"Phantom" (Susan Kay)
I'm reading "Phantom" by Susan Kay right now, and it is AWESOME! I'm going to post the part that totally made me cry! !!!**I DO NOT OWN ANYTHING CONTAINED IN THIS EXCERPT; ALL BELONGS TO SUSAN KAY&WHOEVER OWNS HER BOOK RIGHTS©**
He was five when we had our confrontation over the mask. Until that terrible summer evening he wore it with unquestioning obedience, removing it only to sleep and never setting foot beyond the confines of the attic bedroom without it. So fiercely unbending was my regime that he would no more have considered appearing without it than he would have considered appearing naked-at least that is what I thought until that night. It was the evening of his fifth birthday and I was expecting Marie for supper. I hadn't invited her. With her stubborn grain of well-meaning she had issued an ultimatum, insisting that I celebrate an event which until now I had contrived to ignore. "You can't continue to let the occasion pass unmarked," she told me with a curious finality that brooked no opposition. "I shall bring him a present and we shall all take supper together in a civilized manner." I spent the day in the kitchen, with the door closed, contriving to keep myself busy so that I need not be reminded of the reason for this grim farce. I might have been preparing to feed the entire village. Batches of cakes and tarts issued in an insane procession from my oven, but still I went on mixing and stirring in the still, stifling heat, like a woman possessed. And all the time I worked I was aware of the piano playing softly in the drawing room. He did not come pestering, like a normal child, begging to lick the spoon or steal a cake with the healthy impatience of his age. His complete indifference to food was merely another source of conflict between us. At length, when I went in and told him to go upstairs and put on his best clothes, he turned on the piano stool to look at me with surprise. "It isn't Sunday ... is Father Mansart coming to say Mass again?" "No," I replied, wiping my hands on my apron, and not looking at him directly. "It's your birthday." He stared at me blankly and I felt a perfectly unreasonable irritation rising inside at the shameful necessity of explaining this basic phenomenon. "The anniversary of your birth," I said shortly. "You were born five years ago today and the event should be celebrated." "Like a requiem?" For a second I wondered if he was mocking me, but the eyes fixed on mine were entirely innocent and puzzled. "Not exactly," I said with difficulty. "Then there won't be a Dies Irae?" I heard the sudden disappointment in his voice. "Or an Agnus Dei?" "No ... but there will be a special supper." I saw his interest shrivel and his glance wander back to the score on which he had been working. "And a present," I found myself adding suddenly. "Mademoiselle Perrault is bringing you a present, Erik. I expect you to remember your manners and thank her nicely." He turned to look at me curiously and for a horrible moment I thought I was going to be obliged to explain that too. But he said no more, only continued to gaze at me thoughtfully. "Go upstairs and get changed while I set the table," I told him hastily. As I pulled a tablecloth from the drawer, I was aware that he had made no effort to move. "Mama." "What is it now?" I demanded irritably. "Will you give me a present too?" I put the napkins out on the table with a trembling hand. "Of course," I replied mechanically. "Is there something particular that you want?" He came to stand beside me and something about his taut silence made me suddenly very uneasy. I sensed that he was afraid of my refusal, so no doubt whatever it was he wanted was going to be highly expensive. "May I have anything I want?" he asked uncertainly. "Within reason." "May I have two of them?" "Why should you need two?" I inquired warily. "So that I can save one for when the other is used up." I began to relax. This didn't sound very alarming ... nothing more extravagant than a ream of good quality paper, by the sound of it. Or perhaps a box of sweets... "What is it you want?" I demanded with sudden confidence. Silence. I watched him playing with the napkins. "Erik, I've had quite enough of this silly game now. If you don't tell me what you want straightaway, you will have nothing at all." He jumped at the sharpness of my tone and began to twist a napkin between his thin fingers. "I want- I want two ..." He stopped and put his hands on the table, as though to steady himself. "For God's sake!" I snapped. "Two what?" He looked up at me. "Kisses," he whispered tremulously. "One now and one to save." I stared at him in horror and without any warning burst into uncontrollable tears and sank down at the table. "You must not ask that." I sobbed. "You must never, never ask that again ... do you understand me, Erik ... never!" He shrank from my noisy grief in horror and backed away to the door. "Why are you crying?" he stammered. I made a mighty effort