Father Panic's Opera Macabre

by Thomas Tessier

  He took the spoon out of his pocket and began to scrape his face with the edge of it. He dug in hard, not caring when he felt pain and his own fresh blood. Then the pain blossomed across his face and into his head, and he had a sense that he was breaking the mask in places. Hope electrified him and he gouged at his cheeks and chin and forehead even more energetically. It was like fire breaking out in his skin and then penetrating his brain. He bent over in agony. The spoon fell from his hand.

  He saw the water in front of him and it looked so sweet and soothing. That was where he was supposed to go. The other side. He waded in and began to swim. Cold, too cold. But he didn't care. Neil swept his arms and kicked feebly. Then the body of a dead man bumped into him. He pushed it away, but another one bobbed against him, and another, and suddenly he saw that he was surrounded by countless bodies floating in the river. They moved slowly, drifting along at the edge of the current.

  Go with them.

  No...

  You're one of them.

  No...

  You are. This is where pain ends.

  No. Let someone else kill me. I want to see it happen. Neil turned and splashed his way back to land. He dragged himself under a clump of thick bushes and nestled close to the ground, curled up protectively. His face felt as if it had long jagged strips of raw exposed flesh. Had Neil broken the mask, ripped parts of it away? He couldn't tell. His brain wouldn't focus on anything, and that didn't even bother him. He didn't care anymore. He was so cold and wet, and he had nothing left.

  Revival

  Neil shivered so violently it seemed as if his whole body was trying to shake itself to pieces. His clothes were wet, clinging to him. He felt the dank cold deep in his bones. His limbs were stiff and had no strength. He was on the ground, lying in tall grass.

  Daylight. So much easier for someone to see him. At first he thought it was morning, but when he cautiously raised his head and looked around, Neil saw the big house-Marisa's house-shimmering with golden light. It must be late afternoon. He felt a tremendous sense of relief, but it was soon followed by a wave of confusion. How had he come to be there, outside the front of the house, and at this hour of the day? What had happened to him last night? Why had Marisa left him? Where was she?

  The mask-fear and panic boiled up in Neil again as he realized that the mask was still on his face. For a brief moment, he had begun to consider the possibility that everything he'd experienced there had been nothing more than a long bizarre hallucination, or dream. That he had arrived there, fallen into a mysterious trance or had a brain seizure that somehow unleashed him on a journey into deep corners of his own subconscious mind. That seemed unlikely, and the presence of the mask disproved it.

  Unless the mask was merely another imaginary sign of his continuing mental breakdown. Is this dementia?

  Neil stood up and looked back, away from the house. He saw his car, still where he had left it. The hood was raised and the front end was partly dismantled. He moved a few steps to get a better angle and then he could see the radiator lying on the ground. That appeared to clinch it. There was no way Neil would have tried to take the radiator out by himself. He wasn't mechanically adept, he had no tools with him, and there was no point to it, especially in this remote spot. Someone else had done it, Marisa's workman, just as Neil remembered.

  But he also noticed that the cluster of shacks and huts visible on the nearest ridge were half-collapsed, with doors gone or hanging loose, roofs caved in, all of them utterly dilapidated. No one lived or worked in them. And the grounds immediately around the house looked even more overgrown with weeds and brush than he seemed to remember-thick coils of brambles and briars sprawled about, slowly spreading, creating impenetrable thickets around the building.

  The windows were gone-another small shock. The sun still caught the tiles and lit them brilliantly, but all of the windows were vacant, dark and empty rectangles in the face of the house. In some of the frames he could see jagged shards of glass that hadn't yet fallen away, but most of the glass was gone. So was the front door-not just open, but gone. The house stood open to the elements, and to anyone who happened to come there.

  Like him. Neil walked along the crumbling balustrade, gazing at the old house and its surroundings. There was no sign of human life anywhere, nor any indication that there had been for many years. Again he wondered if he had somehow imagined everything-Marisa, her family, the workmen, the passion and fantastic sex, the billiards room, the cellar, the wagon, the horror and savagery he had seen. If only he had imagined all that. It was just a big crazy dream. Ha ha.

  But how could he have conjured up all those peculiar details, like the bird skulls in the stew? And the sensory memories that were still so vivid to him-how it felt to be inside Marisa, the touch of her wet mouth on his skin? No, it wasn't possible. Besides, his car and the awful weight on his face told him it was something else, something unfinished.

  Neil hesitated. He glanced back toward his car again. He could just walk away. Follow the gravel road until it brought him to another road, take that one and keep going until he either flagged down a passing car or reached the next town.

  Then find a doctor-please take this thing off my face.

  No. Not yet. He walked into the house. It was gloomy, but enough sunlight reached the interior for Neil to find his way around. Instead of going upstairs and trying to get to the bedroom where his things were, he began to check the ground floor rooms. The house was silent, except for the rush and swirl of the mountain wind as it blew through the corridors and passageways, which only added to the feeling of emptiness.

