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    Behind a Pale Mask
    Behind a Pale Mask
    Behind a Pale Mask
    Ebook60 pages52 minutes

    Behind a Pale Mask

    By Wayne Kyle Spitzer

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    "You know me to be a ferryman," I said, pushing the circlet up and over my forehead. "How?"

    "Why, by taking one look at you, that’s how! You've no mask, that much is true, nor have you a scythe, as I’ve said … you’ve the cloak, all right, but that can be purchased at even the lowliest of costume shops; I’ve one just like it in my wagon here, in fact. No, this is something in the face itself. It’s an aura." He paused, appraising me coldly. "You’ve the heart of a ferryman."

    After a moment I replied, "I knew a woman once who said the very opposite."

    "A woman, eh? She must have feared you very much."

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHobb's End Books
    Release dateNov 13, 2017
    ISBN9781386923718
    Behind a Pale Mask
    Author

    Wayne Kyle Spitzer

    Wayne Kyle Spitzer (born July 15, 1966) is an American author and low-budget horror filmmaker from Spokane, Washington. He is the writer/director of the short horror film, Shadows in the Garden, as well as the author of Flashback, an SF/horror novel published in 1993. Spitzer's non-genre writing has appeared in subTerrain Magazine: Strong Words for a Polite Nation and Columbia: The Magazine of Northwest History. His recent fiction includes The Ferryman Pentalogy, consisting of Comes a Ferryman, The Tempter and the Taker, The Pierced Veil, Black Hole, White Fountain, and To the End of Ursathrax, as well as The X-Ray Rider Trilogy and a screen adaptation of Algernon Blackwood’s The Willows.

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      Book preview

      Behind a Pale Mask - Wayne Kyle Spitzer

      Prologue

      Iwas beginning to learn, at some cost, the difference between being a ferryman and a wanderer. As a ferryman, I'd suffered but sore shoulders and alienation. As a wanderer and a vagabond, I was to suffer blistered feet and trembling cold and fear as I had never known, only inspired.

      But in the days of walking which followed Shekalane's disappearance, I had yet to experience those things which would later wake me shivering in the night, turning to Rosethorn for comfort—as I have turned to her always, whether I knew it or not—since that day she was delivered to me on the deck of the Vorpal Gladio. To the contrary, cavalier in the knowledge I'd nothing left to lose (including my own life), I had taken my leave of the place of Shekalane’s betrayal, and forged ahead into the moon-drenched night, having nothing, really, but the shadow of a plan, and hoping, mostly, just to keep moving and to perhaps thwart my inevitable capture a while longer.

      I’d carried with me all my possessions, those being but the accouterments as ferryman worn upon my person, the organic sword Rosethorn at my hip, and the maps of Ursathrax stored so ingeniously in Jamais’s scabbard. My scythe, the platinum key, my gondola—even my familiar, Sthulhu—had all vanished with Shekalane.

      Real fear would come later, when I had forged a future as well and had much to lose.

      Still, the going had been perilous ...

      Though I believed Shekalane had betrayed me, I 'd been unable to write off the possibility of her capture. And if she had been taken, then following the immediate banks of the River Dire could have likely led to my own capture, as well.

      But in Ursathrax, one seldom had a choice—as I have said in previous chapters. In most places, there was but The River itself, a pair of slim banks, and then the East and West Walls looming straight up on both sides. So, I'd had to travel from the place of betrayal to the Tinsel Forest along those very banks, beating a path through the bramble whenever possible to avoid being spied from The River. I had heard distant sounds on several occasions, and it is possible that these might have been the splashing of oars. I’d noticed no lanterns, but this brought me little comfort. My pursuers would no doubt have doused them as to render themselves invisible to me.

      After a time, the West Wall had gradually curved away, and I'd moved inland away from The River to find myself skirting the fringe of the Tinsel Forest. I'd maintained a course which ran parallel to The River, however, as the less populated regions of the Far south were still my objective, and I could see no reason to venture deeper into the forest of lights.

      But after stopping to rest and consider the maps as to what lay ahead (using the glittering trees for illumination), I’d elected to change directions. Away from The River Dire, and straight for the West Wall.

      I'd learned from the scrolls that something known as a Relief/ Maintenance Lodge, a term I'd never heard, lay just beyond the Tinsel Forest, where the West Wall began its rocky climb skyward. However, the map had not been entirely clear as to whether this lodge lay at the foot of the wall or stood near its summit.

      The discovery had only reinforced my belief that I held in the scrolls a secret knowledge to which few in Ursathrax were privy, yet I did not equate it with survival or destiny yet. I knew only that this Relief/Maintenance Lodge would be a place of which few if any could be aware, and that it sounded like a place of rest and perhaps even fresh water, where I might replenish myself as well as Rosethorn—who's color would begin to fade all too soon—if in fact she survived the journey.

      Again, as I have said in previous chapters, there were very few places along The River Dire where the land extended for any length before meeting the Barrier Walls. Jaskir, the city on whose shore I'd first betrayed my duty as ferryman, was one such place. The Tinsel Forest was another.

      It is here, Dear Reader, that I begin the tale proper, recounted with as much honesty and clarity as a man such as I can ally.

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