I have many masks. Grandmother gave me one every year on my birthday until I was old enough to make my own. Some of them were given to her as a child and the others she made, hunched over her sewing machine with her knives and needles and gnarled fingers. She'd call me over and fit them over my face, and then she'd tell me their names. They all had names; they all had stories: Julia, four-years-old, stolen from her bed in the middle of the night; Anna, nine, strangled with her own hair; Marie, twelve, found naked and pale beneath a bridge. She'd fit them over my face, and for the next year I'd be the drowned girl, the starved girl, the girl who was taken to the dance and never came back.

Afterwards I would go into the large living room where everyone was waiting with the cake and they'd all clap their hands and smile and take pictures and tell me how beautiful I looked, and then Uncle Abel would place his big hand on my shoulder and kiss a cheek that wasn't really mine, and he'd say that the masks would never be as pretty as me.

I would hang them on the walls of my room when I wasn't wearing them, and at night in bed I could just make them out in the darkness and I'd talk to them, and sometimes I pretended they answered. We'd talk about many things: ribbons and  moonlight and music, storybooks and stars and that thing in the basement. I'd ask them if they had been happy in life, and in my mind the answer was always yes, yes they were, and they were even happier now that they were with me.

These days I have no more need for masks. It's been years since I've last left the house and I've grown used to the solitude. I keep them in a cardboard box in my bedroom closet and I tell myself they're as happy there as anywhere else. Sometimes, though, I'll dig them out when I need to remember, and I'll sift through each one and wonder at how I could have ever fit into them, they're so small. I'll turn them over in my hands and poke my fingers through the eyeholes, and I try to remember what it was like to have worn those faces, to have been those girls, if only for a little while.

My memory is a deceitful thing. I am not old, I will never be old, but each passing year strips away at me and brings me closer to change, and those lives I lived become faded and grey and distant like dreams on waking. When I'm at my worst I'll look at the masks and slowly I am reminded of birthdays and long hallways and of Mother, sitting all alone in the attic; of the hiding places in the walls and the voices of my cousins, laughing as they set fire to one another.

Looking at them I am reminded of the fall, and the other masked children running down the streets in the dark, and the golden leaves spiraling to the ground with every infinitely gentle breath of sky, and all the fireflies dying.

Fall was always everyone's favorite season. Mother's, especially. In the attic, in the window seat where she waited for Father, she'd say that this time of year she could hear him in the wind, the wind blowing in from the ocean. Her breath would fog up the glass and I could see the messages she had traced for him there. She'd put me on her lap and with her long hair brushing my face she'd point in the direction of the sea and tell me that Father was coming home, that he promised, that he always kept his promises and was coming home.

For Grandmother, autumn meant that she could go outside again. She loved taking walks around the neighborhood, but the winters were too harsh on her and the flowers of spring and summer bothered her senses. She said they smelled of rot. So as soon as the first of the leaves turned she'd bundle herself in her big sheepskin coat and set off down the sidewalk. The neighborhood dogs would always snarl and jump at her, choke themselves against their collars trying to bite her, and the cats would hiss warily from safe distances, but Grandmother loved her walks all the same.

And Uncle Abel, well, he liked to watch things die. He told me once, after making me promise not to tell anyone else ("Not even my masks?" "Not even your masks"), that autumn reminded him of how the world would end.

"It won't be quick, my darling," he said to me, "but it will be beautiful. The world will grow silent and still, we'll all die waiting for a winter that won't come, and everyone that you love will be carried away."

Carried away. In the mind of a young girl, those words were magic. I'd stand by the window in my room, where the sun was always the most beautiful shining through the leaves of the rows of ash and oaks, and imagine the trees as people, people grown old and brittle and worn, their sins and skins taken from them and lifted into the sky; a family of giants, their outstretched fingers grazing each other as they died.

Though my family owned the house, we were not the only ones who lived there. It was a large place after all, and after they had traveled so far and so long, we could hardly turn away the ones who showed up at our door seeking sanctuary. They came and went like the seasons, those pilgrims, bringing tales of the places they had been and the places they wished to go; stories of those lands beyond the clouds, where the dragons dwelled; of the mountains at the edge of the world; of the inn that marked the boundaries of dream. Most of the guests only stayed for a day or two before continuing on, some stayed for months or years at a time, while a few had been there since before I was born.

