The Mask

The Mask                                                                                                                                                                                                15th October 2007                 







I can still remember how it all started. Me and my big brother Sonny had been planning what was going to happen on the night of the 31st of October 1988  for
weeks but finally it was all arranged. We were to meet the other trick or treaters in the village square in our costumes before making our way around the village in
a general clockwise direction. As Sonny and I completed our costumes with our masks (his was a horrifying clown face and mine was a black, elaborately
decorated Venetian style mask, which didn’t really fit in with the theme of the night), our mother shouted to us and asked us to be back no later than midnight
which would give us about three hours to get around the whole village.

We set out in good spirits although I tried my best not to look at my brothers mask because it really was quite terrifying. After a few minutes we reached the
village square where there was a skeleton, a pumpkin, some form of zombie whom had a ‘ware wolf’ on a lead, a few vampires and a lot of grim reapers were
waiting for us.

“Come on you two! We’ve been here for at least ten minutes!” yelled a vampire.

“Yeah, get a move on, we want to get going!” said a grim reaper.

There were murmurs of agreement as we got closer to them.

The party trudged along the road in a jolly mood and if it hadn’t been for the costumes, one would have thought that it was Christmas. As the group went down a
driveway, lead by Sonny, out of the corner of my eye I noticed a graveyard. I hadn’t been in this part of the village before, but I was sure that if I went in through
the grim, creaky looking gates I would be able to find my way back out again and back to the others. In I went and to my delight my presence had gone so far
without being noticed!

For me, Halloween had never been about sweets, costumes and scaring others. It was about the Pagan and Celtic beliefs that the 31st of October was the
beginning of the dark half of the year, which brought death and suffering, and most of all that on this day only, the boundary between the living and the dead was
blurred. Although I was not a Pagan or Celt, I still found these traditions fascinating and when I saw that graveyard, I was strangely drawn to it.

As I walked through the gates, the leaves rustled around my feet and I felt a strange presence as if I was being watched by something or someone. I proceeded
forwards even though I could hardly see. I looked up and saw the huge black shape of a church looming out of the darkness. The further I went down the path, the
older the graves around me seemed to get. At last the path took me around the corner so I was now behind the church and I was overwhelmed by a vast sea of
black tombs. I had no fear. I walked off the path and into the unknown. Still, the graves got older and the markings on them more difficult to read as if it wasn’t
already near impossible to read them in the dark. Finally, I decided to stop at a huge black stone which must have been at least six feet tall. I peered closely at it
and could just about make out a date. 1311. This was probably the oldest thing I had ever seen and as I stood there I became aware of footsteps behind me. I turned
slowly to see nothing. The footsteps stopped and all I could hear was my breath on the inside of my mask. I turned back to the stone, but it was hidden by a tall
black figure. It was such a shock, I let out a yelp and jumped backwards. Now I was further away I could see what I was facing properly. It looked like a man, but
taller. He had some kind of balaclava covering his face, but I could see his eyes through two neat round holes. I wondered if somehow they were fake because they
were glowing red. I lowered my gaze to his hand, where he was grasping a meat cleaver covered in some red substance. Still, I wasn’t scared because of course his
alarming appearance was ‘merely a costume’. Now however I wished I had ran as fast as I could in the opposite direction instead of speaking.

My voice sounded oddly muffled because of my mask.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scream, It’s just that you gave me a huge shock!”

The man stood perfectly still. His glowing red eyes stared into mine with an emotion that I didn’t recognise. I glanced down at my watch and saw that it was ten
to midnight and the others would probably be frantically searching for me.

“Wow. It’s really late. I have to go.”

Still the figure said nothing and remained motionless, so I decided to leave this odd spectacle and try and find my way home.

I turned and began to jog back to the path by the church. The footsteps started again behind me. Without stopping, I turned my head to see the man walking
towards me. By this time I was getting nervous and had realised that this was no ordinary person. My jog rapidly turned into a sprint but before I had reached the
path, a sudden searing pain in my left thigh sent me hurtling into a white marble cross before I collapsed to the cold ground.

I looked down and nearly had a heart attack. I wish I had had a heart attack and died there and then. The meat cleaver which I had seen only moments before in
the man’s hand was embedded deep in my skin and blood was pouring from my punctured skin, through my now ripped black trousers and into a growing puddle
beside me.

