Death Mask

by Graham Masterton

  It had been nearly twenty-five years since two young troopers had come to her door with their hats in their hands, telling her that Frank had been killed. She had said, softly, “Oh, dear God,” but she hadn’t cried. She hadn’t even cried at his funeral.

  The first time she had sobbed, it had come upon her quite unexpectedly, when she was sitting with her friend in Aurora’s Café drinking coffee and they had played “Pretty Woman” on the jukebox. Frank had always sung it to her—not that Frank could sing in key. He had always found it difficult to pay her compliments, and so he let Roy Orbison do it for him.

  She sang it now, under her breath. “Pretty woman … walking down the street …”

  Molly came out, carrying a leather-bound photo album. “I found plenty of reference,” she said. “That’s if you still want to go ahead with it.”

  “I can’t believe I didn’t see the warning in the cards,” said Sissy. “The twentieth of May, at a quarter after ten, on a bridge. It was all there, if only I could have read it. I could have saved all of those people’s lives.”

  “Sissy, you tell fortunes. You talk to dead people in mirrors. You’re the most amazing sensitive I’ve ever known. But you’re not infallible. Nobody is.”

  Sissy turned around to face her. “I used to be. I used to be infallible. But—well—maybe Trevor’s right. Maybe I am losing it. Maybe I am going bananas.”

  Molly had bookmarked the album and now she opened it. Inside was a large color photograph of Frank standing on the shore at Hyannis. Sissy had taken it herself, only about two weeks before he was killed. His hair was ruffled by the ocean breeze, and he was grinning at her. She had forgotten how blue his eyes were.

  “That’s good, that’s a good one. I like that.”

  “I won’t draw him at the beach, though. I’ll draw him here.”

  “Okay. Under the vine trellis, how about that?”

  “I could draw him anyplace. In the living room, if you like.”

  “I know. But when he materializes—if he does—it seems like something he should do without us all staring at him. Something private.”

  Molly nodded. She understood what Sissy meant. She couldn’t guess what it would feel like for Frank, being resurrected through a drawing of himself, but she imagined that it would be momentous, both physically and emotionally.

  “What are you going to say to Victoria?” asked Sissy, as they went back inside.

  “I don’t know. We haven’t done it yet, have we? But if we do—I guess I’ll simply tell her the truth.”

  “ ‘Victoria, this is your grandpa, who died long before you were born? Come and say hi!’ ”

  “Sissy, you’re such a cynic.”

  “No, I’m not. I’m a jelly, if you must know. I’m just trying to protect my feelings.”

  Molly sat at her desk, and Sissy sat close beside her. Trevor stayed on the opposite side of the study, pacing up and down. Every now and then, he nervously cleared his throat, as if he were waiting for a job interview.

  With the photograph of Frank at Hyannis propped up in front of her, and three smaller photographs showing his right and left profiles and a three-quarters view, Molly began to sketch. She had never met Frank, of course, but Trevor had told her so much about him that she felt she knew him well. His matter-of-fact attitude to life, his dry sense of humor. But she also knew that he had been dedicated to helping other people, particularly those who were helpless and down on their luck—and that didn’t only mean those who were victims of crime, but also the criminals themselves.

  Frank Sawyer had done everything he could to help a nineteen-year-old drug addict named Laurence Stepney to turn his life around. One morning he had seen Stepney and another youth trying to break into a car in the parking lot of the Big Bear Supermarket near Nor-folk. He had walked up to Stepney and asked him what the hell he thought he was doing. Without hesitation Stepney had pulled out a .38 revolver and shot him in the face.

  “That’s it,” said Sissy, as Molly started to shade in Frank’s cheekbones. “You’ve really got him, you know? When you come to the eyes, though … I always thought that Frank looked a little long-sighted … like he was focused on something way behind you. My friend said that he always made her feel transparent, as if he could see right through her.”

  Trevor came halfway across the room, leaned over to peer at Molly’s sketch pad, and then went back to his pacing. “This is not going to work, is it? I can’t see how this is possibly going to work.”

