Book 2 - Mrs. Quarterhorse at the Masked Ball

Mrs. Quarterhorse has spent a small fortune on her Christmas Masked Ball, the ball to literally end all balls, because at its end an asteroid will pulverise the Earth. Her spectacular old ballroom cellar will soon be crowded with gowns and tails—all the beautiful people, as the world calls them, or, as Mrs. Quarterhorse prefers, all the ugly morons. I suspect she enjoys the company of these beautiful morons more than she lets on, otherwise why would she choose to spend her last night surrounded by them? We’ll all be wearing animal masks designed by yours truly. What animal masks have to do with the Christmas theme, I have no idea, but Mrs. Quarterhorse and I set aside the best masks for ourselves; she’s a cobra, and I’m a boa constrictor. I’ll do my best to fit in with all the better dressed (albeit lesser masked) aristos, but if someone tries to drag me onto the dance floor, or if I otherwise make a fool of myself, I’ll pilfer a tray of cocktail sausages and await the asteroid’s arrival in bed with a good book.

Available for pre-order at Amazon

The following is an excerpt from an interview between publisher Georges Presse and the author.

GEORGES PRESSE: This is your second story about Mrs. Quarterhorse.

S. C. MARCHERE: Have you at least read it this time?

GP: I have. And it’s an improvement over the first.

SCM: So you finally took the time to read the first book?

GP: No, and I don’t plan to. The first book is about a plague, and I’ve had enough of plagues, fictional as well as real.

SCM: I told you the last time we spoke, the plague is not the focus of the story!

GP: This new story is about an asteroid.

SCM: It’s not about an asteroid.

GP: Here we go again.

SCM: There’s an asteroid in the story, yes, an asteroid rushing toward Earth that shadows the events of the story, but the story is not about an asteroid. Saying it’s about an asteroid makes it sound like science fiction, which it is not.

GP: If it’s not science fiction, what is it? Is it a ghost story, like the last one?

SCM: No. It’s about what the title says it’s about: a fancy masked ball. The sort you’d never get invited to. Mrs. Quarterhorse and I are the only ones who believe the asteroid will strike at the end of the ball. The guests, all two hundred or so of them, Mrs. Quarterhorse’s high-flying friends, they’re oblivious to what is coming.

GP: I wish I’d remained oblivious to what was coming. By which I mean the last chapter, I hated it.

SCM: I wasn’t sure about the epilogue myself. I even state as much in the story.

GP: Then why did you include it?

SCM: Because it happened.

GP: Will there be more books after this one?

SCM: Can there be, considering how it ends?

GP: Perhaps we shouldn’t give the ending away.

SCM: We can discuss the beginning instead, if you like. I was pleased with the chapter in which Mrs. Quarterhorse and I are snowed-in together.

GP: You are confronted with a broken furnace, if I recall.

SCM: Don’t spoil how it turns out.

GP: Heaven forbid anyone learn in advance whether or not the furnace is repaired.

SCM: It matters! A story doesn’t have to be about something earth-shaking, like an asteroid, to be engaging.

GP: But it helps sell a book, and that’s what we’re trying to do here, isn’t it?

SCM: The reader already knows there’s an asteroid in the story. Now they know there’s also a broken furnace.

GP: And with that thrilling reveal, we surely have a bestseller on our hands.

Mrs. Quarterhorse at the Masked Ball is the second book in the Mrs. Quarterhorse Series.

Following is the fourth chapter of Mrs. Quarterhorse at the Masked Ball, a pause in the story during which the protagonist reflects on recent events and prepares for the fateful masked ball about to begin.

Chapter 4

A Bird of Prey

Ploughs did eventually reach the far corners of the snow-buried city, and so by December twenty-fourth, the night of the Great Christmas Masked Ball, Mrs. Quarterhorse’s drive and walkways were cleared to the paving stones.

