Mask of Silver

by Rosemary Jones

  “I don’t understand,” I said. Blood on the ground, claw marks on the trees, thin spots. None of it made sense. “What do you mean?”

  “Just that there are places that you shouldn’t go. Not alone, not looking for something, not hunting down paths. People disappear doing that in Arkham. You should ask Florie.”

  “Florie? At the diner?” I said.

  “Yep. Her family has been in Arkham a long time. She hears things. She remembers things. Me, I just took a wrong turn and have been a bit stuck ever since. Of course, I found Duke and that’s something.” Pete looked around the clearing. “Going to be dark soon. I’ll walk you two back up to the gate. Safer that way.”

  “But we need to find our friend,” I said, not wanting to stay but not wanting to abandon the search for Paul. “And we found something. Blood.” I pointed at the spot where I never wanted to step again.

  Pete looked where I was pointing. He kept a firm grip on the back of Duke’s neck. “Could be blood. Could be an animal got loose here and killed something. Not necessarily your friend. Look, I’ll walk you back to the gate and then I’ll take a little search around town. I know the places that man can go drinking when he’s got a thirst. Likely your friend is in one of those joints.”

  Fred looked as troubled as I felt. “I’ve known Paul to go on a binge or two, but not when he’s working. He’s always been reliable.”

  “We should keep looking,” I said. I hated to stop our search even though I felt as if I was being pushed out of the woods. Not by Pete, but by the trees, the buzzing insects, the rotting smell of the place, all crowding in on me like one of the nightmares that kept dragging me out of sleep in the middle of the night. Above us, the black coat swayed like funeral bunting on the branch.

  “If Paul is not back by morning,” Fred said. “We call the cops.”

  “Could do that,” Pete agreed amiably as he practically shoved us back on the path and walked us toward the Fitzmaurice gate. “Not that the cops have much luck around here. Arkham’s a strange town.”

  “I believe that,” I said.

  Pete smiled more broadly at me. “Florie said you were one of the clever ones. Well, she’d know.”

  Florie again! I resolved to go back to the diner as soon as I could. I wanted to talk to Florie now.

  The shadows were deeper on the path. Once or twice a bush rustled, which was odd because there was no wind at all. I pretended that I didn’t see the odd shapes created by some of the shadows. Shapes like a dog-headed man, hunkering down and loping on all fours like a wolf, only to stop and stretch, and stand like a hunched-over man in the shelter of the hemlock. Duke bared his teeth and growled at the nothing in the bushes, and it remained hidden.

  Pete and Fred started talking about airplanes. Pete had no desire to fly in one. Fred wanted to take a camera up in one. “Did you see The Skywayman, some of the stunts that they got? But they filmed from the ground,” said Fred.

  “The pilot died,” I said. It had been a horrible wreck a couple of years ago, killing both the star of the film and his co-pilot. Of course, their studio just rushed it into release with plenty of headlines in the press promising a final close-up of the killer crash. Sydney had seen it and reported his disappointment in the whole thing. He said most of it looked false because the studio had used models rather than actual footage for many of the “death defying” parts. “Why would you go up in a plane to be killed?”

  “Planes are safe enough,” said Fred. “And getting safer all the time. I’ve talked to some of the barnstormers. They can do tricks without any trouble if they are given time to set up and rehearse. It’s like us. They make it look worse than it is, to give the audience a scare.”

  I had my doubts about that. But luckily Sydney had never liked how airplanes looked in films and never expressed any interest in doing a movie with one.

  By the time that we reached the gate, I was almost convinced that Paul had just gone out for a snort on the town. But not quite. The voice in my head that I didn’t want to listen to kept insisting that it had been blood on the ground and claw marks on the tree where we’d seen what looked like Paul’s coat.

  Pete shoved the gate open. Duke, with a happy tail wag, bounded through and across the lawn. We walked more slowly behind the dog. Pete came last. He turned and gave one more long look down the path. Then he shoved the gate shut and lowered the latch to lock it with a decisive snap.

