paused. “You know what it’s like on death row—just waiting?”

  Twenty minutes later I was on the highway headed north. Three trucks rushed by, nearly knocking me over with their speed. A couple of carloads of kids came by, too. They just saw me as somebody to have some farm-boy fun with—calling me names and flipping me the bird and challenging me to a fight.

  Then they were gone and there were just the unending prairie darkness and the winter stars overhead, and the lonely crunch of my feet on the hard ground.

  I kept thinking of her, of how good and loving she’d felt in my arms, even though all the time I held her she’d been . . . dead.

  I don’t know how long I walked or how many cars and trucks roared by. After a while I faced frontward and just started walking, forgetting all about thumbing.

  Then I started thinking about my own life. The years being raised by my uncle in a one-room apartment in the city. And the wife who’d dumped me for a grinning young Marine. And the years of drifting after that . . .

  I heard it from a long way off. It came up over the sound of the wild abandoned dogs roaming the night, of the distant train smashing through the darkness of the distant prairie, of the crunching sound of my feet . . .

  I recognized it immediately, that sound.

  A slightly laboring VW engine.

  At first I was scared and started running along the shoulder of the road, my backpack slamming against my shoulders. But the faster I ran, the closer she drew . . .

  When she got alongside me, I decided there was no use fighting it anymore. Chest heaving, warm now from sweat, I turned and looked at her there inside the red VW.

  She leaned over and rolled down the window. “Would you like a ride?”

  “Just leave me alone, all right? Just leave me alone.”

  “If I didn’t like you, I wouldn’t have come back. When we were making love, I realized how lonely you are . . . being a drifter and all, and I thought I could help you.” She smiled and held her hand out to me. “I thought I could take you with me.”

  I didn’t want to hear any more. Throwing my backpack down so I could run better, I set off, trotting back down the road, away from her as fast as I could get.

  For a long time I could hear the VW sitting there, engine idling, but finally I heard her grind the gears and set off over the hill, leaving me alone.

  The blackness again; the sound of my own heart racing; the texture and smell of my own sweat.

  I stopped. She was gone. I no longer needed to run.

  And then I saw the headlights headed toward me and heard the engine with the idle set too high, the laboring VW engine.

  As I watched her come closer, an exhaustion set in. All I could think of was the time I’d had mono. For three weeks I hadn’t even been able to walk down the hall to the bathroom . . .

  She pulled up. This time she opened the door for me.

  “I’ll drive around till you get used to the idea,” she said. “So you won’t be so sca
red, I mean.” Blond hair hiding part of her face, she said, very gently, “It’s really what you want, you know. No more bitterness . . . no more pleading . . . no more pleading.”

  The door opened wider.

  “We can drive these highways all night and look at how beautiful the forest is on the hills, and by then—”

  “—by then I won’t be scared.”

  “By then,” she said, “you won’t be scared.”

  “My backpack—”

  She smiled again. So soft. “You don’t have to worry about things like that anymore. I’m going to take you with me.”

  She put out her hand once more, her warm, tender hand, and I took it and let her draw me inside her car, the red VW that set off now into the unceasing black prairie night.

  And it was just like she’d promised. I didn’t worry about anything.

  Not anything at all.

  Ray Russell

  REFLECTIONS

  IN 1987, St. Martin’s Press unleashed the funniest novel in years, Dirty Money. For decades Ray Russell has been one of the most original, literate, and versatile writers alive, and the fact that he is one of the nation’s wittiest authors will come as no surprise to anybody who has read Russelino’s “God Will Provide,” “The Hell You Say” (previous clever short-shorts), or the hilariously horrific “American Gothic” in Masques II. (Or M 2, as Ray would have it.)

  A key to the success this first executive editor of Playboy has enjoyed with very brief stories is the particularly skewed view he holds on our times—a singular eye that sizes up what’s already been done with various icons of horror (or SF; or fantasy; or anything). Ray hones in on elements no one else has even noticed, including an icon as familiar as that which you’ll find in his newest story . . . dead ahead. Nobody else could have written it but the author of Sardonicus and Dirty Money.

  REFLECTIONS

  Ray Russell

  THIS TIMEWORN CITY OF OURS is a place of many shops. I have often reflected that they are like voluptuous sirens, luring us with the enticing wares that beckon from behind the shining panes of their windows. A person could stand—as I stood last night—outside Alecu’s pastry shop, and simultaneously see the mouth-watering cakes and tortes as well as one’s own face, licking one’s lips at that delectable display. At certain hours, when the light is right, the windows of those shops are as good as any looking glass. Frequently, with their aid, I have straightened my hat or smoothed my mustache before going on to keep a rendezvous with my beloved.

  Last night, I waited for her in front of the pastry shop. It was closed—dark inside, each windowpane a perfect black mirror. I could see myself, lit by the combined rays of the street-corner lamp and the full moon: the respected physician, elegant host, pillar of society. All those qualities and attributes seemed to be reflected there. I fancied I could see them clearly.

  But would I see her?

  I feared that I would not. I feared that my most morbid suspicions would be confirmed. I shivered, and not only with the cold. Soon I would know the truth. I had set a trap for her and had asked her to meet me in front of the shop at midnight.

  Somewhere, in the chill darkness, a distant bell tolled that hour, and at the same time I heard the delicate click of her approaching heels. I turned away from that sound to face the shop window. The click of her heels drew nearer.

  And then I saw her beautiful reflection in the glass. I was filled with a welcome warm flood of relief.

  “Good evening, Ioan,” she said in that sable voice.

  I turned to her. “My dear . . .” I began to say, but my voice faltered.

  “Is something wrong?” she asked. “You seem ill at ease.”

  “I am an ingrate and a fool,” I replied. “I misjudged you. Can you forgive me? I actually had come to think that you were—”

  “A vampire?” she said, as her lips stretched wide in a ghastly smile, revealing hideous fangs.

