The Shadow Mask Read online

  But gradually, the music and the laughter faded, and in the corners of my inner vision, I began to see that black mist. It was the same black mist I saw in Jeremy’s record store. And it brought with it the voices of friends I no longer knew, memories of disappointment and pain. The black mist spread and extended its inky tentacles deep into my thoughts, corrupting and rotting my power from the inside. I heard memories of death, the deaths of people my parents knew, the deaths of grandparents, until I was in complete blackness and I heard myself weeping in my old room, that dreadful day I learned my parents were never coming back.

  I knew then I was asleep, stuck within a nightmare, and it was unfair. And just when it felt like I would never escape this darkness, I felt a hand on my shoulder.

  There, standing before me, was the figure I saw when I first listened to that blue disc from my dad, the shaman from the island of my birth, the being of light who gave me my sound-bender powers. He was decked out in a feathered headdress and he shined golden against the blackness.

  “You are trapped in darkness,” he said without moving his lips. “You mustn’t be afraid. Remember that in the darkness there is more than enough light, but it is hidden deep within Mother Night. Will you remember my words, Sound Bender?”

  “I will,” I said.

  “Then awaken!”

  I opened my eyes to a deafening metallic clamor. Someone was pounding on the sliding aluminum door of the storage locker.

  “Leo, open up!” Dmitri shouted.

  “Beat it, Dmitri,” I said without thinking, finding that my Fisher-Price record player had turned itself off and the record was over. What had just happened?

  “Leo, the nor’easter is back. Kyu-ho said we need to leave in thirty minutes.”

  “Then come get me in thirty,” I said, trying to shake off this uneasy feeling. Something wrong had just happened, something half sound bending, and half nightmare. But I was back, and there was a lot to do. “I’m in the middle of important work. Bring the hand dolly when you come back.”

  “Okay, Mr. Leo,” he said. Then after a pause, he said what I knew he would say. “Can I come in?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  For the next thirty minutes, I tore through all the boxes I could open, setting aside anything remotely related to Borneo, Antarctica, and Belgian diplomats. Of Borneo, I found a ton, including CDs of my dad’s field recordings and his travel journal detailing his month-long trip almost hour by hour. I also found some stuff about their trip to Antarctica, but not as much as I’d hoped. And of Belgian diplomats, I found nothing. But I did find a musty old book by Marie Rathbone, titled The Immortal Underground. It was a clothbound hardback with thin yellow pages, and someone had underlined, with a ruler, a bunch of stuff in a red pencil.

  I sorted my finds into two sets of boxes. One I would keep for myself, which included my old Fisher-Price record player, some toys from my old room, a few of my dad’s records that seemed really cool, including the Spiricom one, the files from Antarctica, and my father’s personal travel journal from Borneo. The second set was for Crane, and it contained all of my dad’s planning notes for his trip to Borneo, his sketchbook of native instruments, and his attempt at musical notation of their tribal melodies. By the time I was finished, I had gathered a stack of boxes taller than my head. After they were loaded into the car, there was even less room for Dmitri, and he literally had to play a game of 3-D Twister in the back.

  The nor’easter was returning in full force, and by the time we crossed the Verrazano Bridge, we were swallowed up by a dizzying moonless cloud of ice. Every now and then, I would get a flash of that terrible feeling from my dream, an echo of something dark accompanied by the electronic voice of Dr. Bill from the Spiricom record. Both the record itself and the Spiricom device seemed somewhat fake, and didn’t make me believe that communicating with the dead was possible. But I also found it hard to believe that that man who made the record, the one who sounded like a friendly milkman, had spent years working on that record and his Spiricom device only for a hoax. He must have believed that it was all true, just like when I first told Trevor about my power; how could he doubt something that was so clearly true to me, something I had lived and experienced? Maybe there was something to communicating with the dead?

