S.R. Hughes's Blog: The Froth-Mouthed Ravings of a True Lunatic, page 5

Ch. 13 / Pt. 1 : When They Wear the Mask

Chapter Thirteen

Rehani arrived at the mansion just before lunch that Sunday. Usually wardrobed for notice, a creature of bright colors and mixed fabrics, that morning she dressed in flat gray, an overcast made wearable. The only loudness in her outfit presented as an LGBTQ pride-rainbowed black power fist emblazoned across her facemask, which she quickly removed.

Deirdre hugged her without words. Victor put a hand on her shoulder, squeezing an ounce of encouragement before departing from the entry hall.

“I’m so sorry,” Deirdre said, pulling away.

Rehani didn’t make eye contact. She pursed her lips, nodded. Took a shaky breath. “I…I met her mom…”

“I’m so sorry,” Deirdre repeated, even knowing how little difference such words made.

They fell together again, embracing. Deirdre rubbed Rehani’s back as Rehani gently shook against her. They stood there, wrapped up in each other’s warmth, for a long time. They communicated in the only wordless language every human knew: grief.

After several stretched minutes, Rehani sucked in a couple deep, phlegmy breaths and cleared her throat. Murmuring into Deirdre’s ear, she said, “I don’t know why the stars and the spirits, why the universe wanted me to See this. It feels so small, this one man and his stupid mask, it feels…”

Deirdre backed away far enough to catch Rehani’s eyes. “Maybe that’s the reason. This is just a side-quest. It’s something you can deal with, something—something you and me and Paul can all deal with—when we really need a sign that we can deal with, Gaea, anything.”

Rehani held her gaze. Swallowed. “Maybe.”

“We’re not going to save the world, here. But maybe we can save a few lives. And you have to admit, with Victor and the kids involved, the three of us are uniquely gifted to handle this. And we…” she lost steam for a moment, glancing her reflection shimmering in the loss lacquering Rehani’s eyes. “We can win this and I—I really need a win.”

Rehani wiped at the not-there-yet tears and nodded. “Me, too.”

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Ch. 12 / Pt. 3 : When They Wear the Mask

The night buzzed its song, insects and amphibians, owls and mice, and Bob and the Mask crept quietly through its orchestration. Baldwin and Deer’s Head both bordered Squatter City, more or less, while a wilderness buffer zone protected westward Denton. Bob and the Mask had started their sweep in that very forestation and had moved slowly eastward since sunset. 

Bob had felt something growing inside him since he’d first donned the Mask (we don’t talk until the end), but as he searched the bristling foliage for the boy who had copied his crimes, he felt it more powerfully than before. An instinct, maybe. He couldn’t quite tell where the copycat was, but he knew when he was getting closer or farther away. The Mask helped him know. Combining this profound insight with a lifetime of practiced patience and a reinvigorated stamina and endurance, Bob closed in on his prey one step at a time.

Their prey.

His and the Mask’s.

The forestation thinned along the northern borders of Deer’s Head, the suburb hugging the western and northwestern angles of Downtown Oceanrest, but true dark had fallen, by then, and Bob and the Mask felt sure of their shadow-shade camouflage. A couple miles into the suburb, the new Main Street carved through the woods, heading south, and the last vestiges of wilderness tattered off into sprawling civilization. Bob and the Mask felt their prey nearby, moving skittishly, sometimes drawing closer, sometimes meandering farther away. The boy maneuvered gracelessly, scared and uncertain.

Bob and the Mask crossed (New) Main Street and wandered into the scrawny commercial-industrial zone separating pleasant Deer’s Head from rubbled Squatter City. Nothing looked open. A few tiny stores still glowed their windows, but caught between the nationwide lockdown and the narrowing curfew, most sat darkly empty. 

Closing in, Bob felt heat sizzle through his veins. A quiet excitement gnawed at his calm. 

This kid had used their M.O.? 

Did he think they had something in common?

Bob’s lips sneered, grinned, pursed. (Did the Mask’s?) He restrained a snicker.

Bob had worked his entire life. He’d picked up his first job part-time at fifteen and now, in his late forties, his first stretch of real unemployment unfurled endlessly ahead of him. After the divorce he’d had a couple bad years at work. Clients left. As soon as the COVID-driven furlough had rolled over him, he’d known he was buried. The confirmation came ninety days later, a phone call that took under five minutes. It still echoed against the undecorated walls of his condo. Or it had, until he’d painted the place red.

He’d been married. He’d had a child. He’d lost everything.

This kid believed they had something in common?

They tightened their grip around the hilt of their knife.

The commercial-industrial area gave way to a small pocket of recent mixed-use rezoning. A few short apartment buildings filled space between a twenty-four hour drug store, a plague-shuttered bar, and a ‘consignment boutique.’ A couple blocks farther east, Bob and the Mask passed the invisible boundary between Deer’s Head and Baldwin.

Small houses with small yards rowed the northernmost streets of Baldwin. Some had fences, some didn’t, some had decks, some didn’t, some had stoops or porches, some didn’t. Bob and the Mask did their best to stay out of sight, sticking close to the few fences available. They could feel the copycat, close now.

there.

A shadow darted from around the back of an unlit house, rushing for an unlit garage. In the darkness behind a pool of lamplight, Bob and the Mask watched the shadow open the garage side door and slip inside.

 (How did Bob see so well in such deep night? He didn’t wonder.)

Bob and the Mask approached the same door. A multi-paneled window, situated at chest height, peered inside the structure. Hovering a few feet away, Bob and the Mask stared through the glass.

Two cars sat in the garage, one a decade-old SUV, the other a low-riding mystery protectively sheeted. The kid sat inside the SUV, driver’s door ajar, trying and failing to hotwire the vehicle. In front of the hood, a tall, broad shelving unit supported an arsenal of tools and parts. Next to the shelving unit, a wall-mounted display of the same. A stool sat between the vehicles. The electronic garage door opener glowed a ‘ready’ light from the opposite wall.

