Death Mask

by Graham Masterton

  “There are dozens of roadside giants,” Frank told her. “Indian braves, cowboys, half-wits, girls in swimming costumes. Up near New Milford, we have a thirty-foot corn dolly.”

  “I know. But why choose a meat packer from Nowheresville, Iowa?”

  Sissy pulled back her bedcovers. “I think we need to talk to Jane Becker, urgently. I really have a bad feeling about this.”

  Frank said, “I’ll come with you. And we can take Deputy, too.”

  Sissy looked across at Molly. “You didn’t?”

  “I surely did. I had a busy night last night, while you were dreaming about scary giants.”

  Sissy climbed out of bed and went to the window. In the backyard, Mr. Boots and Deputy were jumping up and down together, snapping at cicadas.

  “They made friends right away,” said Molly. “I think that Mr. Boots kind of understands that Deputy isn’t going to try to take his place.”

  “Oh, that’s what you think?” said Sissy. “I think that Mr. Boots is intelligent enough not to get into a fight with a German Shepherd half his age.”

  Frank said. “I’ll let you get dressed. My coffee’s getting cold, and my chocolate pecan cookies are getting staler by the minute.”

  When he had gone back through to the kitchen, Sissy said to Molly, “Has Victoria seen him yet?”

  “No. She left for school before he—you know—rematerialized, or whatever we’re supposed to call it.”

  “She’ll be so delighted.”

  “I know. But I’m not so sure this is something that I want her to get delighted about. It can’t last, can it? He’s a painting, an image, not a real person.”

  “He feels real.”

  Molly looked at her sharply. “He’s too young for you, Sissy. Don’t start getting ideas.”

  “For God’s sake, Molly. He’s my husband.”

  They arrived outside the Becker home in Lakeside Park a few minutes before noon. The day was hot and brassy, with only a single cloud in the sky. The house was a large Colonial-style two story in pinkish brick, with sloping grounds of at least three-quarters of an acre, most of them given over to very dry grass. The sawing of cicadas was even louder than ever.

  “Let’s hope she’s at home,” said Frank.

  There were two vehicles parked in the driveway: a black Jeep Cherokee and a red Honda Civic. The Civic had a sticker in the rear window saying GLARING ANOMALIES.

  “Glaring Anomalies?” said Frank.

  “It’s a rock band,” Molly told him. “A few years after your time, I’m afraid.”

  “Don’t worry about it, sweetheart. Everything’s a few years after my time.”

  They went up to the front door, and Sissy pushed the bell. They waited for nearly half a minute before Jane Becker answered, wearing a baggy oversized T-shirt with ketchup stains on the front of it. She looked very white-faced, and her curly chestnut hair was tied up in a lime green nylon scarf.

  “Yes?” she blinked.

  “Hi, Jane,” said Molly. “Remember me?”

  Jane Becker frowned at her, and then she said, “Oh, yes. Oh, sure. The sketch artist lady. Erm—what are you doing here?”

  “I just wanted to talk to you a little more, that’s all. I guess you’ve seen on the news that they still haven’t caught this Red Mask character. I was wondering if maybe there was something else that you can remember about him. Something that might have slipped your mind the first time. You know—what with the shock and everything.”

  “Well … I don’t think so.” Jane Becker peered around the front lawn as if she half expected Red Mask to come bursting out of the bushes.

  “Do you mind if we come in for a moment? Would that be okay? This is my mother-in-law Sissy, by the way, and this is Detective Frank Sawyer.”

  Frank flashed his shield, without giving Jane Becker the time to see that it was Connecticut State Police, and not Cincinnati.

  “I don’t really know what else I can tell you,” she said. “That picture you drew—that was so totally like him. Totally.”

  All the same, without explicitly inviting them in, she opened the door wider so that they could step into the hallway, and then she led them through to the living room.

  The house was cool and freshly decorated, with salmon-colored carpets and pale yellow couches and chairs. Over the fireplace hung an amateurish oil painting of a stone bridge with an improbably blue stream flowing underneath it. There were shiny brass firedogs in the fireplace, even though the logs were artificial and the fire itself was electric.

