The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)

This Old Man

Previously: "When a Body Needs a Body" 

It's the thought of the old man waiting at home that decides it for you. The worst that could happen is that you accidentally kill him, and that would be far from a tragedy.

"Hey, how about I take him for a ride," you tell your parents when you catch up to them in the sick room. They are sitting on opposite sides of the bed, looking harried, as grandfather burbles and shrieks.

"Take him for a ride?" your mother demands. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, put him in my Jeep, let me drive him around. He doesn't get out any. It might quiet him down."

"You can't just drive him around," Mrs. Chen says, looking horrified.

"Why not?" you and your father say simultaneously. "It's not a bad idea," he continues. "A little change of scenery—"

"What if he grabs your wheel, causes an accident?"

"He won't do that," you insist.

"You're not taking him out!"

But Mr. Chen has already stood and pulled over the wheelchair. "Help me move him," he says to you.

Mrs. Chen argues and flutters about uselessly as you get the old man into his wheelchair and out the door. Grandfather slaps his hands about until you get outside, and then he does calm down, at least to the extent that he stops fighting. He sits up and looks around with sharp interest, and docilely lets you get him into the passenger side of the Jeep. "Be careful. Don't drive fast. Be back soon," your mother says as you buckle him in.

"We'll be fine," you assure her. "Look at him, he's having fun already."

It's an uneventful drive out to the old school, though it is also something of an agony: You take it slow, and you are worried that grandfather will start flailing. But he seems very happy, actually, and cranes his head about and makes excited, chirping noises punctuated by only the occasional shrill cry.

At the school you park as close to the entrance as you can. And since you don't have the wheelchair and you're not about to try carrying him downstairs while he's conscious, you take the blank mask from the backseat and press it to his face. This is also insurance: If something goes badly wrong with the spell, you can put the mask onto that stone robot and take it back. But it also means you can carry the old man down the stairs in your arms without him fighting you.

You lay him on the book—opened to the sigil for the new spell; no time for making a copy—and start pulling together the ingredients. He wakes under the mask long before you're done, but you let him scream until you can't take it any more, and then you quiet him a little longer by putting the mask back on him.

At only one point do you run into a question about the new spell. Caleb is right, it uses the exact same ingredients as the last spell, which you still have on hand. But that includes a bit of hair. You almost just pluck some from your head, but then you pause: If you do that, would that make the new 'bot obey you, or would it obey Chen? You play it safe and risk the dangers of temporary unconsciousness by pulling Chen's mask off your face long enough to pluck some of your own hair.

* * * * *

It takes longer to put things together than you would like, and the old man is shouting and wriggling on the desk, like an upside down beetle, by the time you get all the stuff poured over him. You grit your teeth, light a match, and duck as you drop it on him. Like last time, a purple flare fills the room.

And only then—God damn it!—do you remember that the last time you set fire to a thing down here it took a week for it to burn itself out.

Well, that's what the insurance is for. With a sigh you hunker down with the mask of the old man and start to seal it up. You use up the rest of the sealant as you do so. So much for getting Andrea this week, you reflect. The list of ingredients is in the book and the book is under the—

You glance over your shoulder and do a double take. The fire is out. The hell? You lunge over with your lighter and light the hem of the old man's bathroom. It smokes acridly, but there's no more purple flame. All the stuff you'd piled on his chest is gone.

It's finished? That's all? You look at the old man's face.

And you hiccup with horror.

He's been turned to stone.

* * * * *

There's really no other way to describe it or explain it. His skin is hard and cool, like granite, and nowhere that you press it does it give or yield; even his hair is like a pompadour carved from rock. His limbs are frozen—his back is arched and his hands claw the air—and his eyes are squeezed shut. He could be a very life-like statue, and the detail is amazing, with the finest wrinkles captured and preserved by whatever magic you performed on him.

His clothes are unchanged, however. That's good, as you've no idea how you could explain how his robe and pajamas became petrified.