Guests to the ball had been asked to not arrive before six in the evening. The dance itself would begin at ten. I, however, on Mrs. Quarterhorse’s urging, had shown up a full day early. Prior to settling once again into the cosy second floor suite, I had not seen her since the blizzard. She’d spent the intervening days tending to all manner of preparations for the ball, but at night she’d nearly always found time to call me. Knowing now how little her phone meant to her, how rarely she even looked at the thing, I took the regularity of her calls as the greatest compliment. She called on various pretexts—for my opinion on decorations, on food, and on music, although it didn’t appear as if she had used any of my suggestions. I wasn’t offended! I’d suspected from the start that her requests for help had only been excuses to chat.

Her house was fast becoming a different world. Musicians rehearsed in the basement, decorators moved from wall to wall with ladders and scaffolding, and cooking staff so crowded the kitchen and dining room, I didn’t dare step anywhere near. I spent most of my time in the suite because I was otherwise getting in the way. Mrs. Quarterhorse was giving her guests the run of the house—to my chagrin, as I had become fond of the place, and worried her treasures would be in jeopardy as the party stretched into the night—because her ballroom basement, enormous though it may have been, was surely too small to safely contain the nearly two hundred bodies now expected.

Mrs. Quarterhorse had been so convinced most of her guests would cancel at the last minute out of fear of the approaching asteroid, she sent out three times as many invitations as she had originally intended. But panic never materialised. That the asteroid was expected to arrive just before sunrise on Christmas morning did fluster people sensitive to such coincidences, but there was little flusterers could do except pray; and among Mrs. Quarterhorse’s guests were very few of a fretful religious bent. No Midnight Mass for this gang, nearly every one of her invitations had been accepted.

For all our telephone chatting, Mrs. Quarterhorse and I had not discussed even once the frightening phenomenon we’d witnessed in her library. Or in her study, whichever. Sixteen Three of Clubs had emerged from an ordinary deck of cards—we’d both seen the impossible laid out before us on that desk, we hadn’t imagined it. Our silence on the matter began only a minute afterwards. I gathered the cards, shuffled the deck back to normal, and then we quietly played a few hands of gin rummy before returning to bed.

Although we never discussed the cards, I was certain we’d read them the same way. During our many phone calls since, Mrs. Quarterhorse often encouraged me to leave town, to go search for my city of terracotta roofs; she offered to buy me a ticket to Rome, and even suggested a particular hotel with a rooftop lounge overlooking the city that might be the very perch from which I’d viewed the rooftops in my dream.

Her pleas became increasingly desperate as Christmas Eve approached. She urged me to not dawdle, as there was surely soon to be a run on the airlines.

But I refused.

One morning she called me only six hours after we’d hung up the night before. In that short time, besides all her usual ball preparations and hopefully at least a few hours of sleep, she’d added my name to her French bank account and bought me a ticket for a flight to Rome leaving that very evening. I was to take a taxi to her house where she would fit me with sufficient luggage and cash.

I had to ask her to repeat herself not only because what she had told me was so absurd, but because she was calling from the home of her seamstress, a woman who had several loud children and a barking dog.

She couldn’t repeat herself because the seamstress had stepped back into the room, and so she asked me simply to bundle up my things and come to her house immediately. She was on her way home as soon as her gown fitting was complete.

My simmering fear of the asteroid came suddenly to a boil.

I frantically stuffed all my meagre wardrobe into my overnight bag, along with the deck of cards and derringer recently given to me by Mrs. Quarterhorse. I paused upon considering the unlikelihood I’d successfully pass a gun through airport security! And then I caught a glimpse of my beautiful sparkly purple bike leaning against the wall by the front door. I couldn’t abandon the Purple Panther at the motel. Were the streets sufficiently clear of snow for me to pedal all the way to Mrs. Quarterhorse’s? I left my room jacketless and in bare feet to examine the condition of the roads.

As I stood shivering on the slushy walkway looking out across the parking lot to the street beyond, my attention drifted from the street to a bright cloudless sky.

