Mask of Flies (24 page)

For a week, I
practiced, day and night. I sat with the cipher key open, and burned
the letter and corresponding symbol in my mind. Then I familiarized
myself with the locations of each symbol on the keyboard. The process
was extremely frustrating, and I nearly gave up on it multiple times.

When I stepped away, I
thought of Aart and the son I left behind. I thought of what a weak,
worthless person I have become, dwelling on my failure as a wife and
as a mother. These thoughts bit deeply, provoking more toxic
thoughts. I knew I had to keep occupied, or I would be overcome by
the poison. I planted myself back in front of the typewriter.

Over the next few days,
I didn’t allow myself to gravitate into poisonous territory, and
maintained my focus. I took a copy of
Mallay
Medical Terms
off of Roger’s shelf and transformed large
terminologies into cipher, much faster than the days prior. It wasn’t
perfect, but I began to reign in my accuracy towards in the evening.

On the weekend, I
eavesdropped on two older women talking on the porch next door—typing
their dialogue as fast and accurate as possible. I thought this
exercise most applicable to the actual task of transcribing the
meetings.

On Sunday night I told Roger I felt
ready.

The Farseer meeting
house was about 10 miles outside of the town. Roger walked carrying
the encrypted typewriter. We came to a splintered ruin of a house, in
the middle of the woods.

Roger looked at me from
over his shoulder. “This house acted as a safe house for the
Underground Railroad, designated to house fugitive slaves en route to
Canada.”

The insides blackened
with charred wood. An unsoiled steel door stood underneath a stairs
running upward. Roger took out the big brass key and opened it to a
descending staircase. We followed the carmine light from hanging
lanterns. Below the ground, a network of hallways wormed through the
cellar; the space much larger than what I perceived from viewing the
upper level.

“The lower quarters
were used to house over a hundred runaway slaves at a time.” Roger
walked in front of me, guiding me though different hallways until he
came to a large chamber. “This room was a common area, but now our
meeting place.” An enormous oak table sat as the centerpiece of the
room. It could’ve easily seated 25, but only 13 were present. Roger
took the typewriter and placed it on a small desk in the far corner
of the room.

Roger introduced me the
members at the table. “This jolly fellow is Mr. Greenfield from the
North American League of Psychic Research.”

The man in his middle
years had a red tipped nose, which was most likely attributed to his
fondness for a bottle. He was bald at the top of his head and had
hair closely tapered around his ears. His bush like beard obstructed
any distinct features of the bottom of his face. He stood to shake my
hand.

“This is the lovely
Ms. Roux, a fellow colleague from the University—specializing in
parapsychology.”

She was imposingly
pretty. Her hair fell down her shoulders in blonde ringlets, and her
bosoms perked out markedly from her form-fitting blouse. She smiled
at me with perfect teeth.

“This is our fearless
leader, Mr. Morrow, a liaison of the United States of America.”

The man could have been
between 35 and 50 years of age. His gaunt features cast an air of
illness. The black hair on his head faded into the dark brick wall,
turning his face into a floating specter in the dim light. And those
pale blue eyes were cold, like desolate planets. Morrow nodded his
head in my direction to acknowledge my presence and greeted me with a
faint whisper.

I sat by the
typewriter, and they began the meeting immediately. I typed their
discussion about how their standardized tests prove “psychic
ability”, as they put it. Morrow wanted more baselines, more proof
to show to his superiors. Roux and Mr. Green argued that the current
tests were exhausting enough.

I attempted to keep up
with the back and forth banter, but I fell behind. I summarized and
omitted in a scramble to catch up. After Mr. Morrow slammed the gavel
and dismissed the meeting, I stayed behind, editing the minutes and
filling in the blanks.

When Roger read it over, he seemed
pleased with my accuracy. “Looks like you have the job Angeni.”

When the sun waned,
Roger drove me to a cottage that looked like a gingerbread house. “We
are going to talk to Ms. Roux about your state of mind. She is a type
of psychologist that is well equipped to treat someone of your
talents. She will ask you about your talents and also discuss how you
could help with our testing. Is this going to be okay with you?”