There was the man in the dark suit who never left his downstairs room. There was nothing in there but stained walls and an old chair, and he'd be sitting on it playing thin air like a violin. He had a soft voice and would offer to teach me to play, but every time I tried the notes came out like screams. Clumsy fingers, he'd say, smiling. Perhaps we need to pare them down some. Run and fetch a knife, my love. Run and we'll make your bones sing.

There were the three women who shared the bedroom down the hall from mine. Three generations of mothers and daughters; the oldest looked even older than Grandmother while the youngest shifted in and out of sight like sunlight through diamond. They all had long, long hair, and they'd weave it in their looms. They would tell me my fortune whenever I came to visit. My future changed daily. Some days I would die alone and unloved, some days I would live forever in fire. The mother would tell me I'd fall into a love that would break me, the daughter would tell me I was already dead.

The woman who lived in the third-floor room above mine, her hair moved beneath her scarves like waves, as though it were alive. There were many mirrors in her room, and she kept them covered with sheets. When I was pretty she'd smile and call me Little Sister and told me that I should go out with her at night. When I wasn't she wouldn't let me in her room. She only ever left the house at night, and she'd come back hours later with a nice-looking young man. I'd hear things in her room above as I tried to sleep: assurances and pleas, soft laughter and the names of old gods being called, the loving hisses of snakes.

Though the house was always full she was never crowded, at times seeming almost abandoned in her silence. She was most quiet in the fall, when everyone was lost in their own private ethos, and there were days when I wouldn't see anybody else at all, alone save for the wolves in the walls and my masks. Walking down the hallways I could hear the house murmur to me in her language of old wood and trapped rainwater, her tangles of vines and thorns.

Autumn, descending like a balm to soothe the burns of summer.

Autumn, and all the children would wear our faces.

Autumn, appearing; autumn and fall and fell.

I was seven-years-old that Halloween, and on hearing the doorbell ring for the first time that night I flew down the stairs to the foyer, where Uncle Abel was waiting for me. I reached for the door and he caught my hand.

"Your mask, my darling. You must remember to wear your mask."

I had it in my hand ("This is Christina. She is seven, like you, and she refused to believe that she couldn't fly."), forgotten in my excitement. I pulled it over my head, felt my world contract, felt the blonde ringlets brush my shoulders. Uncle Abel knelt down and adjusted it for me, smoothing the skin over my forehead and cheeks. When he was satisfied with it he picked up a bowl of candy and opened the door, winking at me while he did so.

There were around ten of them, two tired-looking but smiling women chaperoning. Only a few of the children were that much taller than me, and the eyes behind the masks were bright. There were three girls dressed as princesses but the rest of the group, being boys, tended toward the macabre: there were plastic skulls and restraint masks of leather and steel; a hockey mask spattered with fake blood; a rotted pig's head writhing with maggots and worms; a misshapen and gangrenous mass of green. The tallest of the children wore a dark cloak and a white mask with plain facial features, and though it was clearly made of plastic he seemed to be some sort of marble statue come to life. His was my favorite.  

A look of feigned delight on his face, Uncle Abel loudly and comically proclaimed how the girls were just the most beautiful little princesses he had ever seen, and how concerned he was for them to be in the company of such terrifying creatures. Laughing, the children held out their bags as Uncle Abel doled out the candy in great big handfuls. They thanked him as one when he had finished and ran back to the sidewalk, looking inside their bags and comparing their plunder.

"Well?" said Uncle Abel expectantly. He closed the door and looked at me, his eyes awash with amusement. I peeled Christina off my face.

"If they hate and fear us so much, why do they pretend to be like us?"

"Because they hate themselves even more, my darling. Because they know too much. Despite the lies they tell each other, even the youngest among them knows somewhere deep down that they are nothing more than meat. Carrion, delayed. They know that they will die, and that we will still be here when they do. They know that they can try, but they can never become more than what they are, and they hate themselves for that."

"But we die, too," I said.

He went to his knees and gathered me in his big arms. "And we look forward to it, my love."