  Sissy said, “Trevor … even if it doesn’t work, we’ll still end up with a very fine portrait of your father, and I can’t complain about that.”

  “The whole thing’s nuts. I’m nuts for going along with it.”

  “Trevor, I like you when you’re acting nuts. You’ve been so serious all your life. You were even serious when you were potty training.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Momma.”

  “Do you know why your father married me? He told me once. He said, ‘Sissy—you are the most irrational person I ever met. You’re completely crazy, and that’s just what I need in my life. A little bit of crazy.’ ”

  “I’m sorry if I didn’t inherit any of that.”

  “You don’t think so? I think you did. I think you’re more like me than you care to admit.”

  Now Molly was filling in the shadows under Frank’s cheekbones and the lines around his mouth. She really was a remarkable artist, thought Sissy. Her portraits weren’t at all like photographs. In a way, they were much more real than photographs. They breathed life, and character. As she highlighted his lips, Sissy almost expected Frank to start talking to her. And as the drawing came nearer and nearer to completion, Trevor came back across the room and stood right behind her, staring at his dead father in fascination, but also in deeply suppressed pain.

  “Okay,” said Molly, at last. She held the portrait up so that they could see it better. “All we can do now is wait and see if anything happens.”

  “Well, I suggest we leave it for a while,” said Sissy. “Let’s sit down and have a drink, and say a prayer to whatever gods we happen to believe in.”

  Molly washed her paintbrush and put it back into its jelly jar. Before she stood up, she sorted through her necklace until she found the brass and garnet ring, and squeezed it tight between finger and thumb.

  “Saying a prayer to Vincent van Gogh?” Sissy asked her.

  “Asking for his blessing,” said Molly. “If anybody knew what madness and fear and disappointment were all about, he did.”

  They left the study and went back into the living room. Trevor filled up their glasses and they sat down and looked at each other, almost as if they had done something for which they should all feel guilty.

  “Do you want to smoke, Momma?” Trevor asked her.

  Sissy blinked at him in surprise. “You don’t mean that, do you?”

  “What the hell. What difference is it going to make?”

  “Well, thank you for your consideration,” said Sissy. “But your father’s coming back, and you know what he felt about my smoking.”

  They sat in silence for five minutes longer. Then the phone warbled, making Sissy jump.

  Molly picked it up and said, “Sawyer residence. Oh, Mike. How are you? I know, terrible. Victoria’s really upset. Well, and Trevor is, too. I know.”

  She covered the receiver with her hand and said, “Mike Kunzel. He wants to know if I can draw him another composite.”

  “Not if you’re wearing that necklace, you can’t.”

  “Of course I won’t. And I don’t have to go downtown. Trevor saw the perpetrators as clear as anybody. I can do it here.”

  She took her hand away from the receiver. “For sure, Mike. I can do that. Give me an hour, and I’ll e-mail it to you.”

  She said, “Yes,” and then, “yes,” and then she held out the receiver for Sissy. “He’d like a word with you, too.”

  “Me?”

  Detective Kunzel said, “Hi, Mrs. S
awyer. How’s it going?”

  “Well, we’re all very upset, naturally.”

  “Last time that Red Mask called me on my cell phone, you said that he had given us a clue. But I never had the chance to ask you what it was.”

  “No, you didn’t, and I have to say that I was kind of relieved. I didn’t think that you’d believe me, even if I told you.”

  “Try me, Mrs. Sawyer. You never know. I’m supposed to be the most skeptical guy in the unit, but there are times when even us skeptical guys find ourselves clutching at straws. We’ve raided three addresses this afternoon, looking for red-faced men—one in Betts-Longworth and two in Over-the-Rhine. But the only red faces were ours.”

  Sissy tried to choose her words with care. “Let me put it this way, Detective. You’ve heard about people having doppelgängers, exact doubles of themselves?”

  “Go on.”

