'A chopping knife!' The maid opened her eyes wide and clasped her hands in front of her. 'You mean a real chopping knife?'
'Yes, yes, of course. Come on now, pleess. You can find dose tings surely for me.'
'Yes, sir, I'll try, sir. Surely I'll try to get them.' And she went.
The little man handed round the Martinis. We stood there and sipped them, the boy with the long freckled face and the pointed nose, bare-bodied except for a pair of faded brown bathing shorts; the English girl, a large-boned fair-haired girl wearing a pale blue bathing suit, who watched the boy over the top of her glass all the time; the little man with the colourless eyes standing there in his immaculate white suit drinking his Martini and looking at the girl in her pale blue bathing dress. I didn't know what to make of it all. The man seemed serious about the bet and he seemed serious about the business of cutting off the finger. But hell, what if the boy lost? Then we'd have to rush him to the hospital in the Cadillac that he hadn't won. That would be a fine thing. Now wouldn't that be a really fine thing? It would be a damn silly unnecessary thing so far as I could see.
'Don't you think this is rather a silly bet?' I said.
'I think it's a fine bet,' the boy answered. He had already downed one large Martini.
'I think it's a stupid, ridiculous bet,' the girl said. 'What'll happen if you lose?'
'It won't matter. Come to think of it, I can't remember ever in my life having had any use for the little finger on my left hand. Here he is.' The boy took hold of the finger. 'Here he is and he hasn't ever done a thing for me yet. So why shouldn't I bet him? I think it's a fine bet.'
The little man smiled and picked up the shaker and refilled our glasses.
'Before we begin,' he said, 'I will present to de - to de referee de key of de car.' He produced a car key from his pocket and gave it to me. 'De papers,' he said, 'de owning papers and insurance are in de pocket of de car.'
Then the coloured maid came in again. In one hand she carried a small chopper, the kind used by butchers for chopping meat bones, and in the other a hammer and a bag of nails.
'Good! You get dem all. Tank you, tank you. Now you can go.' He waited until the maid had closed the door, then he put the implements on one of the beds and said, 'Now we prepare ourselves, yes?' And to the boy, 'Help me, pleess, with dis table. We carry it out a little.'
It was the usual kind of hotel writing desk, just a plain rectangular table about four feet by three with a blotting pad, ink, pens and paper. They carried it out into the room away from the wall, and removed the writing things.
'And now,' he said, 'a chair.' He picked up a chair and placed it beside the table. He was very brisk and very animated, like a person organizing games at a children's party. 'And now de nails. I must put in de nails.' He fetched the nails and he began to hammer them into the top of the table.
We stood there, the boy, the girl, and I, holding Martinis in our hands, watching the little man at work. We watched him hammer two nails into the table, about six inches apart. He didn't hammer them right home; he allowed a small part of each one to stick up. Then he tested them for firmness with his fingers.
Anyone would think the son of a bitch had done this before, I told myself. He never hesitates. Table, nails, hammer, kitchen chopper. He knows exactly what he needs and how to arrange it.
'And now,' he said, 'all we want is some string.' He found some string. 'All right, at last we are ready. Will you pleess to sit here at de table?' he said to the boy.
The boy put his glass away and sat down.
'Now place de left hand between dese two nails. De nails are only so I can tie your hand in place. All right, good. Now I tie your hand secure to de table - so.'
He wound the string around the boy's wrist, then several times around the wide part of the hand, then he fastened it tight to the nails. He made a good job of it and when he'd finished there wasn't any question about the boy being able to draw his hand away. But he could move his fingers.
'Now pleess, clench de fist, all except for de little finger. You must leave de little finger sticking out, lying on de table.'
'Ex-cellent! Ex-cellent! Now we are ready. Wid your right hand you manipulate de lighter. But one momint, pleess.'
He skipped over to the bed and picked up the chopper. He came back and stood beside the table with the chopper in his hand.
'We are all ready?' he said. 'Mister referee, you must say to begin.'