Bob and the Mask grinned.

Stepping forward, they knocked on the window.

The kid jumped. He spun around, reaching for something. Seeing them on the other side of the door, he stopped reaching and stared. Gulped. Rising to his feet, the kid let his hand fall to his side. Dried brown-red blood stained his shirt and the top of his pants. A long blade, not much smaller than their own, waited, sheathed and hungry, at his right hip. Around his neck, a medical mask and a black bandanna dangled like empty talismans, shields from a faith the boy didn’t wield.

“Is it—is it really you?” the kid asked.

Bob and the Mask nodded.

“How did you find me?”

They didn’t react.

The kid sniffled, wiping at his eyes and nose. “Fuck,” he said, leaning his back against the heavy shelving unit at the hood of the SUV. “Fuck, I don’t know what to do. I didn’t think…I just…”

Bob and the Mask kept the knife out of view. With their free hand, they gestured for the kid to come outside.

“I just…I’m so sick of it all. I try so hard every day and nobody respects me. I don’t have anything,” he ran his hand through his hair, tousling the mop of it wildly. “I do all the right things but what do I have to show for it? Fuck. You know what I mean, right?”

Bob frowned. Did the Mask?

They inclined their head, implying both familiarity and curiosity.

“People like us, you know, the world just shits all over us and expects us to take it. And everyone’s so surprised when we don’t.”

‘People like us.’ Bob flinched. Molten heat seethed behind his lips. He—

—we don’t talk until the end—

He said nothing. He and the Mask nodded.

The kid kicked the SUV’s wheel well. “Fuck,” he muttered, barely audible. He kicked again. “Fuck!” he repeated, more loudly. Turning back to Bob and the Mask, eyes glistening glassy as the window, he continued his monologue. “I just wanted her to…to…” he trailed off. “It’s just like with you, right? How your ex just took your house, your kid…that’s why you’re doing this, right?”

Bob and the Mask bowed their head, not-quite-nodding. They tried the doorknob and found it locked. Lifting their gaze back up to the kid’s, they gestured for him to join them. They gestured ‘quickly.’

The youth-cheeked killer almost opened it.

But then he hesitated. “I need you to say something.”

Bob and the Mask stared.

“I need you to promise me we’re on the same side.”

They lifted their off-hand and put a gloved finger to their lips.

“Could you just take off the mask, then? Just look at me, man to man?”

They shook their head.

The kid stepped back, shaking his head. “I don’t know…I don’t know, I don’t know…”

They nodded. Fair enough.

But they were done waiting.

Their gloved fist blew through the glass. Shards and sprinkles cascaded everywhere, crash-sprinkle-splintering across the concrete floor. Bob and the Mask put their arm through, reached down to the knob, and unlocked it. The kid leapt back and reached inside his blood-stained sweater. The lock undone, Bob and the Mask kicked the door open just as the kid wrestled free a pistol and opened fire. The first volley missed, bullets pulping wood or zipping off into the night.

Pulling away from the threshold, they waited outside. They took deep, calm breaths. The kid’s shoes squeaked and scuffed concrete; he edged toward and away from the door, afraid both to advance and retreat.

After a few seconds, they heard him move for the SUV again.

Surging through the doorway, they saw the kid climbing into the vehicle. As they rushed toward him, he slammed the driver’s side door shut. He hit the locks before they reached the handle. An expression of relief, almost triumph, eased the kid’s fearful features as he twisted around to grab his pistol again. The expression vanished when Bob and the Mask gripped the sides of the industrial shelving unit in front of the hood and tipped it sharply away from the wall.

The steel dented the fiberglass hood but didn’t wreck it. Tumbling tools and paint cans, however, burst holes in the windshield, fracturing it. The kid shouted inside, misfiring his gun once through the roof as he tried to shield himself from the debris. Left-handed, Bob and the Mask cocked and threw a fist. His knuckles burnt like cinders for a second but the blow cratered the window next to the kid’s face.

Writhing away from a mess of hardware, a small cut on his forehead sheeting red, the kid tried to point the pistol at Bob and the Mask. They pulled away just as a bullet blew through the window they’d half-broken. Turning, they walked along the length of the SUV. Inside, the kid continued shooting. Aimless rounds drilled through glass and chassis, hitting nothing.

A pause in the gunfire brought Bob and the Mask to a stop at the vehicle’s trunk.

The passenger-side door opened, the kid spilling out. He regained his feet in a second.

“What the fuck!?” he shouted. “What the fuck?”

Bob and the Mask made no response.

“We’re the same!” he wailed. “It’s the fucking bitches! It’s them!”

They rolled their gloved fingers along the hilt of their blade.

“Come on, Bob. That’s your name, right? Bob? I know about you. What happened.”

They took deep, slow breaths.

“We’re on the same side. Come on. I know we’re on the same side.”

They moved as if to charge him. When they pulled short at the edge of the trunk, the kid fired a pair of bullets into the garage door. 

“Fuck.”

The mess of papers and files and junk stacked on the sheeted car unraveled to the floor as the kid shoved them all aside, throwing himself over the hood. Through the tinted glass of the SUV’s rear windscreen, Bob and the Mask watched him back up to the electronic garage door lift. Outside, a pair of muffled voices shouted conversation. People had heard the gunfire.

The kid glanced between the battered SUV, the electronic controls, and Bob and the Mask. His eyes swam, rolling with consideration and confusion. With an uncertain shout, he slapped the button that raised the garage door. The motor hummed, pulling chain.

The kid ran for the driveway and they moved to intercept him.

Seeing his escape cut off, the kid stopped running and brought his pistol up instead. “Don’t move!” he shouted. “I said don’t fucking move!”

They kept moving.

The first bullet missed, gone to the night, and the second—

—drilled into Bob’s body slicing meat and muscle and tendon—

—hot lead death, cold heat, a tunnel gored through—

—something caught it and tore it apart, disassembled it into component molecules and ate them—

—stitched the broken fibers back together—

—the second one didn’t do anything, either. And when the kid squeezed the trigger a third time, the weapon dry-fired, emptied.

