'One!' I called.
He didn't blow the flame out; he closed the top of the lighter on it and he waited for perhaps five seconds before opening it again.
He flicked the wheel very strongly and once more there was a small flame burning on the wick.
'Two!'
No one else said anything. The boy kept his eyes on the lighter. The little man held the chopper up in the air and he too was watching the lighter.
'Three!'
'Four!'
'Five!'
'Six!'
'Seven!' Obviously it was one of those lighters that worked. The flint gave a big spark and the wick was the right length. I watched the thumb snapping the top down on to the flame. Then a pause. Then the thumb raising the top once more. This was an all-thumb operation. The thumb did everything. I took a breath, ready to say eight. The thumb flicked the wheel. The flint sparked. The little flame appeared.
'Eight!' I said, and as I said it the door opened. We all turned and we saw a woman standing in the doorway, a small, black-haired woman, rather old, who stood there for about two seconds then rushed forward, shouting, 'Carlos! Carlos!' She grabbed his wrist, took the chopper from him, threw it on the bed, took hold of the little man by the lapels of his white suit and began shaking him very vigorously, talking to him fast and loud and fiercely all the time in some Spanish-sounding language. She shook him so fast you couldn't see him anymore. He became a faint, misty, quickly moving outline, like the spokes of a turning wheel.
Then she slowed down and the little man came into view again and she hauled him across the room and pushed him backwards on to one of the beds. He sat on the edge of it blinking his eyes and testing his head to see if it would still turn on his neck.
'I am sorry,' the woman said. 'I am so terribly sorry that this should happen.' She spoke almost perfect English.
'It is too bad,' she went on. 'I suppose it is really my fault. For ten minutes I leave him alone to go and have my hair washed and I come back and he is at it again.' She looked sorry and deeply concerned.
The boy was untying his hand from the table. The English girl and I stood there and said nothing.
'He is a menace,' the woman said. 'Down where we live at home he has taken altogether forty-seven fingers from different people, and he has lost eleven cars. In the end they threatened to have him put away somewhere. That's why I brought him up here.'
'We were only having a little bet,' mumbled the little man from the bed.
'I suppose he bet you a car,' the woman said.
'Yes,' the boy answered. 'A Cadillac'
'He has no car. It's mine. And that makes it worse,' she said, 'that he should bet you when he has nothing to bet with. I am ashamed and very sorry about it all.' She seemed an awfully nice woman.
'Well,' I said, 'then here's the key of your car.' I put it on the table.
'We were only having a little bet,' mumbled the little man.
'He hasn't anything left to bet with,' the woman said. 'He hasn't a thing in the world. Not a thing. As a matter of fact I myself won it all from him a long while ago. It took time, a lot of time, and it was hard work, but I won it all in the end.' She looked up at the boy and she smiled, a slow sad smile, and she came over and put out a hand to take the key from the table.
I can see it now, that hand of hers; it had only one finger on it, and a thumb.
7/ Kenneth Ireland - The Werewolf Mask
The mask looked just like a horrible werewolf with blood dripping from its fangs. It was one which fitted right over Peter's head, with spaces for his eyes so that when he looked out the movement gave an extra dimension of horror to the already terrifying expression on the rubber face. The hair hanging down from the top of the mask looked real, as did the hair and whiskers drooping from the sides and face. It was very satisfying, Peter felt, as soon as he had been into the joke shop and bought it.
Something, however, was missing. While the mask seemed realistic enough, it was his hands which were wrong. If a human could really turn into a werewolf, it would not be only the face which would change, but the hands would grow hairy as well. He discovered this when he unwrapped the paper bag in which he had bought it and went upstairs to try the effect in front of his dressing-table mirror. As long as he kept his hands hidden, all was well, but once his hands were seen, they were far too smooth. In fact, they weren't hairy at all. It was rather disappointing, but nevertheless he thought that he'd try out the effect anyway. His mother was in, so making grunting and drooling noises he loped away down the stairs.
He went into the living-room where his mother was darning some socks, flung open the door suddenly and leaped in, arms raised to his shoulders, fingers extended like claws, and growling ferociously.
'My goodness,' said his mother, looking up, 'what on earth made you waste your money on a thing like that?'
'I thought it was rather good,' said Peter, not at all put out. 'Doesn't it look - well, real?'
'Well, it was your birthday money, so I suppose you could spend it how you liked,' said his mother placidly, returning to the socks. 'I don't know how you manage to get such large holes in these, I really don't. I think it must be the way you drag them on.'
'But doesn't it look just like a werewolf?' asked Peter, taking the mask off and examining it carefully.
'It would, I suppose, except there are no such things and never have been such things as werewolves. I think you've wasted your money on something which is of no real use,' his mother replied. 'The money would have been better spent on some new pairs of socks. Still, your Aunty Doreen did tell you to spend it on something to amuse you, so I suppose we can't expect everything.'
'The thing that's wrong with it is my hands,' said Peter. 'The face is all right, but the hands are wrong to go with it, don't you think?'
He put the mask on again and held his hands out for her to see the effect. She glanced at him briefly. 'Putting a mask on like that won't make your hands look different from a boy's,' she said. 'The only thing you could do is wear gloves, your woolly ones perhaps, to disguise them.'
Since she was taking no more notice of him, he went back upstairs, drew a pair of woolly gloves from a drawer in his dressing table, and tried the effect this time. Well, perhaps it wasn't all that bad. At least the gloves gave some kind of appearance of hairiness, but it was still not quite right. He tried combing the backs of the gloves, but that was no good at all. When he tried the claw effect, it was not half as good as when his nails were showing.
He still had some money left, so he went back to the joke shop, taking the mask with him.
'Have you got,' he asked, 'anything like hairy hands?'
The shopkeeper, being a bit of a joker himself, looked down at his hands and asked if they would do. Then he looked down at his feet behind the counter and as if in surprise announced that he hadn't got pigs' trotters, either.
'No, I mean,' explained Peter carefully, 'like I bought this werewolf mask, I wonder if you have a kind of hairy hand mask to go with it. You know, to make the whole thing look - well, more real?'
'Hairy, with sort of claws, you mean?' asked the shopkeeper, nodding. 'I might have. Hang on.'
He went along the shelves behind the counter, opened first one drawer then another, and at the third drawer extracted a transparent plastic bag which he placed on the counter.
'These do?' he asked.
Peter picked them up eagerly, and inspected the contents through the plastic. They looked about right.
'Can I try them on?' he asked.
