Masques IV
Page 6
“Whereas you are merely birds,” I continued, “and scavenger birds at that, I am a human being. I am not only smarter than you are, I am stronger. If you attack me, I will simply shield my eyes with my arm and walk away, and soon other humans will see me and come to my aid.”
I took another long pull at my cigar and looked away from them, as if bored.
“I guarantee you,” I went on, “that I will not panic. I will survive, merely scratched, to see that you, and a great number of your kin, pay dearly for attacking your betters. Pay painfully. Pay with your lives.”
I paused a little in order that my words might sink into their reptilian little heads, and then I began to walk casually along the clearing path, gazing upwards and smoking dreamily as I did so. I did not even watch to see how they slunk, in cowed confusion, out of my way.
The next morning, during breakfast, while I was having my second coffee and Geraldine her second herbal tea, I proposed brightly that we take a short row in the cove. I approached the whole thing in a very airy, casual fashion, but made it clear I would be saddened and a little hurt if she did not accept my whimsical invitation. Naturally I knew the whole idea would strike her as childish and that she would do it only to indulge me. She, herself, would never dream of instigating anything childish, of course. That, in our marriage, was understood to be my function.
To my relief—one never knew with Geraldine—never—she accepted with almost no perceptible hesitation. She even suggested we do it without further ado, seeing as how the sun was bright and the waters of the cove presently smooth and placid. We rose from the table and went directly to the gaily beflagged pier.
We were the first arrivals for water sports that morning and the little puce boat with its gold stripe bobbed fetchingly as it waited for us in the water. In a rather neat piece of seamanship, I managed to get both Geraldine and myself aboard it without her realizing how tiltable a craft it was. Smiling and chatting about how extremely pleasant everything was, I rowed us to an isolated part of the cove behind a rise of the shore which put us out of sight of our fellow vacationers.
Once I had reached this point I let go of the oars, took firm hold of the sides of the boat, and gave it the tipping motion I had practiced with such great success the night before. I was highly discomfited to discover that the little craft had somehow achieved a new seaworthiness.
“Hughie,” she asked, “what on earth are you trying to do?”
I looked up at her, perhaps just a little wild-eyed, and suddenly realized that it must be Geraldine’s considerable bulk which was stabilizing the boat. I would have to exert a good deal more effort if I was to upset it successfully. I began to shake the boat again, this time with markedly increased determination. I was uncomfortably aware that I had begun to sweat noticeably and that damp blotches were beginning to spread from the armpits of my striped blazer.
“Hughie,” she said, a vague alarm starting to dawn in her eyes, “whatever you are doing, you must stop it now!”
I glared at her and began to shake the boat with a new energy verging on desperation.
“I’ve asked you not to call me Hughie,” I told her through clenched teeth. “For years I’ve asked you not to call me Hughie!”
She frowned at me, just a little uncertainly, and had opened her mouth to say something further when, with a gratifyingly smooth, swooping motion, the little golden boat finally tilted over.
For a moment all was blue confusion and bubbles, but then my head broke water and I saw the boat bobbing upside down on the sparkling surface of the cove a yard or two away from me. There was no sign whatsoever of Geraldine so I ducked my head down under the water, peered this way and that, and was pleased to observe a dim, sinking flurry of skirts and kicking feet speedily disappearing into the darker blues far below the bright and cheery green hues flickering just under the surface.
I swam up to the little inverted craft, took hold of it, surveyed the coastline to see if it was empty of witnesses, and saw that this was, indeed, the case. Several gulls were circling overhead, but when I glared up at them and shook my fist in their direction, they flew away with an almost furtive air. I cried for help once or twice for effect, then pushed off from the side of the boat and swam for the shore where I staggered, gasping, up onto the hotel grounds into the view of my astonished fellow guests.
At first the investigation proceeded almost exactly along the lines I had envisioned it would. The general reaction toward me was, of course, one of great pity and everyone, the police included, treated me quite gently. It never appeared to occur to anyone that the business was anything other than a tragic accident.
But then things began to take an increasingly odd turning as the authorities, after a highly confident commencement, found themselves unable to locate Geraldine’s cadaver, and by the time I was judged able to sit warmly wrapped on the veranda and overlook their activities, they had become seriously discouraged.
I watched them as they carefully and conscientiously trailed their hooks and nets up and down the cove and in the waters beyond, observing their scuba divers bob and sink repeatedly to no effect, and seeing them all grow increasingly philosophical as Geraldine’s large body continued to evade them. There was more and more talk of riptides and rapid ocean currents and prior total vanishments.
Towards the end of this period I was on the veranda consuming a particularly subtle crepes fruits de mer, and rather regretting it had almost come to an end, when the chain of events began which have led to my present distasteful predicament.
Startled by a sudden flurry of noise, I looked up to see a large bird perched on the railing which I had no difficulty in recognizing as the general of the gulls. As I gaped at the creature, he hopped from his perch over to my table, gave me a fierce glare, dropped something which landed with a clink upon my plate, and then flew away emitting maniacal, gullish bursts of laughter.
