Darker Masques

by J N Williamson

  That time when he was six or seven and he wanted to see that movie and we wouldn’t let him and he said he was going to jump out of a tree if we didn’t let him go. We wouldn’t, and we found him not long afterward with a broken leg at the foot of the elm in the backyard. He hadn’t made a sound. No screaming or crying, lying there I don’t know how long with a broken leg. Just lay there until we found him. All he said then was “I demand to be allowed to go to all the movies I want to go to.” Demand. Allowed. That was the way he talked, even then. As if he was reading the words out of a book.

  So from then on we let him go to the movies he wanted to. Wouldn’t you? No?

  That started it, anyway. We were afraid although Irene for a long time didn’t entirely come to stop believing that he simply had fallen out of the tree. She asked him more than once about it, at first: “Now, Billy, you must have fallen out of that tree.” He’d simply say, “I jumped. I deliberately jumped.” I believed him. After all, hadn’t he been building up to it with his other threats from the time he’d learned to talk? The time he said he was going to burn himself with the birthday candles if he didn’t get a bicycle for his birthday. Not a small boy’s bike; a big one, one he couldn’t possibly ride. Of course, he didn’t get it—and he deliberately waited until it was time to blow out the candles, and we were all watching, to stick his hand over the flames and hold it there until Irene jerked it away. I felt sorry for the kids at his party. Of course, that was before we stopped inviting his friends to the house. He didn’t mind. It wasn’t long after that that he didn’t have any friends, not at school or anywhere. He didn’t care.

  Even Irene had to admit that he had deliberately burned himself, since it happened right in front of her eyes that way. I think he did it in front of her to make her understand that it couldn’t possibly have been an accident—especially when, about a year earlier, he’d fallen down the cellar steps after we wouldn’t let him go ice-skating one day. (He had a bad cold.) Even I thought it had been an accident. He was furious with us for thinking he had simply fallen. “I told you I was going to do it!” he kept yelling. When he jumped out of the tree, I guess he just got tired of waiting for us to come out and watch him. He claimed he had yelled for us to “come see.” We didn’t hear him.

  He got his bike, and when he eventually asked for another one, an expensive racer type, we gave it to him, even though he couldn’t possibly ride it. He told us he would drown himself if he didn’t get it. What would you have done? Irene was very frightened. She kept saying that he “might accidentally drown himself.” I argued against it because I could see what was going to happen to us for the rest of our lives if we didn’t take a strong stand, although I admit I never thought it would come to this. I told her there wasn’t any body of water large enough for him to drown himself in for miles around. How could he get to it? (He was only seven or eight.) Then she mentioned our bathtub . . .

  When I heard him running the water for his bath that night, on his own, I gave in. Especially considering that we’d always had to drag him to the tub.

  From then on we gave in to all his demands that were halfway reasonable. When we balked on some of the more outlandish ones, he threatened to do himself bodily harm. Always bodily harm. I began to dread hearing him open his mouth for fear of another demand. He got everything he wanted.

  Three or four years went by like this. Why didn’t we take him to a doctor, a psychiatrist? We tried to. We told him he was going to the “doctor for a checkup.” He thought he was going for a physical examination—until, unfortunately, he saw the word “psychiatrist” at the entrance to the doctor’s office as we walked up to it. He darted from us, pulled a penknife out of his pocket, and told us he would stick it in his stomach if we didn’t promise never to try to make him see a psychiatrist again. Or any kind of a doctor. Or—he was a smart one—if we ourselves ever tried to see a doctor about him.

  The worst thing, for then, was when a year or so later he told us he was going to jump in front of a car if we didn’t buy him one—a VW. “A car!” I yelled at him. “You’re only twelve years old!”

  “I demand a car. Do you think I’m only a child because I’m twelve?”

  We argued about it until he made me so mad that I told him he could jump in front of cars for the rest of his life before I’d ever buy a twelve-year-old kid an automobile.

