Unmasked

by R. Saint Claire

  “Well, you're right about Jan. He is a twit,” Jenna said, chuckling wearily.

  “Another window?" Warren whined. "Christ almighty. I’m too old for his shit.”

  Jenna leaned against the window frame for a moment, and looked out across the bright lawn, each blade of grass silky with fresh, morning dew. The lodge with its spired towers appeared incongruous to the natural setting as if fashioned from a fairy tale, and yet Jenna knew there was nothing magical about what had transpired there. She also knew they had to go back in and face it, or simply leave now. She was open to either option, though favoring the latter.

  She looked at Warren. “So what’s the plan, little brother?” Neither one of them had the energy to act quickly.

  He joined her at the window, squinting his eyes in the bright, morning light. “My instinct is to save my own ass…and yours, but...”

  “But?”

  “I can't leave Chrissie behind...or Karla. As much as I despise her, I still love her.” He rubbed Jenna’s arm. “Does that make sense?"

  Jenna nodded. She did understand, and she was willing to take the high road if he was. She silently mulled over another thought: if she acted the part of a hero, saving Karla's ass (and fortune) from the evil machinations of Herr Weiss, Karla would be very grateful, and that gratitude just might have a handsome cash value attached to it.

  Warren saw the line deepening between Jenna's eyes and read her mind. The money wasn't as important to him; his book was raking it in and would continue to do so for years. If anything this family tragedy would increase its sales, although he perished that thought from his mind instantly. It sickened him, but he was around show business long enough to see the truth in the old media adage: if it bleeds, it leads.

  He sympathized with Jenna’s struggles, and if money was part of her motivation for wanting to stay and help Karla who was he to judge? His reasons were a bit more complicated; he could never keep his fingers from picking at a sore, and Karla had been the biggest sore of his life. He knew he had to go back.

  “We do need one thing,” Warren said, looking around the shed.

  Jenna understood immediately. She picked up a badminton racket with missing strings and looking at him questioningly. He shook his head, then eyed the long oars stacked against the wall wondering when the hell anyone ever rowed crew in these waters.

  “Here we go!” Jenna picked up two rusty golf clubs that were attached to the wall by a decade’s worth of cobwebs.

  “Alright,” Warren said, gesturing with his head towards the window. “Now move your skinny ass!” He helped Jenna through. It was a short drop to the damp grass and she landed without falling. Warren passed the two golf clubs to her, then crawled out himself.

  “Well, that was easy,” he said.

  “Should we separate?” Jenna said, her voice rising an octave, knowing the answer she wanted to hear.

  “No fucking way. We’re in this together, sis.” He grabbed her hand and they took off across the lawn

  They easily found the cellar stairs where Warren had cut himself the night before. It appeared less sinister in the morning light, and with some patient maneuvering, Jenna was able to squeeze her hand past the jagged wire and shards of glass to unlock the door from the other side.

  They squeezed each other tightly when they passed the room where Anne’s body laid, giving it a wide berth as they moved quickly over the waxed linoleum floor until what sounded like an animal howling in pain stopped them dead in their tracks.

  * * *

  In the dimly lit bathroom of the makeshift recovery room, a heap of bloody bandages surrounded the frail figure of a woman clad only in a hospital gown. Brittle blond hair, the color and texture of a cheap acrylic wig, obscured her face as she bent over the sink, groaning.

  “What you are doing?” Dr. Weiss appeared behind her, alarmed. He came closer and pressed his large hands on either side of her head, tilting her face towards the bright, fluorescent light.

  His thick, pale lips rippled with revulsion. “Your skin has rejected the tissue once again. We had the perfect specimen, your exact blood type and genetic profile. It should have worked.” He released her face, moving a step back and unconsciously rubbing his hands against his coat.

  A realistic latex mask of a woman's face, its features frozen in perfect youthful symmetry, lay on the counter. The woman moved towards it, lifted it with both her hands and held it out in front of her, meditating on its calm visage while Dr. Weiss watched her cautiously. Then with a sudden vicious movement she began to tear at it. Her throat emitting a hoarse, guttural growl.

