Darker Masques

by J N Williamson

  Then smiled.

  It was an irony Krystal knew wouldn’t have escaped him.

  She wiped her finger on her pants, then bent over the console to punch up the right frequency. She leaned into the microphone.

  “Central Control,” she said. “Colonization may begin.”

  Joseph A. Citro

  THEM BALD-HEADED SNAYS

  ON the phone, Joe Citro doesn’t remind you of the characters dropping by Bob Newhart’s inn. But he’s a Vermont native nevertheless and does—in this, his first published short fiction—exhibit some of the flavor of Larry, Darryl, and Darryl. The woods, you know. Critter-company.

  Author of the novels Shadow Child and Guardian Angel, and two more sold to Warner’s, Citro is moving fast now (Up East-wise) with film options, a Horror Writers of America post, and projects too premature for discussion. He’s a long way from the “wispy family with sparse, cornsilk hair” that Joe says was the inspiration for his initial story; “dumb and poor and always picked on.” Thcre’re those woods in the back of his mind, you see—and soon to be in the back of yours, after you’ve met the extraordinary “Snays.” (Can critter du jour be far behind?)

  THEM BALD-HEADED SNAYS

  Joseph A. Citro

  AFTER THE CANCER, MOM AND DAD TOOK took me way out in the Vermont countryside to live with my grandparents.

  “I’ll come back for you, Daren,” he said. His eyes looked all glassy and sad. I bit my top and bottom lips together so I wouldn’t cry when he started home without me. Sure, he’d come back, but he didn’t say when.

  Before that day I’d never seen too much of my grandparents. They’d come to visit us in Providence once, right after Mom got sick. But that was years ago, when I was just a kid. I remember how Dad and Grampa would have long, quiet talks that ended suddenly if Mom or me came into the room.

  After that they never came to visit again. I don’t think Mom liked them, though she never said why. “Their ways are different from ours,” that’s all she’d say.

  And they sure weren’t the way I remembered mem! Grampa turned out to be sort of strange and a little scary. He was given to long, silent stretches in his creaky rocking chair. He’d stare out the window for hours, or read from big, dark-covered books. Sometimes he’d look through the collection of catalogs that seemed to arrive with every mail delivery. My job was to run to the bottom of the hill and pick up the mail from the mailbox. There were always the catalogs, and big brown envelopes with odd designs on them. There were bills, too, and Grampa’s once-a-week newspaper. But there was never a letter from Dad.

  “Can we call Dad?” I asked. Grampa just snorted as if to say, You know we ain’t got a phone. Then he turned away and went back to his reading. Sometimes he’d stand, take a deep breath, and stretch, reaching way up toward the ceiling. Then he’d walk—maybe to the kitchen—bent over a little, rubbing the lower part of his back.

  Grampa didn’t talk to me much, but Gram was the quiet one. She’d move from room to room like a draft. Sometimes I’d think I was all alone, then I’d look over my shoulder and Gram was sitting there, watching me. At first I’d smile at her, but soon I stopped; I’d learned not to expect a smile in return, only a look of concern.

  Sometimes she’d bring me a big glass of greenish-brown tea that tasted of honey and smelled like medicine.

  “How you feeling today, Daren?” she’d ask.

  “Good,” I’d say.

  “You drink up, now.” She’d nod, pushing the glass toward me. “You’ll feel even better.”

  When I’d take the glass away from my mouth she’d be gone.

  Every other Friday, Grampa went into town to get groceries. After I’d been there about a month, he took me along with him. And that was another odd thing about him: he had a horse and buggy when everybody else had cars. I felt embarrassed riding through the downtown traffic beside an old man in a horse-drawn wagon.

  Grampa said his back was acting up real bad, so he made me carry all the bags to the wagon. Then he told me to stay put while he made a second stop at the liquor store.

  I didn’t, though. I took a dime from my pocket and tried to make a collect call to my father. The operator said our number was no longer in service.

  Grampa came back with his bottle before I’d made it back to the wagon. He yelled at me, told me he’d tan me brown if I ever disobeyed him again.

  I’d lived in Stockton, Vermont, about two months before I saw Bobby Snay.

