Chapter 14

XIV

Skull Mask

Thunder rumbles and rain begins to fall. Cubi pulls the hood of his coat over his head and hunches forward. Soon his feet are splashing in the bursting raindrops that cover the pavement. The faux beeswax buildings of Antennaton loom from the haze of falling water. Cubi walks briskly down the familiar streets, towards home.

"Cubiform…" A soft voice seems to coo, half shrouded in the hiss of rain.

Cubi keeps walking, yawning into a sleeve-concealed hand.

"Cubiform. We see you…"

Cubi straightens up and looks around, startled.

Three humans, their faces concealed behind skull masks, are crouched by the side of a letter box. They stare at him with bright eyes shrouded in dark make up and shadow. They are wearing clothes appropriate for a night out on the town, but seem unfazed by the rain as it soaks them through. At least one of them is a woman.

"Hello," Cubi says.

The three of them just peer around the post box. One of them lets out a low, prolonged hoot.

"Okay," Cubi says. "Nice chatting with you."

He walks onwards, hearing their quiet splashing as they follow him. He looks over his shoulder. They scurry from shadow to shadow, hiding behind the street furniture and peering around it at him.

"You're really scary," Cubi calls back. "I tremble in my water-laden shoes at the prospect of being peered at by skeletons."

Cubi turns to look where he's going and stops dead in his tracks. A woman in a skull mask is standing right in front of him, rain streaming down her white plaster features and bare, tattooed arms. Her hair is long and braided - apparently black in this light. The tattoos on her arms depict, in great detail, the bones that lie beneath the skin.

She stands up straight, feet wide apart.

"Oh!" Cubi says. "How do you do?"

She says nothing. As Cubi walks around her, trying to look as friendly as he can, she twists her upper body around to keep her skull face and fervent eyes aimed squarely at him. After Cubi has passed her, she walks close in his footsteps, stopping completely still whenever he looks over his shoulder.

When Cubi takes the next right, there are five more humans in skull masks to greet him, blocking his path. He looks back to see the first four rounding the corner, spread out, blocking his path backwards.

They all stand still, either upright or crouching animalistically. Whenever he looks away from one group, the other moves closer. Frantically, Cubi looks around for an avenue of escape. The pavement back and forth is blocked. A large van obstructs his path across the road to the left. A small alley descends down some steps to his right. Another two humans in skull masks are down there, standing shoulder-to-shoulder, sealing off the narrow passageway completely. They stare at him with their heads slanted to one side.

As he looks down the alley, hands seize him from behind. His arms are held fast, each by one person. A pair of tattooed arms wrap around his shoulders, completing the hold. His hood is pulled back and a masked face with long, braided hair leers at him from the side, as the five humans to the front approach closer. Rain strikes Cubi's face at an angle. He forces his eyes to stay open as water collects in his eyelashes.

The foremost of the five opens a flick-knife with a sudden, metallic sound that makes Cubi jump. The hands and arms holding him grow tighter.

The man or woman with the flick-knife is wearing loose clothes, all black. Cubi can't takes his eyes off of theirs. Wide, with more white than iris, they stare back at him, stabbing into him like the long blade of the knife before his face might.

The knife-wielding leader brings the blade closer to Cubi's face. Raindrops glisten on its smooth metal edge. He tries to move back, involuntarily, but is unable to overcome the combined strength of those holding him. One of the skeletons to his left passes something ceremoniously to the leader, who presents it for Cubi's inspection with a flourish.

It is a doll, with long-ish blond hair, dressed in jeans and a dowdy raincoat. It is quite obviously supposed to be Cubi. Once certain that Cubi understands, the leader slides the long blade of the knife into the dolls stomach, and brings it back out in a cutting motion, ripping through its chest. The doll has a skeleton, apparently. Its split ribs protrude from the ragged gash down the middle of its torso.

The hands holding Cubi force his arms up. The leader drops the doll into Cubi's palms, closing his fingers around its midriff with gentle care. And then the five humans in skull masks in front of Cubi fall backwards, moving to a strange, ethereal rhythm. As Cubi looks around, he realises that the rest of them are disappearing as well. The alley to his right is deserted. Soon his arms are freed, and the only one remaining, as far as he can tell, is the tattooed woman with her arms around his shoulders.

He tries to remain as still as a statue as she slides away from him. She chuckles throatily, and then sprints off. Cubi shudders explosively, gasping. He looks down at the doll in his hands. It darkens rapidly as it becomes saturated with rain. Stuffing spills out of its wound.

A heavy thud booms to Cubi's right and he almost breaks into a run. But instead of some new danger, he sees that the tattooed woman has slipped on the wet steps that lead down into the alleyway. She sits dazed at the bottom of the steps, one hand to her head.

"Are you okay?" Cubi calls without thinking.

She says nothing, just groans.

"Think," Cubi says to himself. "Think carefully about what to do now. Oh, fuck it, I was never much of one for thinking before I act."

Unsteadily, still shaking profoundly, Cubi heads down the steps. There are five, he counts. At the bottom, street level is waist high. He reaches out a hand to the woman. Suddenly she seems to recover her senses. She scrabbles to her feet and bolts. Or rather, she tries. On the second step she puts weight on her left leg, lets out a gasp of pain and crumples up.