  “That’s a bad place,” Pete said. “The Fitzmaurice men could never resist it. But it’s a bad place to get lost.”

  “Sydney said that he loved those woods. That he liked to go there with his grandfather,” I said.

  “Florie says he liked to throw stones at hornet’s nests,” answered Pete. “Lots of men in Arkham are like that. Shove a stick at something to see what will happen. Doesn’t make it a good idea.”

  We bid Pete goodnight and trudged back to the house. “Tomorrow,” I said to Fred, “you can take me to the diner again. I need to talk to Florie.”

  Fred looked up at the flock of crows that seemed to have returned to permanently settle on the roof of the Fitzmaurice house. The birds spread across the eaves like a giant ink blot.

  “I think you are right,” he said.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The next morning, Max told us that everything was all right with Paul. “He’s taking the train back to California,” he said.

  I was only halfway through my morning coffee. Another horrible night had filled my head with nightmares. I woke with all my bedding, pillows included, in a tangle on the floor. The nightmare left me shivering and sweating with a horrible pain in my neck because I’d been curled up on a nearly bare mattress. There had been no fire in this dream, that I remembered, but something had been chasing me through the woods. My dream featured trees that dripped poison from stone leaves and giant insects, bigger and blacker than crows, that filled the skies with buzzing wings.

  Gulping a couple more mouthfuls of coffee, I listened to the others question Max about Paul. Most importantly, how he knew that Paul was going to California and what did that mean.

  “He got a job,” said Max. “He called from the station and asked me to ship his stuff.”

  “He just took off in his makeup and tramp clothes?” I asked. That made no sense at all.

  “No, of course not,” said Max. “He came back here while we were still down at the gate shooting at the crows, and washed up. Found a telegram offering him a part in some project of United Artists and took off. I think he wanted to avoid Sydney. Well, you know how Sydney was about Maggie leaving. Paul just grabbed a couple of shirts and his razor kit. Then he asked if I could send his trunk later as he didn’t want to deal with it. It’s all locked up and ready to go.”

  Jim, who was stuffing his face with bacon, just nodded in agreement. Hal, who was eating with more dignified bites, said, “I noticed that his things were missing from the bathroom and closet. His trunk is still in our room.”

  “I didn’t hear the phone,” said Eleanor.

  Max shrugged and took a bite of toast. “It was a bit later, when Jeany and Fred were out in the woods. I picked up the receiver just before it rang. I was in the hall, about to make a call to the studio, but when I picked it up, there was Paul on the other end instead of the operator.”

  It made sense. Paul always had been a bit distant with the rest of us. He might take off without telling anyone. Even if he’d promised to work with Hal on his chicken farm.

  We heard a clatter on the stairs that meant Sydney was sweeping down to breakfast. Renee was eating up in her room, as was Lulu. Renee stayed upstairs because I’d washed her hair and set it in pins that morning to give her a proper curl for the day’s scene. Lulu probably was eating in bed for the same reason. Being half dressed and made up did not do much for glamor over breakfast. Besides, both leading ladies had taken to avoiding Sydney in the
mornings. He was either too cheerful to bear before coffee or equally gloomy and insufferable. We never knew which, and it seemed to be triggered by the state of the previous day’s filming or whatever discussion that he’d had with Eleanor about the state of her scenarios.

  “Hush,” said Max. “Don’t say anything more about Paul. I’ll tell Sydney later. But he’s not going to like losing him. You know how he gets when someone poaches one of his actors.”

  “Well, I know how I get when that happens during a show. How does Sydney react?” said Eleanor.

  “Furious and unforgiving, and the rest of us will be questioned for days about our supposed lack of loyalty,” said Hal. “He dislikes it most in the middle of a shoot. The last time was the young man who fell down the mountain.”

  “Selby didn’t leave,” I said. “He broke his leg and had to stay in the hospital.”

