Where Human Pathways End

by Shamus Frazer

  Even scared as he was, there was a stuck-up air about that little fellow. Oh, it was courage he had all right. ‘Is she frightening you?’ he asked, and a voice he had like my mother used to call ‘real class’. ‘I’ve seen her here once or twice before.’ And he added so low she shouldn’t, not with ordinary ears, have caught it: ‘I think perhaps she’s a patient that’s been released from some . . . some Home: an asylum, you know. . . . What’s that she’s wearing on her face?’

  ‘A mask!’ the thin muffled voice took him up. ‘And who is going to remove it and find the pennies. . . . Who shall we have to fetch it away? . . . Not you, my little fair-spoken dancing partner? . . . No one? . . . Then I shall be forced to take it off myself. . . .’

  Her long writhing fingers went up to her face, and she peeled off that sunken horror—and revealed Robin’s mask, the skull-face, sitting there bonily as before.

  Now there was a trick I could appreciate. She must have slipped Robin’s mask out of his fingers while she talked, and fitted it on under the other without our noticing anything. This was quite a trick, I thought—and I lost something of my . . . my discomfort, thinking how she’d done it. It would have needed a real conjurer’s sleight of hand to have slipped it away and under, the way she must have done. . . .

  ‘She’s diddled you, Robin,’ I said. ‘She’s won your mask back again, look.’

  And I wasn’t prepared for what happened next. Robin screamed: he just stood and screamed, because the words wouldn’t come.

  ‘Robin, whatever’s up?’ I cried, all over gooseflesh. ‘What’s come over you, Robin?’

  He stopped yelling then. He shuddered, and when he spoke it was in a tired voice, not like himself.

  ‘You’re wearing my mask, Fred. You took it off her first time and put it on your face. You’ve got it on now—and your specs sitting over it.’

  I put my hand up to the mask, and before I’d taken it off to look I knew that what Robin had said was the truth. I felt I could drop: I was past screaming.

  ‘So we have four masks,’ the old . . . horror cut in, ‘and the question is still—where are the pennies? Are the wages of sin under this?’ She tapped the hard frontal bone with her fingernail. ‘What do you think, Master Wheyface Death? Or is there a fifth mask, eh Redbreast? Or nothing perhaps—nothing at all my little Nijinsky? Well, we’ve got to find out—some day, haven’t we? So who is going to take the fourth mask off, my pretty dears? . . . Shall I pick a volunteer? Eh?’

  The long crooked finger uncoiled again from her bosom and she wriggled it at us in turn and began again that fearful singsong—a familiar kid’s jingle, but intoned as if it were some black litany in that chill high voice of hers:

  Eenie, meenie, mina, mo!

  Catch a nigger by his toe.

  If he squeals let him go.

  Eenie . . . meenie . . . mina . . . MO!

  The finger was still and pointed at my heart—and I was moving forward with a dragging sickness on me like despair. It was like the crisis of nightmare, and I was stretching forward my hand to that bony horror under the black straw bonnet when my wrist was seized, and a voice called in my ear—over thousands of light years it seemed: ‘No, no. . . . Leave her. She’s mad darkness. Come away.’

  It was the fair-haired kid, him with the dancing-pumps. ‘My people live only a little way down the path there. Come back with me. You’re not well. They can telephone. . . .’

  He was interrupted by that odious thin and ice-edged voice—sharp now as a claw:

  ‘Then if no one will assist me I shall have to take off the fourth mask all by myself. . . .’

  Her hands went up to the thing that wasn’t a face and . . . and Robin and I squealed. We hollered as if the hearts were being pulled out between our ribs. And it was as if that screaming released the trance in which we had been held.

  ‘If he squeals let him go. . . .’ Oh yes, we squealed all right, and went on squealing as we raced away under the sputtering gas-lamps. Terror made me glance round to see if she was following. No—she sat there still as a pillar, and there was something white in her hands that maybe was a mask. The fair kid was standing as still in front of her: he hadn’t moved or made a single cry. I turned my head away and pounded on, screaming for help.

  It was quite dark now, and the fog had grown thicker. Robin had left me behind; but I came across him in a few moments, crouched under an ivy-topped wall and retching.

