The Book of Masks (Abridged)

A Dad's-Eye View

YOUR HANDS FEEL NUMB as you take the mask from Caleb, and with a vast reluctance you put it to your face. The world goes dark.

Your first feeling on waking again is anger. You raise your head and glare at Caleb and at ... No, it's not your son. It's a fake. And then you have to remind yourself that it's not a fake of your son, but of you. You take a deep breath as you sit up, and have to grip the edge of the table to keep your hands from shaking.

A whole welter of confusing memories, impressions, and bits of knowledge press upon you, and you have to concentrate to sort them out. You-- No, your father was jumped by these two, and something ... a mask ... was pressed on to your ... his ... face. He was investigating the basement because of the car parked nearby, and he was investigating because no one at the community center proper could explain where that mystery box went after it was picked up. And the mystery box was important because--

"Okay, I see now what happened," you growl. "Christ, Johansson, you had my-- my dad's head, and you still managed to not cover your tracks."

"What do you mean?"

"The box. You put-- You put his name to it when you mailed it here from Salopek, here to the community center."

"That was the only way to do it," he says. "I was pretending to be your dad at the time--"

"Yeah, but the delivery confirmation went back to Salopek and from there back to his office. He got curious because he didn't remember putting in a request to have anything sent out, and certainly not to this address. So he talked to Jack this afternoon, and from there tracked it here. The guys at the community center said a kid picked it up. He spotted your car and this door, and that's why he came in here. Took one look at you two jokers--" You glare at the fake Will Prescott "--and naturally figured it was you two behind it all."

Caleb blinks. "Okay, I guess that makes sense. He started yelling--I guess you, uh, remember that part--"

"And so you jumped on him with his own mask."

"I had to get him to shut up," Caleb protests. "I couldn't explain anything to him. He wouldn't understand."

"Oh, he'd understand if you explained it all to him. He'd have killed you, but he'd have understood."

"Well, I didn't want to be killed."

"Which makes you a minority of one." He turns red. "Now, how did this golem business come about?"

"I couldn't leave the mask on him permanently," Caleb says. "I thought ... Well, I thought 'Let's try the next spell'."

"Jesus. Did you even have a clue what it would do?"

"It might not have done anything bad."

"Oh, and where would you have been then? What if it gave him superpowers?"

"Then he wouldn't have been pissed, would he?"

"After wearing his face so many times, you think he would have been okay with being mugged?" You can't tell where your own rage ends and your dad's begins. The sheer idiocy on display in this room--

"Look, what's done is done," Caleb says. "You wanna hit me? Hit me. I guess I deserve it."

Something like a red mist seems to descend over your vision, and it takes a supreme effort of self-control not to follow through on the invitation. You lower your head and say, through gritted teeth, "That won't do any good."

There's silence for a moment, and then the golem speaks. "So, what do we do now?"

You look at him, and something like a cold knife goes through your heart. You dumb kid. But you're talking to yourself, too, when you think it. The thing is right--if you'd been here you'd probably have helped Caleb do it because you'd be in such a panic. And your dad--

Goddamn it, your dad actually would understand. It's not that he has such a low opinion of you, but-- You stare at your twin, and actually want to burst out crying. I was actually the same way when I was his age, a voice says in your head. It's a familiar voice and a familiar caution, one that your dad has often given himself. I was smarter than him, I could do worse things and get away with them. You catch yourself smiling grimly at your dad's memories, at incidents you never knew about. Remember the time you nearly burned down the house. Remember the time you blew up your bedroom at three in the morning because you set the timer on that homemade bomb wrong. Remember the time the Air Force visited because your homemade UFO--a lawn chair, dozens of helium balloons, and a string of Christmas lights--showed up on their tracking radar ...

If Will had half my ingenuity he could do the same things. If he had half my wit he could walk away from his own disasters. But he's got my sense of curiosity but he's missing that same little voice that says 'Think real hard before you attach those rockets to your roller skates, and try to anticipate all the bad things that could happen.

You suddenly feel very tired, and your shoulders slump. You glance at your watch. "I have to get back to Salopek," you say quietly. "You two pack everything up--hide the first golem in the back somewhere--and take it to my house. I'll look through the book and see if I can figure anything out."

"When do we get together? Tomorrow?" Caleb asks.

"We won't." You reach for your wallet and remember who's wearing whose clothes. You snap your fingers at "Will" and tell him to undress. "I'll give you your two hundred back later."

"You're not serious," Caleb frowns. "You're ending our partnership?"

You frown back. "After this, you really think I want your help and input?" He thrusts his lip out belligerently, then shrinks back again as you stare stonily at him. "Anyway, I've got a new partner," you continue. "My dad, and he's a hell of a lot smarter than you."

* * * * *

The basement is quiet as you change into your dad's clothes, and then you drive back to Salopek to finish up for the day. Back at the house you find two large boxes in your study. You take them out to the garage and carefully stow away the more flammable elements for eventual disposal. Dinner is muted, and it only takes a glance to get Robert to stop him horsing around. Afterward, when the boys are upstairs, Martha--your mother, your wife--sits next to you on the sofa and asks what's wrong. "Just a hard day at work," you tell her.

"Is it something Will did?" she asks.

"No," you grunt. But lying does not come easily to your father. "Not at work, at least. I told you he was helping his friend Caleb out with a science project." She nods. "I found out what it involved. Someone was going to get hurt, so I had to put a stop to it."

"What was it?" Her eyes widen in concern.

"They were just playing with some dangerous chemicals. It wasn't school sanctioned or supervised."

"You know, Robert doesn't have a dollhouse for them to blow up."

You wince, then smile at the private joke. "Does Amanda still carry a grudge over that?"

"You could have just built a house out of Legos and used that as a prop for your volcano."

"It wouldn't have had the structural properties I needed to demonstrate the power of pyroclastic flows."

"That wasn't a school-sanctioned experiment either."

"No, but it was a success. And her dollhouse did make a nice little one-house Pompeii. Surely she's old enough now to appreciate that."

"She's an interior decorator, Harris, not a vulcanologist." She puts her arm in yours. "And I think she ruled out Hawaii for her honeymoon because of bad memories of mountains blowing up."

"Well, the point is that she can visit now without worrying that her nephew is going to reenact the experiment for her." You snort. "But it will just be something else when it happens."

She giggles and kisses your neck deeply. "All this talk of fireworks," she murmurs.

You groan softly. Two teenage boys in the house, and twenty years of marriage, and ... and they still do it at least once a week. Visions and memories bat at your imagination. A shudder passes through you--one that combines dread and anticipation. You should switch back into your own form before going to bed, let a fake dad sleep next to your mom. At the same time, though, it's easier to deal with what happened by pretending to be your dad. It makes him feel less absent. You're not sure you'd be able to look at his replacement.

Your mind flashes back to the dinner table: Yes, Will never once looked you in the face all during the meal.