The Masked Family

Chapter Two - Lilly, Pennsylvania

 

One hour before the power was cut and all the lights went out in the town of Lilly, Olenka Pankowski shivered as she watched the white-robed men pile out of the train. One after another, they poured from the five coaches and onto the platform, melting together into a shifting sea of white.

Except for the stomping and scraping of their feet on the coach steps and platform, the robed men were silent. Every one of them wore a conical hood with a flap drawn up in front, leaving only the eyes visible through a rectangular slit.

And they just kept coming.

"How many
are
there?" whispered Olenka's friend, Renata Petrilli. Like Olenka, Renata was seventeen, and her father and brothers worked in the coal mines.

"Dozens." Olenka pushed a lock of jet black hair behind her ear. "Dozens and dozens."

Renata's pudgy fingers tightened on Olenka's arm. "People were saying they'd come, but no one said there'd be so many."

Olenka watched with wide, dark eyes as more of the robed men stepped off the train and into the swarm of white. "Maybe more of them than there are of us."

"But why so many?" said Renata.

Dominick Campitelli, who stood just in front of them in the crowd of townspeople, spoke over his shoulder. He was just a year older than the two of them and was already at work in the mines.

"Because they're afraid of us," he said, pitching his voice well above a whisper...loud enough for the robed men to hear it. "Because every time they send some guys to burn a cross here, we send 'em runnin' back with their tails between their skirts."

"But what about this time?" said Renata. "There's so many of them."

Dominick snorted. "This time, too. Wait and see."

Olenka wasn't so sure he knew what he was talking about. As she watched, the robed men continued to stream from the train. She'd lost count of how many had debarked already, but she thought there must be at least a hundred of them.

A fear that she hadn't felt for years began to build in her chest. A storm was coming, the kind of storm she remembered too well from her early childhood in Poland.

She recognized the signs. Something terrible was about to happen.

"This is bad," Mrs. Froelich said behind her. "Why won't the union just take back their men? The Klan's only here because the mineworkers threw out the Klansmen."

Mrs. Lorenzo, who was standing on the other side of Renata, turned around. "That's not the only reason they're here, and you know it."

"You don't know what you're talking about," said Mrs. Froelich.

Father Stanislavski looked back at Olenka and nodded. "They're here because they hate us," he said
matter-of-factly. "The Wops and the Polacks and the Hunkies take their jobs."

"Bah," said Mrs. Froelich. "You got a prosecution complex."

Olenka watched the robed men as they lined up on the platform. She thought Father Stanislavski was more right than Mrs. Froelich gave him credit for.

Directed by two men with more decorations on their robes than the others, the Klansmen arranged themselves into four columns stretching the length of the platform. They looked like an army, ready to march, their ranks continually swelled by the white-clad comrades who kept flowing from the train.

Not for the first time, Olenka thought about hurrying home before whatever was going to happen got started. She knew she wasn't safe there. If a storm started--
when
the storm started--the robed men would surely be at the heart of it.

Then again, she had a feeling that nowhere in her tiny town would be safe that night. She didn't really think it would make much difference whether she was out in the open or locked away in her family's rooms two blocks away.

On the platform, the two leaders walked between the columns, talking to the lined-up men. As the leaders passed, the men undid the ties that held their masks in place and lowered the flaps, exposing their faces.

Most of the men looked straight ahead, like soldiers in formation, but some of them glanced at the townspeople. Olenka couldn't see all of them, and she didn't recognize the ones she could see. They might as well have left their masks in place, as far as she was concerned; to her, the cold, stern expressions of the strangers looked as unreadable and inhuman as the masks.

She had seen those expressions before, on other men who came in the night. She had seen them in the village her family had abandoned over a decade ago, back in Poland.

When the leaders had finished walking the length of the lineup, they returned to the front of the group. Standing a little apart from the others, the two men talked in low voices and looked at their wristwatches. The train conductor stepped down from the locomotive to join them.

"What's happening?" said Renata. "What are they talking about?"

Olenka shrugged. The conductor pulled a pocket watch on a chain out of his vest pocket. He flipped open the cover and looked at the face of the watch, then said something to the two robed leaders.