When I saw what the disgusting beast had dropped amidst the remains of my crepes my appetite departed completely and has not, to be frank, ever been quite the same since. I recognized the object instantly for what it was—the wedding ring I had given my late wife—but to be absolutely sure, I rubbed the ring’s interior clear of sauce with my napkin and read what she had caused to be engraved there years ago: “Geraldine and Hughie, forever!”
I carefully wiped the remaining sauce from the ring, and deposited it in the pocket of my jacket. I heard another burst of crazed, avian laughter and, looking up, observed the general of the gulls leering at me from a far railing of the veranda. I determinedly returned to my crepes and made a great show of appearing to enjoy the remainder of my dinner, even to the extent of having an extra cafe filtre after dessert. I then strolled in a languid fashion down to the beach for a little constitutional before retiring.
It was a quiet, clear night. The Mediterranean was smooth and silvery under the full moon, and its waves rolled softly and almost soundlessly into the sand. I gazed up at the sky, checking it for birds, and when I was absolutely sure there were none to be seen, I threw the ring out over the water with all the strength I could muster.
Imagine my astonishment when with a great rush of air the general of the gulls soared out over my shoulder from behind me and, executing what I must admit was a remarkably skillful and accurate dive, reached out with his orange claws and plucked the ring from the air inches above the surface of the water. Emitting a final, lunatic laugh of triumph, he flew up into the moonlight and out of sight.
That night I was awakened from a very troubled sleep by a sound extremely difficult to describe. It was a soft, steady, rhythmic patting, and put me so much in mind of a demented audience enthusiastically applauding with heavily-mittened hands that as I pushed back my covers and lurched to my feet in the darkness of my room, my still half-dreaming mind produced such a vivid vision of a madly-clapping throng in some asylum auditorium that I could observe, with remarkable clarity, the various desperate grimaces on the faces of the nearer inmates.
There, hanging in the air in the moonlight directly outside my window, was the large, sagging body of my wife, Geraldine. She looked huge, positively enormous, like some kind of horrible balloon. Water poured copiously in silvery fountains from her white lace dress and her bulging eyes, also entirely white, gaped out like prisoners staring through the dark, lank strands of hair which hung down in glistening bars across her dripping, bloated face.
The sound I had heard was being made by the wings of the hundreds of gulls who were holding Geraldine aloft by means of their claws and beaks which they had sunk deeply into her skin and dress, both of which seemed to be stretching dangerously near to the ripping point. She was surrounded by a nimbus of the awful creatures, each one flapping its wings in perfect rhythm with its neighbors in a miracle of cooperative effort.
Sitting on her head, his claws digging almost covetously into her brow, was the gull general. He watched me staring at him and at the tableau he had wrought with obvious satisfaction for a long moment, and then he must have given some command for the gulls began to move in unison and the lolling, pale bulk of Geraldine swayed backwards from the window and then, lifted by the beating of gleaming, multitudinous wings, it wafted upward and inland, over the dark tiles of the roof of the hotel and out of my line of vision.
I had breakfast brought up to my room the next morning for I anticipated, quite correctly as it turned out, a potentially awkward visit from the police and preferred it to take place in reasonably private surroundings.
I had barely finished my first cup of coffee and half a brioche when they arrived, shuffling into my room with an air of obvious uncertainty, the inspector looking at me with the downward, shifting gaze which authority tends to adopt when it is not quite sure it is authority.
It seemed that a local farmer hunting just after dawn for a strayed cow had come across the body of Geraldine. It had been tucked into a small culvert on his property and been rather ineffectually covered with branches and leaves and little clods of earth. One particularly unpleasant feature about the corpse was that it had been brutally stripped of the jewelry which Geraldine had been seen to be wearing that morning. Her fingers and wrists and neck had been deeply scratched by the thief or thieves which had clawed her gold from her; the lobes of both her ears had been cruelly torn.
The police could not have been more courteous with me. Their community’s main source of income originates from well-to-do vacationers, and the arrest and possible execution of one of them—myself, for instance—because of murder would be bound to produce all sorts of unfortunate and discouraging publicity. They were vastly relieved at the taking of Geraldine’s baubles since it suggested not only the sort of common robber they could easily understand and pursue enthusiastically, it gave their imagined culprit a clear motive for spiriting the body away from the water and later trying to hide it.
Taking my cue from them, I confessed myself astonished and saddened to learn that my wife’s drowned corpse had been so grossly violated and wished them luck in apprehending the villain responsible as soon as possible. The lot of us, from differing motives, were considerably pleased to have the affair resolved so amicably, and after shaking hands all around and giving them permission to look over my suite—an action understood by us all to be a mere formality—I took my leave of them and assumed my present situation on the veranda.
Just now I’ve noticed that in the midst of the latest shift of gulls taking their places to observe me from the overlooking tree is the general himself, and since I gather that signifies that something of considerably import is about to transpire, I’ve cast a sidewise glance at the doors opening out onto the terrace from the hotel’s lobby.
Sure enough, I see the approaching police, all of them wearing expressions of unhappiness and great regret. Worse, I see the unmistakable glint of gold in the inspector’s cupped hands. The gulls obviously paid another, quieter, visit to my rooms last night in order to leave my dead wife’s pretty things behind in some craftily-selected hiding place. Perhaps the general did it personally. It would be like him.
