by Tanith Lee
He looked around quickly. There was no sign of Ron. He’d been absent for hours. Most of the night he’d been ‘supervising’ the colourful dance party in the ballroom. Much to Peter’s irritation Ron, had outdone himself in the charm department and had won over most of the guests. Last Peter had seen of him, Ron had been smooth talking the final stragglers in the bar.
Peter decided not to inflict Ron on Valerie.
He moved around the desk and indicated with his hand. “After you Miss... Valerie.”
She smiled.
Peter blinked. Her lips moved so naturally into an expression of gratitude. The mask must have been custom-built for her (his) face. The latex moved with every nuance underneath.
She moved off and walked before him to the elevators. He marvelled at her easy stride in the heels, and the sway of the material. Her outfit was sexy yet classy, not an easy combination to pull off. Peter had studied many celebrities over the years to ponder how to achieve that effect.
She glanced back to check on him, and for an instant he forgot everything except her vulnerability.
They rode the elevator to the second floor in silence. Valerie’s step quickened as they walked along the south wing until they reached the white marble entrance hall. She swiped her card, and Peter followed her into the living room of the suite. One wall was made entirely of glass, and during the day it offered a spectacular view of the lake. The suite stood on metal stilts, and had a large balcony, its own private driveway, and access from the outside. It was popular with honeymooning couples, and was booked out constantly despite the steep price tag.
Flames flickered in the modern fireplace. Jazzy music played in the background. An empty bottle of red wine stood on the oak coffee table, along with two glasses containing its dregs. A man lay slumped on the right-hand side of the large, white brocade couch, his head titled back. He wore a shiny black latex mask with holes for the eyes, nostrils, and mouth, a white shirt with a tie, and trousers. One of his loafers was kicked off as if he’d been hit by electricity.
Peter moved quickly to the man’s side, rehearsing his first aid training. The man was breathing deeply. Peter checked the pulse: strong and slow. He seemed asleep.
Peter noticed a white residue at the nose, and frowned. He glanced over at Valerie. She stood before the fireplace, and grasped her hands together.
“Is he all right?” Her voice trembled a little.
“From what I can tell. I’ll try to wake him.”
Peter addressed the man in a loud, clear voice, “Sir, you have to go now.”
No response.
“Can you hear me?”
Peter placed his hands upon the man’s shoulders, and lightly shook him. “Sir, please open your eyes.”
A loud snore erupted.
The ridiculous noise inspired a burst of laughter from Peter.
He straightened up and turned to Valerie, still smiling. “He’s stoned and unconscious. It might take a while to wake him. How did this happen?” As soon as the words left his mouth he realised it was an improper question.
“Oh,” she said, “we met tonight. I don’t do this normally...” she trailed off.
Peter stepped towards her with his palms out in a calming gesture. “You don’t have to explain, it’s none of my business –”
She raised her head and looked at him directly. “I don’t get away very often.” She said. “Not like this. A little sip of freedom is a powerful drink for a parched soul.”
That statement was so unusual and profound that it stopped Peter. No one he knew spoke like that.
“It’s intoxicating,” she continued. “You believe you can just be who you really are. And you forget. All the other things that normally stop you behaving this way. You imagine those rules have disappeared.”
She stepped towards him, and shook her head ruefully. “Really, you pretend they don’t exist.” She sighed. “Reality always rushes back in.” Valerie nodded at the man on the couch.
“I just wanted that taste...”
“But, those rules, they were made up by other people.” Peter couldn’t believe he was saying this to her. “Is it wrong to express who you really are?”
She moved closer to the man on the couch, and beside Peter. “If it hurts someone else, then isn’t that a problem?”
“I think this guy’s problem is that he was drinking, and snorting coke. You probably added a little too much excitement to the mix.”
Her laugh was champagne bubbles on the tongue. She touched his arm. He fizzed.
“You’re very kind, Peter.”
His name on her lips was a benediction.
He looked in her luminous eyes, and again heard the gushing of water. Or perhaps it was the blood in his veins.
She raised her hand and touched his cheek. “You have a special insight,” she murmured. “So different from this man.”