The pain was there, but I didn’t really feel it. I looked through my mask and saw the man towering over me. He slowly bent down with a very mechanical
movement and effortlessly plucked his weapon from my skin. He brandished it menacingly and although I knew I should have been running from this madman to
save myself, all I could do was stare at him. He reached up with his huge white hand and pulled off his balaclava. I couldn’t help but gasp. My eyes scanned his
face and I wished that he had kept his face covered. His face was the palest I have seen yet his veins stuck out with a shade of vivid blue. He had prominent cheek
bones, sunken eyes and pointed white teeth covered in the same substance as the meat cleaver which I now knew to be blood.

There was no point trying to go anywhere. I was severely crippled and even if I wasn’t I would never be able to outrun a giant such as this. He lifted the cleaver to
his face and examined it. He stayed still for a moment or two with nothing but the occasional twitch of his eye. A smile spread across his face which allowed me to
see his full set of ghastly teeth.

Before I had time to move even slightly, or think, the meat cleaver was once again in my thigh. This time I felt it. My screams were stifled by my mask but I’m
sure I still made more noise than I had ever done before.

He hacked a chunk of flesh from me. I felt a great burning sensation where there was now a large blood filled hole in my leg. I saw blood covered hands move
before me grasping the lump of freshly butchered meat. The man smelled it and again, a smile came over his face. As he raised it to his mouth, I felt faint and then
when he slowly sunk his teeth into it, everything went black.

The next thing I remember is waking up several maters from where I had been before and some more of my leg was missing. I looked about me but there was no
sign of the man. I took off my mask and clutched it to my chest as if it could save me. The air that I had expected to smell fresh, was stale and smelt of nothing but
my own blood which was still flowing steadily into the pool that I was lying in. After about five minutes, I decided that the stench was too much to bear, so I put
my mask back on and fainted again.

I awoke again, for what would be my last time. I was being dragged carelessly through the graveyard by the madman. After getting me wrapped and twisted
around several gravestones, he hauled me onto a huge compost heap behind the stone that had fascinated me so much. I hadn’t noticed it before even though it was
so ridiculously large.

The soft warmness of the compost heap was somewhat a relief after lying on a hard floor in a sea of cold blood. I vaguely remember my attacker walking away
into the darkness but my attention was stolen away from him by screams of my name. I could hear my brother’s voice, far away, but it was still a comfort to hear
it. I listened harder and I heard my mother and father’s voices. They were moving further and further away and if I still had any hope of survival left, I had to yell
as loud as I could. I opened my mouth and tried to yell. I made no noise but I was aware of a sudden moistness on my chest. I looked down and saw yet more
blood spilling from my throat. I couldn’t see my neck so I tried to feel it with my right hand, but it wouldn’t move. It had probably been broken when I was
dragged across the graveyard by it. My left hand and arm were still in tact so I lifted my hand to my neck and felt it. Where my voice box was, there was now a
gaping hole. I wondered how I was alive still for surely it was impossible for me to breath? And even if I could breath I should have died through loss of blood.
Maybe I was dead already, I don’t know, but if I was then I’m not sure what trick my mind has played on me, because after feeling my neck and then returning my
arm to where it had rested before, the man reappeared but this time instead of the meat cleaver, he had an axe. If I had not been dead before, I certainly was when
he thrust the axe right into the centre of my chest.

I must have looked ridiculous just lying there. I was lying in my own crimson blood on a compost heap, my black trousers ripped to pieces, revealing my half a
leg, just the one huge gash in my black jumper, where the axe had been, both of my trainers although intact were covered in blood. The whole thing was a perfect
dramatic death, and to make it just that little bit more dramatic was the mask. It hid the looks of horror and pain that may have gone across my face, and muffled
my screams. It made my death not only dramatic, but also glamorous. I talk about my death as if it is something to be proud of and show off. But, it is. I was so
young, just a teenager, I hadn’t done anything interesting with my life but my death was more interesting than two hundred normal people’s lives put together.

I still wonder who my murderer was, why he only ate my leg, and why he disappeared when he heard my brother’s voice calling me, even though he had made
sure that I could make no response, and of all nights, was it just coincidence that my death was to be on Halloween?

Although my body and the feathers of my mask may have rotted, that is how the mask came to be buried in the compost heap.