  Frank said, “You’re absolutely sure that you’d never seen this Red Mask guy before he attacked you in the elevator?”

  Jane Becker sat down next to the fireplace. “Never. He was a total stranger.”

  “And you have no idea why he wanted to kill Mr. Woods?”

  “None whatsoever.”

  Sissy felt a prickling sensation in her fingers. She lifted her hand and saw that her mother’s amethyst ring had turned several shades darker. So the probability was that Jane Becker was lying. But lying about what, exactly? That Red Mask was a stranger to her, or that she didn’t know why he had murdered George Woods?

  The prickling sensation was caused by more than her mother’s ring, however. It was the kind of sensation she felt when some potent or meaningful artifact was very close. She felt it whenever one of her clients brought her a loved one’s scarf or a pair of gloves, in order to help her to communicate beyond the grave. She felt it whenever she walked into a room and saw a photograph of a gone-beyonder. She always knew they were dead, even without being told.

  Molly was saying, “—anything about his hair, or his skin texture? How about scars? Did you notice any scars? Scars can be a real important clue, because they might have been caused by a sports injury or an occupational accident.”

  Sissy turned slowly around and around, trying to locate where the prickling sensation was coming from. Frank held her arm and said, “Sissy? Are you okay?”

  “Sure. I’m fine. It’s just that—”

  “I don’t remember anything else about him, except what I told you,” said Jane Becker. “He might have had a scar, but I really don’t recall. I was fighting for my life, remember.”

  Sissy said, “May I use your bathroom, please?”

  “Oh, sure. Along the hallway, second door on the right.”

  “Thank you.”

  Sissy left the living room. She walked slowly along the hallway, her ring hand raised, her eyes narrowed in concentration.

  It’s here, Sissy. The answer is right here. It’s in one of these rooms.

  She passed the dining room. There was nothing in there but a highly polished oak table and eight oak chairs, and it smelled airless, as if it wasn’t used very often. She reached the bathroom, which had a ceramic plaque on it with the legend, “The Littlest Room.” But as she turned the door handle, she felt the prickling on her back. There was another room opposite the bathroom, with its door half ajar.

  She hesitated for a moment, listening. She could still hear Molly and Jane Becker talking, and so she pushed the door open a little farther. The room was a study, with a desk and a personal computer and shelves crowded with books. Whoever used this study, they weren’t particularly tidy, because there was an empty coffee mug on the desk, as well as a scattering of pens and CDs and torn-open credit-card bills. The computer’s monitor screen was surrounded by yellow Post-it notes. “Hairdrsr 8!!!” “Call Ken B. re ins. Claim!!!”

  On the wall to the left of the desk there was a cork notice board crammed with postcards and Hudepohl beer mats and take-out menus and family photographs. Sissy slowly approached it, and now she could almost hear the prickling sensation as well as feel it, like the effervescence on top of a glass of soda.

  Close to the center of the notice board, overlapped by a thank-you letter from a local children’s charity, was a postcard of a giant red-faced figure holding a triangular butcher knife in each hand. A triangular piece was missing from his
right earlobe, as if his sculptor’s chainsaw had slipped. The caption read, “Butcher Buck, Borrowsville, IA.”

  Sissy took out the thumbtack and turned the postcard over. “Butcher Buck used to advertise the Borrowsville Meat Packing Co., Inc., in Borrowsville, IA. Unusually for a giant roadside figure, he was made not of fiberglass, but a single red-crown oak tree, carved in 1957 by local artist Dean S. Ferndale II. Butcher Buck stood 32 ft. 7 in. tall and was estimated to weigh 6.3 tons. He was severely damaged by lightning in 1974 and removed.”

  There was a message scribbled in ballpoint pen, too. “Hi, Rick & Family! Greetings from darkest Iowa! Lonnie says this looks like me when I’ve been lying in the sun too long! See you on the fifteenth! All best, Dave M.”

  The card was dated May 12, 1993, so Jane Becker would have first seen it when she was very young. Young enough for it to frighten her.

