Masques IV

by J N Williamson

They told of things he’d never heard of in all his career as a law officer.

  It had happened—was supposed to have happened—Wednesday nights. Those interminable Wednesdays when he had all night patrol duty. But the children said those were the nights he did things to them and to the animals. He had no alibi—why would a sheriff, doing his job as he was supposed to do, need an alibi?—and the children were so sincere, so detailed, so . . . right.

  Except none of it ever happened.

  After a while, as the trial dragged on (one of the longest trials in California history), he gave up. He didn’t know how to answer the child abuse experts with their degrees and their graphs and their scientific studies and their videotapes of children identifying him as the ringleader of the “cult.”

  That’s what the newspapers and the experts called it, a “cult.”

  It seemed so weak just to say that it never happened.

  But the children never lie. “The children never lie.” Over and over and over again the numerous official experts agreed: the children never lie.

  The verdict was guilty on all counts.

  The prison sentence didn’t matter to him. He was past feeling. What did matter was that the producers of the TV movie about him and Valencia County didn’t pay Addie a dime for the rights to the story. They didn’t have to. He was a convicted child molester, and the facts were on record. So the dream was over. Addie was going to live the rest of her life in Valencia County. Eventually she would die there, a broken woman with a broken soul.

  Somewhere inside, Clint knew that he was crying for her and for him and for their destroyed lives. But the tears were so deep that his eyes were never moistened. He doubted he would shed a tear again.

  James Hutchings, twenty-seven year old accountant, was undergoing hypnosis in the office of therapist Jon Sherman, trying to determine the actual source of his post-traumatic stress syndrome disorder. Not that the source was ever in great question: as a child, Hutchings had been one of the many victims of the Valencia County child sexual abuse ring. Not only had his initial molestation experiences been traumatic, but the subsequent trial of the defendants, which lasted for more than two years—with him testifying before the world via television cameras and in open court—had further traumatized him greatly.

  Afterward, he’d gone on to a seemingly “normal” high school and university life, become licensed as a top flight C.P.A., and earned, at a very early age, respect for his professional accomplishments.

  But the post-traumatic syndrome had surfaced three years ago: nightmares, impotence, hallucinations, eating disorders, addictive behavior, suddenly stressed interpersonal relationships. His marriage failed, his two children were being raised three thousand miles away, and Hutchings couldn’t seem to get it together in any phase of his life other than work.

  Nine-to-five he was “normal”—brilliant, actually—and every other hour Hutchings was a walking disaster case. He’d tried psychotherapy; it hadn’t helped. He’d tried all the different groups which had helped so many, but they had resulted in only cosmetic improvements.

  He was strongly considering suicide and his turn to hypnotherapy was the very last try Hutchings would make to regain his mental health. If this failed, he had already decided to kill himself.

  “And now that you are completely relaxed, more relaxed than you have ever been before, I want you to breathe slowly and deeply. Take a deep, deep, slow breath and then hold it, hold it . . . now exhale slowly . . . slowly . . . slowly. Exhale completely. Inhale deeply again.

  “I want you to go back into your existence, Jim, back through your entire history. I want you find the source of your present troubles. Be there, but realize that you are actually here with me, right now. It is safe for you to be there mentally, at the source of your problems, and tell me what you are experiencing.

  “Where are you, Jim?”

  “In a . . . a barn, I think. There’s hay, and there are cows and chickens . . . yes, it has to be a barn.”

  “Good. That’s very good. Now tell me what’s happening.”

  “It’s night. It’s dark outside, it’s cold. I’m cold. I’m so cold.”

  “Why are you cold, Jim?”

  “Because I don’t have any clothes on. Oh, I’m scared! I’m so scared! It’s the night of the ritual, and I’m supposed to be in it.”

  “What ritual, Jim?”

  “The wedding of the devil. The devil is going to get married tonight, and I’m to be a gift for him on his wedding night. They’re going to do . . . things! . . . to me. I’m so cold and I’m so scared.”