  Dr. Weiss quickly intervened, snatching the mask away from her.

  “Your prosthetic face,” he said, brushing his hand covetously over the smooth surface of the latex skin. “It came from the finest artisans in Europe.”

  The woman gesticulated wildly about her, then pointed at the mask with a prolonged groan.

  Weiss sighed, clearly annoyed. “Your soft palette is healing, and you’ll be able to speak again soon.”

  She groaned and banged her fist into the wall.

  “I did the best I could under the circumstances,” he continued, his voice flat with fatigue. “But you have too much damage to the tissue already. You should have stopped with the surgeries years ago, but you wouldn’t listen. Now you removed the bandages too soon. No wonder it didn’t work.”

  The woman began to pace the room, her hands beating at the sides of her head, causing her fresh incisions to bleed.

  Dr. Weiss, his hands held out in front of himself in a protective gesture, backed away from her and moved towards the operating room. At the ready was a full syringe of a barbiturate he had prepared earlier for such an emergency. It was enough to knock her out for days, maybe dispatch with her completely. Wouldn't that be the best option for everyone involved?

  He turned to retrieve the syringe, but when he spun back her face was inches away from his. Only it wasn’t a face, just a mass of twisted red scars stretched over bone. Most of Chrissie’s recently attached skin had fallen off with the bandages, leaving in place of a mouth a red horizontal slit without lips, two holes where the nose once was, and lidless, rheumy slits for eyes, through which blue light the color of madness shone.

  Dr. Weiss gasped and the syringe fell from his hand, the needle spearing the linoleum floor in a upright salute. Flummoxed, he bent awkwardly to retrieve it.

  “I’m sorry, my dear. We’ll try again.” His voice taking on an affected tone of cajolement, he continued, “We still have beautiful specimens, right here at the lodge.”

  He straightened up in time to see a raised scalpel in the woman’s hand, the slit of her mouth twisted in a grotesque grin. He backed away, sliding his large body along the edge of the counter towards the door.

  “What? Are you crazy! Get away!” His hands reached for a tray of instruments but fumbled, sending it crashing to the floor, tools clanging every which way.

  Crouching before the raised scalpel he shouted, “Jan! Jan, help me!”

  She brought the blade down, slicing through his outstretched hand and dividing it into two slabs of thick, white flesh separated by a deep red gash. He recoiled with a cry, clutching his injured hand against his chest, shooting red blood across his white doctor’s coat. She seized the advantage, and jabbed the scalpel into the side of his neck where it stuck and wiggled.

  He lumbered towards the door. She ran like a gymnast, jumped, and landed on his back, her legs wrapped tightly around his middle. He spun around the room several times in an attempt to hurl her off, but she clung there like a lion on a hippo’s back. She then grabbed the scalpel from the side of his neck with both hands and dragged it across his throat.

  A glob of bright red blood belched against the tiled walls followed by gurgled gasps for air as Dr. Weiss hovered for a moment, balancing on his massive legs, his hands grappling at his neck in an attempt to plug the hole. After a few breaths that bubbled with an agonized moan, his fish-gray eyes r
olled back to just white, and then he pitched forward like a falling tree, his body striking the linoleum floor with a loud thud and rattling the trays of silver instruments on the countertops.

  Jan entered the room holding the canoe paddle in the air; his mouth forming a round O at the sight of Dr. Weiss face down in a pool of blood.

  The woman was ready for him. In her hand she held an open container of the sulfuric acid intended to dissolve the bodies of Anne and Chrissie. She flung the liquid at him, hitting him square in the face.

  It took several seconds for the pain to register; then Jan’s screams began: high-pitched, agonized wails—like a little girl’s as if someone didn’t just pull her hair, but tore it from her scalp.

  Impervious to the mise en scene of gore surrounding her, the woman calmly replaced the stopper of the glass container and returned it to the counter. Then she picked up a fresh scalpel from a tray, and stepping over Dr. Weiss’s body and the pool of blood surrounding it, she left the operating room as Jan bashed blindly around it, knocking items every which way as he desperately searched through the medicine cabinets for something to relieve the agony of his melting face.

