City of Masks

by Daniel Hecht

  Ed was into technology, but he was not at all the proverbial nerd. He was too handsome, in a long-faced way, and his intelligence was by no means confined to machines. The tilt of his smile gave it away: the streak of sadness or resignation that came with knowing the human condition only too well. His lanky body, long face, and sandy hair gave him the look of a minor member of the British royal family, which he exploited to do an outrageous impersonation of Prince Charles.

  "How did the meeting with Beauforte go?"

  "He's sort of a smug son of a bitch. But I think there might be something for us there. I agreed to do a preliminary, got a retainer check. Full fee, you'll be happy to hear."

  "Great! Well, I should be done here in a week. I can go down there if you'd like, or we could both go — "

  "I thought maybe I'd get down there later this week," Cree said."Maybe before you return. I can clear the time." Edgar looked disappointed, so she explained: "He says his sister — she's the main witness - is very disturbed. I got the sense the family's only coming to us because they'll do anything to calm her down, she's really going pieces. Plus, I was thinking, here's the paying customer you said we needed, so it would be good to follow up right away . . ."

  Edgar nodded, unconvinced.

  "Okay," Cree admitted, "I got a feeling that we should move on this. A buzz. I don't know why." Still Ed said nothing, but a little ripple of concern passed over his forehead, and Cree decided to change the subject. "How about your end? What're you getting?"

  His face brightened, sheer enthusiasm for the hunt replacing his doubtfulness. "Multiple occurrences, multiple witnesses with excellent credibility. The entity appears to be a perseverating fragmentary, displaying both visual and auditory. A couple of reports of tactile, but those're from my least reliable witnesses."

  Cree nodded, and Edgar went on, using a shorthand vocabulary that in all the world only Cree would understand. A perseverating fragmentary was an entity with a limited repertoire of activities, an apparition appearing in the same place and doing the same motions again and again. They called it fragmentary because the entity was not a complete human personality, but a lingering, very limited mental construct. Such a manifestation was almost more the experience itself than a being — a disconnected mental and emotional matrix that somehow repetitively played out independently of a corporeal body or much of a self-aware consciousness. What people referred to as "ghosts" could range from merest shards, no more than a roaming impulse or hunger, to virtually complete personalities.

  That Ed's entity had been seen, heard, and maybe felt on several occasions by more than one person did suggest it would be a promising study. If it were perceivable by several senses, and was robust enough to be witnessed by several people, it would give Cree more to work with and possibly allow Edgar's equipment to register verifiable physical phenomena.

  "So what's on for tonight?" Cree asked.

  "Well, I'm going back to the site. I'll do some infrared and visible-light work. One of the witnesses has agreed to come with me and wear the polygraph setup, too."

  "She good-looking?"

  Edgar rolled his eyes, and the grin appeared. "She is, very definitely. But she's also thirty years older than me and happily married." Then his smile evaporated. "Actually, I'm not looking forward to it. The place bugs me. Creeps me out."

  "Any reason in particular?"

  Edgar's eyes moved to one side. "Just the feeling of the house. I'm not in your league, Cree, but I do have a couple of functional nerve endings."

  "I've noticed. I rely on it daily, Ed. Tell me about the feeling."

  A kink of trouble had formed between his eyebrows, and Edgar rubbed at it with both big hands as he tried to put words to the feeling."This . . . loneliness, I guess. Something very . . . stark there."

  Oh, yes, Cree thought. That.

  When she'd first started spending time in haunted places, she'd been as frightened as anyone else by the fear of scary things, the dark, the unknown — grisly deaths, nightmarish visions, awful secrets, moving shadows. That unrelenting sense of imminent danger. But you got a grip on that after a while. What you didn't get used to was the existential stuff:The scary things might spring out and hurt you or make you crazy, but the maw of loneliness Ed spoke of, that abyss of emptiness, could swallow your soul.

  They both came back from that. They talked some more about the Massachusetts entity and then about the equipment she'd need to take with her to New Orleans. Cree got on the radiophone and Ed walked her back into the storage area, showing her where to find everything. But he seemed increasingly reluctant, and at last she pointed it out to him.