  I had no sooner said that than he ran out of the house. I went to the door, but I didn’t realize he was running toward the highway until he was too far away to hear me. I screamed then that he could have a car and began to run after him. From a distance, still screaming, I saw him reach the highway, wait a moment, then jump right in front of an oncoming sports car.

  I had the VW waiting for him when he got out of the hospital—a new one. That’s what he’d demanded.

  I’d hoped that he’d be content just to own the car, to sit in it, to pretend he was driving it. But as soon as he was recovered enough, he demanded that Irene or I drive him wherever he wanted to go whenever he wanted to. We did. Wouldn’t you? I was particularly anxious not to displease him. Irene had told me that if I ever did anything again that might cause him to do something on the order of jumping in front of a car, she would leave me. I also felt guilty about causing his injuries, if you can believe it.

  He soon tired of being driven, though, and demanded that we buy him some property, a field large enough for him to drive the car in himself. He wasn’t old enough to drive legally on public streets, of course, and the fact that he insisted on not breaking the law amused me in an ironic way—until I came to the conclusion that he was not really interested in not breaking the law, or even in driving. His interest lay in making another, a larger, demand on us. He well knew that I couldn’t afford to buy a field. But I did it.

  He’d had the VW less than a year when he told us that he’d cut his finger off if we didn’t buy him a Porsche. I borrowed on the house for it.

  I thought he was tiring of the game when he didn’t make a major demand—there were many minor ones—for more than a year. Then out of the blue he said that unless we swore to give him anything he wanted for the rest of his life—anything—he would kill himself.

  We agreed—what else was there to do?—and he said the first thing he wanted was for us to kill somebody for him.

  He said this at dinner. Sitting at the head of the table, saying it very calmly, as if he were asking for the mashed potatoes (which he liked very much and which we therefore had every day), very composed, his face calm. He’s a skinny, pimply kid, hardly someone who looks forceful. Yet right then he spoke with the assurance of a President of the United States—a mad president. And very seriously, just as he always was, incidentally, in asking for the potatoes.

  In the morning, I thought, I’d go to the authorities and commit him to a mental institution. He was still a minor.

  “Kill somebody for you?” I was afraid to look at Irene.

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I demand it.”

  “Well, then, who?”

  “Anybody. It makes no difference. I demand that you kill for me.”

  “When?” I had to have until morning.

  “Within twenty-four hours. If you don’t, I’ll kill myself.”

  There was no doubt in my mind that he would carry out his threat. And there was also no doubt in my mind that if we killed once for him, he would demand that we kill again—and again. How far could he go? To, indeed, the President of the United States?

  With that, he rose and we were dismissed.

  That night in our bedroom I told Irene about my plan to go to the authorities in the morning. In fact, I told her a number of times; she seemed so numb, so uncomprehending, so withdrawn, that I didn’t seem to be getting through to her. She never answered me. She made no reply—except for a low moaning sound. As I tried to go to sleep I kept hearing her moan. She wouldn’t let me hold her. And she wouldn’t take a sleeping pill.
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br />   Toward dawn I awoke to find her gone from the bed. There was a light coming from our bathroom, and when I went in, there she was lying on the floor, dead, an empty bottle of sleeping pills beside her. The bottle had been nearly full.

  Beside the bottle was a note: “Tell him you did it, that it was your idea. He will think I’m the ‘somebody’ and he will stop. He will be satisfied. It will shock him into sanity.” And then a P.S.: “Hide the pills. Say you suffocated me with a pillow. Put me in bed.”

  Wild grief first. Then a fury. Calling the police simply wasn’t enough.

  I went into our bedroom and got my gun. Then, into his bedroom.

  The gun, aimed at his head. What could be more fitting than that he be the ‘somebody,’ that within the time specified his last demand be fulfilled?—by me, as always.

  Now that the police and everybody else have gone, I suppose I ought to tidy up a bit. If nothing else, clean up the blood. That’s what Irene would do, God bless her soul. (Oh, God, how will I ever get along without her?) At least I got her into bed before the police saw her—she wouldn’t have liked to be seen on the floor—although I didn’t do anything else for the rest of the day except wait for dinnertime. I wasn’t up to it. I thought a lot, though—about not killing “somebody” for him, putting it into the right words. And once more I thought about all of his threats, especially the last one, and how he’d followed through on every one of them. Had I made the right decision? Including telling him the truth about Irene, that she had committed suicide?