  He went through several rooms that were almost bare, containing a few pieces of rotting furniture. The floors were littered with broken glass, grey grit, and mats of damp dust. Paper wasp nests clung to the upper walls, the empty ceiling fixtures and dangling sconces. Wide bands of wallpaper had peeled off and crumpled to the floors.

  So far, everything he saw argued that the house had been abandoned years before. But he couldn't be sure yet. These might be some of the rooms that had been left unused by the family, as Marisa had explained to Neil. He was beginning to think that he would find nobody, but he also believed that he would find something-something that made sense of all this to him.

  Then Neil opened a door and recognized the dining room. The long table and the sideboards were gone, but some of the chairs remained, dusty and scattered, lying on their sides. The wall tapestries were shredded and black with mildew. It was impossible to imagine that anyone had eaten there in years.

  Neil walked quickly to the far end of the room, opened the door and made his way along the short, unlit passage. The windows in the billiards room were shuttered on the inside, but thin lines of fading daylight allowed him to make out various objects in the prevailing gloom. The billiards table was still there, and apparently in good condition. It startled Neil to see the sofa where he and Marisa had spent time. And the little television, the radio. Even their wineglasses-he stood frozen, staring at them. Finally, he went closer and lifted one. A small pool of red wine swirled at the bottom. Neil immediately recognized the strong tannic bouquet.

  It was no dream or hallucination-none of what he had seen-unless he was experiencing it all again. Or it had never ended. The mask was still on his face, after all. But the mask didn't explain anything. He'd encountered the dwarf woman, Marisa, the workers and servants, Marisa's family-all of that-well before they got to the masks. Neil felt like a dog chasing his own tail. It was a waste of time. It wasn't possible to make sense of experiences that seemed to arise from some lost pocket of reality, a place that had its own logic and reason-all of which escaped him. He had the irrational feeling of being caught in someone else's dream world. But that would mean he had no chance of escape, which he knew was absurd.

  He turned the television on, but the screen stayed dark and there was no sound. The generator was off. He tried the radio, and the sexy, breathless voice of a woman singing in French squiggled out of n
owhere. Neil laughed. There were batteries in the radio, and they still worked. He almost switched it off, but didn't. The radio station and the song reminded him that there was still an outside world. His world. He increased the volume, and it sounded good, it was like bright light and fresh air.

  Neil picked up the box of matches Marisa had used and lit a candle. He carried it with him as he crossed the room and ascended the circular iron staircase to the second floor. In the corridor, he turned and made his way to the bedroom he had used. The door was closed. Before he tried to open it, he went into the bathroom. His toiletries were missing.

  Neil looked in the mirror and saw himself-bruises and lumps on the side of the head, scratches, crusted spots of blood, all the signs and marks of what he had experienced. And his features were subtly different, younger and smoother, but also more drawn, tightened, as if with pain and deep inner hurt. He scared himself. The mask. He turned quickly away.

  The bedroom was different. The furniture was still there, each item exactly where he remembered it. But there were no sheets on the bed and no blanket. Neil's things were gone-his overnight bag, the shirt and jeans he'd left out, the Rose Tremain novel he was reading-all gone.

  Movement-he heard a sound outside. More than one-there were sounds in the house, both above and below him. Neil cupped his hand around the candle and walked quickly back into the main corridor. He saw the faint blue glow down the corridor at once.

  As he approached the alcove, one of the servant women came down the steps into the corridor and walked right past him without a glance, as if he didn't exist. Now he even heard the sound of people outside, carried through the open window at the end of the corridor. Nothing unusual, just the distant, ordinary sounds of people at work, talking among themselves.

  The young man was in the bunk. The same young man he had seen the first time there, and who had struck him with a blackjack, and who had kissed Marisa at the scene of that unspeakable atrocity. But now he wore the black uniform Neil recognized. It was not the uniform of any police force or army, at least none that he could recognize, but it only seemed the more frightening for its lack of definition.

  The young man's skin was bone white, puckering at the corners of his mouth and eyes. His body didn't move at all, there was no sign of breathing. Neil grasped one hand and felt for a pulse. Nothing. He let it drop back onto the black-clad shirt. The blue votive candle flames danced in a brief flick of the wind.

  Neil was about to turn away, but he saw the young man's face seem to turn ruddier, flushed with sudden color. The slack skin on the face tightened, the chest rose slightly, and a soft sigh of breath broke the silence. Neil could not move. The eyes opened, and turned.

  The handsome young man smiled as he reached for Neil.

  Zuzu

  Neil backed away instinctively, but then he noticed the expression on the face of Marisa's lover: his smile was warm and loving, his eyes were filled with-gratitude? His hands grasped feebly at Neil's arm and then his cold fingers brushed Neil's skin and rubbed his palm tenderly.

  Neil yanked his hand away. The candle slipped out of his grip and was extinguished when it hit the floor. Now the tiny space was lit only by the votive candles, the air suddenly colored a chilly blue. He was fascinated and horrified by the look of pain and sorrow on the young man's face. It was as if he could not bear to be parted from Neil's touch.

