The Book of Masks (Vol. 5)

An Interview with the Professor

Previously: "People Who Want to Talk to You" 

You feel balanced on a knife's edge. Neither appointment is one you want to keep.

What it comes down to, finally, is the pressure from your dad. It just seems easiest to bend to him.

"Okay," you tell him, "I'll go talk to the guy. Um, is it okay if I'm a little late getting home? I was supposed to go talk to someone else—"

"You can hang out with your friends later," your dad snaps. "Unless you take the job and have to start work right away, be home for supper. And if you do take the job and start right away, call."

He turns back to his paperwork, and you feel yourself dismissed.

* * * * *

You pull over into a parking lot on the drive out to the professor's, to send Mr. Williams a text explaining that something came up and you will not be able to keep your appointment with him. You are profuse in your apologies, and tell him that you very much want to see him.

Though really, you don't. You just want that "reimbursement" he promised, and it would suck if he decided that you were a flake and not worth the bother after all.

The late afternoon sunlight is hitting the front of Professor Blackwell's villa in a way that makes it seem to glow, but you still don't like its looks as you trudge up the path leading to the portico. There is something haggard and bony about its hard, white walls, and the windows are dark and baleful. It strikes you, as you are almost at the porch, that it looks like a skull: the jawless skull of some great monster cast upon the dead ground.

Stupid nerves, you chide yourself as you mount the stone steps to the front door.

But almost you turn around and leave when you see the doorbell: it is set inside an ornamental metal casement cast to resemble the head of a ravening wolf. You would have to put your finger inside its jaws to ring the bell, so instead you just bang the side of your fist against the heavy door a half-dozen times, and pray that the dull thump can be heard within.

You have to knock a second time before the door opens. The professor peers out, his mouth pursed into a frown within the tangles of his greasy, frizzy mustache and goatee. But his eyes light up when he sees you.

"Ah, Mr. Prescott," he booms as he pulls the door wide. "Pray enter with all dispatch. Your father telephoned to tell me that you were on your way, and here you are."

You step for the second time into that dark, cool atrium, and shiver a little as he shuts the door behind you, closing you off from the sunlight. The air feels heavy and a little dank, and it is no comfort when you think that it feels like an exhalation of breath from the bowels of the house.

"Now," the professor continues. "I suppose your father told you I was still interested in procuring your services for some light library work. That is true, but the fact is that I require more. My research is quite involved—more involved than even the university is willing to compensate me for—and I am in urgent need of an assistant. Someone," he continues as he ushers you down the hall, deeper into the house, "who can not only help with the cataloguing of my collection, but in running certain errands for me. Nothing that would be beyond an alert and capable young man such as yourself," he hastily adds. "It would only be the sort of errand-running as I suppose your own family requires from you now and again."

Great, you sigh to yourself. He wants me to do his grocery shopping and take his laundry to the cleaners. That will eat into your after-school game-playing schedule, and complicate your weekends with your friends.

The hallway he is taking you down is flanked by doorways leading into other rooms, and you glance into these as you follow him. One leads into a large, formal dining room, and another into a crooked hallway. At the center of the house is a large gallery, flanked on one side by a wide staircase that mounts to a landing before turning to ascend to the second floor, and on the other by a double-doorway leading into another large room. French doors on the other side of this room lead outside, and three large desks occupy the floor space. You think you catch a glimpse of the corner of a book case.

But it's the bat-like gargoyle crouching on one of the tables, its leathery wings half-folded about its body, that catches your attention. It's as big as you are, and as you do a double-take at it, it snarls and snatches through the air at you with a claw-like hand at the end of its skeletal arm.

You freeze and blink and the illusion vanishes, replaced by the oily, coiling reflections of light off the polished table top. Still, the momentary hallucination was so intense, and so realistic, that you have to stop to gape.

The professor is still murmuring to himself as he continues down the hall, but he stops and falls silent. "Is there something the matter, Mr. Prescott?" he politely asks.

"Uh ... No!" you gasp, and look between him and the room beyond that doorway. You can't shake the horrible feeling that if you look away, that thing will manifest again, that it only vanished because you dared to look directly at it. "I just— I thought I saw something in there."

The professor pads back and cranes his neck to peer into the room.

"My library," he says. "If you take the position, you will become well acquainted with it. It is full of curios," he adds with a plump smile that he surely means to be reassuring, but which isn't. "I admit that they can be ... disconcerting, at first. But one will grow used to them, and even come to admire them in time. Come." He gestures you to follow him.

You end in dark living room, the only light into which filters through heavy drapes. The sofas are large, deep and a rich, chocolatey brown in color; the furniture is of walnut; and the carpeting is thick. The professor invites you to take a seat in a deep, soft chair that faces a coffee table.

"Now," he says as he flicks on a heavily-shaded lamp at your elbow, "I can somewhat guess from your demeanor that you are ... reluctant ... to take employment with me. I understand. I am an old duffer, and you are a young man with many social commitments, I have no doubt. And if I am being perfectly honest—"

He straightens up and looks down at you, with his hands behind his back.

"If I am being perfectly honest in my assessment of the situation, you also resent the pressure being put upon you by your father to accept the position. Am I not correct?"

You're not even sure you understand what he means; and if you do understand him, you're not sure there's a diplomatic answer to be made. So you just shrug.

"Well, I can help you out there, while helping myself out," he says. "Although the tasks I would have for you are not onerous, a small number of them do require a certain amount of, erm, perceptive ability, shall we say. Not to put too fine a point on it, you will be required by this job to study certain texts and illustrations with a close eye for detail. Not everyone—and this is not to condescend to the population at large!—are capable of such. So," he concludes, "I must ask you take a small qualifying exam before we can really get down to the business of discussing requirements and terms."

He smiles at you, tightly.

"If you fail my test, Mr. Prescott, you will be able to return to your father in a clear conscience, able to report that you were not actually suitable for the position."

Well, that sounds good, and you nod.

"Excellent. We understand each other. Still, I do hope you will apply yourself to the test, and will not, er, flunk it purposefully. You might, I hope, even find it stimulating."

He pads silently over to a cabinet, from which he extracts a thin sheaf of papers. He brings these over to you.

"Do you remember those 'Where's Waldo?' books that were all the rage some years back?" he asks as he hands the sheaf to you. "Pretend it is that sort of thing. Contained within each of these illustrations is an element which does not belong. I cannot tell you what that element is, nor can I characterize it more clearly than by repeating, 'It does not belong'. I pray you examine them, and tell me of each what is wrong with it."

He smiles again at you, and this time there is a gleam in his eye you definitely do not like.

But you settle the sheaf in your lap, and bend your head over the top sheet.

* * * * *

You have seen pictures like this before, in books of illusions. The picture shows the inside of a palace or cathedral: a place of many staircases and pillared galleries, of windows and promenades. The geography is byzantine, with corridors and walls and ceilings intersecting each other at odd angles. The ability to "read" the picture is made worse by the complicated geometrical designs that cover the tiled floor.

Dimly, as you study the picture more intently, you are aware of the professor leaving the room. But you are pulled deeper into the picture as you stare at it, so that you pay him no heed. The lines of the illustration fascinate you the harder the longer that you stare at them, and like the cords of a net they seem to catch and hold you paralyzed within them.

So you don't even react when a clammy hands reaches around from behind you, pressing itself against your forehead. For a moment you have the vertiginous feeling that you are falling, and then darkness overwhelms you, and your consciousness fades.

You never wake up again.

The End

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