Darker Masques

by J N Williamson

  “The Middle Ages were more than five hundred years ago, Niles,” said Kevin, calling me by my last name in the voice that always made me want to punch him. “But the guild sign was just what got me thinking about it all. I mean, what other business has kept its guild sign?”

  I shrugged and tied a broken shoelace. “Blood on their sign doesn’t make them vampires.”

  When Kevin was excited, his green eyes seemed to get even greener than usual. They were really green now. He leaned forward. “Just think about it, Tommy,” he said. “When did vampires start to disappear?”

  “Disappear? You mean you think they were real? Gripes, Key, my mom says you’re the only gifted kid she’s ever met, but sometimes I think you’re just plain looney tunes.”

  Kevin ignored me. He had a long, thin face—made even thinner-looking by the crew cut he wore—and his skin was so pale that the freckles stood out like spots of gold. He had the same full lips that people said made his two sisters look pretty, but now those lips were quivering. “I read a lot about vampires,” he said. “A lot. Most of the serious stuff agrees that the vampire legends were fading in Europe by the seventeenth century. People still believed in them, but they weren’t so afraid of them anymore. A few hundred years earlier, suspected vampires were being tracked down and killed all the time. It’s like they’d gone underground or something.”

  “Or people got smarter,” I said.

  “No, think,” said Kevin and grabbed my arm. “Maybe the vampires were being wiped out. People knew they were there and how to fight them.”

  “Like a stake through the heart?”

  “Maybe. Anyway, they’ve got to hide, pretend they’re gone, and still get blood. What’d be the easiest way to do it?”

  I thought of a wise-acre comment, but one look at Kevin made me realize that he was dead serious about all this. And we were best friends. I shook my head.

  “Join the barbers’ guild!” Kevin’s voice was triumphant. “Instead of having to break into people’s houses at night and then risk others’ finding the body all drained of blood, they invite you in. They don’t even struggle while you open their veins with a knife or put the leeches on. Then they . . . or the family of the dead guy . . . pay you. No wonder they’re the only group to keep their guild sign. They’re vampires, Tommy!”

  I licked my lips, tasted blood and realized that I’d been chewing on my lower lip while Kevin talked. “All of them?” I said. “Every barber?”

  Kevin frowned and released my arm. “I’m not sure. Maybe not all.”

  “But you think Innis and Denofrio are?”

  Kevin’s eyes got greener again and he grinned. “There’s one way to find out.”

  I closed my eyes a second before asking the fatal question. “How, Kev?”

  “By watching them,” said Kevin. “Following them. Checking them out. Seeing if they’re vampires.”

  “And if they are?”

  Kevin shrugged. He was still grinning. “We’ll think of something.”

  I enter the familiar shop, my eyes adjusting quickly to the dim light. The air smells of talcum and rose oil and tonic. The floor is clean and instruments are laid out on white linen atop the counter. Light glints dully from the surface of scissors and shears and the pearl handles of more than one straight razor.

  I approach the man who stands silently by his chair. He wears a white shirt and tie under a white smock. “Good morning,” I say.

  “Good morning, Mr. Niles.” He pulls a striped cloth from its shelf, snaps it open with a practiced hand, and stands waiting like a toreador.

  I take my place in the chair. He sweeps the cloth around me and snaps it shut behind my neck in a single fluid motion. “A trim this morning, perhaps?”

  “I think not. Just a shave, please.”

  He nods and turns away to heat the towels and prepare the razor. Waiting, I look into the mirrored depths and see multitudes.

  Kevin and I had made our pact while sitting in our tree on Sunday. By Thursday we’d done quite a bit of snooping. Kev had followed Innis and I’d watched Denofrio.

  We met in Kevin’s room after school. You could hardly see his bed for all the heaps of books and comics and half-built Heath Kits and vacuum tubes and plastic models and scattered clothes. Kevin’s mother was still alive then, but she had been ill for years and rarely paid attention to little things like her son’s bedroom. Or her son.

  Kevin shoved aside some junk and we sat on his bed, comparing notes. Mine were scrawled on scraps of paper and the back of my paper-route collection form.

