Death Mask

Sissy sat up and reached across to the night table for her glasses. As she did so, Frank came in wearing a blue striped shirt and khaki chinos. He came straight across to her and took hold of her hands and kissed her.

“Oh my God. Frank. I don’t believe it.”

“I couldn’t sleep,” Molly told her. “Instead of tossing and turning, I thought I might as well do something useful, and — well, I brought him back to life again.”

“Oh, Frank.” Sissy pulled him closer and kissed him again, and for a few dreamlike moments she forgot that he was nothing but a likeness of Frank, and that she was twenty-four years older than he was. He felt like Frank and he smelled like Frank, and she wanted him so much to be alive and real that her very bones ached.

“Sissy,” said Frank. “You haven’t changed, have you?”

“My hair is gray, Frank. I have crow’s-feet. Look at my hands.”

Frank gave her a sloping, rueful smile. “I didn’t mean that. But even that’s better than being dead, any day.”

“Do you remember what happened yesterday?” she asked him.

“Sure I remember. I may be a painting, and nothing more than that, but there’s nothing wrong with my short-term memory.”

“When you were burning — didn’t it hurt?”

“Didn’t feel a thing. I guess it might have been different if I was flesh and blood. But I’ve known guys catch alight, ninety percent burns, and they didn’t feel nothing, either. Once the nerve endings are burned away, you might as well be made out of wood.”

Sissy said, “I had a dream last night about a man made out of wood. It was Red Mask, I’m sure of it.”

“I don’t get it. Red Mask is made out of wood?”

She nodded. “Didn’t you ever see those giant roadside figures like Paul Bunyan and the Muffler Men? When I was a child, I used to go visit my Uncle Henry and my Aunt Mattie on their farm in Iowa, and on the way to Webster, there was this huge man all dressed in black, with two huge butcher knives.

“It used to scare me so much that I always used to close my eyes tight shut whenever we drove past it, and I wouldn’t allow myself even to think about it. But I’ve been having dreams about it ever since I first saw one of Molly’s sketches of Red Mask. I kept seeing it on the horizon, but I was always too frightened to take a look at its face. Until last night, anyhow.”

“What made you look?” Frank asked her.

“Losing you, Frank. That’s what made me look. I don’t want to lose you again.”

“And this giant figure? It was Red Mask?”

“No doubt about it. He’s a roadside advertisement for some meatpacking company in Borrowsville.”

Molly said, “Wait up a moment, Sissy. Why would anybody disguise themselves as a giant roadside figure from Iowa? Like, draw attention to yourself, or what? And it’s so darned — I don’t know. It’s so darned obscure.”

“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 motherin-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.”