Darker Masques

by J N Williamson

  Case in point, the slime-and-suspense-dripping “Drinking Party.”

  THE DRINKING PARTY

  K. Marie Ramsland

  AMNIOTIC, THAT’S HOW THE PLACE FELT. Warm and oozy, concealed in membrane—so damp it made your bones swell. I licked my lips, tasting salt, trying to focus on what we were there for.

  We’d let ourselves in, which I thought odd; but Frank, who claimed to know our host well enough, had insisted. The odor of sodden earth assailed us at once, as if we’d entered the late summer lair of a listless newt. Candles burned on either side of several doorways in what appeared to be some sort of sparsely furnished waiting room. The windows were round small and few, like portholes on a ship. A faint background bubbling reminded me of the job I’d once held and quickly lost at an oceanography lab. Glancing around, I shrugged against underwear that suddenly seemed too tight. Or too loose. Or something. I wanted to get out or get started—anything to slip out of the cloying skin of that unwelcoming room. But our host had not yet begrudged us an appearance.

  Frank, younger than my forty years by half a decade, nudged me, pointing.

  “Say, look at that!”

  He walked toward a shadowy wall to our right. For the first time, I noticed a huge aquarium stretching across five feet of wall space—as tall from the floor as a man of average height. That explained the bubbling. Thrown back to the false but seductive promise of my days as a biology graduate student, I joined Frank beside it. Moments later, I was sorry I had.

  The filmy glass container seemed more a captured swamp than an exotic aquarium. It smelled of stale neglect. Amid slimy, strangling weeds, a large frog straddled murky water at eye level. It stared, its eyes dull. I waved my hand but it didn’t even blink. I felt invisible. Then I realized what had drawn Frank’s attention.

  The frog was disappearing—right there in front of us!

  Well, not disappearing exactly, but changing—as if it were being devoured from inside. The skin sagged and crumpled into something like the formless folds of a shirt dipped into a washtub. The amphibian flattened out. Something drained from its eyes, some life force bade farewell; blinked out. The frog dropped lower, shrinking, emptying backward into its former tadpole state. The once-taut skin drifted to the brackish surface, blending into tiny islands of curdled scum.

  Frank looked at me. What the hell . . .? his eyes asked.

  I shrugged, bewildered, then glanced again at the gruesome, floating bag. It began to sink. That’s when I saw the shadow.

  A thing dark and oval scooted away, as if the frog’s own astral projection were swimming free of its visceral cage! I stepped closer, squinted. I’d heard of this marvel but had never witnessed it: the feeding habits of a subaqueous beetle, paralyzing its prey before turning bones, muscles, and organs into a siphonable juice. I strained to recall the scientific name.

  “A water bug,” came a voice from behind us. I jumped as if I’d been swatted, and made my first visual acquaintance with our host.

  “Oh, geez, Leth!” Frank exclaimed—“You scared the be-jiminies out of us.”

  I was glad Frank’d spoken. I’d lost my voice.

  Leth was unlike anyone I’d ever seen. A bald head ol brownish skin and small watery eyes topped an obesely bulbous body. I’d heard from Frank that this guy was a former bartender who’d won enough money from outdrinking everyone who wagered on it to have quit his job altogether. He claimed he’d never lost.

  That’s why we were there, to take up Leth’s challenge. But I saw immediately what such a degenerate life had done to the man: I could almost hear the liquid sloshing around inside him, and not just in his belly—in the whole, bloated trunk of his disgusting body.

  He turned dark eyes on me. I stepped back, involuntarily touching the cold glass of the aquarium. I thought of the frog and drew away. Leth extended his hand, a stubby thing with several fingers cramped arthritically inward. Frank was introducing us, so I swallowed and allowed my palm to slip quickly across the one extended to me. I didn’t quite catch his last name. It sounded Irish: O’Serus, or something like that. It didn’t matter. He was clearly a foreigner.

  “I’m glad you came, Victor,” he said. “Frank has impressed me with your capacity to stay sober.”

  I swallowed. Suddenly the whole thing seemed like a bad idea, an adolescent game. But I couldn’t back out—not with him looking at me like that, gloating, ready. I thought of my cut of the money we’d get if I stayed—and if I won.