“Yes, as payment.
It’s fine.”

Ms. Roux greeted us
with her big smile. Roger took a seat in the parlor and she guided me
into a back room furnished with a small round table and two chairs
and gestured for me to sit.

“I know little about
the Seneca people and their belief system. Perhaps if I had a better
understanding it could help us today,” Ms. Roux said.

I tried to describe the
Seneca’s bond with nature, how we attune ourselves to the cyclical
energies within life.

She scribbled notes
without breaking eye contact. “And death?”

“Yes, life and
death.” I told her how I used to leave my body and look through the
lens of nature. “Once I gave birth to my son it stopped. The gift
replaced with emptiness—”

“There are a few
others here that claim to have separated their consciousness from
body, mostly medicinally induced or in a dream state, but none at
will. It’s termed as astral projection.” She paused. “In
complete control . . .”

“Now lost,” I told
her about High Hat and how he tricked me deeper into depression. “I
choose Aart to die.”

Ms. Roux broke her eye
contact and spoke to the table. “There are occurrences of this type
of depression that worsens over time, to the point of psychosis. The
inflicted mother may see and hear things that aren’t necessarily
there. This High Hat, a feared symbol of the Seneca community, could
be an artifice of an ill mind, only appearing when you’re put in
overwhelming circumstances. You knew Aart worked a dangerous job and
perhaps precognition did come into play, but—”

“He is real!” my
voice echoed through the corridor. I projected greater than I
intended.

She smiled politely and closed her
book. “I think that is enough for now. These conversations can get
emotional.” She handed me a box of Hawthorne and Motherwort tea.
“This will keep you from seeing High Hat—next time we will talk
about how you can help me and the project.”

That night, Roger
tried to kiss me, but I pulled away. I thought didn’t have the
capacity to care for a man after everything. But I always liked
Roger; he was always well groomed and smelled nice. He was different
than Aart, less severe, but more passionate about life in general.
Sophisticated.

When he persisted a
second time, I gave in. His soft hands caressed my arms as he kissed
me. This awakened a lost hunger from within. I felt like a person,
alive. I returned Roger’s advances and took him on floor. I
straddled him and ripped apart his shirt. The buttons popped off, and
I kissed his pale skin. He writhed, losing his composure. I shared
his hunger; it was like a fire being lit from the bottom of my
stomach, catching the rest of my body. We ripped off the remainder of
our clothes, as if they were covered with poisonous insects.

He took me. Then I took
him. We were in a constant struggle for position—this furious cycle
continued for moments that could have been a lifetime.

After, we laid on the
floor sharing a hand rolled cigarette.

Roger blew a circular
ring of smoke. “I have a feeling the group will be giving you much
more attention, you may have to start training a new stenographer.”

Dec 23, 1905

I began the
tests—such greedy tests. It started with lessons from members of
the community. An elder woman, Elizabeth explained the art of the
séance, contacting the dead, by evoking a spirit’s transmissions.
We lit candles, closed our eyes, just emptiness.

Then a man held up the
backs of playing cards and wanted me to name them. I drew blank.

“I feel like I’m
wasting everyone’s time”, I told Ms. Roux.

“These are nothing. We needed
resources from the community, and in turn we let them believe their
talents are being used for something important. We will begin the
real trials soon.”

The following week
they started.

Mr. Greenfield walked
me into a detached chamber in the Farseer meeting room. “This is
Dr. James Mesmer, renowned hypnotherapist, grandson of the famous
Franz Mesmer.”

After the
introductions, the hypnotherapist began his commands in monotone. A
metronome ticked behind him. The room faded out into a dark fog, and
I fell beneath the black current again.

The violent force
snatched me up. The feeling of total helplessness, I had forgotten
since being lost in the forest. Sucked under deeper, I hit the
ground, sitting in the same chair, in the same room inside the
Farseer compound, but the room was submerged under the dark water.
Its black essence flowed around me. My audience sat in their chairs,
their skin pale, see-through membranes. The darkness concentrated in
Mesmer’s swollen joints, bubbling in Mr. Greenfield’s diseased
liver, provoking the growth of the swollen mass on Morrow’s brain.