Though I knew he was lying for my sake, his words still comforted me. My uncle -- my beautiful and battle-scarred uncle, whose teeth were swords and his hands the spaces between worlds; how I miss him so. He is gone now, gone many grey years since. One day a dark-skinned and moon-eyed woman came to stay with us, and when she departed a week later, bound for lost places, Uncle Abel left with her. His last autumn was one where the falling leaves blotted out the sky, and he was happy for it.

A strong wind was blowing that night, herding them to us, and I spent the next few hours in the window seat in the living room, peering out the curtains to watch the sidewalk. Whenever some new troupe of evil clowns or aberrant horrors accompanied by their mothers made their way up the pebbled drive I ran to meet them. Uncle Abel or one of the older cousins would answer the door and hand out the chocolate and candied apples as I stood silently by and stared.

The kids dressed as monsters, as corpses and goblins and horned things, I felt a kind of one-sided kinship with them, of the sort I never felt when I watched them from the safety of my bedroom as they made their way to and from school in the spring and fall, as they rode their bikes and skateboards in the summer, as they dragged their sleds behind them in the winter. Sometimes my younger cousins and I would sneak out of the house and try to get as close to them as possible. We'd steal down to the bus stop at the end of the street and hide behind hedges and tree trunks, watching as the children laughed and kidded and ran after one another. On those occasions I regarded them with little more than a child-like curiosity, studying them as they would study a particularly large bug. They were completely different creatures from us, worlds apart in all the ways that mattered save proximity. But that night -- in their costumes, trying to be something other than what they were -- I no longer felt so alone. I had been pretending to be one of them for so long, wondering if any of them knew how I felt, and now here they were, returning the favor. I suppose I loved them for it, loved them in a way that only a little girl can. There was a magic there possessed by those children that brought their disguises to life, and for a while I saw my kind running out in a world remade in our image.

They kept coming for a few more hours, but as the night wore on less and less children appeared, replaced by older kids and teenagers smoking cigarette butts picked up off the street. With them the magic was gone. There was no disguising what they were: cold meat hiding beneath pieces of molded plastic and rubber, beneath garments of cheap fabric; people more bored with their lives than scared of it. Around ten o'clock -- disheartened -- I abandoned my post by the window, bid my uncle goodnight, and went upstairs.

The wind died down as I reached the second floor, and for a few moments I could hear the three weavers in their room down the hall, spinning their flaxen hair into futures; the man in the black suit downstairs, playing a funeral dirge on the nerves of his fingertips; the thing in the basement, seeking penance, and the wolves in the walls, and Mother's soft sobs from far above me -- in that sudden silence the house could hold no secrets from me, and it was suffocating.

Understand -- as a child, I was never allowed out of the house after dark, and certainly never by myself. And up until then, I was perfectly content with that rule, content to while away those evening hours with exploring the ever-changing tunnels in the basement, crawling into the walls to feed the wolves, sitting in my room and listening to the stories of the faces around me. There were always fires to be set, shadows to be stolen, dreams to be skinned and hung shrieking from the ceiling. It was never dull, and I was happy, and I wanted for nothing.

That night, though, listening to the house around me, there was nothing I wanted more than to slip away from her, unseen, and run barefoot on unyielding pavement, breaking myself against the night's lovely creeping dark. I went into my room, slipped my mask from my face and let her fall to the floor along with my clothes, and I walked to the window and opened it. Naked as I was, it was the first time I could remember feeling cold, with that chill breeze running along the bumps and rises of my bare arms. It felt like dead hands touching me everywhere, pulling me and pulling me, and I leaned out too far over the windowsill and tumbled out, and upside down I briefly caught a glimpse of my masks, looks of abandonment and hurt in their hollow eyes, their empty mouths hanging open in surprise.

I fell two stories and landed, hard, on my back. There was a moment of intense pain where lights exploded in the sky, and then the darkness returned and the stars blinked back into view and I was standing up, my head spinning. For a while I couldn't hear anything except a ringing sound in my ears, so I just stood there, immobile, embracing the silence and feeling the soft grass beneath my feet, and when the sound came back it was that of distant laughter and receding footsteps, the elegiac gusts of wind brushing dead leaves down the street, themselves speaking in their own rapid-fire and skittering tongue as they blew past.

Autumn, perfect in all her dying.

Elated, I ran.

