City of Masks

by Daniel Hecht

  Or maybe not. Maybe it would chase her away completely. And that was too dire a thing to contemplate. The indecision gripped him. What was needed, greater patience or more impulsiveness?

  But Helen had opened her purse and taken out her calendar, and it was time to concentrate on the matter at hand.

  16

  AFTER LEAVING GUIDRY'S OFFICE, Cree tried to call Lila from the pay phone at the police complex. She got the machine again and hung up without leaving another message. Suddenly she knew where to find her.

  Ten minutes later she arrived at Beauforte House, and, sure enough, parked at the curb was the beige Lexus SUV she'd seen in the garage at the Warrens'. The front door of the house was slightly ajar.

  Two o'clock, and the Garden District hummed with its own low-key bustle: an occasional car driving slowly along the tree-shaded streets, a couple of tourists sauntering the root-buckled sidewalks. Groundskeepers worked in flower beds or trimmed lawns, filling the air with the drone of mowers. Two houses down from Beauforte House, a team of repairmen were doing some work and the street rang intermittently with the whine and shriek of a circular saw.

  Broad daylight, sunny and pleasant and ordinary, and all Cree could feel was seething fear. Whatever the source of Lila's problems, supernatural or medical, she wasn't safe here. Lila had no business coming here alone in her current condition.

  She trotted up the stairs into the faint breath of cool, musty air that flowed out of the front door. She knocked loudly and pushed it open. The dim interior stretched away.

  Her pulse jumped when she noticed a purse in the middle of the foyer floor, lipstick and keys spilling from it as if it had been thrown there.

  "Lila? Are you here? It's Cree Black." The still house absorbed her words, and she called again, louder.

  A scuttling sound upstairs.

  She began walking up the long staircase, bringing each foot down hard to make sure her steps were audible. "Lila, it's me, it's Cree Black. You weren't at home, so I swung by here. Are you up there?"

  A muffled shriek startled her before she realized it was the carpenters' saw down the street. And then the thought occurred to her that if Lila had screamed or called for help, no one would have heard it amid the chorus of noises outside.

  She came to the top of the stairs and paused. There was more light up here, but she found the light switch and turned it on anyway. Overhead, the chandelier sprang to life, a galaxy of yellow sparkles. "Lila?"

  The house looked fine and old and proper, yet its rooms seemed infused with that malevolence Cree had felt as she'd hung in the mirror tunnel. She hesitated at the top of the stairs, feeling almost incapable of going farther.

  Quick footsteps thumped from the front of the house, and she turned in time to see a form cross the doorway of the middle front room and disappear. Lila!

  Cree called to her again and started to cross the room, her eyes on the doorway. Halfway across, she stepped on something and felt a stab of pain as her ankle turned. She winced and looked down to find a woman's shoe, one of the slate-blue, square-toed pumps Lila had worn yesterday. She saw its mate flung into the far corner. Then she noticed that a lamp had been knocked off one of the side tables.

  There'd been a fight here.

  "Lila, it's Cree! Are you okay?"

  Someone moved in the front room, and the window light shifted. Cree gimped toward it. Her sense of foreboding grew, that tornado weather again: She felt the sky's belly bulge and birth the dangling worm that would soon lengthen and swell. As she came into the doorway, she caught a momentary glimpse of Lila cringing behind an ornate desk to her left. And then Lila fled through the side door.

  "Lila! It's just Cree! Don't be afraid! Please don't run away!"

  Lila had looked like a madwoman. Her eyes were wide and mindless, her face a checkerboard of red and white blotches, her hair ratted out on one side. Though Cree had barely glimpsed her, she saw that her skirt was ripped up one thigh, her blouse untucked and partially unbuttoned. Cree flung herself through the room and into the next, but Lila was already gone, into the central room. Cree heard her bare feet thumping across the big floor and then the different sound as she ran into the hallway.

  She had to repress the urge to chase her. Lila was clearly lost in a nightmare in which she was being pursued, and Cree must not appear to be her pursuer. Instead, she limped slowly back through the big room toward the corridor. There were no more sounds from back there, so she didn't think Lila had gone down the rear stairs; she must have run into one of the rooms along the hall, maybe the master bedroom.

