The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)

The Furtive Filcher

Previously: "Field Babes" 

[Text by Nostrum]

Natalie’s offer is tempting. Being with someone’s better than being alone, and you could use the help on this. Two birds with one stone, you figure.

"Uh, sure," you say. "Beats doing this alone."

"Great!" You fire up the truck’s engine, its sudden rumble provoking her into a fit of giggles. She rubs her fingers on the white strips still left on the mask, looking at them. "So, I thought a bit about it and how you’re supposed to polish it, and I figured—why not use something to polish things faster? Then I remembered Dad has a buffer to polish his car, and I figured that might do the trick."

You curse yourself for not thinking about it. Your dad also has that machine—he doesn’t let you touch his stuff, which is why you probably ignored it—and you could’ve probably at least tried it while he’s not around.

"Cool," you can only muster to reply. You’re still sore that she thought this before you could, as you drive her away from the stadium. She entertains you with small talk, but you’re still sore that she outsmarted you on that one.

—

"Come in!" she says, and you feel a strange déjà vu all over. It intensifies when she says, "Dad won’t bite your head off if you come in," but she probably must’ve seen your reaction because she immediately follows with "plus, I need you to help me bring it out."

Buffers aren’t that heavy, though, so you figure this must be an excuse to have you in. "Alright," you respond, and immediately hop off towards the sidewalk.

Compared to your secluded location, Natalie lives practically in the middle of everything. The Warehouse, for instance, is practically within walking distance. Being properly in downtown, though, her house, which stands across from an apartment complex, is something of a cross between a duplex and a walk-up apartment, with basement parking. You idly wonder how much it’d cost to live in this kind of place (expensive because of the location, or cheap because of the neighborhood) before noticing you’re pretty much there—down a hallway with stairs leading up and down, dividing the four housing units, then turning towards the right.

She opens the door and exclaims "Mom, Dad, I’m home!" while taking off her sneakers. She puts on some slippers, and you wonder if you should take your own sneakers off before she exclaims, "It’s a little quirk of mine." Her house has a pretty modern feel, with white walls accented with black and wooden floor, which surprises you a little. She leads you into the living room, which has a rich black cushioned couch and seats surrounding a huge flat-screen TV with speakers all around, where her parents are.

You timidly wave to them. Her dad has the same vibe as yours—same stare, same posture, even the same attire of short-sleeved shirt and polyester pants—but he's younger, and he has sandy hair with graying sideburns over a well-kept full beard that gives him a pretty macho look.

Natalie takes a lot more from her mother—same elfin features, same freckles, but with deep black hair bobbed up to the shoulders. She also seems younger than your mom, and she's quite attractive.

"Mom, Dad, this is Will," she tells them. "The guy I was talking to you about." That quickly? you think to yourself. "Will, this is my dad, Henry, and this is my mom, Clarisse."

You shake hands with her mother first, then as you take her dad's hand you blurt out, "Natalie told me you work with my dad."

"You’re Harris’ son, right?" He gives a good look at you, a bit in disbelief. "We work on some projects together, yeah. Nice to meet you—your dad doesn’t talk a lot about you."

You wince, but they don’t seem to notice. You and your dad don’t have the best of relationships, and hearing that he barely mentions you to his working partners makes you feel worse. You see how Natalie’s parents seem to treat her better, and you can’t help but feel the smallest bit of envy.

"Dad, I was wondering if you could lend me that buffer thing of yours. Will here needs to polish his truck, and he wondered if he could—"

"Sure, I guess."

"Thanks! But we’re gonna take it back to his place, if that's all right."

Henry gives you a long stare. "I want it back just as it was, alright?"

"Cool. Thanks, Dad!" Her father disappears into the dining room, and you chat idly with Clarisse until he reappears with the machine, still on its box.

A few farewells later, back in your truck, you wonder just how close she is to her parents, that they barely question why she’s there with a random stranger asking for a car buffer.

"My parents are cool like that," she replies when you ask. Perhaps way cooler than yours, you think.

—

Once again, when you're at the school basement, you’re miffed that you didn’t think of this earlier. After searching high and low you find an outlet, and Natalie plugs in the buffer. The rest of the work, which would likely have taken you the rest of the weekend, if not longer, is completed in a handful of minutes. The mask now gleams strangely all over, and looks like if had transformed from ceramic into metal. Natalie studies it with a look of wonder. "Cool. How the heck did you do make this?"

The question’s pretty stupid—with the book, of course—but you only reply, "I’m as surprised as you are."

"So what are you going to do with it?"

You ask yourself the same question but are distracted by the chime on your phone. "Mind if I check this?"

"Is it your girlfriend?" she purrs slyly.

"No! No! It’s, um—" You squint at the screen. "It's Caleb, one of my friends."

"Ryerson?"

"What? No, Johansson." She nods, and you open Caleb's text.

Your eyes almost fall out of your head as you read it. "Uh, 'scuse me a minute while I take care of this?"

"No problem," Natalie says. She perches on the work table and idly turns the mask over and over in her hands.

You run up the stairs and out the door, coming to a stop just outside, to bite your lip as you read Caleb's text again: dude wth? wat's that abt u and gillam keefr @ soccer game?

There was no way you wanted Natalie seeing that and getting the wrong idea about you and Gillian. But now that you give it a second and a third read, you wonder more about the fact that Caleb is texting you about it. He wasn't there and you didn't tell him, so how would he know about you and Gillian and the exhibition match?

pdavis, he says when you ask. That would be Paul. While you're wondering why Paul would be telling Caleb—and as you're wondering who else he told—Caleb writes, Dude what r u ding w delps girl?

Just keepn company, you reply.

delp will hex u fr sure lol

You roll your eyes. Caleb is just joking, of course, but you can't help wondering if there's a serious warning beneath. Braydon Delp is small and he seems soft. But given the way Gillian was hanging on you, he could get jealous. And you're not sure you want someone with his occult interests and his kind of imagination getting mad at you and deciding to get even.

You're tapping in a text asking Caleb who else Paul might have told when a pair of arms twine themselves around you from behind. You've just time to hear a giggle when something dark and suffocating goes over your face.

—

You wake up in a rush, and sit up with a hard, hacking cough. You look all around. You are sprawling on the grass in front of the elementary school basement door, with your cell phone resting on the ground nearby. You pluck it up and look at the messages.

The name delp jumps out at you.

You are groggy and probably not thinking clearly as you stumble back down into the basement. So when you find that Natalie's not there, and that both the book and the mask are missing as well, it's not hard to conjoin those disappearances and Braydon Delp's name into an irrational but sinister suspicion. Especially when you look back at your phone and see that Caleb's last text says, Fuck delp just txtd me says hes lookg for u!!!

You reach up to rub your head, which is starting to ache. That's when you discover something even worse.

Your cap is gone!

Next: "Lost and Loster" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 4)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)"