Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 20, No. 1, January 1975

The Face of Death by Gary Brandner

Unhappily, not all unsolicited gifts are returnable.

The man talking to Zhivar was clearly too rich to be walking in this neighborhood. Melina watched them through a gap in the draperies that hung across the front window. She studied the man’s tailored suit, his razor-cut gray hair, his healthy, tanned complexion, and she was sure Zhivar could not bring him here.

She was wrong. They were coming this way. Zhivar, in his contrived Gypsy costume, complete to the single gold earring, was talking rapidly, waving his arms and showing the dazzling white teeth under his moustache. The gray-haired man listened with a half-smile and let himself be steered along the street to the small building that had once been a store. A hand-lettered sign propped out in front read: Madame Melina — Palmistry. The sign made no promises so, technically, no laws were broken. The police were tolerant of Gypsies in this section of the city, as long as there were no complaints. Even so, this was the last week Melina and Zhivar could stay in the abandoned store. The entire block was condemned to make way for a high-rise parking structure. Already workmen were pulling down the row of buildings behind them.

As the two men drew near, Melina let the draperies fall back across the window and walked over to a card table that was set up at the rear of the room. The table was covered with a cloth of crimson silk printed with golden symbols for the sun, the moon, and the planets.

Melina touched a hand to the blue-black hair that hung thick and loose to her shoulders. With proper grooming and makeup she could have been a strikingly beautiful woman. It mattered not to Melina. Zhivar approved of the way she looked, and she had no one else. She seated herself at the table to wait.

“Here we are, sir,” Zhivar said, holding the door open for the gray-haired man. “Here is the Gypsy lady who knows all and tells all. Your past and your future are revealed to her by the lines in your palm. Madame Melina.”

She lowered her head to acknowledge Zhivar’s introduction, then looked up to study the man he had brought with him. He was slightly built, and moved with an easy grace. Melina judged him to be in his middle fifties, a man comfortable with his station in life. He had a good face, with kindness in his eyes.

“Please sit down,” she told him.

“Thank you,” the man said. “To tell you the truth, I’m a little nervous, coming in here like this.”

“There is nothing to fear.”

“I’m sure of that.” The man smiled. “It’s just that I have never had my fortune told before. It happens I had some time to kill before an appointment and your... er...”

“He is my husband.”

“Your husband was very persuasive.”

“May I see your hand?”

“Does it matter which hand?”

“The left hand tells your past, the right hand tells your future.”

The man smiled at her. “I already know my past, so we might as well have a look at the future.” He extended his right hand, palm up, across the table.

Melina pretended to study the man’s clean, uncalloused hand.

“I see a business transaction,” she said. “It will take place very soon. It involves a considerable amount of money, and you will come out of it very well.”

That much was easy. The man mentioned that he had an appointment, and in this part of the city it was not likely to be social. Probably he had business with one of the import firms in the next block. From the man’s clothes and his bearing, it was reasonable to assume that his dealings involved considerable amounts of money. As for predicting his success... well, one always predicted success. From this point on Melina would adjust her reading to clues she picked up from the man’s reactions and the questions he asked.

Zhivar slipped back past the curtained doorway into their living quarters. His eyes told Melina to squeeze as much as she could out of this one. By leading the man on, she could easily run the bill to over twenty dollars.

Looking up into the man’s face, Melina was reluctant to go on with it. No one would really be hurt, of course, but she did not like to deceive people, especially a man with a good face like this one.

Then suddenly she went rigid in her chair. The face of the man began to change. As she watched, the healthy tan paled, and discolored blotches grew on his cheeks. The man leaned back away from Melina, and she saw the skin of his face split into festering strips, then blacken and wither away, leaving the naked, mottled skull.

“What is it?” the man asked. He pulled his hand back, and Melina realized her nails had dug into the flesh. Convulsively she released her grip.

“I can tell you no more,” she said, shielding her eyes. “You must go now.”

“Are you ill?” the man asked. “Can I help you?”

“It is nothing. Please go.”

The curtain stirred as Zhivar moved behind it, listening.

The man stood up uncertainly. Melina kept her eyes away from his face.

“At least let me pay you,” the man said. He pulled a wallet from his inside coat pocket and slipped out a five-dollar bill. He laid the bill on the table and, when Melina still did not look up, walked out of the store.