  I had. He’d done exactly what I knew he was going to do. As soon as the twenty-four hours were up, at dinnertime, and I’d said, I-don’t-know-how-many times, that I hadn’t killed “somebody” and that I wasn’t about to, he’d taken the gun I’d offered him—the same one I was going to shoot him with until I came to my senses, and thinking of his final threat, changed my mind just before I pulled the trigger—and he’d blown his own brains out.

  Dan Simmons

  SHAVE AND A HAIRCUT,

  TWO BITES

  I found Song of Kali in an airport just a few hours after watching Colorado author Dan Simmons win the 1985 World Fantasy Award for that novel. That wasn’t, however, the first time I’d heard of it. Phoning to cite some of the fine novels of horror, fantasy, and science fiction for a book I was editing, Harlan Ellison had insisted that Kali was “probably the finest novel in the last decade.” Then Dean Koontz urged me to read it. Enjoying periodic rational moments, I did. At last.

  And in galleys for my “how to” book I replaced on my Top Ten list a wonderful novel by a respected chum of mine—with Song of Kali. I hadn’t been that totally absorbed by a book of fiction since the master-works of Bradbury, Matheson, Bloch, Koontz, Ira Levin, Paul Wilson’s The Keep, Steve King’s Pet Sematary, or Peter Straub’s Ghost Story. The first writer I wanted for Masques III was Dan Simmons; like Robert R. McCammon’s classic “Nightcrawlers” in the original Masques, this was the last story in. I was twice-blessed.

  Dan’s first yam won the Rod Serling Memorial Award for previously unpublished authors; it appeared in an issue of Twilight Zone that “came out on the day our first and only child was born,” he says, “so no one in the family noticed that I was published for some time.” After appearing in OMNI and Asimov’s, he had new tales in Night Visions 5 (Dark Harvest); he is now working on a story collection (Eyes I Dare Not Meet in Dreams), the SF novels Phases of Gravity and Hyperion for Bantam, and his massive novel Carrion Comfort—co-illustrated by Simmons—will be out when you read this.

  Brace yourself for a shocking treat.

  SHAVE AND A HAIRCUT

  TWO BITES

  Dan Simmons

  OUTSIDE, THE BLOOD SPIRALS DOWN.

  I pause at the entrance to the barbershop. There is nothing unique about it. Almost certainly there is one similar to it in your community; its function is proclaimed by the pole outside, the red spiraling down, and by the name painted on the broad window, the letters grown scabrous as the gold paint ages and flakes away. While the most expensive hair salons now bear the names of their owners, and the shopping-mall franchises offer sickening cutenesses—Hairport, Hair Today: Gone Tomorrow, Hair We Are, Headlines, Shear Masters, The Head Hunter, In-Hair-itance, and so forth, ad infinitum, ad nauseam—the name of this shop is eminently forgettable. It is meant to be so. This shop offers neither styling nor unisex cuts. If you hair is dirty when you enter, it will be cut dirty; there are no shampoos given here. While the franchises demand fifteen to thirty dollars for a basic haircut, the cost here has not changed for a decade or more. It occurs to the potential new customer immediately upon entering that no one could live on an income based upon such low rates. No one does. The potential customer usually beats a hasty retreat, put off by the too-low prices, by the darkness of the place, by the air of dusty decrepitude exuded from both the establishment itself and from its few waiting customers, invariably silent and staring, and by a strange sense of tension bordering upon threat which hangs in the stale air.