to control myself. "I'm not ... crying." I gasped. "Yes, you are!" he shouted in a voice that was suddenly ugly with rage. "You're crying and you won't give me my birthday present. You made me ask-you made me ask-and then you said no. Well, I don't want a birthday. ... I don't like birthdays. ... I hate them!" The door slammed behind him and a moment later I heard the echoing bang from upstairs. I sat where he had left me, staring at the napkin he had thrown on the floor. When at last I stood up wearily, it was to see Marie walking purposefully up the garden path, with a parcel under her arm. As we sat down together at the table I was dreadfully aware of the empty place setting. "Where is he?" asked Marie, broaching the subject that had been between us since her arrival. "In his room," I said grimly. "He won't come out... I've called him several times, but you know what he's like. There is nothing to be done with him when he flies into one of his tantrums." Marie looked at the parcel she had placed on the chiffonier. "Does he know it's his birthday?" "Of course he knows!" I said angrily. Lifting the lid off the tureen, I began to ladle soup a little wildly into her bowl, trying desperately to recapture the determined, busy mania which kept my terrible thoughts at bay. As long as my hands were moving, my mind remained blissfully numb and I could avoid facing my own wicked inadequacy as a mother. A mother who could not bring herself to kiss her only child; not even on his birthday; not even when he begged. The tragic dignity of his request had unnerved me so much that my hands were still shaking. I spilled soup on the cream lace of the tablecloth and mopped at it with a muttered curse. The door behind me opened and I stood rigid, watching Marie's face turn white and her hand fly instinctively to her mouth. The horror in her eyes lasted for only a split second before she regained her composure sufficiently to force her slack lips into a strained smile. "Good evening, Erik, dear ... how nice you look in that new suit. Come and sit beside me and have your supper. Then afterward we shall open your present." When I turned and saw him standing there in the open doorway, without the mask, my heart seemed to stop dead in my breast. He had done this for spite; he had done this to punish and humiliate me... "How dare you!" I spat. "How dare you do this, you wicked child!" "Madeleine ..." Marie half rose in her chair, one hand outstretched to me in a nervous gesture of appeal. "It really doesn't matter-" "Be silent!" I snapped. "I will deal with this without your interference. Erik! Go back to your room and put on the mask. If you ever do this again I shall whip you for it." He shivered and the grotesquely malformed lips puckered, as though he was about to cry, but still he stood there stubbornly, both hands clenched into fists of defiance. "I don't like the mask," he muttered. "It's hot and it hurts me. It makes sore places." I could see those places now. Beneath the hollow sockets of his eyes the livid flesh, thin as parchment, had been rubbed raw by the constant pressure of a mask which was evidently too tight. Because I did not look at him more closely than I had to, I had failed to notice how much he had grown. "Go to your room," I repeated unsteadily. "I shall make a new mask after supper, and you will not come down without it again. Do you hear me, Erik? Never!" "Why?" he demanded sullenly. "Why must I always wear the mask? No one else has to." A red mist of rage swam before my eyes, an explosion of fury that blew the last shreds of my self-control to pieces. I flew at him and began to shake him so savagely that I heard his teeth rattle. "Madeleine!" sobbed Marie helplessly. "Madeleine, for pity's sake-" "He wants to know why!" I screamed at her. "Then he shall know ... by God, he shall know!" I dug my nails into the thin material of his shirt and dragged him from the room, up the stairs, before the only mirror in the house. "Look at yourself!" I spat. "Look at yourself in the mirror and see why you must wear a mask. Look!" He stared at the glass with such dumb, disbelieving horror that all the fury shriveled and died within me. And then, before I could stop him, he screamed and flung himself at the mirror, pummeling the glass with his clenched fists in a mad frenzy of terror. The glass shattered. Shards flew in all directions, embedding themselves in his wrists and fingers, so that suddenly he was bleeding from dozens of lacerations. But still he went on screaming and pounding the fractured mirror with bloody hands; and when I tried to restrain him he bit me-he bit me like a wild animal that was out of its mind with fear. A hand fell on my arm. Marie's voice, oddly cold and determined, told me to go downstairs and find bandages. When I returned, she had coaxed him from the debris of smashed glass and was picking the slivers from his fingers with a pair of tweezers. I could not watch... I waited for her in the drawing