  She entered the bathroom and switched on the lights. Avoiding her reflection in the mirror above the sink, she dropped the hospital gown to the floor.

  There stood the naked body of a middle-aged woman, all of its imperfections exposed in the harsh florescent lights: the flabby muscle tone and mottled skin stretched tautly over obvious breast implants stacked too high on an otherwise bony chest.

  She pulled a neat stack of all-black clothing from the bathroom closet, and efficiently dressed herself in man-tailored slacks, a V-neck sweater, and low-heeled pumps. When she was finished dressing, she picked up the latex mask and fastened the straps beneath her thin strands of brittle, blond hair. Only then did she face the mirror, cocking her head from side to side as if gauging her attractiveness.

  She picked up the scalpel again, and traveling with determined purpose—the heels of her sensible shoes striking the hard linoleum floor with quick, light steps—she headed in the direction of the west wing, towards Karla's secret chamber.

  15

  Spotting Dr. Weiss’ body on the floor, Warren’s first thought was that the large man had had a heart attack until he saw the blood. They weren’t expecting this. Warren cleared his throat, wondering aloud if perhaps there was a phone on the premises. Jenna agreed to look for one, eager to get away from the body.

  Carefully stepping over the blood, she moved to the ransacked recovery room and screamed when she saw Jan sitting on the floor, one leg tucked under him and the other straight out, his back against a cabinet and head tilted forward as if he were watching TV or listening to music. Belying the casualness of his pose were his hands—closed into tight white fists.

  “What the fuck?” Warren whispered.

  Jan's face, what was left of it, still sizzled. The flesh melted down to the bone hung from his chin like the peach-colored film from atop a paint can. Jenna, realizing that this was the source of the burnt meat she smelled, rushed to the bathroom and vomited.

  She flushed the toilet and sank to the cold tile floor, suddenly so tired she could have fallen asleep right there, and she might have if Warren's scream hadn't roused her. She sprung to her feet and found him hovering in the threshold of an adjacent room. Coming up close behind him, she peered over his shoulder.

  “Chrissie!” she screamed, and lurched towards the body on the gurney. Like Anne’s, it was draped with a white sheet, an oval of blood soaking into the sheet above the face. Warren grabbed Jenna’s arm and wrenched her back, pulling her to the other end of the hall.

  Once they were a safe distance from the blood and the smells of death, some wild instinct overcame Warren, and he embraced Jenna against the wall, pressing his body into her as he would a lover. Here was a woman he had barely spoken to for years, and yet he couldn’t get enough of her body, the scent of her dark wavy hair. He buried his face in it as if he were a child again and she the eternal mother, a miracle of feminine curves and layers of earthy scents that aroused his spiritual manliness with each breath.

  Jenna, in turn, gave in to the physical sensation of being held, something that she rarely experienced in her daily life, yet needed desperately. Surprisingly, the knowledge that Mitch, Anne, and now Chrissie were all dead didn’t fill her with enervating grief, but a jolt of renewed vigor. She was alive, and so was Warren. She marveled at the beating of his living heart, his musculature and strength, like an essence she could swallow that would, in turn, invigorate her further—an abundance of pure life force.

  Conventional measurements of time are meaningless in the whirlwind of transcendent emotion, but after a short while Jenna raised her head from where it rested on Warren's shoulder and said, “My God! What happened here?”

  “Well,” Warren replied slowly, his throat dry. “I’m no detective, but it seems like Weiss went crazy, performed some sick operations on our sisters, killed Jan for some reason…Mitch too, then killed himself by slitting his own throat…and good riddance to the twisted, old fuck!”

  “Does…does that mean it’s over?” She asked, her voice small and childlike.

  He nodded and planted a kiss on her cheek. “Now let’s find Karla and get the fuck out of here.”

  * * *

  The thick velvet drapes drawn over the leaded glass windows inside Karla’s suite gave the appearance of nighttime when it was near noon. Red candles (burnt down to stumps) lit the bedroom with a soft, crimson glow.

  Karla and Jorgé, their bodies coiled together like two snakes among a mass of black satin, were too engaged in their raucous lovemaking to notice that they were not alone.

