The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)

Jamming with Javits

Previously: "Five Final Chances" 

You're sidling toward Roy Nelson, who is still leaning against his car, when with a snort he abruptly yanks his car door open and climbs inside. Though he lingers there a moment, you give up on him. That leaves you alone in the parking lot with Javits.

The thought gives you a nasty jolt. If he called you over now, and explained that he was going to take your pants off you and throw them onto the gym roof, like he's done to some of your other friends—

So you're edging away when out of the corner of your eye you see Javits climb into his own truck. You let your breath out with relief.

And, somehow, that gives you the courage to turn around and sprint toward him.

He's started his engine with a roar when you reach his window, and he does a double take at you, squinting with a curved lip. Too late to turn back now, you tell yourself as you knock gently on the driver's-side window.

It comes down, but Javits doesn't deign even to ask you What the fuck?

Okay, what do you do now?

It's like an out-of-body experience, as though you've been taken over by some instinct, as you drop your pack and bend over to unzip it. From between your books you yank out the mask. When you straighten up again, Javits is staring at you with sullen, spiteful curiosity. The mask seems to weigh your hand down—

* * * * *

It's a mask. You put it onto your face. There isn't any other way it's supposed to work. But I can't ask him to put it on. I'll have to put it on him myself. Like this!

That's what you were thinking, it seems to you afterward, when you're sitting in the passenger seat of Javits's truck, trying not to throw up. I knew what to do, but I didn't have time to explain it to myself so I just did it.

And now look where you are.

You slammed the mask into Seth's face. You had it balanced in your hand, and he had the window of his truck down and was looking scornfully at you. So you pasted him in the face with the mask. Like a pie in a slapstick movie.

His head snapped back, and to your astonishment the mask vanished, as completely as though it had never existed. Seth's head lolled, then he toppled over, falling out of sight. You stared at the place where he'd been, then went up on tiptoes to peer inside the truck cabin. He had fallen to one side, his back twisted at an ugly angle. His eyes were open, but unseeing. Your guts hopped and flopped around. Then you scampered around to the other side of his truck and clambered into the passenger side.

That is where you are now, shivering hard. Javits is still splayed on his side, still staring up at the roof of the truck cabin. The motor is still running. After a minute, you reach over and twist the ignition off.

Okay, what the fuck happened, and what does it mean? You review what you remember. You hit him with the mask. For a moment, you are sure, you saw the mask, held by you, against his face. Then it was gone, and your palm was mashing him in the nose. Where did the mask go? You didn't see it fall off him, and when you glance around the cabin you don't see it. Is it still on him, but invisible? You gingerly push and pinch at his face, but you feel only flesh. He's not dead, at least, for he's breathing—snorting even—like an engine. Did you fuck up? The book didn't come with instructions about what to do with the mask after you make it. What if Seth is now in a coma? How will you explain it?

Don't explain it, you tell yourself. Just run away! After all, no one saw you!

But you don't run, at least not yet. Instead, you give yourself—you take out your phone and check the time—ten minutes to see if anything changes. And when then ten minutes are up (you know) you will give yourself another five, and after that another two-and-a-half, and then another one-and-a-quarter and then another—

Fortunately, you don't have to wait that long. You have a minute to spare for the original deadline when you are jolted almost out of your seat by a change in Seth: the mask reappears on his face. You lick your lips, and gingerly pick it up with a forefinger and thumb.

Seth's eyes have fallen closed, and now he looks like he's asleep. Something tells you it would be very easy to wake him. You swallow hard, carefully open the truck door, and as noiselessly as you can slide out. You push the door gently closed.

Then you grab up your pack and run like a son of a bitch back to your own truck.

* * * * *

You spend all evening terrified that Seth and his buddies will pull up to your house, bust in, and drag you out to give your ass a righteous beat-down. Well, okay, you're not seriously worried about that. But you jump every time your phone dings with a text from Caleb with a question about the reading in English class.

Also, you're out in the garage working on some magic, and every noise makes you jump guiltily.

As soon as you got home you pulled out the grimoire to read over the spell again. To your astonishment, you found that the book had altered in your absence. The page was disfigured by an oval-shaped stain, though not deep enough to hide the words beneath. You stared at it mutely, then again acting on instinct you pulled the mask from your bag and set it on the page. When you lifted it, the page beneath fluttered and came away. Your heart nearly burst from your chest in excitement. Eagerly you flipped it over.

The reverse carried a seeming continuation of the spell. There was nothing more to be done to the mask apparently; now—only now, after it was too late!—it gave some instructions as to its use.

The most relevant instruction had to do with "sealing" it. A mask, the book explained, will continue to "absorb" the images of those it is set upon, melding them into new faces and bodies, until it is sealed. Only then can it be worn.

And how do you seal a mask? For that, you had to consult the next spell, now revealed. It didn't say that it was the spell for sealing a mask, but you had a hunch that it would. At the very least, you had the strong suspicion that you have solved how to get further into the book. The next page, and all the pages afterward, are still locked tightly shut. But if this afternoon is anything to go by, prepping and finishing the new spell will cause the page to unlock, and on the other side you might find further instructions.

You had all the necessary ingredients for the next spell on hand, but you also remembered the stink you made the last time you played with the stuff. So after dinner—and after making sure that your dad was on the other side of the house, in the living room, watching TV—you snuck all the ingredients downstairs to the garage. You opened the main door, and near the entrance you've been mixing the stuff together into a bowl.

Which brings matters to the now: You are holding a burning match over a bowl that is sitting on the sigil at the bottom of the page. You hold your breath, and drop it.

A small fireball blooms, and a great puff of smoke goes up. When you delicately test the air, you detect no odor. Well, that's a relief, at least.

The fire, meantime, has transformed the mess of ingredients into a kind of slurry. Better still, when you lift the bowl, the page flutters beneath. You grin to yourself at how easy it has turned out. You fetch a plastic tub from the kitchen, pour the slurry into it, close it, then bag everything up again and carry it all up to your room. Your dad is still watching TV as you pass through the living room, none the wiser for the occult stuff going on under his roof.

Up in your bedroom you translate the reverse of the newly unlocked page. It confirms that you have made a "sealant" for a mask. If you apply it with a brush to the interior of a mask, you will be able to put on the mask and in that way "don the form" that it contains. You guess that means it will turn you into a copy of Seth Javits.

Because that's whose form is inside the sealed mask.

It was only by chance that you noticed that after you got home. After pulling the mask out of your bag you examined it for damage or changes. None were apparent. But as you tilted the mask this way and that, you noticed that some of the gleams inside its surface didn't change position. When you gave them a closer look you were amazed to see that they came together to make a ghostly image: the pale face and features of Seth Javits. It was like a 3-D image inside the surface of the mask, and as you tilted it this way and that you could see the sides and top of his head, and even, if you tilted it just right, a bit of his bare shoulder down below.

I just have to seal it, you tell yourself with nervous excitement, and I could turn myself into his twin.

But will you seal it? There's another experiment you could perform with it: mixing another image into it, to create a hybrid person.

Next: "The Kind of People Who Have Special Plans " 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 1)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)"