Death Mask

by Graham Masterton

  “Why not? You can do it with roses, and police composites. I have plenty of photographs you can use for reference.”

  “Sissy, how old was Frank when he got killed?”

  “Forty-seven. Why?”

  “Forty-seven. So what’s going to happen if I draw him and he comes to life and he’s only forty-seven and you’re seventy-one? I mean, how are you going to deal with that? How are you going to deal with seeing him at all, talking to him, even though he’s dead? How is Trevor going to deal with it? And Victoria?”

  Sissy took a deep breath. She knew that what she was thinking was deeply unnatural, and probably wrong. These days, she wasn’t religious. After Frank had been killed, she had stopped attending church. But she did believe in greater powers, and a moral order, and to bring Frank back to life did seem like flying in the face of God. She thought of all of those stories—like “The Monkey’s Paw,” in which a grieving father resurrects his horribly injured son. Deals with the devil always carried a price that was far too much to pay. In fiction they did, anyway. She didn’t know whether the same was true of real life.

  “I don’t honestly know how I’m going to deal with it,” she admitted. “How do you think he’s going to deal with seeing me? But we’re not even sure that you can do it yet, are we?”

  “Sissy—”

  “We have to try, Molly. If there’s one thing the cards are quite certain about, there’s going to be a massacre. How are we going to live with ourselves if we don’t try everything we can to stop it?”

  “It’s too scary.”

  Sissy reached out and took hold of her hand. “Come on, Molly, Frank was never scary. He was tough, yes, and a very good cop. But he was always fair, and he was always kind, and he always had a terrific sense of humor.”

  “Yes, but he’s dead, Sissy. He died over twenty years ago, and we’re talking about bringing him back to life. That’s what frightens me.”

  Sissy said nothing for a while, but looked down at Molly’s hand as if it held the answer to everything. Then she said, “Would you at least try?”

  “I have to ask Trevor. Frank was Trevor’s father, after all. He may want him left in peace.”

  “You can’t let any more innocent people get killed, Molly. I know you didn’t bring those drawings to life on purpose. Those murders weren’t your fault. But you have to face the fact that you’re the only person who has the ability to turn them back into drawings again and destroy them.”

  Molly stood up and went to the window. “I think I need to find out more about this necklace first. I don’t want to start bringing any more drawings to life until I’m sure of what the consequences are going to be. I’m sorry, Sissy, but this really creeps me out.”

  “Can you remember who sold you the necklace?”

  “She gave me her card. She said she had a small antiques store, out near the country club.”

  Molly went through to her studio to find her purse. She was gone for only a moment before she called out, “Sissy! Come here, quick!”

  Sissy followed her. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Nothing at all. But look.”

  She pointed toward her desk. The roses had gone. The “real” roses, anyway. But on the sheets of paper on which she had rested them, they had reappeared as paintings.

  “Well, I’ll be damned.”

  Sissy picked up the painting of the red Mr. Lincoln rose and sniffed it. It had no fragrance at all, only the smell of cartridge paper.

  “We can do it,” she said. “I’m sure we can do it.”

  Molly said, “I’m still frightened, Sissy.”

  “All right. I know you are. So let’s find out more about your necklace.”

  Molly reached into her embroidered bag and took out her purse. “Here it is … Dorothy Carven, Persimmon Antiques, Madison Road. Why don’t I give her a call?”

  At that moment, they heard the front door open and Trevor call out, “Hi, Molly! Hi, Mom! We’re home!”

  Persimmon Antiques turned out to be a fussy, high-class antiques store with a single Sheraton chair in the window and thick brown carpeting inside. A little bell jingled as Sissy and Molly walked in through the front door.

  “Classy,” said Sissy. There were fewer than a dozen pieces of furniture in the store—two chaise longues, a pair of armchairs, two bureaus, and a gilded desk. On one of the tables stood some eighteenth-century figurines of shepherds and shepherdesses, as well as a Meissen dinner service. The walls were hung with oil paintings, mostly landscapes and views of the Ohio River.

