The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

A World of Possibilities

Previously: "Coffee and Unwanted Company" 

You've already run into two people by sitting out in public, and thereby exposed your secret grimoire to scrutiny. But you persevere, and hunch back over it again after Christian and Braydon have left.

You can deal with the last spell later, and turn your attention to the next spell. Alas, it proves a frustration.

At first, all goes smoothly. The book apparently still does not like for you to write down the ingredients it decrees for each item, for with this spell as with all the others, pens and pencils fail to write and electronic devices glitch if you jot anything substantial down. (So it's very strange that the book let you copy down its sigils—twice!—for those seem like they're an even more powerful magic than the ingredients for the spells.) But with a little translation work and memorization, and then some comparing and contrasting with earlier spells, you discover that this list of ingredients is identical to the list of ingredients for making the metal bands that copy memories and personalities.

The instructions for assembling them differ, though. Below the list of ingredients is but a single line of Latin; translated, it seems to say "My use is my solution."

That makes little enough sense, but when you read further ...

At first you think something must have gone wrong with your eyes, and then in a panic you think you must have gotten the book wet in the rain and that the ink has all run. The bottom half of the page is consumed by a great block of text, but the letters and words are blurry and unreadable.

But as you stare in horror at the ruin, you notice something funny about the mass of letters. They are blurry, but they are not blurry in a fixed way. They seem to shift and alter. Whenever you fix your eyes upon a spot the words stick in place like a blob of ink that has run, but when your eyes look away, the ink seems to come alive and to dance and run liquidly.

Then you notice a further oddity. If you fix your attention on a spot, the words just in the periphery of your vision seem to resolve themselves into legible words. You could almost read them and write them but for the fact that they won't stay quite still, but will slither into superficially similar arrangements of letters. menimissc, for example, will shift subtly into nieminissc and then into mciimnsse.

Not until you peer very closely at the page do you discover—so you have to suppose—the reason for all this. There's a faint, fuzzy line across the middle of the page, just below the last bit of Latin, and you feel a raised bit when you run finger along it.

Of course! you think, at first with excitement, and then with despair. The bottom half of the page has been torn away.

Close inspection confirms it. That fuzzy bit is a neat tear running from the margin of the page inward, and when you pull the book apart slightly you find the tear continuing down the length of the spine to the bottom. The page with the ingredients you'd translated? That's the top half of the page. The bottom half, which would have the rest of the instructions and the sigil, has been torn out.

The fuzzy ink you're seeing is the next spell. You're not supposed to be able to read it, however, until you execute this other spell. And so the book, it seems, is responding to the damage by making the words unreadable.

Until you find the rest of the page, you will be unable to complete the spell, and will be unable to proceed.

But of course you didn't rip the book, so who the hell knows where the rest of that page went.

So you're at a dead end.

After slowly finishing your latte while staring into the fireplace, you close the grimoire, tuck it under your jacket, and go out to your truck.

* * * * *

Sunday afternoon, after church. To your astonishment, you weren't struck dead by lightning on entering the sanctuary. In fact, the rain has stopped and the clouds have mostly cleared, though a heavy train of them is still lumbering across the sky. You're over at Caleb's, having called and asked to come over. You've left him alone, for the most part, at school over the last week. Now you want to check in on him.

"Oh, fine, I guess," he sighs when you ask him how he's doing. "You didn't come over here to hold my hand, did you?" he asks. "I'd rather you held my cock."

You smile mirthlessly. "No, uh, weird stuff last Friday, or yesterday?"

His expression remains sour. "No, and thanks for reminding me about it all." He slouches in the chair at his chair. "It's ancient history now. Almost."

"Why 'almost'?"

His expression tightens. "I still gotta pay Ioeger and Tilley back their money."

It takes you a moment to register what he's saying. "Wait. Dude. You swore to me you didn't take it."