A large bird, much larger than I was used to seeing, perhaps an eagle or a hawk, swooped overhead from left to right, slowed, hovered for a moment indecisively, confusedly, as if its prey had suddenly vanished, then pumped its broad wings and rose to such terrific height it appeared no more than a dot. It hovered again, swooped again, hovered again, then finally swooped back and away in the direction from which it had first appeared.

During my card-reading heyday I’d contrived meaning into the most commonplace behaviour of birds—but now? I was only glad it had left—I’d swept it away like a pestering fly, like a speck in my eye! The sky alone now held my attention—the sheltering, smothering blue firmament. Infinite space. Everything, nothing!

And while I gazed at everything and nothing, a great calm came over me.

Something terrible was coming—Mrs. Quarterhorse was right, and I could feel it. When I looked up at the sky, I could feel that terrible something drawing nearer, I could feel it pulling on my bones. But there wasn’t anything I could do about it—what was going to happen was going to happen.

My gaze dropped to my bare feet on the cold concrete.

By the time I returned shivering to my room I’d decided I couldn’t accept Mrs. Quarterhorse’s offer. If my end was truly coming, there was nothing I could do to avoid it.

The phone rang nearly the moment I stepped back inside. It was Mrs. Quarterhorse again, this time calling from the taxi bringing her home. She offered to pick me up if I was ready. I thanked her for her ongoing thoughtfulness but quickly added that I couldn’t go to Rome because I was going to be with her at the masked ball on Christmas Eve. And furthermore, I was looking forward to it.

To my surprise, a loud sigh was the extent of her rebuttal, but she would nonetheless exchange the ticket for a credit in my name; it would be at the airport if I changed my mind. After a sufficient pause to allow us to ascend to lighter matters without getting the bends, I asked her about the fitting. She reported that the gown was beautiful but a bit loose, likely because she hadn’t been eating enough lately. But she had asked the seamstress to leave the waistline as it was. She’d have a few extra breakfasts to fill it out on her own. It then seemed as if Mrs. Quarterhorse was about to ask me over for dinner when she remembered other pressing ball-related business, and instead merely sighed again and asked if she could call me back that night.

Thereafter, we never spoke of the asteroid, or of my getting on a plane, escaping, whatever she had hoped I would do. From that point onward our conversations took the form of Mrs. Quarterhorse complaining of the various incompetencies she had endured during the day’s preparations, and my sympathising with her.

In the evening following the frantic call in which she had pleaded with me to leave before it was too late, Mrs. Quarterhorse called again, this time while less than lucid. She paused often to organise her thoughts, and at least once seemed to doze off. The purpose of her call was to tell me she had heard back from somebody or other about the glass buoy she had given me long ago, the one we had found among the ashes of my home. It was being held as evidence in the case against her for punching the detective. Mrs. Quarterhorse assured me she was staying on it, and that she wouldn’t allow the buoy to disappear into a file box somewhere. I had, during a previous conversation, learned the case against her had been all but dropped thanks to string-pulling by Mr. Slacks, although she would probably still have to face a judge at some point. I didn’t contribute much to the conversation; I only listened and answered affirmatively or negatively where each seemed appropriate. In truth, I’d all but forgotten the glass buoy. I had assumed I’d get it back eventually, although at that time I wasn’t wasting much thought on the future. That she was fretting over a future she presumably didn’t believe was coming I suspected was because she wasn’t as certain about the asteroid as she claimed to be.

After babbling a bit longer about the buoy, she went on to tell me about her dress—sleeveless, velvet bodice, floor length skirt in deep dark olive with blinding gold accents. Her attention skipped around, eventually leading back to the buoy, and then suddenly to the little frame she had found on Tarpin’s property. She wasn’t sure what had become of the frame, and so she asked if I could do her a favour and inquire after it; she’d do it herself, but she was presently having difficulty remaining awake, and certain the mere sound of Tarpin answering the phone would put her to sleep.

