The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)

The Making of a New You

Previously: "The Morning Of" 

You carefully explore the house after dressing, upstairs and downstairs. There's a black SUV, gleaming like Darth Vader's helmet, in the three-car garage, and your truck is still parked out front in the wide carriage drive that sweeps past the front door, but those are the only vehicles, and the house seems to be empty. There's a tremor in your chest as you go out the back door and trudge off toward the barn, but find it deserted as well. It seems funny that everyone would have taken off, leaving you unsupervised in the house of people you don't even know. Except there is precedent, kind of ...

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

You and Robert and Jenny Ashton are sprawled around the living room, talking casually of plans for the soon-to-be-upon-you Christmas vacation, when Umeko appears at the foot of the stairs. She stops and blinks at Jenny. "What's she still doing here?" she asks.

"Just hanging out," you reply.

"Well, it's weird," Umeko says. "Go home," she tells Jenny with a grimace. Jenny flashes you and Robert a brief, slightly fearful glance, and starts to get up.

"The fuck's got into you all of a sudden?" Robert demands of your cousin.

Umeko stares. Then she smirks and giggles. "You know who got into me!"

"Shut the fuck up," you snap. "Jenny," you call, and she stops. "Where are you going?"

"Home, I guess. That's what I was told," she adds with a hooded glance at Umeko.

You slap Robert on the knee and haul yourself to your feet. "Well, come with us," you tell her as Robert, looking confused, scrambles to his feet as well. "We'll go do something."

"I thought we were gonna do something," Umeko protests. "The fuck did I change into this for if—?"

"You can come too," you reply. To Robert: "We'll swing by Caleb's, you can change there and—"

"Fuck that!" Umeko snarls. "Don't you wanna hang out with your"—she hugs herself tightly—"favorite cousin?"

"We said you could come with."

Umeko glowers. "No," she says in a shrill voice after a moment's struggle with herself. "I'll stay here, hang out with and talk to Aunt Martha instead!"

"You can't do that, she doesn't know you're—"

"That's what makes it fun," she mocks you back. "Don't worry about me, I can play this girl. 'Oh, Aunt Martha—'"

"Come on, let's get out of here," you growl at Robert. With a pale look, he stumbles after you, and Jenny trails in your wake.

"Bruh," Robert says when you're outside. "I know who got into her, but what's got into you? You shouldn't piss off—"

"Well, he shouldn't piss me off." You yank open your truck door, and propel Jenny by the shoulder into the cab. "Anyway, I don't know why we went along adding Umeko to the mix."

"To finish filling out the family," Robert replies in a patient tone.

"Pfft. Umeko's hardly ever at the Prescotts'."

"Well, she will be now." Robert pauses. "Also, she can get us into the college."

"Charlie Russo can get us on campus," you retort.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The barn is empty, and even that worktable you and Robert put together has been disassembled and the pieces stacked neatly in a corner next to an old-fashioned steamer trunk—the kind with a domed lid and brass fittings at the corners. That's where you dug out all that stuff to make the masks. On an impulse, you open it up.

It's all there, and you stare at it thoughtfully for a long moment: the Rubbermaid containers, the satchel filled with tools, and the book.

You remember the book. It's the one you found in the last semester. You used it to make a mask of yourself—a magical mask that someone could use to disguise themself as you. But then it disappeared from your room, and all the ingredients for making it—the same kind of ingredients as are in this trunk—vanished from the old school where you had been keeping them.

And now here it is again. There's a prickling in your palms as you pick it out. You remember everything you ever knew about it, and more.

Because you've been using it a lot more lately.

So it's quick and easy to put together another mask. You set up the table again, mix the powders and liquids, set them afire in a bowl balanced on the open page of the first spell, pour the bowl out over the convex mirror, and keep a tight grip on it when the resulting shell twists in your hand into the shape of a face. There's a powered buffer in the trunk as well, and an outlet in the barn wall, and you settle onto a nearby hay bale to polish the new mask as well as the other one you were given to polish. The hard part would be the metal strips that need runes carved into them, but someone has been thoughtful enough to make a handful of them already, and to store them in the canvas satchel along with the carving tools; and there's three tubs full of the liquid pastes that you will need to complete your work.

