Goosebumps Story (Compilation)

The Mask

When I was in gradeschool we lived in a tiny cottage, built in the 1940's. My mother was an artist, and tutored students at our house. She also had a lot of college-aged artsy friends who would come over and hang out. This was the 1970's, so they were no doubt sitting around getting totally baked, so if I weren't there to see it I would have found this story (in retrospect) a likely result of too much THC.

One of the "fun" things they did together was make "life masks", which required the subject to lie on the floor with straws up his nose and vaseline on his (or her) skin so a cast could be made of their face without ripping out all the hairs. Pretty much all the circle of friends plus my mom and dad, had these made. My mom hung them all in a line over the windows in our den (where our TV was). This might have seemed really creepy to a normal person- watching TV with a bunch of disembodied white plaster faces just staring down from the wall; but Mom painted surreal and gothic subjects, and my dad paraphrased HP Lovecraft tales to me at bedtime. So it wasn't creepy to me at all- just "normal".

Now our TV room where the masks were was pretty tiny, and laid out in such a way as to have one door behind the couch that led to the hall where the bedrooms were, and another door to the right of the couch that led to the kitchen/dining area. In the kitchen was a door that led out to the back yard, and also one that opened to the garage.

This is important, because my dad worked late a lot, and my mom was super-paranoid about "weirdos' getting in since we lived near a fairground and bums wandered by pretty regularly. So she always (even when she was high) locked all the outside doors with a deadbolt and chain before putting me to bed.

I remember watching TV, then it was supposed to be time for me to go to bed. Dad was working late as usual, (he was an accountant) and Mom had a friend over. They were talking all about this friend's upcoming wedding, which was about to bore me to sleep in any case. So I went to my room without being asked. I had already seen Mom go around and do her door-locking ritual when I was getting a pop-tart. She and her friend got drinks, then went to the TV room and closed both doors. I could still hear them talking low, and the TV murmuring in the background. Our house was pretty small, and noises carried. Besides, the door to my room was just across the hall from the door behind the couch in the TV room.

I got a book and started reading. It wasn't very long before I head a loud, steady "knock... knock... knock" that didn't seem to be coming from the front door. I just assumed that another friend had showed up and they were knocking rather than ringing the bell.

I could hear my mom and her friend moving around, a door opened (not the one across from my room though) and my mom stuck her head around the corner of the hall as she went to the front door. Her friend yelled out- "There's nobody- the door is locked." No one at the front door either, obviously as Mom came into the hall again before opening the door across from mine that led to the TV room. All this happened in about a minute.

I about crapped my pants when my mom screamed- worse than when the mouse ran across her foot. I jumped up and ran to her side to hold her hand- it terrified me to hear her so frightened. Her friend ran into the room (from the other door) and said, "What? What's wrong?" and Mom points to the masks.

They were hung too high to reach without a stepladder, but someone had obviously been messing with them. Several had marks across the faces, greasy black sooty smears. One on the end had a black thumbprint sized mark in the middle of the forehead. "Did you do this?" my mom accused her friend. "How could I - I was with you or checking the locks-" Mom's friend was crapping bricks. I could tell there was no way either of them had a clue what was going on.

Then they both proceeded to freak out over the knocking that came from the door inside the house- the one leading to the kitchen from the TV room. After they had heard the three knocks, my mom had leaned over and opened the door (without even getting up from the couch- like I said the room was small). Upon seeing that there was no one there, her first reaction was to check to see if it was me (it wasn't) then check the front door while her friend checked the back and garage doors. Both of them assumed there must be someone else in the house. Obviously they thought that person got inside, but was locked in. And now that person had vandalized the masks in a very creepy manner. Like they had been marked for death by some sooty demon finger.

"We are leaving. It isn't safe." My mom grabbed me and some clothes, and we bugged out in a hellfire hurry to stay over at my Grandma's. She paused long enough to scribble a note to my dad, then left.

My mom's friend and she got together the next day to try to figure things out. They were both artists, and could tell the black smudges were not from any paint. It was like they were burned into the plaster. My Dad's mask hadn't been touched- he had refused to let Mom hang it in the first place. Mom's friend's mask was fine too, but my mom's wasn't. She didn't notice until the next day because it was marked on the back, not across the face. It looked like a splatter of black acid burns was all over it.

Mom took the masks down, and painted over all the ones that had been marked. When I got older I wanted her to make a mask of my face. She refused.

Two years after the mask incident, the girl whose mask had the stripe across the eye and cheek was in a car accident and almost lost an eye. That same year, the person who had the black thumbprint died. One mask had been marked across the mouth. That woman is still an alcoholic. My mother died of rapidly advancing cancer. My dad and the friend who hadn't been marked are both still alive and well. The other two unmarked masks were from people I understand are still living, but I am not sure of their health. If it was a prank, it was one one Mom and her friend never figured it out, or discussed it very much afterward. Like they wanted to forget on purpose.

I have the mask of Mom's friend hanging in the hall above my stairs.