  I was playing in the barn, upstairs in the hayloft, looking out the loading door toward the woods. I saw him come out from among the trees. He swayed when he walked, moving with difficulty, as if a heavy wind were trying to batter him back to where he’d come from.

  He continued across the meadow, weaving through the tall grass and wildflowers until he came to the road that ends in Grampa’s dooryard. When he got closer I saw how funny he looked. His skin was the color of marshmallows, his eyes so pale it was impossible to say if they were blue or brown.

  And it looked like his hair was falling out. Maybe it wasn’t really, but it wasn’t very plentiful. It looked limp and sparse and stuck out here and there in little patches, making his head look like it was covered with hairy bugs.

  Back home he would have been the type of nerdy kid we’d picked on in school. But here, well, he was the only other kid I’d seen for a long time.

  “Hey!” I called, “hey! Wait up!”

  I dodged back into the barn and jumped down into the pile of hay below. I sneezed once, then made for the door, ran after him. But I didn’t need to; he was in the barn waiting for me.

  All of a sudden I wasn’t so eager to say hi. In fact, I was kind of scared of him. He was taller than I, but he was spindly, weak-looking. I wasn’t afraid he was going to beat me up or anything. It was something else. Maybe it was the way he had crossed the dooryard and entered the barn in less time than it took me to jump out of the loft. Maybe it was the way he stared at me as if there was no brain behind his washed-out eyes.

  Or maybe it was the smell.

  I didn’t realize it at the time, but now I think that strange odor was coming from him.

  It was like the odor of earth, the strange scent of things that were once alive—like rotting squirrels and leaves mixed with the smell of things that would never live. Like water and stones.

  “I . . . I’m Daren Oakly.”

  “Bobby,” he said. “Bobby Snay.” His voice was windy-sounding, like air through a straw.

  “Where you going?” I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  “Walkin’, jes’ walkin’. Wanna come?”

  “Ah,.. No. Grampa says I gotta stay here.”

  “You don’t gotta. Nobody gotta. Nobody stays here.”

  It was warm in the barn. The smell seemed to get stronger.

  “Where d’ya live?”

  He pointed with his thumb, toward the woods.

  “You live in the woods?”

  “Yup. Sometimes.”

  “How old are you?”

  He blinked. I hadn’t noticed till then, but it was the first time he’d blinked since we stood face to face.

  “I gotta go now,” he said. “But I’ll come again. I always come ‘round when ya need me.”

  I watched him walk away, lurching, leaning, zigzagging through the field. He had no more than stepped back into the woods when I heard Grampa’s wagon coming up the hill.

  “You ain’t to do it again!” Grampa raged. “I won’t have it. I won’t have you keepin’ time with them bald-headed Snays! Not now, not till I tell ya. You don’t know nothin’ about ‘em, so you stay clear of ‘em, hear me?”

  “But—”

  “You see them around here again, you run an’ tell me. That’s the long an’ short of it.”

  “But Grampa—!”

  It was the fastest I’d ever seen him move. His hand went up like a hammer and came down like a lightning bolt, striking my cheek.

  “An’ that’s so you d
on’t forget.”

  Anger flared in me; adrenaline surged, uselessly. Then fear settled over everything. I couldn’t look at Grampa. My nose felt warm. Red drops splatted on the wooden floor like wax from a candle. I bit my lips and fought away the tears.

  Later, I heard him telling Gram, “They’re back. The boy seen one of ‘em just today.” Grampa sounded excited—almost happy.

  I woke up to the sound of shouting. Outside my bedroom window, near the corner of me barn, two persons were fighting. One of them, the one doing the hollering, was Grampa.

  “I don’t care who you come for, I’m the one’s got you now!”

  Grampa pushed the other away, butted him with his shoulder against the open barn door. The door flapped back, struck me side of me building like a thunderclap.

  I could see the other person now. It was Bobby Snay.

  Grampa hit him in the stomach. Bobby doubled up. Puke shot out of his nose and mouth.

  Grampa lifted a boot and Bobby’s head jerked back so hard I thought his neck would snap. He tumbled sideways, slid down the barn door and curled up on the ground.