room, but she did not come back down again. I assumed she had put him to bed and was sitting with him; I did not dare to go upstairs and see. Worming my way into the farthest corner of the sofa, I spent the rest of the night stitching steadily at a new mask and staring into the empty hearth. Shortly before dawn, when he woke screaming from the first of what proved to be a long succession of nightmares, she came into the room with a candle in her hand, looking gray and drained ... and angry. "He's asking for you," she said grimly. "God knows why, but it's you he wants. Go upstairs and comfort him." She stood in front of me like an avenging angel and I shrank from her strangely uncompromising figure. "I can't," I whispered. "I can't go to him." Without warning she suddenly leaned forward and dealt me a resounding slap across the cheek. "Get up!" she stormed. "Get up, you spoiled, sniveling brat! All your life you've been spoiled ... by your parents, by Charles, by me ... everyone pandering to Madeleine, dear, pretty Madeleine. Well, it's not enough simply to be pretty, do you hear me, Madeleine? It doesn't excuse you from human obligations. It doesn't permit you to poison a child's mind and cripple his soul. You should hang for what you have done to him since he was born ... you should burn!" She struck me again and then turned away, sobbing hopelessly and sinking into the chair beside the hearth. And shocked as I was, I found myself remembering the day I had found her in the dormitory at the convent, standing on the bed to avoid the huge spider that sat peaceably in her path to the door. "Get rid of it, but don't hurt it," she had begged me with white-faced intensity. "It can't help being ugly." I had dropped a book on the spider, in my brisk, heartless manner, and squashed it nicely. She had refused to speak to me for days after... I could not get that picture out of my head, as I dragged myself up the staircase, with one hand against my burning cheek. I could not forget that mangled spider... The floorboards creaked beneath my feet and I heard renewed terror in Erik's cry. "Mama? Mama?" "Hush," I murmured. "It's me, Erik... Hush, now." I heard him sigh with relief as I walked into the room. One small bandaged hand groped briefly in my direction, then subsided wearily back on the coverlet. "I don't feel well," he complained fretfully. "I know." I sat stiffly on the edge of my bed, thinking how small he looked in its great expanse, how small and how helpless. "I'm sorry. Go back to sleep now and you'll feel better in the morning." He clutched at the coverlet in alarm. "I don't want to go to sleep," he panted. "If I go to sleep it will come back ... the face! The face will come back!" I closed my eyes and swallowed hard over the lump which seemed to be blocking my air passage. "Erik," I said helplessly, "you must try to forget about the face now." "I can't forget it," he whispered. "It was there in the mirror and it frightened me. Did you see it, Mama, did you see it too?" "Erik, the face will never hurt you." "I don't want it to come back!" He sobbed wildly. "I want you to make it go away forever!" I took a deep breath and looked down on the little corpse face against the pillow. The deep- socketed eyes were staring desperately into mine, seeking the reassurance that I alone could give. And I knew then that, in spite of his rapidly burgeoning genius, he was still too young to bear the reality of this burden. "The mask will make the face go away," I said, as gently as I could. "As long as you wear it, you will never see the face anymore." "Is the mask magic?" he demanded with sudden, passionate interest. "Yes." I bowed my head, so that our eyes no longer met. "I made it magic to keep you safe. The mask is your friend, Erik. As long as you wear it, no mirror can ever show you the face again." He was silent then, and when I showed him the new mask he accepted it without question and put it on hastily with his clumsy, bandaged fingers. But when I stood up to go, he reacted with panic and clutched at my gown. "Don't go! Don't leave me here in the dark." "You are not in the dark," I said patiently. "Look, I have left the candle." But I knew, as I looked at him, that it would have made no difference if I had left him fifty candles. The darkness he feared was in his own mind and there was no light in the universe powerful enough to take that darkness from him. With a sigh of resignation I sat back on the bed and began to sing softly; and before I had finished the first verse, he was asleep. The bandages on his hands and wrists showed white and eerie in the candlelight, as I eased my skirts from his grasp. I knew that Marie was right. Physically and mentally, I had scarred him for life.
That, my good friends, is WRITING! ((NOTE: To read "Phantom" on-line for free, go to http://www.freewebs.com/unitedminority/SUSAN%20KAY.txt)) I am loving this book so much I may still buy it! Well, I'm about to have to get offline, so...
