Free Paint It Black by Nancy A. Collins

into the water and return to the car. I try not to hear the noise the gators make as they fight amongst themselves.

    I climb back into the car and slam a cassette into the Caddy's tape deck. Lard's The Last Temptation of Reid thunders through the speakers, causing the steering wheel to vibrate under my hands. I wonder when the emptiness will go away. Or at least be replaced by pain. Anything would be preferable to the nothing inside me.

    I don't see why you had to go and kill him like that. We could have used a renfield. They do come in handy, now and then. Besides, he was kind of cute . . .

    'Shut up and drive.'

    From the diaries ofSonja Blue.

    4.

    It was late afternoon, sliding toward evening, and Palmer was out in the courtyard, hammering together a shipping crate for a collection of hand-painted Day of the Dead masks.

    Create PDF files without this message by purchasing novaPDF printer ( http://www.novapdf.com ) The masks - made of papier-mache and painted in primary colors so bright you could still see them when you closed your eyes - were piled in a small heap nearby, grimacing blindly at the failing sun.

    Palmer dropped his hammer and straightened up, massaging his lower back. He pulled a bandanna from his pocket and mopped his brow. God, he hated this part of the business.
    Building the crates for shipping was a relatively minor hassle.
    It was loading up the Land Rover and taking it into the city that was the real ball-buster. Still, the pay was pretty good, and money went a lot farther in Yucatan than it did back in the US.

    Looking down, his gaze fell across the masks in their nest of excelsior. He'd bought them as part of a larger job lot from a family of artisans who'd been producing carnival decorations for over four generations. Until now, he hadn't paid that much attention to them. He shifted through the collection, studying the workmanship. Most of the masks were small, designed to cover the face of a child. All of the traditional carnival personae were represented: there were skeletons, their teeth bared in aggressive, lipless grins; what were supposed to be tigers, judging by the stripes, but looked more like jaguars, broom-straw whiskers bristling from snarling muzzles; blood-red devils with grease-pencil mustaches and shoe-polish goatees, licorice-black horns jutting from their foreheads; grinning clowns whose noses and chins met, like the ancient Punch puppets of Europe.

    Yet there were less typical false faces scattered throughout: a sheep's head, the wool cunningly made from balls of cotton; a wolf, fangs bared in a predatory snarl; a rooster caught in mid-crow, its beak open and throat sac extended.
    Palmer chuckled to himself as he sifted through the empty masks, remembering Halloweens spent dressed as a pirate, a cowboy, a hobo, and other exotica.

    Then he found the black mask.

    It was at the very bottom of the pile. He frowned and picked it up, turning it over in his hands. Like the others, it was papier-mache. Unlike the others, it was adult-sized. And, except for the eyeholes, it was without features of any kind.
    There were no overexaggerated human or animal characteristics, merely an oval painted black and coated with several layers of varnish, so that it shone like a scarab's carapace.
    There was something oddly compelling about the mask, something that made him set it aside from the others as he prepared to load them into their crate.

    It was dusk by the time he finished driving the last nail into place. He tossed the hammer back into the toolbox and stepped back to appraise his handiwork. A boot heel scraped

    Create PDF files without this message by purchasing novaPDF printer ( http://www.novapdf.com ) behind him. There was a figure standing in the door leading to the front of the house. Whatever had breached the security of his home could not be human, or else he would have heard
    - or at least felt - its thoughts long before it reached the front door.

    Before Palmer could