Stephen Jones - The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Volume 23

But it took me a long time to recall that, afterwards. And by the time I did, at last. it truly didn’t matter none.

No God but the one, down here where I was raised. And not too much of Him, neither, when things really counted.

Skinless Jenny helped me fit the Mask of Fear on that very night while the two Mizes watched, holding hands, and Half-Face Joe extolled my charms out front, racking up the take. I hadn’t seen Lewis Boll all day, though the tent sure got itself up on time; thought maybe he’d finally run off to find himself a bank to knock over, and told myself I didn’t much care.

I’d worried over my state, too, knowing what-all I was going to have to do in order to earn my money that night. But Miz Forza simply smiled, and called that last gal over — she gave me her Dutch Cap, all fresh-boiled and cleanly, to cram up inside myself. “Works just as well t’keep things in as it does t’keep ’em out,” she confided, and I chose to believe her.

I barely recognised my own body in the dim bronze mirror hung up at the back, to make the tent seem bigger — so smoothed and plucked and powdered, legs shaved and wild half-whatever hair tamed to a fare-thee-well, pinned up under the Mask’s slippery cap. I was a creature of myth, of legend, and where I moved I cast a net far wider than my gauze and crinolines alone could swing. My high heels clicked onto the stage like talons.

“Oh, you’re a demigoddess like that, my sweet Persia,” Miz Forza told me, admiring. “I always knew it, always. Didn’t we, dear?”

“Yes indeed,” Miz Farwander chimed back, nodding her head, her grin curling up on either side to show even more teeth than was usual. “Always. Right from when she told us what they called her.”

And I saw her tongue poke out to touch her bottom lip, a bit too quick to notice, ’less you were looking at her straight-on — so long and red, so thin, a flickering spear. Almost as though it’d been sharpened.

Up above, the dregs of last night’s storm still roiled, and the Mask felt hot and heavy against my sweating face. Behind one curtain, Skinless Jenny struck up on her dulcimer, hammers flying, skittering out trails of extra music while the gramophone ground on: Some mean old moanin’ blues tune I half-remembered from earlier days when I’d heard my Ma humming it, leant up ’gainst the sill in some lousy little coal-town hostel—

While out from behind the other, meanwhile, my fellow cooch-gal handmaidens come trooping heel-to-toe, white arms waving languid as twister-shucked branches after the real wind’s already blown by. Their palms were stained with henna and lip-rouge, a kiss pressed full-on at the centre of every one right where those lines that are supposed to map out love and marriage split apart — like they split apart now, so’s the rubes (who were standing ass-to-elbow by that point) could catch their first glimpse of me in full regalia, with everything I had ’neath my jaw-line hanging out on display.

Oh, and I heard ’em make that single almighty gasp , too, as they did; Jesus, if it wasn’t enough to make my own head swim same’s if I’d been punched, under the Mask’s brutal weight. Like a shot of that same rot-gut I’d been proud to never touch a drop of, sped straight through ’tween my breasts and into my beating heart.

I let my own arms drift up, slow as parting black water. Let my own hot hands cup together ’neath Her face and made with a vampish pose, like I was Theda Bara. There in the spot’s single bright column, I shook back both our heads together, and let them snaky locks fall where they may — up, down, to either side, so’s my nipples rose up and peeped out like two new red eyes through a dreadful forest’s wall of vines. Took my cue from Miz Farwander and stuck my tongue through Her slack mouth — far as it’d go and farther still, ’til it ached right to root — to lick Her bluish-purple lips.

And as I thrust the Mask open ’round me, forcing myself inside, it was as though I felt myself crack open too, somehow. Felt Her enter into me, through every pore, at the very same time.

Which, of course, was right about the moment I finally noticed Lewis Boll standing in the third row back, with that gun of his already drawn and cocked the Two Mizes’ raptly attendant way.

They can’t see him , I thought. Light’s in their eyes — no way, no-how. Oh, goddamn him and goddamn me too. He’s gonna go ’head and ruin every damn thing .

“Gun!” one of the rubes yelled out, which let loose with a general back-stumble, a crash and rip and the racket of thirty men with two feet apiece set off running flat-out, not caring who they might plough into, so long’s they ended up out of range. The gals did much the same, scattering like mice when the kitchen door slams open. I saw Joe grab Jenny by the arm and haul her clear in mid hammer-fall, putting paid to the music half; one kick did for the other, as the gramophone needle skipped and tore ’cross the whole of the record at once.

An empty tent with the back half tore down and rain falling in — just me, Lewis and the Mizes, with me froze in place mother-naked and masked, sweat drying on my goose-pimpled everything. As he looked me right in the eye, or close enough, with his finger never straying from the trigger — stood there with his hat-brim dripping into his collar and told me, like it was some sorta damn foregone conclusion—

“Persia. you’re comin’ with me now, gal. Gonna leaves these two witches to their own damnation. We’ll git married, have us some young’uns, live high; Law won’t never catch us, not if we start out runnin’ fast enough. Won’t that be fine?”

And: Might have been, for some , was what I thought, but didn’t say; might still be, for you, with someone else. ’Cause. I just ain’t that gal you’re thinkin’ of, Lewis Boll. Never was. Never will be .

I looked at him, past him. Saw the dim bronze shadow of myself in Miz Farwander’s mirror, looming over Lewis like an angry spectre, for all you could see the full range and extent of my shame. And as I kept on looking, I saw one of Her snakes — my snakes — start to move its slick green head, to rise and keep on rising like it planned to strike, flickering its impossible tongue out like a kindling flame.

And Lewis.

(oh, Lewis)

for all he didn’t see it too — for all he couldn’t’ve — he went rigid, went grey, went heavy, went dead. Stood there while the stone spread fast all over him like mould does on cheese or a blush follows a slap, ’til Miz Forza stepped forward lightsome as always, took him by the elbow and pushed him off-balance, to shatter on impact with the raw dirt floor.

“There,” she said, clapping her gloved hands. “That’s that. And now we’re alone again at last — just the three of us.”

Upstairs, the thunder crashed, like God Himself was breaking rocks. But Miz Farwander simply shrugged her shoulders at it with a brisk little tut-tut noise, flicking her too-long tongue against her metal teeth, and told the sky above her:

“Oh, go on and howl all you want to, father-killer — you had your chance ’fore you let yourself get old, let the white Christ take half the whole world over and some host of no-name one-gods take the rest, with barely even a fight. But you still had to keep spillin’ your seed hither and yon, didn’t you, where we could get to it? And now it’s done. We’re three once more, whole and perfect, with nothing at all left to stop us.”

She put one hand on my right arm as Miz Forza took my left, and the two of ’em drew me away — cooed at me, stroked me, told me to keep my eyes down ’til we was inside the caravan itself, for fear of any further accidents. And when we got inside they sat me down easy with my feet up, to give me some time to settle in and come to terms with what had happened; Miz Farwander made tea, while Miz Forza tipped a bottle of something into it — that salve she’d used to keep the Mask good-looking? I hoped not, but it sure to hell did stink almost the same—