Page 11 of Masked Intentions in Pelican Point
We broke their sacred trust. The mask was never meant to be worn by the living, only to contain the hungry dead. But now it travels, and with each new bearer, the spirits grow stronger. They learn our ways, our weaknesses.
God forgive us, we have loosed something terrible upon the world. The mask remembers every death, every drop of blood spilled in its presence. And it grows hungry for more.
The temperature drops so suddenly that my breath mists. Somewhere in the archives, I hear the unmistakable sound of drumming—rhythmic, tribal, impossibly ancient. The documents on the desk begin to flutter as if touched by an unfelt wind.
I don't run. Twenty years of academic training keeps me methodical, even as primal fear claws at my spine. I photograph the final page, close the books, and walk steadily toward the stairs. The drumming follows me, growing louder with each step.
Only when I reach the main floor do the sounds fade. But as I lock the archive door, I can swear I hear voices whispering in a language my grandfather once tried to teach me—the old words, the ones that weren't supposed to be spoken after dark.
"Miskito cahochee," I whisper back, and the house falls silent.
The spirits are waking up. And they remember me.
The comms crackle with clipped voices, staff calling in positions as we race toward the north wing where a side window has been forced and the alarm tripped. But all I register is Allison’s breath just ahead of me—fast, ragged, proof she’s alive and fighting the same current I am. Whatever sparked between us isn’t done.
By the time we reach the window, security has the breach contained and the intruder is gone. Not the worst outcome—the mask is safe. Still, the air vibrates with unsettled energy, the sense of a probe testing defenses before the real strike.
"They were checking our response time," Allison mutters.
I pace the length of the gallery whilst Allison questions the guards. Her tone is clipped, her posture straight, but I see the residual heat in the set of her mouth. She has to be feeling it too. Whatever flared between us isn't something either of us can bury under procedure.
"The window sensors worked," one guard reports. "We were here in less than thirty seconds."
"Not good enough," Allison replies. "They still got that window open. Next time, we may not be so lucky."
I fold my arms, letting my voice cut in. "This wasn't about getting inside. It was about seeing how quickly we'd react. Whoever's behind this is building a playbook. Exactly the sort of probing raid the Calusa were described as using in the old accounts. Hit, retreat, watch. I've seen men in Kandahar do the same—pressure our lines, clock our response, fade into the dark. Different continent, same strategy."
Allison's gaze sharpens, and I see her cataloguing the slip in my academic facade. A real art historian wouldn't reference tactical patterns with that kind of certainty. But before she can probe deeper, the guard interrupts with his report.
Her gaze snaps to mine, intent at first, then narrowing as if she's just realizing I'm not exactly the bookish historian I pretend to be. Allison take’s the guard’s report and sends him on his way. Suspicion and curiosity flare in her eyes as if she can see through the mask I wear. "You sound very certain for a man who claims to be an academic."
"Maybe I'm more than that." I close the space between us, lowering my voice so only she hears. "Or maybe I'm just a simple historian, and you're the one reading more into it."
I hold her gaze, letting the suggestion hang. She studies me as though weighing whether I believe my own words. The look in her eyes says she's beginning to understand there's more to me than the neat story I spin. She may not know what, not yet, but the questions are there now, simmering between us.
She tilts her head slightly, studying me. "You talk like a man who's done more than grade papers. Where exactly did you learn about probing raids?"
"Just stating historical facts," I counter with a shrug, though I can see she isn't buying it.
Her eyes stay on me a beat too long, weighing me, as if cataloguing each slip in my act. For the first time she looks like she's fitting the pieces together—that the man in front of her might not just be the tidy academic she was told to expect.
She tips her head, voice laced with that characteristic British bite. "So the professor plays soldier now? Interesting." The jab lands with deliberate sting, but beneath it her eyes search mine as if trying to catch me out. Her jaw tightens, daring me to slip.
I grin. "Careful, Bennett. The way you're poking holes in my cover makes me think you like soldiers more than scholars."
She rolls her eyes, biting back a retort, but the pulse at her throat betrays her before she growls, low and heated. "I might have kept my distance, Porter, if you weren't so bloody tempting. You're trouble, and I know it, and yet here I am."
The admission spears straight through me. Trouble or not, she called me tempting, and that single word twists inside me. I like the way it sounds on her tongue, the way she hates giving it to me and yet can't quite take it back. It tells me more than she wants me to know—that she's already in deeper than she intended.
We circle back toward the ballroom, tension drifting behind us like a wraith ready to strike. I think back on what happened with the guests who seemed to have been affected by the mask and file each detail away. Threads weaving into a pattern, and at the center, the legend of the mask. Someone is using that history, stoking fear and uncertainty, manipulating superstition to cover their moves. The Calusa rites described masked dancers losing themselves in trance and frenzy.
It reminds me of men I once commanded—hard-eyed SEALs who went glassy the moment adrenaline spiked too far. They call it the thousand-yard stare. You had to slap them back into themselves or risk losing them forever. Here, it's happening to pampered billionaires and their hangers-on. Different battlefield, same hollow look.
Recognition hits me like a physical blow because my grandmother told me stories. She called it ‘spirit sickness,’ what happened when people touched objects that carried too much history, too much pain. The symptoms were always the same: vacant stares, speaking in unknown languages, movements that belonged to other times and places.
I find Allison at the edge of the terrace, her face half-lit by lantern glow. She's scanning the room, voice low into her comm, all control and command. She doesn't notice me until I'm beside her.
"You're wound tight," I say.