  I recoiled, in disbelief as well as horror. “No!” I cried. “Impossible!” I gestured wildly toward the window. “Your reflection . . .”

  “Ah yes,” she said, admiring her lovely image in the window.

  “A vampire cannot be reflected,” I pointed out. “Everybody knows that.”

  “You are a famous scholar of the healing arts, Ioan, but I am afraid you have not studied the lore of my kind closely enough.”

  “I have,” I insisted.

  “If indeed you had” she replied in a mocking tone, “you would have known that our forms, even as yours, can be reflected in many things—in water, in windows, in gleaming china . . .” She began to move closer to me. “But not in silver, or in mirrors backed by a coating of it.”

  “The killing power of silver bullets is known to me,” I murmured, “but . . .”

  “Silver,” she crooned, slowly moving ever closer, “was the coinage paid to Judas for the betrayal of your Lord. And the old legend has it that, to compensate the spirit of that metal for the base use to which it had been put, it was forever granted the power to repel evil. Hence, when a creature of my sort stands before a silvered mirror, the glass refuses the reflection. But a shop window, with no silver behind it . . .”

  “I understand” I said.

  “You understand too late, my poor Ioan.”

  Baring her fangs again, she moved quickly toward me. From under my cloak I drew the syringe. It was filled with glittering fluid.

  She laughed. “Poison? That will avail you nothing.”

  “Not poison,” I said sadly. “Medicine. We prescribe it in cases of epilepsy.”

  “I do not suffer from that complaint,” she said, and laughed again.

  “No, my dear. Your affliction is far more terrible. And this will cure you.”

  She lunged at me like a panther. I sank the needle deep into her smooth white throat and pressed down the plunger. “Argenti oxidum,” I whispered, as she fell dead at my feet. “Oxide of silver. Farewell, my love. And may you rest in peace at last.”

  The shop window reflected my anguished face and my tears.

  Melissa Mia Hall and Douglas E. Winter

  THE HAPPY FAMILY

  MELISSA Mia Hall’s fiction, she writes, “has appeared in a variety of anthologies”—edited by Charles Grant and Jane Yolen, by Kathryn Ptacek, Marty Greenberg, and Joe Lansdalc. A book critic and photographer too. Hall created, produced, and directed “a short film entitled Manikin” rising from a “certain fascination” she has with mannequins. “Especially,” she adds, “the human variety.”

  Doug Winter, saying he can “count at least one mannequin among my personal friends,” was editor of the prestigious Prime Evil; before that, he was a chronicler of horror fiction in general, S. King in particular. His story “Splatter,” from Masques II, was nominated for a World Fantasy Award. He’s also the collaborator—with Grant—on a novel, the lawyer’s first, titled From Parts Unknown. “The Happy Family” is the second part of a proposed tetralogy of stories by Hall and Winter. It is a story for all seasons, but might just as easily have slipped into any of the other categories of this anthology.

  THE HAPPY FAMILY

  Melissa Mia Hall and Douglas F. Winter

  SKIN SO PALE AND BODY pencil-thin. Hard. Cool to the touch. Put your head against that unmoving breast and hold tight; everything’s going to be all right.

  She stares blindly at the track lighting of the department store. Her arms are crossed protectively in front of her, as if she’s embarrassed by something he said. There’s a slight arch to her back, and she’s too tall, her legs long and bare. She is modeling lingerie, or a swimsuit that could pass for lingerie. A bicycle leans against the Plasticine rock behind her. Two steps to her left, another mannequin, not as fetching or desirable, scans the distant menswear section, as if she’s lost a boyfriend to the racks of disconsolate ties.

  Walter stares at her and thinks about the movie where a mannequin turns into a girl. A real-live girl.

  That is not what he wants. He just wants he
r.

  There is something special, something right, about this mannequin. She is so much like the others, the ones he has collected. They wait for him at home, perfectly coiffed, perfectly clothed, perfectly arranged down in the den.

  Rachel doesn’t particularly like them. Neither do Laurie or Rob, his children. Laurie seems afraid of them. He can never understand why. She always liked playing with her Barbies.

  Walter pats his pocket to make sure that he brought his checkbook. He’ll have her. Somehow he will have her. All you have to do is name the right price to the right person.

  But there’s no rush. She’s not going anywhere.

  He smiles crookedly, amused with himself. No one at work thinks he has a sense of humor. His secretary walks on eggshells around him. She’s afraid of him. But the name partners of most blue-chip Dallas law firms tend to be frightening, don’t they?

  There aren’t many shoppers this early on a Saturday. Give it an hour and that’ll change. He savors the silence, marred only by the throb of rock videos warming up in the junior department. At least that’s what they used to call it. Now it’s something like “Connections” or “Upbeat.” Laurie once liked to hang out in those places, but now she seems to prefer the same expensive boutiques as her mother.

  Walter has always loved department stores. He liked them when he was a kid and Sears was top of the line and Penney’s just for window-shopping. He never thought he’d marry a woman who would consider Saks Fifth Avenue slumming.

  Her arms are crossed so tightly.

  Walter turns to watch a grim-faced clerk march past, his arms filled with pantsuits. Then he looks back toward her.

  Her wig is styled in a short, punkish bob, laced with spiky curls that dance on her forehead with comic intensity. He’ll take the wig off. Let her go bald.

  Her eyes are blue. A beautiful blue, wide and watery bright. Her nose slices the air. Imperial. Her cheeks are hollowed as if she were sucking air, preparing to say how lost she is, how defenseless. Her skimpy pink underwear would make anyone feel defenseless. Who could ride a bicycle like that? She’s not even wearing decent shoes, just flimsy white sandals, half-on, half-off.