Home! Home! urged the voice.
The rain began pouring down as Harley raced up the long drive. The mansion loomed above him, its windows flickering, shifting with each bolt of lightning, so first it was all ablaze, then dark and foreboding.
Was the house really moving back and forth through time, or was it simply his vision that kept changing?
At the top of the hill, Harley stopped, panting for breath.
I must go home! Please take me home!
The cry was irresistible. Harley sprinted onto the porch. Without bothering to ring or knock, he pulled open the door.
Standing behind it, as if she had been waiting for him, was the old woman who had spoken to him at the edge of the path the day he got the mask. Lightning sizzled behind him and Harley gasped. Suddenly the woman wasn’t old after all, but young and pretty.
Another bolt of lightning, and age reclaimed her.
The voice in Harley’s head cried out again, not words this time, just a sound so filled with loss and sorrow that Harley’s heart nearly burst with pain.
What did it all mean?
Unable to see because of the sudden tears filling his eyes, he backed away. But before he could turn and run, the woman grabbed his arm. She pulled him into the house, then slammed the door against the mounting storm.
Slammed it, too, Harley felt, against the world he knew and any chance he had of returning to it.
The woman fell to her knees and stared at him. Wiping the rain from his face, Harley could see tears welling in her eyes. She reached out wonderingly to touch his cheek, then sighed. “It’s not really you, is it?”
Harley didn’t know what to say.
As if his silence gave her hope, she whispered, “Eamonn?”
He shook his head, too fearful to speak.
She sighed again and stood. “Of course not. You couldn’t be.”
“What’s happening?” whispered Harley. “I don’t understand.”
“This is the last night. I had hoped he would come home.”
Harley shook his head. “I don’t know what you mean.”
The old/young woman smiled sadly. “Nor should you.” She glanced at a clock on the wall. “We have a little time. Take off the mask, and I will tell you a story.”
“I can’t. It won’t come loose.”
She gasped and put her hand to her mouth. “What have you done to yourself? Never mind. If what you say is true, then tonight is your last chance, too. At least, it is if you want your own face back.”
He followed her through the house, which continued to shift with each lightning flash, one moment well kept and orderly, the next a cobweb-festooned horror of peeling wallpaper, sagging ceilings, and buckled floors. When they came to the kitchen she motioned for him to sit at a long table.
She took a chair opposite him. Staring straight into his eyes, she said, “I don’t know who you are, or where you found that mask, but I’m glad you’ve come. It was the only chance for Eamonn. And now it seems that I am the only chance for you. So we’ll have to work together.”
Harley started to ask a question, but the woman shook her head. “Just listen.”
A flicker of lightning showed through the window and the suddenly beautiful woman sitting across from him began her story.
“I was born in the mountains of central Europe. When I was in my early teens, my parents married me to an artisan, a man who made masks for royalty, for the court balls. I did not complain at their choice; in those days we did as our parents told us. Besides, he was very handsome, with dark flashing eyes and clever hands. But there was something hard and hidden in his heart, and he could be cruel as well as kind. But still I loved him. Loved him deeply.
“During the second year of our marriage my husband began to disappear without explanation. At first it was only for days, but as time went on his absences grew longer and longer. After each absence he would return with many masks, so I assumed he had been working. Even so, I wondered if he had another woman. Jealousy began to eat at my heart. Finally I decided to follow him on one of these trips.” She shuddered. “That was how I learned about the Faceless Ones.”
“The Faceless Ones?” whispered Harley, fearing the answer but needing to know.
Lightning flashed outside the window. Once again she was the haggard crone Harley had met at the edge of the woods.
“The Faceless Ones were my husband’s victims. They were—had been—people born with great beauty but weak character. Or perhaps their character was weak because of their beauty, because it made life too easy for them. In any event, they were my husband’s natural prey, and he was able to bring them under his power and steal their faces.”
Harley shivered. Against his will, his fingers crept to the handsome face now covering his own plain, pudgy features.
“He stole their faces then sold them as living masks to men and women who were rich and royal but hardly fair of feature. The customer would go off on a journey ugly and months later return home with not only a new face but a new name, telling some story about being the favored first cousin—and heir—of the rich and royal man or woman who had died tragically while traveling abroad.
“For years my husband sold these masks and made a great deal of money in doing so. But as his victims grew in number, so did our danger.”
“Why?” asked Harley.
“Because they did not die from their loss. Instead they lived on, lurking in the shadows. Waiting.” She glanced away for a moment, then said slowly, “As the numbers of the Faceless Ones grew, they slowly found each other and vowed to work together for their revenge. They did not dare appear in the daytime, of course. But at night they were always waiting just outside the light—waiting for us to stumble into their hands.
“In time the danger grew so great that my husband decided we should flee Europe. We had plenty of money, for his customers had paid him dearly for the ‘masks’ that changed their lives. We came to this country, leaving behind—we thought—his faceless victims, those shadow people who lived in loss and misery.
“Finally we settled in this town, which seemed like a good place to be forgotten. We changed our name to ‘Tiyado,’ built our home, had our son.”
