The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)

Golems and Gorgons

Previously: "Vee Is for Visit" 

(with an assist by Masktrix)

"I don't know where Shelly is," you tell Vee. You are suddenly very hot, and your forehead starts to burn.

"Does your friend Ian know?" she asks. “He sent you that warning.”

"Sure, ask Ian," you retort. The world begins to spin.

"We were planning to. Who is he?"

You grunt. What's the point in not talking? She'll learn it all from you soon enough. "Friend of Shelly's. Freshman kid, farm boy."

"So how come he knows where Shelly is, and you don't?"

Your mind flashes back to the church basement. Vee kicking Shelly's torso while you played hide and seek with her and Abi.

"Hide and seek?" Vee says.

Did you say it out loud? "Yeah," you sigh, "playing hide and seek with you and Abi. At St. Xavier's."

"Hide and seek? With Abi and me?" Her tone is sharp. "How was that supposed to work?"

You jerk your head up. Vee has left her chair and is looming over you. When you don't reply, she says, "You were pretending to be Abi, Will. Was Shelly going to pretend to be me?"

Your heart pounds once, very hard. "I don't know," you improvise. Sweat pops out all over your body.

"Will. You say you were playing hide and seek at the school. You were hiding in Abi's mask. Where was Shelly hiding?"

You stare—then burst out giggling. Hide and seek. With masks. Maybe it's the fever talking, but that sounds like a fun game.

"I don't know where Shelly is," you grin back. "I'm supposed to find her. That's the game. Smoke out the imposter." Again, you giggle, but it turns into a cough. "Maybe she's you. You're not Shelly, are you?"

"And what if I was?"

"Then you'd win. You got me, Shelly. Totally bluffed me. Come on, let me go. You won."

In the moonlight, through the haze that chokes your brain, her features seem to swim. Is her hair raven black, or burnt orange? Is her face lean and sharp, or round and happy?

Vee stares. "Was Ian playing too?"

"Sure, he was the referee." This is fun, you think, making up shit.

"He tried warning you. How did he know we were on to you?" You'd shrug, but you're numb from the neck down.

"Shelly told him, didn't she?" Vee hisses, answering her own question. "She must be right under our noses!"

"Sure," you sigh. "Because you're Shelly." Your eyes fall shut, and you snicker. "Call Ian, tell him to come out and get us. Tell him to bring the fake me and you, too."

There's a pause. "Sure thing, Will.”

“Thanks. And Shelly? Do you forgive me?”

"Of course, Will. You helped me."

You smile to yourself. It feels good to be forgiven.

But forgiven for what? you wonder. Oh, that’s right. Forgiven for turning Shelly into a Gorgon. No, not a Gorgon. A Gorgon turns people into stone. No, I’m the Gorgon, I turned Shelly into stone. Shelly is something else beginning with a G…

In the silence, in the dark, you think you hear distant music—a thrumming beat and some shouting. The darkness in your head reels and revolves, and you snap your head up with a jerk. What was that sound, like the clink of metal? Vee's chair is empty.

Your head sinks forward again, and the darkness enfolds you.

* * * * *

Look out! It's a big dog and it's going to jump at you!

It does, knocking you from a dark, warm place into a dark, cold, wet one. It's like having a pallet of bricks dropped onto your lap.

You thrash, and voices shout: "I've got—!" "Get—!" "Shut up!" You kick and twist, but you're wrapped in something like a cocoon. Your scalp is aflame with what feels like a carpet of biting, writhing ants.

The shouting stops, and the darkness is filled with heavy breathing. Lots of it. A shadow looms over you, and a face is pressed close to yours. "Will?" a voice squeaks.

"Can you get your knee out of my back?" another voice groans from the floor nearby.

But you ignore it to concentrate on the face that is staring into yours. You must be hallucinating, feverish.

It's Shelly.

She's back from the dead.

* * * * *

"You're in so much trouble, you fucking asshole!"

"Don't cuss at him!"

"I'll cuss at whoever I goddamn please! Him especially! After we get him out of here, I'm—!"

The speaker trips. And because he is supporting you as you run through the dark, you stumble too.

"Hey, easy there," yelps the guy who is supporting you on the other side. "Keep your feet under you, boss."

"He's doing the best he can!" Shelly shouts.

