She was just about to continue on her way when the same man appeared, walking very briskly. In each hand he was carrying a large triangular butcher knife. Sissy stepped back, frightened, to let him pass.
When he reached gateway he stopped and stared at her as if he had never seen her before. “What are you waiting for, child? It’s no use waiting. What’s done is done, and all we can do is more of the same. No rest for the wicked. No justice for the innocent. Je suis un fou qui crois qu’il est moimême. I am a madman who believes that he is me.”
With that, he stalked through the gateway toward the orchard and disappeared behind the old stone barn. Sissy felt a cold tingle of fear, and she began to run away from the gateway as fast as she could.
Up ahead of her, however, the sky began to grow black, and she saw flickers of lightning. The poplar trees along the side of the road began to rustle uncomfortably and sway. Then, on the horizon, she saw the silhouette of a giant. He was standing beside the road, as if he was waiting for her.
She stopped, panting. She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t want to go back to the gateway, in case she met the gingery-haired man with the knives. But she was too frightened of the giant to carry on. Perhaps she should run across the fields.
The sky grew darker and darker, and the wind began to whistle. In the field to her left, she saw several gravestones, some of them tilted at odd angles.
Frank, she thought. Frank can save me. He may be dead, but he can save me.
Molly set a glass of freshly squeezed grapefruit juice on the nightstand beside Sissy and went across the room to pull up the blinds. It was a gloomy morning, with heavy gray clouds. Scores of cicadas were still crawling around the window frame.
“Looks like rain,” said Molly.
Sissy sat up. “Did you talk to Trevor anymore?”
“I tried, Sissy, honestly, but there was no point. He never really believed in any of your psychic stuff, did he? And when Trevor makes his mind up, that’s it. Stubborn is his middle name.”
Sissy said, “I had another bad dream about Red Mask. Actually, it was a dream about Van Gogh. Two Van Goghs. One was chasing after the other, with knives.”
“It is that necklace that does it, isn’t it?”
Sissy sipped her grapefruit juice and wiped her mouth. “More specifically, sweetheart, I think it’s that ring. Van Gogh painted so many self-portraits, and I’ll bet you that whenever he was wearing that ring, his self-portrait came to life. Chrissie said that Red Mask had a piece missing from his ear—just like Van Gogh.”
Molly shrugged. “It doesn’t matter anymore, anyhow. I’m not going to paint any more pictures while I’m wearing it.”
Sissy didn’t say anything. All she could think of were the tilted gravestones in the field, with the storm clouds gathering overhead. All she could think of was Frank lying in the absolute darkness of his casket, and how much she needed him.
“Am I being selfish?” she asked Molly.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Do I want to do this to save people’s lives, or do I want to do it for me?”
“It’s academic, Sissy. It’s not going to happen. Big Chief Trevor has spoken.”
“Even if I beg you?”
“Sissy, no. We never lie to each other, Trevor and me. We never do anything behind each other’s back. And I can understand how he feels. Even if I paint Frank and he doesn’t come to life, that’s just as bad as if he does.”
Sissy thought of Mary the cleaner dying in the darkness of the elevator. She still felt so guilty about that. If only Mary could have seen daylight before she died. She knew what Frank would have thought about Mary, too. Frank had always been so selfless. On the afternoon that he had been killed, Frank had been acting without any regard for his own personal safety.
But of course, that had been his decision, not hers. Maybe Trevor was right. How could she resurrect Frank without knowing if he would be resentful at being resurrected, or angry, even? Maybe the dead preferred to be dead, sleeping their way through all eternity, resting in peace.
“How about you and me going for lunch together today?” Molly suggested.
“What about Trevor and Victoria?”
“Trevor promised to take Victoria downtown to buy her some designer jeans.”
“Designer jeans? She’s nine years old!”
“You think that makes her any less fashion conscious? And she’s getting an iPod, too, for doing so well in her spelling bee.”
“Hmm, okay. But I’m not so sure he should have taken her downtown.”
“I didn’t think it was such a good idea, either. But he said that he and Victoria weren’t going to be using any elevators, and besides, he doesn’t believe that Red Mask will try to attack any more people, not with so many cops around.”
“Maybe not the real Red Mask … but how about the other two?”
“That’s what I said. But he doesn’t believe in them. I mean, he believes in them, but he thinks they’re just two guys with their faces painted red. He doesn’t think that they’re my drawings, come to life.”
She paused, and then she said, “He loves you, Sissy. You know that. But he thinks you’re losing it, and there’s not much I can do to persuade him otherwise.”
“He thinks I’m going senile?”
“He didn’t exactly put it like that.”
“Oh—so how did he put it, exactly?”
“I think he used the word bananas.”
“I’ll give him bananas. I’ll give him bananas where you don’t need Ray-Bans.”
“Come on, Sissy. You know what he’s like. Pragmatic.”
“I guess so. I just hope that he’s careful. Pragmatic or not, he’s still precious to me. And so is Victoria.”
“So you’re okay for lunch, then?”
“Sure, I guess so. What do you have in mind?”
“A huge chicken stir-fry at Through The Garden, with Jamaican glaze.”
