Masque of the Red Death

Bethany-Griffin
Masque of the Red Death

Masque of the Red Death

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This is part of the introduction to the book

Chapter One

CHAPTER

ONE

THE CHARCOAL SKY SPITS COLD RAIN AS WE rumble to a

stop at a crossroad. A black cart blocks the road, and even in an

armored carriage we know better than to force our way past.

Burly men stagger to the cart, carrying something between them.

Someone. One of the men stumbles, and the body wobbles in a

horrifying way.

My friend April gags behind her mask. “Too bad your father didn’t

design these things to keep out noxious smells as well as noxious

diseases.”

I wonder whether the people remaining in the houses will be cold

tonight. If they’ve wrapped their dead in their only blankets. They

should know better.

The corpse collectors wear cloth masks, flimsy and useless to stop

the contagion. They roll their cart forward a scant hundred yards and

stop again, unconcerned that they’re blocking traffic. They don’t care

that we have hell-raising and carousing to do in the Debauchery

District.

The Debauchery District. The very name makes me shiver.

As I turn to April, prepared to complain about the delay, a girl is

pushed through a doorway and into the street.

She is clutching something, and her emergence at the same time

that the corpse collectors are making their daily appearance cannot be

an accident. Other people appear in the doorway—the inhabitants of

the house, perhaps—and I feel afraid for them because not a single

one of them wears even a cloth mask.

A corpse collector approaches the girl. Before, I wanted him to

hurry, but now each heavy footstep fills me with dread.

The girl is slight, and her ancient dress has been hemmed and

stitched so that her arms and legs are visible, but with the rain and the

half light, it’s impossible to tell if she is blemished or clean. The people

in the house want her to give the man the bundle, but she turns away.

It doesn’t take much imagination to realize that she is cradling a baby.