The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)

Not Your Normal Cookbook

Previously: "Friday Night Follies" 

It's a little before eleven when you saunter over to Andrew's in a loose t-shirt and shorts. His SUV is parked in the driveway and the garage door is up, so you poke your head in to look for him there.

He greets you with you a bright, well-rested grin, and summons you over to a workbench, where the sacks you brought him last night are resting.

"There's a couple of sawhorses in the side yard," he tells you. "Can I get you to bring them in for me? I'm gonna use them and a plywood sheet to make us a work table." You nod, and within a few minutes you've got a makeshift work site set up. Then, under his direction, you unload the bags and lay the stuff while he goes inside to get the book.

"I gotta tell you," he says after rejoining you, "I really don't know how this is gonna turn out. This thing—" He shakes his head.

"What are we making?"

"I don't know! The book—"

"I was gonna ask you about that," you say. "I didn't see anything like a recipe when I looked at it."

Andrew hesitates. "Well, you were right about the book being weird. After you left, another one of those pages turned loose. Here, you can look at it."

The top of the page he shows you is crowded with an ornate script while the bottom is dominated by an intricate, wheel-like design whose rim, inside and out, is thickly ornamented with smaller designs that look like a cross between Arabic and Chinese lettering. "So what's it say?" you ask Andrew.

"Well, it's a recipe. That's the best I can call it. Though you're not going to be able eat whatever it makes, that's for sure."

"What does it make?"

"It doesn't tell you. It just tells you what to do with the stuff." Andrew continues to look unhappy. "I really shouldn't be playing around with this," he says. "Who knows if the guy who wrote the book even knew what he was doing. It's like alchemy or something. But, I'm really curious." He trails off with a frown.

If Andrew is nervous, then you should be too. But when he shakes himself and says, "Well, let's see what happens," you swallow and gamely put yourself at his disposal.

* * * * *

It all comes together pretty quickly, even with you measuring out each ingredient extra carefully, and with Andrew slowly translating the Latin, word by word and phrase by phrase, from the book using an online translator. (You ask why he didn't write out a full translation before, but he brusquely waves you off.) Bit by bit you add the stuff to a mixing bowl, which you set on the sigil—that's what Andrew calls the design at the bottom of the page—and drop a flaming match into it.

An acrid smoke comes pouring out with a choking stench. You and Andrew gasp and cough and flee the garage for the driveway outside. You are still in the driveway, still recovering, when a neighbor woman comes striding along, walking a Husky.

"Morning, Andrew!" she calls. Her smile fades to a look of mild alarm as she looks into the garage. "Oh, jeez, you got something on fire in there?" she asks as her dog dances from paw to paw and makes low woof-ing sounds at you.

"I burned some brownies," Andrew says. "That's all."

"Oh, that's too bad. So how're y'all doing?" She smiles vacantly at you before returning to Andrew. "I haven't been out to the club in a couple of weeks—"

"I thought I missed you, thought you changed your schedule."

He and the woman talk a little more while you cast nervous glances at the dog. It's big and fluffy and it has very sharp teeth, and the longer you look at it the more like it wolf it starts to look. It becomes more and more agitated, too, tugging at the leash and making louder and more aggressive barks at you, even with the woman telling it to hush.

Finally Andrew and Heather—that's her name, you finally learn, when Andrew uses it—wind up their talk, and she resumes her walk. Andrew leads you back into the garage. The stink still lingers, but it has dissipated somewhat.

Inside the bowl you find a runny, grayish paste that swirls when you tilt the bowl this way and that. Andrew raises his eyebrows over it, then turns back to the book. The next step, he informs you, is to pour it over the convex mirror—a semi-spherical bowl that you had to get at a speciality shop at the mall—that is the weirdest item Andrew had you buy. It seems like a waste of the stuff you've made—it'll probably just run out all over everything, and you'll have to mop it up with paper towels—but you do as directed. The paste comes out like a batter, and to your surprise it hardens almost instantly on touching the mirror, and forms a grayish shell around it. You and Andrew both touch it, confirming that it is warm but solid. Andrew himself then plucks up the thing up, mirror and all, and fumbles the shell off. He turns it this way and that, frowning at it.

And then, like he's suffered a spasm, he hurls the thing from himself. It flies away, bounces off a cabinet built into the garage wall, and falls with a clatter to the ground.

"What's wrong?" you ask.

"I don't know," Andrew stammers. "It just seemed to ... twist around, in my hand." He flinches, and stares hard at the thing on the ground.

You go over to pick it up, but you pull your hand back as you bend over it. You sit down in a crouch and stare at it.

It was a smooth semi-sphere, like the mirror, when Andrew picked it up. But the thing on the ground no longer has the same shape.

For a start, it is an oval now. It is also a lot shallower, like soup bowl. And, finally, it is no longer smooth and regular, but has acquired ridges and bumps along its concave side.

You twist your head around to get a look at these, and are shocked when you recognize the pattern they make.

It's a face.

There's a brow and a brow-line over two wells that look like the lids of a pair of sleeping eyes. These are separated by a nose that lies between two cheek bones and flat cheeks. The lips of a mouth are closed against each other, and beneath these are a chin. The whole thing looks rather like one of those "tragedian" masks that sometimes decorate the marquee of a theater, only with a neutral expression.

How in the world this thing came to have such a shape—which could only have been carved and smoothed into by a skilled sculptor—you have no idea. The skin up and down your back ripples with goosebumps, and you glance around, hoping to spot the original sphere somewhere nearby. That would be more comforting than to think that this ... thing ... is it.

You glance up as Andrew rolls up beside you, to bend over and frown at it too. "Pick it up," he tells you in a husky voice after a moment's silence. "It's okay," he assures you when you hesitate, though there's a strong note of doubt in his own voice.

So you do. You pick it up and just as quickly hand it to him. He hastily drops it into his lap and stares down at it.

* * * * *

He still has it in his lap, and is consulting the book, when you hear your name called. You jump with a guilty start, and look around to see your dad looking in at you through the garage door. "Can you turn loose?" he asks you.

"Huh?" You turn a panicked glance at Andrew, who looks up from the book with a startled expression.

"I was just wondering," your dad says, "if you could go pick us up some burgers. Andrew," he adds, "can we get you anything?"

"No," he stammers. "Uh, thanks, Harris." He looks at you. "Sure, we're at a— You can go take care of your dad."

"I'll be back later," you tell him, but he has gone back to reading the book. And, you'd admit to yourself, it is with a mix of reluctance and relief that you leave him and that weirdness.

* * * * *

Your dad sends you to Five Guys for lunch, and you're away long enough that a visitor has arrived when you get back: Umeko, to pick your brother up for the movie. In fact, they'll be leaving in a few minutes, which is why your dad only gave you an order for three when you left.

Umeko is a very pretty twenty-year-old girl, with long, black hair and a mischievous, knowing smile. Robert looks like he's going to burst with happiness as he fidgets beside her. But his expression falters when Umeko turns from him to you and says, "You wanna go with us?"

Next: "Ready Player One" 

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