  Nothing was clear in my thoughts. I needed Trevor to help me separate fact from fiction. But what I wanted was my parents. I would have given anything, anything, just to talk with them again. I felt like crying, but with Dmitri in the back watching my every move, I forced myself to keep it all inside. Feel nothing.

  “You are more uneasy than before, Leo,” Kyu-Ho said to me.

  “Do you believe in life after death, Kyu-Ho?” I asked.

  “Confucius, the great philosopher, taught that there is a heaven, but we should not seek it in this life, for it is beyond our understanding. We must build our society as if it were heaven. Confucius teaches us to remember the past, mourn our ancestors, and thank them for what they have given us to help us on our way.”

  “But what do you really believe, Kyu-Ho?”

  “In my dreams, Leo, I have traveled to the land of my ancestors. I have seen the Land of the Dead with my missing eye, and it haunts me. I search for peace, but I fear I will never find it.”

  That was deep, and I had no answer. Any reassurance that everything was going to work out fine would just be insulting — he hadn’t tried to sugarcoat it, and neither would I. So I remained quiet on the moonless trip across the bridge, and for the rest of the ride.

  We got off the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, and when we turned off the avenue for the waterfront, I realized that the whole area was still without power. Some power lines were still on the ground, half buried in ice crystals. None of the streetlights were on, not even the traffic lights.

  All of the windows of Crane’s Mysteries were black — from the second to the seventh floor. Klevko came out, carrying two electric lanterns, to help with the cargo as I said good-bye to Kyu-Ho. He bowed and told me he hoped that I could find peace. I did the same. Then he drove off, taking off the rest of his bumper on a fire hydrant not thirty feet from me.

  “These boxes are for Crane, Klevko,” I said, pointing to the ones I had put together especially for him.

  “I will deliver them now,” Klevko answered. “He is waiting.”

  “And these two are for me.” I indicated the boxes with my toys, the Antarctica information, and my dad’s journal.

  Klevko gave me one of the lanterns. “Still no power in the building,” he said. “I call the power man all day, but they tell me there’s not enough people in our area to fix the power. Maybe they come tomorrow. For now, we have backup generator for elevator and security. Dmitri will help you with personal boxes.”

  We rode the elevator to the seventh floor, Klevko quickly disappearing into a hallway with Crane’s boxes, while Dmitri trailed behind me with the hand dolly. He loaded the boxes into my dark room, then left down the hallway without a light.

  Hollis was in his room, but he wasn’t doing great. He was curled up in his bed, hugging his knees, and didn’t even flinch when I entered. I knew he was reeling, because when he’s really sad he tries to stay as perfectly still as possible. When he was young and sulking, he would disappear for hours on end, making my mom both furious and terrified that she had lost him. She’d always find him somewhere, in a closet under a pile of clothes or some crawl space, not talking, as motionless as a hibernating squirrel. He was clutching Ghosty in his hand.

  “You all right?” I said, kneeling by his bed.

  He shook his head, just slightly. His eyes were open, but he didn’t look at me.

  “Are you mad at me?”

  He shook his head no.

  “Just not feeling so good?”

  He nodded, and I heard him grunt softly. I noticed that above his bed, he had hung our mom’s watermelon crystal necklace on a nail.

  “I’m right next door, chief. I’ll check on you in a little whil
e, but come get me if you need anything or want to sleep in my room. Okay? I’m going to take care of everything.”

  Back in my room, I set the lantern on my nightstand and got into bed with all the papers I had gathered about Antarctica. I read through their itinerary, a schedule for my mom’s string quartet, information about the colony they were staying at, maps of the continent and the icebergs, packing recommendations, and other papers. But nothing that had anything to do with who organized their trip, the plane they took down to explore the icebergs of Antarctica, or who flew it. Or even the plane’s route. I needed more information. Much more information. To get to the bottom of their disappearance, I was going to have to call the rest of my mom’s quartet, dig through her old e-mails, even go down to Antarctica myself and get whatever I could from the base. But that would take time, lots of time, and even more money.