*DOIT4JESUS*
JESUS LOVES YOU!
AMANDA
He was five when we had our confrontation over the mask. Until that terrible summer evening he wore it with unquestioning obedience, removing it only to sleep and never setting foot beyond the confines of the attic bedroom without it. So fiercely unbending was my regime that he would no more have considered appearing without it than he would have considered appearing naked-at least that is what I thought until that night. It was the evening of his fifth birthday and I was expecting Marie for supper. I hadn't invited her. With her stubborn grain of well-meaning she had issued an ultimatum, insisting that I celebrate an event which until now I had contrived to ignore. "You can't continue to let the occasion pass unmarked," she told me with a curious finality that brooked no opposition. "I shall bring him a present and we shall all take supper together in a civilized manner." I spent the day in the kitchen, with the door closed, contriving to keep myself busy so that I need not be reminded of the reason for this grim farce. I might have been preparing to feed the entire village. Batches of cakes and tarts issued in an insane procession from my oven, but still I went on mixing and stirring in the still, stifling heat, like a woman possessed. And all the time I worked I was aware of the piano playing softly in the drawing room. He did not come pestering, like a normal child, begging to lick the spoon or steal a cake with the healthy impatience of his age. His complete indifference to food was merely another source of conflict between us. At length, when I went in and told him to go upstairs and put on his best clothes, he turned on the piano stool to look at me with surprise. "It isn't Sunday ... is Father Mansart coming to say Mass again?" "No," I replied, wiping my hands on my apron, and not looking at him directly. "It's your birthday." He stared at me blankly and I felt a perfectly unreasonable irritation rising inside at the shameful necessity of explaining this basic phenomenon. "The anniversary of your birth," I said shortly. "You were born five years ago today and the event should be celebrated." "Like a requiem?" For a second I wondered if he was mocking me, but the eyes fixed on mine were entirely innocent and puzzled. "Not exactly," I said with difficulty. "Then there won't be a Dies Irae?" I heard the sudden disappointment in his voice. "Or an Agnus Dei?" "No ... but there will be a special supper." I saw his interest shrivel and his glance wander back to the score on which he had been working. "And a present," I found myself adding suddenly. "Mademoiselle Perrault is bringing you a present, Erik. I expect you to remember your manners and thank her nicely." He turned to look at me curiously and for a horrible moment I thought I was going to be obliged to explain that too. But he said no more, only continued to gaze at me thoughtfully. "Go upstairs and get changed while I set the table," I told him hastily. As I pulled a tablecloth from the drawer, I was aware that he had made no effort to move. "Mama." "What is it now?" I demanded irritably. "Will you give me a present too?" I put the napkins out on the table with a trembling hand. "Of course," I replied mechanically. "Is there something particular that you want?" He came to stand beside me and something about his taut silence made me suddenly very uneasy. I sensed that he was afraid of my refusal, so no doubt whatever it was he wanted was going to be highly expensive. "May I have anything I want?" he asked uncertainly. "Within reason." "May I have two of them?" "Why should you need two?" I inquired warily. "So that I can save one for when the other is used up." I began to relax. This didn't sound very alarming ... nothing more extravagant than a ream of good quality paper, by the sound of it. Or perhaps a box of sweets... "What is it you want?" I demanded with sudden confidence. Silence. I watched him playing with the napkins. "Erik, I've had quite enough of this silly game now. If you don't tell me what you want straightaway, you will have nothing at all." He jumped at the sharpness of my tone and began to twist a napkin between his thin fingers. "I want- I want two ..." He stopped and put his hands on the table, as though to steady himself. "For God's sake!" I snapped. "Two what?" He looked up at me. "Kisses," he whispered tremulously. "One now and one to save." I stared at him in horror and without any warning burst into uncontrollable tears and sank down at the table. "You must not ask that." I sobbed. "You must never, never ask that again ... do you understand me, Erik ... never!" He shrank from my noisy grief in horror and backed away to the door. "Why are you crying?" he stammered. I made a mighty effort to control myself. "I'm not ... crying." I gasped. "Yes, you are!" he shouted in a voice that was suddenly ugly with rage. "You're crying and you won't