The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

Into the Book

Previously: "A Cry for Help" 

You need to play for time. "How far did you get in the book?" you ask Chelsea.

"To here." She flips to a page covered in a mess of Latin words and symbols arranged in wheel-like patterns. "Do you know what it does?"

"Well, I'd have to study it a lot more closely," you tell her (truthfully). "How about you tell me what happened when you, uh, did what it told you to do."

Chelsea makes a face. "Gordon was the one doing it. I wasn't paying attention until he got the matches out."

Matches? you almost exclaim aloud.

"Until then, it was just, you know, a lot of chemicals and stuff. I mean, what is this, Magic or Chem? Anyway, he mixed it all up, and then he poured it on himself, and then—" She swallows. "Then he set himself on fire." She shrugs.

Your jaw falls open.

"I really tried talking him out of it," Chelsea adds, "but he's got all that stupid testosterone."

Yes, you’d have to admit, it takes major balls to set yourself aflame. "Where are these chemicals he used?" you ask.

She waves vaguely at one of the crates. "Oh yeah," she says, "and he used some of my hair in it." Her eyes widen. "D'you think that's what it was? Because he used his own hair in the other one."

"What other one?"

The spell before this one!" She clucks her tongue. "It used hair too, but we didn't need as much dirt. I remember he said something about that, because he was so happy about not having to go out to the cemetery again."

"Cemetery?!"

"Yeah-uh! Don't you know what’s going on? Didn’t you get this far?"

You have shake your head. She stares at you hard, then deflates. "I guess you didn't that far?"

You shake your head.

"Well, it was a gross one. And that's when I started not wanting to do this anymore. But Gordon went to the cemetery and got a lot of dirt for it. I mean, a lot! It took a week to make, too, and he had set it on fire too. But he used his own hair in that one. Not mine."

"Uh-huh. So what did it do?"

"It made this big thing, like a big old lumpy statue." She looks past your shoulder, at Gordon. "Kind of like that. But not Gordon-shaped, you know?"

Interesting. "So where’s the thing he made? What’s it for, what’s it do?"

"Well, he had to hide it. He couldn't keep it up here because Steve or Jason might find it. But for what it does--" She gives you a hooded, sidelong look. "If you put a mask on it, it comes to life. It turns into a person."

"A mask?"

"Yeah, a mask," she says sarcastically. "You know, like the kind you were making?"

"I just wanna be clear on everything," you hurriedly explain. "Uh, do you have one of these masks around now?"

"Why?" Her brow clouds with suspicion.

"Because--"

You suck on your upper lip, trying to come up with a reason for getting your hands on one of those things--one of those masks--that you were supposedly making, and supposedly know all about.

"Well, you said that this spell was like the last one," you tell Chelsea, "that it made something like, uh, what Gordon turned himself into. And you said that if you put a mask on the other thing that it comes to life, that it turns into a person. So, and this is just a hunch," you stammer, "maybe if you put a mask on Gordon here-- Well, maybe it’ll do the same thing? Come to life, turn into a person?"

Chelsea stares at you, mouth agape.

"That's brilliant," she says. "Oh my God!" She hurries over to one of the big crates.

"I'm sure there's one around here someplace," she says as she sorts through a lot of plastic containers and other junk piled atop it. "Gordon made it, but then I think he got bored wth it." She moves over to another crate.

Which is okay by you. It gives you a chance to study her trim, firm ass, her narrow waist, her strong legs and calves, and the pile of blonde hair, loosely curled, that cascades around her shoulders.

"Jesus, Gordon!" She puts her hands on her hips. "He must've taken it home." She whirls around, her thumbnail between her teeth. "I suppose we could use--"

She catches herself, and gives you another sidelong glance.

"Well, I'll have to pick it up and bring it here," she declares. "I'll have to meet you up here tomorrow. Like, early. Six o’clock." She gives you the kind of look your mother gives you when she wants something with no argument.

Your eyes nearly pop from your head. "Why so early?"

