The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)

The Unnameable Dread of Unutterable Things

Previously: "The News from Roberta" 

Roberta's account of what happened yesterday does sound pretty scary, and it doesn't get any better.

"I was so freaked out," she tells you. Her breathing is labored, and you have to press the phone close to your ear to make out her words. "I didn't know what to do! You weren't just, like asleep. It was like you were in a coma! I couldn't get you to move or wake up, and I was slapping at you hard! I didn't know if you were ever gonna wake up again, and— So was I supposed to go find someone? How was I supposed to tell a teacher or a paramedic that we were playing with magic spells?"

So she started frantically rereading the spell, translating it on her phone, to find out what was supposed to happen. When, to her intense relief, the mask reappeared on your face, she peeled it off and was going to wake you, but then she saw the lacrosse team coming out to practice, so she shoved all your stuff into your duffel bag and bolted because she didn't want to be caught there with you.

And by that point, as she was hustling back toward the school and speed-dialing a friend to pick her up, she had decided that the stuff was way dangerous. Evil, even. Real black magic shit.

But the longer she talks, the more skeptical you get.

For a start, you're not even sure she's telling the truth.

Okay, you can believe that maybe something happened when she hit you in the face with that mask. It did seem to knock you out. But it "disappeared into" you? That's some pretty lame-sounding shit, if you're talking about "black magic." Shouldn't she be telling you about smoke and fire and a hissing or shrieking noise, weird symbols appearing on your face, and maybe you levitating? But it just "disappeared into" you? And then it just came back, all very quietly? That doesn't sound real.

And Roberta doesn't seem like the kind of person to worry about what's "evil," anyway. She's pretty goddamned sarcastic about people, and she's got a mouth on her, too. Now she's acting like an old church lady, calling your book "black magic" and "evil"?

"Uh huh," you say. "Well, if you don't want it, I'll take it back."

"I'm not gonna give you back something that's dangerous, Will! I wouldn't give you a pile of plutonium! I'm not giving this back to you!"

"So you're just gonna keep it? Even though it's 'dangerous'? Like plutonium?"

"I don't want to keep it." She sounds peevish. "I don't want it anywhere near me! Who knows what it could ... attract."

You can't resist jeering. "Like demons?" Roberta is the very last person you can believe legitimately believing in the occult.

There's a pause. She says, "Now you're just trying to get my goat."

Your demonic goat, you mutter under your breath.

"Listen," she says, and all of a sudden she sounds quite fervent. "You don't have to believe in God or the devil—and I don't, Will!—in order to think there could be some ... funky stuff out there. Like, you don't have to believe in Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster to be scared of, like, Great White sharks or grizzlies."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

She sighs. "It's like in a book I was reading once," she tells you in a pinched and ragged voice. "Do you get how freaking little we know about the universe? We don't even know anything about our planet, like what's even in the oceans, let alone under the ground. We're like ants walking on the surface of an orange. Or on a big old slimy ball of mud. We know what's on the surface, but what's under the surface, what's under there that could—?" She struggles for words. "Could come wriggling out. You could be walking along all innocent, but there's a spider underneath, and it could jump out and grab you. There's enough stories out there about ... things, Will. I don't mean ghosts or demons, but about weird stuff. And that book and that thing you made, that's weird stuff. I don't want it to turn out to be like ... a sugar cube or something, that'll attract ... things!"

By now there's a hard shiver in her voice.

* * * * *

"Sounds like someone's been reading Lovecraft," your friend Carson Ioeger says the next day at lunch, after you recount your phone call with Roberta. You don't tell him anything about the book or your adventure with it, or even that she'd stolen it and some other stuff from you. You just tell him you were talking to a girl about some stuff and she said yada yada yada.

And after he got over his hilarious incredulity that you were talking to a real, live girl ("As if, Prescott! As! Fucking! If! Pwha-ha-ha!"), he offered some offhand thoughts about what she'd said.

You admit you'd never read "Lovecraft," you'd just heard the name, and when Carson drops the name "Cthulhu" you tell him that, Oh yeah, you'd heard of him (or it), but you still aren't sure what he's saying.

