The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)

A Girl Who Never Was

Previously: "Face Time" 

Joshua wants to seal the mask up right away and try it out, but you insist on waiting until Eileen can join you. As you wait, Joshua tells you a little about Julie McDowell. Not that there is much to tell. She's just a girl who goes to Eastman, and she hangs out with various people without seeming to be part of any particular crowd, and she thinks nothing of barging in on Joshua and smoking a bowl, if he's up for it with her. All in all, a not-quite-but-almost-random girl to have tested the mask on. But neither of you give any thought to showing it or the magic to her.

Eileen shows up at a little before, eager to find out what has been going on, and gets pissed when she learns that you and Joshua have done stuff without her. "You couldn't wait?" she says.

"We didn't do hardly anything!" Joshua protests. "We just read the rest of the spell and then looked at the next one, but we didn't—"

"Wait, what new spell?"

You show her the book, and the stain on the page, and explain how you laid the mask atop that stain and got the page to turn, revealing the rest of the first spell and the beginning of a new one. "We think that's part of the magic," you tell her. "You have to perform a spell, and then that lets you turn the page to get a new spell."

Eileen bends over the book, flipping between the two pages and studying the writing and the sigils. "So what does this say?" she asks, pointing to the continuation of the first spell.

"That's what we were telling you," you reply, before you got pissy about us going on without you. "It explains how the mask works. If we seal it up now, we could put it on—one of us could put it on—and it would, uh—" You look up at Joshua, but he just grins a terrified smile back at you. "It would turn that person into a copy of Julie."

Eileen's expression doesn't change, but her eyes get very wide. "Or," you continue, "it says we could put it on another person. Then that person's, um, form or whatever would go into the mask, and it would mix up with Julie's to make a new form, one that's not exactly like her form or the other person's. Like, the form of a new person, I guess." You twist your hands in the air, trying to explain.

"So what did you do?" Eileen asks.

"Nothing. I— We decided to wait for you. So now you're caught up."

Joshua points at the new spell. "We think that's the spell that seals up a mask, so someone can wear it."

"You 'think'? What does it say?"

"It's just ingredients and instructions," you reply. "I think you have to perform the spell before the page turns loose, or something. It doesn't tell you what it does before you do it."

"Wow," Eileen says. "The book is kind of an asshole, isn't it?"

"So what do you want to do?" Joshua asks. "I say we seal it up, so we can test it out."

Eileen's eyebrows go up. "So you can test it out how? By putting it on? So you—" She looks between you and Joshua. "So one of you can turn himself into a copy of Julie?" Joshua looses a terrified giggle. "Oh no," Eileen says. "We're not doing that!"

"So what are we doing? We have to test it out!"

"We don't have to do anything! But you're not gonna— What's the other thing? About mixing forms and things?"

"One of us would have to put the mask on," you tell her. "And it would mix her face with theirs."

"But I don't want to put it on!" Joshua cries. "I mean, Jesus! Mixing up a guy and a girl!"

"Don't you want to do it for science?" Eileen retorts. "But fine, I'll do it."

Before you can react, she throws herself into one of the beanbag chairs and holds the mask high over her face. Your throat and limbs freeze, so that she has all the time in the world to change her mind before she goes through with it. But neither you nor Joshua say anything, and after taking a deep breath and licking her lips, she lowers the mask onto her face.

There is, maybe, a glint of light from her face as she settles the mask there, and then her hands fall away, and she stares, with a naked face, glassy-eyed and unresponsive at the ceiling. Beside you, Joshua whinnies like a frightened horse.

* * * * *

It's just like with Julie, he tells you, and the two of you perch anxiously on either side of Eileen, watching to see what happens, and you are itchy all over and just about to declare that you need to get Joshua's mom, at least, or call 911, when something ripples over Eileen's face, and the mask reappears there, shining with a blue light. You and Joshua look at each other, opened mouthed, then scramble for it, knocking it from Eileen's face to the floor. Joshua gets it first, and you have to crowd up close to examine it. Has there been a change to the face inside the mask? You can't tell for sure, but the image inside doesn't look like Eileen, and Joshua says it doesn't look like Julie anymore either. You go back to consult the book while Joshua gently chafes Eileen back into consciousness, but it says only what it said before. That you can either keep adding faces to it, or you can seal it up.