Bob and the Mask grabbed him by his left arm and spun him toward them. They plunged a seven inch blade into his guts and put their shoulder into him. He whipped at their back with the butt of his gun as they crashed him into a wall. The motor overhead groaned, chain rattling to its finale. Bob and the Mask drew the blade halfway out and shoved it back in again. The kid shouted and spat, slapping the butt of his gun into their back. They ripped the knife out and shoved it back in.

Bob and the Mask continued jerking the blade in and out of the kid until the pistol clattered to the concrete floor. Loosing their crimson-slicked blade, they let the kid’s half-limp body collapse. Stepping over the kid, they kicked the gun out into the short driveway. Stepping over his groaning, whimpering heap again, they pressed the button that closed the garage door. The motor reversed its groan.

 By the time they’d returned to the kid, he’d pushed himself up to his hands and knees. They grabbed a handful of his greasy-tacky hair and slammed the side of his face into the rear bumper of sheeted vehicle. They did it two more times for good measure.

Bob felt his cock getting hard. His mind raced.

(iamnotamessenger)

I am not a messenger.

(iamamessage)

I am a message.

The thoughts whirled through his consciousness in whispers. Bob wasn’t a mere messenger, he had no screed or manifesto. This pathetic child believed they had things in common? That the world had cheated them both? That’s what the world did: it cheated people. But the Mask and Bob were beyond that, now. It didn’t matter how the world had cheated Bob, anymore. Bob and the Mask were the cheat that the world played.

The universe could point at anyone at any time and take everything it wanted away from them. So could they. And what they wanted was—

(whatsunderneathhismask)

Grabbing the kid’s leg, they dragged his drooling, barely conscious remains toward the slew of scattered papers and folders and notes haloing the car. They threw him face-up on the blanketed hood and wiped blood from their knife on their pants.

“You don’t have to do this,” the kid said—or Bob and the Mask believed he said it. They couldn’t really hear and the kid couldn’t really speak. He whimpered and choked and the noises made a close enough facsimile. “You don’t have to…”

They approached with the knife and Bob—

Bob blacked ou—

who are you?

face to face with

(a lock and a key)

take off your—

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Ch. 12 / Pt. 2 : When They Wear the Mask

That afternoon, Victor drove Deirdre and Paul up to Squatter City to take care of Samedi, her cat. Paul, grumpily allergic, had mostly come along to help Deirdre load a few books and grimoires into the trunk for Nora and Olly to peruse. As they crossed Lafayette, Victor turning west toward Black Watch Hill, Deirdre felt something strained in the air; a sixth-sense sensation her sixth sense lacked the strength to interpret. She almost asked Paul but remembered that he’d smoked a joint before leaving the mansion, not wanting to deal with the spirits still whispering around the fringes of his awareness.

At the house, she cleaned and refilled both of Samedi’s litter boxes, changed over food, and dished out a small portion of fresh tuna for him to eat. She found the feline, himself, in the den, where she sat the offering on the floor. Moving between the book shelves built into her walls, Victor pulled out a few selections and handed them back to Paul. Paul gathered them up and exited back to the car. Samedi ate fish, purring, his half-length tail flicking side to side.

 She stroked the top of Samedi’s head and scritched around his cheeks and under his chin. He purred, rubbing into her hand. In the measureless emptiness of the past year, Samedi’s companionship had become a talisman for her.

“Hey, Vic?” she asked as they prepared to return to the mansion.

“Yeah?”

“You think there’s a way I could bring Samedi back to the house?”

Victor hesitated. “Isn’t Paul allergic?”

“I have meds,” Paul offered.

Victor pursed his lips, considering. Turning back to the car, he sighed and nodded. “Give me a day or two to cat-proof the room next to yours and we can come back for him on Monday.”

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Ch. 12 / Pt. 1 : When They Wear the Mask

Chapter Twelve

Squatter City wasn’t just condemned houses and foreclosures nobody had ever picked up the bill for. A tent city had developed along the attenuated avenues veining the area’s northwestern fringe. More endeavoring indigents had built shacks or other makeshift structures in the broad overgrowth that had once served as yardland. Between the few dozen hollowed-out homesteads and the numerous jerry-rigged shelters, somewhere just over three hundred people lived there at any given time.

The city of Oceanrest had made it as easy to ignore as possible. They’d rerouted two major roads, dividing Main Street from Old Main Street, and had added unnecessary lanes to Grant Avenue on Baldwin’s north side and Lafayette Avenue on Squatter City’s south side. They’d even moved the railroad station, despite the fact that it serviced only twelve trains per week—ah, but sixteen during bed-and-breakfast season.

On the other side of the under-trafficked drive across Grant and Lafayette Avenues, things fell apart pretty quickly.

Booker parked next to one of Oceanrest’s only remaining payphone banks and climbed out of the car into humid afternoon. His lenses automatically adjusted to the new light. Putting on his facemask, he waited while Castellanos exited the other side of the vehicle.

“How long do you think it’ll be before we start raiding this place again?” Castellanos asked, donning her own facemask.

Booker winced. He’d never enjoyed Castellanos’ use of the word ‘we’ to attach them to the actions of the department in general. He might have been a fackin cahp, but he was a fackin cahp who solved murders. “What do you mean by that?”

“Before Virgil took reins, Denver had badges rustling people out of here every month.” Before Chief Virgil LeDuff, Oceanrest had had a Chief Denver, and before him, a different Chief LeDuff. Thus why everyone called the man ‘Virgil.’ “Trying to keep the property values from collapsing. But they collapsed anyway.”

They started walking, scanning the rubbled sidewalks.

Castellanos continued, “But Oceanrest’s been recovering. Before, well, before the fucking plague, Oceanrest saw six years straight economic growth. The median income’s up five thou a year from 2015.”

“We’ll see if it stays that way,” Booker replied.