He sighs deeply through his nose. "Then I'll bring you in one of my books and you can borrow it. Or— No, fuck that. You can check one outta the library." You're lounging out front, on the grass, with your lunches, and he points at the library with a kick of his foot. "That'll explain it," he says, "assuming your reading comprehension is high enough." You flip him off.

But when your seventh-period study hall rolls around, you do go looking for some Lovecraft books in the library. You find one and sit down to read it, but quickly discover that each story is a choking tangle of purple prose, so dense and clotted that you can hardly decipher the sentences. After manfully struggling through the opening paragraphs of three different stories, you toss it aside and slump in your chair.

And then, because you've lost all taste for the dry, silent, sterile atmosphere of the library, you hike your pack onto your shoulders and go outside. It's a clear, sunny, warm day, so you're not surprised to stumble across two other students, sitting with their backs against the library wall, gazing out across Borman Avenue. But it startles you a little to see who it is: Virginia, from the charity drive on Monday, and Shane, from Starbucks. You greet them with a startled "Hey!" and they look up with surprised "Heys" of their own.

Virginia is dressed much as she was on Monday, in a black t-shirt and skinny jeans with holes in the thighs. And she's as made up as she was on Monday with mascara, dark lipstick, and hair with a hint of tint in it. Shane is more strikingly dressed, in tan khaki trousers and Converse sneakers, but also in a long-sleeve dress shirt, necktie, and sleeveless gray sweater. It's the kind of clothes that you'd expect some kind of dweeb to wear, but they show off Shane's burly torso, and his short haircut and bold stare complete the impression of a field jock dressed for a church function. You are feeling severely underdressed in your own billowy t-shirt and cargo shorts as you drop our pack at their feet and plop down next to them.

"What'cher doin' out here?" Shane asks. The question isn't unfriendly, but it is direct. "Skippin'?"

"I got a study hall but I'm sick of the library. What about you?" You didn't have study halls when you were a junior.

"Skippin'," Shane says. He twiddles a long piece of grass between his fingers, then puts it in his mouth. "Too nice a day out."

You nod, and glance at Virginia. Her gaze is distant, but she seems to be looking at something behind your ear. You twist around to glance back, but see nothing. When you twist back again, she's looking elsewhere, with the corners of her mouth pulled slightly down.

"Oh hey, I was gonna ask," Shane says, "yah get yer things back from Robbie?"

"No. Pff. I called her last night, but she won't give 'em back."

"Whoa. Whadja do to her?"

"I didn't do anything! She just— I don't get it. She's weird."

"She's a tease," Shane agrees. Then he turns his head to stare intently at the side of Virginia's head. "I'm glad she's not my type," he says. Virginia hitches her shoulders, but says nothing.

"Well, I don't know what I'm going to do," you say. "It was stuff I was working on."

"Arts and crafts type stuff, yah said?"

"Right. I was working out of a book, and she grabbed it and the other stuff, so now I'm I'm stuck."

"Can't yah just get another copy of the book online?"

"I don't think so. It's an old book." You tell him briefly of finding it in the special collections section of Arnholm's, and how it was originally a couple of hundred dollars, but you got it for nearly nothing after pointing out some "damage" to it. "So even if I found another copy," you tell him, "I couldn't afford it because it's, like, super rare and valuable."

"Whoa!" For the first time Shane actually seems interested in your plight, and Virginia is also listening intently. "So she took like a, what? An antique or somethin' from yah? And she won't give it back?"

"Sounds like Robbie," Virginia murmurs.

Shane sits up very straight, looking keen and concentrated. "Yah know, if I talked t'er, if me and Zion talked t'er, I bet we could—"

"I don't think so. She—" You weigh your words carefully. "She thinks the book is 'dangerous'. It's really old, and some of the stuff it uses is weird. I think she thinks I'll hurt myself."

Shane snorts. "She thinks everyone's a baby, e'cept her. But yah know, there's one surefire way t'get it back."

You raise a querying eyebrow. Shane grins.

"Break into her place and steal it!"

Next: "Heist School Drama" 

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