The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)

Backyard Magic

Previously: "Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down!" 

"Okay, there's this one thing I've sort of got into, recently," you tell Eileen and Joshua. "I don't know what it is, but— What?" you ask, for they are looking at you like you just sprouted another head.

"Nothing," Eileen giggles. "Only that kind of came out of nowhere."

You blush. "Well, you were asking me what I'm into, and there's nothing, really. But I found this book recently, it looks like an arts and crafts thing, and— Well, lemme show you. 'Cos it's really weird and I don't know what to make of it. You might be interested, though, if you're into, uh, crafts stuff." You nod at the marionettes, still swinging in the draft under the shadowy ceiling.

You put your soda down, and Joshua and Eileen put theirs down to follow, but you tell them you'll be right back.

When you return, you can tell they've been talking about you and probably laughing at you, too, but you brush your embarrassment to show them the book.

"I found it at Arnholm's, you know, the used book store, about a week ago," you say as you squat down between them. "It was in the special collections for, like two hundred dollars"—Joshua's eyes widen—"but they let me have it for two."

"Jesus!" he exclaims, but he doesn't ask why they cut the price. Instead he bends over to examine the book, and to brush its red leather cover with his fingertips. "Looks pretty cool," he says.

"Yeah, well, lookit this." You open the cover to show him that row of faces directly inside. You say nothing to him or to Eileen, who has shifted over and twisted her head around to get a look too. For a long moment neither of them say anything. Then Joshua says, "Whoa!"

"I know, right? Massive optical illusion!"

"Yeah!" He touches a fingertip to one of the faces. "How does that work?"

"It's a trick your brain plays," Eileen says.

"I think these things play tricks on your brain," you retort.

"Whew! What else is in here?" Joshua turns the page, and bends to peer at the script. "What language is this?"

"Latin."

He looks up, startled. "You read Latin?"

"No, but I got a phone and an online translator."

"So what's it say?"

"I dunno. Some gobbledy-gook about arcane secrets and danger." You pause for effect. "I think it's, like, a book of old magic."

Eileen looks up sharply, her mouth a perfect "o" of skepticism and amusement. Then she laughs.

"Oh my God, you are into magic! Remember what Scott said back at the gelato place?" She giggles at Joshua. "He said his friend here is into magic, into Harry Potter, and—!"

"I'm not into Harry Potter! I'm not even into ... magic! I just found this thing, is all, and it looked interesting, so—"

"Uh huh!" Eileen's eyes dance. "So what kind of spells does it do? Could we turn someone into a frog?" She pinches the corner of the book and tugs. "Hey, what's wrong with the pages?"

"That's something else that's weird." you pull the book away from her. "The pages won't turn. That's how come I got it cheap, it's like the pages are glued shut."

Eileen's jaw falls open, and then she snorts. "Well, that's bullshit! This whole thing is bullshit if—"

"Well, except this one." You flip to the page with the ingredients and the instructions. "I—"

Then you pause. These guys seem interested, or at least intrigued—more intrigued than Scott and Brendan—but they might back off if you tell them you got a page to turn by feeding some of your blood to the book. "Well, this one turns," you lamely conclude, "and it looks like a real spell. It's got ingredients and instructions and everything." You run a fingertip over the wheel-like sigil. "I haven't tried it out, though."

"What's it do?" Joshua asks. He's turned a lot more sober since you uttered the word "magic."

"I don't know. It doesn't say. It just says gather these ingredients and—"

"Do you have to do it by moonlight?" Eileen asks.

"No."

She squints mischievously at Joshua. Then she looks up at you. "Do you want to try it?"

"Sure." You have to swallow your heart, which has suddenly bobbed up into your throat. "I've got the stuff out in my truck."

"What?"

"Yeah. That's what I was going to do today. I showed this stuff to Scott and one of his friends, and we were going to work on it today, but they don't seem interested." You look between Eileen and Joshua.

They look at each other. No one moves for a long moment.

Then Eileen says, "Let's do it!" and scrambles to her feet.