It's a hateful thought that you've dodged confronting, but there's no avoiding it now: Back in the bedroom, you contemplate the third mask in your inventory. The one you found on the bathroom floor after you fainted. The one that's got your name in it. It nauseates you to touch its inner surface with your fingertips.

Someone did it to me, you think. The same thing I did to Caleb and Jenny and Umeko, and some others ... They did it to me first. And after they had their fun being me, they hung the mask on someone else's face. They were the boss Even when it felt like I was being the boss, it was just someone else pretending to be me.

Your expression hardens as you glare at the mask. This fucking thing. I can't even use it, even though it looks like me and acts like me. It's a fucking traitor, it'll do what the bosses tell it, not what I tell it. I'll have to get rid of it.

Well, you can figure out later how to destroy it. For now, you can just make a new copy of yourself, one that when finished will obey you. You return to the barn, where you put everything away except for a paintbrush and two of the Rubbermaid containers. Then you glue a metal strip into one of the new masks, lay back on the hay bale, and lower it onto your face.

* * * * *

You are stiff and cold when you wake, and you feel slightly nauseated as you return to work. The new mask, like the old, now has your name floating over its inner surface, like something out of a "magic eye" puzzle, and it remains there even after you have "sealed" the mask with goop from the two containers you kept out. That done—

You chew on your lip as you return to the book, flipping through it to the last open spell. This you study with a deep frown while feeding scraps of the original Latin into the online translator on your phone. It confirms what you were ninety-nine percent certain of anyway: the last ingredient, the one that will bind a mask to your control, requires a bit of your hair. With a grimace and a wince you pluck a few hairs off the back of your neck, drop them into the sealed mask, then strike a match and drop it in too. There's a brief, purplish flash of light and a small bloom of smoke, and the inner surface of the mask, which in contrast to the glowing blue of the outer surface is a muddy gray, acquires a polished sheen. You let out a deep breath.

That's half of what you need for a hiding place: a mask to place on your victim, which will turn them into an obedient copy of yourself while you make yourself into a copy of them. But who to hide out as?

There's almost an embarrassment of possibilities. From among your old friends, there's Keith Tilley and Carson Ioeger and James Lamont and Paul Davis. And from among your new friends there's Noah Lepley and Laurent Delacroix and Marc Garner and Reece Palendech. And if you want to reach farther than that, there's Marc's sisters, Eva and Jessica, and Katy Conlee and Meghan Velasquez, and Barbara Powell and Josie Holden and Phoebe Beauchamp ... It makes you dizzy to think of all the new acquaintances you have, and have had an easy time hanging out with, ever since ... the bosses ... took charge of your life. You can't help shuddering with resentment.

It's in this distracted state of mind that you return to the house, tramping carelessly through it toward the bedroom to collect the rest of your things, when a voice calls out suddenly, "Charles? Is that you?"

You freeze, except for your heart, which nearly explodes in your chest. You have had the house and grounds to yourself for so long now that you forgot someone might return.

Before you can answer, a woman steps around the corner from the living room. She stops dead with a shocked look on her face when she sees you. Her mouth falls open as you and she stare at each other.

The moment seems to hang, and your mind struggles like it's swimming through cold molasses as you make the deductions. This is Charles Whitney's house, and this woman could be old enough to be his mother, and with her dark hair and her sharp gaze she even looks like him. Oh, you finally conclude, and feel foolish for having taken so long to reach it, this must be Mrs. Whitney!

"Who are you?" she demands.

"Oh, I'm a friend of Charles," you stammer. "Will Prescott. Um, he, uh—"

"Is that your truck out front?"

"Yeah, I, uh, I had to get cleaned up, and he, uh, had to go, and—"

Fuck this, a voice inside your head suddenly barks. You wanted a hiding place. No one would look for you ... there!

Next: "Like Leaves in the Forest" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 2)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)"