  “Let’s begin,” I said.

  Leth gestured toward a doorway. I strode boldly into the next room, almost as dark and humid as the first save for two candles burning in the center of a splintering table, and two at each of three doorways.

  I took a seat. Frank sat to my left, eyebrows raised. His fleshy chin quivered below pale lips. Clearly, I was not the only one who wished we hadn’t come.

  Leth set a bottle of Jack Daniels—my request—and three glasses on the table. Then he slapped down a shabby deck of cards. Poker was not the point, we all knew that; we simply had to pass the time somehow.

  “Let’s get one thing straight,” piped up Frank. His voice was raspy, taut with nerves. “I’m betting on Victor here. Are we settled on the stakes?”

  “We’re settled,” the brown man replied.

  I glanced at Frank through narrowed eyes. I knew only what he had to gain—a great deal of money with which to shovel himself out of debt; Frank hadn’t told me what he—we—had to lose. He winked to reassure me. I shrugged and went along.

  Leth filled our glasses equally, then handed the bottle to Frank, who acted as referee. It didn’t seem fair to Leth, actually. Frank had something to gain by cheating. But the idea was that we’d all be sober enough to recognize cheating if it happened; so it didn’t much matter who poured.

  While Leth dealt cards, I studied him surreptitiously. He was an odd one, no doubt. To boost my own confidence, I envisioned him caught in a sticky web, bleating “Help me” in a pathetic voice. It didn’t work. The web would have to be enormous because he was at least six feet tall. I glanced to Leth’s misshapen hands—thick, stubby paws, with hardened skin. It reminded me of a snake I’d seen once, about to shed its lifeless shell. I grimaced.

  Leth caught my eye. He grinned. Too much liquor had rotted his teeth into a dark, cavernously empty mouth. I concentrated on my cards.

  The game went on as we continued to drink. Frank watched me closely. He seemed nervous. I thought of his wife and two-year-old son, hoped he hadn’t gambled with their security the way I had once with my own family, losing them with the house. Long since, I had substituted a debilitating drinking habit for a promising career in science, but the work was a negligible loss compared to never seeing my wife and two children again.

  Scratching the back of my neck, my hand came away—shockingly—with a live roach! I flung it to the stone floor, froze.

  “I’m not much of a housekeeper,” Leth said. “I suppose I like having the critters around.” He took another drink. I swallowed, mentally nodded. The guy liked bugs? It made sense. People who look like bulldogs bought bulldogs.

  Frank filled my glass. I held the gaze of the brown man opposite me, tried in vain to read his thoughts. If there was anything swimming around behind those liquid eyes, it was neatly hidden from my perception.

  “You okay?” Frank asked. Beads of sweat had popped out on his brow. I frowned, lit up a cigarette, casually replaced the pack in my shirt pocket.

  “I’m fine,” I replied “Got a long way to go.”

  But I didn’t; not really. One had to stay in control to win such games, and I was getting rapidly digested in the stomach of apprehension. The third empty bottle quivered before me. Empty. I caught the hard, smirking eyes of my host.

  Also empty.

  Swollen air pressed my clammy shirt to my back. I took a deep breath, licked the sting of whiskey off my mustache. Frank poured another round. It struck me he was somehow acting out a part. The room seemed to
brighten. I wanted to puke.

  I’d experienced a similar sense of unanchored floating when my wife had announced her intention to divorce me, to leave me with my debts, my isolation, my habits. I’d gasped then for air too thin to sustain consciousness, swaying with the surreal force of her verbal blow: ““You won’t see me again.”

  Frank nudged me. My eyes had closed. I snapped to attention, a wayward schoolboy. The “teacher” across the table eyed me with a Mona Lisa grin.

  “Shit, Victor,” Frank exclaimed “you done better than this before! What’s with you?”

  He was right. Something was seriously wrong. I filled my lungs, clenched my teeth for control.

  Abruptly, I simply didn’t care enough. I didn’t need money that badly. I wanted out, no matter what it cost. It was Frank’s fault if he’d gambled everything away. I pushed back from the table. “That’s it.” My tongue was thick, my brain battered seasick by booze. “I concede.”