I ran past darkened houses and shut doors, through barren flowerbeds and circles of yellow light cast by streetlamps, leaped over cars and hedges, scaled tall fences and old trees. Every now and again I'd come across groups of trick-or-treaters still out, and I'd run past them as well, and as I left them behind I'd hear shouts of confusion, of terror, of admiration for what they thought was my costume.

I ran as though something terrible was chasing me, as though stopping meant death. I ran so fast, so fast, that I could no longer see where I was going. Every jagged cut on the soles of my feet, every gash on my skin delivered by low-hanging branches, every one was a metamorphosis in motion: I ran as hard as I could against that freezing wind, that wind like knives, hoping it would flay the skin from my bones, hoping I would emerge as something other than what I was, something different and reborn, something beautiful.

I had ran for what seemed like an eternity before the breath and will had finally gone from me, and I collapsed, heavy, weightless, and felt soft earth beneath my face. Exhausted, I shut my eyes and slept, curled into a ball of myself, and when I awoke hours later the fireflies had emerged.

There were hundreds of them, floating like down in long, slow circles, an arpeggio of green and yellow lights against a big black sky. Far beneath us, at the bottom of the hill, burned the lights of the town, and I couldn't help but notice how dull they were compared to the bugs, how pale and dim. I propped myself up on one hand and held out the other, and a few of the fireflies alighted on my palm.

"You don't usually see them this late in the fall," said a voice to my right. I looked over and saw a man sitting on the grass about ten feet from me. He was tall and skinny and dressed in frayed clothes. A ragged beard protruded from beneath the hood of his sweatshirt, the rest of his face hidden. There was an open jar on the ground beside him, a strip of masking taped marked FIREFLIES attached to it. A dozen or so of the bugs circled lazily around him.

"Hello," I said. "What are you doing?"

"Waiting."

"The bugs. Are they yours?"

He shook his head. "Not yet."

"My cousin. Loki. He can do this whistling sort of thing with his mouth and fingers. He can call all sorts of bugs like that. Uncle Abel calls him the Lord of the Flies. He'll catch a whole bunch of fireflies and then he eats them. He doesn't really eat them, though. He just chews and chews until his whole mouth is covered with their insides and his smile glows in the dark."

The stranger chuckled. "I suppose that's one use for them." His voice was rough and hoarse, but gentle.

"What do you use them for?"

He shrugged. "As guides, mostly. As lights in dark places. Sometimes people get lost in those places under the earth, and they get scared. But, really, all they need is a little light to show them the way. To show them they're not so alone."

I brought my palm closer to my face to get a closer look at them as they crawled over each other.

"When I was littler I used to think they were nothing but light. I called them 'Ghost Lights.' Then my cousin Loki showed me the ones he caught, and I saw that they looked just like little cockroaches up close. I thought that they were icky, and I was scared of them after that."

"Hmm," said the stranger.

"Then my Uncle Abel told me not to be scared. That they were just like everything else, dying in the fall."

I held my hand back out in the air, and the bugs took flight. The sky was beginning to lighten in the east, a thick morning fog creeping in, the cold wind vanishing.

"So now I'm not scared of them," I continued. "I think that they're the same as me. Ugly things, trying hard to be beautiful."

The stranger turned his head to me, and even in the rising light I couldn't see past the darkness of his hood.

"Is that why you came out tonight?" he said.

I nodded. "I thought that with everybody trying to be something else, nobody would notice me, and I could finally feel what it was like to go out wearing my own face."

"And what does it feel like?"

"I don't know. It's … nice, to be able to be myself. Still. I could tell from people's faces when I passed them that I'd always be a monster."

"And is that so bad?"

"I hate being so different. I just want to be the same as everyone else. Why can't I?"

I had never cried before then, nor since. By then I had thought myself incapable of it, a limitation of my own biology. But then the tears came, bitter and stinging. A few drops, a trickle, a stream, and then they were gone, and then they were no more, and all that was left was a specter of steam rising from my cheek.

"At first I thought that the kids in the costumes and masks, at first I thought they wanted to be just like me. That I could show them my face and they would love me forever and ever. But it's not like that, right?"

"No."

"They wear the masks because they're bored, and if they wear them they get candy. That's it. And that's all. And they'll never know what it's like to not be able to take it off."

