The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)

The Man in the Wheelchair

Previously: "In Which You Try to Wash Your Hands of It All" 

Andrew seems pleased to see you when he answers the door, and quickly wheels himself back out of the way to let you in. "S'up, little dude?" he asks when you're settled in his living room.

It's a nice place he's got, with cool, white walls and spare, functional furniture. The couch he leads you too is padded black leather in a frame of chrome tubes. The floor is a dark hardwood, and vertical slats of sunlight gild the bare wall opposite the front window, whose steely Venetian blinds are only half open. A Roomba is parked in the corner.

Most of the house is controlled automatically or remotely, and what he cannot clean or maintain himself from his laptop or chair is handled twice a week by a maid service.

His eyebrows shoot up when you show him the book, and he examines it while you tell him of your adventures with it, but he only becomes amused. "Dude," he says, "Halloween's not for another month. And this ain't scary."

"I'm not trying to be scary. But you try turning the rest of the pages in the book."

"Yeah, they don't turn. It's a fake."

"Fine. So buy it off me?"

He guffaws. "I'm not gonna give you two hundred bucks for a worthless book!"

"I don't want two hundred bucks. I'll take anything for it."

Andrew laughs again. "It really has you freaked out, huh?"

"You don't believe me? What I told you about it? The writing that didn't show up until I got home with it or the way the page turned after"

"Oh, I believe you didn't take a close look at it before you bought it," he says. "I believe you didn't notice that writing, or that that page was about to come unstuck all by itself."

"So how come the rest are stuck together?"

"Because it's a fake. It's a prop or a bookend or something." He makes it give it back to you.

"No way, man," you say. "I don't want it. It's asking for blood. What kind of prop—?"

"Well, I don't want it!"

"Come on, man! Just give me two bucks for it, so I'm whole."

He laughs. "No! You want to get rid of it that bad, you give me two bucks!"

"What? No!"

His grin sharpens. "Then I guess you don't want to get rid of it that bad!"

Next: "The Double-Dog Dare" 

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