Even though I doubted Mrs. Quarterhorse was going to remember the conversation we’d just had, or that she would, once lucid again, care in the slightest about the little frame, I nonetheless felt obliged to give Tarpin a call.

I had braced myself for a long, dull conversation with him—as that is what conversations with Tarpin are invariably like—but instead, our talk was brief and distressing. Before the call turned bleak, I learned from him that his mother had, in fact, recovered the frame just a few days earlier. It had taken much yelling, he explained, to pry it from the police where it was being held as evidence, presumably for the case against Mrs. Quarterhorse. I took this to mean we would likewise be able to retrieve the buoy; if Tarpin’s mum could prevail, Mrs. Quarterhorse would have no difficulty.

When Tarpin’s mother yelled at him to hang up, he told her it was me he was talking to, and that he was thanking me for finding the frame that had, evidently, belonged to his mother’s great-grandmother. Actually, I hadn’t found the frame, nor had he thanked me, except so far as one can accept an unearned thank you second-hand by overhearing it.

Tarpin and his family were leaving town, and he suggested I do likewise. His dad had learned from someone at work that the asteroid was going to strike within a hundred miles. As he spoke, his mother and father both yelled at him to keep his mouth shut. Tarpin kept his mouth open nonetheless, to explain that his parents were worried that once word got out, everyone would try to leave at once and then…

That was the end of the call. One of his parents had likely grabbed the phone away from him.

Two weeks had passed since that last brief conversation with Tarpin. He wasn’t someone to ordinarily cross my mind, but I had thought of him often since we’d spoken. His parents had certainly been wrong about a stampede out of town; a few had left, mostly for the same reason people were leaving coastal regions all over the world—the fear of destructive waves after the asteroid landed in the ocean. Of course, nearly all these migrations were from the Pacific coast, not the Atlantic; but as confusion over the striking point of the asteroid grew, some on the Atlantic were similarly moving inland. However, the hearty folk of our coastal community were mostly staying put, and, some of them, looking forward to the social event of the century, Mrs. Quarterhorse’s Christmas Masked Ball.

I wondered how puzzled the guests would be upon receiving animal masks at the door. Mrs. Quarterhorse didn’t seem at all concerned about the lack of a consistent theme for her party—was it celebrating Christmas, or was it a celebration (ironic or otherwise) of the end of the world? What did ducks, cheetahs, and gorillas have to do with either?

As for the masks, while I was pleased with how they’d turned out, I refused to take much credit, because the seamstress who put them together for Mrs. Quarterhorse had far exceeded the silly little sketches I’d drawn for her. The best of the bunch was unquestionably Mrs. Quarterhorse’s own shimmering golden cobra mask, designed to perfectly complement her ball gown.

During one of our nocturnal phone conversations, not long after the blizzard, I had confessed to Mrs. Quarterhorse that despite her effort to quell my worry about not fitting in among her high society guests, I remained anxious. The end of the world was fast approaching, yet I worried about making a social faux pas.

Mrs. Quarterhorse then repeated a suggestion she had made once before, but I hadn’t at the time taken seriously—that I should arrive not as an ordinary guest, but as a card-reader.

I didn’t care for the suggestion. So near to the incident of the sixteen Three of Clubs, I wasn’t eager to put cards in my hands for anything other than gin rummy; but I knew myself too well—today the cards scared me, tomorrow they wouldn’t. I’d been through this often. And so, I told Mrs. Quarterhorse I’d consider it.

She reminded me that I had on many occasions read the future with such precision I obviously had a natural gift for it. And this gift would give me a psychological advantage over the other guests. She admitted that most of her friends were, in fact, exactly the snobs I was worried they were going to be. But she argued that there are many hierarchies—wealth is one thing, but being able to divine the future? I’d have them at a disadvantage all the money and status in the world couldn’t overcome.

I let the cards drop from their leather case into my palm, and then spread them out until several royal faces peered out from among the suits. Perhaps Louis XVI had sorted this very deck while under house arrest, taking anxious notice of the King of Diamonds surrounded by a menacing cluster of low-counting clubs and spades.