  “Okay,” said Kevin, “what’d you find out?”

  “They’re not vampires,” I said. “At least my guy isn’t.”

  Kevin frowned. “It’s too early to tell, Tommy.”

  “Nuts. You gave me this list of ways to tell a vampire, and Denofrio flunks all of them.”

  “Explain.”

  “Okay. Look at Number One on your stupid list. ‘Vampires are rarely seen in daylight.’ Heck, Denofrio and Innis are both in the shop all day. We both checked, right?”

  Kevin sat on his knees and rubbed his chin. “Yeah, but the barbershop is dark, Tommy. I told you that it’s only in the movies that the vampires burst into flame or something if the daylight hits them. According to the old books, they just don’t like it. They can get around in the daylight if they have to.”

  “Sure,” I said, “but these guys work all day just like our dads. They close up at five and walk home before it gets dark.”

  Kevin pawed through his own notes and interrupted. “They both live alone, Tommy that suggests something.”

  “Yeah. It suggests that neither one of them makes enough money to get married or have a family. My dad says that their barbershop hasn’t raised its prices in years.”

  “Exactly!” cried Kevin. “Then how come almost no one goes there?”

  “They give lousy haircuts,” I said. I looked back at my list, trying to decipher the smeared lines of penciled scrawl. “Okay, Number Five on your list. ‘Vampires will not cross running water.’ Denofrio lives across the river, Kev. I watched him cross it all three days I was following him.”

  Kevin was sitting up on his knees. Now he slumped slightly. “I told you that I wasn’t sure of that one. Stoker put it in Dracula, but I didn’t find it in too many other places.”

  I went on quickly. “Number Three—‘Vampires hate garlic’ I watched Mr. Denofrio eat dinner at Luigi’s Tuesday night, Kev. I could smell the garlic from twenty feet away when he came out.”

  “Three wasn’t an essential one.”

  “All right,” I said, moving in for the kill, “tell me this one wasn’t essential. Number Eight—‘All vampires hate and fear crosses and will avoid them at all cost.’” I paused dramatically. Kevin knew what was coming and slumped lower. “Kev, Mr. Denofrio goes to St. Mary’s. Your church, Kev. Every morning before he goes down to open up the shop.”

  “Yeah. Innis goes to First Prez on Sundays. My dad told me about Denofrio being in the parish. I never see him because he only goes to early Mass.”

  I tossed the notes on the bed. “How could a vampire go to your church? He not only doesn’t run away from a cross, he sits there and stares at about a hundred of them each day of the week for about an hour a day!”

  “Dad says he’s never seen him take Communion,” said Kevin, a hopeful note in his voice.

  I made a face. “Great. Next you’ll be telling me that anyone who’s not a priest has to be a vampire. Brilliant, Kev.”

  He sat up and crumpled his own notes into a ball. I’d already seen them at school. I knew that Innis didn’t follow Kevin’s Vampire Rules either. Kevin said, “The cross thing doesn’t prove . . . or disprove . . . anything, Tommy. I’ve been thinking about it. These things joined the barber’s guild to get some protective coloration. It makes sense that they’d try to blend into the religious community, too. Maybe they can train themselves to build up a tolerance to crosses, the way we take shot
s to build up a tolerance to things like smallpox and polio.”

  I didn’t sneer, but I was tempted. “Do they build up a tolerance to mirrors, too?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I know something about vampires too, Kev, and even though it wasn’t in your stupid list of rules, it’s a fact that vampires don’t like mirrors. They don’t throw a reflection.”

  “That’s not right,” said Kevin in that rushy, teacherish voice he used. “In the movies they don’t throw a reflection. The old books say that they avoided mirrors because they saw their true reflection there . . . what they looked like being old or undead or whatever.”

  “Yeah, whatever,” I said. “But whatever spooks them, there isn’t any place worse for mirrors than a barbershop. Unless they hang out in one of those carnival fun-house mirror places. Do they have guild signs, too, Kev?”

  Kevin threw himself backward on the bed as if I’d shot him. A second later he was pawing through his notes and back up on his knees. “There was one weird thing,” he said.

