Unmasked

by R. Saint Claire

  “Please, Warren! Come back! I’m scared!”

  “Hold—the fuck—on!” Warren shouted back. The earlier charm of Chrissie's helplessness evaporated quickly. He walked down the short flight of stairs and pulled on the door—locked.

  Pressing his face against the small wired glass window, he saw a long corridor and what appeared to be a vacant hospital bed against the far wall. He remembered that the lodge had once been a T.B. clinic and he was certain he was looking at the remnants of that. He also guessed, instinctively perhaps, that whatever was in the basement held the answer, at least part of it, to the mystery of what the hell was going on at Wolf House. He knew he had to get down there and check it out. He also knew that he would get nowhere towing Chrissie around in her frilly nightgown.

  Deciding with a sigh that she couldn't even find her way back to her bedroom in the dark, he resigned himself to crawl back through the transom, put her to bed, and find another way to access the basement. He returned to the office and dragged a chair to the door.

  “Listen babe,” he said, leaning his hands against the locked door. “I’m coming back through the transom. Can you shine the light there so I can see what I’m doing?”

  “Okay. I’m trying to get the flashlight to work. It keeps going out.”

  “Shake it!”

  “I am shaking it!”

  He climbed on the chair and pulled himself headfirst into the transom as before, but his arms were weak from the previous effort. As he wedged himself into the space with a grunt, the flashlight went out.

  “I need that light!” He was disoriented now, and wary of the glass pane atop the narrow opening. He could only feel the space in front of him.

  “I’m trying!” Chrissie whined, banging on the flashlight with the palm of her hand. The beam held for a few seconds.

  “Got it!” She pointed the light at the door just as a massive shadow crossed it.

  “Huh?” Chrissie spun around.

  “Hey! Point the light up here!”

  Chrissie felt a light breeze on her bare arms, making the hairs stand up. Someone was in the hall with her. The flashlight died again.

  “Karla! Jenna!” She called into the darkness. She heard the sound of heavy breathing and detected the scent of men’s cologne in the musty air.

  “Mitch?” She whispered as a ball of fear hardened in her throat.

  “Chrissie!” Warren called from his awkward perch halfway through the transom window, his arm stuck against his side. “What’s happening?”

  “Someone is here…”

  The flashlight switched on suddenly. Chrissie spun the beam back to the door and square into the face of Dr. Weiss. He lumbered towards her, his thick lips curling into a frown over his pointed, yellow teeth.

  She screamed and dropped the flashlight. It banged and rolled along the hall, landing at an odd angle, and casting their shadows against the wall: his towering and sinister, hers frozen and crouched beneath it.

  From the canted angle of the flashlight’s beam, Warren watched in horror as Dr. Weiss pulled Chrissie’s gown over her head, revealing her tanned, muscular legs and a flash of her white cotton panties. Pressing his hands against the doorframe hard, his mid-section gave, and he popped out of the window, landing hard and striking his forehead into the floor.

  Through the spinning stars before his eyes, he watched as Dr. Weiss dragged Chrissie, kicking and struggling, into the darkness.

  Warren got to his feet and picked up the flashlight, pointing it down the hall. The weak beam blinked twice then died in his hand, revealing just of trace of their retreating figures.

  “Fuck!” he screamed, smashing the useless flashlight against the wall then lobbing it down the hallway where it clanged and echoed through the blackness. He knew he’d never find them feeling around in the dark. He threw on his jacket and circled back to the lounge in as much of a run as the darkness would allow.

  He reached the foyer and flung open the front door. A blast of wind caught it, nearly ripping it from its hinges. The rain was falling now in thick slabs, making shallow puddles in the manicured lawn.

  Warren ran into the storm, his hands covering his head. The tails of his jacket flew up, and for a moment he spun all the way around, caught in a vortex of wind. He got his bearings and turned right, running parallel along the east wing hallway looking for any light from a window or a door leading to the basement.