After waking, Eileen says she is ready to seal it up, and since there's nothing else to do but experiment with the new spell, you set up stuff like you did yesterday, in the back yard. The next spell uses the same ingredients in almost identical proportions, which again you have to burn in a bowl set atop a sigil, but this time though there is smoke there is no overwhelming and disgusting stench. The result is a bowl of a thick but smooth liquid like you made yesterday, but there are no further steps, such as pouring it over a mirror. And this time, when you lift the bowl from the sigil, the page beneath comes loose. You turn it and read the continuation of the spell. There's not much there, and when you translate it, it confirms what you'd suspected and hoped. You have made the sealant; all that remains is to brush it over the inner surface of the mask. Joshua gets a paint brush from the garage, and inside of five minutes the entire inner surface is coated and dried.

And before you can argue about who should be the guinea pig, Eileen snatches the mask away and marches back inside. You and Joshua follow, exchanging excited but slightly nauseous grins.

* * * * *

"How's my voice?" the girl asks. "Do I sound like—? Who do I sound like?" She is staring at the screen of her cell phone, which she is using as a mirror, and touching and pushing at her face. "Wow," she says. "It feels so real!"

Eileen had thrown herself again into the beanbag chair, and set the mask onto her face. This time, when her hands fell away, they fell away from a face you have never seen before. Neither has Joshua, for he says the girl looks nothing like Julie either. Together you stared at her for a very long minute before Joshua, swallowing thickly, knelt beside her and gently rubbed and massaged her back into wakefulness.

The girl, once awake and animated, does look sort of like Eileen—she could pass for maybe a cousin—but she definitely talks like her, and the first thing she demanded to know was if either of you "perverts" had gone digging through her pants and panties while she was knocked out. But physically, no one would guess that it was Eileen in the basement with you now. Where Eileen's reddish-gold hair trailed past her shoulders in coiled ringlets, this girl's dirty-blonde hair drops only to the tops of her shoulders, and it has stiff waves rather than ringlets. Her eyes are a little larger, and her jawline and chin a little more firm. Her eyes are an olive color. Below the neck, though, she seems to have the same general shape and proportions as Eileen.

As for her voice: "Eh, you sound kind of the same," Joshua tells her. "Maybe a little, um—"

"But I don't sound like Julie?" the girl drawls, putting a lot of vocal "fry" into her voice.

Joshua jumps. "Okay, that sounded a lot more like—"

"But I don't look like her," the girl says. "And wow, it—" She pulls at her cheek. "It feels totally real!"

"What about the rest of you?" you ask. "I mean," you add when the girl gives you a sharp, slightly horrified look, "when you move around? Walking, and, uh—"

With Joshua's help, the girl gets to her feet and tests her balance. "Feels fine," she says, but gasps as her jeans drop a little. "My clothes feel loose!" She grabs the hem of her pants to hold them up.

"Yeah, Julie's smaller than you," Joshua says. The girl hits him. "Ow! I mean she's shorter than you! Jeez!"

The girl starts marching around the room while holding her pants up. "Okay, so I wanna— I'm gonna need some new clothes to go with this look. We should go out and buy some."

"So when do we get to try it out?" Joshua protests. "Will and me?"

"Try what out? This?" The girl gestures at face. "Oh, you're not gonna—"

"Why not?"

"'Cos you'll just got digging around inside her! Besides, your clothes'll fall right off if you put the thing on."

"So what are Will and me supposed to do? We wanna have some fun too!"

"So make you up a new mask," the girl retorts, "and put your faces in it."

Joshua gapes at her. Then, reddening, he charges from the basement. Eileen prances around a little, then says, "I'm gonna go into town, get something that'll fit me better."

"I'll go with you," you say, but Eileen shakes her head.

"You need to stay here with Joshua," she says. "Make sure he doesn't do anything stupid. Which he totally will."

Next: "More Equals Merrier?" 

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