  “I think that the two Red Masks who killed those people at the Giley Building and the Four Days Mall, and the two Red Masks who killed those people on the skywalk this morning—I think they could be doppelgängers, of a kind.”

  “I don’t get it. You mean, like identical twins?”

  “In a way. But identical twins are two separate people. These are the same person, twice. Like two copies of the same picture.”

  There was a very long pause. Then Detective Kunzel said, “I’m sorry, Mrs Sawyer. You got me there. I don’t really understand what you’re saying.”

  “It doesn’t really matter if you understand it or not, Detective. The most important thing is to be aware of it. When you send your men out looking for these Red Masks, tell them to watch their backs. My cards have given me a very strong warning: the hunters could end up becoming the hunted.”

  “Well … I’m a whole lot more confused than I was a minute ago,” said Detective Kunzel. “But I’ll take your word for it. I’ll tell my men to look out for one guy who could be two guys.”

  “He may be no guys at all,” Sissy told him.

  Another pause. “Let’s just stick to your doppelgängers for now,” said Detective Kunzel. “But if you do have any more theories—”

  Sissy hung up and handed the phone back to Molly. “I have a very bad feeling about this,” she said.

  Mr. Boots, who had been sleeping on the carpet next to the couch, suddenly lifted his head and let out a whuff.

  “See? Mr. Boots can feel it, too.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  A Painting of Frank

  Eleven o’clock chimed. Molly felt too tired to stay up any longer, and so she went to bed—“Although if anything happens, you have to wake me!”

  After another twenty minutes, Trevor followed her, and then there were only Sissy and Mr. Boots in the living room, with the cicadas busy singing outside, and the weary ticking of the wall clock.

  Sissy went into Molly’s study to see if the painting of Frank was still there. She looked down at it sadly and touched his lips with her fingertips as if she expected to feel him kissing her. One fall day, when they were kicking their way through the leaves, he had said to her, “You were so easy to fall in love with. And so easy to stay in love with.”

  “Frank,” she whispered. Then she went back into the living room and sat on the couch so that she could stroke Mr. Boots’s ears while he dreamed of whatever he dreamed of. Not giants, that was for sure. Nor red-faced men with butcher knives and slits instead of eyes.

  Sissy slept, and snored without realizing that she was snoring.

  She dreamed that she was walking through an underground parking lot, all echoes and shouts and squealing tires, and that she didn’t know which way to get out of it.

  “Watch your backs!” she called out, but her voice was thin and strangulated, and she wasn’t sure if anybody could hear her. “There are two of them! Watch your backs!”

  She woke up with a jolt. The living room was dark, but the desk lamp in the study was still shining. Mr. Boots stirred in his sleep but didn’t wake up. The wall clock told her that it was ten after two in the morning.

  She eased up herself up from the couch and went through to the kitchen. She poured herself a glass of ice water from the fridge and drank it all in one, so that she gasped. Outside, the yard was in shadow, although the sky was stained with orange from the city lights. She opened the back door and stood there for a while, listening to the sounds of the night.

  As her eyes became accustomed to the darkness, she saw somebody underneath the vine trellis. A man, sitting quite still. She slowly lifted her hand to her mouth and bit her knuckle, partly out of fear and partly to make sure that she was really awake. She had never felt a sensation like this before: such a mixture of elation and terror. She didn’t know whether to call out for Trevor and Molly, or to go back into the kitchen and lock the door behind her, or to challenge the man to his face.

  But it was the man who spoke first. “Excuse me,” he asked her. “Where is this?”—as if he had fallen asleep on a train journey and just woken up.

  Sissy approached him. His face was hidden in the shadows, but she recognized the wave of gray hair.

  “Frank?” she said. “Frank—is that you?”

  “Where am I? I don’t know how the hell I got here. Is this a dream?”

  She sat down beside him. Now she could see that he really was Frank. That lean, angular face. That diamond-shaped scar. He even smelled like Frank, of Boss aftershave, which she had given him for Christmas twenty-four years ago.

  “This isn’t a dream, Frank. We’ve called you back.”

  “Called me back? Called me back from where?”

