The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)

The House of Professor Blackwell

Previously: "Mind and Muscle" 

There's a deserted feeling to the house on whose porch you stand. The yard has been blasted of all green things, and the cloudy sky casts a shadow over the house. The dark windows are like blind, lidless eyes, and the white walls of the villa have a sooty grime on them.

"How do you have a key?" Seth asks Marc as he slides a key into the deadbolt of the dusky front door.

"Lucy had it. As I said, the owner of this house used to come and go as her, so he put a key on her ring."

At least the door doesn't creak as it opens.

The foyer beyond is dark, and the wooden floor squeaks under your feet. Marc shuts the door, plunging you all into a near-total darkness. "Now, if I recall correctly," he says, "there's a library ahead to our left, a staircase ahead to our right, a living room over that way—" His hand brushes across you. "And a den and dining room and kitchen at the end of this hallway."

"So what are we looking for?" Jeremy asks. His voice sounds hollowly in the gloom.

"Anything that looks like a mask or a beta."

"You don't know where he keeps them? I thought Lucy had been out here before."

"She has, but I don't remember her playing with any of them."

A silence falls over your group.

"So are we all just going to stand here?" Seth asks.

You were wondering the same thing. But like the others (apparently) you feel reluctant to step deeper into the house.

There's a rustle of clothing, and Marc advances down the hallway. In single file, with you taking up the rear, the rest of you follow.

Half a dozen steps take you to a junction: an archway on the left and a staircase at the right. Dim, gray light streams in from the former, enough for you to make out your companions. Marc glances around.

"Okay, let's split up," he breathes. (You'd speak as quietly too.) "I'll check out the library. Lucy spent a lot of time in there, and maybe something will jog my memory. Seth, you look around downstairs. Gordon, you and Jeremy look upstairs. Pay special attention to a bedroom done up in Chinese colors and patterns. I think it's the professor's bedroom. He may have some stuff in there."

Again, for a long moment no one moves.

Then Marc turns into the library; Seth moves back the way you came; and you and Jeremy mount the staircase.

It's built of dark, heavy wood—as most of the interior of the house seems to be—but is so solid that it makes no noise under your footfalls. Halfway up you hit a landing, then make a one-eighty turn to mount the rest of the way to the top floor. There you find another hallway, running parallel to and directly above the hallway below. There are windows at either end, but the light outside so dim that they cast no real illumination.

"Split up?" Jeremy murmurs. "I was afraid you'd say that," he mutters when you nod.

You grin ruefully at his back as he softly stalks down the hallway toward the front of the house. He has a black goatee like a Koosh ball on his chin, but his hair is still mop-like, and he still walks like his legs are stilts and his feet are roller skates. It's almost like being back in middle school with him, and you momentarily wish that it was Keith inside Jeremy's skin, for then it would be like you're friends again ...

You turn the other way and try a door on your right. It opens silently.

Whatever the Chinese for "jackpot" is, this is it: a room done up in ebonies and scarlets, with silk hangings, lacquered wall ornaments, and a bed under a gigantic canopy with dangling tassels at all four corners. All that's missing is a statue of a dragon and a slant-eyed harridan in a kimono and beehive hairdo behind a cash register, and it could be the foyer to the Panda Gardens Chinese Buffet and Restaurant.

A thick rug covers the floor, but you still move about the room on tiptoe. You pull open a wardrobe and run your hands through the suits, jackets, pants and shirts that hang there. You slide open the dresser drawers and paw through piles of silk underwear and dark socks. You look under the vanity in the en suite bathroom, and even drop onto your stomach to search under the bed. You find lots of personal effects, from nail clippers and scissors to bottles of aspirin, but nothing that looks magical, let alone like a mask or an undressed beta.

You're patting down the curtains when a movement catches your attention in the corner of your eye: Jeremy, leaning in the doorway. "Did you hear that?" he asks.

"Hear what?"

"A rattling sound, like rocks sliding down the roof."

"A squirrel?"

He frowns, but before he can reply, the ceiling above groans and squeaks, like heavy footsteps; then there's a rumbling, like a heavy weight being dragged across the roof.

"That's a big squirrel," Jeremy says.

"Is there an attic in this place?"

His eyes widen. "You think maybe he keeps the beta in the attic?"

"I don't think anything, 'cept maybe there's an attic with— Uh—" You were about to say with something in it, but you really don't want it to turn out that way. "Let's go see what else is up here. You find anything down your way?" You join him the hallway.

"Just a spare bedroom. Nothing in it."

"Took you long enough to search it."

"I was listening to the stuff on the roof."

"Don't get rattled, man," you tell him as you open another door. The room beyond is completely bare, and the floor is caked in dust. "Old houses like this—"

Bang! You and Jeremy jump and wheel on the window. Jeremy grabs your shoulder.

"It was bird," you tell him as you wrench his fingers off you. "Get a grip. On anything but me. Hey!"

Jeremy has hurried across the room, his feet kicking up the soft white dust. He cranes his neck, looking out through the window. "Marc's out there," he says. "Down in the side yard."

"Marc?" You hurry over to join him. "Did he throw a rock or something? Does he want us?"

"Don't know."

It doesn't look like it. Marc is standing on a brick patio directly below, looking around with his hands on his hips. Jeremy tries pulling up the window, but it seems to be stuck.

"Hey guys!" a muffled voice hollers from the hallway.

You and Jeremy look at each other, then bolt from the room. "This way," the voice calls from the stairway. What did Seth find? you wonder.

You thought Jeremy was behind you, but after tumbling down the landing to the first floor you find that you've lost him somehow. Through the archway and the room opposite you see Marc standing outside a set of French doors. He's rattling them, as though trying to come inside.

"This way!" Seth calls again from down the hallway. You shoot one last glance at Marc, then trot into the back of the house. "Here!" You duck into and through a formal dining room and large kitchen. The outside door is open, and you step out and down onto a cracked and narrow sidewalk. The wind catches the kitchen door and slams it shut behind you.

"In here!" It takes you a moment to realize Seth is calling from inside a stone shed. Prickles run up your spine as you trot over to the open doorway. Something about the shed's size and the shape bothers you. It's made of white blocks like marble, and two fluted columns flank the low doorway. The door is open, but interior is swallowed up in blackness. "Help me," Seth says from inside.

Help him with what? you wonder as you duck and step in over the threshold.

The door slams behind you, shutting you up into absolute darkness. You wheel and fumble for a latch. There is none, only a smooth metal door. You sweep your arms around, brushing the rough walls on all four sides with your fingertips. But you are alone inside the—

You swallow as the word pops up out of your subconscious mind, from which it had been struggling to escape.

Inside the mausoleum.

From outside comes a skittering chatter, as of hundreds of dry, scaly leaves rustling in the wind. Or—and you shiver and shrink back as the image forms in your head—the clatter of hundreds of bats drumming their wings on the stonework.

That's all for now.

*
"Table of Contents (Vol. 2)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)"