The three of them walked down the stairs from the platform and crossed the track of the siding on which the train sat. For an instant, Olenka thought the men were heading for the crowd...but they rounded the locomotive instead and stood along the main track, gazing in the direction from which the train had come a half hour before.

As the leaders and conductor stared along the track and checked their watches and talked some more, Olenka looked back at the men on the platform. Draped in white, they stood at attention, maintaining their rigid columns like statues.

Waiting.

In front of Olenka, Dominick Campitelli and Nicolo Genovese talked in hushed voices, but not so hushed that she couldn't hear what they were saying.

"They can hide a lot under those damn robes," said Dominick. "I bet they've got plenty of guns."

"Pistols," said Nicolo. "Knives, I bet."

"They must think we're pretty dumb," said Dominick, "if they think we don't have 'em, too."

Olenka's mouth was dry. The palms of her hands were damp with sweat.

She could feel it. The storm was closing in.

Turning, she scanned the crowd for her father, Josef, but didn't see him. She wondered where he was; though she had come straight from Renata's home to the station and had not seen her father since the train's arrival, she had no doubt that he knew what was happening. Lilly was too small a town for word not to have reached him.

And Josef was too much a man of action not to be doing something about this.

All the more reason for her to worry when he was nowhere in sight at such a dangerous moment.

"What are they waiting for?" said Renata.

"Maybe they're havin' second thoughts," Dominick said loudly. "Maybe they're gonna hitch up their skirts and go home."

Some of the people in the crowd laughed, but not Olenka. Not Father Stanislavski, either. He looked back at her and shook his head slowly.

"Not yet," he said, as if his words were meant for her alone. "They won't leave until they're done with us."

Olenka shivered.

"The big bad KKK," said Dominick. "Looks like a bunch of sissies to me."

"Hey, you!" a young man from the back of the crowd hollered up at the men on the platform. "Yeah, you! With the white hat on! I think you need a little more starch in them bedsheets next time!"

Most of the crowd laughed. The blanket of anxiety that had lain over them since the train's arrival seemed finally to have lifted.

"Don't'cha know you're not supposed to wear white before Memorial Day?" shouted another young man.

"No, no," said someone else. "Those are wedding gowns! They're gettin' married!"

"If those are the
brides
," yelled a woman, "I'd sure hate to see the
grooms
!"

Just about everyone laughed at that one.

And then, they all stopped.

The whole crowd turned as one to stare out along the track in the direction that the conductor and Klan leaders were looking. Everyone had heard the same thing at the same moment.

A distant, high-pitched toot. And there it was again.

"Oh my God," said Renata.

The second one had been closer than the first.

The third was closer yet.

Father Stanislavski turned and nodded knowingly at Olenka. "This is what they were waiting for."

Like everyone else, Olenka knew what it was. She had heard it thousands of times before, by day and by night...but never with such a feeling of dread.

It was the whistle of an approaching train.

Fifteen minutes later, the train pulled onto the siding behind the first train and unloaded another hundred white-robed men.

Fifteen minutes after that, every electric light in the town of Lilly went out at once.

*****

Chapter Three

Baltimore, Maryland, 2006

If Spellerina were here, this guy would be one dead frog.

That was what Celeste Beacon was thinking as she sat in her favorite restaurant in town in her favorite red dress and got dumped by her favorite boyfriend of all time.

Abracadabra, dumbass! Take that!

Sure, Spellerina could have handled this...if Spellerina existed, that is. If only she were a real, live super-hero instead of a make-believe one Celeste had pretended to be as a little girl.

If only Celeste still had that stick she used to pretend was a magic wand, only it really was a magic wand this time, and she could zap the guy sitting across the table before he hurt her any more than he already had.

Where's the damn magic when you really need it?

"It's nothing you did." Eric, the freshly minted ex-boyfriend, gazed into Celeste's eyes with a look of intense sincerity. "I want you to know this is all on me."

All on him. I like that.