give me my birthday present. You made me ask-you made me ask-and then you said no. Well, I don't want a birthday. ... I don't like birthdays. ... I hate them!" The door slammed behind him and a moment later I heard the echoing bang from upstairs. I sat where he had left me, staring at the napkin he had thrown on the floor. When at last I stood up wearily, it was to see Marie walking purposefully up the garden path, with a parcel under her arm. As we sat down together at the table I was dreadfully aware of the empty place setting. "Where is he?" asked Marie, broaching the subject that had been between us since her arrival. "In his room," I said grimly. "He won't come out... I've called him several times, but you know what he's like. There is nothing to be done with him when he flies into one of his tantrums." Marie looked at the parcel she had placed on the chiffonier. "Does he know it's his birthday?" "Of course he knows!" I said angrily. Lifting the lid off the tureen, I began to ladle soup a little wildly into her bowl, trying desperately to recapture the determined, busy mania which kept my terrible thoughts at bay. As long as my hands were moving, my mind remained blissfully numb and I could avoid facing my own wicked inadequacy as a mother. A mother who could not bring herself to kiss her only child; not even on his birthday; not even when he begged. The tragic dignity of his request had unnerved me so much that my hands were still shaking. I spilled soup on the cream lace of the tablecloth and mopped at it with a muttered curse. The door behind me opened and I stood rigid, watching Marie's face turn white and her hand fly instinctively to her mouth. The horror in her eyes lasted for only a split second before she regained her composure sufficiently to force her slack lips into a strained smile. "Good evening, Erik, dear ... how nice you look in that new suit. Come and sit beside me and have your supper. Then afterward we shall open your present." When I turned and saw him standing there in the open doorway, without the mask, my heart seemed to stop dead in my breast. He had done this for spite; he had done this to punish and humiliate me... "How dare you!" I spat. "How dare you do this, you wicked child!" "Madeleine ..." Marie half rose in her chair, one hand outstretched to me in a nervous gesture of appeal. "It really doesn't matter-" "Be silent!" I snapped. "I will deal with this without your interference. Erik! Go back to your room and put on the mask. If you ever do this again I shall whip you for it." He shivered and the grotesquely malformed lips puckered, as though he was about to cry, but still he stood there stubbornly, both hands clenched into fists of defiance. "I don't like the mask," he muttered. "It's hot and it hurts me. It makes sore places." I could see those places now. Beneath the hollow sockets of his eyes the livid flesh, thin as parchment, had been rubbed raw by the constant pressure of a mask which was evidently too tight. Because I did not look at him more closely than I had to, I had failed to notice how much he had grown. "Go to your room," I repeated unsteadily. "I shall make a new mask after supper, and you will not come down without it again. Do you hear me, Erik? Never!" "Why?" he demanded sullenly. "Why must I always wear the mask? No one else has to." A red mist of rage swam before my eyes, an explosion of fury that blew the last shreds of my self-control to pieces. I flew at him and began to shake him so savagely that I heard his teeth rattle. "Madeleine!" sobbed Marie helplessly. "Madeleine, for pity's sake-" "He wants to know why!" I screamed at her. "Then he shall know ... by God, he shall know!" I dug my nails into the thin material of his shirt and dragged him from the room, up the stairs, before the only mirror in the house. "Look at yourself!" I spat. "Look at yourself in the mirror and see why you must wear a mask. Look!" He stared at the glass with such dumb, disbelieving horror that all the fury shriveled and died within me. And then, before I could stop him, he screamed and flung himself at the mirror, pummeling the glass with his clenched fists in a mad frenzy of terror. The glass shattered. Shards flew in all directions, embedding themselves in his wrists and fingers, so that suddenly he was bleeding from dozens of lacerations. But still he went on screaming and pounding the fractured mirror with bloody hands; and when I tried to restrain him he bit me-he bit me like a wild animal that was out of its mind with fear. A hand fell on my arm. Marie's voice, oddly cold and determined, told me to go downstairs and find bandages. When I returned, she had coaxed him from the debris of smashed glass and was picking the slivers from his fingers with a pair of tweezers. I could not watch... I waited for her in the drawing room, but she did not come back down again. I assumed she had put him to bed and was sitting