The Faceless Mask

“Trying to pick something out for All Hallow’s, are we?” the old man asked in his gruff though oddly mellifluous voice.
Orville’s Old-Fashioned Oddity Outlet was infamous throughout the city of Sombermorey and Harrowick County beyond. Everything he sold came with a story, and every story was complete and utter bunkum. Most people thought that his shop was just a tourist trap to capitalize on our area’s plethora of urban legends, and that it was only the runoff business from the much more popular Eve’s Eden of Esoterica across the street that kept him afloat.
But for those willing to entertain the notion that an elderly snake oil salesman in a pastel suit and straw fedora might in fact be a legitimate purveyor of the preternatural, Orville’s little shop was worth hitting up. I had ventured in there in the hopes of finding something that might gain me admittance to an upscale Halloween party that I was most definitely not invited to, and a wall filled with gorgeous masquerade masks had stolen my attention.
“Ah, yeah. I’m trying to put together a Halloween costume,” I said to the old man. “These are beautiful. What can you tell me about them?”
“Tell me, Miss; have you ever heard tell of the Masked City of Incognauta?” Orville replied, his voice dropping melodramatically as if he was trusting me with some coveted secret. “Somewhere out amidst the planes, in the void between worlds, there’s a void that’s a world unto itself; a sovereign city-state that follows no laws but its own, and that includes the laws of physics. It’s a city of Eternal Masquerade, where the citizens are forbidden to remove their masks for any reason, under punishment of exile. Some say it’s because the Incognauti slowly became their masks over time, either unintentionally or to save themselves from the growing madness of their home. Either way, their identities and souls now live entirely within their masks, their bodies reduced to mere hosts. These are the masks of exiled or fallen Incognauti, ripped willingly or not from their bearers, leaving the masks silent and the bodies screaming and jabbering in incoherent madness. What became of those bodies, I don’t know and don’t care to ask, but the masks have been lovingly safeguarded, passed from buyer to buyer and wearer to wearer, wandering down many different paths before all winding up at my shop. Should you choose to don one, the ancient and arcane knowledge held within will begin to trickle into your mind, but so will the identity held by the mask. You won’t lose yourself to it all at once; it will be far more insidious. It will take over so gradually that you won’t even realize it’s happening. Go incognito long enough, and you will become Incognauti.”
“I see,” I said with an amused smirk. “Ignoring the fact that you just blatantly ripped that story off of the SCP Wiki, you’re saying that if I were to try on one of these masks and feel absolutely nothing, that would merely be the insidiousness of the curse and not evidence to the mundanity of the masks?”
“Won’t matter to me then, honey; you wear it, you bought it,” Orville chuckled. “If you don’t mind my prying, what’s got you in the market for such a high-end Halloweeney mask, anywho?”
“I… I was hoping to get into Seneca Chamberlin’s Halloween Party,” I admitted with some hesitation. “He hasn’t had a party this big in years, either because of COVID or some personal issues he was having. Since there will be so many people there, I was hoping that if I just looked the part, I might be able to sneak in unnoticed. I’m not going to steal anything or hurt anyone or blow anything up; I just want to crash the party. Pendragon Manor is the stuff of legends. I’d love to see it from the inside, especially on Halloween.”
“Crash Seneca’s big Halloween bash? Yeah, I can get behind that,” Orville chuckled. “None of these masks will do the trick for you, though. Not if I know Seneca’s security; which, incidentally, I do. They need to attend some sort of sensitivity training about the appropriate manner to deal with the ornery elderly.”
He fetched a keyring from his desk and used it to unlock a drawer directly beneath the mask display. He slowly pulled it open, revealing a silver mask sitting on a velvet pillow. It had been constructed of tightly meshed wires, woven into mesmerizing fractal patterns. Though the wires were slightly less dense around the eyes, the mask was completely lacking in any facial features whatsoever.