Sissy couldn’t help smiling. “Have you ever heard of the phrase, seriously tempted?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Blood on the Skywalk
“Okay,” said Trevor. “How do you spell embarrass?”
“Oh, Dad! You’re not going to make me spell all day, are you? I did enough spelling at school!”
“Just one more word. Impress me.”
Trevor and Victoria were walking along the second-story skywalk that overlooked Fountain Square. On the opposite side of the square stood the Tyler David-son fountain, on top of which stood the nine-foot-high figure of a woman, with water cascading from her outstretched hands. Even though it had been raining, the square would normally have been crowded on a Saturday morning. Today, however, it was almost deserted, with shoppers hurrying across the glistening wet bricks as if they would rather be anyplace else but here.
White squad cars were parked on all four corners, and uniformed officers were gathered in almost every store doorway. Trevor had seen on the news this morning that a twenty-one-strong team from the FBI had been called in to help the CPD, including profilers and experts in serial killings and terrorist activities.
“Two r’s and two s’s,” said Victoria.
“That’s right!” said Trevor. Then he frowned. “At least I think that’s right.”
“It’s easy. You just have to remember ‘she was rosy red with severe shame.’ Two r’s and two s’s.”
“Hey, that’s excellent! And just for that, we can go to Hathaway’s after we’ve bought your jeans, and I’ll buy you a hand-dipped chocolate shake. They’re really good for the waistline, so they tell me.”
They crossed over Fifth Street and followed the skywalk past Tower Place Mall. The bridge that crossed over Race Street into Saks Fifth Avenue was all glassed in, and the windows were still beaded with raindrops. They had to go to Saks because Saks was the only store in Cincinnati that carried preworn, prewashed 7 For All Mankind jeans for preteens, and that was what Victoria insisted on having.
> “Look at the state of these jeans,” Trevor complained, as they rummaged through the denim department. “They’re all worn out. They’re rags. This is more like a thrift store.”
“Daddy, that’s the whole point. What do you think of these? Aren’t they the neatest of the neat?”
“My angel, they have a huge triangular hole in the seat. They’re also sixty-five bucks.”
“I can sew up the hole. Please, Daddy. I love them.”
Trevor turned toward the assistant, a white-faced girl in a Marc Jacobs blouse and a pair of jeans with rips in the knees. He smiled conspiratorially, as if to say, Kids, what can you do? But the assistant gave him a wintry look, as if to say, You’re an almost-middle-aged man wearing a brown sport coat, what do you know?
“Cash or charge?” she asked him.
“How about a discount for the hole?”
“You want a discount for the hole?”
“I can ask, can’t I?” Trevor poked his finger through it, and waggled it. “I can’t have my nine-year-old daughter displaying her tush to all and sundry.”
“Daddy!” Victoria protested.
“I’ll ask my supervisor,” said the assistant. She left the word asshole unspoken.
Ten minutes later they left the designer denim department. Victoria said, “Daddy—sometimes you can be so-o-o embarrassing.”
“Two r’s and two s’s—right? But I got us a seven-fifty discount, didn’t I?”
They had almost reached the Race Street bridge leading back to Tower Place Mall when Trevor heard someone hurrying up behind them. Without warning, a heavily built man pushed between them, almost knocking Victoria sideways.
Trevor shouted, “Hey! Watch where you’re going!” But the man kept on storming toward the bridge—at least until he reached it, when he suddenly stopped.
There were at least twenty people crossing the bridge, including six or seven children of various ages. Trevor witnessed what happened next, but he could hardly believe it was real.
Another heavily built man had appeared at the opposite end of the bridge. Trevor saw that he was wearing a black suit and a red shirt, and he had close-cropped, brushlike hair. But it was his face that alarmed Trevor the most. It was practically scarlet, with narrow black eyes and a thin black gash for a mouth.
The second man crossed his arms, and then uncrossed them, pulling two enormous triangular knives out of his coat. The first man did the same. The knives made a sliding, metallic sound, and they flashed brightly as the men held them up over their heads. A woman shopper screamed, twice, and a man shouted, “What the hell? What?”
The two men started to walk toward each other, making stabbing gestures in the air. The bridge was only a hundred feet long, if that, and the shoppers and their children were caught in between them. Some of them rushed to the windows and started to bang on the glass, trying to attract the attention of the car drivers who were passing beneath them. Others started crying out and huddling together.
They stood no chance at all. The two men bore down on them from either end of the bridge, chopping at them with such ferocity that Trevor saw fingers flying through the air. There was blood everywhere, a blizzard of blood. It spattered the windows and splashed across the skywalk in long arterial loops. The shoppers dropped to their knees, their hands covering their heads to protect themselves, but the two men continued to stab them, piercing their hands and their arms and their shoulders and their backs.
Nobody shouted or screamed. Instead, they whimpered, like animals. And all the time the knives flashed up and the knives flashed down, and there was the chih! chih! chih! sound of constant stabbing.
Trevor seized Victoria’s sleeve and yanked her close to him. He dragged her backward into a rail of summer coats, so that they toppled over, and were buried. Victoria was gasping, “They’re killing them, Daddy! All those poor people! They’re killing them!”