  When we had breath back to speak, Robin sobbed:

  ‘Who was she? Who, in mercy’s name, was she, Fred?’

  ‘The kid thought she’d escaped from . . . from somewhere,’ I said.

  ‘Did he run off, too? . . . Did he get away?’

  ‘He stayed,’ I said. ‘He stayed to see what was under that bone . . . to look at the Fifth Mask, Robin.’

  ‘We shouldn’t have left him,’ said Robin, ‘not with her . . . not alone as he was.’

  ‘He could have run off same as we.’

  ‘She’d mesmerised him, that’s what—same as she done to us.’

  ‘He was a plucky kid. . . .’ I don’t know why I used the past tense: the words seemed to be given to me. ‘I think he stayed because he wanted to see . . . whether she was anything at all, living I mean.’

  ‘He wanted to see . . . ?’ cried Robin. ‘Oh no, not that. He’d have run off if he could.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s been us imagining things, Robin. She couldn’t have harmed us, when you come to think of it. She was a bit cracked, that’s all—but not sufficient to be put away.’

  Robin was always the leader of our gang at school—and now it was the old Robin Hood that was coming to life in him again.

  ‘We shouldn’t have left him with her, Fred. It wasn’t right. Not after the way he spoke up when you were going to . . . going to——’

  ‘I know,’ I said, and shivered, ‘I know what I was going to do.’

  ‘We’ll have to go back there and . . . and call him, Friar.’

  ‘Catch me going back there, Robin—not if wild horses was to come and fetch me. . . .’ And I shivered again because the words raised a picture before my mind’s eye of the kind of wild horses that might be sent to fetch me—glossy, tar-black stallions with fire-coal eyes, and smoky manes, and black ostrich plumes tossing from their heads—funeral horses and the glass hearse rattling behind.

  ‘You got to,’ said Robin. ‘It’s an order; and I’m going with you, anyway. . . .’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m sick. He saw I was sick. If she speaks to me again I’ll . . . I couldn’t bear it, Robin. . . . You’ll have to go yourself. I’ll wait here for you to . . . to come back with him.’

  ‘You wouldn’t like to be left alone . . . in the dark, Fred. And I’m going back. . . .’

  I ran after him. I implored him not to go. I wept and swore, but he kept on.

  The seat lay on the outer edge of a pool of gas-light. We approached cautiously—but from fifteen yards away you could see there was nothing there.

  ‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘She’s gone. We can turn back, please, Robin.’

  ‘There’s something huddled up on the path, far corner of the seat, look. Here, let me get my flashlight.’

  ‘It’s only a Guy Fawkes someone’s set there,’ I whispered. ‘Let’s turn back, Robin; let’s get home.’

  ‘It’s moving,’ said Robin. ‘It’s moving on hands and knees. It’s dragging something that looks like a mask . . . something white.’ The thing moved painfully slowly towards the ring of the lamp-light, and as it moved it moaned like an animal.

  ‘It’s her,’ I cried. ‘It’s her coming for us.’ But even as I was shouting it I knew that I lied, that it wasn’t her and that I was both a coward and a traitor. But in the same moment Robin’s nerve had broken again—and it was with a kind of savage desolation in my heart I saw him waver, turn, and run back along the path. I followed in panic of being left behind—but by the time we’d pulled up it was of myself that I was most afraid, a
nd of the thing I’d done. Robin had known, too, what that thing was that crept towards the light: I could tell it in his face that was set like a mask.

  We said nothing. The Fifth had begun in earnest. There were heavy thuds through the fog, and here and there in the gardens the red flicker and glow of a bonfire. Once a rocket broke right overhead and threw out a handful of drifting blue stars.

  We never spoke of that night again—not aloud: the talking was inside for each of us, I suppose, over and over, for ever and ever. But I did hear a scrap of talk between my parents a night or two later when they thought I was sleeping.

  ‘Weak heart, poor kid,’ my father was saying. ‘He’d overstrained it the same afternoon, dancing. And there was something that had given him a shock—a banger, I shouldn’t wonder. They found him on the doorstep. He’d crept there to die. And that was a peculiar thing, Martha—he was clutching a Fawkes Day mask when they found him: shaped like a sleeping child, it was.’