"To get the goddamn thing taken care of!" She stamps a foot. "Gordon sometimes disappears from home on weekends, but he can't be gone forever. Besides, Steve will be wanting up here, and I don't want him finding Gordon like-- like--"

Actually, the delay would suit you--it’s just the early hour that bites--so you quickly agree. "And I’ll, uh, take the book home with me," you tell her, "and try to figure stuff out tonight. Give me a call early, so I don't oversleep." She promises she will.

Then, as you start to leave, she calls your name.

"I swear," she says, her face fixed in a solemn expression, "and I am totally serious, that if you fix all this, Gordon and me will totally make it up to you. Me especially."

You assure her it's all in the spirit of being friends, and duck out before she can see your swelling erection.

* * * * *

Maybe you get an hour's sleep that night, for although there aren't many pages to study, the going is very hard. They are in Latin, so you have to use a web browser for translation. Even then the work is slow, for the browser is glitchy and will crash on you when you put more than a few words at a time into the window. The word processing program will also crash when you try entering text into it, and none of your pens or pencils will work when you try jotting down more than a few cryptic notes to yourself. You soon become convinced that some witchery attached to the book is keeping you from copying anything down.

After a few hours, though, you have been able to decipher the gist of some of the spells. The main items relate to masks, metal strips, and the statues Chelsea mentioned.

The masks are easy enough to understand: by setting one onto a person’s face, you can "copy" them into the mask; then, after sealing it up with a magical paste, you can put it on and turn yourself into a duplicate of the person you copied.

It also helps that you recognize the spell having to do with the metal strips--it's the device Caleb said could copy a brain. You can wear the strip by itself, giving you a person’s memories and even their personality, but you can also put such a strip into a mask, so that you can not only look like them, but think and act like them.

The statues are a bit more mysterious, but it appears that by putting a mask onto one, you can create a duplicate of a person without having to wear the mask yourself; and that duplicate will be your obedient slave.

There's a lot of food for thought here, but by five o'clock you're too exhausted to do any actual thinking. Your eyes fall shut at one point, and then your phone is ringing. Fifteen minutes later, at a little before six o’clock on a Saturday morning, you're dashing out the door past your astonished father.

* * * * *

You find both the gym door and the door to the loft open. Chelsea, looking rested in a way that makes you envious, raises expectant eyebrows as you stumble into the loft. "You have anything?" she asks.

"I could use some coffee," you mumble, for the adrenaline from your rush over has already begun to dissipate. But she only frowns.

"Look," you confess with a sigh, "I didn't get that far into the book the, uh, the last time I had it, so there may be, uh, stuff that I'll have to look through more carefully." You don't tell her that you suspect most of the magic resides in the incomprehensible sigils that appear on each page. "But it looks like each spell builds on the others. Maybe there’s a spell later in the book that'll fix Gordon. But to be honest--"

You rake your fingers through your unkempt hair, for what you’re about to say is bound to go down hard with her.

"Well, see, the last spell Gordon did called for cemetery dirt. I think this one, the one that, um—" You jerk your chin at the petrified Gordon. "I think you’re supposed to use an actual corpse. I’m pretty sure you're not supposed to use it on yourself."

Chelsea’s mouth falls open. "You mean he did it wrong? You mean he's stuck like that?"

"Like I said, maybe there's a cure later on. But I can't get the next page of the book to turn."

"So what are we going to do?" Her lips peel back so far you can see her gums.

"Well, we can try what I suggested last night. If you put a mask on-- on Gordon there-- Do you have a mask of him?"

"Yes, we've still got that one," she spits. But her expression turns thoughtful. "I suppose we could use it." Now her expression turns inscrutable. "There are a couple of ways we could use it."

"Well, how about you dig it out and put it on Gordon. Maybe that's the way to undo the spell."

"It's not here," she says brusquely. "I'll go get it later and try it out, then call you."

You'd like to catch up on sleep; but you'd also like to be around to see what exactly she tries to do.

* To continue: "The Return of Gordon Black" 

*
"Table of Contents (Vol. 3)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)"