Cubi walks over to her and looks down. "Are you okay?" he asks her warily. "Should I call an ambulance?"

She just growls, eerily.

Cubi sighs. "Yes, very spooky. Look, you've done all your threatening. It was very effective. Look, I'm still shaking like mad."

He shows her his hands. It's true.

"But at this point," Cubi says. "I think you have to choose between being sensible and admitting that you need help, and trying to keep up the act and just embarrassing yourself."

She looks up at him. Her eyes are bright and passionate. "No ambulance," she says.

Cubi nods. "Can you walk?"

She lifts her left leg up awkwardly, wincing and places some weight on it experimentally. She lets out a little gasp of pain. "No," she says.

"Well, I'm no doctor. You might have broken something for all I know."

"It's just a sprain," she hisses. "Fuck off already."

Cubi turns towards the steps, then looks back at the woman. "My apartment isn't far from here. It's upstairs, but there's an elevator."

"So?"

"Just thought you might like to rest up. Get out of the rain. Have a cup of tea."

She sighs and looks at Cubi like he's a deluded puppy. "No, I don't want to go back to your apartment, thank you very much."

"Your choice."

Cubi looks around. There's nowhere to sit, so he leans against the wall.

"Aren't you going yet?" the woman asks.

Cubi shrugs. "Just thought I'd see you off. Aren't you going yet yourself? Go on, walk away."

She glares at him. "You're enjoying this, you bastard."

"Excuse me? I offered to help you. I'm waiting for you to stop being childish and realise that you want to accept that offer."

They both look up sharply, at a distinct cawing sound. A small black bird is perched on the edge of the alley. It looks down at Cubi with both eyes.

"You were a big fucking help, you were," Cubi tells it.

It cocks its head to one side as if in answer, and then turns to look at Cubi dead-on with one side-facing eye.

When Cubi looks down, the woman is trying to crawl off. She makes excruciatingly slow progress, gasping and panting as she goes.

"You'd go quicker if you had someone to support the weight on your left side," Cubi says.

She tries to ignore him, but after much effort she has barely moved a metre from her starting point. She turns and looks back at Cubi. "You can't help me to walk to where I'm going," she says.

"Shame," Cubi says. "I wanted to see all the people going about their daily business in skull masks. We'll go back to my apartment, okay?"

"Don't fucking try anything," she says firmly.

"Like what? Threatening you with a knife?"

"We would never have really hurt you," she says. "We just wanted to get a point across."

"I wonder whatever it could have been," Cubi says, stepping over to her.

She holds up her tattooed arms and he takes her hands.

*

"Tea, milk, no sugar."

"Thank you."

"Will you take the mask off now?"

"No."

The woman in the skull mask lies propped up on Cubi's sofa. Her left leg is surrounded with pillows. Her trainers sit on the floor next to the sofa. She lifts her mask up slightly and sips tentatively at the tea, as if expecting it to be poisoned.

Cubi sits on the armchair opposite her and starts slurping his own cup of tea.

"Don't you have a television?" she asks.

"I have two. One in the kitchen and one in the bedroom. I only watch television when I'm eating or trying to get to sleep."

"Weird."

"Says the woman in the skull mask."

"Granted. Each to their own."

They sit in silence, drinking slowly for a few minutes. Then Cubi says, "I'm dying to ask about the tattoos."

"What about them?"

"Well, for a start, which bones do you have as tattoos?"

She looks down at herself. Her bare feet are tattooed in the same manner as her arms. "It's very comprehensive, trust me."

"Must have hurt."

"Lots of things hurt. It's the price you pay for being alive."

"Nice way to think about it," Cubi says. Then he gestures to the array of pillows. "How's the leg? Any better?"

She stares at the offending limb. "I'll find out if I move it, I think. But I don't really want to right now."

Cubi's mobile goes. He answers it and then hangs up a few seconds later. "You guys don't have my mobile number do you?" he asks.

She shrugs.

The little mutilated doll is sitting on the arm of Cubi's chair. He pats it on the head. "It is a very good likeness," he says.

"We wouldn't really do anything like that to you. We just wanted you to…"

"To be afraid."

"Well, when people ridicule Slink, it hurts us. I guess we just wanted to hurt you in return."

"Bit of a difference between hurting someone's feelings and making them feel afraid for their life."

"Maybe we went too far."

Cubi sits forward slightly, a serious expression on his face. "Scrimshaw put you up to this didn't he? He's the only Slinkist who knows that I inherited the painting."

The woman doesn't speak, but her demeanour is a definite enough answer.

"I knew it," Cubi says. "And please, take the fucking mask off. If I wanted to turn you in to the police I'd already have done it."

The woman impulsively lifts the skull mask up and off, exposing a face with chiselled, well-formed features. Her eyes are dark pits of black makeup, slightly ridiculous-looking without the mask.

"Do you have a name?" Cubi asks.

"Call me Apogee," she says.

"I'll get you a blanket, Apogee," Cubi says. "In the morning you're leaving. Under your own steam, with my help, or in an ambulance. We'll find out which."

*

When Cubi gets up the following morning, Apogee is gone. The sofa has been tidied up and her skull mask sits propped against the arm.