The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

The First Mask

Previously: "Tackling a Teacher" 

You lean against the office door—now closed and locked—and chew on your fingernails. When you've torn the ones on your right hand to bloody shreds, you start on your left.

Voices sound in the hallway: a man and a woman, talking. You double-check the lock, shut off the lights and hold your breath.

Three hard knocks sound against the door, right where your ear is, and your heart tries exploding out of your chest. The knob rattles. Voices mutter.

A ringtone sounds in the dark, and your racing blood pounds in your ears. More knocks at the door, and a woman's voice now sounds clearly from the other side of the door: "Cathy?"

A man's voice says something, then over the still ringing phone you hear footsteps moving down the hall. You wait for a count of ten, then flip on the lights. Frantically you search all about the unconscious Coach Schell until you find her cell phone and shut it off. You fight down the vomit that is welling up inside your chest.

Screw it. You'll count till ten again, then take your chances on an escape. Your nerve fails, though, and as you fight to regain it you notice a glow from the desk. You blink.

The mask has reappeared, wedged between Coach Schell's face and the desk. As you watch, its glow dims and fades away.

With your heart in your throat you gingerly pull it out. You check long enough to see that she's still breathing—and she is—then force the mask back into your bag.

You're not going to waste time counting to ten again, and flee the office, lingering just long enough to make sure that the door latches securely behind you. On trembling legs you trot down the hall, then sprint out of the gym. No one stops you, and if anyone sees you, you don't see them.

* * * * *

It's a few hours before you're able to find out what you've made and done. As soon as you get home your mom sends you out to pick up some groceries; then on your return you are dragooned into helping to prepare dinner and to set the table.

Then your dad corners you with an ultimatum: Are you going to apply for that job at Salopek?

You'd dearly love to say "no." Aside from wanting to maximize your free time, it sounds pretty awful. Salopek is an engineering company—aerospace of some kind, but you pay as little attention to your dad's work as you think you can get away with—but you're not qualified to do any real work there. From what your dad has said, it sounds like it would be a lot of grunt work: delivering mail, sorting packages, maybe cleaning up some of the engineering bays.

But that mask you made consumed almost all of the cash you had on hand. If you have to buy any more stuff, where are you going to get the money? Your dad is unlikely to give or lend you any right after you tell him you're not going to take that job.

"Tell you tomorrow?" you ask. "I want to talk to Caleb first?"

"What's Caleb got to do with it?" he asks. His eyes narrow. "Something to do with that chemistry experiment?"

"No." Damn. He remembers that stink you made up in your room when you made the mask. But of course. He remembers every stupid thing you've ever done. "He was just talking about maybe he wanted it."

"Does he need the money more than you?"

You shrug, even though you know that Caleb—who lives with his single, working mother—could use the income. "Let me just talk to him. We'll flip a coin or something."

You wince after the words are out, for it sounds like you've just said you'll take the job if Caleb won't. But your dad only grunts and orders you to wash up for dinner.

So it's not until after eating and helping to clear the table that you finally get to the mask and the grimoire.

You're astonished—and more than a little disconcerted—to see that there's been a change to the book since you last looked in it. A light oval patch, almost like a stain, has appeared on the page with the spell on it, and at first you wonder if you'd carelessly set a plate or a glass on it at some point. But then you recognize that it's about the same size and shape as the mask. With a prickling anticipation, you lay the mask on the page. When you lift it, the page comes away with it, and turns.

You take out your cell phone, and sentence by sentence, and word by word, you translate the passage of Latin on the other side. It's a set of instructions for finishing the mask, and after you've set down a crude translation—and fiddled with the precise wording—you settle back to see what you've made, and what you can do with it.

It confirms that the mask has now "absorbed the form" of the person you set it on, but it still doesn't say if it's only the face or the entire body. But it now adds that the mask has to be "sealed" before it can be used. If you don't seal it, but lay it against another face, it will absorb that form as well, and merge it with the first form to create a new one. The additional abbreviation "Etc." suggests to you that this process can continue indefinitely.

But how do you "seal a mask"?

You turn to the next page—it looks like a new spell. It begins, as the first spell did, with what looks like a set of ingredients, followed by instructions and a sigil. Some translation work shows that you have on hand all the ingredients already—it's much the same stuff that went into making the mask—and that it has to be burned as the other stuff did. Your heart sinks as you imagine the stink it'll make. You decide to put off making it until tomorrow, after school, when your dad won't be home.

You try turning the page, though without much hope. And yes, it's stuck firmly against the pages that follow, just as the previous pages had been. It looks like you'll have to perform this spell before you can unlock. That's another reason to get it done tomorrow afternoon: so you can see if the spell that follows will require lots of new ingredients.

Having exhausted the book, you pick up the mask to see what, if any changes, have come over it since your adventure this afternoon.

At first glance, it looks the same. It's still the color of a cloudless summer sky. It still has highlights playing over its surface. But now those glinting highlights don't shift as you turn the mask this way and that, and as you study them they seem to form a pattern. They gleam just under the surface, and follow the curve, so that it looks like there's another face inside the mask, whose chin and cheeks and nose and lips fit against those of the mask.

You don't recognize it, so you can't be sure, but it looks a little like ... Coach Schell?

The book says it would copy her form. Does that mean that this is her face inside it?

* * * * *


"Suppose I got you that job at my dad's work," you say to Caleb the next morning as you're hanging out before classes start.

"What, are you the hiring manager out there?" he retorts.

"Let me finish! Suppose I got you that job. You know, if I told my dad you'd be perfect for it."

"Like you said you were going to do."

"When did I—? Shut up!" You glare him. "If I got you that job, would you lend me some money? Give me, like, your first paycheck?"

His eyebrows arch. "This sounds suspiciously like you're angling for a kickback."

"I'm only asking for a loan! I need some money."

"For what?"

"Nothing," you mutter.

Caleb rocks backward on his heels. "Look at it from my point of view, Will," he says. "If I was a bank—"

"You're not a bank, man. You're supposed to be my best friend."

"It's the principle I'm talking about. Oh, but hey, speaking of principal," he says, "if I lent you this money, would you pay interest on it?"

"I don't even got any interest in talking about this anymore, cocksucker!"

"Fine. Then you don't get a loan. I've got a use for that money." He rubs his hands. "If and when I can get my hands on some."

"For what?"

He peers down his nose at you. "Loan me a hundred and I'll tell you my business plans."

You flip him off, and that's all that gets said.

* * * * *

You race home from school and hurl yourself into your bedroom before your mom can catch you. Rapidly—for you'd gotten up early to set out the ingredients for the spell—you assemble a little work area in front of the open window. For good measure, you fetch an oscillating fan from the hall closet to blow the stench outside. You mix the ingredients together in a bowl, set them on the sigil, and stick a lighter into it. It bursts into a low flame.

But no ghastly stink comes rolling out as before. Maybe you did something wrong?

The flames dance and lick up all the ingredients. When they snuff themselves out, a thick slurry is left behind.

When you pick up the bowl, the fan blows the page up and flips it over. You set the bowl aside and snatch up your cell phone.

Half an hour later, after translating two pages and doing a little online research, you have discovered two things. First, that you have now made that sealant, and if you apply it to the mask you will be able to put it on and transform yourself into "the exact image" of the person it copied.

Second—and this preys more on your mind, for your dad will be home in a little while—you're going need at least a hundred dollars to buy stuff for the next spell.

Next: "In Bed as a Stranger" 

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