  “Yeah, what?”

  “They were closed Monday.”

  “Real weird. Of course, every darn barbershop in the entire universe is closed on Mondays, but I guess you’re right. They’re closed on Mondays. They’ve got to be vampires. ‘QED,’ as Mrs. Double Butt likes to say in geometry class. Gosh, I wish I was smart like you, Kevin.”

  “Mrs. Doubet,” he said, still looking at his notes. He was the only kid in our class who liked her. “It’s not that they’re closed on Monday that’s weird, Tommy. It’s what they do. Or at least Innis.”

  “How do you know? You were home sick on Monday.”

  Kevin smiled. “No, I wasn’t. I typed the excuse and signed Mom’s name. They never check. I followed Innis around. Lucky he has that old car and drives slow, I was able to keep up with him on my bike. Or at least catch up.”

  I rolled to the floor and looked at some kit Kevin’d given up on before finishing. It looked like some sort of radio crossed with an adding machine. I managed to fake disinterest in what he was saying even though he’d hooked me again, just as he always did. “So where did he go?” I said.

  “The Mear place. Old Man Everett’s estate. Miss Plan-lunen’s house out on 28. That mansion on the main road, the one the rich guy from New York bought last year.”

  “So?” I said. “They’re all rich. Innis probably cuts their hair at home.” I was proud that I had seen a connection that Kevin had missed.

  “Uh-huh,” said Kevin, “the richest people in the county, and the one thing they have in common is that they get their haircuts from the lousiest barber in the state. Lousiest barbers, I should say. I saw Denofrio drive off, too. They met at the shop before they went on their rounds. I’m pretty sure Denofrio was at the Wilkes estate along the river that day. I asked Rudy, the caretaker, and he said either Denofrio or Innis comes there most Mondays.”

  I shrugged. “So rich people stay rich by paying the least they can for haircuts.”

  “Sure,” said Kevin. “But that’s not the weird part. The weird part was that both of the old guys loaded their car trunks with small bottles. When Innis came out of Mear and Everett’s and Plankmen’s places, he was carrying big bottles, two-gallon jars at least, and they were heavy, Tommy. Filled with liquid. I’m pretty sure the smaller jars they’d loaded at the shop were full too.”

  “Full of what?” I said. “Blood?”

  “Why not?” said Kevin.

  “Vampires are supposed to take blood away,” I said, laughing. “Not deliver it.”

  “Maybe it was blood in the big bottles,” said Kevin. “And they brought something to trade from the barbershop.”

  “Sure,” I said, still laughing, “hair tonic!”

  “It’s not funny, Tom.”

  “The heck it isn’t!” I made myself laugh even harder. “The best part is that your barber vampires are biting just the rich folks. They only drink premium!” I rolled on the floor, scattering comic books and trying not to crush any vacuum tubes.

  Kevin walked to the window and looked out at the fading light. We both hated it when the days got shorter. “Well, I’m not convinced,” he said. “But it’ll be decided tonight.”

  “Tonight?” I said, lying on my side and no longer laughing. “What happens tonight?”

  Kevin looked over his shoulder at me. “The back entrance to the barbershop has one of those old-style locks that I can get past in about two seconds with my Houdini Kit. After dinner, I’m going down to check the place out.”

  I said, “It’s dark after dinner.”

  Kevin shrugged and looked outside.

  “Are you going alone?”

  Kevin paused and then stared at me over his shoulder. “That’s up to you.”

  I stared back.

  There is no sound quite the same as a straight razor being sharpened on a leather strop. I relax under the wrap of hot towels or my face, hearing but not seeing the barber prepare his blade. Receiving a professional shave is a pleasure which modern man has all but abandoned, but one in which I indulge myself every day.

  The barber pulls away the towels, dries my upper cheeks and temples with a dab of a dry cloth, and turns back to the strop for a few final strokes of the razor. I feel my cheeks and throat tingling from the hot towels, the blood pulsing in my neck. “When I was a boy,” I say, “a friend of mine convinced me that barbers were vampires.”

  The barber smiles but says nothing. He has heard my story before.