  Frank jumped up. His chair crashed to the floor.

  “Concede?” he screamed. “You can’t! I bet on you!”

  I shrugged. “Sorry. Y’win some, ya lose some.” I needed a place to vomit.

  Frank grabbed me by my jacket lapels. “You don’t get it, Vic!” he shrieked his control gone. “You lose this one, there won’t be no chance to win anything else! Ever!”

  I jerked away, urgently ill.

  Leth leaned forward his smallish head on crusty hands. His face was expressionless. Yet I had the distinct impression he was savoring his easy victory. I wasn’t sober enough to be sure, but he seemed not the least bit affected by his own fast intake of alcohol.

  Out of one eye, I saw Frank run to the door. Leth made no move to stop him.

  The door was bolted.

  “Let me out!” screamed Frank. He pounded on the solid wood, hysterical. I began to understand that Frank’s fear implied more than financial collapse. He was trapped—we were trapped.

  Frank groped his way along the darkened wall to another door and I stood up. “Frank, get hold of yourself!” I called shakily.

  He pushed open the door. Flinging a desperate look toward me, he grabbed a candle and ran.

  And turning to Leth, woozily, I got it through my head that I was alone with him!

  Nausea braided into panic. I dared not look at Leth’s face, sensing his expression would somehow be terrifying. Mumbling about assisting Frank, I staggered to the door through which he’d disappeared. I called out, heard nothing, men felt along a descending corridor so slick with moisture I surmised we’d meandered into an underwater tunnel. Outside, I hadn’t noticed water, but it had been dark. Muggy, bubbling queasiness fused my senses.

  Hearing a noise, I turned. The light from the room I’d just left was extinguished by the closing door. I gasped aloud. Had our repulsive host locked us in? Why? Did he intend to keep us there until we paid our debt, whatever it was?

  I thought of the roach. Leth liked bugs. What would I encounter farther into his damned tunnel? Movie images of screaming people covered with ants, being devoured bite by little bite, crawled into my thoughts.

  And then I realized a more horrifying possibility.

  Perhaps Leth d locked himself in with us!

  I forced myself to stay calm. What could he do, anyway? I’d aged, yes, my belly was bloated—but I was fit enough to take on Leth, even with the disadvantage of inky darkness.

  So I waited, listened, heard no sound not even my friend somewhere ahead of me. Slowly, cautiously, I pressed numbed fingertips along the roughened stone wall, moving farther from the room where I’d drunk myself into the first stages of a perceptual haze. Toward what I moved I had no idea.

  A sound. I stopped listened with acute awareness. Something dragging, scraping, clawing. Did Leth have a Weapon? Did he want to kill us?

  I took a few more steps, found a doorknob, let myself noiselessly into an equally lightless room. I shut the door, moved to the side. If anyone opened it, then I’d have the advantage.

  Nothing happened.

  Something rotten stank nearby. Whatever it was, I hoped to God it wasn’t alive. I remembered slipping a book of matches into my cigarette cellophane, safe and dry in my shirt pocket. Seconds later, holding the lit match high, I scanned the small room.

  It was a cell of some kind, without furnishings, but it had the ubiquitous porthole window. A pile of rancid clothing lay in one corner, heaped against the wall. I went closer, but the match burned out.

  A sound, outside the door, startled me. I waited. Then I lit another match. I moved closer to examine the lumpy, smelly material. I poked around gingerly. Several black shapes skittered out of the folds. It was not someone’s discarded suit. Grayish in color, it looked more like a stiffened vinyl garment bag.

  I don’t think I understood that it had been human until I saw an eyeball dangling from a stiff, dark hole. It took me a moment to figure out, like a perceptual illusion coming into focus, that I was kneeling next to a sack of skin . . .

  With a howl, I jumped back, burned my finger on the match, slammed myself against the wall. Breathing hard, I tried to steady my swimming senses. The gorge boiled into my throat. I had to get out, get away from that reeking thing. My God, what had happened here? Who was this Leth O’Serus?