with him; I did not dare to go upstairs and see. Worming my way into the farthest corner of the sofa, I spent the rest of the night stitching steadily at a new mask and staring into the empty hearth. Shortly before dawn, when he woke screaming from the first of what proved to be a long succession of nightmares, she came into the room with a candle in her hand, looking gray and drained ... and angry. "He's asking for you," she said grimly. "God knows why, but it's you he wants. Go upstairs and comfort him." She stood in front of me like an avenging angel and I shrank from her strangely uncompromising figure. "I can't," I whispered. "I can't go to him." Without warning she suddenly leaned forward and dealt me a resounding slap across the cheek. "Get up!" she stormed. "Get up, you spoiled, sniveling brat! All your life you've been spoiled ... by your parents, by Charles, by me ... everyone pandering to Madeleine, dear, pretty Madeleine. Well, it's not enough simply to be pretty, do you hear me, Madeleine? It doesn't excuse you from human obligations. It doesn't permit you to poison a child's mind and cripple his soul. You should hang for what you have done to him since he was born ... you should burn!" She struck me again and then turned away, sobbing hopelessly and sinking into the chair beside the hearth. And shocked as I was, I found myself remembering the day I had found her in the dormitory at the convent, standing on the bed to avoid the huge spider that sat peaceably in her path to the door. "Get rid of it, but don't hurt it," she had begged me with white-faced intensity. "It can't help being ugly." I had dropped a book on the spider, in my brisk, heartless manner, and squashed it nicely. She had refused to speak to me for days after... I could not get that picture out of my head, as I dragged myself up the staircase, with one hand against my burning cheek. I could not forget that mangled spider... The floorboards creaked beneath my feet and I heard renewed terror in Erik's cry. "Mama? Mama?" "Hush," I murmured. "It's me, Erik... Hush, now." I heard him sigh with relief as I walked into the room. One small bandaged hand groped briefly in my direction, then subsided wearily back on the coverlet. "I don't feel well," he complained fretfully. "I know." I sat stiffly on the edge of my bed, thinking how small he looked in its great expanse, how small and how helpless. "I'm sorry. Go back to sleep now and you'll feel better in the morning." He clutched at the coverlet in alarm. "I don't want to go to sleep," he panted. "If I go to sleep it will come back ... the face! The face will come back!" I closed my eyes and swallowed hard over the lump which seemed to be blocking my air passage. "Erik," I said helplessly, "you must try to forget about the face now." "I can't forget it," he whispered. "It was there in the mirror and it frightened me. Did you see it, Mama, did you see it too?" "Erik, the face will never hurt you." "I don't want it to come back!" He sobbed wildly. "I want you to make it go away forever!" I took a deep breath and looked down on the little corpse face against the pillow. The deep- socketed eyes were staring desperately into mine, seeking the reassurance that I alone could give. And I knew then that, in spite of his rapidly burgeoning genius, he was still too young to bear the reality of this burden. "The mask will make the face go away," I said, as gently as I could. "As long as you wear it, you will never see the face anymore." "Is the mask magic?" he demanded with sudden, passionate interest. "Yes." I bowed my head, so that our eyes no longer met. "I made it magic to keep you safe. The mask is your friend, Erik. As long as you wear it, no mirror can ever show you the face again." He was silent then, and when I showed him the new mask he accepted it without question and put it on hastily with his clumsy, bandaged fingers. But when I stood up to go, he reacted with panic and clutched at my gown. "Don't go! Don't leave me here in the dark." "You are not in the dark," I said patiently. "Look, I have left the candle." But I knew, as I looked at him, that it would have made no difference if I had left him fifty candles. The darkness he feared was in his own mind and there was no light in the universe powerful enough to take that darkness from him. With a sigh of resignation I sat back on the bed and began to sing softly; and before I had finished the first verse, he was asleep. The bandages on his hands and wrists showed white and eerie in the candlelight, as I eased my skirts from his grasp. I knew that Marie was right. Physically and mentally, I had scarred him for life.
That, my good friends, is WRITING! ((NOTE: To read "Phantom" on-line for free, go to http://www.freewebs.com/unitedminority/SUSAN%20KAY.txt)) I am loving this book so much I may still buy it! Well, I'm about to have to get offline, so...
*DOIT4JESUS*
JESUS LOVES YOU!
AMANDA