  ‘Poor little boy—dreadful!’ said my mother. ‘Why, it might have been our Fred. And fancy cremating him—a little boy: it’s not as if they couldn’t afford a proper funeral.’

  I was biting my pillow to keep in the sobs that were shaking me in the dark. Before my parents were asleep, it was wet whichever way I turned it.

  It may have been coincidence. After all, I wasn’t to know it was the same boy. And I didn’t tell Robin what I’d heard either; but I believe he knew already.

  I’ve only had two real friends in my life—barring my parents—and both of them’s . . . gone. They know what was under the masks: if there was anything, I mean.

  You’ve been kind listening, sir. It would be an added kindness if you’d come with me to the door . . . and look out and tell me if those kids in the masks have gone. . . . No, that’ll be all right, sir. . . . It’s only a step across the road and there’s regular trains to Kensal Green.

  The Cyclops Juju

  IT WAS FROM Bradbury Minor I first heard about the juju.

  ‘Have you seen Winterborn’s god, sir? It came by post this morning.’

  ‘God?’

  ‘Yes, from Africa. It’s only got one eye, and it’s most awfully ugly, sir.’

  And when Winterborn brought it along for my inspection I found that Bradbury had for once not exaggerated: it was most awfully ugly, though not from the kind of distortion one expects in a West African carving. The work was African, but the features and their evil were European.

  ‘Did your father send this, Winterborn?’

  ‘My stepfather, yes, sir. It belonged to a real witchdoctor. He took it from his hut.’

  ‘Did the witchdoctor mind?’

  ‘The letter says he’d run off into the bush, so my stepfather’s policemen turned out everything and burnt down the hut. He was a very bad witchdoctor, and if he’d been caught he would have been hung. . . . Do you think he’s a god, sir?’

  ‘A juju of some kind, I expect—a bad juju.’

  ‘Gosh! He’s beautifully hideous—just like that one-eyed monster in the Latin play, we’re doing . . . the cyclone chap who’s a cannibal, you know, sir—Polly . . . Polly . . .’

  ‘. . . Wolly doodle?’

  ‘No of course it isn’t, sir. I just can’t remember the name.’

  ‘Polyphemus, the cyclops—not cyclone, Winterborn.’

  I was new to schoolmastering, but already I’d adopted that deplorable correcting habit.

  ‘Polyphemus, of course. He’s exactly as I imagine Polyphemus to have been, only much smaller. But he’s heavy. You feel him, sir.’

  I took the thing and turned it over in my fingers. It was carved from some iron hard wood, crudely but effectively painted. There was something about the slant of the body and the upturned tilt of the head that was suggestive—but of what I had for the moment no idea. It had almost a Greek look: the scrolly carving of the red hair and beard set about the dead white face, the square mouth opening on pointed ivory fangs bore a hazy resemblance to the masks of Tragedy. But it was not in Ancient Greece that I should find the clue to that tilted head and upstretched throat, the single eye staring oddly skywards: the association my mind groped for seemed to belong to a later date. I spoke the explanation before I was properly aware it had presented itself to me:

  ‘You know, Winterborn—I think it’s a model of a ship’s figurehead.’

  ‘Surely it’s too small, sir?’

  ‘It’s a model, a small scale model—but it’s more like an eighteenth century ship’s figurehead than the usual line in African idols, don’t you think.’

  ‘But it is African.’

  ‘It’s African work, I should say, but copied from a European model.’

  ‘Then it isn’t a god at all,’ Winterborn seemed despondent about this, ‘only a bit of a smelly model boat! What a swiz!’

  ‘I don’t see why it shouldn’t be a god,’ I said. ‘After all they’ve given their idols top-hats before now, and this cyclops figurehead would surely seem more powerful juju than a silk hat. My idea is it’s a model of a slave-ship’s figurehead—which would make it very strong white man’s medicine, indeed. It’s ugly and evil enough to have been a really big noise among the bush gods. Here, take the horrible thing back before he puts a hoodoo on me!’

