The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

Burglars Three

Previously: "The Long Wait" 

You text Caleb and ask him to meet you in front of the nearby movie theater. You also ask him to bring Dylan along—you figure that, for what you've got planned, you could use the help.

To outvote Caleb, if nothing else.

Which showed foresight: Caleb calls you a nut after you spring your plan on him, while Dylan tells his cousin to grow a pair.

"Look, if you're all into breaking and entering," Caleb demands of Dylan, "why weren't you telling us to do this before? Why weren't you going out and—?"

"Because it was the middle of the week," Dylan retorts. "I was going to call you tomorrow, tell you this is what we should do."

You find yourself doubting Dylan, but you're glad of his support. He asks what you know about the guys' houses and families, and you admit that you've only got their addresses, courtesy of Roxanne. "Is she coming too?" Caleb wants to know. "The fuck why not?" he asks when you tell him she isn't.

"Because she's got to work."

"If it's so important to her—"

Dylan tells him to shut up, and that's the end of the argument.

* * * * *

It doesn't make sense to delay. Your targets will be out partying, and the sooner you case their places, the better chance you'll catch them empty, because (as Dylan points out) that their parents might all be out socializing too.

Ethan Gilkey's house is the nearest to the mall. The lights are on in the living room as you cruise by, but there's an SUV parked in front of the garage. It's also nestled amidst a lot of other houses, so even if the lights were off you're not sure you'd dare try breaking in.

Zachary Holzer's house is at the end of a cul-de-sac, and the lights are out. You're ready to pass on it, but Dylan consults an online map and tells you there's an empty field abutting its back yard. After five minutes of wandering around and getting lost, you find that field, park next to it, and hoof across a lot of bumpy, muddy, uncut turf to approach Holzer's house from the back. Caleb locks his hands together in a stirrup, to support you as you clamber to the top of the high wooden wall that surrounds the place. "Looks dark back here too," you hiss.

"Lemme see," Dylan says.

"I only got two hands!" the groaning Caleb protests.

"Well, get down," Dylan tells you, "and I'll—"

"Fuck you, I don't need— I'm going over," you say. "Then Caleb can help you up and over."

"Yeah, and I'll gladly stay back here," Caleb mutters.

You grasp the top of the fence and heave yourself high enough to throw a leg over. You're balancing there and wincing as the boards pinch your family jewels when you hear the deep growl.

You have just enough time to cuss and to pull your leg back when there's an explosion of barks, and something very big and very heavy hurls itself at the fence, knocking you off.

You hit Caleb on your way down. "Jesus!" someone shouts (and you're not sure it isn't you), and the three of you scramble back across the muddy fields, stumbling and falling, to regain your truck. The dog—which by its bark sounds like it's the size of a grizzly bear—slavers and claws at the fence behind you.

"Okay, that's two down," Caleb whimpers. "Can we go home now?"

Dylan says, "Don't be a baby," and you say, "We've still got Whitney's place to go by."

"Less than a fifty percent chance the book'll be at his place."

"More like a hundred percent," Dylan says. "He's gonna be the one keeping it."

"They why didn't we go looking at his place first?"

"These places were on the way," you tell him.

"Oh, fer Chriss—!"

"Look, if we can't get into his place, then, um, we'll go hitting the parties, looking for them there."

"You can," Caleb retorts. "I'm going home. In fact, you can take me back to my car now—"

"I'm not taking you nowhere! You can sit out in my truck when we get to Whitney's."

Caleb grumbles in the back of his throat, and leaves the talk to you and Dylan as the latter reads you off directions from his phone.

* * * * *

"Shit," Caleb mutters as the three of you, from inside the truck, look over the last place on your list of houses. "This isn't even worth getting out for."

You're a fair piece out in the countryside, where the houses are spread apart, and the Whitney's colonial-style house stands splendidly isolated from the neighbors. The night is pitch dark by now, but by the glow of the porch light you can make out the shadows and silhouettes of tall trees and bushes that dot the rolling grounds. There is no fence about.

