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Chapter 1
CHRISTY
Two years later
“We don’t hide behind the masks. We are The Masks, and we’re coming for you...”
Sitting bolt upright in bed, I swipe at the bead of sweat rolling over my cheek that’s stained a deep pink by a large port-wine birthmark. My heart thunders violently, my pulse racing as my mind tries to make sense of the vision. I rarely dream. I don’t even have nightmares. Iseethings, things that haven’t happened yet. Things that will come true. It’s both a gift and a curse.
Gritting my jaw against the feeling of dread that’s trying its best to incapacitate me, I force my fingers to relax and let go of the duvet. Over the years I’ve learnt how to control my fear, embrace it even. So that’s what I do now. I embrace it. Fear only ever has power if you let it. I refuse. I’m stronger than that. I’ve had to be.
“Just breathe, Christy. You can’t change what’s to come, but you can prepare yourself for it,” I say, repeating the mantra that I’ve often told myself over the years. Goosebumps rise on my arms as I force myself to look into the dark corners of my room and calmly assess whether I’m alone or not.
I am.
Tonight isn’t the night they’ll come for me, but it will be soon. I’m as certain of that as I am of my next breath.
These faceless men,The Masks, have visited my dreams on and off for almost two years. I haven’t had any visions of them for months and I’ve managed to lull myself into a false sense of security because of it, convincing myself that they weren’t real, that our fates aren’t intertwined.
I was wrong.
These men aren’t the kind of monsters that live in books and movies, nightmares even. These men are asrealas I am. Without ever having met them, I already know that they’re twisted, perverted, anddangerousin ways I don’t wish to look too closely at right now.
Blowing out a breath to calm my racing heart, I lean over and reach for my bedside lamp, switching it on. My warmly decorated bedroom is illuminated with a soft white glow, chasing away the darkness and the visions, at least temporarily. For now at least I can function, even if the familiar, yet disturbing voices of the three masked men still linger.
“Who are you?” I whisper as I pull back my sweat-soaked duvet and climb out of bed, my bare feet sinking into the thick, plush carpet. “What do you want from me?”
I don’t get an answer. Instead, the ticking of my wall clock fills the silence. It’s barely five am. Knowing that sleep will be impossible now, I grab my phone, clothes, and makeup bag and head into my ensuite to shower and change. Stripping, I set the water temperature to cool and step under the spray. Tipping my head back, I allow the water to cascade over my skin, humming gratefully at the feeling. I can’t stand any kind of heat on my scarred back. Doctors have said that I’ve become sensitive to heat, a lingering psychological effect from the burns I endured as a child when my house caught fire and my mother was killed, swallowed up by the licking flames. I may have grown a thick skin on my back, but it’s sensitive to the touch. Aside from cool water that eases the phantom pain, the slightest pressure reminds me of everything I’ve lost.
When I step out of the shower and wrap a towel around myself, I can’t help but grit my teeth at the sensation of the soft cotton sliding over my scarred skin. Forcing myself to keep still, I grip the side of the vanity unit and focus on my breathing. With every inhale and exhale of breath I take my mind elsewhere briefly, unhinging myself from sensation, from reality, until the pain disperses. It’s a skill I’ve learnt over the years and enables me to function day-to-day.
Once I’m tethered back in the here and now, I dry myself off, pull on my knickers and get dressed in a pair of faded blue jeans and a grey sweater. I don’t own a bra, and have never worn one. The tightness of the straps is one step too far in my ability to ignore the pain successfully.
Brushing a comb through my long, wet hair, I study my reflection. The deep red birthmark covers the majority of my right cheek, my eyelid, and part of my forehead above my eyebrow. Lifting my hand I place it over my birthmark and stare at the unblemished side of my face. Objectively, I can see that side is pretty. In the past, I’ve felt the attention from others when they’ve looked at me from this side, only to reel back in horror when I’ve turned to face them fully. It’s why I now choose to cover it up with makeup, not for my own vanity but for everyone else’s peace of mind. When I slide my hand across my face to study my birthmark, a familiar feeling of beingdifferentwashes over me.
I have two faces. The one I see when I wake up in the morning, and the one everyone else sees when I wear makeup. One is disfigured, the other… a lie.
The only people who’ve ever seen the real me are my aunt and uncle who I live with, my half-sister, Kate, and her partner, Roger. Whilst my sister and I share the same father, we couldn’t be any more different if we tried. I’m my mother’s daughter with flaming red hair and heterochromia. Another abnormality that marks me as different. I have two different coloured eyes. My left eye is a bright blue, my right eye a brown so dark it verges on black.
Kate, however, is raven-haired, unblemished, perfect.
I hadn’t even known I’d had a sister until the night I’d dreamt of her when I was twelve. Two weeks later we met at the reading of my father’s will, a man I never knew or had even met. Not in real life and not in my dreams, though by all accounts he had known who I was and had kept a close eye on me. I’ve often wondered why he never came to claim me when my mother had died in the fire when I was eight. It’s a question I’ve never been able to get an answer to. Not even Kate can tell me that.
As my fingertips glide over my birthmark, my palm pressing against the splotch of colour marking half of my face, I feel nothing but abstract acceptance. I’ve long since distanced myself from my reflection. It’s easier that way.
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” I say, repeating my mother’s words.
She used to say that to me all the time growing up. I’d come home from school heartbroken from the verbal abuse of cruel kids and she would tell me that one day someone would love me for all that I am. I never believed her as a child, and I don’t buy into that crap now.
Beauty isn’t everything, it fades with time, but there’s no denying that it’s a currency that has meaning in the world, and something that I’ve never been rich with. I’m deformed, marked, disfigured, repulsive. I’ve been called all of those words and more, and whilst they no longer have the power to hurt me, theyhavescarred me. Hating my reflection was something the child I had once been indulged in. I don’t hate what I see anymore, after all, it’s who I am, but it isn’t all of me, just the surface.
Like I said, I’ve grown a thick skin, both metaphorically and physically, and the very same skin on my back suddenly begins to prickle withknowing. I can’t describe it any other way. It’s another gift, not as powerful as my visions, but a part of me nonetheless. Call it intuition, gut instinct, whatever you like, but I know that any second now my phone is about to ring.
Half a beat later, it does.
Picking up my phone, I press the connect button to answer the video call. “Hey, how’s Iris?” I ask as a familiar face appears on the screen. It’s not my sister, but her partner Roger, or should I sayBeast. He’s long since dropped his given name, just like my sister did many years ago.
“What the fuck, Christy? Are you doing that witchy shit again? The phone barely even rang,” he responds with a chuckle.