  Sissy went back into the living room. Jane Becker was saying to Molly and Frank, “I’m so sorry I can’t remember any more. All of those murders—they’re just terrible. I wish I could think of something that would help you to catch this guy.”

  Sissy dropped the postcard onto the table beside her. “Who does this remind you of?” she asked her.

  “Hey—you took that out of my dad’s den!” Jane Becker protested.

  “Where I found it, my dear, isn’t important. What is important is who it reminds you of.”

  Frank picked up the postcard and read the caption on the back. “Butcher Buck. That’s who attacked you?”

  “He had a red face, just like that. Or maybe he had blood on his face. I don’t know. I must have gotten confused.”

  Molly looked at the postcard, too. “But … Jane … the description you gave me, this is him, right down to the last detail. No wonder you said his eyes and his mouth looked like slits. They are slits, like they’ve been cut with a chisel.”

  Sissy sat down beside her. “Jane, what did he really look like, the man who attacked you?”

  Jane Becker’s eyes filled up with tears. “I don’t know! I don’t remember! I didn’t see him at all!”

  Molly said, “What? But you were so sure!”

  “I know. But when you asked me to tell you what he looked like—I didn’t want to let you down, that’s all! I just described the most frightening man I could think of.”

  “So you gave Molly a description of a man who doesn’t exist?”

  Jane Becker sobbed, and nodded. “I figured, where’s the harm? He’s not real, so the police won’t be able to find him, so it doesn’t matter.”

  “But Jane … if Red Mask doesn’t exist, who do you think has been committing all of these other attacks?”

  “I don’t know. I really don’t. I guess some crazy guys have been making themselves up to look like him. I mean you hear about these copycat killings, don’t you? It’s terrible. It’s really terrible. But it’s not my fault, is it?”

  “Not entirely,” said Sissy. “But something very strange happened when Molly drew that picture of Red Mask. Something you might call miraculous.”

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  “You may not believe me, Jane. That’s up to you. But the sketch of Red Mask that Molly drew from your description came to life. Red Mask didn’t exist before you accused him of attacking you in the elevator, but he sure did afterward.”

  Jane Becker stared at her. “He what? He came to life? Oh, come on! This is some kind of a joke, isn’t it?” She turned to Molly, both hands held out, as if she were appealing for sanity.

  Sissy stood up. “Like I said, you don’t have to believe me. But your description of Red Mask came to life and it was that Red Mask who committed the second attack. And when one of the witnesses described who had done it, Molly drew a second sketch, and that came to life, too. So we had two Red Masks … and it was those two Red Masks who committed both of the next two attacks.”

  Molly said, “It’s true, Jane. I know it sounds completely unbelievable, but I saw it happen with my own eyes. Yesterday we managed to destroy one of the Red Masks—set fire to him and burn him up—but there’s still one more left.”

  “At least we know that there never was a real Red Mask,” Sissy put in. “The real Red Mask was Butcher Buck, and he was probably burned for firewood thirty-five years ago, after they chopped him down.”

  Jane Becker pulled a crumpled tissue out of her sleeve and blew her nose. “I don’t believe any of this. I think you’re all insane.”

  “I’m sorry, Jane,” said Sissy. “But it’s true. And we need your help to finish Red Mask for good and all.”

  “What can I do?”

  “You can face him, that’s what you can do. You can face him, and you can show him this postcard, and you can tell him that you made him up. He’s alive because he believes he’s alive. He’s alive because he’s convinced that he’s the image of a real person. He needs to be told that he was never real—that he was only a wooden statue, nothing more, and that even that wooden statue doesn’t exist any longer.”

  “What?” said Jane Becker. “You seriously think I’m going to go right up to some homicidal nutjob and tell him that I invented him? You’re even crazier than I thought you were!”

  “You’re the only person who can do it,” said Sissy.

  Jane Becker stood up. “Listen,” she said. “I think you’d better leave.”

  Molly said, “Jane! You have to come with us! You have to do this, or scores more people are going to be murdered!”

