The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)

The Marius Maskerade

Previously: "Favors Asked with a Sinister Flavor" 

Dammit, Carol, stop thinking with your libido, you chide yourself after pointing a sharp fingernail at Marius. I know you've got hot pants for him, but—

Dammit, man, just stop thinking like Carol!

But Marius has already picked up the other end of the trunk, and with one brawny arm he lifts his end higher than you can manage with both your hands. The other boys watch with poker-faced interest as you struggle to help move the trunk out of the barn, but none of the assholes moves in to help.

Across the back yard you lug the trunk: you tottering backward on your high heels, straining and panting; Marius, looking slightly bored and resentful, hefting his end like it's nothing. You dodge his hooded glance, hating the way it makes you feel. It's like being back in freshman P. E., or even in middle school, when the coach would pair you with someone bigger and stronger, and they had to resentfully keep pace with you at some exercise or other because the coach was watching, when clearly what they wanted to do was push your ass contemptuously to the floor.

And what makes it even worse: Marius is making you horny. And you feel Carol's humiliation at knowing he would want nothing to do with her.

Probably.

No, Carol, you insist with gritted teeth. He definitely wouldn't want anything to do with you, even if you do think of yourself as a MILF.

Up the steps and onto the back porch you heft the trunk, and then through the back door and into the house, before you stop and insist on taking a rest. "You know," you pant, "I've just realized I don't think there's room for this thing in the garage. We're going to have to move one of the cars out. Would you mind—?"

You gesture Marius to follow to the entry hall. "Here's the key to the Mercedes," you tell him as you pull a ring of keys off a hook on the wall. "Just back it out onto the driveway, would you? I need to get something from out of that crate first, anyway."

On your way back through the house, Marius calls after, "Mrs. Whitney, I think there's plenty of room in the garage!" You shout back, "No, Marius, my husband needs that space for his Lexus!" He shouts something else, but you can't make out the words and ignore him. Besides, you need to get into the trunk, fast.

It was a mistake, you now feel, getting Marius to help you. He's almost certainly not a fake. But you might be able to salvage the situation if you switch places with him. He attends St. Xavier, a painfully prestigious school west of town, along with Charles, where he's a prefect, and from behind his face you could probably get Charles alone. And it would get you out of Mrs. Whitney, who now has you completely discombobulated.

The door to the third bay is up, and Marius has the Mercedes backed out into the driveway, when you get outside. Marius shuts the engine off as you are still running up, but you reach him in time to block him getting out. You gesture him to roll the window down. After a moment of confusion with the controls, he does.

"I—" You start to say. But, you realize, there's no need to say anything. With him pinned behind the wheel of the car, he has nowhere to go and no way to block you. You strike at his forehead with the metal strip.

And nothing happens. Or rather, nothing like you'd expect happens.

The metal strip, instead of sinking beneath the skin and bone, rests on his forehead, making an unearthly sizzling noise. Marius's eyes go out of focus, and his jaw goes slack. He's not unconscious, though, and his jaw and lips continue to work, as do the muscles around his eyes as he tries to refocus. But his arms remain limp at his sides, and his head slips over.

It would shock and horrify you, but you've seen this kind of thing before. You and Caleb did it to Robert one day, shortly after ... well, after Caleb stopped being Caleb. He was, characteristically, seized by a sense of scientific curiosity, and wondered aloud what would happen if you tried copying the memories of someone who was wearing a mask. You challenged him to try it. So together you went back to your place; Caleb ordered Robert to lay down on his bed; you put a metal strip onto him; and this is what happened.

So, okay, at least you've confirmed that Marius Hall isn't Marius Hall anymore. But who is he? You tear the metal band off his forehead and—before he can recover—grip his face by the temples, mutter an incantation under your breath, and pull.

A mask comes away in your hand, and Marius's head falls forward. You grab a fistful of his hair and lift his face for a look.

Shit, you think. This is going to be awkward every which way I cut it.