“Sooner or later, this land’s going to be worth something again, and every bank snarling over its dead investment is gonna show up asking how many people it has to sacrifice to turn it into profit."

Booker peered over at Castellanos, brow creased. He understood her point, but she’d said it in such a strange way… Then again, Alejandra Castellanos was a strange woman. “And what are we supposed to do about it?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Yet.”

He chuckled, head shaking. “Alright, alright. So how about for now we keep that big brain of yours focused on the case, then?"

“It’s already solved,” she answered. “It’s just a matter of getting the cuffs on. Besides, you disagree with me?”

“Oh, no. I just think we’ve got better things to do today than preach to the choir.”

“And we kick the can down the road, we kick the can down the road again…”

Cracked and potholed, Lafayette Ave represented Squatter City at its best. They stopped in front of a two-story house with no visible collapses and boarded windows only partially covered in spraypaint. The front porch stank of piss. Booker knocked on the door and felt its age beneath his knuckles. If he put his shoulder against it, he’d win. “Anyone home?”

He waited for a reply. Knocked again, more loudly, and waited again, too.

Still nothing.

“It’s gonna be a long afternoon,” he said.

And it was.

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Ch. 11 / Pt. 4 : When They Wear the Mask

Castellanos had the worn, jittery gaze of someone caffeinating themselves through a hangover. Instead of a puzzle, she clutched a styrofoam coffee cup in her hands, her third or fourth that morning. Like most alcoholics the day after a night drinking, she looked profoundly withdrawn.

Booker tried not to look at her too much. He kept his own dark hands wrapped around his own lukewarm cuppa, his second. He turned his head to stare at the clock behind Virgil’s desk, the second hand clicking jaggedly forward.

Virgil pushed through the door ten minutes late, white medical facemask in one hand, newly poured coffee in the other. “Sorry,” he said, settling his things in perfectly-formed gaps among his desk’s clutter. “Had more press bullshit to deal with.”

“No problem,” Booker replied.

Virgil grumbled his disagreement as he sat. “So. Squatter City.”

“What’s the story with the copycat?” Castellanos asked.

“He’s nobody. A college kid from out of state.”

“Timothy Laclerc,” she replied.

“He’s good as cuffed, already,” Virgil said. “A half-dozen BLM protesters ID’d him and the victim. We have footage of him heading north into the Downtown area and getting on a bus. He’s done. You two stay focused on Robert Robertson.”

“Bob-Bob’s-son,” Castellanos chirped.

“A’yeah, sure, call him that if you want.”

“Castellanos and I need to head to Squatter City,” Booker addressed the topic of the meeting. “Seeing as Bob-Bob’s-son or whoever is hiding out there.”

“We suppose he is,” Virgil agreed. “But I can’t let the two of you go up there without backup.”

Booker balked. “We—we talked about this.”

Virgil nodded. “We did, a’yeah. We did. That’s why I need you two to hand-pick your back-up. The two of you know a few guys who can keep their heads about them up there? Some shields not afraid to talk to someone who looks at them like a bedbug?”

Booker searched for words but didn’t find them. He turned to Castellanos. “Al?”

She blinked. Bobbed her head. “I know a few people.”

“Three or four, that’s all,” Virgil said. “Just in case.”

“Mm,” she grunted. “In case.”

“Not that—but—just…” Virgil sighed.

“We should get moving,” Booker sat up, performing readiness. “Before daylight starts burning out.”

“Right. Thank you for your time. Dismissed.”

“When they bring that Laclerc fucker in, can we talk to him for a while?” Castellanos asked, standing.

“Why?” Virgil responded.

Castellanos hitched one shoulder, a half-hearted shrug. “He did an amateur act impersonation of Bob-Bob’s-son. I’d like to know more about why.”

“Probably ‘cause he’s a dumb college kid and he thought we’d let him patsy our killer,” Booker offered.

“Probably,” Castellanos admitted. “But I’d like to know for sure.”

Virgil leaned back in his chair, some joint of it squeaking with the motion. “Fine,” he said. “When we bring him in, after initial interrogation, if he doesn’t keep his mouth shut and lawyer up, you can have a go at him.”

“Thanks.”

“Be careful up there,” Virgil warned them as they left. “It’s the wild fuckin’ west north of Lafayette.”

As the door closed, Booker almost said something. Almost. 

But he didn’t.

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Ch. 11 / Pt. 3 : When They Wear the Mask

Razz had spent the last moments of his life pushing Olly through a doorless threshold and fighting a monster to buy time. He hadn’t known that monsters existed, or magic, because Deirdre had never told him. As she bent over him, trying to use her prowess as a healer to pull him back together, he asked with a shaking, quivering voice if she was a witch. She’d spent so many months afraid of how he’d respond to that truth that she’d never told him. One of the reasons he’d moved out of her house so long ago…

They’d tried to capture his heroism in his memorial statue. Nora and Victor had commissioned it. On a three foot tall pedestal, a life-sized, photo-accurate depiction of slender Razz stood, his tee-shirt baggy, his pants baggy, his shoes so clean that even though they were sneakers people could still catch their reflections in them; he wielded no weapon but had a buckler shield strapped to his right arm, his stance braced to become the immovable object meeting an unstoppable force.

She’d met him five years before his death. It felt like so much longer. By the end, he’d taken to calling her ‘mom’ as a joke. She’d correct him, ‘auntie,’ and it became part of the secret banter they’d used to communicate. Every intimate relationship developed its own language, its own inside jokes and one-word references, its own slang and grammar; and each of those languages died with one or the other party.

She used to imagine all sorts of different futures for him…

Standing in front of the monument at the center of a hedge labyrinth floored by morning mist and walled by dewy leaves, Deirdre wiped tears from her eyes. She wiped her hands on her pants. She thought about walking back inside, couldn’t, and took a seat on one of the eight short, white, stone benches surrounding the memorial.

The future had seemed so much smaller since he’d died. The world, so much less.

