I should walk away, he thought. His feet continued up the drive.
He stopped in front of the double doors, polished ebony adorned with the leering heads of unearthly demons.
I should leave, he thought as his hands caressed the cold metal.
A small path to the left caught his eye and he allowed his curiosity to take him further into Rettorian’s realm, following it past more shuttered windows and a neglected terrace.
Whilst the front of the building proclaimed riches and wealth, the rear showed neglect and decay. This was a house of two faces - like the owner.
The picture painted by Rettorian back at the inn was beginning to seem like nothing but a skilfully drawn joke; a trap to lure him in. Yet the man knew him, knew his history, everything; it was unnerving.
He would not take the job, of that much he was certain, there was too much that he didn’t know, too much that hinted at danger; however, that did not mean he couldn’t take the opportunity to make a little money from his excursion, a small recompense for the inconvenience.
He congratulated himself on his astuteness. Nobody ever got one over Thomas Collins, something even his own father had eventually learned.
The house continued to look down at him, waiting. It seemed to be reading his mind. You can still walk away. Was that his voice or was it the house speaking to him?
He glared at the shuttered windows in defiance. No. Thomas Collins did not walk away. He deserved something for being brought out on a night like this, conveniently forgetting he would have been knee-deep in blood and entrails at the abattoir.
And so, as if to aid his decision, he found a small window left carelessly ajar. No problem for a man of your talents, the house dared him.
Once inside Tom gave himself a minute or two to allow his eyes to adjust to the gloom. The room was empty, no furniture, no wall hangings, no ornamentation, nothing. A slight disappointment but there were bound to be riches elsewhere; he would stake his life on it. Across the room, there was one door. He opened it softly. It led out onto a hall – and here there was light.
Flickering lamps hung between heavy tapestries revealing a wide oval lobby. The floor was chequered with black and white diamonds leading his eye round to a series of doors, none of which gave any clue as to what lay beyond. He patted his pocket, feeling the comforting security of the cosh that nestled there. Emboldened he stepped forward.
“Ah, Mr Collins. You’re somewhat earlier than I expected but I do admire your…keenness.”
Tom spun round in shock. Lanius Rettorian stood right behind him. There was no place he could’ve come from except the room through which Tom had entered – and he was certain there had been nobody there.
Surprisingly, Rettorian ignored the fact that Tom had entered by illegal means and addressed him as if he’d just arrived in the usual, more expected way; chatting in a friendly manner as if this was all perfectly normal.
“What do you say to a bit of breakfast? Set us up for the work ahead?”
Food.
Tom hadn’t realised how hungry he was; he could risk eating. Perhaps Lanius might give him a clue as to the treasures hidden within these walls. He quickly weighed Rettorian up.
It would be an easy matter to overpower the man if need be.
Tom allowed Lanius to steer him towards the dining room where he noticed three places had already been laid; if Rettorian wasn’t going to mention his breaking and entering then he wouldn’t either. For the moment he would follow Rettorian’s lead.
In the dining room, a small fire was already dancing merrily in the hearth and silver-covered dishes adorned the sideboard despite the earliness of the hour. Tom’s stomach growled as he scented the aroma of cooked meats.
A free meal after free drinks.
He wondered what price he would eventually have to pay for this. He did not pause though and filled his plated, taking a seat opposite Rettorian once more.
“Lucy,” said Lanius in response to Tom’s querying look at the third plate. “Another assistant of mine. She will be here shortly with the coffee.”
As if on cue the door opened and a woman of uncertain years entered. She wore a simple plain black dress and her hair was scraped back in a severe bun.
But there was something about her, her face, that wasn’t quite right; it kept drawing his gaze no matter how hard he tried to concentrate on his food. He found his appetite slowly dying away.
The woman didn’t seem to notice his attention, merely nodding in response to Rettorian’s introduction. Tom sneaked another look at her. He tried again to place her age, looking for the tell-tale lines around the lips, at the corner of her eyes but there were none; no lines, no wrinkles anywhere.
There was just whiteness.
Her face was flawless giving away no clues, no hints. Even her eyes, black bullets that darted sporadically across to Rettorian and then back to her plate – which was devoid of meat – gave nothing away. Her face was as immobile and unemotive as a mask from a Greek tragedy.
That was it exactly.
A mask.
He could see now how taut the skin was, stretched out like a canvas on an easel; no pores or pits to mar its perfection – until you noticed the joins. Barely perceptible at first, he traced neat stitches – for that was all it could be – around the hairline and then down to be almost hidden by her high-necked collar. As he looked, Lanius leaned across and pulled the collar up a bit more thereby obscuring the lower edges.
“I’m afraid my handiwork got a little slapdash around the neckline,” said Lanius apologetically. “I don’t want to put you off your breakfast.”
Tom just stared at him, his hunger now completely gone.
“Coffee?” asked Lucy, as if Lanius had made no comment.
He accepted wordlessly but it was a bitter drink.
“Now that we’ve all finished, I think it’s time we got down to business.” Lanius tossed down his napkin and stood up.