All this is to the good—no neighbors, almost certainly no dog prowling the yard, and none of the lights in any of the windows are on.

But the place is almost certainly alarmed to the teeth.

"Come on, we should check it out anyway," you say, though you have as little hope and enthusiasm as Caleb.

"What, you wanna stumble around in the dark?" he protests. "What if they got bear traps?"

"They're not gonna have bear traps! Besides, you're staying in the truck."

But Caleb is determined to be glum. "Yeah," he says as he slumps in his seat. "But I'm the one'll have to come help you out of the Bengal tiger trap when you fall into it."

He is right about it being very dark, and Dylan asks if you've got a flashlight in your truck. You have to think a bit before you remember an emergency tool kit that should be in the storage bin behind the wheel well in the truck bed. You rummage around (using the light from Dylan's phone to see by) until you find a big, silvery flashlight that's not much smaller than a baseball bat. "Are the batteries any good?" Dylan asks. You flick it on. "When was the last time you changed them out?"

"I dunno. Never, I think. I wasn't even sure I had this thing. But maybe my dad—"

"Yeah, you really oughta be a professional burglar," Dylan mutters.

Together you creep partway up the drive to the house, then veer off to sneak across the grounds. You almost immediately come to grief: There's a small, gurgling creek cutting across the grounds, and you nearly fall in, so you have to return to the drive and use the bridge to cross it. "These people must be loaded," Dylan says, voicing the obvious.

You make a wide circuit of the house, first to one side and then to the other, looking for signs that anyone is home. But except for the porch light, the place is dark. "Do you think there's, like sensors, on the grounds?" you ask. You've been giving the place a wide berth.

"This is real life, not a Mission Impossible movie."

"How do you know what people've got? I've seen in TV shows—"

"Those are TV shows."

But Dylan, like yourself, keeps his distance from the house itself.

Eventually you make your way to the back, where you find a large deck and a swimming pool. You're just summoning up your nerve to approach them when Dylan catches your elbow and points. "What's that?"

That is a dark shape back far off behind the swimming pool, like another house. In the night, it is nothing more than a blacker shadow against the black sky, but it is something else to check out. As you approach it, though, it gradually resolves itself into a barn. "Not much chance of an alarm here," Dylan observes.

The doors are padlocked, but there's a wide window directly above them, and by standing on Dylan's shoulders you're able to pull yourself up into a loft. After searching around, you find a rope, which you lower to help pull Dylan up. Then you descend a ladder into the barn.

It's not being used as a barn, though. There's no hay bales or farm implements or feed; instead, it's a carport for a RV and an SUV, and there's not much room between them and the empty animal pens for you to squeeze through. You sweep the place with your flashlight, though. You've about given up when with a soft whistle through his teeth Dylan directs your attention to something you'd missed: a large trunk nestled back inside one of the pens.

"Worth breaking into?" Dylan asks when you find it locked.

"Don't got a crowbar or nothing." But you give the trunk an experimental heave, and find that though it is bulky, it isn't heavy. "Maybe it's got a loose panel, or something," you say, "and we can get into it through—"

But you find something better than a loose panel. Beneath the trunk is trapdoor.

You and Dylan pause in surprise, then shift the trunk to the side so you lift the door by a heavy iron. A soft exhalation of cold air drifts up from below.

It's a storm cellar, you decide after you've dropped down into it. It is stocked with a couple of chairs, a table, and some supplies, including kerosene lamps.

And among those supplies—

"This is stuff for making a golem," you whisper to Dylan as you run your flashlight over the sacks and jars and bottles. "Of course I'm sure!" you snap in reply to his inevitable question. On the shelves that hang on the wall you find more of the kind of things that are used to make masks. "This is his workshop!"

But where is the book? And where are the masks?

Next: "The Loot Box" 

*
"Table of Contents (Vol. 3)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)"