“This, young lady, is one hundred percent Seelie Silver; made for an Incognate Marchioness,” he said as he held it up, glimmering like a spider’s web in the early morning light. “You may have heard that the Seelie have a bit of a knack for names and the like. This mask hides not only your face, but the name that goes with it. Wear this to Seneca’s shindig, and I guarantee you’ll get in.”
He pushed it towards me, and I gingerly accepted it. I turned it over in my hands, running my fingers along its cool silver filaments, gazing in awe at the ethereal designs they formed. The mask certainly seemed, if not otherworldly, then at least extraordinary. It was inconceivable to me that it was merely some sweatshop-produced chrome costume that he was trying to pawn off on me.
Okay, maybe not ‘inconceivable’, but a remote possibility nevertheless.
“So now Fairies made these masks?” I asked incredulously.
“No, just that one. Pay attention. You think mortal craftsmanship would ever be good enough for a Marchioness?” he asked.
“Uh-huh. And of course, ‘I wear it, I buy it’, so I can’t just try it on to see if it actually does what you say it will,” I sighed, shoving it back towards him. “I might as well buy a can of magic beans.”
“Now hold on. Hold on. Maybe we can work out an arrangement,” he said, refusing to accept the mask. “You said you only wanted it for Seneca’s Halloween Party, right? Well, what if in exchange for a small security deposit – just enough to cover the deductible on my insurance in case you don’t bring it back – I’ll let you use this mask for Halloween and bring it back the next day? If it does the trick, then perhaps you’ll be interested in buying it for keeps. If not, then you get your security deposit back. Potential big scores for both of us at minimal risk. What could possibly go wrong?”
I paused, pulling the mask back as I considered the offer. Magic or not, it was absolutely stunning, and probably my only hope of getting into the party.
“Just a small safety deposit?” I asked.
“I’ll even throw in those magic beans to sweeten the deal,” he said, his wide grin revealing fillings made with the same Seelie Silver as the mask.
***
“A thousand-dollar safety deposit for a Halloween mask. I must be out of my mind,” I murmured to myself as I drove up the winding terrace that encircled Pendragon Hill.
It wasn’t really that outrageous of a sum, considering how much I had spent on my hair, gown, jewelry (which included a tiara), and shoes. All told, I’d spent an awful lot of money on a party I wasn’t even invited to. The only traditional expense I had forgone was makeup, since if the mask worked as advertised, I wouldn’t be able to take it off.
As I approached the top of the hill, I could hear the faint sound of live music, and I saw the fancy cars lined up at the titanium gates as a stout little valet checked to make sure they were on the list. I quickly grabbed my mask and fastened it to my head. It didn’t really impair my vision that much, but it certainly wasn’t anything I had wanted to wear while driving up a hill where one wrong turn would mean disaster.
As I pulled up to the valet, he glared down at me and my vehicle with palpable contempt.
“Are you on the list?” he asked impatiently, looking like he was just waiting for an official reason to call security.
“I don’t need to be on the list, Woodbead,” I replied with an indignance that took me off guard; and I hadn’t the slightest idea where the name Woodbead had come from.
To my surprise – and relief – a look of sudden regret washed across the valet’s face.
“Yes, of course. My apologies. I didn’t recognize you in your marvellous new vessel,” he said. “Welcome to Pendragon Manor. Please enjoy the party.”
“Thank you,” I said, smiling mischievously beneath my mask as I pulled into the motor court. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure if the mask had actually worked or if I just happened to resemble and sound like someone the valet knew, and at that point I honestly didn’t care.
I was in.
I felt like I was in a fairy tale as I hoisted up the skirts of my gown to ascend the tapering staircase into Chamberlin’s mansion, passing through the front foyer with nary a glance and straight into the majestic ballroom.
