Jack Ketchum - Sleep Disorder

Her body was the object of that ceremony.

Her body…and the mask.

She'd never had a child. She had never allowed the tight smooth flesh to disappear. At forty her body still deserved to wear the mask. She took it to the mirror.

There was no strap. It was designed to extend across the back of the skull almost to the neck. Her own coiffed hair was nearly the same color of the lioness' fur. She could simply tuck it in.

She slipped it on.

The fit was perfect.

She leaned in close to the mirror and turned her head from right profile to left. Then stepped back and gazed at herself.

The mask hugged her like a second skin.

She was aware that she was trembling. It was warm in the room but her nipples had gone rigid, dark.

A cat , she thought.

A predator .

You've never been so beautiful …

Trace sweat gathered between her breasts. In the mirror she saw the door open slowly behind her.

He stepped silently into the room. He'd changed into a sheer, plum-colored kimono. She saw him smile at her image. She turned.

"You like it?"

"Stephen, it's… spellbinding."

"I'm glad," he said.

He moved across the room to the bed, reached beneath it and withdrew a second box. He smiled again.

"It's Tutsi, isn't it?"

His smile widened as though impressed. Or…

"You knew this was coming, didn't you?"

She nodded, smiling too beneath the mask.

He opened the box, extricating its contents from the tissue. He looked up at her and opened the kimono and let it fall off his shoulders. He was naked. She saw that, like her, the years had barely breathed upon his body.

In his hand he raised the massive head, its mane trailing eighteen inches at least. Its dark wide mouth hung open in a howl.

He drew it on over his head.

She sensed the sudden pull of him as he held his arms out to her and she saw the shadow of his erection, saw the muscles of his arms twitch and the muscles of his shoulders. She crossed the distance between them and the supple grace of her walk seemed like something unknown and new to her.

She knew what sex with him would be like. Something crimson. A crimson gash in time.

She wanted his hands on her, the long polished nails tearing.

She gazed into the eyes behind the mask, saw them flick across her body like the tongue of a whip. Were his eyes different somehow? No , she thought— just hungry . His hands were electric as he reached for her — power flowing from fingertips, bared ends of wires. Power that had nothing to do with wealth or position or even intellect, but something deeper and much older.

She could feel it clawing out of her too. A power of her own which very nearly matched him.

Already she could taste his blood.

The sheets were streaked with blood.

It was morning.

The masks lay beside them on the bed.

She watched him sleep.

He was Stephen and she was Christine and they lay in bed in a Manhattan loft in Soho. Outside, below the windows, were shops and galleries. One of them was her own — she, Christine, with a masters in history and an doctorate in art — who had never wanted for anything nor ever failed at anything, born of New York privilege, who had been engaged not once, but twice, only to find each man bereft and even empty in both the moral courage to stand up to her and the wisdom not to try. Who had neither regretted these men nor missed them. Who had been quite content alone to this very moment.

Below too and uptown were Stephen Gannet's offices — Gannett Financial Services, snapping at the heels of giants like Paine Webber, Salomon Smith Barney, Dreyfus, and outperforming all of them. He said he'd been in the military once but he didn't seem the type. Before and after, he said, he'd prowled the world while his curious fortunes amassed. He'd been on digs but spoke of them as though bored. She only knew a little about him. Fortune suggested a net personal wealth exceeding ten billion dollars. She'd looked him up. In the financial world the fact that he chose to live in SoHo was considered eccentric if not downright crazy. He supported the arts and was notorious for ignoring all other forms of charity.

They'd met at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre, at a benefit for the Lincoln Center Library of the Peforming Arts. They'd talked about sculpture, architecture, Expressionism and Post-Impressionism, and Post Neo-Expressionism. She found him more than knowledgeable. And amazingly attractive.

They went to bed. And now…

Her body ached, stung.

Claw marks etched her breasts and thighs. She could feel their sting glowing across her back.

Yet she'd given as good as she'd received. You only had to look at his shoulders.

Cats , she thought. A mating of lions .

God knows what we did .

She could remember only in knifelike flashes of flesh on flesh, torso to torso, torso to back. She remembered him pulling so astonishingly hard at her nipples that she came merely from that. At some point they'd discarded the masks to use their mouths, their tongues, their teeth, but that seemed to change none of the scarlet animal fury of their lovemaking. Something had worked its way inside them. Some primal kiss of fantasy, some gossamer thing that lit her nerves and dropped her into fiery bliss.

She'd come, it seemed, for hours on end.

"Morning," he said.

"Good morning."

"Any regrets?"

"Not a one."

"Good. That's good."

Her eyes took him in. Her thoughts could not. The words just seemed to slip out of her.

"Who are you?" she said.

He smiled. "A collector, nothing more. Rich by accident and then design. Much like you." She watched him idly trace a scratch on his neck with his index finger. A scratch she'd made the night before.

"I collect little pieces of cultures, anything that's left. So damn much has been plundered. There's truth in those pieces, you know — and power in truth. You could say I try to collect some of that power. All too often those little pieces scattered all the hell over the world provide the only remnants of entire civilizations."

Little pieces? Her eyes accessed the room. His nonchalance astonished her. So much of what he referred to as "little pieces" were actually priceless relics. Each room in his apartment could be a mini-museum worth millions.

"You must've been everywhere," she said.

"Nearly, I suppose. From Troy to Knossos to Ninevah. From Hastings to Golgotha to the Seven Hills of Rome. Yes." His voice darkened. "From cenotes to ziggurats."

Fascinating. But his previous words resurfaced, like shadows standing just behind her. Little pieces. Power. Truth.

The wounds of his passion radiated on her skin.

She shook her head. "I wish I could remember…"

"What happened? Last night?"

"Yes. Not that it really matters. It was… wonderful."

His face grew stolid. Like a mask.

"Of course it matters. Do you want to know what happened? I mean what really happened?"

She nodded.

"It was the masks. The masks happened."

"The masks…yes, but…"

He leaned up on one elbow. "We're living in an age that's been so thoroughly demythologized, there's nothing left. You know that Christine — you know that as well as anybody in our field because you see it every day in your gallery. Art today has no mythology. Which is why so much of it is empty, drained of its real vitality, exsanguinated. And why we prefer the works of former eras, other cultures, things…so…old."

He was right of course. They'd known instantly they had that in common.

"People think that masks are about nothing more than children at Halloween. But take a good look at Mardi Gras and you see what masks can do. Even today. People get monumentally, fabulously drunk. They trash the streets. They do drugs they wouldn't ordinarily touch. And they fornicate with anything that moves — regardless of gender. The masks release them, Christine. The masks separate the chaff from the real seeds of the soul. But what they forget, and what we know, is that all they're doing is tapping into a kind of vestigial power based on a much, much earlier magic. When the powers that the masks invoke weren't just psychological. They were far-reaching. Cosmic, limitless, without parameter."