Save for the fireplace housing a roaring inferno, there were no lights whatsoever. Not that it needed any; the fireplace was large enough to purge the room of any darkness by itself.
It had the strange effect of making the stone walls glow with an eerie light, and whatever paintings hung on the walls had a gleam to them in the same manner as the door leading into it.
The room was a strange combination of study and bedchamber, with a wall of bookshelves on the one side of the room and a bed large enough for four people on the other.
Raphaël's mind wandered to the books he found in the library for a moment, and he wondered if the Marquis kept any such tomes here. He shuddered at the thought of what texts the Marquis had that he would keep secret, considering what Raphaël found earlier that evening.
A gorgeous rug of Persian origin threw the room together, lying under a dark leather chair facing the fireplace and a small end table on the chair's right side.
On the table sat a crystal decanter and a glass, both filled about half way with a dark liquid. A frail, withered hand grabbed the glass and slowly lifted it, and Raphaël watched as the liquid tossed about in its container as wildly as the figure's hand was shaking.
Lady Montbéliard took several steps forward and knelt next to the chair, whispering something to whoever was sitting in it - the Marquis, most likely. She looked up at Raphaël and with a finger, beckoned him closer.
“Raphaël de Leval,” the figure had said in a raspy whisper. It was more of a statement than an observation.
Raphaël was nervous, but he knew he needed to make a good impression on the Marquis. “So I am, my Marquis. I have been most anxious to meet you,” he said in the most charming manner as he possibly could. “Lady Montbéliard has spoken to you about me, I trust?”
“Oh that she has,” he replied. He made no motion to stand or move from his chair, which forced Raphaël to slowly move between the chair and the fireplace.
A fit of coughing overcame the Marquis, and Lady Montbéliard rushed to wipe his mouth with her handkerchief. Raphaël rounded the chair, and finally laid eyes on the man he had hoped to see all evening. The sight of the Marquis horrified him.
To call him a man would have been dishonest; he resembled more of a corpse than a living, breathing human. Yet there he was, his chest extending with heavy breath under a loud, crimson coat.
His white hair hung in long, greasy wisps across his brow, and his wrinkled skin clung to the bones of his face so tightly, Raphaël could see his skull outlined in his flesh.
His eyes were sunken in, whatever colour they had remaining blinded by a milky white film covering his pupils.
He looked like a strong wind could snap him in two. Raphaël whimpered and clumsily stepped backwards.
The Marquis let out a laugh in response, eventually joined by Lady Montbéliard. His laugh was just as putrid as his image was, and caused a knot to turn in Raphaël's stomach.
“Does my appearance frighten you, boy?” the Marquis sneered.
Raphaël dared not answer. The Marquis' lip curled up in a smirk that could send a dog running with its tail between its legs.
“Raphaël,” Lady Montbéliard started, rising up from the chair so that she was standing at least while addressing him, “The reason that Arnaud has not made an appearance tonight is, well...as you can see.” She motioned to him with her hand. The Marquis simply scoffed.
“Don't mince words, Catherine.” He narrowed his eyes and leaned forward, looking at Raphaël's face as best as he could manage through the clouded cataracts. “I'm dying. This body is giving way every passing hour, slowly rotting away to the mercy of whatever infection festers.”
Raphaël grimaced and bit the inside of his lip. He paused, trying to determine if he should say what was on his mind.
“If you have something to say, say it, boy,” the Marquis snapped, sensing Raphaël's hesitation. “Otherwise, don't waste what precious little time I have remaining.”
“Forgive me, my Marquis,” Raphaël started. “But I don't understand. Why would hold such an event when you yourself are so...” He was about to say 'frail,' but stopped himself short of uttering the word for fear of insulting the man. As withered as he was, he was still the Marquis, and still Raphaël's senior.
If the Marquis had an inclination of what Raphaël was going to say, he ignored it. Instead he took another sip of his drink and turned to Lady Montbéliard. “Catherine. Has everyone arrived?” he queried.