The floor was covered in mosaics of gleaming marble tiles, lit by crystal chandeliers hanging from a ceiling embellished with Renaissance-style frescos. Guests in elegant evening wear and masquerade masks danced to classical music from a small chamber orchestra performing on a stage at the opposite end of the ballroom. Portraits and statues lined the walls, an opened skylight revealed the starry firmament above, and the floor-to-ceiling arch windows afforded a whimsical view of the aviary outside.
As starstruck as I was by the venue, I still managed to spot Chamberlin mingling with the other guests almost immediately. He was easily recognizable despite his golden Oni mask; tall and slender in a three-piece crimson suit and top hat. I saw him cock his head slightly when he noted my presence, excusing himself from his other guests to come say hello. It had originally been my plan to avoid him as much as possible, but as he approached, I was inexplicably free of any fear that he was coming to confront me for attending his party uninvited.
“Come to hold me to my standing invitation, I see?” he asked wryly.
“I would have come sooner if I had had any legs to stand on,” I replied, before I even knew what I was saying. “Is Crowley here? I’d love to say hello.”
“Lamentably, he was unable to attend this evening. Something came up in Adderwood that he needed to see to,” he said, as if I had the slightest idea of what he was talking about.
“Oh really? What about that Noir woman I’ve heard about? Is she there as well?” I asked, uttering yet another name that meant nothing to me.
“It was her idea, as far as I can tell,” he shrugged.
“So then there’s no one over your head here tonight?” I asked. “No one who might object if you took an old friend down to the old tunnels beneath your wine cellar?”
“And here I had hoped that you'd simply come to take advantage of my hospitality,” Chamberlin laughed. “But if you’re looking to make a discreet exit from Sombermorey, I believe I can arrange that. After the party, however. I’m not about to abandon all my guests when they’ve been so looking forward to seeing me again. I suggest enjoying yourself until then. If not for you, then for your ‘chauffeur’. It’s the least you could do for making her bring you all this way.”
I laughed, though I didn’t know why, and Seneca left to attend to his other guests.
For the next few hours, I mingled with my fellow revellers. A few of them I knew by reputation, but most of Chamberlin’s friends fell under the category of reclusive, eccentric millionaires, and I had never seen or heard of any of them. None of them ever suspected that I didn’t belong there, in no small part because I always seemed to know exactly what to say. Unfamiliar words and foreign names dropped from my mouth quite regularly, their meaning known only to their recipients.
It became increasingly hard to deny that it wasn’t me who was speaking, but the mask that was speaking through me. While this admittedly made me uneasy, it wasn’t enough to make me want to take the mask off. After all, hadn’t this been exactly what I had wanted it for? It gave me the identity I needed to get into the party, and of course that identity had come with some baggage of its own. It wasn’t actually controlling me or taking over me, I thought. Throughout the night I had been able to take sips of cocktails or bites of hors d’oeuvres Mandalorian style, lifting up the mask just enough to slip something into my mouth, and I felt no resistance from the mask when I did this. I remained convinced that I remained in full control of my actions and could take the mask off anytime I wanted.
It wasn’t until the hour neared midnight that something went amiss. The sound of a struggle drew my and everyone else’s attention towards the door to the foyer, revealing an unwelcome latecomer. He was tall, spindly, and shabbily dressed in a faded and tattered orange suit. His jack-o-lantern eye mask was clearly a cheap mass-market costume piece, marking him as painfully out of place amongst such a high-couture crowd. We all would have been wondering why they had even let him in, were it not for the several security guards who were frantically trying to pull him back. Despite his slight frame, the man seemed to possess an inordinate strength and continued his advance through the ballroom with very little difficulty.
“Where is it? Where is it?” he shouted in a raspy, nearly inhuman-sounding voice. “The old man said it would be here!”
One of the security guards tasered him, and he didn’t even flinch. He just batted the weapon away with a casual backhand, craning his long neck across the sea of masks, as if trying to find one in particular.
And then he stopped when his gaze fell upon me.