  A woman appeared from the back of the store with her mouth full. She was tall, fiftyish, with rimless half-glasses and a wing of white hair. She was wearing a purple silk pantsuit and at least twenty gold bracelets.

  “May I help you, ladies?” she asked, and immediately pressed her fingers to her lips. “Do forgive me! I just picked up some strawberry cheesecake from the Bonbonnerie, and I couldn’t wait until I got home. Have you tried their cherry trifle? To die for, I promise.”

  Molly said, “Ms. Carven? You may not remember, but I bought this necklace from you at the Peddlers Flea Market.”

  The woman peered at the necklace over her glasses, and then took hold of it and lifted it up. “Yes, of course I remember. It’s very unusual, isn’t it? I mean, it’s only glass, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen another one quite like it.”

  “Do you know anything about its provenance?” asked Sissy.

  “Provenance? I don’t think it has any kind of provenance. It’s just a costume piece, that’s all. I pick up quite a few interesting bits and bobs when I’m clearing houses. I wouldn’t sell them here, so now and again I take them down to the flea market to see what I can get for them.”

  “So you don’t know anything about it? Where it came from, or who collected all of these mascots?”

  “Well, I bought it from an elderly woman in Hyde Park. Her husband had died and she wanted to get rid of everything. He had one or two very fine paintings, as I remember, and a wonderful longcase clock. But he also had an awful lot of junk. Boxes and boxes of newspapers and old theater programs and buttons and coins. I think he was one of these people who never throw anything away.”

  “You don’t have the woman’s name?”

  “May I ask why you want to know?”

  “Oh, I’m writing a book about jewelry and superstition,” Sissy lied. “You know, charm bracelets and birth-stones and things like that. And, as you say, this necklace is very unusual, isn’t it? I’m sure it must have a story.”

  Ms. Carven went over to the gilded desk, opened the top drawer, and took out a leather-bound book. She licked her thumb and leafed through it until she came to the page she wanted. “Here you are… . Mrs. Edwina Branson, 1556 Observatory Road. There’s a telephone number, too, if you want it.”

  Mrs. Edwina Branson was well into her eighties. She was white haired, small, and stooped, and was dressed in a smart cream blouse with a pearl pin at the collar and a green plaid skirt. She obviously took good care of herself.

  She lived in a ground-floor apartment overlooking a small courtyard. Her ginger cat was sleeping on the bricks outside her window. The apartment was furnished entirely with modern furniture—a beige couch, two beige chairs, and an oak-topped coffee table. The only pictures on the walls were photographs of her children and grandchildren.

  “I have some iced tea if you’d care for some,” she told them.

  “Thanks all the same,” said Sissy. “We don’t want to take up too much of your time.”

  “But I enjoy having visitors. When you get to my age, most of your friends are dead, and your children are all too busy.”

  She turned toward Molly and said, “It suits you, dear—the necklace. I think I only wore it once. I never liked it. Too flamboyant for me.”

  “So it wasn’t yours, originally?” Sissy asked her.

  Edwina Branson shook her head. “My late husband Felix gave it to me. He brought it back from France after
World War II. I used to teach European history, you see, at Miami University in Oxford, and Felix thought that I would find it interesting.”

  “Do you know anything about it? Who it used to belong to?”

  “He said that some woman in Paris gave it to him, in exchange for chocolate. Well, I hope it was in exchange for chocolate. She said that it was called a ‘necklace of fortune.’ None of the charms on it are worth very much, but every one of them is supposed to have belonged to somebody famous.”

  “Such as?”

  “The woman didn’t know who all of them were. But the little crocodile allegedly came from Alexandre Dumas, who wrote The Three Musketeers. He used to wear it on his watch chain. And those earrings were brought back from Devil’s Island by Alfred Dreyfus, after he was pardoned. This ring here, with the small red stone, that used to belong to Vincent van Gogh.”

  “Surely this is worth a fortune,” said Molly.