Lady Montbéliard half-nodded. “Every last one. They're all very excited, Arnaud.”
“What are they excited for? What's going on?” Raphaël asked, and was promptly ignored by the other two.
Lady Montbéliard forced a glance over at Raphaël before continuing. “The boy had an...episode, shall we say, after he had read some of the books that you had tucked away in the library. I have my doubts about his fortitude.”
The Marquis, mid sip, weakly waved his hand dismissively. “Irrelevant. Those books were useless. I found a way around that.”
Frustration and impatience overtook Raphaël as he listened to them talk and ignore his presence completely. Were they planning on pulling their support for the Laval family? That would be unacceptable.
He reminded himself that the proper thing to do was to wait until he was spoken to, but there were too many questions that needed answering.
“My Marquis,” he finally shot out suddenly, ignoring the glare he received from Lady Montbéliard. “I know I am speaking out of station, but I fear that my family needs your help, and we need it soon. I do not mean to offend you, but I was under the impression that Lady...”
“Catherine has spoken about you at length to me over the course of the past several months. It's why you're here tonight.” Raphaël breathed a sigh of relief. Perhaps there was hope for him after all. “But,” the Marquis continued, noting the sudden deflation in Raphaël's features. “It's not exactly for the reasons you thought.”
“I'm sorry Raphaël,” Lady Montbéliard apologetically stated, though Raphaël had his doubts to the sincerity of it. “I'm afraid we've deceived you.”
Raphaël soon felt a new emotion emerge: rage. He didn't like to be jerked around like a mutt on a leash. “What are you saying?” he growled, his teeth gritted.
“Your family won't be receiving my support,” the Marquis said with some assertion. “The Marquis Arnaud de Forbin will be found dead in this chair by evening's end.”
“I came here with the intention of creating an alliance,” Raphaël protested. “I don't know what game you're playing, but I refuse to be your toy.” He clenched his hands into fists at his side and felt his body tighten.
Suddenly, a powerful gust swept through the room, seemingly emanating from the Marquis' chair. Light faded from the room and the walls turned to the colour of soot. The fire behind him twirled and spun into the air with a roaring intensity, turning white.
Raphaël could feel the flames lick his skin beneath his clothing as he instinctively stepped back from it. The flames spread and soon lifted themselves out of the fireplace, churning and spinning until they floated above the rug, a white ball of fire at level with Raphaël's head.
He tried to again move out of the way, but felt a great weight on his legs, unable to move. Closer and closer the fireball came. Heavy beads of sweat poured from Raphaël's forehead and cheeks.
The Marquis sat in his chair, head back and mouth open, the fire glowing brightly in his eyes. Lady Montbéliard stood to the side and looked on as this was some banality on the level of rain falling in the countryside. Their nonchalance panicked Raphaël even further.
The ball of flame buffeted, and then began to take a shape of something. The change was slow at first, but then Raphaël opened his eyes widely as he saw what it had become: the ball of fire now resembled the face of the statue downstairs, of the monster housed within the forbidden book that he had read in the library.
“You will rue your defiance,” the demon-fi
re said. With a great motion, the demon-fire opened its mouth and roared, swooping over Raphaël in an attempt to swallow him. The heat was unbearable. Then, mid-motion, it stopped. The wind died, the fire returned to the fireplace, and the unnatural darkness that had befallen the room retreated.
Before he could react, Lady Montbéliard stepped behind him and grabbed his arms, holding him in place. She was remarkably strong for a woman her size, and Raphaël was unable to break free from the hold.
“Raphaël,” the Marquis said, with an intentional slowness that made his words hang heavy in the air. “You will play our game, whether you like it or not.”
Raphaël tugged and pulled, to no avail. Her arms were like a vice grip against his wrists.