Trevor was rummaging through his pockets for his cell. “Ssh!” he told her. “Don’t you move! Don’t you make a sound!”
“But they’re killing them!” she protested. She tried to sit up, but Trevor pulled her back down again, under the coats.
“What are we going to do?” said Victoria. “Supposing they come looking for us?”
Trevor punched out 911. “Police? There’s another stabbing attack in progress. Right now, yes! The skywalk bridge over Race Street, between Saks and Tower Place Mall. Send somebody fast as you can!”
“May I have your name, sir?” asked the police operator.
Trevor snapped his cell phone shut, and then climbed up onto his hands and knees. “You ready to make a run for it?” he asked Victoria.
Victoria, half hidden under a pink flowery coat, gave him a nod.
“Okay, then, let’s make a run for it.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The Summoning
Molly gave Victoria half a Versed tablet to calm her down, and put her to bed. Trevor chose a double Jack Daniel’s instead of a sedative, and Sissy joined him.
“I couldn’t believe my eyes,” he said, as he hunched in his armchair in the living room. “It was like a horror movie. There was so much—blood.”
They had already seen on the news that seventeen men, women, and children had been fatally injured on the Race Street skywalk. The attack had lasted a little less than three and a half minutes, but between them, the victims had been stabbed three hundred and twenty-four times.
The two men who had perpetrated the attacks fitted the descriptions of Red Mask—or at least two out of the three Red Masks. Witnesses at both ends of the bridge had seen them rushing toward the skywalk before the attack took place, but nobody had seen how or where they had gone afterward.
“We are urgently appealing to anybody who might have seen these men leaving the scene of the stabbings,” said Lieutenant Kenneth Moynihan of the homicide unit on the news. “So far, we have no idea how they managed to make their escape without a single person noticing them. We don’t know if they went through the mall or out through one of the department stores, or made their way along the skywalk. They could have had a getaway vehicle parked in the Fountain Square Garage, but none of the attendants there saw anybody who matches their description.”
Trevor switched the sound off. “Do you have any idea?” he asked Sissy.
“I do. But do you really want me to tell you?”
“Momma, for better or for worse, I saw those two Red Masks today. I saw them with my own eyes, and I saw what they can do. My God, if I hadn’t had a run-in with the girl in the denim department, Victoria and I could easily have been on that skywalk, too.”
“Well, I thank whatever fates there are for that.”
“So? How do you think they got away?”
Sissy sipped her whiskey. “You saw those roses yesterday evening. One minute they were three-dimensional, and real. The next, they were only two-dimensional—nothing but drawings.”
“And what does that tell me?”
“Roses are roses. Roses don’t have intelligence, or choice. Roses can’t make decisions. But men can. I’m beginning to think that those two Red Masks have the ability to choose when they want to be real and when they want to be drawings. A man can be traced, but a drawing can hide anywhere—on a wall, on a sheet of paper—just waiting for the time when he wants to turn himself back into a man again.”
Trevor said, “I find it so goddamned hard to get my head around all of this. Surely there must be some other explanation.”
“Like what, for instance?”
“Maybe it’s some kind of a conjuring trick. You know, like Harry Houdini. He could make himself disappear, couldn’t he? And he wasn’t a drawing.”
Sissy laid a hand on his shoulder. “It’s all in the cards, Trevor. The cards show an image that comes to life. It’s just like those killings that happened this morning. The cards predicted them, but I didn’t understand what they were trying to say to me.”
She took out l’Avertissement and handed i
t to him. “Look here. A bridge, with a man warning people not to walk across it. Red roses, entwined on the railings … but they’re not red roses at all, they’re hands, covered in blood. Seventeen of them, if you count. Adult hands, children’s hands. One for every person who was killed today.”
Trevor said, “That could be a coincidence.”
“It could be, yes. Except for the five magpies, which stand for the month of May, and for the two crosses on the hill. Diagonal crosses, two Xs. And what’s the date today? May twentieth. Roman numerals, XX for twenty. Not only that … look at the two men nailed to the crosses. They both have red hair and red faces.”
Trevor finished his whiskey and put down his glass.
“Do you want another?” Molly asked him.
“I’d like to, but I need a clear head for this.”
Molly said, “Whatever decision you make, honey, you know that I’ll respect it.”
“I know. But I don’t have a choice, do I? Not after seeing all those people butchered.”
“So you agree we should do it?” Sissy asked him.
“On one condition. That Dad really wants to help us. If it distresses him too much—or if anything else goes wrong—then we send him back to wherever he came from, and that’s an end to it. We leave him in peace.”
“Of course,” said Sissy.
Now that Trevor had actually agreed to them resurrecting Frank, she herself was less than sure that she wanted to go through with it. It had been one thing to fantasize about it, but to do it for real …
“I think I need a cigarette,” she said.
“Dad’s not going to like it when he finds out that you’re still smoking.”
“No, you’re right. I don’t need a cigarette.” She hesitated, and then she said, “Goddamn it. Yes, I do.”
She went out into the yard, where the cicadas were chirping more raucously than ever. She lit a cigarette and deeply inhaled.
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