  I moved on to my dad’s travel journal instead. For every music trip he took, he kept a careful and thorough journal of almost everything he did, everyone he met, and every thought he had — in case he ever needed to go back. All of it written in green ink. The trip to Borneo lasted over a month, and the whole journal was filled with green ink. I flipped through the pages, trying to find any mention of that mask he brought back, but soon I was reading more and more of each entry, until I was caught up in his adventure, traveling up the Kayan River in a longboat through murky green waters, the jungle on every side of him, stopping at river villages where the people lived in long row houses. I could visualize them, covered in elaborate tattoos, their stretched earlobes carrying dozens of heavy wooden rings. According to his journal, he visited over twenty villages, some of them somewhat modernized and near plantations, some of them down murky backwaters of the river where the villagers lived as they had for thousands of years. Some of the villages represented all that was left of their tribe, with their language, their customs, and their culture shared by only thirty people.

  Someone knocked on the door.

  “Hollis, is that you? Just come in, chief.”

  When nobody answered, I opened the door, but no one was there. I checked in Hollis’s room, and he hadn’t moved a muscle.

  Returning to my bed, I picked up where I left off, reading strange tales by the lantern light. One visit to a town called Byong Ku got my attention.

  11/5, 6:30 p.m.: Arrived at village of Byong Ku earlier today after a four-hour trek over a mountain ridge. Very eerie and deserted. Two guides from my party went ahead to make contact with the villagers and ask permission for me to visit. They approved, and at 4:30 p.m., I entered their village. My main guide, Lapsing, says these villagers do not mix with the rest of the villages in the area, that they have isolated themselves for unknown reasons.

  The villagers greeted me warmly. They have seen a few other Westerners, missionaries mostly, but live in a completely traditional mode. Approximately 60 villagers present. Lapsing reports that their language is unique to their village. One of the scout guides, Trogo, shares some words with them, but only a few, and much is lost in translation. The villagers accepted the trinkets and food we offered, and have invited us to stay with them and sleep in their row house. I am intrigued by them, but in what way, I cannot yet say.

  11/6, 4:45 p.m.: Have spent the day observing and inquiring about their music traditions, but am having difficulty communicating this idea. They seem unaware of music. I have seen no musical instruments, nor do they seem to make music in their daily lives. They have allowed me to observe a medicine woman tending to a dying man. She performed a “soul-catching” ritual on him, using an engraved pole and smoke. The old man shows no improvement and will surely die within the day.

  11/7, 10:30 a.m.: Old man died last night.

  11/8, 3:50 a.m.: Have just returned from old man’s death ceremony. The villagers do make music but only during death ceremonies. The villagers deny they are making music at all, and now back at the row house, they claim to have no memory of the elaborate ceremony just performed. Death ceremony was as follows. The dead man’s wooden coffin was placed on ceremonial rocks at dusk, and laid with flowers and plants by all villagers. At nightfall, a fire was lit, and all adult men and women donned ancient masks, some comforting, some grotesque like the particularly haunting twin mask. They quickly entered profound trance states. The men played different pitched hollow rocks and lithophones with mallets, while the women danced. Children assisted. No singing. Trogo explains that while in trance, the villagers transport themselves to the Land of the Dead, said to be over another mountain ridge and across a river. During the death ceremony, they guide the dead man’s spirit into the Land of the Dead, playing music so he will follow and not stay back to haunt the village and the surface world. When the dead man’s spirit reaches the Land of the Dead, the music stops, and the ceremony is over. Made several high-quality recordings to be examined later. Now to bed.

  I shut my eyes as well, imagining this horrific ritual half a world away — seeing the tribespeople in their masks dancing around the fire to ghostly drums, their leader wearing the grotesquely haunting twin mask. It was such a disturbing vision that I was actually relieved when I heard an insistent knocking at my door. It wasn’t a friendly knock and it seemed to rattle my very bones.