  “That’s okay, Jim. You aren’t really there. You’re here, in Los Angeles, and you’re safe. It’s okay to relive what went on back then, but realize that you’re safe now and no one is going to do anything to you. Do you know you’re safe?”

  “Yeah. Um . . . uh, nobody looks right. Everybody looks different. Sheriff Lansdale is here but he doesn’t look like he does now. He’s wearing a cape and his hair is different. And he’s got a big scar on the side of his cheek. He never had a scar when I knew him, but he has a scar, a real big, ugly scar. Why didn’t he have one when I was a kid? But he had to have a scar, because that’s when I knew him . . .”

  “That’s okay, Jim. Don’t worry about the scar. Let’s go to something else. I want to get you out of that barn. Let’s go to your house. What do you see in your house?”

  “Uh . . . it’s my house, I know that. But it’s just one room! It’s made of stones, and there’s straw on the floor where we sleep, and a fire in one corner, and the walls are all black where the smoke goes. I don’t understand! I know this is my house, but it isn’t the house I grew up in!”

  “That’s okay, Jim. Don’t worry about the discrepancies. Let’s just go with what you’re getting. Is your mother in the house?”

  “Yes, she’s coming in the door. She’s got roots in her hands—she’s all dirty. She’s been out digging roots for us to eat. She looks like she’s never taken a bath in her life! And she’s got scars all over her face—the pox, I think. And she’s dressed funny. She’s got on a long skirt and her hair is all wrapped up in a cloth and she smells bad—oh, my God, does that woman stink!”

  “Jim, how old are you?”

  “Fourteen. I know ’cause it’s time for me to get married. My pa’s arranged for me to marry the girl from the next estate. We’re going to get married on Whitsun, and then I won’t have to be in the rituals anymore.”

  There was a long moment of silence, which only the hypnotist noticed. When Jim Hutchings was fourteen, Sheriff Lansdale had already been in police custody for over five years. And the boy certainly had never been part of an arranged marriage at that age. A thought . . .

  “Jim, can you tell me what year it is?”

  “It’s the tenth year of the reign of our king, Edward of Caernarvon. We had the celebration last month.”

  “Jim—what country are you in?”

  “England, of course. What country do you think King Edward rules? Are you French? Are you an enemy of our king?” Hutchings was moving about on the couch, obviously disturbed, completely involved in his hypnotic experience.

  “No, Jim, I’m definitely not an enemy. I’m your friend. I’m going to check on something and, while I’m checking, you just see whatever it is you want to see. I’ll be right back.”

  He went over to his bookcase to pull out a pocket encyclopedia. The list of English monarchs was, Sherman was grateful to see, complete. King Edward II (Edward of Caernarvon) had ruled from 1307 to 1327.

  Over six hundred years ago.

  The standing room only crowd in the packed hotel auditorium was silent, totally involved in the words Jon Sherman, Ph.D., was speaking. It was the best attended lecture in the history of the conventions of the American Association of Child Abuse Professionals. Reporters and news crews clustered in the aisles and in front of the dais and only the insistent clicking of Nikons punctuated the hypnotist’s amplified voice.

&nb
sp; “And so what I’m saying to you, fellow professionals, is that our knowledge of the human potential is so limited even today, that often we don’t know what we assume we have already scientifically established.

  “I have now regressed all twenty-six of the people who, as children, were involved with the Valencia County child sexual abuse ring. Every one of these adults relived a lifetime in the target year 1317, near Lancaster, England—where they were, indeed, victims of such a ring. According to historical documents which I have carefully researched, a severe famine existed in England during this period. Worship of the devil was considered by many to be a way to bring about the end of the famine. These victims all agree that the person you know as ex-Sheriff Clinton Lansdale—as well as the storekeeper, the music teacher, the mail carrier, the doctor and all the others—were also involved in this ancient ring of devil worshippers.