If he wanted it all on him, Celeste could oblige. She'd start by hitting him with her empty wine glass...the one he'd let her drain, refill, and drain again before letting her have it with the dumping speech. When the shards of glass were all on him, she'd follow up with the point of her shoe, jammed hard into his nuts. Then, she'd put the table on him, too, overturning it on top of him and jumping up and down on it as hard as she could.

That was what she
wanted
to do to him, anyway. If only she were the hard-bitten bitch she wished she could be, not the least bit afraid of unanticipated consequences and heavy public scenes.

Why can't I be the kind of person I hate?

"You've made me very happy." Eric still exuded sincerity from every pore. "It's just the rest of my life I'm not happy with. I need a fresh start, you know?"

Celeste broke eye contact and stared at the burning white candle stub in the center of the table. Even as her mind roiled with visions of violence, she couldn't quite believe what was happening.

Eric had completely surprised her. Earlier that day, when Celeste had put on her favorite little red dress and put up her long, blonde hair, she'd never suspected for a second that she was primping to get dumped.

She'd thought that things were going so
well
. The last two years had been great, with no bombshells or danger signs along the way. Finally, she'd thought, after her long record of bad choices, she'd found someone who was as perfectly matched to her as it was possible for another human being to be.

That was the first sign of danger right there.

"I'm moving to Colorado," said Eric. "A buddy of mine from school is setting up a chiropractic clinic, and he wants me to partner with him. It's a great opportunity."

Celeste stared blankly at the candle stub, thinking about a picture she would paint when she got home.

The image of it was as clear to her as if she were remembering a painting she'd already finished. Ninety percent of the painting would be a field of daisies, resplendent in midsummer sunlight. The heart of the image, however, positioned slightly northwest of dead center, would be a mangled, fetal creature hunched in a patch of blackened flowers. The gnomelike figure's gnarled hands would be full of dead daisies, contaminated by his touch; his face would be a twisted version of Eric's, decayed, surreal, but recognizable.

And she would sell this painting for a lot of money. Macabre stuff like that always sold best in her shop.

"This is an opportunity for you, too," said Eric. "You have a secret admirer."

Suddenly, Celeste's eyes snapped up from the candle stub. She stopped thinking about the daisies and deformed gnome.

"It's another reason why I'm stepping aside," said Eric. "I know you well enough to know you're this guy's total soul mate. He's had a thing for you ever since you met at his New Year's Eve party."

Celeste stared at Eric as if he'd just sprouted D-cup breasts. "Coley Bassinette?" she said, her voice dripping with disgust--not for Coley Bassinette, but for the moron ex-boyfriend who was actually trying to
set
her
up
with someone at the same time he was dumping her.

"Is it okay that I gave him your number?" said Eric.

*****

So what if I can't ever go back to my favorite restaurant? It was worth it.

As Celeste rode home in the taxi, she couldn't help smiling. Every time she remembered the moment when she'd up-dumped the table on Eric, she could barely hold back the hysterical laughter.

Hysterical was the right word for it, too. The laughter definitely had an edge of rage and desperation. She was proud of herself for what she'd done, the bastard had deserved it...but he'd still come out the winner. Other than having to foot a dry cleaning bill to get dinner out of his clothes, he'd strolled off free and easy and unhurt.

I hope he dies.
Even as Celeste thought it, she knew it lacked conviction. Up until an hour ago, she'd been all the way in love with him. She hadn't had nearly enough time to hate him properly.

I'll get there. One day at a time.

She just hoped her brother, Cary, wouldn't make her feel better too soon. She really wanted to nurse her hatred a good long while, and Cary had a way of helping her get over things fast. It figured, because his childhood super-hero code name in the Nuclear Family had been "The Hurry."

Would she be able to hold off calling him so she could nurse her grudge a little longer?
No way.
Celeste hadn't spoken to him in weeks, and she sure couldn't resist calling him with
this
news.

In fact, riding in the taxi made her look forward to talking to him even more. Cary's latest job was driving a cab. That and dressing up like a super-hero for parties, of course.

And being a full-blown super-hero in his own mind, don't forget. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Better to be a delusional wannabe super-hero than a selfish asshole who won't even ask to drive his ex-girlfriend home after he dumps her in public.