  He concluded from the hospital setting he’d seen, that Dr. Weiss was behind all of it—Mitch, Anne, and now Chrissie had all been kidnapped by him. Hopefully Anne was still alive, and Mitch? If he had only found the hairpiece, then maybe…but he believed Jenna’s story of seeing his dead body in the lake. She wasn’t the type of girl to imagine things. Jenna! he thought, Had Weiss gotten her too?

  A white flash of lightning speared a nearby tree, causing Warren to leap a foot in the air. He took refuge against the mansion’s stone wall. A branch from the struck tree hit the ground in the exact spot where he had been standing only seconds before. He smelled the acrid scent of sulfur in the air. The Devil’s scent?, he thought, and from what he had read that morning about Ostara and its occult history it wasn’t that far-fetched.

  A few slate roof tiles loosened by a gust of wind smashed into bits at Warren’s feet. The realization that he could die at any moment stuck in his brain like a hot dagger. He blinked the rainwater from his eyes until he was sure he was really looking at a storm cellar with a blue sliver of light shining from around the cracks of its double doors.

  He ran to it and pulled the doors as hard as he could. They opened with a bang.

  A muddy staircase, fashioned from the same stones as the mansion walls, greeted him. It smelled like a grave, but it was preferable to remaining on the lawn and risking death by electrocution. At the bottom of the stairs was a door. He ran to the bottom and pulled on the latch hopefully. It was locked. Warren peered through the small glass window and spied a passage leading to the same blue-cast linoleum-floored hallway. I gotta get in there, he thought, if only to get out of this fucking storm.

  He walked back up the stairs and into the pounding rain, felt around on the ground till he found a good sized stone, then holding it over his head, ran back down the stairs and smashed it into the window; only it didn’t shatter as he had hoped. The window was laced with honeycomb wire, and as the stone went through so did his hand. He felt an odd tug, then a burning pain that made his stomach lurch. He instinctively pulled his hand back through the window, lacerating it further on the jagged wires and shards of glass that still stuck to the frame.

  His knees gave way, and he sat down on the stairs, clutching his injured hand to his chest, trying to pinch the wound closed with two fingers. He felt the hot blood, pumping out with each heartbeat, run down the length of his arm. Again he thought of the very real possibility of dying.

  The sound of his hoarse sobs rang in his ears before he was consciously aware of crying. His mind raced through the events of the past week, and he wondered how he had traveled back in time from the sunny perch of his Washington Heights’ balcony sipping his morning coffee to the dank basement of Wolf House where he would most likely bleed to death.

  I'm in a tomb. No one will ever find me here. I'm already buried: dead and buried. This thought produced a spasm of fresh tears as he curled on the cramped stairs. There was a certain peace associated with letting go, and relaxing his grip on the wound, the warm blood flowed easily now, seeping through his fingers and into the thick stones of the mud-caked foundation. Feeling no pain at all and strangely calm, what light came from the sky disappeared like an aperture closing at full stops, one-by-one, until complete darkness enveloped him.

  The faint throb of his own heartbeat pulsated in his ears, then turned into a drumbeat, thumping low as if from a distance. As the volume increased an image appeared: fuzzy, out of focus at first, but as the picture sharpened he saw that it was a dancer wearing a bright red Spanish style dress that swayed and dipped to a
sensual calypso beat. Other instruments joined in.

  As the image came into clearer focus he saw that the dancer was Karla: her blond hair pulled back in a tight chignon trimmed with a red rose. She spoke to him without moving her lips. It's over, baby brother, and I won. I will always win.

  “You fucking bitch! I won't die today!” He sound of his own voice brought him back to consciousness. He tasted mud in his mouth and spit it out, and with a cry of defiance, he extricated himself from the sepulchral staircase.

  Back in the cool night air—freshened by the abating storm--his spirits lifted immediately, and he marveled for a moment at the power of élan vital. He ceased believing in the Catholic faith long ago, but God was still the word he used to describe life’s complex and unfathomable mysteries, and he paused for a moment to offer a silent prayer of thanks.

  Feeling how his hand swelled (nature’s way of staving the bleeding), he was elated with gratitude for a body that still functioned, and he moved to the front door with a refreshed mind toggled to a clear plan: Clean up this cut before it gets infected, rest up for a bit, then find the girls.

