The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

One Well-Armed Research Project

Previously: "A Dead End and a Detour" 

Caleb, using your body, sent the Molester to the nurse's office? Your dad's reaction: The hell? Your reaction: Way to go, Caleb!

"Three days' detention?" you ask Martha, and you keep your voice very neutral. She nods. "Will told you this?"

"The school called." She hesitates. "I didn't tell you because I was hoping that Will would."

"Mm. Well, he did. He just didn't mention the nurse's office." Martha's eyes widen as you get to your feet. "I think I will have a word with my son," you tell her.

"Harris," she says. "Harris?" But you ignore her and slowly mount the stairs.

You rap on the door to a bedroom that was once yours, and enter without waiting for a summons. Will Prescott, splayed on his bed, tries to levitate off it. He thrusts his cell phone half under his butt, and turns very red.

Ah. Porn.

You close the door behind you. "I hear that the school called. They had a much more complete report about what happened."

Will's face twists up. "What do you mean, 'more complete'? I told you what happened!"

"About the nurse's office?"

His face freezes, then falls. "Oh. Heh." He grins weakly.

"Not that I'm not proud of you," you say in a very level tone, "for laying out the Molester so bad he needed— Well, what did he need from the nurse, anyway?"

"Uh, some pain medicine?"

You raise one eyebrow, a gesture that both you and father know means, "Pull the other one, it's got bells on it."

"Because he was kind of woozy."

Up goes the other eyebrow, in a gesture that means, "Strike two."

"Okay, I knocked him cold!" That grin reappears, wider and more nervous than ever.

You lock the bedroom door. Will swallows.

"Fuck you, Caleb," you murmur in a low, hard voice, "but I will tear that face off you and put it on myself and find out directly what happened at school today if you don't—"

"Alright, I put a mask on him and it knocked him out! Jeez, are you happy now?"

Your jaw slackens. "A mask?" It takes you a moment to get the word out past the blockage in your throat. "You slapped a mask onto the Molester in full view of the—?" You slam your mouth shut before your voice can rise to a shriek. "Never mind that, where the freaking fuck did you get a mask?"

"I made one?" The sweat has popped out on his brow. "Um, a couple, actually. With mind-bands and everything."

It's like your eyeballs want to jump out of your head. "Fuck you, no you didn't. When did you find time, those things take fucking days, mister, to—"

"I used a car buffer! You know, for waxing cars? Makes it go a lot faster, you can get one buffed in less than an hour!"

Your knees buckle, and you sit on the edge of the bed. "And you didn't. Freaking. Tell me?"

"It was going to be a surprise," Caleb says. He twists on the bed, like he's trying to burrow into it with his butt.

You blink. "So what happened at school?" Froth starts to fill your mouth. "The fucking truth, this time!"

Well, it turns out he did tell you the truth. Mostly. He was slipping a blank mask out of his backpack and into his locker while reorganizing his shit when the Molester loped past, grabbed the bag, and went down the hall. Caleb ran after, mask still in hand, and leaped on the soccer goalie. They twisted about for a time, with Caleb whaling feebly at him, and accidentally smacked him in the face with the mask. That knocked the Molester down and out, and he and Will both got shipped to the nurse's office for observation. There was a lot of panic in the office over the Molester's condition, for nothing they tried could revive him. Luckily, Caleb was alone with him when the mask came out, and he hastily snatched it up and hid it in his shorts. But the apparent seriousness of the injury was the reason Caleb got suspended.

Considering the circumstance, you think, your friend got off light.

"So you've been making masks," you say when he's done. It's a topic less likely to set you off. "How many?"

"Somewhere between a few and a bunch?"

"A number, God damn it."

"Three. Definitely three," Caleb says. And when you continue to stare, he adds. "Polished."

Oh God. "What about unpolished?"

His grin is a rictus. "Nine?"

You pinch the bridge of your nose. "Twelve. You've made twelve masks. That you hadn't told me about."

"Well, I've told you n—"

"God damn it, Caleb! You know what we're supposed to be doing!"

"But we are doing it!" He flings his arms out. "We're getting your dad back!"