The English girl was standing there in her pale blue bathing costume right behind the boy's chair. She was just standing there, not saying anything. The boy was sitting quite still holding the lighter in his right hand, looking at the chopper. The little man was looking at me.
'Are you ready?' I asked the boy.
'I'm ready.'
'And you?' to the little man.
'Quite ready,' he said and he lifted the chopper up in the air and held it there about two feet above the boy's finger, ready to chop. The boy watched it, but he didn't flinch and his mouth didn't move at all. He merely raised his eyebrows and frowned.
'All right,' I said. 'Go ahead.'
The boy said, 'Will you please count aloud the number of times I light it.'
'Yes,' I said. 'I'll do that.'
With his thumb he raised the top of the lighter, and again with the thumb he gave the wheel a sharp flick. The flint sparked and the wick caught fire and burned with a small yellow flame.
'One!' I called.
He didn't blow the flame out; he closed the top of the lighter on it and he waited for perhaps five seconds before opening it again.
He flicked the wheel very strongly and once more there was a small flame burning on the wick.
'Two!'
No one else said anything. The boy kept his eyes on the lighter. The little man held the chopper up in the air and he too was watching the lighter.
'Three!'
'Four!'
'Five!'
'Six!'
'Seven!' Obviously it was one of those lighters that worked. The flint gave a big spark and the wick was the right length. I watched the thumb snapping the top down on to the flame. Then a pause. Then the thumb raising the top once more. This was an all-thumb operation. The thumb did everything. I took a breath, ready to say eight. The thumb flicked the wheel. The flint sparked. The little flame appeared.
'Eight!' I said, and as I said it the door opened. We all turned and we saw a woman standing in the doorway, a small, black-haired woman, rather old, who stood there for about two seconds then rushed forward, shouting, 'Carlos! Carlos!' She grabbed his wrist, took the chopper from him, threw it on the bed, took hold of the little man by the lapels of his white suit and began shaking him very vigorously, talking to him fast and loud and fiercely all the time in some Spanish-sounding language. She shook him so fast you couldn't see him anymore. He became a faint, misty, quickly moving outline, like the spokes of a turning wheel.
Then she slowed down and the little man came into view again and she hauled him across the room and pushed him backwards on to one of the beds. He sat on the edge of it blinking his eyes and testing his head to see if it would still turn on his neck.
'I am sorry,' the woman said. 'I am so terribly sorry that this should happen.' She spoke almost perfect English.
'It is too bad,' she went on. 'I suppose it is really my fault. For ten minutes I leave him alone to go and have my hair washed and I come back and he is at it again.' She looked sorry and deeply concerned.
The boy was untying his hand from the table. The English girl and I stood there and said nothing.
'He is a menace,' the woman said. 'Down where we live at home he has taken altogether forty-seven fingers from different people, and he has lost eleven cars. In the end they threatened to have him put away somewhere. That's why I brought him up here.'
'We were only having a little bet,' mumbled the little man from the bed.
'I suppose he bet you a car,' the woman said.
'Yes,' the boy
answered. 'A Cadillac'
'He has no car. It's mine. And that makes it worse,' she said, 'that he should bet you when he has nothing to bet with. I am ashamed and very sorry about it all.' She seemed an awfully nice woman.
'Well,' I said, 'then here's the key of your car.' I put it on the table.
'We were only having a little bet,' mumbled the little man.
'He hasn't anything left to bet with,' the woman said. 'He hasn't a thing in the world. Not a thing. As a matter of fact I myself won it all from him a long while ago. It took time, a lot of time, and it was hard work, but I won it all in the end.' She looked up at the boy and she smiled, a slow sad smile, and she came over and put out a hand to take the key from the table.
I can see it now, that hand of hers; it had only one finger on it, and a thumb.