  * * *

  From the shrubbery that edged the wet lawn, a figure dressed in a hooded rain slicker watched Warren stagger to the front entrance of the lodge, then moved onto the porch and watched through the window as he searched for, found, and lit a hurricane lamp.

  After a few moments the warm light reappeared in Warren’s bathroom. Once Warren had collapsed on the bed with a towel wrapped tightly around his hand, the figure circled back across the lawn and entered the same basement stairs.

  Its black, leather gloved hands took out a ring of keys and unlocked the door. Two feet encased in yellow galoshes stepped carefully over the shards of broken glass and entered the lower level and moved towards the blue light.

  13

  Warren’s brush with death centered him somehow, and as soon as his head touched the pillow, the tension and trauma of the day melted into the soft bedding. He found his mind folding around a memory of one of the weekend trips he and Peter took recently—riding in their convertible through a country setting as bucolic as the Andrew Wyeth prints that adorned the walls of their Manhattan apartment.

  Peter, his blond hair showing its first streak of gray in the golden autumn sunlight, smiled at him from the driver’s seat. Half-awake, Warren smiled back, wishing he could communicate with him telepathically and let him know that everything Peter had ever wanted in their relationship was going to happen: a country house they could fill with the antiques they both loved, the dog (Peter was currently obsessed with a creature called a labrodoodle)—all of it.

  He now recognized in his own hesitation towards commitment, the dickish behavior of many of his gay friends—the practice of keeping one’s lover on tenterhooks until something better came along. He hated himself for it now, and in the alpha state between dream and consciousness, he resolved to change his shitty attitude when he returned to his old life and beg for Peter’s forgiveness.

  Just as the vision of him and Peter in the convertible evaporated, he felt a cool hand on his neck. He bolted up to find a slim figure sitting on his bed. He saw the silhouette of frizzy hair and after a moment of cold fear realized it was Jenna.

  “Thank God you’re alright,” he said, embracing her hard. A jolt of pain shot from his hand up his arm, reminding him of the dreadful night.

  “Warren, what the hell is going on?” Jenna had changed into workout clothes and sneakers. The line between her eyes had softened; she appeared calm, centered. Noticing the bloody towel around his hand, she gasped and said, "What happened to you?”

  “It's nothing.” Warren waved it away and turned up the flame of the hurricane lamp, noticing how pretty she looked in the soft, crimson light.

  “Listen. I believe you did see Mitch dead in the lake this morning. Look what I found.” Warren grabbed his damp dinner jacket hanging from the bedpost, pulled the handkerchief from the pocket, and showed her what was inside.

  Jenna looked at it and said softly, “Mitch’s hairpiece.”

  Warren nodded solemnly and put it back in his pocket. “God knows what’s happened to Anne. And now he has Chrissie.”

  “Who has her?”

  Warren explained what had happened earlier that night.

  “Jesus!” Jenna sighed.

  “I’m sure Jan is working with him. Maybe Jorgé too.”

  “Hmmm, not him,” Jenna said.

  Suddenly the lights were back on. Warren and Jenna were face-to-face, sitting closer on the bed than they realized.

  “Why’s that?” he asked, catching something in Jenna's face he couldn't quite read.

  Jenna squirmed under his gaze. “Ah, because I just saw him.”

  Warren looked carefully at his sister. “Did you give yourself a facial or something? You look fantastic.”

  The lights went out again, and Jenna was for once grateful for the darkness. Warren had an instinct for sniffing out secrets, especially ones of a sexual nature. Her dalliance in the steam bath was the last thing she needed to reveal right now.

  “I was just with Jorgé…and Karla,” she said.

  “Oh? Doing what?”

  “Just talking.”

  “Did you tell her about Mitch?”

  “I tried to, but…” Jenna could never think up a good lie on the spot. Warren was too preoccupied to press it.