  The masked woman had used her own key to quietly enter the suite and now watched them from a corner of the room, her black clothing blending into the darkness. The mask and white blond hair caught the candlelight and glowed, seeming to float on its own within the black.

  Karla, wearing a white towel fashioned into a tight turban around her head and nothing else, moaned with pleasure underneath Jorgé, his body a muscular plank supporting itself on two strong arms as he fucked her with long, confident strokes. Then, without losing either entry or rhythm, they rotated—Karla on top now, each upward thrust of her lover’s hips more forceful than the last, producing fresh emissions of pleasure from her parted lips as she bounced and bucked, creating her own rhythm to the one he set.

  Joining their groans and sighs in a lewd symphony was the masked woman’s hoarse, muffled breathing. Her hand clutched tightly around the scalpel—its edge refracting the glow of soft candlelight into tiny prisms about the room like starlight falling on the lovers’ bodies as they thrashed on the bed.

  Nearing climax, but determined to get Karla there first, Jorgé began a three-pointed effort of upward thrusting cock, one hand on her clit, and the other massaging both breasts at once—like fingers flying across the neck of a Spanish guitar. Karla’s moans morphed into wild screams of pleasure. Her creamy skin glistened in the soft candlelight as she arched back and then bent forward, clamping her hungry mouth onto his.

  As the last of his cock’s deep thrusts drove it home, she screamed in ecstasy, throwing her head back and disengaging the towel which flew across the room and landed at the feet of the masked observer. A fall of dark hair, like a bolt of fine silk, unfurled to her waist.

  “Bianca,” Jorgé moaned, grabbing a fistful of her hair as he came inside her. “Oh, Bianca!”

  Detaching herself from her lover, Bianca rolled across the bed with a sigh and reached for a pack of cigarettes on the night table. She noticed the intruder and gasped.

  “Jesus Christ, Mother! How long have you been standing there?”

  * * *

  When they reached the lounge en route to Karla’s suite, Jenna stopped walking suddenly and collapsed on one of the sofas. Recognizing that she was in shock, Warren ran to the kitchen and returned with a carton of orange juice insisti
ng that she drink some. Jenna handed the carton back to him, and declaring with slow, slurred speech that she was okay immediately fell asleep, her head sinking into the thick cushions.

  Concerned she had a concussion—she looked abnormally pale, and the sudden fatigue was certainly a sign that something was wrong—Warren now realized how stupid they had been to not trek out of there as soon as they left the shed, while they still had the energy—Karla or no Karla. At least the police would be here by now straightening it all out.

  He considered going to Karla’s room alone, without Jenna. It was just down the hall a bit, but he too felt unable to move. He told himself he would only close his eyes for a moment, just a moment…

  * * *

  The real Karla—the world-renowned pop star, now the tragic masked figure in black—sat slumped on the foot of the bed, shoulders hunched with defeat. Her daughter Bianca, who had been impersonating her for years and Jorgé (Karla’s former lover) now scrambled to cover their nakedness.

  “Nice timing, Mother,” Bianca said, pulling a white silk chemise over her head. Jorgé stepped into black underwear and switch on the Tiffany lamp by the bed.

  Taking a long drag on her cigarette, Bianca—the very image of Karla as a young woman—now eyed her mother with impassive disdain. With her own dark hair and clear complexion, she looked no older than her twenty-one years. The blond wigs she wore as part of the disguise had been expertly crafted by one of Karla’s top designers, as had the make-up and wardrobe that added years of sophistication to her youthful face and figure.

  But now the grand scheme, impeccably planned to every detail for nearly a year, had failed. The weight of that failure showed in Karla’s bent and bony frame, prematurely aged from years of extreme dieting and ill-advised surgical procedures: the liposuction that had left her once flat abdomen lumpy and scarred, the oversized breast implants stacked too high beneath stretched-out skin. But it was her once lovely face and what she had done to it that was the real tragedy. The knowledge that it was her decision (motivated by vanity and fear alone) ate away at her spirit bit by bit, till there was nothing left of the woman who had once set out to conquer the world and succeeded.