Ch. 14 / Pt. 1 : When They Wear the Mask
Paul spent the day attuning his sixth sense. In a second-floor lounge near a broad, multi-paned window, where the mansion’s many wards and defenses thinned, he meditated for hours. Surface thoughts skittered roach-legs across his mind. He wanted a drink. He wanted a joint. He wanted to sleep. The impulses to turn back rived through him like steel slivers. At the bottom of the journey, an endless mausoleum of whispers awaited him. It counted among its numberless voices his own daughter, Cassandra.
It took hours not because the practice of attuning his sixth sense took hours, but because paying attention to it at all exhausted him.
He wanted a drink, a joint, some sleep.
In an antique armchair feet from the glass, his eyes closed, Paul took a long, broad breath and tried to focus beyond the distractions. A half-smoked joint of psychic stimulants sat in an ashtray on a bar cart next to him. Its everything-at-once scent languished in the air, rancid rot and blossoming flowers, steak-char and compost, summer breeze and crypt dust stirrings.
Nora had explained to him, once, that everyone had a sixth sense, that a ‘sixth sense’ only represented a person’s connection to the supernatural and immaterial. Most people had sixth senses so weak that their minds rejected supernatural stimuli, replacing experiences with false, mundane memories later on or even blanking out or rewriting events as they unfolded. This population, the vast majority of all human beings, felt these immaterial energies and stimulations as hunches and instincts, vague senses of deja vu or precognition; a sudden decision not to walk down a particular street on the way home, one night. Those like Rehani and himself had more discrete awareness. Their sixth senses had strengthened and adapted into outright abilities. Hers, a connection to myriad probable futures. His…
His, a seat in the theatre of the dead.
He wanted a drink. A smoke. Some sleep.
He wanted to disappear.
Opening his eyes, he stood from the antique chair and approached the window. There, where the mansion’s wards and defenses wore thinnest, he rested his palms and forehead against the glass. He stared down at a flank of grass rolling eastward into brush and forestation. Taking slow breaths, he focused on the quiet. On the near-sibilant silence surrounding him in the cozily muffled lounge. On the hiss crackling underneath…
He pressed his eyelids shut. Pressed hands and head against the window.
Focused.
you, too, soon…
He fought back the impulse to pull away.
you, too, soon…
When the numberless souls ceased reliving and raging at their deaths; when they ceased crying and wailing for release; when they ceased begging to be seen or heard or felt or merely noticed, they always returned to that refrain. The dead choir whispered the words with such crypt-like rasps that they combined into a hiss. A gas leak momento mori.
He dug deeper.
don’t look at it
don’t speak
shh shhh
Finding the frequencies for individual ghosts, he began to fuzz through the channels. He no longer felt the glass against his forehead or palms, no longer remembered the cool shade playing across his face. He existed in a liminal space, its edges painted in grayshade and echolocation, gaps filled in by his sixth sense. He saw no detail.
Dad? his daughter’s voice cut into his head, razorsharp. what is that thing? do you know? Dad?
Paul lost his breath. He clenched his jaw. Feeling his body dimmed his awareness of the other-place.
He searched for a different ghost, some other echo or signal—
you should hurry back home, doc, the Speaker sweet-sizzled. it’s dangerous out here.
He couldn’t tell if the Speaker whispered in from the realm of the dead or from inside his own skull…
you’ve got yourself ‘in tune’ enough. trust me.
He pushed deep—
“Hey,” Olly called out from the threshold.
Paul blinked, backing away from the window. Afternoon had sunset into early evening. He cleared his throat. “Huh?”
“Rehani and Deirdre are ready,” they said.
“Oh.”
“Uh…” they stepped inside, Doc Martens under a floral dress, a wrinkled lilac hoodie thrown over, unzipped. “Are you?”
“I, uh…” he coughed, still finding gunk in his throat. “I’m ready enough.”
They ran their eyes over him head-to-toe. “You sure?”
He laughed it off. “I’m not sure of anything. But, yeah. Let’s go.”
“Alright…” they hesitated, dubious. “Sure. Follow me.”
He glanced overshoulder at the window as he left the room. Frost hazed the glass where a sharp plunge in temperature had frozen the sweat from his forehead and palms. Beyond that, the sky darkened to night.
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