"And that's all! That's all, Will! Caleb!" you correct yourself. You thrust a finger at him. "So you stop what you're doing right now! No more! You just do what I say from this point on, and no more!"

"You're not the boss of me," he says sulkily.

You leap halfway across the bed at him. "I can make myself the boss of you!" you roar. "I can make myself—!" Your voice dies in a strangulated choke as Caleb, eyes wide with terror, stares back at you.

You straighten up and take a deep breath. Your face is boiling hot. But you keep your voice very calm.

"Okay, so you've got some masks," you say when you speak again. "I will overlook the fact that you have got them, because it saves me the trouble of telling you that I want you to make some."

He perks up. "You do? That's great! Because I know who we can—"

"One." You hold up a finger. "We only need one. And until I tell you otherwise, you will stay where you are, as my son— As me, I mean, and you will give me everything you have made so I can lock it away."

Caleb grimaces like he's sucking on twenty-five lemons, all at once, but nods.

"Good. Because I'm not going to let you distract me while I'm trying to get that fucking book figured out."

You leave him with that and return downstairs. Martha is very pale. "I heard you," she says as you sit down next to her.

"Did you hear what I said?"

"Not the words, just the tone." She rubs your back. "What happened to the bonding?"

"Oh, we're still bonded." You settle back on the sofa, and she raises her hand to massage your neck. "I just explained to him that I really appreciated that he told me about what happened at school, but that in the future he should tell me all of what happened."

"You got really intense," she says.

"I suppose I did." You rub your face in your hands. "Because I really thought we were on the same page. And I wanted him to understand how much it hurt me, to find out that we weren't."

"Oh, Harris," she says, and she pulls you toward her.

* * * * *

Those were conversations that happened later. Much later. Before, when you and Caleb were still down in the study, and were bending over the next spell together:

After staring at it in horrified fascination, you talk about it for a few minutes, then tackle it from opposite ends of the page. There seems no better way to attack it, for it is just a solid wall of text.

No list of ingredients. No set of instructions. And certainly no sigil. Just closely set words in a cramped handwriting.

Worse comes when you try entering the words into a translation program, and then into Google. None of them are real; all are just nonsensical.

For an hour you and Caleb struggle with it. Are the words anagrams? Are they sensible words, but broken up with odd spacing? A combination of both? For awhile you think you'd found a key in a set of words that, if rearranged and respaced, yielded a Latin phrase meaning "three dogs windows kicked" but that leads to nothing.

After ninety minutes of fruitless fiddling, you send Caleb upstairs. Before going out to join your better half on the sofa (where she will tell you the rest of the story of your son's day at school) you study the spells that have come before.

There is a definite pattern to their progress. A mask to copy the body. A sealant to make it wearable. A metallic strip to copy the mind. A glue to bind one to the other. A golem that wear a mask and so become a servant. A spell that turns a person into a golem so that they can be replaced by a duplicate. A mask that hides a person so he can be replaced with a duplicate but without transforming them into a golem.

You wonder in almost spastic irritation why the book tossed that next-to-the-last one into the progression. It's like a "fuck you" dick move on the part of the book. It occurs to you then that maybe that's the point. It's there to separate the ethical people from the unethical.

Then there's that page that was torn and then just as mysteriously got repaired. Or did it? You wonder if the page is still damaged, and that's why the page that follows is such a mess of gobbledygook.

To be balked is a terrible frustration, to yourself but still more to Harris Prescott. Words have never much interested him, but matters mathematical, scientific, or engineering have never baffled him for long. You can't but feel a swelling rage at discovering a science-like method that won't yield to your mental battering ram.

But there must be people who do understand magic, for one of them has written a book of it.

You're not sure you want to know who those people are. But you do an internet search, and that yields a local name to go with two others you already know of.

So now you're going to get one of them—or a golem of them, now that you know what Caleb has done—to help you.

* To consult a student at your school: "The Student Warlock" 
* To consult your mother's cousin: "My Cousin the Witch" 
* To consult a university professor: "Fun Is Where You Find It" 

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