The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)

Panic in F Wing

Previously: "And Then There Were Two" 

A tutor is not a teacher, but he could still probably get you in trouble. And the offices—fishbowls inside of fishbowls—are too exposed. Any passer-by could look in, the way you're doing now, and see what's going on. Also, there's that purse sitting on a desk inside one of the offices. That means there's another tutor around, and she could probably return at any moment.

No, you're better off chasing after that girl. By now it's either her or no one.

You hustle off after her.

She's almost to the junction where F wing empties into the school's central corridor when she hears the squeak of your sneakers and glances back. She does a double-take at you and stops with a hard frown. "Are you following me?" she snarls.

You pull to a hard stop. "No," you stammer with embarrassment at getting caught. "I'm just, uh, going the same way."

She stares at you. "Creep," she mutters with a curled lip, and turns around again.

Well, that tears it. Now you don't care if the mask hurts her. You have it in your hand, and you drop your backpack as you leap after her. She turns just as you're raising the mask, so she catches it right in the face as you pounce at her. She just has time to squeal before you cover her face with the mask.

For half a second she sways on her feet. Then she folds up and falls into you.

It's like trying to catch a big, heavy bag of wet cement. You grunt hard and throw your arms around her, but are dragged to the ground with her atop. You scramble out from under with a wildly beating heart and look around. Sweat pops out all over your body.

You have the hallway to yourself (and her) for the moment. You scramble over to peer down at her.

She's folded up on her side, in a quasi-fetal position. Her eyes are open but staring blankly. You swallow hard, and put your ear to her face. You're not sure, but you think you hear a soft breathing.

"Hey," you say, and poke her. "Hey!" But no matter how hard you shake her, she doesn't respond, except to gargle raggedly at the back of her throat.

Oh sweet Jesus! you think, and look around again. If anyone finds us like this—!

But there's a drinking fountain nearby, and that means— Yes! The restrooms! Normally you'd never take a chance on going into a school restroom—way too dangerous—but it's more dangerous out here. You don't even bother to glance inside—let alone bother to look at the sign on the door—before dragging the girl through the swinging door. Not until you've got her laid out on the tile inside do you look around and see, by the presence of urinals, that you're in the boys' restroom.

You wipe your sweaty palms on your shirt as you stand over the girl, and try to take stock.

The first thing is to get her out of sight, so you grab her again by the wrists and drag her inside the very back stall. It's a horribly trick maneuver, for you have to stand first on the toilet to drag her into the stall, then jump over her to get back out. After you've got her tucked inside with the door pushed closed, you take stock again. No good, you see with a sinking terror. Anyone walking in could see her passed out in the stall. But maybe your luck will hold and no one will come in. The school is, after all, practically empty.

Next step is to find the mask. You can't imagine where it's got off to. One moment you were pushing it at the girl, and the next minute you were catching her as she fell. But where did the mask go? You tear open the restroom door, but there's no sign of it on the hallway floor, near where you fell or next to your book bag you dropped. You look around to see if it bounced away someplace, but can't find it. You return to the restroom, to see if it got dragged inside when you dragged the girl to the stall.

No luck.

You open up the stall and stare at the girl. She is crumpled up like a discarded doll, and you grimace hard as you squeeze into the stall with her, to squat atop her to feel under her body for the mask. It's a ghastly business—practically laying atop her with your arms around her and your face next to a pungent toilet bowl. You make quick business of it before giving up, for you know that if someone came in and found you atop her like that, you'd go to jail for the rest of your life.

But of the mask there is no sign.

In and out of the restroom you pass, unable to stomach being inside it with the girl for fear of being caught with her, yet equally unable to wait outside the door as you try to figure out what to do. You have to fake getting a drink of water when a couple of girls go walking by, and you nearly pass out with fright when they turn into the girls' restroom. What if I'd shoved my victim inside the girls' room instead? you ask yourself. A couple of teachers walk by too, and one of them—a heavy-set woman you recognize as a home-ec teacher—frowns vaguely at you, but doesn't trouble you before disappearing off toward the main office.

I can't stay here, you tell yourself. But I can't run away either. Not until I find out what happened to the mask!

How long you twist yourself, like a limp noodle, around this dilemma, you don't know. But far too many minutes have passed for your taste when you return to the restroom and glance into the stall to check on the girl, and do a hard double-take. The mask is back! And it's just sitting on her face! You do a full-body spasm, then halt forward to lean over her. Carefully you lift the mask off and look down at her. Her eyes are closed now, and her breathing is a lot softer and more regular.

But that's the most you check on her. You tuck the mask under an armpit, grab up your bag, and sprint from the restroom and out of the school like a son of a bitch who's been set on fire.

* * * * *

It's seven o'clock, and you've been home for a couple of hours, but you still feel like you haven't caught your breath after today's adventure.

You were ragged with adrenaline when you got home, and you had to drag yourself downstairs to dinner, where you were so jumpy through the meal that your dad snapped at you, asking what your problem was. Back upstairs, you returned to your homework, trying to thrust aside all the terror you feel as you relive (and relive and relive) the afternoon at school. So many things to worry about. What if that girl never regained consciousness? What if she's still lying passed out the restroom, on that cold, hard floor? What if she dies there? Or what if someone did find her, and she's in the hospital? What if she's recovered, but she remembers you, and she picks you out of a lineup? What if the cops show up at your house at 5:30 in the morning with a SWAT team and bust in and arrest you and drag you, howling in your underwear, to the police station?

Also (though this isn't nearly as pressing as the above questions), what are you going to do about the mask?

It's in your book bag now, and that's where it's going to stay, at least until tomorrow. You can hardly bear to look at it, let alone touch it, after examining it this afternoon right after you got home.

At first glance, nothing about it seemed to have changed, which infuriated you. All that trouble, and for what?

Then you noticed something peculiar about the gleaming highlights that run like liquid over its surfaces. Some of them didn't run. And when you turned the mask this way and that, you noticed that those frozen highlights seemed to come together in an image. It took you a moment to recognize that they made a face.

Yes, a face, deep under the surface of the mask, like a 3-D model. When you turn the mask this way and that, you can see the opposites sides of the head, and when you tilt it you can see the front of the crown of the head, and even the tops of the bare shoulders.

And though you don't know the girl you tackled, the image was clear enough that you recognized it as an image of her.

That sent you back to the grimoire, and when you opened it to the spell you were shocked to find that an oval-shaped stain—dark enough to be visible, but not dark enough to obliterate the words beneath—had appeared on the page. Numbly, you laid the mask onto it. When you lifted the mask again (after a count of five) the page came loose beneath. On the other side you found the continuation of the spell.

The mask now contains a copy of the girl—that's the gist of the explanation on the reverse of the page. And if you (or anyone, you suppose) puts the mask to their face, they will transform into a duplicate of the girl.

If they seal the mask first, that is. There are no instructions on how to seal the mask, but it says that if you place the mask onto anyone else without sealing it, it will merge their image with the one already inside the mask.

Next: "So It Turns Out You Can Be Too Careful" 

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