  “He was wrong,” I say, too relaxed to keep talking.

  The barber’s smile fades slightly as he leans forward, his face a study in concentration. Using a brush and lather whipped in a cup he quickly applies the shaving soap. Then he sets aside the cup, lifts the straight razor, and with a delicate touch of only his thumb and little finger, tilts my head so that my throat is arched and exposed to me blade.

  I close my eyes as the cold steel rasps across the warmed flesh.

  “You said two seconds!” I whispered urgently. “You’ve been messing with that darned lock for five minutes!” Kevin and I were crouched in the alley behind Fourth Street, huddled in the back doorway of the barbershop. The night air was cold and smelled of garbage. Street sounds seemed to come to us from a million miles away. “Come on!” I whispered.

  The lock clunked, clicked, and the door swung open into blackness. “Voila,” said Kevin. He stuck his wires, picks, and other tools back into his imitation-leather Houdini Kit bag. Grinning, he reached over and rapped “Shave and a Haircut” on the door.

  “Shut up,” I hissed, but Kevin was gone, feeling his way into the darkness. I shook my head and followed him in.

  Once inside with the door closed, Kevin clicked on a pen-light and held it between his teeth the way we’d seen a spy do in a movie. I grabbed on to the tail of his windbreaker and followed him down a short hallway into the single, long room of the barbershop.

  It didn’t take long to look around. The blinds were closed on both the large window and the smaller one on the front door, so Kevin figured it was safe to use the penlight. It was weird moving across that dark space with Kevin, the pen-light throwing images of itself into the mirrors and illuminating one thing at a time—a counter here, the two chairs in the center of the room, a few chairs and magazines for customers, two sinks, a tiny little lavatory, no bigger than a closet, its door right inside the short hallway. All the clippers and things had been put away in drawers. Kevin opened the drawers, peered into the shelves. There were bottles of hair tonic, towels, all the barber tools set neatly into top drawers, both sets arranged the same. Kevin took out a razor and opened it, holding the blade up so it reflected the light into the mirrors.

  “Cut it out,” I whispered. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Kevin set the thing away, making sure it was lined up exactly the way it had been, and we turned to go. His penlight beam moved across the back wall, illuminating a raincoat we’d already seen, and something els
e.

  “There’s a door here,” whispered Kevin, moving the coat to show a doorknob. He tried it. “Drat. It’s locked.”

  “Let’s go!” I whispered. I hadn’t heard a car pass in what felt like hours. It was like the whole town was holding its breath.

  Kevin began opening drawers again. “There has to be a key,” he said too loudly. “It must lead to a basement; there’s no second floor on this place.”

  I grabbed him by his jacket. “Come on,” I hissed. “Let’s get out of here. We’re going to get arrested.”

  “Just another minute . . .” began Kevin and froze. I felt my heart stop at the same instant.

  A key rasped in the lock of the front door. There was a tall shadow thrown against the blind.

  I turned to run, to escape, anything to get out of there, but Kevin clicked off the penlight, grabbed my sweatshirt, and pulled me with him as he crawled under one of the high sinks. There was just enough room for both of us there. A dark curtain hung down over the space and Kevin pulled it shut just as the door creaked open and footsteps entered the room.

  For a second I could hear nothing but the pounding of blood in my ears, but then I realized that there were two people walking in the room, men by the sounds of their heavy tread. My mouth hung open and I panted, but I was unable to get a breath of air. I was sure that any sound at all would give us away.

  One set of footsteps stopped at the first chair while the other went to the rear hall. A second door rasped shut, water ran, and there came the sound of the toilet flushing. Kevin nudged me, and I could have belted him then, but we were so crowded together in fetal positions that any movement by me would have made a noise. I held my breath and waited while the second set of footsteps returned from the lavatory and moved toward the front door. They hadn’t even turned on the lights. There’d been no gleam of a flashlight beam through our curtain, so I didn’t think it was the cops checking things out. Kevin nudged me again and I knew he was telling me that it had to be Innis and Denofrio.

  Both pairs of footsteps moved toward the front, there was the sound of the door opening and slamming, and I tried to breathe again before I passed out.