The stranger cleared his throat and stood up. Upright, he was much taller than I thought he was sitting down. His head seemed to brush the sky. He held out his forefinger, and one of the fireflies landed on it. As soon as it did its glow faded and it fell dead on the palm of his other hand.

"The family Lampyridae," he said, "live out a unique lifecycle. As larvae, they burrow underground or in the barks of trees to wait out the winter. Sometimes for up to three years. And when they emerge as adults they feed, they mate, they die. They only spend a small fraction of their lives lighting up the sky. The rest of the time they're squishy little grubs. Digging around in the dirt feeding on earthworms and slugs and snails.

"But it's enough for them," he continued. "It's enough that they are able to fly in the end. All they know, all they aspire to do, is to shine as brightly as they can for one brief moment before they die."

He spread his arms out to the sky and, as one, the fireflies swarmed to him. As they reached him their lights intensified into a glow so bright I could see the face beneath the hood and the stars in his eyes, and for that moment, fractured into infinity, all the world was lit in green and yellow. Then the moment passed and their lights extinguished, and they all fell lifeless into his cupped hands.

"Now," he said, tipping them into the jar, "now they are mine."

He screwed the lid on tightly and walked over to me. He placed his rough hand on my face.

"And perhaps, one day, you too will shine."



Dawn had broken by the time I made it back to the neighborhood, the sun burning away the fog. I had never felt sunlight on my face before, and I walked slowly to enjoy it, heedless of the horrified faces staring at me from behind the safety of barred doors and shut windows. I felt myself smiling, and I felt that smile grow wider every time I heard another choked cry or muffled scream.

Grandmother was waiting for me on the porch.

"Good morning, love," she said.

"Good morning."

"And where have you been?"

"With a friend."

"Oh? And who might this friend be?"

I told her about the fireflies on the hill and the collector, about what he told me, about that one moment where the whole world was aglow, and by the end a look of wistful longing had bloomed on her face.

"This collector friend of yours," she said excitedly. "Was he tall, love? Did his arms reach from the underworld to the heavens? Did he hold the universe in his eyes?"

"Yes," I said, and she began to cry. She pulled me close and held me tightly and continued to cry, and she didn't stop crying until years later, when he finally came for her, and together they followed the fireflies to those sunless places beneath the earth.



Long time ago. All that happened a long time ago. I have the house mostly to myself these days. Mother's gone -- one day while waiting for Father she fell asleep against the window and the glass gave way, and she tumbled a long way down, and the house was left to me. The three weavers left soon after, but not before they all agreed as one that I would never find happiness in this world. The man in the black suit departed, saying that he was needed, that somewhere there was a city burning and his fiddle was needed. Even the thing in the basement is gone, its drawers empty and a 'Thank You' card left in its mattress of springs.

I'll still get lodgers every now and then. People with a long way to go. They stay for a few days and then they leave. Nobody else comes around much. Especially children. That decades-old story about a skinless monstrous horror walking down the street in the early dawn hours before disappearing inside the house is mostly regarded as a neighborhood legend nowadays, nothing more than a cautionary tale to scare the little kids into behaving. Still, people avoid walking by the house when they can, and the neighbors have all moved away. I can't even remember the last time they came around to trick-or-treat.

Not that it bothers me. Like I said, I've grown used to the solitude. Perhaps ages ago I was desperate for friendship and acceptance, but these days it's enough for me to go up to the attic and sit in Mother's old seat and, my old masks in hand, watch them play out their small lives below.

It's autumn again, and Halloween, and from where I'm sitting I can see all the little children in their costumes, running from house to house, careless and carefree and shouting, happy to be hiding behind someone else's face.

A strong wind blows in from the north, stripping the old oak in the front yard of the last of its leaves, and as they spiral to the ground I open the window and send my masks spilling down to meet them.

Freed from those faces, I lean my head back against the wall and yawn. The house creaks and groans around me. My mind wanders undisturbed. Slowly, I am lulled into sleep by the distant hypnotic lights of the last fireflies of the year, blinking out their requiem for the seasons.

I shut my eyes and smile.

Autumn, and the leaves are blowing, and my masks are gone, and I'm waiting, waiting, waiting.

All my life I've felt buried in dark places, but I hold on to the hope that someday soon there'll be that one glorious moment when there's nothing left for me to do but shine.