"And I didn't!" His hands explode into the air, and a flush explodes into his cheeks. "I swear to fucking God, Will, I did. Not. Take. Their. Shit!" Then he slumps again. "But I spent all fucking week telling other people I was sorry for shit I did! Not! Do! at their fucking parties, so now I feel like I gotta make things right with the other fuckfaces just so I can put it all behind me."

"Dude!" His plight strikes you to your core. "You shouldn't pay for something you didn't—"

"Fuck you, Prescott," he snarls, and shows you the bird. "Just shut up about it. I'm doing it but I don't want to talk about it! First three bloody paychecks blown to fucking hell is all."

For the second time in a week you are almost moved by remorse to blurt out an apology and explanation, but the fit passes. Maybe later, you tell yourself. Instead, you agree to make the subject taboo. You distract him with talk of games instead, then invite him back to your place to play some on you system. That turns into an invitation to stay for dinner. Caleb isn't exactly joyful when you part that evening, but at least he doesn't seem preoccupied with resentment and confusion.

After you drop him off at his house, though, you go by the elementary school to do some thinking.

The petrified Jeff Spencer is still in its corner, to your relief.

* * * * *

It's dark outside, and dark inside the basement. You brought a spare desk lamp in on one of your earlier forays, though, and after putting some old, collapsed cardboard boxes against the windows to shield the light, you turn it on and sink into a chair.

You have been balked by the book, and your talk with Caleb has reminded you that you had some goals that had gone into eclipse while you were waiting for various spells to complete. What have you got, and what do you know how to do with it?

First of all, you've got masks that you can use to copy people. You've got five blank masks now, and three of those metal bands to go with them.

With masks you can copy a person's body without their mind, or with it. With those metal bands you can copy and wear their mind—their memories and personality—without looking like them. You can even, you recall, mix different faces into a mask before sealing it in order to create "original" people.

You also have these lackey things, both the generic kind and the ones that use people as an ingredient. One of these is wandering around under a mask of Jeff Spencer, while the other—the transformed bully-retard himself—is standing in the corner.

You also have the last spell you could unlock. It puts a special layer into a mask, like a folded-up pedisequos. As near as you can tell from the description, if you put one of these masks onto a person, it turns that person into a copy of the person inside the mask. But more than that, it turns them into a lackey. So you already put some of that stuff in the mask of Caleb. If you put that mask on, say, Keith Tilley, it would turn Keith into a copy of Caleb, but you figure it would be a lackey-Caleb, like you got when you set Caleb's mask on the pedisequos.

What would happen if you put Caleb's mask on the first pedisequos? What if you put it on Jeff Spencer over there? What if you put it on yourself? You've no answers to those questions, and they seem pretty goddamned important. But for now you muse on what you could do with them.

You could make a mask of yourself. Put some of that stuff inside it. Set it on (again, you muse) Keith Tilley. It would turn him into a copy of you, but a lackey, who would obey your commands. There'd be two of you, and zero Keith Tilleys. Well, the world would benefit from more of you and less of him, you tell yourself with a small smile. But if you made a mask of him first, and put it on ... Why, then you'd be Keith Tilley, and he'd be Will Prescott, but you'd be the master and he'd be the lackey. No one would notice there had been a switch.

You could take over someone else's life while leaving a lackey to live out yours.

There's nothing attractive about taking over Keith Tilley's life, still less Jeff Spencer's. But the principle is sound. You'd just have to figure out whose life you want.

If you want one.

But the lackeys could be useful even if you stay as yourself. Turn the Molester, and maybe Joshua Call, and maybe other assholes into lackeys. Then they wouldn't bother you. You could use them to bother other people. You need to get money for Caleb. With a gang of thuggish lackeys, that wouldn't be a problem.

Or you could make a bunch of pedisequoses, and get a bunch of masks, and make doppelgangers torment some of the assholes who, unlike Caleb, really deserve it.

Or you could try to find a way past that torn page. Braydon claims to know something about magic. Maybe there's someone at the university you could contact. Or you could just do an internet search.

Next: "A Gang of Your Own" 

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