This choice: Wait to see what happens • Go Back...Chapter #11Fakes and Flakes by: Seuzz   For obvious reasons you can't shake the premonition that something dreadful is going on. But you also can't square that premonition with the impression you have of Connor. You can't imagine him intending to get you into trouble with an impersonation. And yet that near-disaster at the party last night shows how easy it is to cause trouble without meaning to. If he made a mask of you, and then went back to your place, where your parents and your brother are waiting—Well, the short of it is that he doesn't know anything about you or your life or how to act like you.
Which means you are going to be so dead when you get back home finally.
But fear and horror can only last so long before they turn to boredom. Although you twitch violently every so often when you remember what the situation is, you gradually become numb; and wrapped up more warmly now against the basement chill, you doze and slumber fitfully while waiting for something to happen.
* * * * *
It takes a very long time before something does happen, and you're awake again—though very stiff from not moving—when you hear the crunch of tires on grass outside the window. You hop up and peer cautiously out.
It's Caleb's car, which is good news. Then your truck appears, and you're not certain if that's good news or not. Doors open and slam, and voices call out inarticulately. Three pairs of feet walk over to the basement door. You jump into one of the sleeping bags and glare at the top of the steps as the door opens.
Caleb is the first one in, and he has a very puckish expression on his face as he enters with a small cardboard box. "Yo, lazybones, you can get up now," he says.
A retort fails on your lips as two more people come in. One of them is Justin Carr, and he's wearing a gleaming grin as he follows Caleb down the stairs.
And the third is yourself, and he's smiling like a maniac.
It's bad enough that the third guy has your face, but what's even creepier is that he isn't even wearing the clothes—jeans and a button-down shirt—that you wore last night to the party. No, he's in a dirty green t-shirt and cargo shorts. He greets you with a short "Hey" and resettles the dirty ball cap on his head with a nervous gesture.
"The fuck is going on here?" you demand in a trembling voice.
They all laugh, and you feel yourself flushing.
"Calm down, Will," says Caleb.
"What time is it?"
"A little after two."
"Where the fuck have you been? And what the fuck is—"
"I told you to calm down." Caleb pats a nearby table. "Set up here, Prescott," he says in a joshing manner and nudges your doppelganger. "And we'll get you back to what passes for normal."
"Hang on, I wanna take a picture of the two of them together," says Justin.
"No pictures," says Caleb sharply. "We don't want any evidence of this stuff getting around."
"It'll just look like a Photoshop job," Justin says. "We're the only guys who'll know."
"I don't even want any rumors."
"Okay, just of one of them. Hey Prescott, think fast," Justin calls, and aims his iPhone at your double, who just has time to get a confused look on his face before the photo is taken. "And we're the only ones who know it's—"
"If you guys are finished fucking around," you yell, "I'd like to get dressed! And someone fill me in!"
The guy with your face stretches out on a table. You watch with curiosity for the next bit, since you've not actually seen one of the masks go on or come off yet—which may be one reason you're feeling kind of pissed, since it's your magic book and your project, but these other guys are getting ahead of you. The other Will Prescott holds very still while Caleb grips him across the forehead, says a string of nonsense syllables, and pulls the other's face.
It's over so quickly you wouldn't even know it happened, except for the end result: Caleb is holding a mask in his hand, and Connor Hutchison is lying on the desk. He's in your clothes, and he seems to be asleep, but he looks none the worse for the transformation. "Wait for him to wake up, and then he'll give you your shit back," says Caleb.
"So tell me what happened."
"Not much to tell," Caleb says with a shrug. "Story is, I get a call at about ten this morning, and it's from your cell and it's your voice so I assume it's you, telling me to meet you outside that dumb church you go to."
"What's so dumb about it?"
He ignores your protest, though Justin laughs. "So I show up, and you—'cos it looks like you too—give me a bunch of money and tell me to go buy the shit for the next spell. You've got the list all written out. You tell me you got the money from Connor, and you want me to meet you at twelve-thirty for lunch. So I do all that, and I meet you, and you've got that mask of Mansfield with you, and you talk me into putting it on and going out to Justin's. I try arguing—"
"Just give him the short version," Justin interrupts.
"Okay, the short version is that Geoff Mansfield and Will Prescott go out to see Justin Carr, and they give him a story about masks and disguises, and Justin's all disbelieving until Prescott pulls Mansfield's mask off me. And Justin kind of freaks out, naturally, but we tell him that Connor's in on it, and he wants to know where Connor is, and you tell him that Connor is still back at the elementary school, and we talk about the kind of fun you can have with these things—"
"I thought you said we were only going to be doing 'experiments' so we could read the book!"
"Yeah, well, we can still have some fun while doing science," says Caleb. He glances at Justin, who is a little pink. "And then you start talking about how easy it is to pretend to be other people, and I start giving you shit because you haven't been wearing any masks and don't know how hard it is, and then you freak me out by pulling your face off and there's Connor underneath."
"He was passed out like he is now, and Caleb woke him up by beating on him," Justin says.
"Fucker deserved it." Caleb leans back on his heels. "So did you have a relaxing Sunday morning while the rest of us were—?"
"I might have, if I'd known what was going on. But I was shitting myself because—"
"You shit yourself too easily," Caleb honks. "If you were going to shit yourself, you shouldn't have gone along with it."
"What do you mean? I didn't know what was going on! I woke up, and all my shit was gone and so was Connor!"
That sobers Caleb and Justin up a little. "You mean you didn't plan all this out with him?"
"No! That fucking mask wasn't even done last night when we went to sleep! He must've got up in the middle of the night and finished it and used it on me, and then he took off without telling me!"
The other two look at each other and look over at Connor. But then Caleb just shrugs.
"Well, no harm, no foul. But if it'll make you feel better—" He punches Connor hard in the gut, and Hutchison bolts upright with a hard gasp.
* * * * *
The afternoon passes in the predictable way, with your quartet huddled around the book and studying the next spell. "Runes," Justin says. "This is going to be some serious shit."
"How do you know?" Caleb asks.
"Well, it's all serious shit, right?"
The result of thirty minutes' labor is a metal strip about five inches long and one inch wide onto which some intricate runes next have to be carved. That will only take the labor of one person, so a second metal strip gets made up. You'd make more—four of them—but Caleb gets called back home, and then Justin has to go in for his Sunday shift at Starbucks. That leaves you and Connor.
He apologizes again for running off without consulting you, and you gruffly forgive him—how sincerely even you are not certain. He insists that he didn't get you into trouble at home: "Your dad yelled at me a couple of times, but I get the impression he's usually yelling at you," he says, which you concede is true, and when he describes the things he did that elicited the yells, it sounds like nothing really important.
It takes nearly two hours to carve the runes into the metal bands, for it's very exacting work, and it's almost six before you're done. Connor pays for a couple of burgers, and while you're eating you talk in low tones about the new spell. "I bet it's a mind-reading device," he says. "You haven't worn one of those masks, have you? Well, it only copies the body. There's no memories or anything like that inside them. But if you wanted to do a real solid impersonation, you'd have to have the person's memories."
"So why do you think that's what those metal bands do?"
"It just seems logical," Connor says. "I guess we'll just have to play around with them until we figure out what they do and how they work."
"I guess we could go find Mansfield again, try it on him."
"We could try it on you too, since we've got a mask of you," Connor retorts. "Okay, I wouldn't do that to you again. But to make it up to you, what I did this morning, I'll let you try one of those metal bands on me."  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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