Graham Masterton - Death Mask

The miracle happened early on Tuesday afternoon. It was the tiniest of miracles, and it appeared to be a happy one. But it was only the first of many more miracles — miracles that grew darker and more frightening by the day — like statues that turn their heads around and baths that fill up with blood and dead people seen walking through the streets.

It was the second week in May. Molly was painting a scarlet rose with a yellow ladybug crawling up its stem. Sissy came into her studio and stood watching her for a few minutes. Molly was sitting next to the open window, so that a warm breeze blew in from the yard and the sunshine fell across the gardening book that she was using for reference.

An oval mirror stood on the opposite side of her desk, and Molly’s painting was reflected in it, as was her hand, busily washing in the petals with a fine sable brush. She wore silver rings on every finger, including her thumb, and her fingernails were polished in metallic blue.

She was also wearing a spectacular antique necklace, more like a charm bracelet than a necklace, hung with bells and mascots and stars set with semiprecious stones. It flashed and sparkled and jingled as she painted.

“How about some more wine?” asked Sissy.

“Just half a glass. I always zizz off if I drink too much.”

Sissy came back with a frosty glass of Zinfandel and set it down on the windowsill. “That’s beautiful,” she said, nodding at the rose.

Molly tinkled her brush in a jelly jar full of cloudy water. “ ‘Mr. Lincoln,’ they call it. It has a wonderful smell. I just wish I had a green thumb, and I could grow some in the yard. But everything I try to grow dies of some kind of horrible blight, or gets eaten by caterpillars.”

“Being a gardener, you know — it’s like being a nurse,” Sissy told her. “Your plants are your patients. They need constant fussing over if you want to keep them happy. Me, I always sing to my flowers.”

“You sing to them?”

“Why not? My climbing roses love ‘Stairway to Heaven.’ Trouble is, I’m always gasping for breath by the time I get to the last verse.”

“You shouldn’t smoke so much.”

Mr. Boots, Sissy’s black Labrador, came trotting into the study with his pink tongue lolling out of the side of his mouth.

“Hey, Mister, I suppose you’re pining for a walk,” said Sissy, ruffling his ears. “Well, it’s too hot right now, but let’s go sit outside in the shade.”

Molly said, “I’ll come join you, soon as I’ve finished this. My deadline’s next Friday. Fairy Fifi in Flowerland , this one’s called. You should read the text. Or rather you shouldn’t, unless you have a strong desire to barf. ‘Fairy Fifi skipped and danced, all around the roses. She had bellses on her fingerses. and bellses on her toeses.’ ”

“Saints preserve us.”

From the day that Trevor had first brought Molly home to meet her, she and Sissy had become the most comfortable of friends. There might have been thirty years between them, but they were both spectacularly untidy, and they both dressed like Gypsies, and they both liked wine and fortune-telling and jingly-jangly 1960s hippie music. “Hey, Mr Tambourine Man!” they would sing in chorus, arm in arm.

Such was the warmth that had developed between them that they could sit for hours together saying nothing at all, but occasionally smiling at each other, as if they shared a secret that they would never disclose to anybody else, not even Trevor.

Ever since he was in grade school Trevor had complained to Sissy that she looked and behaved like a fortune-teller from a traveling carnival, with her wild gray hair and her dangling earrings and her black flowery-printed dresses. But Molly was a free spirit, too, and Sissy believed that Trevor adored her all the more because she was just as unconventional as his mother.

Molly reminded Sissy of a young Mia Farrow, from Rosemary’s Baby days, with hair like little brown flames and a heart-shaped face and enormous brown eyes, and a coltish, apple-breasted, skinny-legged figure that always made Sissy think to herself that she used to look like that once — but that was when the Platters had just released “Only You” and her father used to collect her from high school in his new powder blue Edsel.

Sissy went outside, into the small backyard, with its redbrick paving and its terra-cotta plant pots. The sky was hazy but cloudless, and the humidity was well over 80 percent. She sat in the shadow of the vine trellis at the far end of the yard in front of a small green cast-iron table, and took out her Marlboro cigarettes and her DeVane cards. Mr. Boots flopped down at her feet and panted.

Through the open window, she could see Molly’s reflection in the oval mirror, and she waved with her cigarette hand. Smoke drifted up through the vines.

Sissy began to lay out the DeVane cards. They were huge, much larger than tarot cards, worn at the edges, but still brightly colored. They had been printed in France in the eighteenth century, and even though they were called the “Cards of Love,” they were also crowded with mysterious signs and veiled innuendoes, and omens of impending bad luck.

The DeVane cards might well predict that a young girl was going to meet a tall, handsome stranger and plan to get married before the end of the year, but they might also predict that her wedding car would overturn on the way to the church and that she would be seriously disfigured by third-degree burns.

This afternoon, Sissy wanted to ask the cards if it was time for her to return to Connecticut. After all, she had been staying in Cincinnati for almost seven weeks now, and she was beginning to suspect that Trevor was growing more than a little irked by her being here so long.

She laid out the cards in the traditional cross-of-Lorraine pattern. Then she laid the Predictor card, which represented herself, across the center. Her card was la Sibylle des salons , the Parlor Fortune-Teller, depicted as an old woman in a red cloak and gold-rimmed spectacles. Sissy had been able to tell fortunes since she was eleven years old, and she could interpret everything from tea leaves to crystal balls. She had never asked herself how she could do it. To her, seeing how tomorrow morning was going to pan out seemed as natural as remembering what had happened yesterday afternoon.

The first card came up was les Amis de la table , which showed four people sitting at a dinner table laden with roasted pheasants and joints of beef and whole salmon decorated with piped mayonnaise and slices of cucumber. Every place at the table was set with seven pieces of cutlery, and this was a clear indication that she would be welcome for at least another week.

The pretty young woman at the head of the table was holding up a pomegranate and laughing, and the young man sitting next to her was laughing, too. Pomegranates were a symbol of purity and love, because they were the only fruit incorruptible by worms, but they were also a symbol of blood, because of the color of their juice.

Although the young woman and the young man appeared to be so carefree, there was an older woman sitting close beside them, and the older woman’s expression was deeply troubled. She had her left hand pressed to her bosom, and she was frowning at the fourth dinner guest as if he frightened her. However, it was impossible to see his face, because he was wearing a gray hooded cloak, like a monk’s habit, which concealed everything except the tip of his nose.

On the table in front of him there was a shiny metal dish cover, and his face was reflected in that, but the reflection was so distorted that Sissy was unable to make out what he looked like.