Brush rustled behind her.

“Hey,” Paul said. He approached in borrowed pajamas and robe, borrowed flip-flops too big for his feet flapping his soles. 

“Hey,” she replied dryly.

He stopped in her periphery, hovering. He didn’t look down at her, which she appreciated. She didn’t like people to see her eyes reddened from crying. He knew that. Instead, he slipped his hands into the robe’s pockets and peered up at the statue of Razz, himself.

“How’d you figure out I was here?” she asked.

“Olly told me.”

“Huh.”

“Yeah.”

A beat passed. They both made small movements, shifting their weight. They both waited for the other person to say something.

Paul spoke first. He usually did. “After my daughter, uh…after my daughter died, among all the other bullshit people apparently felt comfortable saying to me, some people had the audacity to tell me that things would get better one day.”

Deirdre didn’t ask the obvious question. She already knew the obvious answer.

Paul sat on the bench next to hers, still looking at statued Razz. “Earlier this year, before everything else, you remember I started seeing a therapist?”

“Yeah.”

“She told me that loss was like a rock. People collect them, some big and some small and some just heavy as hell, and we carry them around in a bag we call ‘grief.’ A lot of ‘the work,’ as she called it, was in finding some way to carry this bag of rocks without letting it crush us.”

“Does she know anyone who didn’t get crushed?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know.” His gaze dropped from the statue to the ground. “There’s never going to be a day when Razz didn’t—or my daughter didn’t…die,” he struggled to say the word and paused after it, recovering. “But whether it’s fair or right or just, we’re still here. And we have to keep going because…well, because the world didn’t end, I guess.”

“Sometimes I wish it had,” she said, before he could add anything else. “And maybe it actually did, because nothing since then has ever gotten better. Maybe the world’s already run itself out of bright futures to look forward to and now we have to live through what’s left.”

“I wish I could say I didn’t believe that.” He folded his hands, unfolded them, and folded them again. He started to turn her way, but remembered how much she hated people looking at her mid-feeling and glanced aside. “But if you’re wrong, we have to try. And if you’re right, well, there’s no harm in trying anyway.”

She stood, signaling that he could look at her again, that she’d finished burying her grief and uncried tears to the point of presentability. “Why did you stop seeing this therapist, again?”

“You know. Everything. And after the furlough and now…” he trailed off. “Well. I couldn’t really afford it.”

Deirdre nodded. She knew that tune well.

Birds sang. Early morning rose to mid-morning. It occurred to Deirdre that Paul didn’t usually wake up so early but she didn’t pry into the matter. She hadn’t slept well, either. Maybe that was one of the world’s great secrets: nobody slept well. Not really.

“Anyway,” Paul stood, too, hands unfolding with the motion. “Nora and Olly are up trying to make breakfast. They want to serve it to Victor in bed, but…he’s already up.”

A sound of small amusement escaped her.

“I wanted to ask…does Rehani know anything about astral projection?”

This time she chuckled. “What?”

“I just—I know there’s a ritual space here, somewhere, and since I can sort of sense this thing on the other side or…wherever…if she knew how to push me out there far enough, I could do some kind of mystic reconnaissance.”

“That’s a really strong idea,” she said. “But even if Rehani knows how to make it work, she’s not coming back here today.”

“What? Is she okay?”

“Yeah. No. Physically, yeah.”

“What happened?”

“Another murder. A young woman…her family’s still on the way in from somewhere out of town. Rehani’s involved in the funeral, I think, or something.”

Paul stared for a moment. “Do you, I mean, do you think that’s safe?”

“I don’t think it’s our decision to make,” she replied.

Paul stepped back, nodding. “Right. That’s fair. Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it. You said Nora and Olly are making breakfast?”

“Yeah.”

“Well. Let’s find out if they know what they’re doing.”

He offered a wry smile. “Let’s.”

As they walked back inside, Deirdre couldn’t help but ask, “Have you talked to her, since? Your daughter?”

He hesitated, back door an inch ajar. “I talked to her a couple times, but…no. Not really.”

“Why not?”

“Because the living can’t change the past and the dead don’t care too much about the future.”

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Ch. 11 / Pt. 2 : When They Wear the Mask

Bob had had trouble finding a new victim.

A few hundred squatters and vagrants had created a sub-civilization in Squatter City, but killing the homeless felt pathetic to Bob after everything else he’d done. Every serial killer he’d heard about had either started out or ended up murdering the marginalized and unprotected, sex workers and indigents, picking off prey already cast aside by the herd, acting out the desperate animal impulse of every dumb carnivore in history. But not him, he told himself. He was different. He killed judges and wealthy suburbanites and armed police officers. He wasn’t a dumb carnivore starving for meat, he was a force of nature.

But he’d abandoned his phone and his car and had lost connection to the swirling data vortex of the internet.

Using a library card he’d found among the detritus of his newfound shelter, Bob managed to enter the Oceanrest Metro Area Public Library in Baldwin, cloaked in stolen clothes that gave him an odorous aura. Stained hood up and pulled down to his brow, he bent over the library computers and searched social media for possible victims. He found a few candidates but never dug deeper on any of them. 

That Friday morning, he’d seen a police car in the library’s parking lot and had turned around immediately. Buzzing cold adrenaline had shivered through him, turning his back on the squad car, but nothing had happened. He’d returned to his squat unharassed.

But now what?

Eating a lunch of canned tuna, canned corn, and canned beans bowled and stirred together, Bob listened to a local news channel on a battery-powered radio. Two days had passed since anyone had mentioned him or the Mask. Everyone had gone on talking about the banal, mundane violence of the everyday, the chewing maw of brutal monsters allowed to run systemically amok. Swallowing lukewarm mash, all bland flavors and textures blended together, Bob scowled. His face knit in an inaudible snarl.

He needed to cut through the static.

He had a vague sense, a gut feeling, a hunch, that if he picked the Mask up out of his lap (and when had he started capitalizing it like that in his mind?), if he pulled the Mask on again, somehow it would help lead him to his next kill. And while part of him believed this notion insane, a deeper, more profound part knew it true. 