  Grampa stomped hard on his head once, twice. Every time his boot came down he’d yell, “YEH!”

  There was a big rock near the barn. Grampa kept it there to hold the door open. It was about the size of a basketball, yet Grampa picked it up like it were weightless.

  I was surprised how easily Grampa lifted that rock all the way to his shoulders. Then he did something crazy: he let it drop. Bobby lay still after it had smashed against his head.

  Grampa turned and walked toward the house. He was smiling.

  All the rest of the day I tried to pretend I hadn’t seen anything. I knew I couldn’t tell Grandma, so I actually tried to forget how weird Grampa was acting. But I couldn’t forget; I was too scared of him.

  It was then I decided that staying clear of him wouldn’t be enough. I’d have to sneak off, run away. Then I’d find my father and things would be pretty much the way they used to be.

  Gramma watched me force down a bowl of pea soup at the silent dinner table. Then I got up and started toward the back door. My plan was to run through the woods to the main road, then hitch a ride.

  When I opened the door, Grampa was in the yard. He stood tall and straight, hands on hips. That arthritic droop to his shoulders was gone now. His face, though wrinkled as ever, seemed to glow with fresh, pulsing blood. He was still smiling.

  I knew he could tell by the terror on my face that I’d seen everything. “Get dressed” he said “you got some work to do.”

  I thought he was going to make my bury Bobby Snay’s body. Instead, he made me go down to the cellar to stack firewood he handed to me through a window. We did mat all afternoon. After about an hour my back was hurting something awful, but Grampa never slowed up. Now and then he’d stand straight and stretch his arms wide. He’d smile; sometimes he’d laugh.

  I didn’t dare say anything to him.

  I could hardly eat supper. I was tired and achy and I wanted to take a nap. Grampa wasn’t tired at all. He ate lots of beans and biscuits, even carried on a conversation with Gramma. “I feel ten years younger,” he said.

  The next day Grampa went into town again. I asked him if I could go too. I wanted to get at least that far in the wagon, then . . . well, I wasn’t sure. I’d go to the police, or run away, or something.

  He said “No. I’m goin’ alone. I want you here.”

  I was sitting on the fence by the side of the barn, trying to decide what to do, when Bobby Snay stepped out of the woods.

  I couldn’t believe it.

  As he got closer, I saw what was really strange: he wasn’t bruised or cut or anything. I mean, I was sure Grampa had killed him, but here he was, without any trace of that awful beating.

  He walked closer, weaving this way and that, as if one of his legs was shorter than the other. When he was near enough to hear me, I forced myself to ask, “Are you okay?”

  He stopped walking. His eyes were pointed in my direction but I didn’t feel that he saw me. “Yeah,” he said “yeah, sure, ‘course I am.”

  Then he lurched to the right as if someone had shoved him, and he continued on his way.

  I watched him go, not believing, not knowing.

  Should I tell Grampa Bobby was okay? Should I talk to the law? Keep quiet? Or what? I had to decide; I had to do something.

  Friday at supper Gramma had a heart attack.

  She was spooning stew onto Grampa’s plate when she dropped the pot. Grampa’s hand went up like he was going to smack her. Then he saw what was happening.

  She put both her hands on the tabletop, trying to steady herself. Her knuckles were white. Sweat popped out all over her face. “I . . . I . . . I . . .” she said, as if her tongue was stuck on that one word.

  Then her knees folded and she dropped to the floor.

  Grampa said, “Jesus, oh Jesus . . . oh God.”

  But instead of bending over and helping Gramma, he did something awfully weird: he grabbed his shotgun and ran out the door.

  Left alone with Gramma, I didn’t know what to do. I knelt over her and tried to ask how I could help. I was crying so hard I was afraid she couldn’t understand what I was saying.

  Now her skin turned completely white; her lips looked blue. Her whole face was shiny with sweat. She whispered something: “Go get me a Snay, boy. Go quick.”

  I didn’t argue. I ran toward the door.

  Maybe Mr. Snay was a doctor, a preacher, or something, I didn’t know. Whatever he was, Gramma seemed to need him. Somehow, I guessed, he’d be able to help her.

