The Book of Masks (Vol. 5)

A Girl with a Taste for Horror

Previously: "Double-Dates for a Double Date" 

Are you being given a choice between Amy and Kate? You're pretty sure you're not. But a choice is presenting itself.

But if you go to the bookstore with Kate now, and see Amy later, your choice in practice would be ... Both!

"I'm parked over by the bookstore anyway. I'll stick around here with these guys," you announce to the group at large, "and come out later."

* * * * *

The dusty smell of old paper and glue envelops you the moment you cross the bookstore threshold, and there comes back sharply the memory of Thursday, when you were in here last. With it comes a pang like the memory of something much uglier, but its import escapes you. Andrew and Kate each seem to know exactly where they're going, and separate as soon as they are inside the store. Of course, you follow Kate.

She winds her way through a couple of side rooms into an airy gallery that you've never been in before. Not only are the walls lined with shelves, but the floor is crowded with spinner racks, each one stuffed with battered paperback books. Kate goes directly to a shelf by a tall, narrow window that peeps into a tiny parking lot.

So old and worn are most of the books that the titles on their spines are hard to make out. But Kate seems to know what she's looking for, and with her index finger pulls out individual titles to examine their covers as though she knows what she will find before she even looks at it.

"Most people read Stephen King," she says, though you have said nothing. "I mean, I read him too, but I read him back in middle school, early in high school. He's okay. I mean, he's really good," she corrects herself. "But I like the really nasty stuff."

She shows you the cover of one of the books she has pulled out. It shows a busty woman in a filmy nightgown, with her face shadowed by a great mass of tangled blonde hair. In her arms she holds a small child.

Well, from the neck down it's a small child. It has the head of Spider-Man's Green Goblin. Shudder to the lilt of a child's laugh! reads the tagline at the top. Underneath are the title—The Toy Box and author—W. R. Christopher—in an ornate gothic script. "Cute," you say as she slips it back onto the shelf.

"I know," she says with a sigh. "But I just like it. The crazier the better. I don't like the really gross, true-crime like stuff." She shudders. "There was one I picked up, it was a modern horror book, it was called, like, 'Sometimes They Follow You Home', or something like that. I thought it sounded fun. Like, what exactly follows you home. You know? But you know what it turned out to be? Russian mobsters who kidnap women and rape them to make babies and tie them to beds until they give birth. Ewww! I didn't even finish that one, because right? That's too real." She pulls out another book, to show you the cover. "That's not real."

You hope it's not real, as it shows a hospital—identifiable as such by the giant red cross on its side—bursting through whose windows wriggle giant, slimy earthworms whose gaping maws are lined with knife-like teeth. The title: The Breeding House. "The dead go in, the worms come out," advertises the tag line.

You look at Kate as she continues to examine the shelf. She is small girl with narrow hips and small boobs. But she has a dainty face with large blue eyes, and tousled brunette hair. She is wearing some faded jeans and a filmy brown blouse that hangs unbuttoned off her shoulders over an equally filmy white under-blouse. She doesn't only look very normal, she looks like she should be an illustration in a book called How to Be a Normal, Healthy Teenage Girl. She has no piercings or tattoos; her hair isn't cut or dyed a strange color; she isn't wearing provocative clothes; she is quite pretty, in fact. Only her gaze—some mix of wariness, emptiness and skepticism—and a reserved manner keeps from being the kind of girl who should be cheering on the football team from the stands while gabbling excitedly with her girlfriends about where they'll be eating after the game and whether any of the football players might show up there too.

"Lately I've been getting into this guy." She hands you another paperback.

Michael T. Ross. The Alteration of Sandra Parrish. "Perfection comes at the cost of one's soul." The cover shows a hand in a surgeon's glove holding a test tube, inside of which is a naked woman with a mane of flowing hair. Artfully placed reflections and highlights off the tube obscure her boobs and lower portions.