7/ Kenneth Ireland - The Werewolf Mask
The mask looked just like a horrible werewolf with blood dripping from its fangs. It was one which fitted right over Peter's head, with spaces for his eyes so that when he looked out the movement gave an extra dimension of horror to the already terrifying expression on the rubber face. The hair hanging down from the top of the mask looked real, as did the hair and whiskers drooping from the sides and face. It was very satisfying, Peter felt, as soon as he had been into the joke shop and bought it.
Something, however, was missing. While the mask seemed realistic enough, it was his hands which were wrong. If a human could really turn into a werewolf, it would not be only the face which would change, but the hands would grow hairy as well. He discovered this when he unwrapped the paper bag in which he had bought it and went upstairs to try the effect in front of his dressing-table mirror. As long as he kept his hands hidden, all was well, but once his hands were seen, they were far too smooth. In fact, they weren't hairy at all. It was rather disappointing, but nevertheless he thought that he'd try out the effect anyway. His mother was in, so making grunting and drooling noises he loped away down the stairs.
He went into the living-room where his mother was darning some socks, flung open the door suddenly and leaped in, arms raised to his shoulders, fingers extended like claws, and growling ferociously.
'My goodness,' said his mother, looking up, 'what on earth made you waste your money on a thing like that?'
'I thought it was rather good,' said Peter, not at all put out. 'Doesn't it look - well, real?'
'Well, it was your birthday money, so I suppose you could spend it how you liked,' said his mother placidly, returning to the socks. 'I don't know how you manage to get such large holes in these, I really don't. I think it must be the way you drag them on.'
'But doesn't it look just like a werewolf?' asked Peter, taking the mask off and examining it carefully.
'It would, I suppose, except there are no such things and never have been such things as werewolves. I think you've wasted your money on something which is of no real use,' his mother replied. 'The money would have been better spent on some new pairs of socks. Still, your Aunty Doreen did tell you to spend it on something to amuse you, so I suppose we can't expect everything.'
'The thing that's wrong with it is my hands,' said Peter. 'The face is all right, but the hands are wrong to go with it, don't you think?'
He put the mask on again and held his hands out for her to see the effect. She glanced at him briefly. 'Putting a mask on like that won't make your hands look different from a boy's,' she said. 'The only thing you could do is wear gloves, your woolly ones perhaps, to disguise them.'
Since she was taking no more notice of him, he went back upstairs, drew a pair of woolly gloves from a drawer in his dressing table, and tried the effect this time. Well, perhaps it wasn't all that bad. At least the gloves gave some kind of appearance of hairiness, but it was still not quite right. He tried combing the backs of the gloves, but that was no good at all. When he tried the claw effect, it was not half as good as when his nails were showing.
He still had some money left, so he went back to the joke shop, taking the mask with him.
'Have you got,' he asked, 'anything like hairy hands?'
The shopkeeper, being a bit of a joker himself, looked down at his hands and asked if they would do. Then he looked down at his feet behind the counter and as if in surprise announced that he hadn't got pigs' trotters, either.
'No, I mean,' explained Peter carefully, 'like I bought this werewolf mask, I wonder if you have a kind of hairy hand mask to go with it. You know, to make the whole thing look - well, more real?'
'Hairy, with sort of claws, you mean?' asked the shopkeeper, nodding. 'I might have. Hang on.'
He went along the shelves behind the counter, opened first one drawer then another, and at the third drawer extracted a transparent plastic bag which he placed on the counter.
'These do?' he asked.
Peter picked them up eagerly, and inspected the contents through the plastic. They looked about right.
'Can I try them on?' he asked.
'Sure.' The shopkeeper ripped open the bag and laid the hands out for him.
They were not like gloves, because they did not cover the hands all round, but merely lay on top and were fastened by a strap underneath and another round the wrist. Just the tips of the fingers fitted into sockets so that the rubber fingers would not dangle about uselessly. Peter tried them on.
'You can't expect a perfect fit,' the shopkeeper said, 'because of course they don't make them in different sizes. If they're too big, just tighten the strap underneath and pull the one that goes round your wrist up your arm a bit.'
