THE MAN WHO FEARED MASKS
Mr. Apondee was terrified by masks or false faces of any type. Halloween to him was an idiot's festival of unmitigated horror. He would sooner enter a tiger's lair than attend a masked ball. If he saw a false face harmlessly dangling in the window of a novelty shop, he would shudder and turn away. The memory of it would haunt him all evening long—even intrude in his dreams and torment him until he awoke, limp with nightmare panic.
The detailed circumstances surrounding the inception of Mr. Apondee's mask fear were somewhat hazy, since he was scarcely three years old at the time. But the particular moments of terror he remembered vividly, as if they had transpired within his recent adult life.
He was sitting in a huge circus tent with his father. It was his first circus; he was enormously excited, tense, somewhat fearful. He held tight to his father's hand. Suddenly all the lights went out. There were screams, frightened cries, roars, howls and monstrous bellowings. People began pushing and shoving, trying to force passage toward the entrances of the pitch-black tent.
In the whirlwind commotion he lost his grip on his father's hand. He was swept away in a trampling, cursing tide of sweating humanity. He fell down between the seats, screaming, and suddenly out of the darkness appeared a nightmare face, luminous with a green-silvery shine, huge of nose, gashed by great white rubbery lips which writhed with insane merriment. The face bent over him, with its tiny glittering eyes, its fearful pink mouth and its greasy shine.
His screams of a few moments before turned to delirious shrieks of ultimate terror. He remembered nothing more.
Eventually of course the lights went back on and the masked circus clown returned a screaming and hysterical child to its father.
The child screamed all the way out of the circus tent, screamed all the way home and screamed and sobbed half the night, until exhaustion brought hypnotic sleep.
The distressed parents finally forgot the unfortunate incident, but the child never did. In the recesses of his memory a grotesque and hideous mask wavered always just out of sight, awaiting its chance to loom out of the darkness, awaiting the sudden unexpected moment when it would leap into light and petrify him with pure terror.
The show window of a toy store might bring it lunging out at him. He might be swept with acute panic upon glancing up at a billboard advertising a traveling sideshow. Once he nearly fainted on the street when a weirdly masked "Man from Mars"—advertising a local movie—strode around a corner in front of him.
The fear remained with him through his childhood, through his adolescence and on into full maturity. It seemed impervious to the rationalizing of his adult years. It would not be argued away. Its roots had pierced the psychic marrow of his being and resisted all his efforts to wrench them out.
The obsessive fear haunted him to such an extent that he finally consulted a reputable psychiatrist.
The psychiatrist patiently heard him out and then painstakingly explained in simple layman language that his early childhood experience had made an impact on his impressionable, too-vulnerable young mind all out of proportion to its actual importance. He pointed out that the mask fear was far more than a physical one. True, the child had been buffeted by the circus crowd, had been shoved and pushed down between the seats—painfully and perhaps severely bruised. But the fear went deeper than that. When the lights in the circus tent went out, the child had been holding tight to his father's hand. The father represented security, comfort, protection, home. Suddenly the child was hurled into milling blackness and then out of the darkness appeared a hideous leering face which bore down on him with apparent evil intent. So—the psychiatrist explained—in Mr. Apondee's subconscious mind the mask—or any mask—had come to symbolize the loss of security, of stability and protection. It symbolized all of the inherited and acquired fears which lurked in Mr. Apondee's own psychic depths.
Mr. Apondee listened and he was impressed. He felt better. He believed that he now thoroughly understood the origin of the mask terror, and in understanding, he judged, was exorcism.
But this was only partially true. Although the explanation tended to alleviate Mr. Apondee's mask fear, it by no means entirely dispelled the fixation. The fear remained, buried deep in Mr. Apondee's psychic being, and even though it no longer flickered into furious life at the smallest draft of provocation, still it went on smouldering.
In his early thirties Mr. Apondee got married, and if his marriage had its occasional "ups and downs", it was probably no better and no worse than the average. All considered, it might be termed reasonably successful.
Probably Mr. Apondee believed it far more successful than did his spouse. Mrs. Apondee was frequently exasperated by her husband's lack of enterprise, by his timidity and by his tendency to accept rather than alter his lot.
But after the first few years she seldom complained. It did no good, and in any case Mr. Apondee had plenty of laudable qualities. Although his job was a modest one, he worked steadily at it. He didn't drink, nor stay out at night, nor grumble about the meals.
Mr. Apondee himself was quite satisfied with his circumstances. He had a faithful wife, a small but neat apartment home and a job which was probably his as long as he wanted it, providing he was willing to forego any prospect of raises within the foreseeable future. All in all, he felt that he possessed a measure of security.
He never mentioned his mask fear to his wife. He had an uncomfortable feeling that she would consider it silly, that she might even ridicule him. It was, after all, an awkward thing to explain to anyone and Mr. Apondee could see no point in broaching it.
If Mrs. Apondee had known about it, the chances are the surprise birthday party for Mr. Apondee would have been staged in a far less fanciful manner.
Actually, the introduction of the masks was an afterthought.
The five couples and Mrs. Apondee were crowded into the Apondee's small apartment late one October afternoon. A big birthday cake covered with pink icing and candles rested on a table in the living room. It was Mr. Apondee's birthday and they meant to surprise him when he came home from work at five-thirty.
Suddenly young Mrs. Tyler had an idea. She was giving a Halloween masquerade party later in the month, she said, and that very afternoon she had been out shopping for masks. She had them with her now. Why didn't they each put on a mask before Mr. Apondee came in? It would be great fun; for a minute he wouldn't know who any of them were and that would add to the element of surprise.
They all—including Mrs. Apondee—agreed with enthusiasm. Then a further eerie touch was added when fertile Mr. Fentonby suggested that they put out all the lights in the apartment, except in the vestibule, pull down the shades, and hold lighted birthday candles near their masked faces. When Mr. Apondee first came in, they would remain silent and he would be confronted by nothing but an assemblage of weird glowing masks, hovering, as it were, in mid-air.
Mr. Fentonby's suggestion was adopted with shouts of delight. At five-fifteen they slipped on their grotesque false faces, snapped out all the lights and got their little candles ready. Ten minutes later they drew the shades, lit their candles and waited breathlessly like mischievous children.
The minutes dragged, but presently they heard the click of the self-service elevator down the hall. And then Mr. Apondee's light but steady tread.
He was, as a matter of fact, slightly late. Work had piled up at the office and he was more tired than usual.
Opening the door into the tiny vestibule of his apartment, he sighed with contentment and relief. After hanging up his hat and coat, he strolled into the living room.
In that impossibly black place eleven luminous, nightmare masks floated suddenly out at him. They gleamed and flickered with an unearthly light all their own. The masks were different, but they were all hideous, all malevolent. Some had huge drooping noses; some, great white rubbery lips, grinning with insane merriment; some had tiny glittering eyes and fearful pink mouths.
For one terrible moment Mr. Apondee stood frozen and speechless. Then he began to scream. He screamed and kept on screaming and shouts of "Surprise!" died in eleven throats which were in turn suddenly stricken silent.
Candles were dropped, and some of the masks, but too late. Mr. Apondee plunged like a maddened thing through the darkened room. He headed for the only glimmer of natural light which was visible—a window.
He hurled himself through it, shade and all, and he was still screaming when he struck the cement walk, seven stories below.