Effortlessly tossing off the security guards who had barely even managed to slow him down in the first place, he burst into a sprint as he dashed towards me. I started running too, of course; but instead of running outside as I logically should have, I ran into the kitchen. Despite having never been in that room before, I went straight for a door that ended up leading down into a wine cellar. It occurred to me that maybe I was there to hide or use the wine bottles as weapons, but I didn’t stop. I kept right on running towards a cask of Amontillado at the back.
Before I could reach it, I felt long and slender fingers grabbing me by the back of my gown and hoisting me into the air.
“Well, don’t you look radiant this evening?” the jack-o-lantern-masked man asked mockingly as he spun me around and dangled me in front of him.
His teeth were stained nearly the same colour as his suit, his stubble thick and uneven upon his rectangular jaw, and his jaundiced eyes protruded so far from their sockets I was sure they were about to fall out. I struggled and kicked, but his grip was like iron and his sunken chest was like granite.
“Thought you could escape our collection by running off through the Cuniculi? You’d only have wasted both of our time. There’s nowhere you can go in all the Worlds that I won’t be able to find you!”
He grabbed the mask and pulled it from my face as hard as he could. It didn’t want to go, and I was afraid he’d tear the skin off my face before he’d get the mask off. With every inch he pulled it out, I felt something inside me, something inside my head, being pulled out with it. I screamed in agony when he finally ripped the mask from my face, barely even noticing that he had dropped me to the ground.
He held the mask high above him in triumph, gloatingly staring straight into its faceless visage. He tossed aside the cask of Amontillado with his free hand, revealing a hidden iron door. He easily tore it open and descended down a dark flight of stairs just as the security guards caught up with us. A couple of them chased after him, but two more remained in the room, and I realized that they were flanking Seneca.
I looked up to see him gazing down at me with the same sort of disdain one might show for a mouldy piece of fruit that was no longer of any use to anyone.
“Get this interloper off my property,” he ordered with a sad shake of his head.
***
“You miserable old bastard!” I cursed at Orville the next morning. “You knew what that mask was!”
“Of course I did! I told you what it was! What are we yelling for!” he shouted back.
“You knew it wanted to use me to get away from here, and you knew someone else was after it!” I cried.
“Lady, look at the front door. What does it say?” he asked. “It says Caveat Emptor. It means buyer beware, and it applies to everything I sell here.”
“I didn’t buy it, I just put a safety deposit down on it!” I shouted. “I only wanted it for one night, and it probably would have used me until I dropped dead! And then you told that crazy jack-o-lantern-face guy where I was! I could have been killed!”
“Hey, he said ‘the old man’ said you’d be there. You can’t prove he was talking about me. There are lots of old men he could have been talking about,” Orville insisted, but then let out an uneasy sigh. “Look, I’m sorry. What do you want from me?”
“I want my safety deposit back!” I told him.
“Absolutely out of the question! No return, no deposit! Them’s the bricks!” he shouted.
“You made that agreement without ever expecting to see me again, and I wouldn’t have lost the mask if you hadn’t ratted me out to the jack-o-lantern guy! That’s maleficence, and it voids our agreement!” I said.
“Maleficence! Maleficence! Of all the dirty-rotten, underhanded things I’ve been accused of over the years, no one’s ever accused me of maleficence!” he claimed. “I admit to no wrongdoing, and since returning your deposit would now be a tacit admission of guilt, I ain’t giving it back! However, in the interest of de-escalation, I’d be willing to let you take a thousand bucks worth of clearance merchandise out of here. Before taxes. And fees. And service charges.”
“The only things you have on clearance are more of those magic beans, and the jar you gave me was expired!” I shouted.
“Not expired; past their best before date!” Orville corrected me. “You can still use them, they just, well… let’s just say I’d recommend planting them rather than eating them. Better they be coming up through your backyard than out your back door, if you catch my meaning.”
Category:The Vesper's Bell
Category:Halloween