The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)

People Who Do What They're Told -- Or Don't

Previously: "When Friendships Collide" 

You feel yourself pulled hard in a couple of different directions, but you decide that Caleb can wait, for the last thing you want to do is leave Jamie alone with a lot of magical gear.

So you quickly text Caleb back: No busy w jamie gettn strate on things def see n talk to u n keith tnite.

"Will!" Jamie calls, and you jump a little. "'Dju hear me?"

"Yeah. Uh. Magical robot?"

"Yeah, I think." He slides off the table and shambles over to the thing. "Makes sense if you look at it."

You join him for a look, and it's the first time you've taken a good look at the project that's been burning away in the school basement for the past week.

What had been a pile of brown dirt has baked into a compact, cylindrical shape of an off-white color. It's cracked almost clean through in a couple of places, with one great rent up from the end to nearly the center, and two smaller rents on opposite sides farther up. At the top is a kind of bulbous knob. You wouldn't have recognized the form, though, if Jamie hadn't primed you to see it as a "magical robot."

It does look like a person. A crude, misshapen, scarcely started statue of a person, but in its outlines it does look human, with legs, arms and a head attached to a trunk.

"So I wonder how we turn it on," you wonder aloud.

Jamie sniggers. "Give it a hand job."

You make a face, but can't resist darting a quick glance at the things crotch. Blessedly, unless it is supposed to be flat-chested female, it is not anatomically correct.

"It says something about putting a mask on it," Jamie says. "Except—" He snaps his fingers. "First we have polish it."

You groan inwardly, for even with the car buffers it takes nearly an hour to polish a mask. This thing could take weeks. But when Jamie wipes a palm over it, a thin layer of dust comes away, exposing a gleaming surface beneath. If that's all that has to done—getting the dust off—then it might not take any time at all.

Jamie is so eager to get his hands on the thing that he doesn't argue when you ask him to clean the thing up while you check over the continuation of the spell.

* * * * *

"It's fucking necromancy is what it is," Caleb growls as he turns the mask over and over in his hands. "Fucking necromancy," he repeats.

"How do you figure that?" you demand.

He gives you a look. "It's magic, right?" he says. "And you had to dig up a dead person—"

"We didn't dig up a dead person!" you exclaim. "We just dug up dirt from a cemetery!"

"Dirt that by this point is full of the dust of dead people. It's practically the same thing, Will." He drops the mask with a clatter on the table. Keith, who is standing nearby, jumps away.

You're still in the elementary school basement, where you've been hanging out most of the day. Jamie has gone home, taking most of the masks with him, but he left Ashley Wymer's mask behind, and you've been using it to demonstrate things to Caleb and Keith, who you invited out to look things over again once Jamie was gone. Keith looked a little green in the face when he arrived, but Caleb just has a sour expression.

His necromancy gibe actually has to do with the thing you made. The book calls it a "pedisequos," but Jamie insists on calling it "a magical robot." They are both mouthfuls, so you've just been calling it "the thing" and gesturing at it when you had to talk about it at all. It took Jamie only a minute or so to clean the thing off. Then, after arguing a little more about the translation, and then arguing about which mask to use, you had set Ashley Wymer's mask on it. The shapeless statue had transformed into an exact duplicate of the MILF herself. It had sat up, and only a quick "Quit it!" from you had stopped it from screaming its head off.

"And you confirmed that it only obeys you?" Caleb asks you with a hard look.

"I don't know what you mean by 'confirmed'," you tell him, "but you saw the way it was just now." You have, in fact, just removed Mrs. Wymer's mask from the thing for the second time, after giving Caleb and Keith a demonstration of it.

"Dude," Keith moans, "that was so freaky!"

"What I mean is," Caleb says, "it didn't obey Jamie at all? Did you try any other masks on it?"

"We tried all the other masks," you tell him. "The one of his mom—"

"That's so sick," Keith says in a near whisper.

"—was like Mrs. Wymer. It did everything I told it to, but it tried yelling at Jamie. By the way, man," you tell Keith, "that freaked Jamie out hard. He didn't like it."

"No, it probably turned him on," Caleb says. "He's one sick puppy."