But did he want that?

Didn’t he want to pick someone, to learn them? Didn’t he want to do it?

The radio crackled, yanking his attention.

“…police believe the victim gained control of the vehicle after the initial struggle, crashing it. She fled the crash on foot, but suspect Timothy Laclerc caught up to her in Oceanrest’s Numbered District. Clearing up earlier confusion, Chief Virgil LeDuff recently released an announcement regarding the reported similarities to the Robert Robertson, Jr. case.”

A different voice cut in through the airwaves. “We have CCTV footage of Mr. Laclerc leaving the scene, along with corroborating witness testimony. Laclerc used a similar weapon to wanted fugitive Robert Robertson, Jr., but the crimes have nothing else in common.”

A writhe of muscle crawled beneath Bob’s visage.

Someone had tried to pass of their work as his?

Bob’s knuckles flared white. He grit his teeth, crushing mashed beans and tuna into the crevices of his molars. Glaring at the radio, he felt his body tighten. His pulse rose from his chest and into his head.

we can find him.

He shoveled the last of his mashed meal down his gullet and stood, clutching the Mask in his hands. He kicked the bowl aside and turned off the radio. He and the Mask had an art. They had a process, a message. A ritual. And the notion that some angry college kid had co-opted it as a vessel for his horny-dumb rage made Bob’s musculature roll and shudder under his skin. It made his jaw tighten.

Did the Mask grin?

Bob couldn’t tell; he’d already put it on.

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Ch. 11 / Pt. 1 : When They Wear the Mask

Chapter Eleven

“It’s not our guy,” Castellanos slurred in the passenger seat.

Booker sped westward through the streets. Someone had found a body in a foreclosed apartment building in Oceanrest’s Numbered District, the depressing slab of real estate just south of the Historic District and east of the rundown remnants of Oceanrest’s once-rich docks.

“It’s not our guy,” Castellanos repeated.

Booker released the tension in his jaw. “What makes you so sure?”

“Because it doesn’t take us where they want us to go.”

Booker didn’t reply, just leaned more weight on the accelerator. Just as the engine rumbled him over a hill, he switched to the brakes. A rare patch of night traffic flared up ahead of them, people on their last-minute routes back home before the curfew. Or, technically, after the curfew, but hoping to skirt it closely enough to avoid any repercussions. Booker followed the taillights ahead, barely over the speed limit, until he had space to pass.

Nearing the crime scene, Booker pulled over next to a squad car. Crime scene tape yellowed the perimeter, backed up by wooden barriers. Virgil LeDuff stood just inside the line, maybe waiting for Booker and Castellanos. Unobserved, he slouched and bowed, looking even older than his years.

Virgil straightened up when Booker closed the car door.

“It’s not your guy,” Virgil said, stepping over the tape.

“Then why’d we get the call?” Booker asked.

“At first it looked like it was,” Virgil shrugged. “I figured it out when I got here maybe…five minutes ago? It’s the face. The suspect didn’t do anything to the face. But the first cops to arrive, they didn’t know about the face thing.”

“So you’ll hand it off to Donaldson and…” Booker struggled to remember the older man’s name, the older-older of the two older homicide detectives. 

“A’yeah,” Virgil confirmed. “It’s half-solved already.”

Castellanos blurred into view, remarkably quick and upright for someone so visibly drunk. “How’d it happen?”

“Castellanos, are you—” Virgil mouthed words at the air. “Are you—get back in the car.”

“Why?” Castellanos squinted at the flashlight beams swimming around the crime scene. “What happened?”

“Press will be here any second and you’re drunk as a…Christ, your breath…”

“Al,” Booker said. “Come on.”

“We have a copycat already?” Castellanos moved for the crime scene tape but didn’t cross it. “Someone close enough?”

“Out-of-towners,” Virgil grunted. “We found his car half a mile from here, crashed into a guardrail. We think the victim got control of the vehicle during the initial struggle…but then ran into the docks.”

“Nobody there to hear you scream.”

“Al!” Booker snapped.

Virgil had the stern glare of a man making a show of restraining himself. “He tried to make it look like your guy but didn’t know about the faces. Maybe he figured if he ditched the body and made it back to Pennsylvania, we’d shrug it off and pin it on Robert Robertson, anyway.”

“There’s more…” Castellanos murmured.

“There is, but that’s for Donaldson and Matthews to figure through. You get some goddamned sleep. And get back in the car, Chrissakes—do you know how bad you look?”

Castellanos shot a glance at the man overshoulder that hinted at a snarled snap-back, but she, too, restrained herself. Stepping away from the yellow tape, she moved back toward the car. Grinned at Booker. “Told you it wasn’t our guy.”

Booker and Virgil watched her re-enter the vehicle.

“We can’t have people seeing her like this in the middle of a serial case,” Virgil said.

“No shit.”

Virgil rubbed his forehead. “How bad of a fall did she take off the wagon, this time?”

“Pretty bad, I think.”

“Of all the times…”

Booker took a breath. “You know, she thinks our killer’s hiding out in Squatter City.”

“She’s probably right.”

“If we don’t handle this carefully, things could go sideways real fast.”

“Things are already sideways,” Virgil replied, not looking at Booker anymore but not looking away from him, either. “The copycat killed a protester—or, rally-er, marcher, I don’t know—and your guy killed two cops. None of this has anything to do with anything but the city will act like it does. We have an enhanced curfew starting Sunday and, like you said, our suspect’s probably hiding out in Squatter City. And if anyone fucks up or panics or shits the bed, innocent people are going to die.”

Booker didn’t disagree.

“We’re not sideways,” Virgil muttered. “We’re all the way under.”

Booker squinted at his car’s windscreen in the dim streetlight lambency, trying to make out Castellanos inside. He couldn’t. But an idea occurred to him. “I think me and Castellanos should dig into Squatter City alone.”