It hurt Peter that she even mentioned the man passed out on the couch.
She stepped close to him, and his arm rose up to encircle her small waist. The music seemed louder. They swayed together, her breath warm on his cheek.
“You have depth and complexity inside you, hiding behind your mild features and combed back hair.”
In response he pressed her body against him. There was nothing artificial to her warmth and the kindness in her voice.
They were beside the couch, and as one they sat down. The man behind Peter, snorted loudly, as if he was waking, but settled back again.
Valerie’s fingers stroked his hair, and then tousled it. She smiled, showing an even row of small teeth. “I see you, Peter Witt.”
Something cracked open inside. A burst of rare emotion paralysed him, and she pressed her forehead to his, until there were only her glacier eyes filling up his view.
“Oh yes,” she whispered.
He couldn’t breathe. Air vanished. The rushing became a pounding. But the blinding blue eyes kept him fixed.
And he heard, No, Valerie. Resonant, deep voices.
Peter was sitting, gasping for breath.
Behind Valerie, on the balcony, two white masks with no eyes or mouth hung in the darkness outside the glass.
He could not draw breath to shout.
Only a taste, Valerie pleaded.
The masks moved through the glass. They were figures of smoke, except for their blank white faces.
Valerie stood, facing them. I can’t return.
Enough!
And that sound, if directed, could stop a heart.
Peter shivered, unable to run.
We have indulged your fantasies long enough. You are not one of them.
I can be. After all those centuries of watching, I can now be here among them.
Impossible. We can’t allow it.
One of the figures raised a shadowy arm, and grasped Valerie’s shoulder.
The mask and silicon suit collapsed slowly, as if air was being let out from a balloon.
The wig tumbled finally, onto the puddle of scarlet clothing and fake skin on the floor.
A form, flickering, and unstable, hung beside the other two.
I will find a way, she said.
An exchange passed between the three - electric flashes among distant thunder clouds.
A charged mist swept over Peter’s face and he fell back, unconscious.
Rousing from sleep was like crawling through mud. Each step forward sucked him half way back into the murk, but Peter fought to wake up. It was an imperative. His eyelids flickered open.
He lay on the couch.
Valerie’s exterior - the wig and skin - had disappeared.
Groggily, Peter sat up and checked his watch. 4.55am. Only minutes had passed, but it felt like a month.
He stared at the other man, stupidly, trying to remember the progression of events. After a couple of moments memories reassembled and clarity returned.
The image of eerie blank faces floating towards him arose in his mind, and a jab of fear jolted him to his feet. Some
how, he knew he wasn’t supposed to remember anything of what happened.
Peter leaned forward and pulled up the mask over the chin to reveal the face of Valerie’s suitor. Ron. Of course it was. His furore had been a cover for obsession and thwarted desire.
Peter pulled his phone out and took a photo of Ron, passed out, with the mask half-on.
Insurance, he thought.
He slapped Ron lightly on the face.
His colleague’s eyelids popped open, revealing fearful, bloodshot eyes. He bolted upright. “Where is she?” he shouted.
“Who?” Peter said.
“Val...”
Peter watched the pained expression on Ron’s face as he struggled to hold onto the memories slipping away. Then he relaxed, as if he realised it might be better to forget.
“What happened?” he slurred.
“One of the guests on this floor complained about noise. I came to check and found you like this.
Ron grabbed his face and yanked the mask off. “What kind of fucking joke is this?”
“I don’t know, Ron. Perhaps you can explain why you were passed out wearing a gimp mask?”
Ron’s face reddened, then paled.
“It’s nearly 5am. The early birds are going to be up soon. The chef will arrive shortly. We’d better get out of here.”
Ron staggered to his feet. “I don’t know... I don’t remember what happened. I must’ve been drugged!”
“You should wash your face before anyone sees you,” Peter noted.
Ron glanced in a mirror, and wiped the bottom of his nose. He grunted thanks at Peter.
They left the room and returned to the lobby. In the elevator Ron said, “You’re a good guy, Peter.”
When Peter walked out of the lobby into the car park a couple of hours later, the world outside seemed shockingly bright. He drove home singing along to all the stupid songs on the radio.