  “If you don’t leave right now, I’m going to call the cops.”

  “I am the cops,” Frank reminded her.

  “Well, I’ll call your captain or whoever he is, and tell him that you’ve been harassing me.”

  She came toward him, but Frank raised his hand to stop her. “We seriously need your help, Ms. Becker. I know this all sounds pretty darn bizarre—sketches that come to life, paintings that murder people. But there is an explanation for it, and it’s real. As real as I’m standing right here.”

  “Are you going to leave or what?” Jane Becker demanded.

  But Frank stayed where he was. “Let me ask you something, Ms. Becker. If Red Mask didn’t kill George Woods, then who did?”

  “I don’t have to answer that. I’ve already answered that a hundred times.”

  “No, you haven’t. You said it was Red Mask, but now you’ve admitted that Red Mask doesn’t exist. So who killed George Woods?”

  “I don’t know. It was a man, that’s all. I can’t describe him.”

  “I get the picture. Average height, average build, no distinguishing features?”

  “That’s right. And he just started stabbing.”

  “You said you didn’t know George Woods, didn’t you? Didn’t know the poor man from Adam.”

  “That’s right. I never saw him before, ever.”

  Sissy reached into her purse and took out one of the receipts from Jones the Florists.

  “A dozen roses, every week for five weeks.”

  Jane Becker tried to snatch it from her, but Sissy whipped it out of her reach.

  “That’s private, you bitch!” snapped Jane Becker. “That has nothing to do with you!”

  “Oh, I think it does,” said Frank. “Especially when so many people have been murdered, because of you. What happened between you and George Woods, Ms. Becker? You were having an affair, and the affair went sour? What?”

  “An affair?” Jane Becker was quaking. When she had interviewed her in the hospital, Molly had thought how forgiving she was, how docile, considering what had happened to her. But now her mouth was tight with rage, and her eyes seemed even further apart, like those of a flatfish. “We weren’t having an affair!”

  “Okay, then, maybe it was just a fling. ‘Remember the Vernon Manor … when our dreams came true.’ ”

  “His dream. My nightmare.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Jane Becker had to take a deep breath to compose herself.

  “I
t was a weekend seminar, okay? Realtors and lawyers, talking about property law and escrow and all that kind of stuff. George Woods hit on me from the moment I arrived, and he wouldn’t let me alone.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “I told him to back off, but he wouldn’t take any notice.”

  She paused. Now her anger had given way to self-pity, and tears were sliding freely down her cheeks. “I told him to back off but he must have put something in my drink. Rohypnol, maybe. He never admitted it. I don’t remember him doing it, but he took me up to my room and he raped me.”

  She took a deep breath, and then she said, “He raped me and he … abused me in every possible way you can think of. When I woke up the sheet was covered in blood. And he was still there, would you believe? He was still there, sitting on the end of my bed with a drink in his hand, smiling like the cat that got the cream.

  “He had used a vodka bottle on me. Can you believe that?”

  Sissy reached out and laid a hand on her shoulder. “Sit down,” she said, gently. Jane Becker blinked at her for a moment as if she couldn’t understand what she was saying, but then she sat on the couch, and Sissy sat next to her.

  “So there wasn’t any Red Mask, and there wasn’t any man of average height and average build?”

  “No,” Jane Becker whispered.

  “How did you do it? You managed to give yourself some pretty deep stabs in the back, didn’t you?”

  “I saw it on some TV program once. It probably wouldn’t have worked with a really modern elevator, but the elevators in the Giley Building are so old and cranky.”

  “So you stabbed George Woods, and then you fixed the knife between the elevator doors and stabbed yourself in the back three or four times, and when the elevator got down to the lobby the knife fell out from between the doors and nobody realized it was you?”

  Jane Becker nodded. “I was so hyped up that it didn’t even hurt. In a funny way, I almost enjoyed it, stabbing myself. It was like I was punishing myself. Not for killing George—I didn’t deserve punishing for that. Killing George was justice. But I deserved to be punished for allowing George to do all those terrible things to me.”