  “It isn’t easy to explain. But this is Trevor’s house, in Cincinnati.”

  “Trevor’s house? What do you mean? You mean Trevor doesn’t live at home anymore? Why?”

  “Trevor’s all grown up now, Frank. He’s married, and he has a nine-year-old daughter.”

  “Trevor? How can that be? Trevor’s only eleven.”

  “You’ve been away, Frank. It’s been twenty-four years.”

  “What are you talking about? What do you mean, I’ve been away? Where?”

  Sissy laid her hand on top of his, but almost immediately he drew his hand back.

  “You’ve heard about people in a coma,” said Sissy. “What happened to you, it’s kind of like that.”

  “I’ve been unconscious? For twenty-four years? You don’t expect me to believe that?”

  “It’s true, Frank. I’ll take you inside to see Trevor, then you’ll believe me.”

  Frank didn’t say anything for almost half a minute. The cicadas chirruped on and on, and somewhere in the night, a police siren wailed.

  “So who are you?” Frank asked her, at last. “I’m sure I recognize your voice.”

  “Lots of things have changed, including me.”

  “Sissy?”

  “Yes,” she said. She was very close to tears. “Not quite the Sissy you remember, but still the same Sissy.”

  Frank stood up, so that the light from the kitchen window shone on his face. Sissy couldn’t believe how young he looked. When he was forty-seven and she was forty-five, she had always thought that both of them were beginning to show the signs of encroaching age.

  “Here,” he said, and held out his hand. Sissy took it, and he helped her onto her feet.

  “Your hair,” he said. “What’s happened to your hair, darling?”

  She turned toward the light. “Not only my hair, Frank.”

  He touched her cheek, very gently. There were tears sparkling in his eyes. “I don’t understand,” he told her. “Have I really been unconscious for so long?”

  She held his wrist and kissed his fingertips. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have called you back, should I?”

  “I still don’t understand. How did I lose consciousness? How come I’m not in a hospital or anything? Twenty-four years, did you say?

  He looked around the yard, at the clusters of chirruping cicadas. “This is a dream, isn’t it? This c
an’t be real. But it feels so damn real.”

  “Why don’t you come inside?” said Sissy. “Then I can explain.”

  Frank stared at her. “Oh my God,” he said. “This isn’t a dream, is it?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Bad Memories

  Frank followed Sissy into the kitchen as if he were concussed. He looked around, taking in the flowery red and yellow drapes and the hutch with its decorative pottery plates and jugs. He peered closely at the family photographs on the wall beside the fridge.

  “Is this—?” he asked, pointing at a picture of Trevor.

  Sissy nodded. “That’s right. Looks so much like you, don’t you think?”

  “And this is his wife? And his daughter?”

  “Molly and Victoria. Molly’s an artist. Well—you can see by all of these flower paintings. They’re all hers. This landscape, too. Do you recognize it? New Milford Green. She painted it when she and Trevor came to visit last fall.”

  Frank pulled out a chair and sat down at the kitchen table. “I’m finding this real hard to take in, Sissy. The way you look, everything. You’re still just as pretty as you ever were. But I’ve missed out on so many years, haven’t I? How could that happen?”

  Sissy sat down opposite him and took hold of his hands. “It’s so wonderful to have you back. You don’t have any idea how much I’ve missed you.”

  “Is Trevor here? Aren’t you going to tell him I’m back?”

  “Of course I am. But there’s something you need to know. It’s going to be very difficult for you to understand, and if it makes you angry with me, then I won’t be at all surprised.”

  “You’ve found somebody else. Is that it? After twenty-four years, darling, I can’t say that I blame you.”

  Sissy said, “I have had plenty of men friends, yes. Good ones, some of them. But nobody serious. And nobody who could ever replace you.”

  “So why am I going to be angry?”

  Sissy stood up again and went over to the sink. She took down a small mirror with a frame made of ceramic daisies. She handed it to Frank and said, “Take a look at yourself, Frank. Tell me what you see.”