“I have already told you I'm dying,” the Marquis said following the finishing of his drink. “It is a pain, really...” Another fit of coughing overtook him.
This time, Lady Montbéliard was indisposed, and he had to wipe his own mouth between the spasms. Blood and mucus stained the rag he held to his face. “As I was saying, it's a pain knowing that one's time is limited, and I refuse to leave this world until my work is completed.”
Raphaël pulled against Lady Montbéliard again, and was again denied any leeway. Her strength is unnatural he thought. The Marquis neatly folded the rag and set it aside on the table.
“That's where you come in, Raphaël,” the Marquis continued. “Judgement will be brought fourth. But for that I need more time. Time that you will give me.”
The Marquis' lips parted and began to move in a hypnotic manner, and soon he spoke words that sounded so alien to Raphaël's ears...and yet, he had heard them before.
In fact, he had uttered them himself, when he read aloud from the book in the library with the demon's visage on it. The chant carried with it an air of vile miasma, a toxic breath directed towards Raphaël.
“Stop! What are you doing?” Raphaël shouted, hoping that somehow he would interrupt the Marquis' chant.
It was Lady Montbéliard who answered him instead. “We all wear masks, Raphaël. Take the Lady Montbéliard you know, for example. The jolly old woman with a short attention span. Do you think me so simple to stumble around in public in such a manner? Of course you do; it's the mask that you've grown used to seeing. Arnaud is the same way. Though he is simply taking a more...literal approach to it.”
The dirge continued, and Raphaël began to feel light headed. He could feel himself getting lighter and lighter, and soon felt as if he was floating. A hum entered his ears, and soon a pain jolted through his body.
He felt a fire burn in his lungs, and his appendages felt loose and useless, hanging from his body by the thinnest of tendons. His soul felt heavy, as if it had suddenly become entombed by eons of burden.
He couldn't see, couldn't hear, nor could he speak for a long time. Stars flashed before his eyes, and he wanted to vomit.
Then, as quickly as it began, it was over. Raphaël once again had conscious control of himself. Lady Montbéliard no longer grasped him.
It took a while, but he felt himself sitting down. His vision was blurry, but eventually was able to see again.
That was when he saw himself walking past the chair he was sitting in. The room was still spinning. He was sure he was imagining it. A trick of whatever the Marquis had done to him.
“Shall we head down now?” he heard Lady Montbéliard ask. “They have been waiting for quite a long time.”
“Yes,” the Marquis said. Raphaël was sure that the Marquis had said it, as he didn't open his mouth to speak. However, the voice that he heard was very curiously his own. That was when he noticed the white wisps of hair hang loosely from his forehead.
“My guests have been waiting long enough,” he heard himself say, quickly followed by the door closing and locking behind him.
THE SILENCING MACHINE
Clockhouse London Writers
Did you ever go and see a really good impressionist?
One who could take off the voice and mannerisms of a sports star, an actor, a politician, with such panache and veracity that you believed they had conjured themselves into becoming that actual person.
You’re falling off your seat with laughter and your eyes are permanently propped right open with wonder at just how accurate this mimicry is. But a little voice inside your head is pondering: who are they really, this chameleon; do they have a true persona themselves or has it been obliterated by years of pretending to be a whole host of other people, a succession of comedy masks?
Some know of me as the man with the thousand faces. That’s rather hyperbolic. Let’s just say that when Hassan Le Duc and his inner cabinet at World Wealth Net were viciously and – tut, tut, intelligence services – unexpectedly murdered, I was there in a needful capacity long before I was officially called for.
They keep the germs out, those Hazmat suits, but they allow you to get up close and painfully personal to the after-effects of the slaughter. I was crunching data and recording my own observations long before the people I usually work for had cleared the way for me to properly begin my investigation.
The facts of the matter are these: Hassan Le Duc was the wealthiest individual in the world. With the fracturing of traditional party politics, Le Duc and a few others like him have filled the power vacuum.