“What?”

“There’s not that much ground to cover, really, and you know we can keep our heads clear around a handful of snarling vagrants. We might be able to shake out Robert Robertson before anyone else has to take a risk.”

Virgil pursed his lips, chewing the idea.

“We’re two people you can count on not to shit the bed, and that’s one fewer problem you have to deal with,” Booker said.

Virgil squinted. Maybe he remembered what he’d read about Booker’s officer-involved shooting in Boston. Maybe he just appraised Booker where he stood, an old vet trying to get a read on someone. Either way, he cleared his throat and nodded. “That’s a good idea, yeah.”

“Besides, getting her feet back on the asphalt might help Al straighten out a bit.”

Virgil chuckled, relaxing. “Could be.”

“We’ll start after the morning meeting tomorrow.”

“Get some rest, Book. We’re all going to need it.”

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Ch. 10 / Pt. 3 : When They Wear the Mask

A mile away from the nearest other address, La Femme Rouge sat on the far southeast of the peninsula, hedged in by forest to the north and a steep descent toward the Atlantic to the south. The only road leading there went through Beau-Bassin (technically Nouvelle Beau-Bassin), a historically blue collar suburb thoroughly controlled by the local Québécois mob, for which La Femme Rouge served as a front. Everyone knew this, of course. But nobody did anything about it.

An absolutely enormous rectangle of building, its first floor served as a bar and strip club; or, rather, a bar and a performance area for burlesque, go-go, and exotic dancers, not formally a strip club for alcohol licensing reasons. Its second floor served as extremely inexpensive rental housing for some of its more eager performers. Certainly they enjoyed a fair amount of sex, and certainly some amount of drugs exchanged hands, but it wasn’t a brothel, no, nor a sale point for narcotics distribution.

Everyone knew the truth, of course. But nobody did anything about it.

The building’s third floor also served as rental space, but every rumor Booker had heard and every report he’d read indicated that the mob actually kept a number of its offices up there.

Nobody did anything about that, either.

But if someone got caught holding a bag of molly outside of a CVS in Baldwin, well…

Booker took a deep breath and got out of his car. He pulled the loops of his facemask back behind his ears as he walked toward the front door. Four signs warned customers that they had to wear facemasks while inside. Three more warned them to sit at least three feet apart and not to move the tables, each placed six feet apart.

He pulled the door open and walked in.

For a 9:15 night before a 10 o’clock curfew, the place felt crowded. Moreso than the parking lot had suggested. Booker wondered how many of the customers lived upstairs, how many had just come downstairs to have a drink and get a change of scenery. Crossing the bar, Booker found Castellanos tucked away in a corner booth, alone. From where she sat, she couldn’t see the stage.

Booker sat down across from where. “What the fuck?”

She grinned at him, looking somehow refreshed. Her cheeks glowed. “You know what the best taste in the world is?”

He sighed, taking off his mask and putting it on the table. “You’re drunk.”

“The best taste in the world is the first sip of Speyside smoke after six months sober.”

“We’re in the middle of a case!”

She set her current glass down among the clutter of others. She’d had seven drinks already—though who knew when she’d started? Examining her collection, she sighed. “Hmm. All empty. Come with me to the bar?”

“If I was a different man I’d—”

“If you were a different man, I wouldn’t have invited you.” She edged her way out of the booth and stood. “You’re here because I chose you, John.” She pulled her cellphone from her pocket. “Now, come on. I need another.”

“Al…”

She waved her cellphone at him as she walked away. “You have to see this.”

He stood, picking his mask back up, and hesitated. He considered leaving, getting back in his car and driving away; let Castellanos find her own way home. Except she was right. He wasn’t that kind of man. Groaning at himself, he followed Castellanos to the bar.

They took two stools as far from the rest of the customers as possible.

“Glen Moray,” she ordered. “With a tequila back.”

“Coming right up,” the bartender replied.

“Wait, nevermind. I’m too drunk to taste the price. Just get me a double tequila, rocks, with salt, please. Well is fine. Thanks.”

The bartender nodded and set off to do their duties.

“What do you think they’d all look like, averaged together?” Castellanos asked.

“What? Who?”

“Every composite sketch and photograph of every dead-eyed killer, if you put them all in a flip book and ffffffpp through, what face do you think you’d see?”

“I dunno,” Booker said. “Some white guy. What is it you had to show me?”

She keyed in her phone’s password and swiped through a few screens to a video. Loosely, she handed him the device. “Camera footage from one of the only payphones still operable in the whole metro area. Watch this.”

In the grainy film, a sedan pulled up alongside the payphone stall. Booker recognized it. He recognized the man that climbed out of it, too; the man wearing the mask. The man in the mask walked into the payphone, deposited a few coins with a gloved hand, and picked up the handset.

“That’s Robert Robertson, Jr., calling a wellness check on himself,” Castellanos summarized slurrily. “He used the non-emergency line, provided all relevant information, and hung up. He went back home, took a nap, and killed two cops.”

“So he planned it all out in advance.”

“Mm-hm. Might be why he had a bug-out-bag ready to go. But it means he’s still in the area. He didn’t ditch his car to take a train, he ditched it to leave a cold trail. And if he’s on foot after leaving a cold trail, where do you think he’s hiding?”

“He’s in Squatter City,” Booker answered.

Castellanos bobbed her head, a manic expression painting her maskless face. “And what do you think is gonna happen when a bunch of cops with guns head to Squatter City and start banging on doors and waving badges around?”

Booker leaned against the countertop, dropping Castellanos’ cellphone. “Oh, my god…”

“So. Want a drink?”

Booker shook his head. Shrugged. What did it matter, anyway?

But before he could order, a call came in. Someone had found another body.

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Ch. 10 / Pt. 2 : When They Wear the Mask

“That took a lot longer than usual,” Paul said.

“Yeah, well, we had shockingly vague leads to start off from,” Nora replied.

“Shockingly vague,” Olly echoed.