  "It's just me," Cree called. "I'm just coming to visit you. Please don't be afraid." She continued taking measured steps, trying to ignore the ankle. Into the hall. Talking continuously, she found the light switch, flicked it on. "Lila, please don't mn, it's just Cree! Please talk to me."

  The only answer was the faint, grating screech of the circular saw outside.

  The bathroom and the master bedroom were empty. Cree came to the doorway to Lila's old bedroom, the room she'd fled to to escape the boar-headed man. She felt the tension swell an instant before the attack came and had a flashing mental image of a pig's face, terrible small eyes and grinning snout, but it was too late. Lila lunged out of the doorway, screaming and clawing at her. Reflexively, Cree flinched away. Her injured ankle buckled, and she fell against the wall with Lila's hands at her face and chest, the compact body pummeling and pushing at her with astonishing strength. Lila's mottled face raged in animal desperation.

  Cree managed to catch Lila's wrists as they went over, holding them hard despite the bruising fall. The breath went out of her, but she used her size and strength to hold on and roll Lila over. Lila tossed from side to side, kicking, her face terrified and terrifying. Cree held herself against the twisting and flailing, and managed to pin her arms against the floor. Raw panic leapt like an electrical arc between them.

  And abruptly the plump heaving body went slack and the round eyes shut partially and slid to the side, defeated. Lila lay flat on her back, one pale thigh emerging from her ripped skirt, her blouse half open and showing the lace of her bra. The hands stopped clutching and relaxed, surrendered, against the floor. Somehow it was the hands that most wrenched at Cree's heart.

  Cree lay half on top of her, trying to catch her breath, unwilling to let go of her wrists. The panicked rage faded from Lila's face, leaving only abject surrender, defeat, sorrow. Exhaustion, too. Her pumping chest slowed and then her breathing caught and went uneven, became sobs. Tears leaked out the corners of her half-closed eyes.

  "Lila, it's Cree Black," Cree panted. Her voice came out a rough whisper. "It's Cree! I'm your friend! Don't be afraid. We're in this together, okay? I promise. You don't have anything to be afraid of."

  Lila's head lolled to one side and she lay inert. Cree released one wrist and then the other, and still the hands lay limp and defeated against the carpet. Lila kept her face turned away, mouth open and eyes half shut.

  It took Cree a moment to realize that she wasn't just dazedly staring but was focusing, looking down the hall toward the central room.

  Cree followed her gaze. There was something strange just where the hall opened into the big room. Down on the floor, to the left: the tips of shoes. Someone was standing just around the corner. As she looked, the toes tucked themselves back, almost out of view.

  Abruptly Cree felt him there, felt him wanting to be seen, wanting to be feared. That malevolent glee burgeoning with predatory lust and gnarled with unfathomable complexities. She caught the scent of his sweat again, an inky, testosterone musk.

  She blinked rapidly, struggling to conquer her own fear and rage. The part of her that had become Lila wanted to explode at him, obliterate him. But that would do no good. It would only fuel his affect. You had to overcome it in yourself. You had to overcome it and find the link between what was good in yourself and the same in him.

  "Who are you?" she asked. "What do you want? Do you know who you a
re?"

  There was no change in his affect, no doubt or remorse. More than anything else she'd experienced near him, this terrified her. He had to be a memory spun away from a dying man, but Cree couldn't sense a perimortem dimension to him, none of the range of emotions she'd come to associate with the act of dying. Where was the link, the bridge?

  Whatever he was, she was not ready to reach him. If he came at them now

  Lila stirred slightly, and Cree looked down at her. She had closed her eyes and now looked like she was asleep. When Cree looked up again, the shoes had retreated out of view. The sense of his presence dissipated.

  Weak with relief, Cree leaned to stroke Lila's forehead. "You're all right now. Everything's going to be okay. You're not alone. You're not alone in this." It was all she could think of to say. It didn't sound convincing, didn't sound at all sufficient. Lila just seemed to drowse, a plump middle-aged housewife lying incongruously on the rich Oriental runner, ravaged and abandoned.

