They liked the game because they knew it was bad. Their mother had told them, a million times she'd told them, don't put that on your face, don't go down there. Don't, don't, don't. Nowadays, it seemed each of mother's sentences started with that unpleasant little word. But the children didn't care. Tim and Judy had decided when they were very, frightfully small that they wouldn't listen to their mother, not when it came to the important things, anyway, and the mask sure seemed important. Later, they wouldn't quite remember why they'd done it, why they hadn't just listened to their mother. But what happened later didn't much matter, did it?
The mess was all over the floor now, as the old women say.
They waited until their mother was out of the house, which wasn't all that often and they had to be real careful, 'cause she was a tricky one and you never knew when she might just come back. You know, pop back in, see if she hadn't forgotten something. Now, Tim and Judy knew she only did this to trick them, to catch them doing something she'd told them not to, but they were smart kids. They waited until she was surely gone, proper what with the car and all. And it was a neat trick, 'cause then, even if she did come back, they'd hear the engine in the drive and hide the evidence. If they were quick enough, 'cause she'd caught them once and that hadn't been all that pleasant.
So they waited in the living room – not the kitchen, so as not to give it away, see – and they bid their mother goodbye. This was back in the olden days, see, when it wasn't all that big a trouble to let kiddies off on their own. When you could pop out for hours on end and the kids would more or less be just fine when you got back. Sure, sometimes they ended bad, like Tim and Judy here, but what you gonna do about it?
It was the risk you had to take, if you wanted to leave the little brats at home. And anyway, Tim and Judy only got into trouble 'cause they were naughty little kids. If they'd been good, they'd still be home with mother.
Anyway, when mother was well out of earshot, when the car had driven away some fifteen minutes ago, Tim and Judy looked at one another and nodded, all solemn and jumped and ran into the kitchen. It was mask time. Today would be the day, they felt certain. Mother had let slip she had quite a bit of trouble in town she needed to deal with, which meant she wouldn't be home for hours. Plenty for them to try and then clean up the aftermath. In all my years, I never been able to get just who told them. Maybe it was Jimmy from the flats, maybe it wad ole Miss Hannigan next door. Her son was a big shot lawyer up in town, but the old cook was just batshit crazy. Whoever it was, little Tim and Judy got it into their little heads that if they tried hard enough, if they got the recipe just right, then they could summon up some sort of ghost or something. You know kids, eye for trouble an' all that and those two had always been sulking that nothing interesting ever happened to them.
But first, they had to get the recipe. Tim had been real careful to write the recipe down, right on his arm, every day, he'd rewrite it, so it became a permanent fixture on his skin. Three eggs. That was the first part and the easiest, really. They'd broken loads of eggs in their time. So they smashed up the eggs and then poured the sauce. It was their mother's special pancake sauce. And then, wonder of wonders, they tried to stand tall but didn't quite make it, so they pulled over a char and Judy, who was exactly two inches taller than her brother stood on her tippy-tip toes and reached up into her mother's vodka cabinet and poured down the bottle whole into the bowl. Now, that wasn't something very nice to do, 'cause their mother would do quite a lot of drinking when she came back, so she would've really appreciated that bottle of vodka. But still, no use in crying over spilled booze, is there?
But the mask wasn't really a mask at all at that point, just a gooey thing that wouldn't quite stick to their faces. An' naturally, the ghost wouldn't come if they wasn't wearing the mask. So they figured they'd break the recipe and poured in some flour, until ti got all a bit like the masks their mother put on when she was wanting to look that extra pretty. And they scooped it up in big handfuls and smeared it all over their faces and went and unlocked the basement. Now, I don't know if either of them had a moment of remorse, a second where they thought maybe they shouldn't do this, but even if they did, they didn't listen to that little voice in their heads and they didn't listen to their mother, which proved to be their undoing in the end.
You see, monsters have a way of listening to the world, you know, they keep their ear to the ground even when no one else is. And they hear things, just like I heard those two little lost children howling for me in the darkness of their basement. And we answer those calls, because them things are serious. You should never call for a monster if you don't want him to come, but those children did. They screamed and yelled and called out every name their little heads could think of and I came. Out of nowhere, though not really, but that's what they thought. I was with them before they could say one two three.
And boy, did those children scream when I sunk my claws into the backs of their necks...They cried and they begged for me not to kill them and they promised they'd be good, that they'd never disobey mommy again. But I didn't kill them, nor did I care much about their mommy. Because you see, there's laws, on this earth, like with anything and there's a very clear law that says if you call for monsters, then you're fair game. Now, I take that law very seriously, as you can see.
And Tim and Judy, why, they've had plenty of chances to see that too in the years they've been with me. See, children learn. Is just, sometimes they learn when it's too late.