  "You're not too happy with me going down there on my own, are you?"

  "I'm just thinking . . . why don't you come out here first? Help me finish this preliminary. I could use your insight. Maybe we could take an extra day to see the sights of Boston, then both go to New Orleans - "

  "I don't think the client can wait. Anyway, we'll have plenty of time to work on these together if we end up taking either case."

  She didn't mean it to, but that sounded cold, and Ed didn't answer right away. She was glad they weren't on the videophone now and couldn't see each other's faces. Edgar's desire for her company was sweet but poignant and difficult. Though he never imposed his feelings on her, he didn't try to hide them, either. He was a terrific person, and she gave him most of the credit for their ability to navigate daily through the complex of emotions, working as friends and business partners despite what amounted to a very unequal relationship.

  "I'm also a little worried about New Orleans," he admitted hesitantly.

  You in New Orleans."

  "Why's that?" Knowing why. She got defensive and angry when this stuff got stirred up.

  "I've been there. Great town - 'The Big Easy.' Fun party town. Rich and colorful history, a great mix of cultural traditions. But it's got some places you should probably avoid. More than most cities, Cree."

  He wasn't talking about bad neighborhoods. New Orleans was well known among legitimate parapsychologists and sensationalist amateurs alike as a place where some particularly grisly things had taken place. The horror of LaLaurie House, where Madame LaLaurie tortured and butchered dozens of her slaves in an attic room, was only one of many examples.

  "I'm fine. I'm strong now, Ed," Cree said. Then it caught up with her and she bristled at his concern. "I think I can probably handle it."

  Now he coughed, cleared his throat, feeling awkward. "Of course! It's just - you've been a little, you know, susceptible recently, more than usual . . . Shit, Cree, I can't always figure out how I'm supposed to - "

  "Yeah."

  She said it gruffly, and they both fell silent. On one level, she was doing great. But, yes, she had been more "susceptible" recently. Why?Maybe something to do with Mike, this time of year, she wasn't sure. And yes, she could imagine that it would be tough for Ed, tiptoeing around her vulnerability, trying to protect her without treating her like an invalid. Still, it pissed her off. Not at Ed, he was doing his best. At herself. At the complexities of life. At the reminder that she was fragile, thirty-eight and single, a perpetual widow with a lot of unresolved crap. Why did she get so tough on Ed when he brought it up? Maybe because neither he nor Joyce fully understood that, yes, she had to be careful, but she also had to resist, had to fight back. You had to push the boundaries and hope you got tougher as time went on.

  "Where'd you go, Cree?"

  "I'm here."

  Which was so obviously not true that he had no choice but to roll with it. "Right," he said, with more resignation than sarcasm.

  Cree had drifted back toward his office, and though she was out of range of the videophone camera she could see his earnest face in the monitor. He looked downcast and worried. He clicked a ballpoint pen in and out, inspecting the tip, then looked hopefully up at his own monitor. Still not seeing Cree, he looked away and rubbed his forehead again.

  "You take care of yourself, though, okay
?" Edgar had pivoted his chair, and there was something touching about seeing him in profile. Like watching him talking to himself. "You'll keep in close touch with Joyce and me, right? Call in the cavalry if you need us?"

  "Yeah," Cree said again.

  And then she hurried over to the videophone, wanting to make things better between them, but by the time she got there he'd hung up, and now it was her turn to look at the bland gray-blue of an empty screen.

  3

  DEIRDRE DIDN'T ANSWER WHEN Cree tried to return her call, so after leaving a message she decided to stop over there on her way home. A dose of normalcy seemed in order, and anyway she was feeling something like a nutritional deficit after going four days without seeing the twins.

  Her sister had married a carpenter who when he wasn't renovating other people's homes had gradually restored their own, a fine Craftsman-style house in the heart of the Queen Anne district. Between Don's carpentering and Deirdre's teaching, they did well, and their place was something of a testament to building on what you've got, sticking with it, in both marriage and domicile. The house was pleasingly proportioned, with ivory clapboards and goldenrod trim, fronted by a small yard exploding with rhododendrons and California lilacs: a place loved and loved in.