  17

  BY THE TIME CREE RETURNED to her hotel room, it was fivethirty. She dropped her purse, kicked off her shoes, and fell over onto the bed. Only after she'd lain there palming her eyes for a few minutes did she remember that she'd missed her four o'clock appointment with Dr. Fitzpatrick. The message light blinking on the phone was probably him, wondering where she was.

  Too bad. Tomorrow maybe. She had a lot to discuss with him, but she was too drained to deal with it now.

  She had sat with Lila in the hall for as long as she could bear to, fearing that the boar-headed ghost would return. Eventually Lila had stirred and opened her red eyes to look at Cree. The eyes were neither hopeful nor grateful nor even fearful. They were just desolately empty: This is how it is. This is what I am. It was a state of hopeless stasis Cree knew too well. She saw that same hollow resignation in the mirror, in her own eyes, after something had awakened her grief for Mike and the knowledge of how little she could do about his absence. How little the wound had healed despite the passage of years.

  When Lila finally sat up, Cree retrieved her shoes, helped Lila get them on, and made her stand.

  Downstairs, they picked up Lila's purse. Cree urged her out the door and down the gallery steps, and they went to sit in Cree's car, two utterly emptied women side by side in the heat. Cree's ankle throbbed, and she discovered that her elbows and thighs were bruised from the tussle in the hall. It was still bright daylight, the repair crew down the block was still at work. A few more tourists strolled the sidewalks, gazing around appreciatively and pausing to snap photos. Gradually, reality had reassembled around these ordinary things, and Lila had begun to talk.

  The hotel phone wheedled, and Cree's hand reflexively snatched the receiver.

  "Cree? Paul Fitzpatrick. What's going on? I missed you at four, called your room, couldn't find you. Now I just got through to Jack Warren, who said — "

  "She went over to the house. Alone. I came by while she was there. She was . . . it was bad."

  "Oh, Christ! Why'd she go there?"

  "To fight back. Confront it all. Show she was tough. Didn't quite work out that way."

  "So she talked to you?"

  "Yeah."

  Fitzpatrick chewed on that for a moment. "Are you up for meeting with me tonight?"

  "I don't think . . . I mean, we do need to talk, as soon as possible. But frankly, I'm . . . it was . . . grueling. I'm really tired."

  "You sound like someone who could use a good dinner and a glass of wine. We could kind of combine our psychiatric conference with some R and R. I know the restaurants around here pretty well - I could introduce you to some regional cuisine."

  Somehow, it didn't seem like a come-on. Fitzpatrick sounded straightforward, as always, concerned and reasonable. It had been an overwhelming day, and part of Cree felt that the last thing she needed was one more intense interaction. But it really was urgent that they compare notes on Lila. And Cree did need to eat something.

  And, yes, Fitzpatrick was okay to be around.

  "All right. As long as you know I'm more than a little out of it. I really am" - Cree groped for the right word - "kaput. Seriously."

  "Kaput is just fine. Kaput is eminently doable. I'll pick you up in an hour."

  The silver BMW swooped up to the hotel canopy only a moment after Cree made it downstairs. Paul Fitzpatrick waved, but to Cree's relief he didn't jump out and open the door for her or otherwise conduct any ceremonies that might make this seem more like a date. Determined to conceal her newly acquired hobble, she walked to the car, opened her own door, and slid into the leather interior.

  Fitzpatrick gave her a small grin. "You look like hell," he said. "You look kaput."

  Cree returned the smile. She had showered and changed, but she still felt like crap, and somehow it was just the right thing to say. "Thanks."

  "Seafood okay?"

  "Perfect."

  "You want fancy, folksy, um - "

  "Right now I want normal. I want simple."

  He looked at her appraisingly for a moment, stroking his chin, then nodded and put the car into gear. "There are a lot of choices, but I think I know the right place for tonight."

  Cree was grateful to have someone else decide things. She leaned back, accepting the easy pressure of the BMW's acceleration. Fitzpatrick swung the car north on Canal Street, away from the French Quarter. The sky was dark, leaving the boulevard lit only by street lamps, signs, windows, headlights. She laid her head against the headrest and looked out at the big, strange city she was just coming to know, and Fitzpatrick had the good sense not to say anything at all.