  I gave a mock shudder which turned into a real one, for I had a passing vision—peculiarly intense—of the thing in my hands grown enormous, nodding above the mangroves in some foetid West African rivermouth, with the bowsprit pointing above it like a great spear, and the patched sails drumming idly in the scanty wind.

  ‘A slaver’s figurehead turned into a god!’ Winterborn positively crooned over his restored treasure. ‘Do you really think so, sir?’

  ‘I shouldn’t be at all surprised: the black brig Cyclops or Polyphemus, who knows? You can imagine the impression a figurehead ten times that size would make leering over the mudbanks. To keep him sweet-tempered the locals made a model of him, I expect, and took him ashore and treated him to the sacrifices he liked best.’

  ‘Gosh, I see what you mean, sir—about the ship’s figurehead. It must have been a beastly ship.’

  ‘The very worst.’

  ‘He doesn’t look all that sweet-tempered just now, does he, sir? Perhaps he’s missing his sacrifices. Do you think he’d care for milk chocolate?’

  ‘He’d demand stronger diet, I’m afraid, than milk chocolate.’

  ‘Blood, sir? And human hearts torn reeking from their shrieking . . .’

  ‘Something of the kind, no doubt.’

  ‘Tell you what. If it’s sausages for supper I’ll save a piece for Poly . . . for Pollywolly doodle, sir.’

  After the coming of the juju I noticed that Winterborn took a greater interest in his Latin, or at least in the rehearsals we were holding that term for the play. There was a tradition at Sheridan House School that the boys performed two plays annually on Prize Day, a Latin as well as an English one: Roger Edlington, who a few years ago had taken over the headmastership from his father, had also inherited the rather old-fashioned view that parents should be impressed before they are entertained, and the Latin play was of course intended to impress. Roger had asked me to produce both plays that year, and I had chosen the little drama about Ulysses and the Cyclops because it was short and easy to learn and contained enough mime and incident to enable even the Latinless parent, with the aid of the short synopsis I was to have printed in the programme, to follow the plot. Moreover the rather grand guignol theme should make effective contrast with Toad of Toad Hall which was to follow.

  Winterborn was cast at first as a cyclopean sheep, but this did not satisfy him at all; and when Fenwick went down with yellow jaundice he promptly suggested himself for the now vacant post of Polyphemus.

  ‘But you’re about half Fenwick’s size,’ I said. ‘Polyphemus was a giant.’

  ‘You were going to build up a cardboard head for Fenwick anyway, sir. You could make it taller for me, that’s all.’

  ‘If you�
��re able to play the part I could do that, I suppose.’

  Winterborn looked challengingly at the rest of the form.

  ‘Bags I Polyphemus,’ he said.

  Nobody took up the challenge.

  ‘It’s a longish part, Winterborn,’ I said, ‘will you be able to learn it?’

  ‘I’ve learnt it already, sir. I never thought Fenwick was much good, even before he turned yellow—so I thought I’d better understudy the part. And I tell you what, sir, when you make that carnival head for me you can copy the face from Pollywolly doodle’s.’

  ‘Your juju? I’ve not seen him around lately.’

  ‘Oh, I keep him in the dormitory, sir.’

  ‘He takes him to bed with him, sir,’ said Bradbury, ‘to give him sweet dreams—sweet, I don’t think!’

  ‘Oh put a stopper in it, Bradbury, and shut off the stink!’

  ‘Well, let’s try you out in the part, Winterborn.’

  Surprisingly he was very good, and only had to be prompted twice. The shriek he gave when the Cyclops’ eye is burnt out was startlingly realistic—a harsh, shrill, angry cry like the screaming of a peacock. He got the part—and before long was playing uninvited the role of assistant producer too.

  That scene where Ulysses and his sailors heat up the giant’s staff and drive the point into the eye of sleeping Polyphemus, the most dramatic in the play, could so easily sink into farce if its mechanics went wrong. I had thought of making a detachable eye in the false head, something on the principle of a bathplug that could be pulled out of the socket by a jerk from within: I had even toyed with the idea of a glowing electric eye which would be switched out at the moment of blinding; but neither of these methods seemed wholly proof against ridicule or disaster. It was Winterborn who hit on a solution which though gruesome was both simple and effective.