Tom followed him reluctantly but obediently, past closed rooms and down carpeted corridors until they came to what appeared to be a portrait gallery. He would have to bide his time a bit longer.
“This,” said Lanius, “is my business.”
And so Tom looked. Each frame did indeed hold a face but not a portrait in the traditional sense. These were faces that had been cast from death; young, old, male, female, they all slept in those frames.
“There is great demand for a mask of the dear departed. You’d be surprised how many derive comfort from the face of a loved one looking down at them over the dinner table.”
Tom shuddered. Personally he could think of nothing worse. To have had his father staring down at him would have been a reminder of every blow, every beating. Yet it would not have been possible to create such a mask from his own parent. He knew that. The man had had no face left by the time Tom had finished with him. But he said nothing to Rettorian about that.
“Of course from time to time I face a particular challenge,” said Lanius, leading him further down the corridor.
Tom came back to his present surroundings with a start. Lanius had stopped in front of the very last mask in the gallery.
“This one I am exceptionally proud of,” Lanius said. “I feel I have captured not just the face but the very essence of the man. He has a certain air about him. Don’t you agree?”
Tom stared, horrified. He had not seen this man’s face for years. Not since he had dragged it into the marshes and buried it beneath the muck and the slime.
“Now you are older the resemblance between you is much clearer,” said Lanius.
“How…where…,” swallowed Tom.
“How, when, where, what, why,” laughed Lanius. “People always seem to want to know all the gory details – even when they really, really don’t. Human inquisitiveness is such a funny thing don’t you find? Leads you into all sorts of situations you’d have been better off staying away from.”
Tom could not take his eyes off his father. He felt a
s if he was suddenly ten years old again, the intervening thirty years had vanished and he was trembling before the monster.
“I saw what he did to you Tom,” Lanius whispered in his ear. “I was there for every fist, every flogging, every harsh word and I was there with you when you finally stood up to him. I’ve watched you grow up and become a man. I’ve watched you become your father. Just as I watch and guide every other man like you.”
A shiver ran down Tom’s spine.
“Now,” said Lanius, again discarding his knowledge of Tom’s past, his crimes, as if it mattered nothing. “This is the public side of my business. I am also, as you may recall from my card, a collector of faces…and sometimes collector of debts.”
Tom finally tore his gaze away from his father’s death mask and looked back down the gallery.
“No,” said Lanius. “Not wax casts of the dead. Lucy my dear, will you come a little closer.”
The assistant stepped nearer to Rettorian. Tom had not heard her come in.
“Look at this face,” said Lanius, running a finger gently down her cheek. She did not flinch, remaining as expressionless as a statue as he turned her head from side to side.
“If I see a face I like and it is owed, I take it. Lucy for example was perfection. A young woman at the height of her beauty. Hers was a face that demanded possession so I took it. But I am not a cruel man. I gave her a replacement. Perfectly adequate don’t you think?”
It was at this point that Lucy looked Tom directly in the eye. What he saw there was a despair that chilled him to his core.
“Your face,” said Lanius, “is one I like and you also owe a debt.”
Tom tried to think but his mind was foggy, he could barely focus on what Lanius was now saying. Out of habit his hand went to his pocket, to the hidden cosh. His fingers curled around the cold metal but he found he could not grasp it; it kept slipping, his mind kept slipping, he felt himself fall.
When Tom came to he found himself strapped and chained in much the same way as the dumb creatures on which he exerted his own skills.
An array of knives grinned purposefully next to him, hungry blades crying out to be used; a craftsman’s tools, Tom realised.
Lanius stood over him.
“Have no fear,” he said. “I have not brought you here to die. It is only your face I seek. I leave your blood to others. You will pay your debt as you were meant to.”
Lucy stepped out of the shadows holding up a surgeon’s gown and mask.
“Why my face?” asked Tom, trying vainly once more to free himself.
“I told you. I am a collector. It is what I do. And you owe my master. He has given your face to me and I will return you to Him.”
Tom continued to strain against his bindings, feeling the sting as flesh rubbed open and blood trickled from his wrists. His tormentor’s eyes gleamed with anticipation.
The man was mad thought Tom, as the terror inside him grew.
“My face is no different to anyone else’s,” said Tom.
“On the contrary,” said Lanius. “It is unique. It is the face of a man who has cheated Death and now my master demands some small recompense.”
Lanius had picked up a knife; the blade only inches away from his face. Lucy stepped forward again. This time to fix a gag firmly in place.
“Please…,” he managed to utter before he was prevented from speaking completely. But there was no sympathy to be found there.
“If it’s any compensation, I have chosen a new face for you already. I would not be so cruel as to deny you a mask to look out at the world from and for the world to look upon you.”
Lanius moved closer still. “I think you will appreciate my skill. You may even pick up a few tips, like this for instance. The blade must be no more than the width of whisper; any thicker and it will damage either the skin or the body below.”
Tom felt the whisper’s breath cut into his hairline. He barely heard Lanius through the waves of pain that coursed through him.
