The Masque of Consumption

 I, being a humble physician of scant repute, was summoned to the house of one Miss Cordelia Fitzhugh, a maiden of some twenty and five years, whose beauty was said to rival even the fabled Helen of Troy. Though a pall had fallen o'er her family, for her father, Colonel Fitzhugh, had passed only a fortnight prior, the town’s murmur was that Miss Cordelia had succumbed to no mere grief, but to the vile malady which hath ravaged many a fair bloom—consumption.

The skies hung heavy and thick with the haze of Autumn’s chill, the streets long since cloaked in the umber and gold of decaying leaves. It was on such a day as this that I arrived at the Fitzhugh estate, the stately abode shrouded in ivy and an air of unwholesome stillness, as if the very house knew the fate of its last inhabitant. I knocked, and the door was opened by a servant of such advanced years that he seemed more shade than man, ushering me silently within the parlour, where sat the lady herself.

There, by the dim firelight, I beheld Miss Cordelia—nay, what remained of her. The rose of her cheek was faded, her eyes hollow pools wherein flickered the last vestiges of life. Yet she bore upon her face a curious mask, of porcelain white, delicate as the finest china, that concealed her nose and mouth, leaving only her sorrowful eyes exposed. 'Twas a mask of such design I had never seen, one that might have suited the masquerades of a grand ball, though fashioned not for merriment but, as I surmised, some grim necessity.

She bade me sit with a gesture, her voice weak, but clear, beneath the porcelain. “Doctor,” she began, “you come at my behest, though I fear you shall find no cure for what ails me.”

I inclined my head, for I had heard the like from many a patient in their final throes. “Madam,” said I, “it is my duty to offer what comfort I may, be it in the prolonging of your days, or in easing the passage of your soul.”

Her lips twitched beneath the mask, and she motioned to a nearby chair. “My soul, good doctor, has long since departed this mortal coil. What you see before you is but a hollow vessel, kept here by forces beyond my ken. Yet it is not death I fear, nor even the decay of my body. It is what lies beneath this mask.”

At this, a coldness crept into my heart, and I found myself compelled to ask, though I knew not why. “What lies beneath, madam?”

She raised her hand to her face, and for a moment, I thought she might remove the mask, but her fingers trembled and fell away. “The malady,” she whispered, “it eats away at more than flesh. Consumption—it gnaws at the very soul, until what remains is naught but a shadow, a mockery of life itself. I wear this mask to spare the world from what I have become.”

I frowned. “Surely you speak in metaphors, madam. The illness does weaken the body, but it does not—”

“Enough!” she interrupted, a sudden fierceness in her gaze. “You know not what you speak of. There are things in this world, doctor, that you, in your science, cannot comprehend. The mask is my salvation, and yours. Were it to fall, I should reveal to you not the face of Cordelia Fitzhugh, but something far darker, far more insidious.”

At that, the fire sputtered, casting strange shadows upon the walls, and I felt a sudden, unaccountable dread, as though the room itself had grown colder, and the light dimmer. Still, I was not one to be swayed by such talk. Consumption, for all its horrors, was no supernatural malady, but a disease of the body.

“Madam,” I said more gently, “if you will permit me to examine you, I may be able to offer—”

She laughed then, a sound so brittle, so sharp, that it cut through the stillness like a dagger. “There is naught you can offer, save your pity, and I shall have none of that. You see, doctor, the mask is not simply to hide my ravaged visage. It is… a ward. It keeps me tethered to what little humanity remains, and holds at bay that which consumes me.”

I stood, and with more boldness than I felt, I approached her. “Let me help you, Miss Fitzhugh. Let me see what lies beneath the mask, and I shall know the nature of your affliction.”

She turned her face away, but as I stepped closer, she relented. “Very well,” she murmured, “but I warn you, what you behold shall not be the face of the woman you once knew, but the face of something far worse.”

With trembling fingers, she lifted the porcelain mask from her face, and the air in the room seemed to grow thick, as though the very atmosphere recoiled. The mask slipped away, and there, in the flickering light, I beheld her true visage.

It was not the ravages of consumption that stared back at me, but a face that was no longer human. Her skin, once fair, was now a pale, sickly gray, the flesh beneath sunken and taut as though stretched over bones too frail to bear it. Her lips were shriveled, blackened as though kissed by some foul flame, and her eyes—oh, her eyes—were voids of utter darkness, devoid of light, of life, of soul.

I stumbled back, for the sight was too terrible to behold. She let out a sigh, her voice now a mere rasp. “You see, doctor? This is what the mask hid. Not just the ravages of disease, but the thing that I have become. The thing that consumption has wrought in me.”

I could scarce breathe for the terror that gripped me. “But… this cannot be. It is not possible!”

She smiled, a ghastly, skeletal smile. “And yet it is. Consumption, they call it. But it is more than a disease of the body. It consumes all—flesh, soul, and mind. I am no longer Cordelia. I am but the hollow shell she left behind.”

In that moment, the last ember of the fire sputtered out, and we were plunged into darkness. I fumbled for the door, my hands trembling, my mind reeling. When at last I escaped the accursed house, I knew not whether what I had seen was real or but the fevered imaginings of a mind overtaken by fear.

But I tell you this: from that day forth, I have never again treated a patient with consumption. For I know now that the disease is not merely of the body, but of something far deeper, something far darker. And though I never saw Miss Cordelia again, the memory of her visage haunts me still, like a specter at the edge of my vision, a reminder of the terrible truth beneath the mask.