  Cree went up the walk between mounds of blossoms to the front porch. No one answered when she rang the bell, but she could hear muffled music through the door. She banged on the glass for a while and was glad to see feet and then legs and then all of Zoe skipping down the stairs, a slender girl with chin-length yellow hair that clashed with her Sonics jersey.

  "Hi, Aunt Cree."

  "Hi, Niece Zoe."

  Following Zoe into the living room, she wondered how those straight hips managed to hold up low-riding bell bottoms at all. She tossed her purse onto the couch and then threw herself after it, immediately feeling better.

  "Come here," Cree said. "Gimme some girl bones, kid." She made a grab and managed to snag Zoe, who didn't resist much as Cree pulled her onto her lap and hugged her. Both girls had started to shoot up and were skinny as witches' brooms, all angles and ticklish skin. Now Zoe's butt bones dug painfully into Cree's thigh, sharp as two elbows. Cree inhaled the sweet smell of her as she rocked her back and forth.

  "So where's your mom?"

  "She went to Larry's Market to get some fish and stuff. We're being responsible."

  They probably were, Cree agreed. Ten years old, it was at least a possibility. "And where's your sister?"

  "HYACINTH!" Zoe exploded like a trench mortar. "She's upstairs. HY!" Zoe leaned away so she could finger one of Cree's earrings, inspecting it with a critical expression. "She's got her music on. HYA-CINTH! YOUR AUNT HAS COME TO SEE YOU!"

  Cree's ears rang. "You know, I never really noticed it before, but you got quite the voice on you," she said. "Especially from this close."

  "I get plenty of practice, believe me." Zoe tossed her head contemptuously toward the stairs. An indictment of her sister.

  They were supposedly identical twins, and were both blonde, skinny, moon-faced, verbal, and vivid. But they were not at all alike. Hyacinth seemed to Cree like a cheerful garden of pansies, cosmos, and marigolds on a breezy day, her moods varying but only the way the flowers sometimes toss their heads in the wind and sometimes go still, come vibrantly alight in the sun and then dim as clouds passed over. Zoe was more like fireworks, intense and intermittent, searing colors bursting aloft, etching the sky with brilliant trails and flashes and as quickly fading into utter darkness.

  Hyacinth came into the living room, barefooted and wearing a yellow dress. She frowned at Zoe. "I'm not deaf," she said primly. "I just wanted to hear the end of that song. Hi, Aunt Cree."

  "She actually likes Britney Spears," Zoe said, appalled.

  "I do not! Just that one song."

  Cree gathered Hyacinth onto her lap, holding the two of them like a big, loose armful of reeds and twigs, awkward and pokey. Too big to fit, now. For a moment they jostled and squirmed, and then Zoe broke loose and went to sit on a chair nearby.

  "So, have you been finding any ghosts recently?" Zoe asked.

  Cree thought for a moment. She had never tried to conceal what she did from the twins, but she made it a policy not to get too deep with them. You could gloss over it somewhat, but in the end you were dealing with death, and what happened after death, and the often sad and scary compulsions and fixations that lived on, and living people's fear.

  The girls didn't need all that.

  "Well, actually, I wanted to ask you two for some advice. On one of my cases." Cree decided that if she didn't mention names, telling them wouldn't really constitute a breach of confidentiality. "A very nice old woman came into my office today with a most unusual request."

  That got their interest: They both loved a challenge, a problem to solve. Hyacinth slid off Cree's lap and sat sideways on the couch so she could see Cree better. She bent her long stems under her and tugged her skirt hem over her knees. "What was it?" she asked.

  "She wanted me to make contact with a loved one who had died? And before I could tell her what we really do, she showed me his picture. And it was a dog."

  Different responses: Zoe rolled her eyes, Hyacinth made an expression of sympathy.

  "Do dogs . . . can there be ghosts of dogs?" Hyacinth asked.

  Cree shrugged. "I've never encountered one. But I don't see why not."

  "So what are you going to do?"

  "That's what I wanted to ask you guys. She was such a nice person. I wanted to help her, but I couldn't think of how."