“Another tip, always cut at an angle, allows the blade to keep moving forward.”
A burning agony now scorched across his forehead. His body arched against his restraints, heart pounding in a terror it remembered from once before.
His eyes blurred and he closed them against the horror being perpetrated on him.
Then he found himself looking again at the surgeon moving his knife back and forth.
He tried once more to close his eyes but it proved impossible.
His eyelids too were being taken.
He bit down harder on the gag. If it had not been there he was certain he would have bitten his own tongue out.
Like butter the knife cut through flesh, eating up his identity, inch by inch, taking him away from himself.
He prayed for unconsciousness to claim him, forgetting he had turned his back on God long ago. His words disappeared into the void he had created for himself and if there was anything in the darkness listening for him, it was not God.
For this ordeal, it had been deemed he would remain awake.
Tom’s face burned, a furnace that roared as the exposed nerve endings were assaulted by the slightest movement of air. Tears streamed from his eyes, rivulets that seared fresh agony into tendon and muscle.
Lower went the whisper, melting away his lips, his chin, taking everything.
And then the whisper hushed, a respite from his torment that was to prove too brief. He felt himself raised up slightly and his face roared its hurt as the air shifted and breathed over him.
“Would sir like to see?” asked Lanius, mockingly. “It will need a little cleaning up, a touch of preservative but I must say, and please forgive me the boast, this is perfection. I thank you for such a generous donation to my collection.”
Through the pain and the terror Tom looked upon himself. He saw the pits in his skin from a childhood pox, the scar on his cheek from a mistake in his apprenticeship, the folds that had started to develop as middle age began to claim him.
His life was written in that flesh but it was his no longer.
“Now as I said earlier. I am not a heartless man. I have a new face to give you.”
Lucy walked forward and held up a small tray. She tilted it so that he could see its contents.
No, no. They couldn’t…he wouldn’t.
His whole body revolted from the offering.
“I am sorry you don’t seem to like my gift,” said Lanius. “Perhaps you should take a look at yourself before you decide against it.”
Now a mirror was placed in front of him. Tom could not look away. Every vein, every nerve was exposed. A living nightmare on which no one would look.
With no skin to protect him, his slaughterer’s knowledge told him that within hours he would be attacked by disease, insects, vermin. There was no escape from the slow, painful death that would bring.
“If you choose to live as you are, I will let you go,” said Lanius. “But you do not need me to tell you that you will not live. Already microbes are invading your body even in this reasonably sterile environment. Once outside…”
Tom forced himself to look back at the mask offered by Lanius. To accept that face would also mean another life, one even shorter, more brutal than his own. The freedom he had sought so eagerly had brought him the prison of another.
The man he now gazed upon was currently adorning many a wanted poster throughout the East End; an escaped prisoner already condemned to hang. Even the streets had risen up in revulsion against this criminal and there would be no help to be found there. He had only the faintest chance of escape but it was still a chance and he had to take it.
“My employer does not like to be thwarted,” said Lanius, touching the rope-burn on Tom’s neck. “Once he has marked you for his own he will never release his claim on you.”
Tom struggled once more.
“No, no,” soothed Lanius. “Conserve your strength, you will need it.”
The gag was replaced. And Tom’s scream
s filled his head although not a sound was to be heard in that small chamber.
Slowly Lanius stitched the nightmare to his skull; in, out, in, out, in, out, the needle wove in his sins and his crimes, his follies and his hatred.
In, out, in, out, for every blow he had dealt his father; in, out, in, out for every step that would take him back to the gallows.
As Tom looked upon the man he had become, he knew that he would dance for the Devil again and this time the music would not stop.
AN ABSENT HOST
F A Nosić
“Bienvenue, mon compte,” the lady said with an exuberance of grace and charm, tempered with stifled excitement. “I have been looking forward to this moment since the evening began.”
She smiled and rose to give the young count a kiss on his cheek, beaming from beneath the elaborate black and blue butterfly mask she wore. “The Marquis has been expecting you as well, of course,” she added briskly. “I trust your journey went well?”
“Delightfully,” Count Raphaël de Laval offered gingerly, returning the customary kiss. “I hadn't noticed the Marquis when I was announced,” he stated, hoping to shift the conversation away from the details of his trip.
A trip that had been, frankly, terrible. Between the long journey, the poor weather, and the distaste of travelling in the first place, Raphaël was rather glad that it was all behind him.
“The night is still very young, my dear Count,” she said, acknowledging Raphaël's concern. “He'll make an appearance when he's ready. Believe me, child, by the end of the night, the two of you shall be closer than flesh and blood.”
She winked playfully, a motion which was greatly emphasized by her enormous mask and caught Raphaël off guard for a moment. She took the opportunity to drape her arm around his and interlock them in a rather assertive fashion.
“Now then, let us find some refreshments. I'm rather parched. And hungry as well, now that I think about it.” She continued her drivel for some time longer, prompting Raphaël to smile and nod behind his own white mask, indulging her and her vanity until he could find the Marquis, at least.
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