Now I have risen, a demitasse held lightly in one hand, and strolled slowly over to the railing of the veranda. There is a considerable drop to the rocks below and if I tumble directly from here to there it will surely put an quick and effective end to a very rapidly developing unpleasant situation so far as I am concerned.
I have stepped up onto the railing which is a very solid structure built wide enough to hold trays of nightcaps or canapés and any number of leaning lovers’ elbows. The police are calling out to me in rather frantic tones and I hear the soles of their large shoes scuffling and scraping on the stones of the veranda as they rush desperately in my direction.
My eyes and the general’s are firmly locked as I step out into space. He lifts his wings and, with an easy beat or two, he rises from his branch.
Our paths cross in midair.
He can fly, but I can only fall.
The Coming of Night,
The Passing of Day
Ed Gorman
The coming of Ed Gorman to the horror and mystery scene has been like the passage of the swiftest kind of day: Sunny and pleasant from the moment one rises through the busiest, most interesting of hours. One moment, it seems, Gorman was just another solid new mystery hand who turned out horror novels on the side, usually bylined Daniel Ransom. The next instant he was the author of Nightmare Child and The Forsaken (as Ransom), The Autumn Dead, A Cry of Shadows, and Night Kills, co-editor of the Stalkers, Dark Crimes and Black Lizard anthologies (under his own name)—not to forget the vastly enjoyable Mystery Scene magazine.
Not that it seemed fast to Gorman, who is a lot like his rising career: Pleasantly sunny, interesting and productive, versatile enough to create praised short fiction such as “Drifter” in Masques III and western romps (Death Ground; Blood Game). He and his writer wife Carol (Chelsea is one of her Young Adult novels staying in print) comprise the first couple I’ve known in a while to make me think of them as, precisely, “swell folks.” Perhaps it’s because Ed’s unpretentious enough to speak of his limitations (“in longer books . . . I get too concerned about the language and not enough about the plot”), or because he is one who grew up in “violent circumstances” and has had “to fight for dignity and respect.”
The quotes come from an interview with this fine writer in Cemetery Dance (Summer 1990) where he also discussed the darkly serious nature of some of his later work. The same very personal, bittersweet element that we admire in Ed Gorman so much is what will make his new story, written just for Masques IV, stick in most readers’ minds.
Penny knew Mr. Rigler’s schedule pretty well. After all, Mr. Rigler’s eleven-year-old daughter Louise happened to be Penny’s best friend. So Penny knew just when to do it, just when to walk down the
alley, just when to climb the slanting covered stairs that led up to the rear apartment, just when to find Mr. Rigler in the wide, sagging double bed where he slept off the hangovers he inflicted on himself after working the night shift at Raylon Manufacturing.
Penny—dressed in a white blouse and jeans and a pair of Keds (Mom always saying “Jesus Christ, kid, you think I’m made outta fucking money?” whenever Penny brought up the subject of Reeboks)—Penny moved through the noonday heat, pretty and shy as one of the soft blue butterflies she liked to lie on the grass sometimes and watch.
On her back was the red nylon pack she carried to school every day. Inside it smelled of the baloney sandwiches and Ho-Hos Mom always packed for her lunch.
She turned off the gravel alley and into the small junkyard of rusting cars that belonged to Mr. Rigler. He was always promising his wif
e and daughter that he was going to clean up the back yard someday—“Get ridda them eyesores once and for all”—but that was sort of like his promise that he was someday going to stop beating his wife and daughter, too. He hadn’t kept that promise, either.
A week ago Mr. Rigler had broken Louise’s arm in three places. He’d first hit her in the mouth with his fist and then shoved her over an ottoman. She’d tripped and smashed the arm. Mr. Rigler was pretty drunk, of course. There was so much shouting and yelling that half the block ran into the alley to see what was going on and then two cop cars came screaming down the street and the cops jumped out and they pushed Mr. Rigler around pretty hard, even though he was so drunk he could hardly stand up; and then Mrs. Rigler (who’d been screaming for them to arrest him) started crying and saying how it was all an accident, and the cops looked real frustrated and mad and said you mean you aren’t going to press charges, and Mrs. Rigler kept crying and holding on to her husband like he was some kind of prize she didn’t want to lose and saying no, she wouldn’t press charges because it was all an accident and if those fuckin’ cops knew what was good for them they’d get off her fuckin’ property and right now. So the cops had left and Mrs. Rigler had taken Louise to the emergency ward.
Next day, Louise came over and showed Penny her cast and talked about how weird it felt to have something like this on your arm and how much her arm hurt and how she’d had to get five different X-rays and how cute the young doctor was. Then she’d started crying, the
way she usually did after her father had beaten her or her mother, started sobbing, and Penny had taken her in her arms and held her and said over and over that sonofabitch that sonofabitch, and then Louise had said Why couldn’t something happen to her father the way it had to Mr. Menetti, who used to beat his wife and child just the same way. But then one day they found Mr. Menetti burned char black in his bed. Seems he’d been drunk and smoking and had dropped his cigarette and the whole bed had gone up in flames.