Snap, everything
returned to normal. Mesmer stood in front of me with his hand in my
face.

Red faced Mr.
Greenfield sat with his chest puffed out like some proud bird. “Tell
us girl, what did you see?”

I looked at Ms. Roux

She nodded. “Go on
now, tell us.”

I told them of my
vision, told the malady that flowed through each of the afflicted.
Mr. Greenfield puffed up even more and exited the room. Roux and
Mesmer both excused themselves to check on him. Morrow sat alone and
smiled—something awoke in his frozen eyes.

He scrawled some notes.
“Now here is something we can use.” Then he exited the room.

Alone, I walked out of
the room, and into the empty meeting chamber. I was relieved to see
Roger at the entryway, not wanting to navigate the labyrinthine
hallways by myself.

One side of his mouth a
cracked grin, the other side pursed. “Made quite a stir in there I
see. You seemed to make an impression on Morrow though. That’s a
good thing.

It wasn’t.

That night someone
knocked at the door. Roger woke up next to me and struggled to find
clothes. He donned his robe and went out of the bedroom. I followed
him, peeking out into the foyer. When Roger opened the front door a
figure cloaked in red stood there silently and handed him an
envelope.

After reading the letter, his tired,
exasperated countenance was replaced by vacancy. “Morrow wants us
to return to the table.”

Inside the meeting
chamber, Morrow perched at the head of the table with an amused look
on his face. Two cloaked men stood next to him, and on the table sat
the horrible mask I thought I left behind.

“The scope of this
project is important; it will set the foundation for the future and
culminate into a sizeable advantage for this country,” Morrow said.
“I’m forced to do some difficult things because of my love and
hope for this ideal. You see I took the liberty of recovering your
mask. Your family was happy to be rid of it.”

“That mask makes me
ill of mind.”

Morrow whispered
something to one of his men. They grabbed Roger by each elbow and
escorted him out of the room. They shut the door from the outside, I
heard a lock engage.

“I didn’t agree to
this.” Roger’s shouts could be heard through the heavy door.

“Tonight we will test
your hypothesis.” Morrow pulled out my journal from underneath the
desk and set it on the table next to the mask. “An interesting
read, you are quite a writer . . . Put Roger aside, he is merely
doing his job. In fact, the journal was his idea: a way to streamline
tests for promising talents. ‘Each talent is as unique as the
individual possessing it’ he told me. So here we are.”

Such betrayal, Roger
scouted me during all those visits. I thought he simply enjoyed my
company, perhaps too much.

Morrow called down the
corridor behind him. Two more shrouded men emerged; the smaller of
the two held a tray with barber tools. The larger cloak forced me to
sit and attempted to bind me with leather straps. I fought him, but
the smaller man put down the tray and helped overpower me. Once the
straps restrained me, around wrists and ankles, the smaller cloak
began snipping off my hair. When it was shortened to bristle, he
applied lather and started to shave me bald with a straight razor.

“Difficult things.”
When it was done Morrow pointed to the smaller man. “You’re
forgetting something.”

The cloak reached into
a pouch on the tray and pulled out a spider web of wires and discs
and then placed the apparatus on my head. I felt adhesive around the
disks harden to my bald scalp.

The cloaks pulled me up
from the chair and moved me out of the room. Morrow led the way,
holding the incongruous mask, down a faintly lit corridor, down more
stairs. I dragged my feet and tried to pull away, but there was no
escape.

We came to a large room
with portholes in the floor. Morrow opened a hatch on the ground with
difficulty and gradually descended. We followed, down a ramp that
took us into a long narrow hallway. Red-orange light emitted from a
room at the end of the corridor. When we came to the room I saw a
large charcoal brazier was the source, and I began to sweat
immediately.

The men slammed me into
a platform on the wall. Again they bound me, hands, feet, and head.