Harley felt a shudder ripple down his spine. “Eamonn?” he whispered.
She nodded. “Yes, we called him Eamonn, and he was the joy of my existence. For a time the three of us lived in perfect happiness. Then one night I saw a figure lurking outside our home and knew with horrid certainty that the Faceless Ones had followed us. It had taken them years, and the lord alone knows how they did it, but they had chased us and traced us, and now they were on our doorstep.
“For months we lived in terror. At last, despite my pleas and my tears, one Halloween night my husband went to talk to them. ‘What do you want?’ he asked.
“And they told him.”
She turned away, her shoulders shaking with sobs, and Harley suddenly knew what the Faceless Ones had demanded as their revenge. “They asked for Eamonn’s face, didn’t they?” he whispered.
The old woman answered without turning back to him. “I begged my husband not to do it. I told him we could flee again, find a new place to live. But his heart was hard, and he had never loved the boy anyway, not as a father should. He knocked me out and tied me up, and when I woke, my husband and my son were gone. My husband came back. My son did not. And my husband was never my husband after that. Never.”
“And you never saw Eamonn again?” asked Harley.
“No, I saw him often. He lived in the woods with the other Faceless Ones. I took him food and clothing. But I never saw his beautiful face again—not until tonight, when you appeared at my door wearing it.” Turning back to look at him directly, she whispered, “Eamonn lost his face fifty years ago tonight. This is the last chance, the last chance for him to get it back. I had been praying for some miracle to appear. I wasn’t expecting . . . you.”
Another flash of lightning lit the room and she was once more young a
nd beautiful. “Come,” she said, taking his hand. “Come with me! It’s your last chance, too. If you cannot return Eamonn’s face, you will never see your own again, either. You will be wearing his for the rest of your life!”
They raced out of the house and into the darkness, the old/young woman and the boy with the face that was not his own. The rain drenched them, the wind battered them. They flickered in and out of time with each bolt of lightning as they pelted through the town to the edge of the forest, then down the little-used path until they came at last to the shore of the secret lake.
A little farther and they reached the clearing where Harley had seen the crumbled stone table. Only now the table was whole and solid, and bound to its top was a boy with a handsome and very familiar face: Eamonn Tiyado.
Crowded around the table were dozens of the most horrifying people Harley had ever seen: men and women who were . . . blank, as if their faces had been wiped away, leaving only their eyes, a pair of holes for their noses, and gaping, toothy voids where mouth and lips should be.
At the head of the table, looming above the boy, was his father, wielding a knife that shimmered with silver magic.
The Faceless Ones moaned and swayed, waiting for the mask maker’s glowing knife to fall. Eamonn’s mother cried out in fear and horror.
Then the lightning flashed, and they were in the present once more. The table was gone, only a tumble of stones left to mark where it had once stood.
Harley heard a moan from behind them and turned. A faceless man shuffled out of the trees, a living nightmare who pricked Harley’s heart not to fear but to sympathy.
Harley waited for another stroke of lightning, but it did not come.
They were trapped in the present.
“Eamonn Tiyado?” he whispered.
The man moaned and started toward him.
The old woman uttered a piercing cry, the sound of a broken heart breaking yet again. Then the lightning flashed, and they were in the past.
Harley hoped, for a breathless moment, that they could somehow intercede and change what had happened. But it was too late. Eamonn’s father was holding the boy’s face in the air, and the Faceless Ones were thumping their approval.
The sight drove Harley to an anger unlike anything he had ever known before. “No!” he screamed. “Noooo!”
The Faceless Ones turned in his direction. At the same time, Eamonn’s mother grabbed Harley’s arm, crying, “Run! Run!”
Harley shook her off. Stooping, he picked up a stone and flung it with all his strength. As if guided by heaven itself, it struck the mask maker’s knife, which exploded in a shower of blue and silver sparks.
The mask maker clutched his smoking hand, screaming with both fury and pain, then backed away as the Faceless Ones turned on him, surging forward.
“Get back!” he cried in horror, putting up his hands to ward them off. “Get back!” But his pleas were lost in their combined moans, and a moment later he fell beneath their relentless tide.
Then the lightning flashed and Harley was in the present once more.
The storm was abating now, the rain little more than a light drizzle, the thunder a distant rumble.
The man Eamonn Tiyado had become staggered forward, reaching out hands that trembled with longing. It took every ounce of courage Harley had to not bolt back up the path. But he stood still, waiting.
The shambling creature stopped in front of him. The blank, smooth face was horrifying. But the eyes . . . Harley knew those blue eyes. He had seen them in his own mirror, the first time he put on the mask.
Eamonn Tiyado reached toward Harley’s face. The boy had to resist the urge to lurch away as the faceless man placed trembling fingers behind his neck. He scarcely dared to breath as Eamonn’s fingertips pressed against his flesh.
He felt a sudden pull on his skin. The mask fell away, dropping into Eamonn’s hands as easily as if it had been attached by nothing but a flimsy string.