  Quickly finding the path Bobby Snay had taken earlier, I entered the woods. Almost at once I heard noises. Grunting sounds Soft thupps. Cracks and groans.

  It was Grampa and one of the Snays—not Bobby this time, but surely one of his relatives. It was a girl. She had the same tall, frail body, the same mushroom-white complexion, the same patchy growths of hair.

  Grampa was smashing her with a piece of pipe that looked like a tire iron. The Snay didn’t fight back, didn’t scream, she just stood there taking the blows. I saw Grampa jab at her with the flattened end of the metal rod. It went right through her eye, sinking halfway into her skull. She fell backwards, sat on the ground. Grampa jerked the rod up and down just like he was pumping the blood that spurted from her eye socket.

  I couldn’t look and I couldn’t run away. “Grampa,” I shouted “stop it! You gotta help Gramma!”

  Grampa finished what he was doing and looked up. His eyes were bright, fiery-looking. Then he took a step toward me, squeezing the bloody pipe in his slimy red hand.

  He looked wild.

  I backed away from him, thinking, He’s going to brain me with that thing.

  Then my heel hit something.

  The shotgun!

  I picked it up from where Grampa must have dropped it. I guessed he wanted to do his job by hand. I guessed he enjoyed it.

  I pointed the gun at him.

  “Put that down, boy!” His voice was as gruff as I’d ever heard it. When he stepped toward me I stepped backward, almost stumbled. I had the gun but that didn’t keep me from being afraid.

  “Put it down.” He waved the tire iron, gesturing for me to drop the shotgun. Tears blurred my vision; the gun shook in my hands.

  “Listen to me, boy . . .” His hand was reaching out.

  I looked around. The Snay wasn’t moving. There was no one to help me.

  Grampa took another step.

  “I’m tellin ‘you, boy—”

  Closer.

  I cried out and pulled the trigger.

  If I hadn’t been shaking so much, I might have killed him straight off. As it was, his shirt tore away and red, slimy skin exploded from his left side.

  We both fell at the same time, me from the recoil, Grampa from the shot.

  I stared at him. A white, red-glazed hipbone showed through his mangled trousers. Broken ribs bit through the shred
ded flesh.

  “Daren,” he said. This time his voice was weak.

  I couldn’t move. I couldn’t go to him. I couldn’t run away.

  “Daren, you don’t understand nothin’.”

  I could barely hear him. “The Snays,” he said, “you gotta give ‘em your pain. You gotta give ‘em your troubles. You can’t hurt ‘em. You can’t kill ‘em. They jest keep comin’ back . . .”

  I found myself on my feet again, moving closer to Grampa dragging the shotgun by the barrel.

  Suddenly, I was standing above him.

  “You shot me, boy—but you can make it right. You gotta do one of ‘em. You gotta do jes’ like you’re killin’ one of ‘em. Then I’ll be all right. You gotta kill one of ‘em, for me.”

  “But what about Gramma?”

  “Please, boy . . .” His voice was weak. I could barely hear him. He lifted his finger toward the Snay with the ruined eye. “See that? I got to her in time. Your gramma’s all right.”

  I needed proof, wanted to run back to the house to see for myself, but there was no time. And Grampa was dying.

  The mangled Snay was moving now. She was using the tree trunk to work her way back up to her feet.

  “See there, boy,” Grampa wheezed. “Get her, boy, shoot her. Hit her with the gun!”

  I lifted the shotgun, braced my shoulder for another recoil.

  “Hurry, Daren, ‘fore she gets away.”

  My finger touched the trigger. I was shaking so much the metal seemed to vibrate against my fingertip.

  “Please, boy . . .” Grampa was propped up on his elbow. He watched the Snay lurch, stumble toward the shadowy trees—

  “Now,boy, Now!”

  —and disappear.

  Grampa collapsed on the ground. He was flat on his back, head resting on an exposed root. Now his eyes were all cloudy-looking. They rolled around in different directions.

  I was still posed with the gun against my shoulder. When he tried to speak again, I just let it fall.

  I had to kneel down, put my ear right up next to his mouth, to hear what the old man was saying.