The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)

So It Turns Out You Can Be Too Careful

Previously: "Panic in F Wing" 

You're not sure you understand what the book means by "mixing images." Even in English, the concept is obscure, and you're translating the spell from Latin. You're already playing with something dangerous, and have already taken too many risks.

But it's not like you're ready to throw the stuff away, either. The best course, you decide, is to press on.

By unlocking the rest of the first spell, you've gained access to the second spell, which beings on the facing page. It doesn't take you long to translate the ingredients or the instructions, for they are almost duplicates of the ingredients and instructions for the first spell, only with fewer items and steps.

But you remember the stink you made in your bedroom when you executed the first spell. So, as casually as you can, you sneak the supplies downstairs, past your dad (who is watching TV in the living room with your mom) to the garage in a couple of trips. You open the garage door, and after waiting a long minute to see if the noise attracts your father's attention, you set out the stuff and start to work.

Your worries turn out to be unfounded. Though you again have to mix a lot of weird stuff into a bowl and set it on fire, there's no belch of noxious gas when you're done. (Anxiously, though, you double-check the spell book to make sure you did it right.) The result is a goopy slurry. When you set the bowl onto the book, the page turns loose, and you flip it to read the continuation of the spell.

(Why, you wonder with no little irritation, does the damn book keep hiding the explanation of each spell behind some kind of magical lock? It makes you nervous.)

According to what you read, you've just made a sealant that, when applied to the inside of a mask, will allow you to wear it. That will give you the "image" that is inside the mask.

You fetch a plastic tub from the kitchen, into which you transfer the slurry. Then you very carefully pack all the stuff away, and after closing the garage door again you carry the book and other supplies back up to your room. You also pick up a small paintbrush and take it with you.

Your dad calls to you on your way. "What were you doing in the garage?" he asks without taking his eyes from the TV. He doesn't even grunt when you reply, "Just working on something with my truck."

* * * * *

You carefully scan the headlines the next morning for news of a dead body at Westside High, but there's nothing. Still, you're jumpy as fuck as you pull into the school parking lot, and on the way in, you detour the peek inside the F wing boys' restroom. You don't seriously expect to spot the body of a girl curled up inside the back stall—and there isn't one—but you can't help yourself.

Only as you turn away do you remember the old saying: The killer always returns to the scene of the crime.

"What are you so twitchy about this morning?" Caleb snaps at you after you're settled into your seat in first period. He's giving you a dirty look from the desk across the aisle.

You return his glare with one of your own. "Who says I'm twitchy, asshole?"

"I do, asshole," he retorts. "You're twitching like you got a skin full of bugs."

You force yourself to stop twitching. "Just not looking forward to the day."

"Yeah, how come not?"

"Do you look forward to coming to school?"

"No. But you don't see me—" He flails inside the desk, like a marionette being jerked by a palsied hand.

"Whatever," you grumble, and turn away.

* * * * *

Classes aren't enough to distract you from that girl. You're less worried about her being hurt or in the hospital now, but you're more worried about being in trouble if she catches you. Could she beat you up? She seemed kind of tough. Much scarier, though, would be if she has a bunch of asshole boyfriends, on the wrestling or football squads, and she sent them after you if she saw you and recognized you.

But you're also distracted by the thing you hid in the lowest dresser drawer in your bedroom. The mask.

Last night, after finishing your homework, you returned to the spell. It was very straight-forward: you just had to paint the inside of the mask with the goop you made in order to seal it. So that's what you did.

But that's all you did, too. You couldn't bring yourself to go any further. Not yet.

The book is for real. There's no doubt about that. It is teaching you to make some funky shit, and that shit does some funky stuff. So you hesitated very long and hard, then decided to put it away. If you fuck yourself up with this magic stuff, it could be really bad.

And even worse than what it could do to you, how could you explain it to your dad?

The feeling of dread and fear got worse after you crawled into bed. You laid there for a very long time, staring at the ceiling and imagining all the ways thing could go wrong. You could have made the mask wrong, and it could permanently fuck your body up. Or it could work, and turn you into a copy of that girl, but then you might not be able to get the mask back off. (There are instructions on how to take the mask off, but it involves chanting a very strange phrase over and over. What if you can't pronounce it correctly, and can never figure out how to pronounce it correctly?) Or—and this would be the most mortifying of all—what if you put the mask on, and while you were inside it your mom or your dad or your brother barged in on you and caught you?

No, if you're going to test it out (you decided) you're going to do it when no one else is home. Or you're going to drive off someplace very lonely and try it out there.

So you buried it in your dresser drawer, under a lot of clothes that you've outgrown but not thrown out yet.

* * * * *

Normally you'd eat lunch in back of the school with Caleb and Keith, but today you drag them out to the front quad so you can eat with some other people. You're still sniffing around for news about that guy, and you figure that Jenny Ashton—a tomboy who has lots of friends in lots of places—might have heard if something dreadful happened in a school restroom yesterday.

But Carson Ioeger and James Lamont want to talk about the time capsule project for Mr. Walberg. "So, Prescott," Carson asks you with a satirical glance, "are you shitting bricks about your paper yet?"

Your class buried the capsule last Friday, after which the old walrus sprang the news that you'd each have to write a short paper on your contribution. You're fucked if you can explain why you sent a busted hair dryer to the future.

"What are you giving Prescott shit for?" his friend James chortles. "He did the best he could."

"It's a lame assignment anyway," you mumble.

"Well, sure" Carson snorts. "But is that any reason to treat it like a waste disposal site?"

"It was all a bunch of shit!"

"Mine wasn't." Caleb grins at you, and you glare. "And I heard Kelsey contributed, like, a solid gold belt buckle or something."

"What?" Jenny exclaims. She's been listening to all this with a peevish expression, and now she bolts upright. "That's criminal!"

"Well, she says—"

"You know there's people out there who could use—!"

"A solid gold belt buckle?" Carson dryly asks.

"Well, something like that's a waste anyway!" Jenny hotly declares. "You could take that money and—"

Carson holds up a hand and "yaps" with it, like a puppet. Jenny slugs him in the shoulder.

Then she turns to you. "What did you put in the capsule?" she asks.

"A hair dryer," you quietly reply.

She groans. "Something like that too, you could have— You know, there's a charity drive going on here at school right now! We should all bring in— Stop that!" She hits Carson again when he again "yaps" at her with a puppet-like hand.

So you never get a chance to casually ask if anyone heard about a girl being found passed out in the F wing boys' restroom after school yesterday.

* * * * *

One of the upshots of lunch, though, is that Carson—a smug, know-it-all geek who uses what he learns in science class to concoct elaborate pranks against the basketball players—texts you near the end of school to ask you and Caleb and Keith to hang out after school. He wants to know about the time capsule, and what you know is in it, and who contributed what. When you ask why he wants to know, though, he turns evasive.

"Cocksucker's up to something," Caleb says when you're leaving together afterward. "I think it would be best if you steered clear, Will."

"What about you?" you retort.

"I know how to handle Ioeger and his shit," he airily replies.

Anyway, you wind up hanging out with him and Keith almost until dinner time. In fact, they have managed to drive all thought of the book and the mask and the girl from your mind until you're on your way home. "Supper will be ready in ten minutes," you mom tells you as you pass by the kitchen.

You wash up and go to your bedroom to change shirts. As you drop the dirty shirt to the floor, your eye falls onto the bottom drawer of your dresser. It's partway open.

Your heart goes into your throat, and you kneel to pull it out.

It is empty. Not only the clothes you kept there, but the mask is gone.

Next: "When Charity Begins at Home" 

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