  "I know how," Zoe said. "You could do this, like, seance, and pretend you'd made contact with the dog. You could tell her the dog's ghost was happy and still loved her and would stay with her a Ways."

  "Hmm. Yeah. But I don't like to lie to people. And then if she believed me, she'd want me to do it again, and pretty soon — "

  Zoe scowled. "You could just tell her to get a new dog. I mean, that's what she needs!"

  "No," Hyacinth said immediately. "That would be disloyal! And Aunt Cree couldn't suggest it without offending her, like her precious dog could be so . . . replaceable. She doesn't want just any dog, she misses that one."

  "That's what I thought, too," Cree agreed. "You can see it's a quandary."

  The girls put their chins in their hands and thought about it, taking it on face value, in their different ways allying themselves instantly with solving the problem. Cree looked at them and loved them fiercely. There had been times when she'd envied Deirdre her marriage, her living husband, her relatively normal life, and most of all these two. In tougher moments her longing hurt and knotted up dark inside, but more often it was like this: acute gratitude that these two girls were in her life. The best imaginable nieces.

  They spent a few minutes coming up with suggestions of increasing complexity and unlikeliness, and then the phone rang. Hyacinth bounced off the couch to go to the kitchen to answer it.

  Zoe watched her leave the room, then turned to Cree. "That's her boyfriend. You can tell by how fast she jumped up."

  "Boyfriend! Really? At ten years old?" Cree could just see down the hall to the kitchen, where Hyacinth leaned in the doorway. She had cradled the phone between ear and shoulder and was speaking quietly into the receiver, very involved, swinging the coiled cord like a jump rope.

  Zoe nodded. "At least I think it's a boy. But he looks like some kind of, like, rodent. The sad part is, I think she's in love with him because that's what he's like. She's so softhearted. 'Mommy, look, he followed me home, can we keep him?' " An acid caricature of a cutesy kid. "Pathetic."

  Cree pretended to peer at her doubtfully. "Twins, huh. Which one were you, again?"

  "Very funny," Zoe said acidly.

  "You really are a menace, you know that?"

  Zoe just nodded again in sober agreement. " 'Me-nace 2 So-cie-ty,' "she intoned. Then she sniffed indignantly, and her eyes widened in accusation. "You should talk!"

  "Really like a
rodent?

  "I can hear you guys perfectly, by the way," Hyacinth called down the hall.

  When Deirdre came in, banging through the door with a double armload of groceries, purse, key ring, newspaper, Cree and the girls took the bags and they all went to the kitchen to put things away. The two cats came to get underfoot as they opened and slammed cupboards and drawers and refrigerator.

  "Leave the fish out," Deirdre ordered. "That's dinner. And one of those lemons, Hy."

  "The girls were very responsible," Cree told her. "I can personally attest."

  "This old lady wants Aunt Cree to hunt for the ghost of a dog," Zoe said.

  Another minute of chaos and Deirdre paused to look her daughters up and down. "You know, girls, it's awfully crowded in here. I think Cree and I have this under control. Why don't you go get started on your homework and let us catch up. I'll call you when it's time to set the table." She turned back to the cupboard to stack cans of cat food.

  The twins left, carrying the cats. Cree folded the shopping bags as Deirdre put on an apron and began washing vegetables. The music began again upstairs, this time the insistent, battering beat of Zoe's rap. Cree leaned against the counter, watching her sister's face in the mirror over the sink as they conversed. Deirdre was thirty-six, two years younger and, even in the thick-soled jogging shoes she always put on after work, three inches shorter than Cree. Now she was dressed in her teaching clothes, a white blouse and a practical floral skirt with a faint handprint of chalk dust on one thigh, a silk scarf at her throat, looking very much the middle school teacher at the end of a long day. Cree knew from experience that people seeing them side by side would recognize them as sisters but wouldn't be able to say which was older. Deirdre had prettier, more delicate features, made dramatic by darker hair and brows, but her face showed deeper lines of both worry and laughter, the paradoxical marks of teaching and motherhood. When they'd been in their teens, Cree had often felt largish and plain by comparison. Later, she'd discovered that men could fall just as hard for a fuller-bodied woman, and that had evened things out.