And you do still have his mask. You're pretty sure you know what will happen when you put it on him, but you still tense against unpleasant surprises as you drop it onto the face of the statue.

He comes to life in mid yelp, scraping at the air and twisting wildly. There is no intelligence in his eyes, only the angry, wounded-animal expression he's always got. You grab onto his shoulders. "Calm down," you hiss, though such expressions never do any good.

But now they do. He instantly ceases to struggle, though he still yells, and that continues only until you say, "Be quiet." After that he says nothing, and only twitches a little. His eyes dart about fretfully, though.

You pull the mask off, and he reverts to stone.

Well, maybe you've killed him. But you've got a perfect copy you can take back home. Better than that, it's a copy that apparently you can manage and control. You sit back heavily onto a table top with a sense that is 20% horror and 80% relief.

You're still in this attitude when your phone rings. "Where are you?" your mother shouts as soon as you answer.

"Still out driving," you reply. "Yeah, he's having a great time, it's really doing him a lot of good." You stare at the statue on the desk.

"You'll have an accident! Come back home, now!"

"Okay, okay! It'll be a little while, though, we're way out west of town, way out past the airport even. He really likes the countryside!"

"Come back home! Watch for your father, I'm sending him out to meet you."

"You don't have to do that, I'm turning around now."

"I'm not going anywhere," Mr. Chen says in the background. "That's the silliest—"

"Just come home!"

"Sure. I gotta hang up now, you know it's a bad idea driving and talking. I could have an accident." You slap the phone off.

Okay, what can I work on at home? You pack up the book, and supplies for making brain bands, and write out a shopping list for stuff to make more sealant and masks. It's almost six o'clock, but maybe after you drop your new and improved grandfather off you'll have time to hit a few supply stores.

There's a dolly in the back of the basement, and you use that to pull grandfather up the stairs and to the Jeep; you prop him against it before putting the mask back on him, and catch him as he falls. He's still docile, though, as you bundle him into the car and lock up at the basement. Again, he is alert and interested on the drive back to the house.

They're very pleased when you get back—Mrs. Chen with relief that you survived the adventure, and both of them are delighted that the old man is so tractable after the afternoon jaunt. "He must be exhausted," your father says as the old man has fallen asleep in his bed; he didn't catch you whispering "Go to sleep" in grandfather's ear as you helped tuck him in.

Neither objects when you tell them you've got some errands to run, and neither one says anything when you stagger back in at ten o'clock, having bought up the necessary supplies and made another stop at the school basement to make and polish a mask, mix up some sealant and some glue, and otherwise prepare another disguise. "Meet me at the school tomorrow at eight," you tell Thomason when you call him. "We'll see if we can't catch you a mermaid." That's the only call you make, and you ignore the missed calls you didn't pick up from Kirkham and others. You've still got more work ahead of you this evening.

* * * * *

But you do pick up two calls that come in after eleven. The first is from Seth Javits. "Well, it's done," he says in a very sober tone. "Cindy will never speak to me again, but I guess it doesn't matter since we're busted up."

"Don't sound so disappointed," you tell him. "In the first place, you're picking up a hotter girlfriend. In the second, how sweet is it to set fire to Javits's life and then piss on the flames?"

He grumbles but admits that you're basically right.

Thirty minutes later comes a call from Chelsea Cooper. "Nicely done, Prescott," she coos. "I knew you wouldn't fuck it up. Javits came through. How'd you manage?"

"You managed it, man. The sex blew his mind, and I just told him he should try to make it a permanent thing. Better plan on putting out a lot for him."

"Meh, probably not, not after the way he shat all over Cindy, it sounds like. Like, where could he go? But how's the rest of your assignments coming? Thomason and them."

"Still working on it."

"Jesus, what were you doing today?"

"Dealing with your grandfather," you say through gritted teeth.

"Oh, right." He laughs. "Git 'er done, cowboy, or you'll be dealing him a lot longer."

Next: "Deepening the Talent Pool" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 2)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)"