  “Exactly,” said Hal. “Max should keep quiet. Sydney might not even notice for a day or two. Paul doesn’t have any specific scenes coming up.”

  “I won’t notice what?” said Sydney as he came in and dropped into his chair with a dramatic wave of the arm at Mrs Mayhew and her coffee pot. “Eggs, bacon, and very well-done toast,” he called to her. “With the good marmalade. Not honey. And butter, don’t forget the butter.”

  “Butter and marmalade are already on the table,” I said, shoving them toward Sydney. Mrs Mayhew poured Sydney a cup of coffee and filled the rest of our cups to the brim. I sipped mine a little to gain enough room for more cream and sugar.

  “You won’t notice that Renee and Lulu are breakfasting in bed in preparation for their big scene,” said Eleanor with a wink at Hal. “Or resting from yesterday’s activities. Lulu was up and down all night. She swears that she was eaten alive by mosquitoes and ticks in your woods yesterday. Not that I could find a mark on her.”

  “And I’m sure you looked closely,” said Sydney.

  “Every inch of her pearly white body,” said Eleanor. “Honestly, Sydney, you are as bad as those New York reporters. Not that calamine does a thing for my romantic mood, but I stood ready with a jar of the stinking stuff.”

  “So she can film today?” said Sydney. “No bug bites showing?”

  “You have a heart of gold, Sydney,” said Eleanor. “Such compassion for your actors.”

  “I have a film to make,” said Sydney, “and a studio to please, don’t I, Max?”

  Max had buried his head in the financial section of a Boston newspaper as soon as Sydney had entered the room, but he looked up at Sydney’s comments. “We are making progress and that pleases the studio,” he said.

  “I live to please the studio,” Sydney replied. Mrs Mayhew returned with his breakfast and placed the china plate carefully in front of him. “Excellent, excellent. Nothing like a hearty breakfast before a hard day’s work.”

  Sydney was definitely in one of his jolly moods, which meant that he liked yesterday’s filming. I was a little surprised. I thought he’d still be upset about the crows. After all, the birds had chased Max and him into the house.

  “What are we filming today?” asked Betsy.

  “Just a couple of simple scenes. A lull before the real terror starts,” said Sydney. “You dressing the sisters for a dinner alone in the dining room. The dinner itself. A knock on the door that you answer, only to find no one there. It’s all building up to the entrance of the masked stranger.”

  “No party scene?” said Betsy. She loved the party scenes and being able to do a little extra cameo as a flirtatious maid or guest.

  “I thought about it,” said Sydney. “I discussed it with Eleanor.”

  “Endlessly, darling,” said Eleanor.

  “But we’ve done those so many times,” said Sydney. “I wanted this film to be different. This film will be different. The audience will feel as if they are trapped in the house with the sisters and as anxious as they are to escape it.”

  “But not for a party,” muttered Eleanor. “Women cannot be appeased with a simple party, a few drinks, and a pretty gown. They also want power, as our battle for the vote proved. Now we must show that we can use it wisely. We have been kept isolated too long, now we move into a new way of thinking. The sisters step forward into a new world and a new power after being imprisoned by their family’s past. That is the current that carries this plot, that is why a party would be all wrong.”

  Betsy started to say something, then didn’t. Obviously there was no winning such a dispute with Eleanor when she framed it like that. Whatever Betsy said, she would either fail to uphold the ideals of those who fought so hard to get women the vote, or label herself as far too easily appeased or too quickly distracted by pretty gowns. I gave Betsy a sympathetic glance. I couldn’t figure out the correct answer either.

  Eleanor’s intellect was formidable. I admired her greatly. She also scared me a little. Which was unfortunate, because she could be the kindest of souls. If I had told her of my fears earlier, the outcome of that summer might have been different.

  “We need the isolation of the old house, the anxiety of the sisters to leave their past behind,” said Sydney. “They move to a new place and leave behind the shadows of the old. They remake their world as we will remake ours. Besides, it is much easier to frighten an audience with an empty room.”