  “It may well be true that ‘the children never lie.’ But I put the question to you: Are we, as a modern society, prepared to punish people for what they did hundreds or even thousands of years ago? Is that our responsibility? Because, while I have no doubt that these people did molest these children, I also have no doubt that this mass molestation took place across the Atlantic Ocean over six hundred years ago.

  “And I strongly suggest that when we, as professionals, use advanced psychiatric techniques—some of which border dangerously close to the methods used to brainwash political prisoners—to access the memory banks of children or adults, we may be obtaining far more information than we are capable of dealing with. We may be dooming people who are innocent in the present, but whose guilty pasts have not been forgotten by their victims.”

  Clinton Lansdale, California penitentiary prisoner number 344187, read the cover stories in Time and Newsweek with great interest. Now, at last, he knew for sure he wasn’t crazy. He wasn’t angry at the system because he knew, as a lifelong law officer, that guilty people must pay for their crimes. After six hundred years, he was paying the price for his.

  He got out a piece of prison stationery to begin a letter to Jon Sherman. He knew the prison authorities would allow him to be hypnotized by a qualified hypnotherapist, especially one as famous as Sherman was now. It might gain him a new trial, and a new verdict. Hollywood was sure to be interested. There would be a lot of money after all—and at last, Addie could buy the trailer in San Diego. She could live in it even if he couldn’t.

  His lips curved upward into a smile as he envisioned the ocean as it looked from the yard of Number 15-A. He could see the gulls swooping across the sky, hear their cries as they searched the beach for food.

  It was going to be one hell of a story.

  The Other Woman

  Lois Tilton

  Few things can be more satisfying to an anthologist than discovering a writer who clearly possesses a slightly off-center imagination, the talent to get a really unusual premise on paper, and the intelligence to respond professionally to the editor who expresses genuine interest in his or her work.

  With a novel already in print (Vampire Winter, 1990) and horror/dark fantasy fiction in Weird Tales and Women of Darkness II, Lois Tilton may not qualify fully as my discovery but I’d be proud to make the claim stand up. Certainly “her work” is the term since I met Lois at World Fantasy Convention in ’90, not far from her home in Glen Ellyn, Illinois. She requested a try at getting into this book, I asked her to submit “a different sort of story, 2,500 words or fewer in length,” and that’s what she did—

  And more. Because “The Other Woman” is about the kind of person implied by the title and it’s so inventive, poignant, surprising, and so . . . well, different . . . that I asked permission to hold it for a fifth Masques. Within three weeks, though, the subtle force of the tale was haunting me so much I realized it belonged in this book, now. Wild horses won’t make me say more about it except to add that you may want to glance back at Lois Tilton’s title when you’ve read it and consider all the ramifications.

  I lie naked on the bed, wet hair covering my face. I can’t see, and I panic for a second until I discover I can lift my hand to brush it away. It’s time, again.

  I can hear my mother’s cold silence in the hallway: the disapproving footsteps that stop just outside my door, then move on. “Why do you keep doing this to yourself?” she always asks. “He’s a married man, almost twice your age. Don’t you have any shame?”

  The warm glow from the shower is fading, my skin prickles with the chill, and I get up, wrap my robe around me and switch on the hair dryer, filling the silence with the rush of heated air. I can’t argue about it with her. I know she’s only thinking of me, but she just can’t understand how it is, what we have to go through just to be together. Even this way.

  I shake out my hair, halfway dry already. My face is a little flushed from the hair dryer’s heat, and I turn it off for a second to look into the mirror, lightly brushing a finger across my cheek, the smoothness of the skin. With makeup, the faded scars are almost invisible.

  “I’m pretty,” I tell myself, still not quite believing in the miracle. His gift, the money to pay for the treatments. So much I owe him, I think, finishing my hair and shaking it out so it flows down my back the way he likes it. I dress slowly, for him, as if he were here watching me. The panties, real silk, so sheer they reveal more than they hide—I feel shameless and love how I feel. I won’t wear a bra or slip tonight; the fabric of the dress caresses my bare skin, glides sensuously across the silk.