Shelly. She came through. Wherever she was hiding, she came through for me.

And she brought two friends. One of them you recognize as your own twin. The other, shorter and stronger, looks very familiar, but the fire raging in your brain confuses you, so that you can't place him.

Together, they untied you and somehow pushed you up a ladder and out into the cold, dark open air. Now you are scampering as best you can on dead feet and numb legs across the darkened campus of the St. Francis Xavier School.

The race ends at a white truck; not until your twin drops the gate do you recognize it as your own. Two of them join you in the back; the other runs around to the cab. The truck starts with a growl and a lurch.

A blanket is thrown over you, and you try to throw it off, for you are burning up. Your two companions shout at each other over the rush of the wind as the truck hurtles along, but you can't make out the words. Your head lolls, and you dip in and out of darkness. You're shaken awake a few times, but each time you slip back into a vortex of swirling darkness, smudgy faces, and writhing limbs.

* * * * *

Then a liquid fire is pouring itself down your throat. You cough, sputter, and shoot upward into wakefulness. "Easy there," someone says. "Gross!" shouts another. "He spit all over me!"

It's still dark, but as you hack and cough the fire from your gullet, you are at least able to make out some little bit of where you are.

You are still in the bed of your truck, wrapped in a blanket. Four faces peer closely at you. Whatever they made you swallow, at least it cleared most of the feverish fumes from your head.

The anxious expressions belong to Shelly and to your twin. The disgusted one is Ian Cowdray, Shelly's freshman friend. The fourth face—

Well, you've seen him at school, but his name escapes you. It's a friendly face, at least: handsome, masculine, with tufts of hair popping out from under a trucker cap.

"Do we need to take him to a hospital?" Shelly says.

Trucker Hat shoves his palm against your forehead. "He's hot. But why can't you take him home?"

"His, uh, parents would kill him," your twin says.

"I'd like to kill him," Ian mutters. Shelly hushes him.

Trucker Hat shrugs. "Someone needs to take him home. Get him out of the cold, at least. Hasn't he got any other friends?"

"He can go home with me," Shelly declares. "We've got a place he can stay."

"You gonna tell your mom?" Trucker Hat sounds vastly amused.

"I can take care of him."

Trucker Hat snorts. "Then I don't know why you brought him out here. Shee-ut. He ain't a cow."

"We just needed advice."

"Pfuh. Who'd you say did this to him?"

"Some guys out at St. Xavier's. Will— Uh—" Shelly starts to stammer. "He was pranking them, so they were getting even, and they took it too far."

"Yeah, well." Trucker Hat adjusts his cap. "Get him out of the night air, that's what I say." With graceful ease lofts himself over the side of the truck to the ground. "And next time, man, watch where you go trick-or-treating." With a chuckle, he stumps off over a gravel bed.

"Who was that?" you mutter.

"A friend. Are you feeling okay, Will?" Shelly asks. She feels your forehead. "Gosh, you're burning up."

"What happened?"

"We rescued you," your twin says.

"How'd you find me?"

"Hey, we're not out of this yet, okay?" Ian interrupts. "That girl and her friends are gonna come looking for us. And maybe they can't do anything to you guys, but—" He trails off in a half-choke.

"What? Happened?" you hiss. Your head is starting to pound, and you are hot all over, and the fever feels like it's starting to reassert itself. You want answers while you can still understand them.

There's an anxious silence. Then Shelly, with an assist from the other two, fills you in.

* * * * *

The background details are confusing—Shelly talks too quickly to follow—but the gist is that your twin got a phone call from an inebriated-sounding Abi Steiner, ordering him to collect Shelly, then to go around and get her friend Ian Cowdray and bring him out to St. Xavier's. They complied ("We've been pretending to be her house elves," Shelly giggles) and were met a girl who introduced herself as Abi's friend. She led them behind some kind of amphitheater, then down into a storm drain where they found you. Your three rescuers jumped the girl and hightailed it away with you.

"They're going to come looking for you, boss," your twin warns you. "You need to hide."

Sure. But where?

A possible answer comes when Shelly pulls out a bluish object: a blank mask.

"That girl dropped it back there," she says. "I scooped it up. Did I do a good job, boss?"

Next: "Dragons Vs. Wildcats" 

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