"Will you stop it?" you tell Caleb. "I keep telling you, he's not that different from us. Okay, yeah, he's got some quirks. But the rest of us got quirks too. Shut up," you add as Caleb lifts an eyebrow. "And you don't got any cause to be calling him a sick mofo, either," you tell Keith. "I've heard you say stuff a hundred times worse than anything I heard come out of Jamie's mouth." Keith glares darkly at you.

"And the other masks?"

"Nothing happened with them. I think it's on account of they were just masks, they didn't one of these things in them." You pick up Mrs. Wymer's mask and trace the outline of the metal band glued to its inner surface. "Jamie's mask doesn't have one of these things in it. And the other mask, of Jamie's mom's boyfriend, we got a metal dingus to go with him, but we haven't glued it into that mask. Yet."

Caleb turns to the book, which is resting on the table, and flips through it. "Jesus," he mutters to himself.

"So are we all gonna be cool with this?" you ask him and Keith. "Cool with this and, uh, Jamie?"

Caleb gives you a hard, steady look. You know what he's thinking, and you sigh. "I told you, I didn't mean to leave you guys out. It's just the way it worked out."

"Well, what are we gonna do now?" Keith asks in a hollow voice. "I don't know what to be cool with if I don't know what's going on!"

"We're going to put this thing on a proper, experimental footing," Caleb says in a very firm voice. "We've got three of us here—okay, four, if we include Jamie, which I guess we are—and we're gonna figure out exactly why and how this stuff works. We got a couple of mysteries to solve, like how come the dingus over there only listens to Will, and how come this mask here"—he taps Mrs. Wymer's mask—"only works for him too."

"Well, we don't know it only works on me," you correct him. "All we know is that it doesn't work for Jamie."

"Good point," Caleb says. His manner is very crisp. "But let's start at the beginning. Absolutely fresh slate. We'll each of us make up one of these masks, and we'll each of us make up one of these, uh, metal things. The things that have names on them." His lip curls a little as he looks askance into the interior of Mrs. Wymer's mask.

You sigh and shrug.

* * * * *

You only have enough material, though, to make two more masks. It's Caleb and Keith who cast them, with you supervising. Caleb is all business about it, while Keith yelps and dances around like he's been stung when the newly molded shell twists in his hand like a live thing. You also supervise as they make two metal strips. You then leave them in the basement to polish up the masks and to start carving the rune work into the bands, while you take some of their money to go out and scrounge up the stuff to make some more masks, so you can join them.

While you're out, you text Jamie to tell him what you're doing. If you're all going to be partners together, it seems best to keep everyone in touch with what's going on. He replies by asking where you are. Stay put, he tells you, im brngng u some money.

But it's not Jamie who brings you the money.

You're loitering near the front of Hobby Lobby when a scruffy figures comes loping up to you with a giant grin on his face. His reddish-gold hair is disordered and he sports a two-day growth of beard. His green t-shirt has stains down the front of it, and his jeans are ripped. "Hey, dog!" he calls to you. "Check it out, man!" He throws his arms out, as though expecting a hug.

It's Chip Flanagan. Jamie's mom's boyfriend. One of them. The one that Jamie caught and copied in his living room this morning.

"Oh, crap!" you gasp as you look him up down. "What the fu— hell are you doing?"

"Comin' to bring you some money. Here!" He digs into his rear pocket and pulls out a well-worn wallet. "Twenty, forty, sixty, sixty-five, sixty-seven in cash. An' that's not counting the spare credit card." He waggles his eyebrows at you.

Terror grips your heart. "Whose credit card?" you ask, dreading the answer.

"Chip's, man! Whole ensemble's his! Ain't no point goin' out in his face without the whole look! These are his 'sloppy Saturday' clothes! And whatever we wanna buy—"

"How did you get into his 'sloppy Saturday clothes'?" you yelp in a strangled voice.

"I raided his place. Yeah, there's a spare key out— Well, where only he knows. An' me too, 'cos—" He waggles his eyebrows and point to his temple. "So is this all you need to get?" He indicates the basket that's slowly slipping from your paralyzed hand.

Next: "Of Experiments and Test Subjects" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 1)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)"