Zhivar swept the curtain aside and burst into the room. “What’s the matter with you, woman? That one was good for plenty if you had played him along right. Why did you let him go?”

Melina continued to stare down into her lap, saying nothing.

Zhivar started to shout something else, then caught himself up. “Wait! You saw it on him, didn’t you. You saw the face of death.”

She nodded silently.

“And such a rich one he is. Did you see the bills in that wallet?”

“All the money in the world is of no use to him now. He will be a dead man by sundown.”

Zhivar’s eyes grew crafty. He parted the draperies across the front window and looked out into the street. “There he is. He’s going into one of those shops in the next block.” Zhivar moved toward the door.

“Where are you going?” Melina asked.

“After him.”

“No, let the man be.”

“I will do nothing to hurt him. There is no need. You know better than I that no power on earth can save a man who wears the face of death.”

“Then why are you going after him?”

“It is only a little while until sundown. When he falls, someone should be there. You yourself said all that money is no good to him now.”

“You would rob the dead?”

“Be silent, woman. I will just follow to see where he falls. That is all.”

Melina said nothing more as Zhivar hurried out. It was strange, she thought, that in all the years she had pretended to tell fortunes, before today she had not looked upon the face of death on any of her customers.

She had been a joyful child of four the first time it happened. It was in the old country where Melina and her parents traveled with the other Gypsies, living as they could and enjoying their freedom. Her father, a bear of a man with a rumbling laugh, had been about to leave on a hunting expedition with two of his friends. He swept the little girl up into his arms for a good-bye hug. She looked into her father’s face and began to scream as she saw the features dissolve into a hideous mask of death.

Puzzled, her father had lowered Melina to the ground and tried without success to quiet her hysteria. It was not until long after he had gone that the little girl found her voice and was able to tell her mother what she had seen.

Melina’s mother, a woman of dark and wild beauty, had reacted with such horror that Melina began to cry all over again. Her mother silenced the girl and told her she must never, never tell anyone what she had seen in her father’s face. Her mother then walked away and sat alone by a blackthorn tree. There she stayed until evening when the two hunting friends of Melina’s father returned carrying his body. From that day onward there was no more joy in Melina’s life.

She was twelve years old the next time it happened. True to her promise, Melina had never told what she saw the day her father died. Still, the picture was rarely out of her mind. Her mother had become cool and distant with her, as though it were somehow the little girl’s fault that her father had walked in front of the guns.

Melina became a solitary, quiet child, usually playing by herself away from the others. She had but one friend, a girl named Francesca, who had been born with a crooked spine. They would play together silently by the hour, sailing flower boats upon the river. It was the face of Francesca that Melina watched shrivel into a death’s head one bright August day. Melina had run screaming into the forest and stayed there until long after dark.

When she returned to the camp she found the Gypsies grouped around something lying on the bank of the river. Melina slipped between the silent people and looked upon the drowned dead face of her friend.

It was to her grandmother that Melina went this time — a tiny woman with skin like dry brown paper. The little girl told the old woman of her awful visions.

“What does it mean, Grandmother?” she had asked.

The old woman sat for a long time before answering. “What, you have seen, child, is the face of death. Among our people there is perhaps one in a generation who has the gift... or the curse. When you look into the face of one who is to die before sundown you see... what you have seen. It is not your fault, but all the same our people will shun you when they know. They have not the wisdom to separate the prophecy from the guilt.”

“What can I do, Grandmother? I don’t want to be different from the others.”

“I am sorry, child, there is nothing to be done. As long as you live you must see upon those about to die the face of death.”

After that Melina’s isolation from her people was almost total. The others turned away whenever she came near. Among them, only one scoffed at the fear of death. This was Zhivar, a powerful man in his thirties, with eyes as black as his hair. He began to pay attention to Melina, who was fast becoming a woman. When Zhivar asked her to go with him to America as his bride, Melina quickly accepted.

In the new country they had moved from city to city, living on what Melina earned reading palms, and a rare pay check Zhivar would bring home from some temporary job. Sometimes in a crowd Melina would see the terrible metamorphosis in the face of a stranger. When it happened she would look away quickly and pretend she hadn’t seen. She and Zhivar had no friends, so for many years she had not looked closely upon the face of death. Until today.