After a long sleep Peter woke up refreshed, and turned on his computer.
‘Cross-dressing friendly clubs St. Paul’ he typed into the search bar, and printed out the list of places, and corresponding maps.
Then he hauled his trunk from under the bed, and hung up the clothes in his closet.
He laid one slinky wrap-around dress over his body and admired himself in the floor-length mirror.
“Valerie,” he murmured, and smiled.
Obsidian
Laura Mauro
Aino goes missing on the coldest night of the year.
Pihla leaves her sister unsupervised for six minutes. It shouldn’t be enough time for Aino to climb from her bed, pull on her snow boots and overcoat and disappear, but when Pihla returns, wrapped snugly in her bathrobe, wet hair cocooned in the folds of a radiator-warmed towel, Aino’s blue polka-dot bedsheets have been tossed aside, and she is nowhere to be found.
The bedroom window is wide-open; a sharp breeze tugs at the curtains. Pihla leans out. They are on the third floor, and the drop to the ground is sheer. It’s hard to believe that Aino – brittle as bone china – could have survived the drop.
Below, something moves. A shadow flits between the streetlights: spindle-legged, moving with a spider’s swift, careful gait. Pihla throws on her coat and boots, pulls a woollen hat on and runs outside, leaving the front door open. Her feet thunder in the stairwell. She reaches the bottom, spinning out into the street. The streetlights glow a serene gold. The street is empty.
Apprehension boils in Pihla’s stomach. Her mind is alive with possibilities, each more awful than the last. And in there too, smaller but infinitely more dense, is the certainty of her mother’s anger. A single responsibility, unfulfilled for six minutes, and now this: Aino, gone from her sickbed and spirited away into the early evening gloom. She can’t have gone far, Pihla reasons, as she breaks into a sprint. The road leads out of town, towards the lake and beyond, where tall firs line the roads and the darkness is broken only by the sweep of passing headlights. There isn’t anywhere for Aino to go.
Pihla sees in her mind a flash of powder-lilac coat motionless at the roadside; blood like scattered rubies in the snow.
The doctors say that Aino has epilepsy, that her wide-eyed absences and waking dreams are because something in her brain isn’t working quite the way it should. Pihla is fourteen. She is no scientist, no doctor; she conceives of the brain only as a pink, rubber-ridged object contained within the skull. And yet she doesn’t believe the doctors when they talk about Aino’s brain as though it is a piece of defective machinery. Whatever is wrong with Aino lies far deeper, beneath the skin and bones of her, the fluids and tissues. Pihla believes this with the unerring certainty of youth, and of sisterhood.
“Aino!”
The pavement is slick with ice. By sheer force of will, Pihla stays upright, legs chaotic as she runs. The January chill nips at her skin, leeching the residual warmth of her shower; the blood rises in her cheeks, a livid flush. Aino’s name burns in her throat, and the calm she has worked so hard to maintain is splitting at the seams, crumbling like an old carapace. In its place there is only raw panic. She skids to an unsteady halt at the intersection, scanning for any flicker of motion.
Their mother will be back from work soon, and she’ll know.
“Aino!” Desperation renders the final syllable shrill, echoing like a bird’s cry. She pivots on her heel, lifts her hand to shield the sudden glare of passing high-beams. As the van flashes by, almost silent on the ice, there’s a rustle of motion in the trees across the road. Pihla glimpses red snow boots disappearing into the undergrowth.
She bolts into the road. Luck alone enables her to clear the kerb before a navy blue Ford Fiesta, horn blaring, skids to a halt inches away. Pihla doesn’t stop to apologise. She pushes through the damp foliage with both hands, clawing at the frost-stiff branches, her ears ringing. For a moment she is lost, the pungent scent of rotting bark heavy in the cold air, and the entire world is slanted, canting mercilessly downwards as Pihla pushes on, finally emerging wet-faced and breathless on the other side.
The lake is a silent black mirror. Pihla stumbles down the bank, stopping just shy of the shore. The pebbles are embossed with a filigree of ice, birthday-cake delicate. A few metres upshore is Aino, crouched and perfectly still, a lavender ghost against the treeline.