  “Who’s there?” I croaked. I shoved the diary under my mattress just as the door opened and Klevko barged in, looking sweaty and agitated.

  “Leo! Get up right now. Crane wants you.”

  “Tell him not now, that I’m sleeping,” I said. Crane. Everything single thing he did seemed planned to catch me off guard.

  “No. Crane demands to see you. You follow me, yes? You must. I cannot leave the room without you,” he said, and twitched his pec muscle.

  There was no arguing, so I followed Klevko as he headed swiftly down the hall. I jogged after him to the Sword Room. Outside the window, it was completely white. Klevko walked to the armored knight figure and looked at it suspiciously.

  “I know about the secret panel, Klevko. Go ahead.”

  I had discovered that secret passageway shortly after moving in.

  He nodded and pushed the knight’s pinkie, opening a tunnel entrance next to the giant-screen TV. We went in and got into the tiny elevator. He slid a key into a socket by the D.N.D. button, and it lit up green. We were going to the Do Not Disturb Room, Crane’s room so secret I’d never been in there.

  “The D.N.D. Room,” I said. “I’m moving up in the world.”

  “Not up, Leo,” he said. “We go sideways, then down.”

  The dark elevator trembled quickly, then the whole car shot away with a grinding jerk. I went slamming into Klevko.

  “You are sweaty, Leo.”

  “So are you, big guy.”

  The elevator seemed to pivot on a dime and shot downward. It was getting difficult to breathe in that little coffin of a space.

  “We are far below street level,” Klevko whispered. The elevator lurched. “And now we are here.”

  Klevko opened the elevator, which led into a completely dark hallway, except for a small blinking red light. In that reddish glow, I could barely make out a giant metal door at the end of the hall. It looked like a bank vault, with a wheel and everything. Klevko guided me down the hall, and when we reached the door, he put his finger on the blinking red light until it turned steady red, then spun the huge wheel until it clicked into place. The door swung open and banged against the metal hallway, the noise reverberating in my ears.

  “I stay here, Leo. You go in.”

  Klevko gave me a friendly shove and slammed the door behind me. I groped around in the darkness, feeling the polished metal walls on either side. I knocked my knuckles against them and heard only a muffled thud — that meant the walls were several feet thick. Sweat was beading along my forehead and dripping down my cheeks, and I could hear the sound of my own breathing. Ahead, the air felt cooler.

  “Right this way,” Crane’s voice slithered out of the darkness.

  “I can’t see anything,”
I called out.

  “Yes, Leo, but I can see you on my surveillance camera. I will guide you. Just follow my voice.”

  I fumbled toward the sound and turned a corner, then saw a sliver of light at the end of the passageway. I followed it until I reached a metallic door. I pushed it open, and there he was, sitting at a polished black desk, the lantern on it shimmering off his pale white hands and shiny smooth head. Behind him, the wall was lined with old military muskets and rifles. To his right, a giant safelike contraption took up half the room. On the wall to his left, hung a life-size painting of an old balding woman with a face just like Crane’s.

  “Have a seat, Leo.” He motioned to a carved wooden chair in front of his desk.

  “No,” I said. “Not until you tell me what this is all about. I spent this afternoon doing you a favor, but you’re still messing with me.”

  Slowly, as he rocked back and forth in his chair, a smile spread across his face. “I see you’re beginning to speak up for yourself. Good. Very good, Leo.” He reached into a drawer, pulled out a folder, and tossed it on the desk.

  “What’s that?”

  “My return favor, Leo. I always honor a business transaction. Information about your Belgian diplomat.”

  I sat down and opened the folder on the desk. Inside was only a blank sheet of white paper.

  “There’s nothing here,” I snapped.

  “Exactly. There is no Bertrand Veirhelst in the flesh. Your Belgian diplomat only exists on paper. I’m afraid this Pieter, your little school-yard tough, was having a bit of fun with you. Bertrand Veirhelst is a straw man, as hollow as a drum.”