Now, as the first light of dawn paled the window over their bed, Melina lay awake and alone. The back door creaked softly, and her body tensed under the blanket.

“Zhivar?”

“Yes. Be quiet.”

“What has happened?”

“Be silent, woman. I must have our money.”

Melina sat up in bed and clutched the blanket to her breast. Zhivar was a dark silhouette in the gloom.

“You are in trouble,” she said.

“I am not to blame. I spoke to the man when he came out of the importer’s shop. For some reason he became afraid and struck out at me. I pushed him and he fell.”

“The man is dead,” Melina said.

“Yes. And worse, I was seen when I pushed him. All night I have hidden, but soon they will be here looking for me. And I didn’t even get his wallet.”

Melina slid out of the bed and pulled on a loose-fitting dress. Zhivar was on his hands and knees. He ran his hand across the floor in the near-darkness until he found the loose board for which he was looking. He pried this up and withdrew a thin packet of bills wrapped in plastic. He rose, tucking the money inside his shirt, and pushed past the curtain into the front of the store. With one hand he pushed the draperies aside and looked out.

As Melina watched, the rays of the rising sun probed through the gap and fell across her husband’s face.

He said in a harsh whisper, “They’re coming already, up the street.” He closed the draperies and hurried through the curtain back to the rear door. “I’ll hide in the old building across the alley until they’re gone.”

Zhivar hesitated in the doorway, and Melina knew he was waiting for her to kiss him. Instead, she turned away, holding her body under tight control.

“When I can I’ll come back for you,” Zhivar said, and he was gone.

In a very few minutes there was a knock at the front door. With a last look behind her, Melina walked up and opened the door to two uniformed policemen. One was about thirty with eyes that were much older. The other was very young with a new moustache that he kept touching unconsciously.

“My name is McCall,” said the older policeman, “and this is Officer Flynn.” He consulted his notebook. “Is there a man named Zhivar living here? You know him?”

“That is my husband,” Melina said.

“Is he here now?”

“No.”

“Do you mind if we look around?”

“As you wish.” Melina stepped aside to make way for them.

Officer McCall walked back to search the living quarters while young Flynn looked around the front.

“Do you tell fortunes, ma’am?” the young policeman asked.

“I read palms. The city has an ordinance against fortune-telling.”

Flynn gave her an embarrassed smile. “I wasn’t even thinking about that. I was just interested. My wife brought home a set of tarot cards last week, but I can’t make heads or tails out of them. Neither can my wife, really, but she plays at it.”

“The tarot is difficult to master.”

“I’ll bet it is.”

McCall stepped back through the curtain that hung between the rooms. “Nobody back there.”

“Not up here either,” Flynn said.

McCall licked a stub of pencil and poised it over his notebook. “When was the last time you saw your husband?”

“It does not matter. You will never take him,” Melina said.

“All we want to do is ask him some questions.”

“You will never take him,” Melina repeated. She knew it was true because in that one flash of sunlight when Zhivar had parted the draperies she had seen the deadly transformation of his face.

McCall looked exasperated. “Lady, I’d advise you to cooperate—”

The crash of falling masonry out behind the store broke off McCall’s sentence. There was a scream of pain, another crash, then silence. The policemen looked quickly at each other and ran out the back door.

Melina eased into the chair by the card table and folded her hands in front of her. She was still sitting like that when the ambulance drove away with Zhivar’s broken body.

Officer McCall asked the necessary questions and took the necessary notes. His young partner stood uncomfortably in the background. Melina remained in her chair with her hands folded as the two policemen walked out the door.

After a minute Officer Flynn came back.

“Ma’am, I just wanted to tell you I’m sorry about your husband. I’ve only been married a little while, and I can imagine how it must feel to lose someone close.”

For the first time Melina’s composure broke. She dropped her head onto her hands and sobbed. “Go! Just go away!”

Officer Flynn stood for a moment in the doorway until his partner came pounding up the sidewalk behind him.

“Come on, Dennis, move it! We just got a squeal on an armed robbery in progress.”

The young man made a gesture as though he wanted to say something more, but when Melina didn’t raise her head he wheeled and ran with McCall toward their patrol car.

After a while Melina pulled herself erect. Her dark eyes shone with tears. If only you had not come back, she thought. You are so very young to die, Officer Flynn.