  Deanie's Seafood turned out to be a casual place half a block from the lake, not too far from the park where she and Fitzpatrick had walked. Aside from the brightly lit fast-food place across the street, the neighborhood was composed of seafood distributors and light industrial buildings.

  "Antoine's this is not," Fitzpatrick told her as they crossed the parking lot. "It's where you go when you're hungry and want very fresh fish and clams and crabs and lots of 'em. I like it because it doesn't go for the overdone Cajun or old-timey New Orleans themes you see too much of, and it's cheap. I thought you probably wouldn't be in the mood for anything too elaborate." He stopped, suddenly uncertain. "But if you are, we could - "

  "This is just right."

  The restaurant was an unpretentious place, just the kind of grounded, homey environment she needed: middle-class, mom and pop, guaranteed to keep existential anxiety at bay. The air outside was full of the smell of deep frying, reminding Cree how hollow her stomach felt. When they went inside and she saw people being served mountainous platters of golden-brown, battered sea things, her knees went weak.

  They took a table at the far end of the back room, near the lobster tank. Cree dropped into her seat and watched the green-black creatures bumbling around the perimeter of their glass cage, claws held shut by rubber bands.

  "I need you to tell me what you know about Lila," Cree said immediately.

  "Don't you want to relax a bit? I thought you wanted to - "

  "It's probably best just to get to it. I can't think about anything else right now. Dr. Fitzpatrick, if she were my patient, I'd be considering immediate intervention."

  That brought his eyebrows up. "Not to digress, but could I ask you to call me something other than Dr. Fitzpatrick?"

  "I'm not going to call anyone Fitz, I'll tell you that. How about Paul?"

  "Paul will do." His weak smile faded quickly. "So Lila's really at risk."

  "She spent the afternoon literally bouncing off the walls of Beauforte House, knocking over furniture." Cree glanced around to make sure no one was near enough to overhear, and then went on in a quieter voice: She was in a state of absolute panic. Her clothes were torn and she had bruises and scratches all over. She was being chased by a pig- or boar-headed man who took sadistic pleasure in the pursuit, who drew it out, hiding, popping out at her, chasing her, and then hiding again."

  Fitzpatrick looked agh
ast. After a moment, he spread his hands helplessly. "I have to admit, even from a psychiatric perspective, this is a little beyond my experience. More than a little. This is - "

  He stopped when a waitress appeared, a harried-looking middle-aged woman who set down a bowl of boiled potatoes and then stood, one pencil behind her ear and another poised over her order pad. "Can I get you something to drink? Wine? Cocktail?" she asked.

  "I'd like a whiskey," Cree said. "Bourbon, whatever's cheap. And a beer to knock it down with. Anything on tap, you choose for me."

  Fitzpatrick ordered a glass of Chablis. When the waitress left, he looked at Cree with a mix of concern and amusement in his eyes.

  "A family remedy," Cree explained. "My father wasn't a regular drinker, but he believed that extreme circumstances demanded extreme measures."

  Fitzpatrick pursed his lips and nodded.

  Cree leaned forward across the table. "It's beyond my experience, too, Paul. I can't explain the boar head, and I can't find any of the . . . 'handles' I usually look for. I can't find his dying experience in him, he's very one-dimensional. I've never even read of anything like it. Nothing legitimate, anyway. You'll think this sounds strange, coming from me, but this is almost like a — a fable, or a horror story. Something teenagers tell each other around a carnpfire. But it's very real to Lila."

  "That's all it did? The . . . pig-headed ghost? It chased her?"

  "It raped her, Paul. That's what it does when it finally catches her. That's what happened back in December. It scares her to death, and when she can't run any more, it rapes her. And it does it again and again." It was the first time Cree had said it out loud, and the enormity of it struck her. Cree believed Lila's account, but in one sense it made little difference whether this was a real manifestation or purely the savage hallucination of a tormented mind: Both were equally, deeply frightening.

  Fitzpatrick was looking shaky, as if suddenly he'd lost confidence in his ability to cope with Lila's condition. He picked up his fork and played with it for several seconds, then dropped it with a clang as if he were disgusted with it.