The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

The Coming of Jeff Spencer

Previously: "The Abduction of Jeff Spencer" 

It's instinct, not thought, that pulls you toward Jeff's man-made cave. Home is the instinct that consumes you, and, preoccupied with that single instinct of Home, you suck in your lips and steer through the still-busy thoroughfares of Saratoga Falls. Vaguely it occurs to you that you really like this truck, and wish that you had one like it ...

That's the first tiny little thought that eventually nudges you out of your trance-like stupor. I want a truck like this twists into the truculent conviction that this is your truck, or it should be, and that gradually transforms into the conviction that you are the kind of person who owns this truck. After that, you grimly set out to puzzle through what kind of person that would be.

Does this sound absurd? You don't worry about absurdities, even when you notice them. Once you have an idea you don't stop working it out to its logical conclusions, even if it means you have to hit the world with a metal pipe until it conforms to your ideas.

"They" don't like it when you do that, but you can't help it. Pipes and bats are good ways to change things, to make them better. It doesn't matter that "they" tell you the hitting is why they keep moving you from one home to another. You're just as happy hitting things in the new place as you were in the old.

Eventually it comes over you that you are a "Will Prescott" type person. The vague thought comes with no flash of insight. But it leads to a further thought, that "Will Prescott" shouldn't be having such a hard time thinking. You didn't always have such a hard time of it, did you? This feeling like the stuff in your brain is made of massive granite blocks, and that you have to strain and grunt to move them around? Back when you were Will Prescott—

That's when you abruptly you fall out Spencer's mind and back into your own. It's like falling into the vacuum of space after being encased in glass.

But such freedom!

You almost ran a red light when you remembered yourself. You pull into the parking lot at Panera to have a good think while you figure out what the hell is going on with you.

* * * * *

Because, really, what the hell was that? Gingerly you probe at those weird, slow, absurd thoughts you were having. They are like something out of a dream—one of those dreams where you're trying to run but you can't, only in this case you were trying think but only nonsense would come.

The masks copy bodies, but the metal bands copy memories and personalities. Does that mean that they copy the brain? Was that Jeff Spencer's brain you were thinking with? You explore the insides of your skull, the way you explore a cavity with your tongue.

Yes, there is another brain here with yours, all around you, like a gummy tar coating the inside of your skull. Touching it—licking it, almost—gives you the memories. Some you search for, like the bedroom where Jeff Spencer sleeps; others, like the memory of a broken cat batting feebly at the air before falling still, come unbidden.

This will never work if you have to impersonate Spencer. Not that you're planning to, but you might still run into some of his friends before the night is done, and you want to be sure of fooling them. Better that than hitting them with a pipe or a bat after they realize you're an imposter.

You grit your teeth and press your own mind into his. It overwhelmed you like a living tar as before, but now it is still and dead. But it yields as you push deeper into it, and you cover yourself with it again.

You pull out when you feel your mind dulling again. You've no desire to get caught inside his brain the way you were before. As insurance, you tap a memo to yourself into your phone—You're really Will Prescott—before setting back into your seat to resume the merger.

You're more alert on this second attempt, so that you can almost smell the change as it comes. It's like a tang far up in your nostrils, tickling the base of your brain. It is faint, notional, the illusion of a scent. But is, unmistakably ... Jeff Spencer.

But now that you have a scent, you have something to chase. Deeper you push into Spencer's mind, wrapping yourself under the skin with its scent and with the tarry slime of memories that come with it. A muzziness steals over you, like when you're falling asleep. Random thoughts begin to chase each other: Jeff Spencer, smelly clothes, smelly house, crap storage, Mr. Wilson, Mrs. Martinez and her chintz and her cats and the cat food you tried eating when you were a kid and the hamster pellets at Walmart that Call caught you staring at and he dared you to eat some ...

Now Jeff Spencer's mind closes over yours, and now you're stuck inside it, like an ant that has been sucked down into a bowl of gummy Jell-O. But you were ready for it, and now you're also sucking it inside yourself, until you're an ant inside the Jell-O and you're also the Jell-O that is inside an ant. It's a paradox that would puzzle you, but Jeff Spencer just accepts it—

And that's when your mind snaps into a new shape. A Jeff Spencer-like shape to go with the memories. But you've your own memories too, and your own speed, and you smile grimly as you open your eyes.

You know exactly how to act and think like Jeff Spencer. For you are Jeff Spencer.

If you want to be. Because you're also Will Prescott.

You restart the motor and pull back into the street.

* * * * *

Jeff Spencer crashes on the north side of town, in a set of crummy apartments on Buchanan Boulevard, just a few blocks from the Warehouse. (That's one reason he's often to be found there.) Spencer's guardian actually owns the complex, and he boards Jeff in a studio apartment over some communal storage units. Storage units? They're converted tractor trailers, stripped of wheels and bolted to the asphalt. Jeff's apartment sits over them, on stilt-like supports, at the top of a flight of rickety steps.

Jeff likes living alone, insofar as he likes anything. Certainly he feels no affection for Mr. Wilson, his guardian, who took him in when Jeff's previous guardians returned him to the state so they could flee overseas. Mr. Wilson feeds him and buys him clothes (neither of high quality) and pays him a small stipend to do odd jobs around the complex, but otherwise pays no attention to him. In return, Jeff pays no attention to Mr. Wilson, and returns to the complex only to collect the occasional junk-food meal, to do the odd, paying chore, and to pass out on the mealy mattress on its broken bed frame.

The lights are on in Mr. Wilson's own apartment, but you ignore them and park behind the storage containers where your truck won't be spotted. Gripping your still unbuttoned trousers with one hand, you spring up the swaying wooden steps to the in front of the door. It's locked, and you don't have Spencer's keys, but that's okay. The window by the door is covered in cardboard, and you punch through it with your elbow, reach in, and unlock it from the inside.

Jeff punched the window out a couple of months ago when he couldn't find his keys, and he never fixed it, and he executes this same maneuver at least once a week.

Inside, you flip on the lights and look around. Against one wall is a small counter and sink with a dorm-sized refrigerator perched at the end. A cabinet sags off the wall above it. On the other side is the bed and the wardrobe with Jeff's clothes in it. You open it, strip off your own clothes, and pull on his—crummy jeans, a sweatshirt, and ankle socks. You push over the pile of school books moldering in a corner to retrieve the aluminum bat. You clear a space in the floor, and from under the sink pull out a roll of duct tape; from this you tear off a couple of strips, and hang them from the frame of the bathroom door. Then you relock the door, put the cardboard back over the window, turn off the lights, and flop onto the bed with the bat.

* * * * *

You've got your hand down the front of your jeans—cradling your balls and rubbing the underside of your dick with a dull thumbnail and wondering in a vague way if you've got time to jack off—when you hear footsteps on the outside stairs. You spring over and hide behind the door. A key rattles in the lock, and the door swings open and the lights come on. A figure with broad shoulders steps in and closes the door.

You swing the bat, and Jeff Spencer pitches face-first to the floor. He's still conscious but writhing slowly as you bind his wrists and ankles with the duct tape.

Then you spring down to the truck and haul up your supplies. You whack at Spencer until he's still, then soak him in the stuff for the next spell. You slip the sigil—the second one you've copied out of the book—under him, and set a match to his shirt.

Next: "The Lackey With Two Faces" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 3)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)"