Chapter #9Double Your Displeasure by: Seuzz   "I can't afford to leave town," you say. "Aside from the money thing, I'm doing a job for my dad."
"You can help us out just as much here," Joe says. "But hang loose for now while me and Frank make a deeper search of this place. You don't have someplace you have to be, do you?"
You're supposed to be meeting your friends at the river for a cook out, but that seems very trivial now by comparison, so you shake your head.
* * * * *
They leave you in the library, but you move into a living room after a few minutes; the library, with its eerie corners and discordant noises, makes you deeply nervous.
But you feel much calmer after dropping onto a very modern and tasteful settee in front of a big-screen TV. Aubrey Blackwell might have been a magician, but he was also very up-to-date with modern technology. And the longer you sit, the more you feel the tug of curiosity about the whole situation.
According to Frank and Joe, you had been victimized your senior year by a classmate who kidnapped and impersonated you for a few months. They themselves are professional magicians--real ones, not stage ones--with a deep knowledge of this kind of thing. And Joe has basically offered to take you back to their home base, to help debrief his colleagues on what happened to you. If such a debriefing would help bring Delp to justice--assuming he's alive--then you'd like to give it.
So when Frank and Joe return from upstairs with a cardboard box, you tell them you've changed your mind, and would prefer to go with Joe.
"I wish you'd stay with me," Frank says. "I don't really know where to start. And didn't you say you've got work to do for your dad?"
"That's easy enough to handle," Joe grins. He pulls a mask out of the box. "We got a stone here that can kill both those birds."
Frank does a double take. "You're not suggesting what I think you're--"
"It's perfect, Frank. Prescott would have to go along with it, of course."
"With what," you warily ask.
Joe sucks on his smile. "You could stay here and go with me if we--" He holds out the mask.
The penny takes an embarrassingly long time to drop, and then your jaw joins it.
"We make a copy of you, and Frank puts it on," Joe says. "Bingo-bango, Will Prescott stays in town, works for your dad. He also knows everything you know, and can start hunting down anything that remains of Delp. Meanwhile, you and me--"
You half sink onto the sofa. Someone replaced you back in your senior year, and now they're proposing that--
"It'd be okay," Joe says. "We're not like Delp, we're the good guys. Frank wouldn't fuck anything up for you. He'd be able to play you perfectly, and he'd know what not to fuck up. Wouldn't you, Frank?" Frank says nothing, but gives a curt nod. He doesn't look much happier with the suggestion than you feel.
But it makes sense, and after a minute's thought, you assent. "When do we--?"
"No time like the present," Joe says. "I wanna get back to Olympia five years ago, and daylight is burning. If you're serious about this--" He extends the mask again.
Numbly you take it. It all feels decided, although a big part of you is wishing it hadn't been. "What do I do?"
"Sit down, and put the mask to your face."
"What'll happen?"
"You won't feel a thing." Joe smiles. "Trust me."
So you do as he says. A warm, drowsy feeling spreads all over you as the mask settles on your face, and you slip from consciousness before your hands have fallen to your side.
* * * * *
You feel cold, and you ache, when you wake, as though you're rising from a deep and unrefreshing slumber. You sit up stiffly--
You're naked. With a gasp, you pull your legs to your chest and clasp yourself.
Joe and Frank are on the other side of the room, talking in low voices, but break off and turn. "Back with us," Joe says. "Good. How do you feel?"
"Like I'm half-drowned. What happened?"
"We copied you. You slept. It's all done." Joe holds up a mask. "We thought it best to wait till you were back. It'll be less of a shock if you see it rather than have it sprung on you. Frank's got your clothes, so he just has to--"
"I'll do it in another room," Frank says. "First, I wanna get settled about you and Karter. I don't like you putting his mask back on."
"I need it if I'm gonna use his wheels. It's just till we get outta town."
"But if you put it on, and the spell reasserts itself--"
"I'll have Prescott with me. He can get the mask off me if that happens."
"He doesn't know--"
"We'll teach him. It's easy. Yo, Prescott, over here!"
You totter over. Joe takes your stiff hand and puts it to his forehead.
"Here's the way it works," he says. "If I start acting funny, like I don't know I'm really myself, you put your hand here. Grab me. Go on, try." You grip the sides of his face. "Yeah, like that. Now say the following phrase three times fast, and pull." He utters a string of nonsense syllables. You stumble over them until he's decided you're word-perfect. "Now pull."
You do. Nothing happens, except that your hand slips from his face.
"How about that, Frank, turns out I'm not wearing a mask," Joe chortles.
"Don't joke about things like that," Frank says.
"Okay, you put on Prescott's face, and I'll put on Karter's."
"Do I have to stay," you ask. "I don't really want to see." You remember what it was like watching Blackwell come back into existence.
"You'll have to face up to these things eventually," Joe says. "But if you wanna ease into them, take a walk outside. Mind your step, though. There's things out there."
That almost causes you to change your mind, but you go outside anyway.
The sun is touching the horizon, and the house is ablaze with the glow. The grounds are utterly dead as you pace about, watching your step as warned. It all seems unreal, like a stage play. Maybe that's to be expected, if there are masks and actors involved. It still leaves you feeling uneasy.
Something crunches on the grass behind. You turn, but there's nothing there. Or is there? The grass seems to rustle in one spot.
And suddenly you're running, blindly. You bark your shin on some stonework and tumble to the ground. You scramble up and dash forward, colliding with the wall. Something is rushing after you.
You race along the side of the wall, turn a corner, and run behind the house. The shutters clatter and bang loudly. You round another corner, and that mausoleum swerves into view. You leap for it and scramble to the roof, where you crouch, panting. Something invisible is running circles around you, and you flinch from the impression of arms snatching at the air behind you.
It's in this terrified state that Frank eventually finds you. "Prescott!" a voice calls. "Where are you?" A figure appears around the corner of the house. He looks just like you. He sees you and frowns. "What are you--?"
Before you can answer, his eye goes down, and he turns very red. "Oy! You! Get away!" He grabs up a handful of rocks and starts chucking them hard at the mausoleum. "Go on!" He advances, glowering fiercely. A chittering sound fills the air, and the presence seems to vanish.
Prescott raises his hands and helps you down. "What was that?" you gasp.
"Never mind, just a thing. We should get outta here, though." He puts his hands on your shoulders and stares into your eyes. "You gonna be okay with this?"
He looks just like you. Same hair, same crinkle to the eyes, same sharp grin. For a moment he seems very wrong, though. Then you realize it's because this is your face, not the reversed reflection you're used to seeing in the mirror. "I'll be fine with it," you say.
"It'll be okay," he says. "I won't queer anything for you." He bites his lip. "I'll-- Uh, I'll keep Jerri interested, but without actually--"
You blush, and he blushes too. He claps your arm.
Another voice cuts in. "If you two homos are through making out with yourself--" A new guy swaggers in. He's dressed in ratty clothes, with blue tattoos all up and down his arms, and his dirty blonde hair is badly trimmed. Heavy work boots thud on the ground.
"Will Prescott, meet Adam Karter," your twin says.
"Yeah, fuckin' charmed," Karter says. He hurls some keys at you. "You can drive. Not like you can put any more dents in my car."
You look at the guy who looks like you for a minute before slowly walking away with the guy who looks like Karter. It feels like a vast chasm has opened up in your life, between the normality of all that came before, and the--
Well, you've no idea of what might be waiting, do you?  You have the following choice: 1. Continue |
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