Mrs. Quarterhorse had been extraordinarily generous to give me these beautiful cards. And so I lied to her as convincingly as I was able that her idea was excellent. I’d be a card-reader at her party.

No sooner had I conceded than I learned she had made the card-reading suggestion with something else in mind—an outfit that would be perfect for me; she’d stumbled upon it while flipping through pattern books at the home of her seamstress. It was magnificent, she gushed, black velvet with a long silver dragon pattern from neck to toe. I laughed! What other response could I have given? I asked if she was serious. She insisted she was. I argued that I could not pull off such an outfit. She assured me I could, and with my cards I’d be the talk of the ball.

The talk of the ball! My hope was to not even be noticed!

While still laughing I agreed to do whatever she asked. She and I were staring down the end of the world, together. Did it matter if I looked like an idiot to a house full of strangers?

She gave me the seamstress’ address in case she didn’t have the opportunity to bring me herself to have my measurements taken.

Back to the present.

I dared a peek across the room at my outfit, only just arrived, and now on a hook on the suite bedroom door. For all her fretting of the last two days, Mrs. Quarterhorse had fretted mostly that my outfit would not be ready in time, so when it finally appeared at her front door, she stopped what she was doing to rush upstairs to see how it looked on me. She was thrilled! And so, I pretended to be thrilled, too. I was, honestly, thrilled that she was thrilled. But after she left, because she had so much to do before the guests began to arrive, I couldn’t keep from laughing at the sight of myself in the mirror. I hadn’t taken the gown off for that reason, though; I’d have preferred to have kept it on, to get used to the feel of the thing before anyone else saw me in it, but I was worried about getting it wrinkled. I chose to leave it on its hanger until the party started, when I would be forced to leave my sanctuary. Until then, since my help was not needed by anyone for anything, I would remain in my room, in my street clothes, reading Treasure Island.

As I flopped back in bed with my book, tuning my ears to the unique rackets from just out in the hall, from the main floor below me, and from overhead, I wondered why Mrs. Quarterhorse had asked me to arrive so early. The best I could figure was she merely wanted me in the suite so she had somewhere to escape and vent when things weren’t going as planned. Her most recent visit was to calm herself after Mr. Slacks had shown up at the door, four hours early. Yes, he was a guest. Mrs. Quarterhorse was not pleased to have had to invite him, and refused to have him underfoot one second longer than necessary. She had been, during that brief reprieve with me in the suite, more candid than she had ever been about her relationship with the man, a relationship in which he had gained an extension by using his connections to keep Mrs. Quarterhorse from having to answer for punching the detective. I learned from her that she had come within a hair’s breadth of spending Christmas in prison. Her masked ball had been saved by that greasy idiot, she sorrowfully explained. I managed to inadvertently cheer her up by asking why he always smelled like raisins. She burst out laughing, to my surprise, as I hadn’t thought the observation funny, only peculiar. But I laughed along with her, and she left the suite in better humour than she had entered it. Job well done, I suppose.

My gaze drifted from my book to my ridiculous black and silver costume and finally to the bedroom window. I’d shut the blinds because the sun had been a little too much. It was a cold Christmas Eve, but an intensely sunny one.

The world was going to end tomorrow morning before sunrise, yet I was calm. Would I remain calm after the sun had fallen? Presently, it was so bright outside it seemed as if the sun would remain up forever. But these were the shortest days of the year; that sun out there blazing with such permanence, it would be gone in just a few hours. How would I feel then, knowing it would never rise again? Would I be so busy slithering around the house in my black and silver costume that I wouldn’t cringe as each hour struck? And what would become of me after midnight? Would I be able to keep a stiff upper lip?

I reminded myself there would be alcohol everywhere. Like my mum before me, I don’t care for liquor; but also like her, I’m willing to turn to it when my wits give out. And who knows, maybe when the end was near, Mrs. Quarterhorse would share with me her own special medicine, whatever it was with the unusual scent.