  “Not really. None of the charms are particularly valuable, and there’s no proof at all that any of them are genuine. Felix and I did quite a lot of research into them, but we couldn’t find any way to authenticate them. No certificates, no letters. No bills of sale. All we had was the word of a French woman who wanted chocolate.”

  She was silent for a moment, and then she said, “These days, I don’t take much of an interest in history, not like I used to. History does nothing but take away the ones you love.”

  “You say this ring was supposed to have belonged to Vincent van Gogh?”

  Edwina Branson lifted up the ring between finger and thumb. “It’s only brass, and the stone is only a garnet. But if it really is Van Gogh’s ring, there’s quite an interesting story behind it. You know that Van Gogh shot himself, don’t you?”

  Molly nodded. “I learned all about him at art college.”

  “I’m afraid I only saw the Kirk Douglas movie,” Sissy confessed.

  “Well, Van Gogh went out into the countryside one day and shot himself in the chest with a revolver. But he didn’t die straight away. He managed to walk back to the inn where he was staying, and it was two more days before he finally passed away. I looked all this up on the Internet, and I came across a letter from Van Gogh’s brother, Theo. Apparently—because he had no money—Vincent gave his ring to the serving girl at the inn who took care of him while he was dying.

  “Vincent told the girl that, whatever she did, she must never give the ring to another artist, because it had madness in it. He said something like, ‘je suis deux personnes … there are two of me, the good and the evil, and this ring can separate us, and allow my evil self to walk where it will.’ He had a split personality, didn’t he? And I guess that this was his way of describing how he felt.

  “Funny thing, though. According to Theo, a local farmer saw Vincent propping up his easel before he went around to the back of this château where he shot himself. But only a few seconds afterward, he saw Vincent for a second time, with his pistol in his hand, ‘almost as if there was another Vincent following the first, intent on shooting him.’ ”

  Sissy gave Molly a meaningful look but raised her fingertip to her lips to indicate that Molly should say nothing.

  Edwina Branson picked up another charm, a tiny citrine brooch with a single pearl dangling from it. “I can tell you the story behind this one, too. This used to belong to Marie Curie. It was given to her by her first boyfriend, just before she left Warsaw to go to Paris. He hoped that she would be persuaded to stay in Poland and marry him. Think what a different world it might have been if she had! No radioactivity! But then—no X-rays, either.”

  Sissy said, “Even if this necklace isn’t genuine, it’s a fantastic conversation piece. I’m surprised you didn’t want to keep it.”

  Edwina Branson let the citrine brooch drop. “No,” she said. “I don’t want to put you off it or anything, but I never liked it. That’s why I only wore it once. I felt as if I had dead people hanging around my neck.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Trevor Says No

  “No,” said Trevor. “Absolutely not. You’re nuts even to think it.”

  “But it could be the only way,” Sissy told him.

  “Have you heard yourself? You want to bring Dad back to life? Not that I believe for a single second that you actually can.”

  “We showed you the roses.”

  “All right, you showed me the roses. But what kind of proof is that? You could have thrown the real roses away and painted some more.”

  “But we didn’t. They’re the same roses.”

  Trevor clamped his hands over his ears to show that he didn’t want to listen to any more of this lunacy.

  “I don’t care if they are the same roses. You expect me to believe that Molly’s two sketches came to life and murdered all of those people? Drawings can’t hurt people, Momma. Only people can.”

  “Those drawings are people. But they’re drawings, too, which is why we need your father to hunt them down.”

  “You’re nuts,” Trevor repeated, in total exasperation. “I mean, where’s your respect? Where’s your morality?”

  “What difference does it make, if we can’t actually do it?”

  “It makes all the difference in the world, Momma. Look.”

  Trevor took a silver-framed photograph of his father from the bookshelf. Thin faced, serious, with that same diamond-shaped scar on his cheek.

  “This is Dad we’re talking about. My father and your husband. This is the man who loved us and looked after us, and who died in the line of duty. This is not some—some superhero out of a comic book.”

  “I know that, Trevor. But think of all the innocent people who have been killed already. Do you think your father would have allowed that to happen, if he thought that he could stop it?”