He helped him to put them on. They were rather big, but with them pulled well up the hands and over his wrists they were not bad at all, Peter decided. He would have them, if he could afford them. They were just as good as the magnificent mask, they had what looked like real hair growing along the backs, really satisfying long claws with just enough red on the ends to look as if they had torn into somebody's flesh, and what was more the red was actually painted to look as if it were still wet.
'Try the effect of both the mask and the hands,' suggested the shopkeeper, pointing towards a mirror on the wall behind the door, so Peter did. That was much better, especially in the fairly dim light inside the shop. Absolutely terrifying, almost.
'Wrap them up for you?' asked the shopkeeper.
'No, I'll take them as they are,' said Peter.
'Pardon?' The mask was not adjusted quite correctly, so his voice had been rather muffled.
Peter straightened the mask round his face so that his mouth was in the right place. 'No thanks. How much?'
He paid the money and left the shop wearing his new possessions, because he just happened to have noticed Billy Fidler leaning against the pillar box outside, looking the other way.
He ran out of the shop, crept round the side of the pillar box then slowly reached out a hand to touch Billy on the shoulder. Billy turned, as he expected him to do.
'That's pretty good,' said Billy, standing up. He looked Peter over critically. 'I like the hands.' Then he peered closer. 'Oh - it's Peter.'
'What do you think of it, then?' asked Peter.
'Pretty good. I could only really tell who you were by the clothes. It needs to be darker, though. I mean, you don't expect to come across a werewolf in daylight, so it looks just like a horrible mask and a pair of hands just now. If it was dark, though, and you suddenly came at me, that would really give me a nasty turn, I can tell you. Can I try them on?'
Peter didn't mind showing off his new acquisitions, and in any case he wanted to find out if what Billy had said was true. When Billy put them on, he found that it was. They were very good indeed, very effective for what they were, money well spent. But it was still unfortunately true that in broad daylight, on the pavement outside a row of shops with a pillar box just next to them, the mask was just a mask, and the hands were obviously artificial: not at all bad, though.
'Try them out on her,' advised Peter, seeing Wendy Glover approaching with her mother.
She was a girl at their school who always seemed to frighten quite easily.
Billy obediently popped behind the pillar box, and as Wendy and her mother drew level suddenly jumped out in front of them. Wendy's mother drew her daughter a little closer to her with disdain.
'Billy Fidler, I should think,' remarked Wendy primly to her mother as they continued along the pavement. She turned after they had walked a few paces. 'A bit silly, I think,' she said loudly.
'I tell you, it'd be a different story if it was dark,' said Billy firmly, taking the mask and the hands off again and giving them back to Peter. 'You try it, and see if I'm not right.'
Peter slipped the items into his pockets and went home, taking them upstairs and placing them carefully in the drawer of his dressing table, trying not to fold them and cause creases to develop in them.
It began to grow dark quite early that evening, so at the first opportunity Peter slipped off upstairs, stood in front of the mirror and tried the mask on again without switching on his bedroom light. In the dusk, it looked beautifully eerie. When he strapped the werewolf hands on to his own and then tried the effect in full, he almost managed to frighten himself, it looked so real that figure ready to leap out at him from the mirror.
Then he knew what was lacking, and ran downstairs into the kitchen, hurrying back up to his bedroom with a little pocket torch in his hands. This time he drew the curtains as well, and when the room was pitch black held the torch just underneath his chin and switched it on suddenly.
This time he really did jump in fright. In front of him was a monster, really horrible, writhing and drooling with just a hint of blood on the tips of its fangs and from its claws more blood shining in the light as if freshly drawn from a victim. He moved his left hand across his mouth as though trying to wipe it clean, and it was so realistic that he was glad to know that downstairs both of his parents were in the house.
'Well, well,' he said aloud, very pleased now, and hurried to switch on the electric light.
The Puffin Book of Horror Stories Page 6