I tried my best to continue reading Treasure Island, but I soon found myself merely flipping pages to look at the pictures. And then for the hundredth time I abandoned the book to slouch against the suite doorway to observe the final preparations in the second floor foyer. Mrs. Quarterhorse’s guests would soon be swarming the place, but the suite would remain mine alone, thank Heavens. I was glad there would be somewhere I could find refuge if I became overwhelmed either by the party or from anxiety over the approaching asteroid. While it seemed unlikely the coming horde would be naturally rowdy, alcohol changes people. My experience in this realm is limited, but I have noticed drinkers tend to be either happy, morose, or angry. The few times I have had a bit to drink has taught me I am a laughing drunk—everything becomes a joke, everything and everyone is hilarious. I don’t particularly mind the company of happy drunks. Weepy drunks are another matter, and angry drunks, I think it is fair to say, are the lowest state of our species. But one quality all drunks share is needing to use the washroom, again and again; there was a washroom in my suite, and so I would guard the door key with my life.

The great foyer that made up most of the second floor was fast becoming a winter wonderland. A big Christmas tree now stood directly outside my door, tinselled and decorated, but not yet lit. At least, it didn’t appear lit—such intense coloured sunlight streaked through the stained-glass it was impossible to tell. More lights were being strung around the hall, intertwined with ornamental strands of ivy and poinsettia.

The previous evening, under the cheerful glow of rope lights draped across the front of her house, Mrs. Quarterhorse and I set up an old Nativity Scene that had been in storage in her barn since she was little. I should have told her how much I enjoyed that labour, tramping in snow glowing pink and green and purple, and being among the shepherds and the wise men, the kings and the animals, and the Holy Family. As we arranged the nearly-life-size wooden figures in a pleasing group, I recalled my family’s old Christmas ornaments now lost among the ashes from the fire that had swallowed my home. My last few Christmases had been a bit dreary; my parents and I faithfully strung the lights every year, and decorated a tree, but I hadn’t had a particularly memorable Christmas since I was little. I suppose that’s just the way it goes. But while out in the snow with Mrs. Quarterhorse, I might have been five years old again, eagerly anticipating the arrival of Santa Claus!

To feel the joy of anticipation so near the end of the world—how very strange!

I wasn’t entirely sure what was going on down on the main floor and in the basement, as I hadn’t dared descend the stairs since getting the stink-eye from someone working in the kitchen whom I had bumped into. From the amount of activity going on down below, I expected when I saw it next the lower portion of the house would bear little resemblance to what I remembered from my stay during the blizzard.

I returned to the bedroom of my suite and flopped face down, spread-eagle on the bed.

I’m terrible at doing nothing. When Mrs. Quarterhorse invited me to come a day early, I’d naively assumed it would be to help her in the kitchen, to string ornaments, to vacuum, and to tidy up. I hadn’t then understood how big an event this masked ball was going to be. Previously, my biggest parties had all been at school and had never involved much more preparation than hanging streamers, setting up speakers, unstacking chairs and tables, and just generally making a gymnasium look a little less like a gymnasium. The preparations going on out there now were well outside my experience. I wondered how much all this was going to cost, and if Mrs. Quarterhorse wasn’t deliberately emptying her piggy bank. Did she truly believe the end was near? Did I truly believe it? None of the great gang she’d employed believed it, or they surely wouldn’t be spending their last day making pastries in a stranger’s home.

I rolled onto my back and ran my fingers along the sixteen medallions hanging from the choker around my neck. I believe my mum had worn this choker to remind her to not be afraid. It hadn’t worked for her, as I’d often seen her wearing the choker and terrified at the same time. Perhaps without it she would have been even worse off. I counted the medallions to ensure they were all where they should be, and then groped around for Treasure Island.

The complete Mrs. Quarterhorse at the Masked Ball is available for pre-order at Amazon

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