  “Momma, read my lips. Dad is dead. Dad doesn’t know anything about this Red Mask character, and never will. He’s in the Morningside Cemetery on Squash Hollow Road, and that’s where he’s going to stay. At peace. Undisturbed. Not chasing homicidal drawings all around Cincinnati.”

  Sissy took a deep breath. Victoria had gone to her bedroom, supposedly to finish her homework, but they could hear her chatting and laughing on the phone to her friend Alyson.

  Molly finished wiping the dishes. She said nothing. Trevor was her husband, and Trevor was Frank Sawyer’s only son, so if he was adamant that he didn’t want his father to be resurrected, there was nothing she could do.

  Sissy said, “These Red Masks, they’re going to kill many more people, you know that, don’t you?”

  “So your cards say.”

  “Yes, they do. And so far they’ve been absolutely right.”

  “So far they’ve been totally confusing. And if you think I’m going to allow you to bring Dad back to life simply because you imagine that you can see his face reflected in some goddamned dish—”

  “But you don’t believe that it’s possible.”

  “It isn’t! How the hell can it be? But it’s sacrilegious enough, just thinking of doing it.”

  Sissy sat down on the end of the couch. “That’s your last word, then, is it?”

  The television was on, even though the sound was mute. WKRC’s 11:00 P.M. news was on, showing downtown Cincinnati and anxious shoppers being interviewed. Sissy picked up the remote in time to hear Kit Andrews saying, “—avoiding the elevators in almost all office buildings and major department stores.”

  Colonel Thomas H. Streicher, Cincinnati’s chief of police, appeared on the screen. “I cannot deny that there has been a wave of panic throughout downtown Cincinnati. This afternoon, it was virtually a ghost town, with office workers leaving early and shoppers staying well away.

  “But at the same time I cannot emphasize strongly enough that my officers are hunting for these murderers round the clock, and I am satisfied that we can not only apprehend them, but that we can protect the good people of Cincinnati before we do.

  “So, please. Be vigilant. Be careful out there. But go a
bout your daily business as usual. These Red Mask individuals want to cause as much fear and disruption as possible, and we should not allow them to succeed.”

  “There you are,” said Sissy. “Do your bit for the city’s morale. Go out and get yourself stabbed to death by red-faced maniacs.”

  “You’re a cynic, Momma. You always were.”

  “I’m not a cynic, Trevor. I’m a realist.”

  “A realist? That’s pretty rich, coming from a woman who wants to bring her dead husband back to life by having his picture painted.”

  Sissy reached for the Cherry Mashes on the table, unwrapped one, and popped it into her mouth. She didn’t trust herself to say anything polite, so she thought it better that she say nothing at all.

  That night, she dreamed that she was somewhere in the South of France, on a very hot afternoon. The sky was intensely blue and the fields were stacked with bright yellow corn. All she could hear was the sewing-machine sound of crickets in the hedgerows and the cawing of crows as they circled overhead.

  She was walking along a dry, rutted road, beside a long stone wall. At the far end of the stone wall there was a gateway, with two dilapidated oak gates. A man was standing in the gateway with his back to her. He had a shock of gingery hair, and he was wearing a red checkered shirt. He seemed to be having trouble with a complicated wooden structure like a deck-chair frame without any canvas.

  “Monsieur,” she said. “Do you need any help?”

  The man finished folding up the deck chair and propped it up against the gate. He turned around to face her and he was Red Mask. His eyes shone like silver ball bearings, and his forehead was shiny with sweat.

  “What’s done is done,” he challenged her. “What’s painted is painted.”

  “You can’t escape,” she replied. “It doesn’t matter where you go, somebody will find you. I can promise you that.”

  Red Mask seemed to be amused. “Even if you find me, child, what can you do? Je suis deux personnes.”

  With that, he turned and walked away through the archway behind the gates and into the orchard beyond. He reached the corner of a sagging stone barn and disappeared. Sissy waited, but she was reluctant to go after him. She was only seven years old, after all.