  Before entering, I pause a final moment to stare in the window of the barbershop. For a second I can see only a reflection of the street and the silhouette of a man more shadow than substance—me. To see inside, one has to step closer to the glass and perhaps cup hands to one’s temples to reduce the glare. The blinds are drawn but I find a crack in the slats. Even then there is not much to see. A dusty window ledge holds three desiccated cacti and an assortment of dead flies. Two barber chairs are just visible through the gloom; they are of a sort no longer made: black leather, white enamel, a high headrest. Along one wall, half a dozen uncomfortable-looking chairs sit empty and two low tables show a litter of magazines with covers torn or missing entirely. There are mirrors on two of the three interior walls, but rather than add light to the long, narrow room, the infinitely receding reflections seem to make the space appear as if the barbershop itself were a dark reflection in an age-dimmed glass.

  A man is standing there in the gloom, his form hardly more substantial than my silhouette on the window. He stands next to the first barber chair as if he were waiting for me.

  He is waiting for me.

  I leave the sunlight of the street and enter the shop.

  “Vampires,” said Kevin. “They’re both vampires.”

  “Who’re vampires?” I asked between bites on my apple.

  Kevin and I were twenty feet up in a tree in his backyard.

  We’d built a rough platform there that passed as a tree house. Kevin was ten, I was nine.

  “Mr. Innis and Mr. Denofrio,” said Kevin. “They’re both vampires.”

  I lowered the Superman comic I’d been reading. “They’re not vampires,” I said. “They’re barbers.”

  “Yeah,” said Kevin, “but they’re vampires too. I just figured it out.”

  I sighed and sat back against the bole of the tree. It was late autumn and the branches were almost empty of leaves. Another week or two and we wouldn’t be using the tree house again until next spring. Usually when Kevin announced that he’d just figured something out, it meant trouble. Kevin O’Toole was almost my age, but sometimes it seemed that he was five years older and five years younger than I at the same time. He read a lot. And he had a weird imagination. “Tell me,” I said.

  “You know what the red means, Tommy?”

  “What red?”

  “On the barber pole. The red stripes that curl down.”

  I shrugged. “It means it’s a barbershop.”

  It was Kevin’s turn to sigh. “Yeah, sure, Tommy, but why red? And why have it curling down like that for a barber?”

  I didn’t say anything. When Kevin was in one of his moods, it was better to wait him out.

  “Because it’s blood,” he said dramatically, almost whispering. “Blood spiraling down. Blood dripping and spilling. That’s been the sign for barbers for almost six hundred years.”

  He’d caught my interest. I set the Superman comic aside on the platform. “Okay,” I said
, “I believe you. Why is it their sign?”

  “Because it was their guild sign,” said Kevin. “Back in the Middle Ages, all the guys who did important work belonged to guilds, sort of like the union our dads belong to down at the brewery, and.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said. “But why blood?” Guys as smart as Kevin had a hard time sticking to the point. “I was getting to that,” said Kevin. “According to this stuff I read, way back in the Middle Ages, barbers used to be surgeons. About all they could do to help sick people was to bleed them, and . . .”

  “Bleed them?”

  “Yeah. They didn’t have any real medicines or anything, so if somebody got sick with a disease or broke a leg or something, all the surgeon . . . the barber . . . could do was bleed them. Sometimes they’d use the same razor they shaved people with. Sometimes they’d bring bottles of leeches and let them suck some blood out of the sick person.”

  “Gross.”

  “Yeah, but it sort of worked. Sometimes. I guess when you lose blood, your blood pressure goes down and that can lower a fever and stuff. But most of the time, the people they bled just died sooner. They probably needed a transfusion more than a bunch of leeches stuck on them.”

  I sat and thought about this for a moment. Kevin knew some really weird stuff. I used to think he was lying about a lot of it, but after I saw him correct the teachers in fourth and fifth grade a few times . . . and get away with it . . . I realized he wasn’t making things up. Kevin was weird, but he wasn’t a liar.

  A breeze rustled the few remaining leaves. It was a sad and brittle sound to a kid who loved summer. “All right,” I said. “But what’s all this got to do with vampires? You think ‘cause barbers used to stick leeches on people a couple of hundred years ago that Mr. Innis and Mr. Denofrio are vampires? Jeez, Kev that’s nuts.”