  Fear and hatred welled up within him. Neil lunged forward, grabbed the young man's throat and began to squeeze as hard as he could. But now Marisa's lover smiled gratefully up at him again. His eyes blazed with light, his smooth cheeks glowed with a rush of life and color. Neil felt a terrifying sensation, as if his own strength and energy were flowing through his hands, into the body of Marisa's lover, who was gaining vitality and starting to push himself up from the bunk.

  Neil forced him back down, and moved away. A hand gripped his shoulder. He shook it off and spun around. Father Panic. The old priest grinned at him. Then he spread his arms wide and stepped closer, as if to take Neil in a comforting paternal embrace. The alcove seemed impossibly small, a death-box in which he was trapped. He could feel Marisa's lover behind him, clutching and tugging at his shirt.

  He shoved the priest back against the wall in the landing and rushed past him, down the short flight of stairs, into the dark corridor. Neil's brain teemed with confused thoughts. It seemed as if his presence alone brought these people back. Were they real in themselves or was his deranged mind creating them before his very eyes? He had to get out of the house as fast as possible, and then far away from there.

  "Ustashas!" Somewhere outside but close by, men shouted gleefully and triumphantly. "Ustashas! Ustashas!" Then he heard gunfire. Had war somehow broken out in Italy and fighting engulfed even this unlikely corner of the Marches? But that was an absurd idea. The madness was here, either a part of this house or a part of himself.

  Neil felt trapped on the second floor. He heard the sounds of Father Panic and Marisa's lover in the alcove. The only sure quick way he knew to get out was back down the circular staircase into the billiards room. He shut the door tight and then descended the stairs as fast as he could. It wasn't until he reached the bottom step that he noticed that the lamps were all on and dozens of candles were lit, filling the room with a warm soft glow. As Neil walked slowly toward the bar he realized that all the shouts and sounds of movement about the house had vanished. The only thing he heard now was music, a dreamy mindless techno burble from the radio.

  The television was on, but silent. A handsome young man wearing only pajama bottoms and a sexy young woman in a revealing nightie were talking, their faces and gestures overly expressive. The stage set was meant to suggest an expensively decorated ultra-modern bedroom, but everything was so polished and tidy that it resembled a display in a furniture store. An episode from an Italian soap opera, Neil thought absently. Then the pretty couple on the screen hurled themselves into each other's arms, pressed their bodies tightly in a feverish embrace, mashed their open mouths together and tumbled backward onto a huge bed.

  Marisa was stretched out on the sofa. She was wearing only a black bra and a half-slip, and the large blue opal that hung from a ribbon at the base of her throat. Her hair was wild, her eyes shiny, her mouth wet. She raised one leg, bent at the knee, and held her hand out to him. Turn around now and leave, or stay forever. Neil sat down beside her.

  "My lover..."

  "Take it off me."

  "What?"

  "The mask. Take it off my face."

  "What mask? There is no mask."

  "Please."

  "Silly."

  "Marisa, please."

  "Zuzu."

  "Zuzu..."

  She smiled, caressing his cheek. "Kiss me."

  "Let me go."

  "No one is keeping you." She looked hurt, pouting, and she turned her face slightly to the side. "Go, if you want."

  The sense of urgency and fear within him disappeared. He couldn't leave. She understood things he didn't, things he had to know. She was the only one who could show him the way-to anywhere, or nowhere. He felt as if he knew nothing, and she knew everything.

  But even more than that, he wanted her again, he wanted to kiss her and touch her and enter her, be one with her. The room was golden, the air was sweet with her fragrance. He wanted to taste her again. He felt the heat from her body, like a deeply soothing radiance that reached into him, giving him comfort and peace. He put his hand on her thigh, his fingertips moving lightly over her beautiful skin.

  She turned her head and smiled at him again. Neil kissed her and he felt her arms come around his shoulders. Their eyes closed as their tongues touched, their faces pressing together, skin to skin-mask to mask- and he felt once again as if they were a part of each other, sensation fusing them in a fire of infinite wholeness and pleasure.

  He saw a child, a boy about seven or eight years old, dressed in rags, looking thin and frightened. Then a hand grabbed the boy's hair and jerked his he
ad to one side.

  Neil tried to open his eyes, but couldn't.

  Marisa was dressed in black. She was the person holding the boy by the hair. Her face alive, wild. She swung a ball peen hammer into the back of the boy's skull, the crack of bone creating a million screaming fractures in Neil's nerves and brain.

  Zuzu's mouth sucked at his-and he had the distant, almost abstract sensation of flying slowly into her.

  The boy's blinking and vacant eyes were replaced by those of a girl about the same age. Her round face was gaunt and hollow. Her eyes closed and she turned her face away slightly, and then Marisa drove the axe blade into the back of the girl's neck, at the top of the spine.

  He still couldn't open his eyes, nor could he pull his face away from hers. His body churned and he kicked violently. He pushed against her and rolled away, peeling her arms off him. His face felt as if it were being eaten and burned with acid as he broke away from her and fell off the sofa. Neil quickly got to his feet. She looked like a big cat, holding herself up half off the sofa, her arms straight, her hands flat on the floor. Zuzu grinned at him through the long black hair that hung across her face.