  I stopped, straightened. I knew at that moment where I’d heard the name. Yet it was no wonder I hadn’t made the connection earlier. It had been part of . . . all that!

  A piercing scream ripped into my slowly understanding brain. Frank!

  I flew to the door, jerked it open. Frank’s candle, thrown aside, illumined an expected but incomprehensibly freakish sight.

  Frank struggled with our host, shrieking, his eyes turned to me, pleading. But there was nothing I could do, just as there’d been no way to assist the wretched frog back in the tank. I watched in stunned helplessness—unable even to run—as Leth held Frank in a vampire-like grip, his beetle mouth pressed to Frank’s chest—injecting him, I knew, with paralyzing serum. Preparing Frank for a grisly evening meal!

  Leth O’Serus; lethocerus. Lethocerus americanus.

  I’d never thought of it before, never wondered how really huge they might get. Giant water bugs. I leaned against the frame of the door, laughing weakly at the ironic misnomer. Giant! They’d all been tiny in those oceanography tanks—mere specks compared to the one now munching on the shriveled neck of my friend.

  Exactly like the frog, Frank went limp as his bones dissolved into edible mush. He lost the definition of his shoulders at once, then his rib cage; his face melted into an amorphous sack of loosened teeth and unsupported eyeballs. I watched for only a moment more as Frank’s shoes fell from his dangling, flattened feet and the pants began to slide from his emaciated waist. Then I turned to flee back into my tiny cubicle.

  There seemed only one means of escape: the window. I lifted the latch, pulled. But it wouldn’t budge. I had no idea how long it would take that monstrous thing out there to devour Frank, but I thought I had precious little time. No doubt Leth’s hunger was as voracious as his thirst. I tried again, wildly.

  Water crashed into the room, slapping my face with a force that made me stagger. In moments, I’d lost the support of the floor and I was floating. Somehow I kept my wits enough to hold up my head and tread the water that was quickly filling the room. Something knocked against me. I pushed it away, realized it was the bag of human skin, almost vomited, reflexively. I dived under and kicked my way to the window. It had looked—if I hadn’t drunkenly miscalculated—just large enough to pull myself through. I knew I might drown but I had to try.

  I found a wall, pushed along it, banged my head, almost breathed in; mentally gasping, I pushed again. My fingers dipped into an unevenness, a depression! The water had balanced itself. I forced my shoulders through the small hole, squeezed up to my cursed beer belly.

  But too many years of drinking had taken their toll. I was stuck.

  I strained, desperately needing air, tightly maintaining
control, thought of the supping water bug, perhaps finishing up—and still hungry. I gripped the outside wall and strained harder. Something tugged at my shoe. I kicked out, felt the sharp puncture of my toe. That was enough to send me through!

  I awoke in daylight, half-submerged in a watery ditch. Sitting up was too quick for my expanding head and I turned lost it. Vomited. Groaning, I tried to recall just how I had gotten there. I felt my swollen nose and it all came back.

  Leth. Frank. The drinking party. I was sick again.

  Somewhat composed, then, I sat up and glanced around. There was no sign of a lake, pond or river, as I’d expected—nothing from which I might have emerged when I swam to freedom. Had I imagined the whole thing? For a long time I sat in muck, rocking myself against all the numbing possibilities, nauseous and uncertain, sliding between visions of Frank’s shrinking, beseeching face and my own disgraceful alcoholic history.

  My foot hurt. I’d lost a shoe. And I’d been bitten.

  It could have been a snake, or a snapping turtle in the ditch. I might have banged my nose in another drunken tumble. There were simple explanations, if I wanted them. Perhaps the ditch water had nurtured a harrowing hallucination neurotically formed by deeply suppressed guilt over my lost career.

  With some difficulty I got to my feet. The countryside looked perfectly normal. Stepping away from the muck, I heard ker-plunk. A frog, startled in its morning hunt. We peered fleetingly at one another, both hesitant, both wanting to go our own way and forget the other.

  The frog. Frank. It all seemed too vivid for some pie-eyed delusion. I walked around all that day searching in vain for the dreadful house, Frank’s remains, anything that might provide assurance that my mind hadn’t simply snapped under the weight of boomeranging self-laceration.