  He sat up straighter. “After what happened to Chrissie tonight, Karla has to listen. We need to get to her and tell her everything. When Chrissie and I were snooping around earlier, I found this hospital or a lab or something in the basement. Anne and Chrissie must be down there. Weiss is behind all of it.”

  “But why?” Said Jenna. “And why would he kill Mitch? Mitch never hurt anyone in his life…except himself.”

  “And his ex-wives and his kids...” Warren rubbed the stubble on his chin for a moment then said, “Maybe he found out something he wasn’t supposed to.”

  “Like what?’

  “Like maybe Weiss has been using Karla’s money for some sick experiment. I've been doing a bit of research on this Ostara crap. Look what I found in the library.” Warren reached for the book on his night table and passed the leather volume to Jenna.

  “According to this book, Dr. Weiss’s grandfather was a founding member of Ostara: a European occult society. And get this…he was also a doctor and a German nationalist who eventually became an officer of the Third Reich. They tortured and killed people, Jenna, and used their organs, blood, and skin in their sick rituals. The grandfather was executed at Nuremburg, but the rest of the Weiss family, including der junge Wilhelm, escaped to Switzerland. Now, they pretend to be some New-Age bullshit organization, but that’s their history. And I bet they are just as evil now.”

  “If this is true, then why Karla? Why get involved with a frivolous pop star?” Jenna ran her fingers over the embossed leather cover.

  “I'm not sure, Jenna, but I guess her nearly one billion dollar fortune has something to do with it,” Warren replied, a tinge of sarcasm in his voice.

  Jenna set down the book.

  “Karla is facing the inevitability of aging,” Warren said, pushing a lock of black hair from his eyes. “For us it’s a drag, but for someone as vain as she it’s a tragedy. I know her, and she’d do anything—I mean anything—to keep up her looks.” He thought for a moment, then continued. “Weiss is her plastic surgeon…that’s fairly obvious, but maybe he’s promising her all kinds of bizarre things—youth serum extracted from hyenas' ball sacks; I don't know.”

  “Or us?” Said Jenna.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Remember all that blood he took from us the first night here?”

  “How can I forget?”

  They were both silent, lost in their own thoughts, then Warren snapped his fingers in a eureka moment. “Dr. Weiss is trying to use our fat to plump up Karla’s lips and ass!”

  “What?” Jenna threw back her head and laug
hed. “You're crazy!”

  “No, I'm not. That's the Hollywood trend. Those rich assholes have everything they could ever want except youth, and they’re desperate. Weiss’ Ostara cult is just a ploy to pull them in like it’s a spiritual thing that will give them immortality, which is exactly what they all want. He’s been buying off Karla with plastic surgery while robbing her blind for years, and he’s using us as medical guinea pigs or something. Maybe she sold her soul to the Devil—which would require her actually having a soul, and we both know that’s debatable.”

  “Well, whatever he’s doing, it's working. She looks incredible for her age,” Jenna said, the line between her eyes reappearing.

  “Yes, but it's almost like she looks too good. You know?”

  “I do.” Jenna thought for a minute. “Okay, if this is true, why did he kill Mitch and just dump him?”

  “Maybe Mitch fought back or threatened to tell on them. I don’t know, but hopefully the girls are still alive. I’m going back to the basement. You get Karla, and we’ll meet back at the lounge and get the fuck out of here.”

  Jenna shivered, suddenly realizing how frightened she was. She clasped Warren's arm. “No! Let’s stick together.”

  Warren was for once the sober and sensible one. “We don’t have time.”

  A flare of lightning brightened the window—making the lake visible through the trees for a moment. The low roar of thunder that followed it rattled the window panes. Jenna tightened her grip on Warren’s arm.

  “Even if we were to leave now, we’d never make it through this mess,” Jenna said, although part of her was willing to chance it.

  “It will be dawn soon,” Warren said. “When it gets light, we’ll hike up to the road, flag down a car, and get the cops down here. They can take care of Weiss.”

  “I guess we can't just wait here till it’s light?” Jenna said with a hopeful lilt in her voice, although she knew with cold certainty that it could be too late by then. Anne and Chrissie were in danger—Karla too—and they needed to act now.