  Earrings, the diamond pendant—I never asked for such things, but he likes to see me wearing them. I look at my watch. 6:45. Two more minutes until the car will pull up.

  My mother sees me coming down the stairs. You look like a whore; says the set of her head, averted. Then her eyes, more merciful, turn back. Don’t you know he’ll never marry you? Never be able to give up his wife?

  But I do, I do know. What I can’t explain is that it doesn’t matter, that nothing else matters except being with him. Our few hours together are worth all the pain.

  I see the headlights of the car turning into the drive, and I open the door to leave without looking back.

  He already has the car door open, and I slide down into the smooth leather of the seat. He’s just shaved, I can catch the faint mint scent of his shaving cream, and I lean close against him, fingertips lightly tracing the lean smooth line of his jaw. Oh, how I want him!

  Suddenly his whole body stiffens. My breath catches in my throat. I see it in the mirror, the car driving past in the darkness, its headlights off . . .

  She’s seen us!

  But the car turns the corner without slowing and we both exhale in shaken relief. He turns to kiss me, cupping my chin in his palms, and I open my mouth to his desperate intensity, forgetting about the car, about everything. We only have time for each other now—so little time. Finally we break apart, and I can see his hands are trembling as he puts the car into reverse, backs down the driveway. It’s harder for him, I know it is, having to live with her.

  In less than half an hour we’re outside the city limits, heading down the highway into the night. I don’t ask where we’re going. I know we can’t risk being seen together. She’s suspicious already.

  I remember the first time I saw her, only a few weeks after I was hired—my very first job, right out of high school. She was coming out of his office, I was crossing the hallway on the way to the copier room. I remember how her look stopped me, and I pressed my lips together to try to hide my overbite while her eyes took in every detail of my face, my body, my clothes. I’d never felt so ugly, so ashamed.

  Later, looking around the office, I realized that there wasn’t a woman working in the place who could even be considered marginally attractive. Naturally, naturally, they had hired me.

  “Who was that woman?” I asked Beverly at lunch. Beverly was his secretary then, swarthy, with a mustache on her upper lip. She weighed close to three hundred pounds. “This morning, with the full-length fur coat, the hea
vy perfume?”

  Her thick eyebrows lifted. “You don’t know? Listen, this whole company belongs to her, every share of stock. He just runs it, and you’d better believe she don’t let him forget it, either.” She shook her head emphatically, added, “She’s in and out of here all the time. And let me tell you something else: you want to keep your job, you stay away from him.”

  So I learned to keep my face down whenever she came into the office, which was three or four times a week. Maybe it helped me keep my mind on my job, knowing that at any time I might look up to find her narrow, suspicious eyes watching, her lips pressed thin with distrust. When Beverly quit, when she couldn’t stand it any more, she warned me not to take her job, but I needed the money; my mother had hospital bills and she couldn’t even work part time any more. And the benefits were good. The company’s dental plan paid for the braces I’d needed since I was twelve.

  It wasn’t long before I learned to be alert for the heavy scent of musk perfume wafting across my desk. “Is he in?” she’d demand, then push through the door of his office before I could get out an answer—as if she could catch him that way, unprepared. It made me sick to have to listen to the screaming from behind the closed door, the insane accusations, the threats. I came into the room once with some papers, five minutes or so after she’d gone. I saw him there with his face buried in his hands, his shoulders shaking. I backed out, saying, “I’m sorry, sir, I thought you were alone.” Pretending like he did that there was nothing wrong, as if I didn’t know, as if the whole office didn’t know.

  Then one day he called me in. He had a folder on his desk and he looked slightly uncomfortable as he opened it and looked up at me. He cleared his throat.

  “I hope this isn’t something too personal, but I see here that the company’s medical insurance has turned you down for a procedure—cosmetic surgery?”

  My face went hot and I knew how I must look with the acne scars all flaring red. I shook my head, keeping my head as low as I could. “It was for dermabrasion treatments. But, no, they said the insurance wouldn’t pay, not for—something like that.”