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A high school student finds a grimoire that shows how to make magical disguises. |
Previously: "The First Catch of the Day"  You really should wait for Caleb to get home before you try anything. But you feel a stab of resentment when you remember how smug he was about figuring out the next spell—which he did without waiting for you to be around. So before you can change your mind, you're rushing upstairs to peel Shannon Welch's clothes and face off. * * * * * You wake with a throbbing pain behind your eyes, which you try to rub out by grinding the heel of your hand deep into an eye socket. That doesn't help much, but when you sit up the pain rapidly fades until it has no more weight than a shadow. You look around. You are in a bedroom, sprawled on a king-size bed, that you have never seen before, and when you look down your length you loose a loud yawp, for you are naked. Quickly you scramble back against the head board, pulling your knees up close to your chin as you dart wild glances around the room. The fuck is going on? The last thing you remember, you were in the school office, in some kind of conference room, waiting for a counselor or an advisor or a secretary or someone to come in and talk to you. When someone did come in, she was a small, dark-haired woman with an intense gaze. She came marching straight up to you, and without saying anything she had smacked you on the forehead with her open palm. Then, suddenly, you were here. A draft of cold air seems to pour down your back as you remember her face. That woman ... You actually did recognize her when she came in. She's one of the tutors, who works in that glass maze across from the administrators' office. Your friend pointed her out to you the first week of classes, talked about how "fucking hot" she was. Since then, you've always peeped into the tutorial offices when you passed by them, looking for her. You're not as turned on by her as Ian sounds like he is. (Though, in truth, you had the impression Ian was just trying to act older than the freshman he and you are. You even wondered if he was just quoting someone else's opinion. His cousin Tyler, perhaps, who's a senior, and who probably pointed her out to him.) But that's not important now. The important thing is: What the hell did she do to me? You huddle on the bed in this strange room, listening closely for any sound of someone coming. The house seems deathly still. Warily you stretch your legs out and put one foot on the floor. You are vaguely aware that something is off when you do so. But it's not until you stand up that a new panic sweeps over you. The floor seems far away, and you sway with a touch of vertigo. It's as you're looking down at the floor, trying to figure out why it seems further off than normal, that it hits you that your feet and shins are all wrong. They are longer and bonier and hairier than they should be. Your gaze travels up your front, and your chin tilts down, until you are a staring at a patch of light brown hair on your chest. Your skin and your scalp prickle all over with horror as you lift your hand to touch the unfamiliar growth. Your hand, with its long, bony fingers, looks like a spider. Almost you faint. Feeling very sick, you stumble toward what you take to be a bathroom door. You fumble for a light switch, and when it comes on you freeze at the apparition that stares back at you from inside the mirror behind the sink. At first you take it to be someone else standing there, because it is definitely not you. He is tall and lanky and slightly malnourished looking, with a bony chest, and a long-faced head. His mouth, which is open in a grin of horror, is filled with big teeth, and his face is disfigured by patchy whiskers on his chin and cheeks. His hair is brownish-blonde hair is stiff and straight, except over his ears where it curls up a little, and the bangs fall almost over his eyebrows. His eyes are wide with shock. You grab the doorframe of the bathroom and sink to your knees as new and confused memories flood and fill your brain. * * * * * You sit perched on the edge of the bed, still naked, with your folded hands covering your nose and mouth. Slowly you breath into them, and suck the warmed air back into your lungs. Your heart is beating fast, but the worst of the panic has passed. You are inside the body of another Westside High student, a senior named William Martin Prescott—"Will" to his friends. How did you get here? That's a mystery that baffles you, and would baffle Will, because you know everything he knows, and remember everything that he remembers. It started when he bought an old book in the used book store. It's a book of magic spells, and he and his friend Caleb Johansson started experimenting with it. They used it to make some magical masks that let them impersonate other people— You glance behind at the mask that sits on the other side of the bed: the mask that let Will impersonate and replace Shannon Welch, the school tutor. —and then things went horribly wrong when they accidentally petrified Will's own father. Since then they have been trying to find some spell that will reverse the accident. Needing money and a safe place to work, they have used the spells to impersonate and replace Shannon Welch and her husband, who is a university professor. Their most recent experiment made a metal band. They had made such things before, which they use to copy the memories of other people, like Shannon and her husband, and they assumed that this was just a new spell for making the same old kind of thing. Still, they needed to confirm it, so Will (in disguise as Shannon) took it to the school and used it on— Well, she used it on you. Then he took it back to the Welches's, took off Mrs. Welch's mask, and tried it on. But something was very different about this metal band. Because although it copied your memories, it also seems to have copied more. You are pretty goddamned sure that it pulled your soul out of your body, and stuck it into Will Prescott's body when he put it on. * * * * * But is that what happened? You cradle your skull in your hands and try to think through the fog of terror that still envelops you. You've got your own memories, and you've got Will Prescott's memories. You know how to act like yourself (of course), and you're pretty sure you could act enough like him to fool his friends and family, if you had to. But who are you? Are you Oliver Kelly, or are you Will Prescott? I'm Oliver, you think, and there is no flicker of uncertainty when you answer. And you're sure that you're you—that you're Oliver—because you remember that Will Prescott when through something like this when he started putting on those other metal bands. I've got my own memories, he told himself, but I also remember what this other person remembers. I can even act like them as good as I can act like myself. But I know who I am. I am Will Prescott. That proves it, you decide. If he was sure he was Will Prescott even when he was inside a mask, you feel just as certain that you are Oliver Kelly, even though you are inside his body. You tremble all over as you creep back to the bathroom, where the light is on. You look at the naked figure in the mirror, and he touches his face in just the way that you are touching yours. This isn't a mask, you think to yourself with a sense of wonder and dread. I'm not disguised like him. I'm inside him. I am him. Now that the shock has worn off, you can appreciate better what it is to have this body. When first you saw it, you were horrified because it wasn't yours, and so it looked like a horror. Now, though, despite it's being underweight and undermuscled and more than a little scruffy, you can see that he's not bad looking. He's kind of handsome, actually, though he would look a lot better if he cleaned up. You straighten up, and turn your head and your shoulders this way and that, and grow more pleased with your new look. Will Prescott even had a girlfriend for awhile this summer (even if it did end badly), and you're pretty sure lots of girls turn their heads to glance at him as he goes by. At least thank God I don't have fucking braces anymore! you think as you run a tongue over your teeth. And while I'm being him, I could have a little fun, you think with a dark, evil little thrill. Until I figured out how to get back into my own body. Which reminds you: What happened to your old body? Will got a text from Ms. Meek—who Will turned into a kind of magical robot to help him out—saying that "Oliver" had gone back to class. Is Will Prescott's soul inside your body? If not, where is his soul? While you're still puzzling this out, you hear a garage door opening. That must be Will's friend, Caleb, returning. You scamper back out into the bedroom. What should you do? Tell Caleb what happened? He could help you. But can you trust him and Will—presuming that Will can be found someplace—not to do something to you like they did to Ms. Meek or to the the Welches, or to Will's own father? They were mostly expecting that the new spell would only make something to copy memories. Maybe you could pretend that's all that happened. Next: "Three In One" |
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