  “A completely empty room?” questioned Eleanor. “Cannot be done. There’s nothing frightening about that.”

  “Perhaps not on stage,” conceded Sydney. “But it works on film. Didn’t it, Jeany?”

  I laughed. It had worked. It was a trick that Renee and I came up with to fill a spot in a film where not much happened. Of course, Sydney didn’t like it at first. But when he saw how the audience reacted, he claimed it as his own invention.

  “We had a scene in the Witch Woman of the Woods, where the heroine has to run away from the house into the woods. But why would she do that?” I said, echoing Renee’s early arguments against the scene. “Wouldn’t a house, even a spooky old house, be safer than running through the forest at night? So we show her enter the house, very afraid, very uncertain. She stands in the hallway looking into an empty parlor room. The audience sees it from the heroine’s viewpoint. Just a long, long look through a half-open door at a nearly empty room. Just a chair and the edge of the table.”

  “No dripping blood, no headless corpses?” said Eleanor.

  I shook my head. “Nothing. Everything is completely bare and simple. And we kept the camera on that empty room for a full minute.” One minute of staring at nothing can seem like eternity in a crowded theater.

  Eleanor caught that and nodded. “Long enough that the audience starts to fidget. Papers rustle. People start whispering.”

  “People always whisper at the movies,” said Betsy. “They are reading the title cards out loud to their friends. But it was a long time with nothing happening.”

  “That was the beauty of it,” Sydney picked up. “A moment of absolute stillness with an audience trained to look for frantic action by those silly Keystone pictures and all the rest.”

  “A long moment,” agreed Eleanor. She looked intrigued by the idea. She was a very intelligent woman. “Then what did you do to make them jump?”

  “Slammed the door,” I said.

  I still remembered the satisfaction of that spectacular hard push after sitting behind the door for aminute. The bang of the door, not that anyone could hear it, and Fred’s triumphant call of “Perfect!” as he finished the shot.

  “In the theater, the organ supplied the pop of noise, the sound of the slam,” I explained. “And Fred had shot so close that it was like the door slammed right in their face.”

  “Clever. Bet that made them jump,” said Eleanor.

  I nodded. “It did.” The night that Renee and I snuck into the back of a theater to watch, one man yelled so loud in surprise that he nearly frightened us. He certainly
caused the rest of the audience to gasp. After that, nobody wondered why Renee as the sweet heroine turned around and ran off into the woods not to meet the terrible witch, but to become her. That was the other twist that kept the audience talking as they streamed out of the theater and into the night. It also marked the end of Renee playing sweet heroines in the movies.

  “It’s funny,” I said. “That scene. The house was very similar. The way that the woods ran in the back.” We’d filmed at a mansion that one of the studio heads had built up in the canyons. Sydney had picked it because there was a long lawn in the back that led to a tall iron fence and a gate opening into a wooded ravine. I remember Renee running down the back steps of that house and to the gate to disappear into the place of evil enchantment that changed the heroine forever into the witch in the woods.

  “We use bits of our life to inform our stories,” said Sydney. “And we are drawn to stories that inform our lives. Like dear Renee, forever transforming herself into something that she is not.”

  That made me look up. As far as I knew, Renee had never discussed her complicated history with Sydney. Or that I was actually her sister. But given their intimate relationship over the last few years, he probably guessed that she wasn’t completely who she said she was. Was this a hint that he knew enough to keep her secret or a threat that he knew so much that could harm her?

  “I watched a few of your older films,” said Eleanor. “I have friends in the business and they were able to get a hold of the reels for a private screening. I did not see the witch movie but I saw the siren and the vampire. Both were surprisingly good. Renee truly transforms herself. At one moment, you are sure that she is innocent, perhaps the victim, and at the next she’s a woman of such power, even of evil. Lulu, as much as I love her, cannot do that. She is always just Lulu. She can hold your eye. She can make you care about her character. She can be unforgettable in scenes. But she can never be anyone other than Lulu.”