Quietly, Pihla picks her way around the lake’s frozen rim, taking great care, as though Aino is a skittish animal liable to bolt at her approach. If Aino sees her, she does not react. Her large, dull eyes are fixed on some point in the distance, her lips slightly parted, as though in silent prayer. Pihla crouches beside her, close enough to hear the mucous rattle of Aino’s chest as she breathes.
“You mustn’t run off like that,” Pihla says, forcing herself to speak quietly, to breathe evenly. What she wants is to grab Aino by the shoulders, to shake her so hard that whatever is loose inside her head might snap back into place. She wants to yell, the way Äiti will yell when she gets home. She wants to wrap Aino in her arms and never let her go, because the world is too big and too cold, and Aino is so small. “Aino? You must never do that. What if you fell down and nobody knew you were here?”
For a moment Aino is very still, and Pihla thinks she must be having another of her absent episodes. But Aino draws in a long, wet-lunged breath and she says “I heard someone singing.”
“When?”
“Before you came. Out there -” she raises a doll-delicate hand, and Pihla traces the trajectory out onto the lake. Aino isn’t wearing gloves; the tips of her fingers are a bloodless white. “They sounded so sad.”
Pihla takes Aino’s hands in her own, numb skin against numb skin. “It was only a dream,” Pihla says, breathing warm onto their entwined fingers. Although there is almost five years between them, everyone says they look alike. They have the same snub of a nose, the same small rosebud mouth. The same wispy gossamer hair, though Pihla’s is much longer. “You’re not supposed to go on the ice alone, do you remember?”
“I wasn’t going to,” Ai
no says, a little petulantly. And then – lifting her face, a silvery rivulet of mucus tracing the curve of her philtrum – “But anyway, they were singing under the ice, and you can’t get down there even if you try.”
Pihla sighs. There is no sense in arguing with Aino’s trances; her sense of reality is distorted, her waking dreams woven into the fabric of every day so seamlessly that it is impossible to convince her that certain events haven’t actually happened. Aino believes herself an oracle, a conduit for the magical and the strange, and she believes this not with the lunatic conviction of a man who swears he’s seen aliens flying over the Baltic, but with the quiet, unwavering confidence of one for whom God unequivocally exists.
She isn’t an oracle, though. She is a sick little girl. That’s all. Pihla stands. Tugs at Aino’s cold little hand. “Come on,” she says. Her voice seems very loud in the silence, echoing out over the smoked-glass lake. In the far distance, the stars have begun to cluster in the sky. “Äiti will be worried about you.”
By the time they get home Aino is limp and shivering despite her coat and boots; her face is ashen save for the livid fever-flush blooming across her cheeks, creeping up her forehead. Äiti is waiting for them at the open door, jaw tight with worry. Pihla deposits their shoes in the hall, throws their coats over the stand. When she enters the living room, their mother is stripping the damp pyjamas from Aino’s frail body, testing her temperature with a gentle hand to the cheek. She encourages Aino to stretch out on the sofa, propping her head up with cushions.
“Blanket,” Äiti says.
Äiti hasn’t shouted at her yet, but Pihla knows she’s cross. Her terse commands and stiff marionette motion forecast a coming storm. Pihla fetches the woollen blanket from the airing cupboard and watches in mute contrition as Äiti tucks it around Aino’s bare limbs. A damp blue flannel rests on her forehead.
“You have a little bit of a fever,” their mother tells Aino, stroking her hair, “from all of the excitement. Will you promise to rest now, for your Äiti?”
Aino nods her agreement. Half-hidden beneath the flannel, her eyelids slip shut; blue-veined, almost translucent, like the tail of a pink fish. Äiti unfolds from her crouch, knees clicking. For a moment, her eyes meet Pihla’s, whose gut constricts in fearful anticipation. There is no anger in her mother’s face, though, no steel in her red-rimmed eyes. She is grey, and heavy-limbed, and too tired to shout. She walks by without a word. Somehow, the silent weight of her disappointment feels far worse than any rebuke.
