The Book of Masks (Vol. 5)

The Temptation of Heather Dow

Previously: "A Trip Past the Supermarket" 

"I just had a sudden turn is all," you murmur back at Melissa. You and she are looking at each other's reflections in the mirror. "I suddenly just felt very ... strange."

"Are you ill?"

"I don't know," you confess. Then: "Oh!" You lower your head and close your eyes and cover your face with your hand. "I'm so dizzy!"

"You want me to call a doctor?"

"No!" The thought alarms you, for some reason, and you lift your head again. "I'm better now. Just a passing—"

Garson. The dread of losing him seizes your heart. It's a familiar feeling, but you've never had it hit so sudden, or so out of nowhere like this, before. It must be Garson, I'm thinking about Garson.

At least, that's what I should tell Melissa.

So you smile up at her reflection, and cover her hand with your own.

"You were right, I just suddenly thought about Garson, and it hit me hard." You pat her hand. "I'll be okay. Just give me a minute."

Still, Melissa looks wary. "Can I stay with you?"

"Of course." You smile, and pat her hand again. "But you could fetch me my bag? I might as well touch myself up a little while I'm here."

* * * * *

"That was a nice dinner," you remark to Garson as you and he are strolling back to the hotel room afterward. You are holding each other's hands. "Aren't Brian and Erin looking well? And Eric—" You trail off when Garson just grunts.

"You know," you continue, "if you don't want to go out on the boat with them tomorrow, you can just tell them. Dennis won't be mind."

"No, I'll go," he protests.

"This is your retirement vacation," you remind him. "Not Dennis's."

"He's just trying to show me a good time."

"You've never had a good time on the water."

"I've only been on the water twice!"

"You didn't like it either time. You told me."

"That was forty years ago." You've come to the room, and he fumbles the key card from his pocket. "Maybe things have changed."

Maybe they have, you silently agree. Then, with quick fright: Of course they've changed.

Everything has changed!

* * * * *

It all started with a visit from Brandt Gelding, one of the science teachers at the school. Garson had had dinner with him the week before. When you'd asked Garson afterward what Brandt wanted, Garson (who had come back looking very pale and distracted) had roused himself only enough to say, Oh, about what I'm going to do after I retire. He had some ideas for me.

You had left it at that, because though it certainly was good manners of Brandt to inquire, it could not have been a very pleasant query for Garson to field. Aside from the fact that (as far as you know) Garson and Brandt had never been more than professionally acquainted, Garson would either have had to lie about his post-retirement plans, or he would have to tell Brandt the truth. That he (Garson) was retiring because he was dying.

(You hadn't paid much attention to the doctor's words after the gist had sunk in. You had only caught the phrases "prostate cancer" and "bone marrow" and "metastasized" and "poor prospects" before your mind shut down and refused to absorb any more.)

But then a week later Brandt came over to the house. It was at Garson's invitation, but your husband had been nervous and even irritable all morning before his arrival. At one point he had even snatched up the cell phone and said, I'm going to call Brandt and cancel, but then stood in a paralyzed posture of agonized indecision before dropping the phone and hurrying for the bathroom. You thought you'd heard the sound of retching from behind the door, and had knocked and asked if he wanted you to call Brandt, but Garson said he'd changed his mind. Still, he looked gaunt with a kind of horror, and his eyes were watering all during the wait, and they were watering still in his gray face when Brandt arrived.

Brandt Gelding—whom you had never met before—turned out to be a brusque, rather hard-mannered man. Perfect for teaching math or science, you might suppose: not someone to take any lip, and more than capable of stopping lab-table shenanigans before they got started. He had short, brown hair, thinning at the front and on the top, and a tough-eyed stare. His manner was business-like as he sat down opposite the sofa where you and Garson sat, and he said little more than, This is something I showed Garson, before he took something out of his book satchel. You had smiled with a wan and polite interest, and wished that Garson had given you some warning about what this mysterious visit was all about.

And then Brandt vanished.

