Chapter #12A Date with Two-Face by: Nostrum   So Scott Bickelmeir still wants to talk to you. After some negotiations, you agree to meet at the municipal soccer fields, where the Eastman and Westside girls' soccer teams are holding an exhibition match for charity. Scott smiles broadly as you approach him in the parking lot. He thanks you for coming, and opens with an apology for getting in your face yesterday.
You stiffen even as you accept the apology: There's no way Bickelmeir wheedled you into this meeting just so he could tell you he was sorry. After an awkward pause, he asks you to take a walk with him around the perimeter of the field.
It's a warm day, with a bright sun in a partly cloudy sky, and the tips of the grass are seared a light yellow from a recent heat wave. The shouts and cheers of the crowd rise up around you, punctuated by an occasional shrill whistle from the referee. Scott nods at the field.
"Good thing it's the girls playing and not the boys," he says. "Garner wouldn't have been able to play."
"Is something wrong with him?" you ask in alarm.
"I heard Coach Gellman is playing it safe. It seems like he's okay after that trip to the nurse's office"—Scott shoots you a veiled, sidelong glance—"but the coach wants him to take it easy for a few days."
"Do they know what happened?" you ask.
Scott doesn't reply right away. There's a growl in his voice when he does. "You know what happened to him, Prescott. We talked about that yesterday."
"I mean," you stammer, "have you told anyone about it? That, um—"
"No, you're in the clear as far as everyone's concerned. Bridges and Stanchik didn't see anything. Or if they did, they haven't said anything. I'm the only one who saw what you did."
What do you think I did?, you wonder.
"Did you go out to see that expert this morning?" Scott continues. "You told me your dad confiscated that book, wanted to take it out to show to someone."
"Yeah. We took it to some college professor. He said it's a book of alchemy, really valuable. He bought it off us. I don't have it anymore," you add with a touch of smug relief. Got a couple hundred dollars for it. So ... cha-ching!
"Does this professor have a name?" Scott asks.
"Blackwood, Blackthorn, or something like that. Why?"
He doesn't answer, but pauses to stare at the soccer match. Eastman has the ball, and they score a goal as you watch, to mixed cheers and groans from the crowd.
"I might want to talk to him about it. About that book. About masks."
A tickling, like a mass of spiders, runs up and down your back. "Why are you so interested in this stuff?"
Scott turns to face you.
"Answer me something, Prescott, and answer me true," he says. "What was that mask supposed to do to Garner? Why'd you try jamming it onto his face?"
You feel yourself flushing. "I told you, I just wanted to show it to him, I only meant it as a joke when I—"
"Yeah, I remember what you said. But doesn't that book come with instructions? Or did it just say, ‘Here's how to make a mask’? Is there something you're supposed to do with it? You said it was alchemy, which is like magic, right? So what is this magical mask supposed to magically do?"
You bite your lip instead of answering. Scott would never believe you anyway, but even if he didn't, do you dare tell him, in this mood of his, that it was supposed to be part of a spell for making disguises?
"Come on, I wanna show you something," Bickelmeir says, and gestures you to follow him back to the parking lot.
You're tempted to bolt for your truck, but you follow as he opens up his own truck—which is black, and burlier than yours—and pulls his back pack to him. He unzips it, and fishes something out. Your jaw slackens when you see it is a blue-tinted mask, just like the one you made and lost.
Then you realize it is the mask you made.
"I was sitting with Garner in the infirmary," Bickelmeir says. "We couldn't get him to wake up. The nurse went back to check on you, and while she was with you this thing just appeared on Garner's face. Just ... materialized." He leans close to put his head to yours. "Like magic."
You swallow, and take a step back when Scott offers it to you. "Take it, look at it," he says. "Tell me what you see."
You see a mask, of course. A concave/convex oval, smooth as glass and glowing with a blue light. There are ridges corresponding to a brow, nose, lips, cheekbones and chin, and depressions for the eyes. The sunlight gleams and runs off it.
But hang on. Not all the lines of light melt and run as you turn the mask over in your hands. Some remain locked in place. And as you peer and frown at them, you see that they form an image inside the mask. With a shock, you realize that it's the image of a face. Why didn't you notice that before, after you polished it?
Then you recognize the face. It's the face of Marc Garner.
"You see it?" Scott asks. You nod. "You know who it is?"
"I think so."
"You know how it got there? Are you surprised to see it there?"
"Yeah. A little," you stammer.
Bickelmeir lowers his brow to glare at you. "Really?"
A tremble runs through you. "I didn't know for sure what would happen when I ... tried putting it on him," you reply in a near-whisper.
"But if you put it on now, if you put it onto your face," Scott asks, "what do you think would happen?"
You're shaking too hard to answer. This is all the confirmation you need that the magic promised by the book is real.
"Then I'll guess for you," Scott says. "I'll guess that it would turn you into Marc's twin. Not like his sisters are his twin. It would turn you into his exact duplicate."
You can't help snickering nervously. "You think?"
"I know, Prescott," he says. "Because it happened to me."
His face has gone very pale under his outdoor tan, and when you don't reply he leans in very close.
"I'm wearing a mask, just like that one, Prescott. I'm not Scott Bickelmeir."
--
A month ago—hell, just a week ago—you'd have laughed and then run off as fast as you could. Now, though, you stand frozen in place, listening.
"It happened last month, a couple of weeks before school was supposed to start. I was working out at Salopek—where your dad works—and this box came in. Then it came back to the distribution center—whoever it was for didn't want it—and me and some friends got into it. There were some masks inside it. Masks a lot like this one." He touches the mask that you're holding.
"We took 'em out with us and got together. We goofed around with them. And when we were done, we had a mask that had my face in it"—again, he touches the mask—"and one that had Scott's in it. We put them on. Suddenly I was Scott. I looked like Scott, and the next morning when I woke up I even had Scott's memories. And Scott put the other mask on, and it turned him into me."
You could ask a lot of questions here, but you keep silent.
"But we couldn't figure out how to take them off. There's no catch, no button, no hinge. We had to keep wearing them. We had to go around pretending to be each other. Him pretending to be me, and me pretending to be him.
Suddenly his face twists up, and you realize he's about to burst into tears.
"Until there was a car wreck. Scott was driving my truck, and he was in an accident. It killed him. I don't know if it was the magic or something else. But it killed him and it took my life with it. The world thinks I'm dead, and it thinks Scott's alive."
In the silence that follows, you ask the most pertinent question you can. "So who are you?"
"My name is Taylor Mitchell," he says.
"And what do you want from me?"
He stares at you until his eyes go out of focus, and a slow flush creeps up his cheeks.
"What the fuck do you think I want from you?" he growls. "I want your help taking this goddamn mask off! You've got the book that made it. Or you had it! Doesn't it have directions for taking them off?"
"I don't know," you stammer. "It didn't even tell me what the, the spell would do, exactly!"
Scott's brow lowers. "You sold the book to that guy? Can you get it back?"
Probably not, you think. That house was creepy enough to return. You could just return the money, see if you can negotiate a deal.
That would be the middle course. It is flanked by two very different courses of action.
First, you could just take Scott out to meet the professor, and leave it up to him to work with Scott. On the other hand—
Scott's story sounds very strange, too strange even allowing for the existence of magic. What if it's a lot of bullshit, and this is just a trick of some kind to get ahold of a very powerful book of magic?  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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