title: The Magic of the Mask
author:  Louise Ashby 
description: Louise Ashby is one of the worlds most beautiful women. Who would have thought that a few short years ago she was on the brink of death, the bloodied remnants of her face and skull barely recognisable?
zlib_text: THE MASK
  
  
  DEAN
  
  
  KOONTZ
  
  
  This book is dedicated to Willo and Dave Roberts and to Carol and Don McQuinn
  who have no faults—
  
  
  except that they live too far away from us A dirge for her, the doubly dead,
  in that she died so young.
  
  
  —Edgar Allan Poe. “Lenore”
  
  
  And much of Madness, and more of Sin, And Horror the soul of the plot.
  
  
  —Edgar Allan Poe, “The Conqueror Worm”
  
  
  Extreme terror gives us back the gestures of our childhood.
  
  
  —Chazal
  
  
  Prologue
  
  
  LAURA was in the cellar, doing some spring cleaning and hating every minute of
  it. She didn’t dislike the work itself; she was by nature an industrious girl
  who was happiest when she had chores to do. But she was afraid of the cellar.
  
  
  For one thing, the place was gloomy. The four narrow windows, set high in the
  walls, were hardly larger than embrasures, and the dust-filmed panes of glass
  permitted only weak, chalky light to enter. Even brightened by a pair of
  lamps, the big room held on tenaciously to its shadows, unwilling to be
  com