Because you can't have one Zachary Holzer out front in the driveway when there's another at work in the barn out back.

* * * * *

At least you know he isn't one of the motherfuckers who trapped you, because you remember trapping Zachary and giving a mask of him to someone else. But what are you going to do with him?

You glance around, to make sure you haven't been followed out by any of the other boys, then touch the controller button hanging off the sun visor to close the garage door. That done, you reach into the car and shake Zachary hard.

And when he doesn't wake, you pinch his nose closed and hold his mouth shut.

Just like you did to Stephanie Wyatt when you had to wake her in a hurry.

He explodes in a coughing fit, and his eyes go in and out of focus. As he's recovering himself, you scramble around to the other side of the car and throw yourself into the passenger seat.

"Mrs. Whitney?" Zachary gasps. His eyes bulge under eyebrows knitted together in puzzlement.

"Turn the car on, Zachary," you order him. He stares at you. "Zachary." You glare. "Turn this fucking car on."

He twists the key in the ignition, then shoots you a sharp, sidelong glance. "What did you call me?"

"I called you 'Zachary,' Zachary," you hiss back. "That's your name, isn't it? Zachary?"

"Uh ..." He turns pale, and his eyes wander inside his frozen expression.

"Put the car in reverse, Zachary, and get us the fuck out of here. I want to talk to you."

He remains frozen in his seat until with a jerk of his limbs he shifts the Mercedes into reverse, slowly backs out of the driveway, and turns the car around to follow the carriage lane out. You watch him closely, and don't miss the way he glances down at his clothes, or the way he surreptitiously examines his fingertips and hands.

"Um ..." he says on reaching the main road.

"Turn left. We're going to drive around the neighborhood before we go back home. We need to talk. How much of this afternoon do you remember?"

"This afternoon?" He sounds like he's putting a bold face on his fright.

"Since you got back to the house with Charles and his friends."

"Oh. Um ..."

"I offered to pay you and your friends— What did I offer, and to do what?"

He turns a little green. Then he slowly says, "You were going to pay us two hundred dollars each to clean out your barn?"

"Right." His answer is a relief. "And then I asked someone to help me move a trunk into the house. Who did I ask?"

The blood vanishes from his lips. "Me?" he answers in a small voice.

"What name did I call you, Zachary? Did I call you 'Zachary', or did I call you another name?"

He shrinks up a little in his seat.

"Whose clothes are you wearing, Zachary?" you demand.

He shrinks up even further.

"Uh huh," you say, and brandish the mask in his face. "Do you know what this is?" He bites his lip and shakes his head. "There's a little park up ahead on the left. We're going to stop there and have a talk."

* * * * *

His story is rather different from yours. So he remembers being Zachary Holzer, remembers everything about his life, all the way back to being a kid. But at the same time he remembers being Marius Hall, a student at St. Xavier's, and can remember all of Marius's life back to being a kid. And he remembers both these lives so well that even now, he admits in some little fright, he's not totally sure if he's Zachary Holzer dreaming that he's Marius Hall, or if he's Marius Hall dreaming he's now Zachary Holzer.

There is one difference between these memory sets, though. He can only remember Zachary's life up until the week before Thanksgiving, when Jenna Greeley, this hot girl from his school, invited him to hang out after school. They wound up at Sean Mitchell's house, and Jenna started flirting with him, but then ... Well, he's not sure what happened. All he knows is that he doesn't remember anything of his "Zachary life" after that, only his "Marius life."

But something weird did happen this morning. He was just finishing his morning classes when he got dizzy all of a sudden and almost fainted. When he recovered he had this feeling of vertigo. "Like," he confesses, "I suddenly didn't know who I was. I mean, I was Marius Hall. But I could also swear I was— That, like, a long time ago, I was ... Zachary Holzer." Before that moment, it had never occurred to him that he might have had another life.

So it was a real out-of-body experience when he drove into town to meet Charles Whitney, and found Zachary Holzer waiting with him.

Next: "Allies in Disguise" 

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