Graham Masterton: Death Mask

Sissy stared at Red Mask’s face on the television screen. In her composite, Molly had deliberately tried to tone down the sense of danger that Jane Becker had felt when Red Mask stepped onto the elevator. He was a real killer, after all, and not a villain from a comic book. But his eyes still looked dead, as if there were nobody behind them. No light, no sympathy, no human compassion. His thin lips were tilted up slightly to the left, as if he thought that his appearance on television was deeply amusing.

“Scary, don’t you think?” said Molly.

“He sure is,” Sissy agreed. “But — I don’t know. I have the strangest feeling that I know this face. that I’ve seen it someplace before.”

“Don’t see how you could have done,” said Trevor. “You were never in Cincinnati before.”

“Well, I’m an old lady, Trevor. I’ve traveled far and wide and seen many strange and interesting things.”

Molly went through to the kitchen to finish clearing up. Trevor glanced over his shoulder to make sure that she was out of earshot, and then he said, “Momma. I have to talk to you about this fortune-telling thing.”

“You want me to read your cards, too? Gladly.”

“No, thank you.” He paused, and blinked his eyes very quickly, the way he used to when he was a boy and wanted to ask for pocket money. “It’s just that I think they’re really creepy.”

“Trevor, sweetheart, they only tell us what’s what. Or what’s going to be what.”

“I don’t care, Momma. They’re creepy, and this is my home, and to be honest with you, I don’t like you reading them here.”

“Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.”

“They give me the creeps. They always gave me the creeps, especially when I was a kid. I was scared even to look at them. Gravediggers, clowns, weird people walking through the woods. Strange creatures in pointy hoods, chopping their own fingers off with axes.”

“You should have said before. I never wanted to upset you.”

“Jesus, Momma. I’ve dropped enough hints. I don’t like Molly getting involved in this police work at the best of times, especially after what happened to Poppa. I always think there’s a risk of some lunatic trying to take his revenge on her. But this Red Mask thing — ”

Sissy took hold of Trevor’s hand. Although she was over seventy now, her eyes were as clear as his, and she looked at him with intensity and love.

“Sweetheart, it wasn’t the cards that made this happen. It was going to happen anyhow.”

“Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn’t. Has it ever occurred to you that you and your cards aren’t just foretelling the future, they’re actually changing it? Okay, so maybe this Red Mask character was going to stab these people anyhow. But why did the police have to ask Molly to draw the composite?”

“They didn’t give out her name, Trevor.”

“No. But it wouldn’t take Sherlock Holmes to track down the only forensic artist in the tristate who still uses nothing but pencils and pastels. There was an article about her in the Enquirer only last September.”

Sissy had turned Trevor’s hand over and was delicately tracing the lines on his palm with the tip of her finger. He looked down and realized what she was doing and quickly snatched it away.

“Ho no! You’re not going to give me any of your sneaky palm readings! No way! And I don’t want you telling Molly’s future anymore, and especially not Victoria’s! Life is supposed to be unexpected, Momma. Knowing what’s going to happen to you — it’s unnatural.”

“I don’t agree with you at all. I think it’s the most natural thing in the world. I think all of us could do it — even you could do it — if only we were more in touch with everything around us.”

“We go to church every Sunday, goddammit.”

Sissy spread her arms wide. “I’m not talking about church. I’m talking about time, and fate, and the way that God’s days and men’s decisions mesh into each other, like clockwork. The trouble is, we’re too busy concentrating on the little things. We have no faith anymore. We’ve lost our sense of wonder, and we never listen.”

“Okay. Listen to what , exactly?”

“To the warnings that we’re being given, sweetheart. When something truly terrible is going to happen, you should be able to feel it coming, like an express train in the distance. The rails start singing, don’t they?” She clenched her bony fist and held it up. “Even the air starts to get tighter.”

Trevor said, “What are you saying, Momma? That something bad is going to happen to us ?”

“Let’s pray not. But it’s best to be well prepared for it, if it does.”

Sissy respected Trevor’s wishes that night and left the DeVane cards untouched on her nightstand, although she was strongly tempted to try another reading. She could feel in her bones that the wheels of the world were moving beneath her, and that the next few days were going to see shifts and changes and shadows moving in contradiction to the sun.

She dressed in her long white linen nightgown and sat in front of the dressing table taking the pins and combs out of her hair, and brushing it out.

For a split second, in the shell pink lamplight, she saw herself as she had looked when she had married Frank and was sitting at her dressing table in Connecticut, brushing out her hair for her first night in bed with him. She still had the wide gray eyes and the delicate cheekbones, and that slightly fey, otherworldly look that had led Frank to describe her as a mermaid.

I’m still your mermaid, Frank. The girl you fell in love with, she’s still here. I’m the same girl who ran barefoot through the dunes at Hyannis that July afternoon so long ago .

Then she angled her head a little to the left, and the lamplight suddenly betrayed her. She saw the crow’s feet around her eyes and the lines around her mouth, and a neck that looked like crumpled tissue paper. The cries from the seagulls faded, and the warm ocean breeze died away, and here she was in her stuffy spare room in Trevor’s house, all alone now, growing older with every night that passed.

Molly knocked on her door.

“Sissy? Is there anything you need? How about a glass of warm milk?”

“A time machine would be nice. Look at me. I’ll be seventy-two before I know it. How did that happen? I don’t feel seventy-two.”

Molly came into the room and sat on the end of the bed. “You don’t behave seventy-two, either, thank God.”

“Trevor talked to me this evening. He wants me to stop fortune-telling while I’m here. He says it gives him the heebie-jeebies.”

“You don’t have to stop because of Trevor. You know what he’s like. If it can’t be weighed or measured or calculated, it doesn’t exist. Mind you, he makes a living out of guessing the future, just like you. The only difference is, he tries to guess what isn’t going to happen.”

“He’s frightened that Red Mask is going to find out that you drew his composite, and that he’s going to come after you.”

“I don’t think that’s very likely. It’s only happened once before. Some child molester threatened to throw battery acid at me. But I think I’ve protected myself the best way I know how, which is to draw a really accurate likeness of him, so that he’ll be caught quicker.”

Sissy tied up her hair with a gray silk scarf. “Did you tell Trevor about the flowers?”

Molly looked away, and didn’t answer.

“I said — ”

“No. No I haven’t. Not yet.”

“Are you going to tell Trevor about the flowers?”