"He's got, like, four trilogies," Kate says, "all of them have titles like this one. The Conception of Sandra Parrish, The Alteration of Sandra Parrish and, um ... The Completion of Sandra Parrish?" She squints thoughtfully. "Something like that. Only each trilogy has a different name and a different word in the title. The Devotion of Jennifer Kirk, that's one of them."

"What are they about?" you ask as you flip the book over to read the back.

"This evil medical hospital or whatever," she says, "that's all about using surgery and cloning and brainwashing and stuff to create perfect women for millionaires. It's pretty hinky. Especially this one where they sucked the stuff out of a girl and then sewed this old rich guy up inside her skin, and turned him into her."

You look up from the book to study her again from under your brows. She said it so casually while running her gaze over the bookshelf. Russian mobsters raping women in order to make babies. Eww! Sewing old men up inside the skin of a young girl to turn him into her. Cool!

You glance back down to continue reading the back of this book:

CUT. SNIP. TUCK. BIND. The work of Dr. Bradley Sands is neverending, but the reward comes with warm lips and firm breasts. His last creation began with an act of impious coitus upon an altar of the damned, creating an evil succubus of unspeakable depravity. Grotesque ... malformed ... scorching to the touch, it could survive only in a glass case of occult design. But the learning of Dr. Sands encompasses skills greater than those of the merely demonic, and by his art will this ravening child of hell be cut, molded, altered and improved into a beauty that can enslave souls ... but which will be enslaved to his ...

You hold it out to her, but she pushes it back at you.

"Keep it," she says. "Buy it, read it. I've read it already. I bought it, read it, sold it back to them for store credit." She sniffs. "I think they only get, like a dollar-seventy-five each time I buy a book and return it for credit. But it's cheap entertainment. Only trouble is, I have to get them read and back here before my mom can find them in my room."

* * * * *

It's that same danger—of your mom finding it—that persuades you to return it to the shelf. But on Kate's recommendation you do pick out one book: The Monster Next Door. The cover shows a curvy girl in a cheerleader uniform, her blonde hair tumbling past her shoulders, standing on a football field with her back to the reader, holding a pom-pom in one hand and a skull in the other. The tagline: "She was no longer human. If she ever had been."

Kate is still searching for a book for herself when Andrew finds the pair of you and asks if you're ready to go. "Sure," Kate says, and puts back two of the three books she is holding, and leads your company out front to the register. It has been abandoned for the moment.

"You get something?" you ask Andrew, and crane your neck to get a glance at the cover of the paperback he's holding. You only catch the briefest glimpse of the cover—shades of violet and purple, and the title Steady On My Guy—before quickly averting your eyes. Andrew says nothing.

When no one appears at the register for some time, Kate rings the bell on the counter. A moment later, Ted Arnholm, frowning as usual, appears in an open doorway in the wall behind. He swallows a grumble and advances to ring up your purchases.

You are the last of your trio to pay, and as you start to turn away, you are caught by the fierce and probing frown that Arnholm turns on you. You freeze, wondering if you've done something wrong.

"Were you in here last week?" he asks in an accusing tone.

"Uh ... Yes."

"Wednesday? No, Thursday!" He points a white, bony finger at you. "You bought a book! We had it marked for two hundred dollars, but sold it to you for two!"

You feel your eyes widen. In a moment, you expect him to announce that he's calling the cops.

But you swallow, and nod.

"That's what I thought." He turns with another grumble and marches over to his workstation a few yards away. He rummages in some drawers, then returns with a white card.

"The item you bought," he says as he shoves the card at you. "It belonged to this man, and he came in on Friday, raised an unholy hell wanting it back. Said he'd buy it back for a couple of hundred dollars. We didn't have it, of course." He glares at you. "But if you want, you can sell it to him!"

He glowers at you briefly, then stalks away.

Dumbstruck, you look down at the card. Aubrey Blackwell, it says. Professor of Archaeology. There's a phone number and an address on the back.

"What was that about?" Kate asks. Andrew also looks at you curiously.

That's all for now

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