Yet someone remained behind as well. Where Brandt had been sitting, there now sat a tousle-headed teenager with a three-day growth of heavy beard. He sagged inside the chair where Brandt had been sitting, and inside of Brandt's clothes, his head lolling to one side and his eyes closed, fast asleep.

For a moment you'd said nothing, but only felt like an audience member at a Vegas show, when the stage magician does an unexpected trick. Only there was no one else but Garson to experience it, and you had no cue about how to react. So you only stared in some bemusement as you waited for whatever trick this was to undo itself and conclude.

Garson squeezed your hand, then pulled you to your feet. Together, you crept over to where the boy sat dozing.

Garson poked at him. "You try," he said.

"Try what?"

"It feels just like he looks. You can't tell it's not him."

"Not who?"

"Not Brandt. I mean, not this ... kid ... he turned himself into."

"What are you talking about?" You stared down at the kid, a feeling of fear slowly beginning to creep over you. "What's this about?"

"That's Brandt," Garson said.

"I know it's Brandt!"

"But it doesn't look like him, does it?" Garson pressed.

You threw up your hands.

"I don't know what's going on, Garson! Would you tell me? Or wake him up so he can—"

"Don't you want to know how it's done?"

"I don't even know what's going on!"

It wasn't until Garson had shaken Brandt awake that they tried to explain, and even then it made no sense, even with the evidence sitting right there in front of you. I've turned myself into someone else, Brandt explained. It's like a kind of disguise! Not until Brandt had changed himself back—it seemed to involve putting on and taking off a blue-tinged mask—and then changed Garson using the same trick, that it had begun to really sink in. The trick really did change your husband all over, from the top of his crown to the tips of his toes, into the shape and form of another human being.

A much younger and healthier human being.

Then of course you had to admit it was most marvelous and almost miraculous, though you were also mystified by the meaning of it all. Not until Brandt began to explain that the boy in question was a real boy—a layabout stoner at Westside High named Dane Matthias—did you begin to feel any trepidation. And when Brandt said that the mask—and he let you hold and handle it as he talked: it looked like a classical tragedian's mask, only with a neutral expression—also conferred the memories of the boy, and the ability to mimic his personality ... Well, then you began to feel and act coldly. Garson had read your mood, and quickly ushered Brandt out.

That night, he told you what Brandt, and his "colleagues" at the school had offered.

They had offered to save Garson's life by giving him a new one.

They could make a mask of anyone at school—Garson's choice—and transform him into that person. He would take on their appearance, their memories, the ability to act exactly like them in the presence of their family and friends. But Garson would still be Garson—he would still be the man you loved and married, the new look and act would only be a pretense—but in this stolen body he would be young and healthy again, with all of life to live over.

And what would happen to the person he replaced? The boy who's life he stole would at the same time take Garson's place. Only he wouldn't know it.

There are ways to make them forget who they were, Garson told you. Whoever I pick, he'll think that he's me, that he was always me. He'll live the rest of my life for me.

The rest of it? you asked in some horror. Up until—?

His eyes fell. He didn't even have to answer the question, for he'd seen your expression.

You're not thinking of doing this, you said.

He hung his head, and admitted that he had.

But then he raised his face again, and looked deep into your eyes as the tears streamed from his.

I might have done it, he said, but I couldn't bear to go on without you. I couldn't leave you behind.

You had embraced and spoken no more of it.

But you'd thought about it, first with a shudder at the temptation avoided. But then with a kind of trembling worry.

He can't save himself while leaving me behind, you thought with sudden terror one morning not long after Brandt's visit. But doesn't that mean I'm stopping him from saving himself? Because I can't go with him?

Or won't?

For a week you had worried over it, wrestled with it, nearly driven yourself mad with horror and self-recrimination.

But finally, with an exhausted peace of mind one morning at breakfast, you asked him, Would you let them make you young again, if they made me young as well?

Next: "The Seduction of Heather Dow" 

*
"Table of Contents (Vol. 5)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 5)"