* * * * *

Initially, the plan is to try it out in Joshua's basement, but when you mention that you'll have to set something on fire, he insists on moving to the back yard. You're a little nervous about doing the thing out in the open, but there's some tall, solid fences around to block the view from neighboring houses, and while you and Joshua are hauling a pair of sawhorses and a sheet of plywood out of the garage, his mom comes out to tell him that she's running in to town on a few errands. She asks what you're doing, but Joshua brushes her off by telling her it's an arts project.

You supervise using the book and your cell phone while Joshua mixes and Eileen watches. The dry and liquid ingredients go into a mixing bowl—set on the sigil—that Joshua fetched from the kitchen, and after a nervous moment of grinning at you and Eileen, he drops a lighted match into it. A white smoke and a horrible stench come pouring out, and the three of you hop away, choking and coughing, until the wind has dissipated it. You creep up back up when the smoke has stopped billowing out, and lean in to peer into the bowl. It is now filled with a viscous, grayish goo, like runny oatmeal.

The next step is to set a convex mirror—a small half-globe, and the most expensive of the items you had to buy—onto the makeshift table, and pour the paste over it. Eileen insists on getting involved at this point, and she grins and squeals as the goop dribbles out and pours evenly over the globe. It doesn't pour out over the table, though, but stops where the edge of the mirror meets the wood, with the rest of the paste backing up and thickening over it. It becomes very smooth, with no clumps and clots, and when Joshua gingerly touches it, he exclaims that it is solid. "It says you can pick it up now," you tell him after consulting the book. With his tongue poking thoughtfully into his cheek, he peels the gray shell off the mirror.

You and Eileen crowd in to look at it. It looks like a perfect mold of the mirror—a hemisphere—and is perfectly smooth both inside and out. Joshua turns it over in his hands, rubbing it with his fingers. "So what is it?" he asks. "What do we—? Yaahhh!" He suddenly flings it from him, and before you can duck it bounces off your head and falls with a clatter onto the work table.

"Way to sperg out!" Eileen laughs. "Whatsa matter, you get spiders in your—? Uh—"

She falls silent, and gapes down at the table. Joshua is staring down at it too. You're rubbing the spot on your forehead where you got bumped and glaring at him, but follow their stares, to the shell you made, which is slowly wobbling to a stop.

But it's not a shell anymore. At least, it's not a hemisphere. It's now an oval, and a shallow one, and it's misshapen, with bulges and hollows inside it.

The three of you stare at it. Then Joshua gingerly picks it up. "Whoa!" he whispers as he turns it over in his hands, and you'd mouth the same exclamation except that your throat has gone dry.

The shell is still concave, but when turned over, to become convex, those hollows and bumps inside it take on a very different appearance. They look like a brow, with hollows for eye sockets, and a nose that connects those eye sockets to a pair of lips, a pair of cheeks, and a chin. There's no expression, but it is unmistakably the form of a human face.

"It looks like a mask," Eileen breathes. "Holy—! How did that happen?"

The three of you stare at the thing—it looks like one of those mummers' masks that you sometimes see decorating a theater—then look at each other, then turn as one to stare at the book, lying open and fluttering a little in the afternoon breeze.

You're sure their thoughts echo your own: Magic! Real magic!

* * * * *

With some trepidation, but more excitement, you study the rest of the spell. It says that the thing now has to be polished, and after that it can be set upon a face so that it "absorbs" the image of the person. None of you query what the latter means, but Joshua fetches a soft rag from the house, and you all sit around to watch as he tries "polishing" it. Nothing seems to happen, and you take turns at it, until finally it looks like one patch has begun to fade from gray to white. It looks like it will take forever, though, until Joshua has the bright idea of firing up the car buffer in the garage and applying that to the job. Inside of an hour, with each of you taking a turn working it, you've polished the mask from a dull gray to a brilliant blue the color of a summertime sky.

That's when you turn to the last bit, about setting it on someone so it can "absorb" their image. The other two look as nervous as you feel. Haltingly, over the next hour, you discuss what to do.

One idea is to draw lots and hazard the experiment on one of yourselves. But the second is to find an unwary victim and try it out on them.

Next: "Let Mikey Try It" 

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