City of Masks by Daniel Hecht Page B

together into a thick snake of darkness. It came out like smoke but seemed to collect weight, growing as a long tube of shadow along the floor, writhing, arching, swelling thicker until it was as big around as a horse's belly. It looked like a water moccasin. Lila could hear the friction of its body on the floor, the rasp of scales. She couldn't breathe, couldn't even scream until its knotting coils had filled half the room.
    Jack woke up groggy, groping for the bedside light. "Lila? Peaches? What's goin' on?" he mumbled. Lila managed to find her lamp and snapped it on. When light filled the room, the snake didn't disappear instantly but rather took a second or two to fray into separate tentacles and suck back into the stove.
    Lila was pointing at the fireplace, but there was nothing for Jack to see. Shaking with her own pulse, she could only tell him it was a bad dream. She'd had a bad dream. She was sorry she'd wakened him. Bad dream.
    She had always hated snakes. The visitation had given her a shock, and the next day she felt sick, almost too weak to get out of bed. The housekeeper came for half the day, so that one wasn't so bad. But the next day Jack had to leave on a business trip, a realty seminar put on by the national affiliate company in Dallas. Jack couldn't skip it - he was supposed to make a presentation.
    Lila was left alone at the house for two days and nights.
    "Do I really have to do this?" Lila moaned.
    "Only if you want to," Cree said. "It will certainly help me, and I think it would help you, too. But it's up to you. Always."
    They had come to the bedroom she and Jack shared, a big room that was now about half furnished. A huge antique canopy bed dominated the wall opposite the fireplace, and two large mirrored armoires stood against the other walls. A pair of French doors opened onto a small balcony that hung among the branches of a magnolia tree. Through the dark green, waxy foliage, Cree could make out the backyard, bounded on the far side by a hedgelike thicket, the iron fence, and then the wall of the next house. Cree noticed that the mirrors on both armoires' doors were broken, big spiderweb cracks from some heavy impact, and in combination with the broken mirror downstairs it struck her as a significant detail. But it wasn't the right moment to ask Lila about it.
    Lila was shivering. She reached shakily for one bedpost and sat down on the edge of the mattress.
    Jack moved to her side, looking chastened. "I didn't know," he mumbled miserably. "I didn't really . . . get it. How bad it was. Or I wouldn't have gone."
    Lila stared at the coal stove as if she could still see the shadow snake emerging. The separate muscles of her face ticced, one above her eyebrow, another that tugged the corner of her lip.
    "I don't have what it takes for the blow-by-blow. I can't give you all the buildup. I can't tell every detail. I can't." Looking up at Jack, Lila took his hand and massaged it lovingly as if, Cree was surprised to see, she were suddenly worried about him. But when she went on, it was in that flat, almost mechanical voice, reciting it to get it over with: "That night I saw a wolf in the house. A black wolf. Yellow-green eyes. He just rounded the corner at a run and came bounding down the hallway. I barely had time to jump back in here and slam the door. I could hear him snuffling all along the crack and at the keyhole. I could see the shadows of his paws and muzzle under the door. And then I could hear him saying my name, this raspy, whispery voice, God help me I could hear the sound of those . . . long wolf lips kind of fluttering as he called my name over and over, and I thought, Oh, God, just let me be dead! Don't make me listen to this!" Lila's desperation had crescendoed again, and she struggled to find the impassivity that would let her go on. "And of course I knew there aren't wolves in New Orleans, and wolves can't talk. Which meant I was crazy. So I stood in here for a long time. After a while I