The siblings had called a meeting after dinner, prepared masterfully by Victor, to review their findings for the past few days. Paul and Deirdre had slept over at the mansion, with Rehani planning to join them on Sunday. Paul had noticed Deirdre itching over it, not usually a woman to spend so much time away from her own domain, but he’d taken to it almost like a vacation. The mansion had powerful wards. Powerful enough to keep the voices of the dead out of his skull entirely and reduce the Speaker’s dreamstate monologues to bare whispers. He hadn’t slept so well in weeks.

Victor leaned against a heavy, antique book shelf. Olly leaned against one of the two desks in the library clearing, the one Nora sat on. A splay of documents covered the other. Old tomes and new books piled the floor. Paul supported himself on a filing cabinet while Deirdre stood, hands in her jacket pockets.

“Well. Sorry about the vagueness.” Paul said.

“So Ambrose didn’t have a lot of notes on the case and the police haven’t even digitized all the documentation, so we had to fill in some blanks and make a couple, uh, educated guesses.” Nora cleared her throat. She and Olly exchanged a quick glance. Olly nodded and she continued, “Okay, uh, but, like, we have a theory.”

“It’s an artifact,” Olly added.

“An artifact?” Deirdre asked.

Paul closed his mouth, about to ask the same thing.

“Like a mystic focus,” Nora explained unhelpfully. “But less personal.”

“A mystic focus helps ritual practitioners and born adepts shape, charge, and cast spells with more power and speed,” Olly explained. “And every time you use it, it gets a little bit stronger.”

“It also takes, like, a full year to make one,” Nora picked up, “otherwise every practitioner who found out they existed would have one.”

“The important thing to remember for our purposes is that a mystic focus acts like both a vessel and a conduit for…supernatural power…” Olly, relatively new to the notion that magic and monsters existed, still occasionally struggled to say some of the more absurd phrases aloud. They shifted their weight uncomfortably. “And, uh…so does an artifact.”

Nora slid off the first desk and crossed to the second. Flipping bird bone fingers through open folders and notebooks, she continued the explanation, “Ambrose believed the maybe-real practitioner Solomon bound some minor supernatural entities to a set of rings. And, well, y’know. ‘Big if true.’”

“In the seventies, the killer wore a mask and used a knife. None of the witnesses could ever provide a description of the mask. In the nineties, the killer wore a mask and used a knife. None of the witnesses could ever provide a description of the mask. And now, the killer wears a mask and uses a knife and…” Olly trailed off.

“Nobody can provide a description of the mask,” Deirdre finished.

“What did the mask look like, Deirdre?” Olly asked.

“I…” Deirdre worked her jaw. “It was…I…shit.”

“Wait,” Paul pushed away from the file cabinet. “What are you saying? Is this mask some kind of conduit for something like the Speaker? Or the Devourer?”

“Oh, no way,” Nora said, not looking up from her reading. “We’d be talking about a fractal of a fractal of a fractal, like just one shard of a big broken metaphorical mirror.”

Deirdre peered back at Paul just as Paul peered at Deirdre. They exchanged shrugs.

“What are you talking about?” Paul asked.

“Okay, so, first, supernatural entities come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Or, actually, don’t even think of them as having ‘shape’ or ‘size,’” Nora explained, turning to face Deirdre and Paul. “Think of them as having, uh, ‘magnitude’ or, uh…oh, what’s a good way to describe it?”

Olly stepped forward. “The kinds of supernatural entities we’re talking about here aren’t cryptids, they’re not ghouls or any other weird-looking unnatural beast you could find hiding out in the woods. They’re more immaterial, so when Nor’ talks about them having ‘size,’ she means it metaphorically.”

“Right,” Nora agreed. “They’re inorganic and largely non-physical, but they still have a quality analogous to ‘size’ for the purposes of this description.”

“Get it?” Olly asked, their hands folded behind their back.

Paul and Deirdre shared a glance, again.

“Uh…sure,” Deirdre said. “Close enough.”

Nora continued, “So the big bads are too metaphorically big to metaphorically fit through any metaphorical door that wouldn’t take a prohibitive amount of time or power to open. But there are also a lot of smaller bads, and they can.”

“We think one of these smaller motherfuckers, something attached to serial killers or slasher iconography or something like that, wormed its way into this mask and is using it as a vessel and a conduit.”

“So the man wearing it might not even be a problem?” Deirdre asked.

Olly shrugged. "We don't know."

“Alright. So what do we do with this information?”

A beat passed.

Deirdre sighed.

“We haven’t gotten too far into the research, yet,” Nora said. “It took us this long to develop a strong enough theory about what kind of whatever we’re even dealing with. So.”

“We have a lot of follow-up research to do,” Olly continued. “A lot of tagged categories.”

“Except most of the documents we want to reference haven’t been digitized yet, so the tags don’t actually help us…”

“But we know they’re here.”

“Is there something I could do?” Deirdre asked, voice just loud enough to suggest that everyone take a second to think about an answer. “Is there something I can do here besides sit around? You guys need a third set of eyes on the research? Or do we know someone I could question about any local artifacts? Or do me and Paul just sit here and wait?”

The quiet this time felt heavier, more intense.

Paul pursed his lips.

“Actually…” Olly pushed themselves away from the desk. “Vic’s taking you back to your place tomorrow to check on Samedi, right? ‘cause you’ve got some grimoires we don’t have, and there might be something in one of them that could help. And you’re an, uh, apothecary.”

“Kids,” Victor’s voice had its arms folded.

“Aren’t you the one who always tells us ‘better to have and not need?’”

“I think they’re onto something,” Deirdre said. “I need to swing by my place, anyway, I might as well pick up anything that could help.”

“I could lend an extra set of hands,” Paul suggested.

Victor took a deep breath. “Alright, then. It’s not a bad idea.”

“So we have a first step?” Olly asked.

“We have a first step,” Victor confirmed.

And Paul didn’t bring up the idea he’d had that morning because this one felt safer.

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