In essence, he and his coterie directly controlled the economic destiny of large swathes of the civilised and developing world. Yes, plenty of people had a gripe against him and his business methods but we weren’t aware of an active plot on his life.
Besides which, he took all the usual precautions customary amongst the super-rich, including the use of doppelgangers and high quality facial disguises. Yet still they got to him. But who exactly were they – the men behind the masks? I had my suspicions. Conspiracy rumours sprang up immediately, as is the nature of the modern world.
These are my preliminary findings:
This was a political act. This was potentially the first chess move leading to a revolution. Contradictorily, the rebels were bank-rolled by important and influential people who had their own motives for ridding the world of Le Duc and his cronies.
My conclusions at this stage remain incomplete. All I can do is present what evidence and testimony I have. I shall try to come to some sort of judgement but the reader may ultimately be left to make up their own mind.
~~~
Exhibit One A:
Blog Post retrieved from The Dark Web five hours after the assassination:
I was the decoy. It was my job to create a distraction. I was chosen because I am known for such things. Occupations and flash-mobs are my forte. I was chosen because I have a track record for civil disobedience, and a criminal record to go with it.
They call me the Lone Ranger. Not simply because of my trademark black mask, but also because I always work alone. I am not part of any particular group, though the authorities know exactly who I am. They monitor my blog and my tweets. That is the reason I was chosen as the decoy. The security forces had to be drawn to my latest stunt, to allow the others to do what they had set out to do.
In the weeks running up to the event I steadily increased my traffic on the Internet. Sending out teasers that I was planning something big, something that would strike a blow for every citizen’s freedom to be ambiguous.
I knew they were intercepting and analysing every post I made, along with every response or pledge of support from my followers.
Hi ho Silver, I’d write. The Lone Ranger rides again, and filled the piece with increasingly obvious hints about where and when and what the event would be.
And it worked like a treat.
They began to hack into the calls on my mobile phone. If I jumped on a bus there was always someone two steps behind me. If I sat in a café there was always someone at a nearby table, pretending to read the paper. When I saw some of the responses to postings on my blog or twitter feeds I knew that undercover operatives, preparing to infiltrate my event, authored a high pr
oportion of these.
I understood that those who had approached me to set up the distraction were also monitoring me, assessing whether or not it was actually going to work. They had to be sure that the distraction would be big enough to allow them to carry out their plan to its conclusion without fear of discovery.
Don’t bother asking me who they are. I have no idea. I do not have their names, or addresses, or even a single phone number. They made initial contact with me through a handwritten note, pushed under the door of my squat. Whenever we met it was in car parks in the dead of night. They always wore masks. They always muffled their voices.
And so, as you know, the big day came.
I posted the location, knowing my enthusiastic followers would immediately be on their way, with Halloween masks and Mardi Gras masks and all the varieties in between.
We’d block the bridge in a great carnival of anonymity and bring the city to a standstill. All eyes would be drawn to us, the CCTV and the drones, none of them looking in the direction that they should be.
I knew exactly how the authorities would react. Their chop off the head strategy is so predictable. They’d send in a snatch squad to arrest me first. And they’d do what they always do when I organise one of these actions, their crudely symbolic assertion of authority, the triumphal ripping off of my Lone Ranger mask.
Only, this time, they would be in for one hell of a surprise.
I smiled as I took my needle and thread and began to sew the mask to my flesh.
~~~
Exhibit One B:
Blog Post retrieved from The Dark Web twelve hours after the assassination:
I gaze at my grotesque reflection in the mirror. I do not recognise the monster that stares back at me through haunted eyes, ragged ribbons of flesh exposing crimson tissue and white bone.
When the snatch squad moved in to grab me they did exactly as I predicted and tried to rip away the Lone Ranger mask. My stitching was tight; chunks of flesh were torn from my face. I screamed in agony and almost collapsed from the pain.
Masks Page 15