As it did, a piece of paper fluttered to the ground.
Harley ignored the paper, watching eagerly as Eamonn Tiyado lifted the mask of the beautiful boy, the face of his own childhood, and stared at it hungrily. Then, with a sigh so low it might have been a moan, he pulled it slowly over his head.
The old woman standing beside Harley clamped her hand on his shoulder. He could feel her shaking. Together they watched as the mask wrapped around her son and . . . shifted. The features stretched and extended until they were no longer those of a boy, but those of a man of about sixty. Finally they settled into a face that was ravaged by loss and sorrow, yet still handsome for all that.
Tears shimmering in his eyes, Eamonn Tiyado leaned close to Harley. “Thank you,” he whispered.
Harley lifted a hand to his own face, his pudgy, normal face, and felt a sense of relief so powerful he could barely keep from screaming out his joy. “It was my pleasure,” he said.
Looking down, he noticed the piece of paper that had fluttered loose when he handed the mask to Eamonn. He had assumed it was that tag, the one with the instructions he had so unwisely ignored. He stooped to pick it up, thinking it would make a souvenir of his adventure. When he looked at it he was surprised, but only slightly, to see that the words had changed. Now they said simply:
TWO DAYS: PAID IN FULL!
—S. H. ELIVES
Herbert Hutchison in the Underworld
HERBERT HUTCHISON was fifteen when the car he was driving hit a patch of black ice.
This was a bad thing, for several reasons. First, he was too young to have a driver’s license. Second, the car was his mother’s, and he had taken it without permission. Third, he was already due to appear in court the following week on a petty theft charge. Fourth, he was slightly drunk at the time. Fifth—and possibly worst, from Herbert’s perspective—he was going about 80 miles per hour when it happened.
The fact that there was a solid rock wall on one side of the road and a deep chasm on the other did nothing to improve the situation.
Herbert managed to hit them both, bouncing off the rock wall with a crash and squeal of metal, then back across the road, where his still-speeding vehicle shot through the guardrail and hurtled a good ten feet straight ahead before it began its (very rapid) descent.
“Oh hell!” was all Herbert had a chance to think before the car hit the rocky slope, rolled over three times, then exploded in a ball of orange and yellow flame.
Still, it was an appropriate thought, as hell was indeed Herbert’s next destination.
It took Herbert a while to realize that he was dead. For one thing, he was in a lot of pain, which, to him, seemed to indicate being alive. For another thing, he had always been a very lucky person. So the idea that he might have survived even as spectacular a crash as the one he had just created didn’t entirely surprise him. After all, he had spent a lifetime avoiding serious consequences for major problems of his own making. So the idea that he had escaped yet again didn’t seem that far-fetched.
Two things worked together to change Herbert’s mind. The first came when he glanced behind him and saw the still-fiery wreckage of his mother’s new car. Whoa! he thought. Did I really manage to walk away from that? Still, he might have been able to convince himself he had survived even that spectacle of destruction, if not for the second thing, which was that the earth opened beneath his feet, dropping him into a long, black tunnel.
That was when he was sure he was dead.
Herbert had no idea how long his fall lasted. It seemed like forever. Again, there was more than one reason for this. First, he was impatient by nature, so everything seemed to take forever. Second, he was still in excruciating pain.
He had time to examine himself as he fell. His clothes were torn and bloody, but not singed. Had he been thrown through the windshield before the car erupted in flames? That would certainly explain the throbbing pain in his head and the blood dripping down his face, not to mention the deep gashes in his chest. From the way his right arm was hanging, Herbert
was pretty sure he had broken it. He pulled aside his torn sleeve for a closer look and screamed.
The jagged end of bone sticking through his flesh confirmed that the arm was indeed broken.
He finally landed, with only the mildest of thumps, on a path lined with primroses. He didn’t know they were primroses, of course, having studiously resisted his mother’s efforts to share her joy in gardening. But he did recognize them as something that had once grown beside his house.
Beyond the primroses the underbrush was dense and looked impassable. Erupting from that tangle of bushes and vines were broad tree trunks, regularly spaced. Herbert looked up. The branches crisscrossed over the path, twining around each other to form a dense canopy about five feet above his head. It was like being in a tunnel made of plants.
Herbert turned to look behind him. The path that way was blocked by a solid hedge. He might have tried to push his way through it, if not for the fact that the vines sprouted thousands of two-inch thorns that actually glistened in the low light.
Where was the light coming from, anyway? Herbert looked in all directions but could see no source for it.
He sighed. Clearly this tunnel only went one way.
Limping, trying not to scream, he started forward.
Herbert had no clue how long he had been walking—given the pain he was in, it felt like an eternity—when the green tunnel widened and he saw a sheer cliff rising ahead of him. This would have been the end of his journey, save that at ground level it was pierced by an arched opening. Carved above that opening were the words ABANDON HOPE, ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE.
Two creatures stood guard. Though Herbert’s mind resisted the idea, their horns, tails, pitchforks, and flame red skin made it clear that they were demons.
Oddest of All Page 12
